11 and 12: compliments

Yeah, it's taking me a long-ass time to get through this meme thing, but hey—my blog, my pace, dammit. Today's is about compliments. I'm combining 11 and 12, as they're to do with the same thing.

The physical stuff is typical. I get compliments on my curly hair, my smile (thanks Mom and Dad!), my eyes and eyelashes, and my rack. I think that's typical girl stuff. Those are all things that can stand out on anyone. So while I may not have the bangin' body I had ten years ago, I still have a good rack and the littler details. Eh, I'll take it for what it's worth.

Aside from that physical stuff, the number one compliment I get is regarding my creativity. It's worded differently depending on who's doing the talking, but I get the "You're so creative!" and "You're so crafty!" a lot. It's not just about art and the like. I think it's that I'm the kind of gal who will figure out how to make something work for me if I can't do whatever is the "normal" thing to do. Since I'm short, I will use 12-packs of stacked soda cans as a step-up in the grocery store so I can reach the top shelf. I'll use tongs to get stuff down from higher shelves, provided they're light enough and won't kill me if they fall. If my stepladder doesn't allow me to reach whatever I'm needing to reach, I'll stack furniture until I am where I want to reach. If I don't have the right stacking furniture available, I'll put on my highest platform boots. Many a night, I've hung artwork in a tee shirt, knickers, and red-glitter platform boots, whilst atop a chair stacked on my massage table. Thankfully, I learned how to fall with minimum bodily damage at an early age; though perhaps I should just invest a small ladder. This is probably something I learned from Mama Pants. Not the stacking and falling part (though the falling thing is certainly from her), but the self-reliance. She does things her own way as well.

And though I'm pretty self-reliant, I rarely think of it as creativity. I guess it is, but stacking soda packs just seemed logical to me. Putting all my socks into a lingerie bag before throwing them in the washer seemed like a good way to stop losing socks to the sock-eating dryer monster. (And it works.) I don't think of it as creativity, I think of it as ways to streamline convenience. I see what people are getting at though and I do take it as a compliment, even if I think it's just plain obvious what I'm doing.

The downside to this self-reliance, as Mama Pants also well knows, is that sometimes it turns against me. Over the weekend, I wanted to change out my kitchen faucet spigot thinger. I had to unscrew the current one—not a big deal, as I have a wrench. The new spigot thinger (official term) came with both an outer-thread attachment and an inner-thread attachment, which I found handy, though they were screwed together. No, not screwed together, they were hermetically fucking sealed together. I don't have a man handy to pop open pickle jars or unscrew spigot thinger attachments and the cats are pretty hopeless in those situations, so I had to improvise. (Cue ominous music.) I held one end in my left hand with a jar-gripper so it wouldn't slip, and I had a pair of pliers around the other for turning leverage. It worked. It worked well. The pliers moved the top part just like I expected, but I didn't anticipate how easily it would turn, nor that my first knuckle was directly in the path of what I now know is a very sharp part of the pliers. I put a lovely gouge into the first knuckle of my left hand. It didn't take the skin clear off but the flap was more than just a half-moon. I felt a small pinch and then saw a lot of blood. I didn't feel anything, so I knew that it was deep. And yeah, it was. Like, I maybe could have used a stitch or two, deep. Oops.

However, my crisis reflex is to go zen so I just went into the bathroom and went to work. I had the finger cleaned with peroxide and taped up before I ever felt anything. The perks of a well stocked first aid cabinet. I checked it last night and it looks like I cleaned and bandaged it so quickly that the skin flap has resealed itself into place and started healing. Which is good cos I really didn't want to have to do a SuperGlue stitch. So yeah. While I'm creative, sometimes to physical peril, I see it as self sufficiency.

As to what I never get compliments on: my superfast metabolism. Because I don't have one. Or my genius level math skills. Because I am mathtarded.

The end.

#10: Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn't know

Calling this one in:  All politicians.  Scum of the earth.

#9: Someone you didn't want to let go, but just drifted

Ahh, the drifting. That happens a lot in my life. I'm a shitty communicator at times, I suppose. And C-names seem to be the major connection when I think about it; not all of them, but most. Weird. (I'm gonna use initials on some people.)

First up is C.R., who I believe might still peek on here now and again. She's got wings, I swear. That gal is just an angel walking. We tend to go through long periods of silence and then will pick up like nothing ever happened, and slip back into it. There's never any bad blood (that I know of, at least—though she surely has cause to be irritated by my shitty communication skills) and I adore her to bits and pieces and back together again. She's got one of the most golden hearts I've ever had the blessing to encounter. (If you do pop by, I love you, Nose Buddy!)

Next is C.C.E., whom I'm pretty sure has never happened along me anywhere on the tubes. I think he'd get in touch if he had. "Pants" is not my real last name, after all (which is probably good, as my initials would then be SAP, though my Spanish Minor makes that somewhat funny to me….) and I hadn't adopted the name when we were in touch, only within my time here in Texas. Every time I would get back in touch with C.C.E. after a lapse, generally after a dream or series of dreams about him, he would have just gone through a major break up. He noted the last time that it freaked him out a little bit. I wondered if it might be more harmful than good to continue to contact him when my instincts kicked in and sent me C.C.E. dreams, because that was not something I ever wanted. I held my tongue and clickety keyboard fingers silent after that. He got married a bit ago and I'm happy for him; it's what he always wanted. And so I'll continue to let that one drift, as I don't think it would be very respectful of his new wife to get back in touch. I'm very aware of how much I meant to him, which tells me he knows how much he meant to me too. Sometimes it's best to just let it lie, I guess.

I.S.F. was a friend of mine in high school. He was also a friend of C.C.E.'s, though he and I knew each other before I met C.C.E. and remained friends after C.C.E. and I had broken up. I.S.F. was wise beyond his years and I felt very safe with him pretty much from the get-go. We had a falling out when I was in college, for which I will take 99% of the blame. It was silly and certainly not worth the loss, but when it happened, I was also going through myriad other issues in my life. Unfortunately, my friendship with I.S.F. was a casualty of that period, one I truly regret to this day. He emailed me a while ago, apologising for his part in the fall out. I replied that while I appreciated the sentiment, it was my job to apologise and I did so. We haven't talked since; I don't know if we could get back to where we were anyway. From what I understand, he has a wife and kids now and is happy in his life. I'm glad for that. He certainly deserves it. While I've come to terms with the fact that I destroyed a really good thing, I also am glad that I knew him as long and as well as I did.

My final drifter is Christian. Another C name. Truth be told, Christian and I have never met in person and I don't really feel like we've drifted apart, but I feel he should be in this post because we do tend to float in and out of one another's lives. We bonded over our musical tastes (something that I think my entire generation does more than any other generation before or since) and our love of the Stone Roses. Christian is affected by music like I am and because of that, we just kinda "get" each other. He's funny, smart, and an all around awesome guy. I know we've both had "internet crushes" on each other because of how well we clicked—we've acknowledged as much. I believe his wife is even aware of it; I know she knows she's got a good man. And he's head over heels for her too, which makes him even more attractive (though not in a "I'ma get me some of that" way; that's not my style at all). They make an awesome team, those two; I'd happily be their better-fated Xiola. As for Christian, I'll see him next lifetime.

#8: Someone who treated me like shit/made life hell

There's lots of mud-slogging in these prompts. Because there isn't enough shit in the world right now, I'm now supposed to dredge up memories of someone who made my life hell and/or treated me like shit. Alright, meme, I'll play along.

I went to a babysitter in the neighbourhood who watched several kids at once. Her daughter was a psycho bitch from hell named Kristy who did not like me. (Yes, Mom. I know I spelled her name incorrectly.) I don't know why she didn't like me. I was 3 or 4 years younger than she was, but I was the object of her hatred and maliciousness. She'd smack me around, she'd screw shit up and then blame me for it, and she often made a game of running me into the hotwired fence. She was a peach. I told my parents and I know that at least once they talked with her stupid mother about it, but nothing ever happened. Her stupid mother forgot to pick my brother up from school one day and didn't remember until my parents came to pick us up (though I explicitly remember asking where he was well before then) and we stopped going there to her house. Sometime later, Psycho Bitch Kristy came down with some sort of magical, mystical, mystery illness. At one point, they thought it was Malaria. Stupid Bitch Mom Lady called my mom about it once and I remember thinking right then that I hoped she'd die. (No, I'm not sorry I thought it. Not one little bit.) I also thought she was faking it. I still think she was faking most, if not all of it. I don't wish she'd die anymore. I think she's getting everything she's ever deserved by living her miserable little life.

As the first one of just about everyone in my elementary school to hit puberty, I took several hits in that arena. One kid, Jonny, took particular delight in pointing out my break outs to the world with a variety of unclever, yet hurtful nicknames. The irony of this was that Jonny had fire-engine ginger hair, was covered in freckles, and looked like he'd been fathered by a half-retarded jackal. Also a winner, he fathered a child his sophomore year in high school with a gal who had the IQ of celery. I believe he dropped out of high school before graduating (I switched schools and didn't keep tabs on people that sucked that much) and was murdered a few years after I went off to college.

Another gal in junior high, a Jennifer with a chip on her shoulder, targeted me for no reason at all. She would scream at me, try to get her friends to stare at me, blah blah blah. We wound up in a class together, her sitting behind me. She'd kick my desk. Once, she kicked me in the back. I turned around and asked her what the fuck her problem was. She didn't respond. I switched seats permanently. The next year, she wanted to be my friend. Turns out, she'd gotten me confused with someone else and had tormented the wrong person. I told her to go fuck herself. She's still living in the same town I grew up in. Advantage: me.

Hmmm… Seems like fucking with me doesn't end well. Let that be a lesson, y'all. Grr n' shit.

#7: Someone who makes my life worth living for [sic]

Someone who makes my life worth living for? That's an oddly worded prompt. Why not just "someone who makes my life worth living?" Why must I live for that person? Why can't I be that person, considering it's my own life that I'm living?

I have a lot of awesome people in my life. I like to surround myself with them because they are awesome. Who wants to be surrounded by assholes and mediocrity? That's easy to accomplish. Go to a WalMart. You'll be lucky to be surrounded by assholes and mediocrity. A WalMart would probably make you appreciate assholes and mediocrity. But really. You deserve better. Don't go to WalMart. Please. Just don't.

So yeah, I've got awesome friends and family. My mom's favourite word is "fuck" and she uses it prolifically. My father spits out phrases like "motherless whore" and "butterberry asshole." My nephews blow my mind. My brother amuses the shit out of me. My friends send me shoes and indulge my stupid puns. They overlook that I like horrible television shows and aren't afraid to tell me when to put the fucking crackberry away, goddammit! They are people I call when I shit myself. That's friendship, right there. I don't live for them, but they make living just that much more enjoyable and I'm glad to have them along for the ride.

What do I live for? Well, because the process is an adventure. And it sure beats the alternative.