The One... The Only... The Vieve

The grift

Last week, I was walking down the street and a guy selling Spare Change stopped me. He caught my attention by saying, "Hey, beautiful!", which, for future reference, is usually pretty effective. He shook my hand, introduced himself, called me beautiful a bunch more times, complimented my scarf, asked me if I had a boyfriend (I lied and said "yes" because, charming as he was, I didn't really want him to offer to be my boyfriend), said "of course you have a boyfriend, gorgeous lady like you," and told me I should tell my imaginary boyfriend that he's the luckiest man in the world, to have a beautiful girlfriend like me, and then, finally, he asked me for money. And I immediately gave him $2, without hesitation. He goddamn deserved those two dollars.

The next night, on Thanksgiving, the doorbell rang in the middle of dinner. A woman was standing on my porch, maybe my age, maybe a little younger. She nervously told me that she lived up the street and had locked herself out of her apartment and she didn't have her ATM card and she found a locksmith and her elderly neighbor had offered to write a check for him but he needed cash and she was $20 short and so could I help her out and "loan" her 20 bucks? She would totally pay me back.

Um, yeah. So I told her that I would certainly help her out, but I couldn't just give her $20 because, ha ha, I'm not saying this is the case but, you know, this could be a con and I didn't just fall off the turnip truck. At which point she got a very puzzled look on her face and started sputtering a bit. At which point I continued, and told her to come back when the locksmith arrived, and I would give him the $20.

She didn't come back.

Sickos

I was looking through my site statistics thingy, which lists search strings that people have used to get to your site, and I saw the following: "katie couric crotch".

Ew. And, what?

Regardless, that person was definitely disappointed when they got to this site. People are gross. And perplexing.

Treadmill to glory

This week I decided to start running for real. Meaning on the treadmill at the gym instead of on the zero-impact elliptical machine. I expected there would be a big difference, and that it would be much harder, and holy god, I was right. I've been trying to take it a little slowly -- walking for a few minutes, slow jog for a while, running for a bit, slow down for a bit, and so on, for about 30 minutes -- because I don't want to hurt myself or burn out in two weeks. But it's not so much in my nature to take on challenges like this slowly. I push push push, go go go. I tend to not have much patience with myself; sometimes I don't have much patience with others, either. I expect a lot, and on my terms, and not everything or everyone complies, goddamnit.

But I'm trying. I'm trying to find that balance between pushing things so hard that they break and the other extreme of being so utterly passive that I don't accomplish anything or get any of my needs met. It can be a thin line, a precarious place. I think it is for everyone. And I'm going to miss my footing and fall over to one side or the other constantly, just like everyone else does. But I'd like to be able to hit the mark a little more often, even if I'm flailing and wobbling like a drunk with vertigo.

So running is a way to practice this, I think. And it does feel good to run. I feel light, graceful, powerful. I feel like I'm doing something difficult, something I never thought I would be able to do, and so I feel...triumphant. Yeah, triumphant. Even though my hips hurt and my calves hurt and I had a weird muscle spasm in my right tuchus this morning, I did it, and I'll keep doing it, and I am victorious.

Pretty puppy

About a year ago, I had to have my dog put to sleep. She was an old girl, long in the tooth and gray around the muzzle, but I had only known her for 2 months before I had to say goodbye. It was gut-wrenching, watching her die slowly on the cold linoleum floor of the animal hospital with her head turned toward the wall. I stroked her side and said softly, over and over, "It's OK, puppy. It's OK."

It wasn't OK. I wasn't OK. I felt like my heart was being ripped out. I wondered if there was anything else I could have done. (There wasn't, and I knew that, but still.) I had rescued her from the shelter, I had walked her, I had bathed her, I had taken her to work every day, I had kissed her nose hundreds of times, and I had loved her. I still loved her. I still love her.

I miss you, Rosie. I miss your huge punkinhead, and your furrowed brow, and your whip-strong tail, and how you would sleep on your back in the most unladylike position, and the way your ears perked up every time I got the leash, and how you loved to be near me all the time. I miss your love and devotion. I miss how you made me laugh and feel loved in the most uncomplicated ways.

You had your idiosyncrasies, and bad habits, and I never was able to make you play nice with other dogs or with the cat, but you were a good dog. A very, very good dog. And I'm grateful I had some time with you, even though you had to leave too soon.

Sleep well, pretty puppy.

Book dork

Anyone who knows me knows that I read a lot. A lot a lot. I always have, and I always will--it's a part of who I am. When I was a kid, I usually had at least two books going at the same time, and sometimes I do that even now, though not very often, and usually only because I need a break from a book that I'm reading before I finish it, because I can't get into it or focus on it at the moment for some reason (*cough*, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, *coughcough*).

To illustrate, here is the list of books I've read since August, or maybe late July:

• The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood
• Cloudsplitter, Russell Banks
• Lucy Gayheart, Willa Cather
• In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
• Magical Thinking, Augusten Burroughs
• Stranger Things Happen, Kelly Link
• Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
• The Terra-Cotta Dog, Andrea Camilleri
• The Turkish Gambit, Boris Akunin
• The History of the Siege of Lisbon, José Saramago

Right now I'm reading The Raphael Affair, by Iain Pears, a nicely paced art-history mystery. (A little fluffy, but fun, and a good choice after the challenges of Saramago.) Next up, either The Grifters, by Jim Thompson, or Affliction, by Russell Banks.

Writing about this, and looking at that list of books (I average about a book a week, I guess), I think I need to get out more.

Taxonomy

Yesterday I decided to add categories to this thing, and to categorize all of the entries from this year. Here's what I came up with:

1. 3-2-1 Contact (1 entry)
   
2. Angsty bitching (10 entries)
   
3. Elegy (2 entries)
   
4. Fiction (4 entries)
   
5. Miscellany (2 entries)
   
6. Navel-gazing (16 entries)
   
7. Oh, you men. (3 entries)
   
8. Quotations (3 entries)
   
9. Show-and-tell (10, wait, 11 entries)
   

(Hmm, a lot of navel-gazing and angsty bitching. I can't say I'm surprised.)

This was a fun project, trying to assess everything I've written in an organized, categorical way, and coming up with descriptive-yet-not-totally-boring categories. Well, it was fun until I tried to get the categories to actually show up on the public page. 90 minutes and lots of help pages later, I finally got it to work. I kind of impressed myself--I'm not very code/tech-inclined (or, really, I'm not interested in being so inclined), and I still figured it out. I don't know everything, but I am resourceful.

Anonymity

I know people read this. Not many, but some. I know that people I know and that people I don't know read this (mostly the former, I think). I know for sure of a few people who read it regularly, but the rest are a mystery.

I check my logs once in a while, but they're not very telling. Most of those are the a-hole comment spammers anyway (if you need "male enhancement" or want to play online poker, let me know), but who is c-66-30-9-162.hsd1.ma.comcast.net? Who is wsip-68-15-5-43.sd.sd.cox.net? I'd like to know.

I wonder who reads this, what they think, how I come across, if what they read changes how they think of me. If I'm a stranger, a childhood acquaintance, a new friend, an old friend. But this is the vast, (generally) anonymous Internet, and I'm basically flinging my small collections of words into the midst of an enormous, faceless mob. And who the hell knows what anyone thinks? And should I care? (I do. I try not to care too much, though, or I wouldn't write anything.)

So, I guess I'd like to know who you are. Yeah, I mean you. Yes, you. And you, too. Yeah, and you as well. Send me a comment and introduce yourself, so I have a better sense of at least a tiny subset of the faceless mob.

The little things

I see things and think of things every day that I want to share with someone. Like the "Fudge Fives" thing from yesterday. Or the guy I saw brushing his teeth in his car while I was driving home last night. Or about the origins of my various nicknames and scars. I want to be able to go home and have a someone to tell, to say, "Hey, listen to this!"

I want to share myself with someone, and I want that person to share with me. I guess that's a pretty basic desire, but I've been feeling it a lot more keenly lately.

Potpourri

Just like on Jeopardy!, sometimes I get lazy and want to include snippets of random things that lack a cohesive theme. It's better than nothing, no?

Every professional field has its own lingo, not just lawyers and doctors and whatever else. Here's an excerpt from an email I just sent:
"...please move the Intro over to the verso (get rid of the color screen) and place the Ack.s on the facing recto..."
(OK, maybe that's not all lingo. Maybe some of it is my own pidgin book-ese. Whatever.)

I've been going to the gym in the mornings lately for some running and weights and Power Abs (grrr! Power! Abs!), and so I've been watching the various news shows they have up on the TV screens. I am not a news-on-TV lover (or even liker; actually, I'm definitely a hater), but if Katie Couric happens to be in my line of sight, so be it. They always have the captions on, and these are always inaccurate, which can lead to hilarity. Today, there was a story about two men who escaped from prison: "...if captured, the Fudge Fives...".
The FUDGE FIVES! Instead of FUGITIVES! (I'm guessing that's what they meant, anyway.) I almost fell off of the elliptical machine. Holy crap, that was funny.

I was at Newbury Comics last night (home of a decent selection of music, but mostly home of Napoleon Dynamite gewgaws and other novelty crap), and I saw a product called "Candy G-String." See, it's just like a candy necklace, like you used to get in your birthday party loot bags when you were 8, or like those funny people with the pink hair who kept trying to rub you and lick you gave you at that party that time, but you wear it around your pink bits instead of around your neck. Isn't that CLEVER? Isn't that SEXY? Won't that totally give you a YEAST INFECTION? In case you don't want pink sugar goo stuck in your crotch-crevices, they also had a Candy Bra, which might be kind of cute, but probably only if you're an A-cup or have rigid "enhanced" tits like the ones on the box shot's model.

Also, I had the thought yesterday while riding the Porter Square T station elevator that a lot of people wear ugly, ill-fitting pants. But now I'm thinking about all of my pants, and how they don't really fit me, and maybe they're ugly too and I just don't know it?

Closing thought: I should buy some new pants. CANDY PANTS!