My Own Contradictions

An old "version" of my closet--the clothes have changed but the order has not.

I'm sure I have many, but the one that I'm most acutely aware of after this past weekend is my compulsive need to have a neat and sparkling house--but I absolutely loathe the act of cleaning.  If there were ever something I wish I could afford to pay someone else to do, it would be this.  Despite more than one person comparing me to Monica from "Friends," cleaning does nothing to soothe my soul. 

But I can't NOT do it.  When I see clothes lying all over the floor or dishes piled up in the sink, my left eyelid starts involuntarily twitching.  I see a ring in a bath tub and I start to cringe.  I see water splash on a bathroom mirror and my upper lip begins to curl in disgust.  Clutter of any kind makes me want to grab a trash can and just start chucking things into it.  This makes things a little tense when I have a husband, a toddler, and a dog with a shedding issue.  I volunteered for each of them, and I wouldn't trade them for anything.  It's just a difficult adjustment for me.  I'll admit, there are things I still won't "adjust" on.

Clean rooms make me happy.  Patrick Bateman's apartment described in "American Psycho" makes me happy.  A gift card to The Container Store and two days with nothing to do but re-organize drawers make me happy.  My closet is a beautiful site to behold and I could be blindfolded to pick out a specific article of clothing.  My CDs (the ones I have left over from a world before iTunes) are alphabetized. 

I just don't want to have anything to do with scrubbing toilets, baseboards, mopping, or sanitizing the shower.  I hate that so many things stain a white porcelain sink.  I do, however, go back to that eyeball twitching thing if they're not done.  But once I start, it almost becomes an exercise in futility--I meticulously start doing one thing but while doing it, I notice at least two other things that really need to get done so I put those on my list.  By the time I've finished a basic clean, it's turned into me wearing a HAZMAT suit walking around with Q-Tips and peroxide to get every dirty nook and cranny.  I move furniture to vacuum under it.  I lift up electronics to dust between or under them.  I've vacuumed the dog.  She still runs from the Dyson.  Human beings were not meant to spend their time this way!

And being lenient on or understanding of those who don't put things back in their designated spot immediately after use does not come naturally to me.  It's so blatant that my not-even-22-month-old daughter has gotten in the habit of closing doors all the way that were not.  She brings me shoes that someone has left out.  She puts clothes in the laundry basket that were on the floor.  She's really good at picking up all her blocks and putting them in the bag when I tell her it's time to clean up.  She thinks it's fun to carry around the microfiber dusting tool and clean stuff with it.

I struggle with this insanity week after week.  I dread it each time, but spend far more time than I want to completing the tasks.  And I've been thinking all day that I didn't vacuum over the weekend, so I absolutely have to get it done after work tonight.  It's going to cut into my writing time again, but if I don't do it I'll just be annoyed.  Do they make a pill that fixes this yet?

Fab Friday

What the Camaro looked like before it went all Frankenstein's Monster

I think I might have gotten a little carried away with yesterday's post.  Sad part is I cut it down and left out several details in an effort to make it more blog suitable.  Whoops.

So in an effort to not make any one's brain melt today, I'll try to keep it short. Annnnnnd click "publish."  Ha!  Lame joke, but I couldn't resist.  I'm feeling especially Monty Python-ish today; maybe it's all the John Cleese commercials I see during evening Olympic coverage.

Today's a great day for me.  A personal project of mine is entering the final stages of completion, and after almost 7 years I'll finally have an outcome.  It's a car--yes, I know it's not the typical project for a chick but I think I've established by now I'm far from normal... bordering on insane.  I'm okay with that.  More importantly, it's a 1969 Camaro.  I started out with a 15 year old's dream to turn one into something amazing--looking classically restored on the outside, and a modern monster under the shell.  I'd like to think I was able to somewhat stick to that dream, but the monster side may have been more prominent than I originally intended.  The roll cage, 12 gauges, multiple switches, and 5 point harnesses fitted to stock seats will give it away to someone who knows cars, but oh well.  I'll just have to do my best to act like an F1 team and prevent people from looking/photographing under the body or hood to hide the rest.

Everyone has one of those projects, either personally or professionally, that starts off simply enough and then before you know it, it's barely recognizable as the original idea.  This one is mine.  Looking back over it objectively, it would have been a LOT smarter and cost effective to buy a crate motor, drop it in, and be done with it.  But I held on to my idea of having something unique a little too hard.  If this were a business project, the NPV, IRR, and whatever other financial tool one can think of to evaluate the worth of a project would have been dripping with red ink.  I probably would have shut it down, redirected it, or put it aside to revisit later had it been business.  But emotions got the best of me.

Of course I can say all this because it's not 100% complete and I haven't driven it yet.  I'll probably change my mind once I crank the engine for the first time sitting in the driver's seat.  I've sunk more money into this car than I care to admit, my dad has advanced birthday and Christmas presents for me well into the 22nd century, and at least 5 different shops have had their hands in it.  I'm eternally grateful for their help because without them, it'd be at least another 7 years in the making.  Probably several more.  Time and money are precious commodities, and I couldn't be more humbled that so many have shared theirs to help make this absolutely ridiculous dream a reality.

Today, it rolls out of the last performance shop under its own power and heads to the body shop for paint, glass, and seals.  I'll need a pre-flight checklist to go through every time I start it, but there really will be nothing else like it on the road. 

Every once in a while, one of those ideas that shouldn't happen because it doesn't make sense does happen.  And the end result can force even the biggest skeptics to take a step back and wonder if maybe they should try something crazy, too.

Stuff I Like

Savannah, GA - setting for Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and where I got married

Happy endings are for suckers.

One of my favorite poems is Edgar Allan Poe's Annabelle Lee.  A young man in love shares his story of pain and loss.  The description is beautiful to me.  The resentment, the anger, and the utter devastation--I crave it.  It's real.  It's part of the human condition.  Happy endings are for people who want to escape their reality.  Romantic comedies are predictable, and well, they pretty much make me cringe.  Blah.

I'm not interested in escaping.  I'm interested in the everyday insanity that so many people try to ignore or cover up or even pretend doesn't exist. I don't particularly want to be emerged in it personally  (I have enough of my own issues, thank you very much) but participating as a casual observer amuses me.

Give me gritty, raw misery.  Give me a story where the "bad guy" wins.  Give me a story where the protagonist gains a deeper understanding of his faults and how they're leading to his demise but ends up past the point of redemption.  Give me a love story where one person puts their heart and soul into the other only to have that person leave without an explanation.  Give me Iago's "Demand me nothing, what you know, you know.  From this time forth I never will speak word."  I love that his actions go completely unresolved.

I like to learn--and it seems there are far more opportunities to learn from chaos than from "normality."  Whatever that is.  It's probably just one giant charade that we all put on so others don't realize we're nuts.  I enjoy figuring out the logic another person used to get to their conclusion.  The steps I can't follow, well I chalk that up to the person being crazy and just not realizing it yet.

I like people who stand up for themselves and what they feel deeply passionate about.  I can even tolerate not agreeing with it to some extent--again, if I can follow the logic.  We shouldn't care what others think or approve of (short of being illegal maybe) and yet we're constantly trying to fit in, to find that balance between what we enjoy most and what our social circles consider acceptable.  We shouldn't have to try to live up to others' expectations but our own and yet I'm guilty of doing just that my entire life.  And it took me years to realize it.  Smooth, huh?

So I'll take the conflict, the disapproval of those around me, and I'll figure out for myself what makes me happy.  With the help of the people around me who "get it" of course.  Audrey Hepburn was quoted as saying, "I don't want to be alone, I want to be left alone."  Yes, there is a difference.

Intro to Me



A demonstration of my sparkling personality



I started writing one of those "you need to understand me" bits a couple weeks ago in preparation for this blog.  I've been stuck on where to take it for a few days and decided to start over.  I was all over the flippin' place without making a real point with any of it.  Honestly, I was coming across as an as yet undefined breed of super bitch.  I must have been in a bad mood when I started writing.

Not to say that I'm sweet or even the slightest bit demure.  I can be supremely unpleasant when the situation calls for it, but I'm really a lot more than that.  I do have several tendencies that come across to others as bitchy, but in my defense they're not actually bitchy--they're honest.  Yes, there is a difference.  I'm really quite terrible at concealing my distaste for characteristics I don't find appealing and I truly do appreciate when people share their honest opinions with me--it took me several years to understand that most don't share my appreciation for no frills honesty.

So I muddle through often quiet and occasionally bursting at the seams with opinions that come flying out at less then optortune moments.  I've come to the conclusion that people need a dose of inconvenient reality now and then.  That's where I fit in and quite well.  Those who take offense to it aren't going to warm up to me over time, so I'm just not going to bother.  I'm comfortable with the saying that if you haven't offended anyone in your life then you never really stood up for anything.

So here I am--bitchy but honest and happy to be both.  Hey, at least you know when I compliment you it's genuine.  That should be at least a little redeeming.