Going to the Gym--Together

I didn't need to pee, but we had to go together. I was in the second grade--seven years old, and very insecure. I had a few random friends, but I mostly followed the crowd at this point in my life. When one girl had to use the ladies' room, of course, we all had to go. This female ritual didn't change throughout junior high school, high school, and even into college. However, my confidence level and attitude toward the habit did change. By the age of twelve, I found it absolutely ridiculous that we need to hold each other's hand to pee like I hold my six-year-old sister's hand. Needless to say, I no longer follow the crowd. Yet, in spite of my conformity-rebellion, the habit hasn't changed in others, and the stereotype persists. Many a man has mocked this strange tendency of women to flock in support of one another.

But the odds were evened when I noticed men have a flocking habit of their own. At the gym, like my solo flying, some men go to work out on their own. These individuals work quietly from machine to machine either trying to go unnoticed, or being too self-absorbed in their own muscles to notice anyone else. Yet, there is another kind of gym goer--the kind that travels in groups. They surround each other and take turns on one machine while the rest watch. After each set is completed, they rotate and draw attention with encouraging hoots and congratulatory "manly" slaps on their groupies’ rear-end. So, next time a group of women walk to the bathroom together for their gossip fest (while this remains something I disapprove of), just think--at least they don't have to slap each other's butts on the way.

I Thought This Was Hilarious!

The Poetry Judge
by Garrison Keillor
(The Atlantic, Feb.96)

BEGINNING:
THERE are four hundred poems," the president of the poetry society said over the phone, "but judging won't take you that long, because most of them are pretty bad." The next day the poems arrived in an apple carton, three bundles bound with rubber bands, and I spread them out in the squares of sunshine on my dining-room table. "O dining-room table, dear old friend, home of my mournful mashed potatoes." Four hundred poems, enough to fill a bread box, by ninety-three poets who hoped to win one of four modest cash prizes-modest to you, but no prize is modest to a poet. Poets are starved for prizes--awards, with cash stipends, named after ladies with three names. And what poet truly feels, deep down in his or her heart, that he or she is unworthy of much, much more recognition, right away? Not me. I won the Anna von Helmholz Phelan Prize for poetry in 1962 and am starved for another, even though I am no longer a poet. When I took the rubber bands off the bundles of poems, I could hear a faint sucking, an inhalation of poem breath, poems whispering, Please, sir. Please.

* * * * * * * * *

END:
Okay, I said to her, that's fine,
As I reached for the pistol you gave me, Daddy.
She thanked me for my work, and I said that it was my
pleasure,
As I put the pistol to the back of her head
And blew her brains out,
Which didn't amount to all that much, frankly,
And ran her through a wood chipper.
She made a little bit less than a full load.
I mixed her with the dirt
At the end of the flower bed,
And this fall I'll plant bulbs in her
And next spring she'll look better than she ever did as a
president,
And men in tuxedos will say how terrific the irises look,
But do you know what I went through
For beauty,
America,
And you on the terrace drinking your gin and tonics,
How can you possibly understand any of this, you
dummies?

ENTIRE STORY:

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/archive/index.php/t-4752.html

A Tribute to John Updike

The author around 1997.
Mr. Updike died on Tuesday of cancer. He was 76.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt writes: Mr. Updike was a kaleidoscopically gifted writer whose quartet of Rabbit Angstrom novels highlighted so vast and protean a body of fiction, verse, essays and criticism as to earn him comparisons with Henry James and Edmund Wilson among American men of letters.
Photo: Alfred A. Knopf

http://www.nytimes.com/?emc=na

In remembrance of Updike, I've posted what was my first taste of his work—and my favorite still.

A&P
by John Updike

In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I'm in the third check-out slot, with my back to the door, so I don't see them until they're over by the bread. The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs. I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not. I ring it up again and the customer starts giving me hell. She's one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I knowit made her day to trip me up. She'd been watching cash registers forty years and probably never seen a mistake before.
By the time I got her feathers smoothed and her goodies into a bag -- she gives me alittle snort in passing, if she'd been born at the right time they would have burned her over in Salem -- by the time I get her on her way the girls had circled around the bread and were coming back, without a pushcart, back my way along the counters, in the aisle between the check-outs and the Special bins. They didn't even have shoes on. There was this chunky one, with the two-piece -- it was bright green and the seams on the bra were still sharp and her belly was still pretty pale so I guessed she just got it (the suit) -- there was this one, with one of those chubby berry-faces, the lips all bunched together under her nose, this one, and a tall one, with black hair that hadn't quite frizzed right, and one of these sunburns right across under the eyes, and a chin that was too long -- you know, the kind of girl other girls think is very "striking" and "attractive" but never quite makes it, as they very well know, which is why they like her so much -- and then the third one, that wasn't quite so tall. She was the queen. She kind of led them, the other two peeking around and making their shoulders round. She didn't look around, not this queen, she just walked straight on slowly, on these long white prima donna legs. She came down a little hard on her heels, as if she didn't walk in her bare feet that much, putting down her heels and then letting the weight move along to her toes as if she was testing the floor with every step, putting a little deliberate extra action into it. You never know for sure how girls' minds work (do you really think it's a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glassjar?) but you got the idea she had talked the other two into coming in here with her, and now she was showing them how to do it, walk slow and hold yourself straight.
She had on a kind of dirty-pink - - beige maybe, I don't know -- bathing suit with a little nubble all over it and, what got me, the straps were down...

If you want the rest of the story:

http://www.tiger-town.com/whatnot/updike/

Africa

...I'm going there someday.

(Hopefully summer of 2010!!!)

Sonnet 1

I walk alone along my path in life.
The men surrounding me are merely boys
And will not be my match nor I their wife.
I flit from date to date with dancer’s poise,
But their left feet destroy the tandem flow.
My toes all hurt and head throbs with despair.
A lucky few get close but then they go
And tear my heart to shreds beyond repair.
Someday I may just find my perfect match—
The glove that fits my hand with loving ease.
And when he comes into my life to catch
My eyes and ask me with a smile and ‘please’;
I will not hesitate to say I’ll be
His one true love for all eternity.

Tickle Me Emo

This is so sadly funny...

Housing?

I went condo shopping with Rachel today! I hope next year's great. We'll see how it is living with Stephanie, Rachel and possible other. I just hope that we can find something in my price range; which seems to be a little lower than Rachel's. Well, cross your fingers everything works out! ...and I'm not looking forward to the day I'll have to tell my current roommates I'm not living with them... eek. Let's not think about that right now.

I Think I'm gonna be Sick...

Literally!

I cried. Now, I don't consider myself one of those "blubber" girls. You know, the ones who cry about EVERYTHING. Actually, I've done pretty well about not crying in a long while. But I've now cried twice in one week. After that huge vent about movies, I actually went to the theater with my roommates tonight and saw one of them. It wasn't "R," but it was satanic. I closed my eyes during 90% of the movie and even plugged my ears through part of it while singing "I am a child of God" in my head. I've been trying so hard lately to develop a closer connection with my Father in Heaven and to really feel the spirit. I kept thinking throughout the movie that President Hinckley would not only find the content of that movie (and all of the other billions of movies being produced these days that are exactly like it) absolutely revolting, but he would also never in a million years be caught anywhere near it.

Why did I go then? "roommate bonding." After I realized that my roommates were on an entirely different road than I am, I began to ostracize myself and mentally blame it on them. So many things have fallen into place recently that have pulled me out of their circle. For instance, Becky's infatuation (like, "I'm going to marry him someday" type) broke up with his girlfriend two weeks ago and two nights ago he asked me out. He told me that he asked Becky's permission and she told him it was "fine." That night I came home to Becky and Karma lounging on the couch with an empty pizza box. They had also watched a movie that we were suppose to have watched together. I felt like the odd-one-out. Part of the reason (according to Becky...and I agree) that our trio has become a duo plus one is because of my late nights out with Rachel. And while I know that lack of afternoon connection with my roommates is grating on our relationship, it has really revitalized my bond with Rachel. Our relationship, and even our daily exercise, has become somewhat of a life-line for me. I got sick tonight and was unable to run, but I wanted too so badly. I was so looking forward to running as fast as I could all night. Maybe I was hoping that I could run away from it all. Who knows? But instead, I went to that movie. And now I really feel like I'm going to puke!

There is just so much garbage in this world; I'm not sure how I'm going to find Him.

I have become absolutely disgusted at the state of my peers. During a ballroom class this week a girl interrupted my teacher in mid sentence during the first ten minutes of class, "Are we going to dance, or are we going to just stand around and talk?" She rolled her eyes and folded her arms. I was appalled! My teacher was so thrown off. She said "we're going to talk" and then proceeded to give us the applicable advice for obtaining dancing technique that she had begun with. Only a minute later Aubrey (my teacher) had to stop again to ask the girl to stop talking to her neighbor and listen! It was like pre-school!!! And then she had to ask again! "Excuse me. Excuse me! What did I just say?" "I don't know. I wasn't listening." "Well, please listen." It was atrocious!!!

I am emotionally and physically exhausted. I want to find my match so badly! I just can't sift through all the junk. Sadly, today I lost hope in the one guy I had hope in; and now I don't know what to feel. Part of me wants to wait to get married. I want to go to Africa and New York next summer, and those would be very hard to manage with a spouse. That part of me wants to hang on in the single world for a little longer, until I can "live" a little more. The other part of me is screaming that it doesn't care about New York, and that maybe I can date someone for about a year (beginning now!) and then get engaged near spring of next year, plan most of my wedding before summer, go to Africa and New York engaged, and then come home and get married on Aug. 16th! (The day I want to be married) I want to be completed! I need it.

Bytheway, I directed television news on air for the first time today! I only messed up once and it wasn't too bad.

Virtuous, Lovely, or of Good Report or Praiseworthy

I'm really struggling right now. I have high hopes, and a deep desire to be good and do well in my life. However, I don't feel the people I continually hang out with are helping me achieve my goals. I love my friends to death. We really enjoy hanging out with each other. But life is not one big continual party, and I'm sick of the "hang-overs." I can't live with people who don't lift me up.

I can remember Young Women's lessons in church about carefully selecting good friends. The necessity to leave bad friends seemed obvious and simple in all of our quant hypothetical situations. "Your friends invite you to watch an R-rated movie with them; what do you do?" "Your friends encourage you to skip school or church; what do you do?" "Your friends choose to sleep-in instead of going to the service project; what do you do?" --"If they're doing these things, then they're not really your friends at all. And you need new friends." Such an easy answer.

President Gordon B. Hinckley taught:
"Be clean. I cannot emphasize that enough. Be clean. It is very, very important and you at your age are in such temptation all the time. It is thrown at you on television. It is thrown at you in books and magazines and videos. You do not have to rent them. Don't do it. Just don't do it. Don't look at them. If somebody proposes that you sit around all night watching some of that sleazy stuff, you say, "It's not for me. Stay away from it." (Denver Colorado, youth meeting, 14 Apr. 1996, Quote by Elder Joe J. Christensen, Ensign Nov. 1996, p. 40)

We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.
(13th Article of Faith)

"Anna, always associate with individuals who have high ideals and high standards and a desire to do what our Heavenly Father expects of them."

Please stop being so incredibly selfish!
If you walk into the kitchen and see that I am doing your dishes, don't sneak back out!
Sometimes you should just do things because they are nice, not because you get something out of it.
Don't leave food and dishes out all over the kitchen and living room.
Take out the garbage sometimes.
Stop asking me to join you in doing things that are against my standards!
Be respectful.
Stop sleeping all over the living room!
Go to church.
Throw the empty TP roll away, and replace it!
Support people--even when you don't get anything out of it.
Did I say, DO YOUR DISHES?!
Do your homework.
The sexual jokes are just too much.
Don't be incredibly rude and then cushion it with "I love you."

Grow up.

And let me grow up too.

"Stop...no you stop...no you STOP!"

I’m tired of whining. I’m ready to grow up. I have such a blessed life, and I’m the only person that can short-change the opportunities before me. I need to “pick myself up by my boot-straps.”

Grandpa

I didn’t know my grandfather very well; I was only six-years-old when he died. And even before that, physical handicaps prevented him from communicating, so I only knew him from a distance. I felt awkward around him as a little girl. I couldn’t remember what he was like “before.” I only knew him as he was—no fingers because of a firecracker, and no feeling because of a stroke. My grandmother had to feed him, help him get to the bathroom, and wipe the drool from his chin. But she loved him just the same. Everyone loved him. They loved him now, and they loved the man he was even more. But I didn’t know. Something within me told me I loved him; I’m sure I did. He was my grandfather for goodness sake. Then he was gone. I got a new dress to wear to the funeral. It was pretty. I still have it. But my excitement over the dress faded as we arrived at the funeral. I didn’t know what I felt when we got there. Then we approached the coffin, and I still didn’t know. My mind was racing. Everyone was crying—everyone but me. Why? I didn’t know. I must have loved him, I know I did. I wanted to cry to show my love, but I couldn’t. My dad lifted me up to see him. He was different—plastic-like. It wasn’t the grandpa I knew. He was different then what I knew. I guess I did know part of him. I was only six when he died, but he is still my grandpa and I knew him. I just couldn’t cry; that’s all.

Tears streamed,
But my cheeks were dry.
Others mourned,
But I felt pretty.
I didn’t know,
But I still loved him.