So, I know Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t into Halloween. And guess what? Neither is this Jew.
Yes, I admitted it! Because honestly, I feel like it’s a faux pas not to be into Halloween. As if it’s this amazing holiday with so much to look forward to involved… um, really? I thought it was for kids. And that’s the only part I look forward to, anyway. Kids in their cute-ass costumes. Too bad I haven’t lived anywhere with trick-or-treaters since I moved out of my parents house, oh, about 12 years ago. That’s depressing.
Ok, I can’t lie, the other thing I find exciting about Halloween is when people dress up their dogs. Yeah, that’s right, that’s entertaining as hell for me. A couple years ago we dressed up our black Chihuahua as a bat. He looked amazing. The year before that he was Super Chi, and last year he just wore his bow tie, going as Formal Chi.
But for those people who get so into Halloween (who aren’t parents or dog-owners), I think it’s just a socially acceptable day to get dressed up slutty and go sniffin’ around fo’ it. Right? I don’t know the last time I saw a grown-ass-person dressed up for Halloween who wasn’t slutting it up. And you know, fair. Get in there. I’m just over it.
Personally, I’m going to use this Halloween as an excuse to try to carve an Oprah jack-o-lantern (that’s right, it’s totally insane and incredibly complicated- my brother sent it to me, check it out here), and to listen to this song a lot. Best Halloween jam ever. Enjoy.
It was just a nice little Saturday with Jessica. Susina for coffee, the Grove for shopping. We hit Nordstroms, naturally. After all that shopping we got hungry, so we stopped for a snack (first Jews ever to patronize Johnny Rocket’s).
Then it went down.
While laughing (at someone’s expense, I imagine), I was suddenly startled. According to Jessica, I made a face. A face that said, “Oh what the heyell?”.
“Dude, my tampon just went out of whack, and now it’s pinching me.” I had to share with her. Jessica nearly died she laughed so hard.
But what the fuck, man? How does that HAPPEN? I mean, there I was doing pretty much nothing, and what? What went down? Nothing went down. But all of a sudden my vagina screamed out because my tamp was attacking it. Did is slide down from the force of laughter? Did it wiggle it’s way out in retaliation or self-defense? Does this 29yo Jew have a loose va-jay-jay? No entiendo, people. No entiendo.
And you know what, this wasn’t the first time. It’s happened before, and it was equally perplexing then.
The remedy? Shimmy around awkwardly (like I did in the booth at Johnny Rocket’s), or hit the loo and adjust manually. Fucking tampons. There should be a warning on the box:
Use caution when opening legs, tampon may have shifted in flight.
I don’t really feel like thinking about work, and I don’t feel like working. When I get like this, I like to think about all the things I could do if I didn’t have to work, like if I suddenly came into a giant hunk of money and didn’t have to worry about health insurance…
What I would like to do if I didn’t have to work:
Spend time with my 85-year-old Granny and interview her so I could write her biography.
Travel — mostly to see and spend time with friends, but also to see the world.
Exercise regularly, maybe even get a personal trainer.
Focus my chi at sunrise tai chi sessions with people who’ve been practicing for 50 years
Volunteer three times a week
Read every book in the literary canon
What I’d likely do if I didn’t have to work:
Visit with my Granny but forget to write down her interesting stories and be too self-conscious to ask the good questions that would give me the real insight on her life
Schedule last minute trips to see my friends where I would have to fly in and out at horrible times of the day and not get enough time to visit them. Plan visits to countries I don’t know much about without really doing enough research and end up coming home not having seen the things I would have most enjoyed
Exercise occasionally for a couple months then lose interest all together
Sleep too late to get to tai chi or yoga, watch too much daytime television
Volunteer once every other week and feel overly important about it
Struggle through Tolstoy and then get sucked into Diana Gabaldon novels
Here’s the thing. In the store, they looked pretty good. They were no Rock and Republic (Rock N’ Republic?? I’m old), in fact…they were GAP. OK? GAP. But they looked good! I promise. Slim fit, good from behind, low slung. But I’m an urban woman, and I know that the informed shopper always asks the salesgirl how much a pair of jeans will stretch. This way, she can know whether or not to buy a size down.
The young lady told me that they stretched out quite a bit. I tried on the size down. They were snug, but Salesgirl and I agreed that it was the correct choice, given the stretch situation.
And here’s where things get worrisome. Back in the dressing room, with only myself to judge, I began to indulge the following thought: “I don’t know…that size bigger…it was just so COMF-tah-bul.”
Yes — that is the sound of me turning into my mom. That is the sound of me beginning to care more about comfort than about style. Because I have to admit something to you, readers: in my heart, I KNEW that they would stretch out. They’re fucking GAP. GAP always stretches like two sizes.
But I kind of didn’t care.
So now I have a pair of jeans — and here’s where it gets even more worrisome — that I want to wear every single day. I don’t want to wear my skinny jeans anymore. They’re so tight!! I can hardly breathe! I just want to slip into these GAP jeans, rock a sensible shoe, and call it a day.
Two of my good friends are newly unemployed — I know, not exactly headline news in today’s climate. Still, breaking up is hard to do, and when it’s your employer, it has a special cold and stony feeling to it. It makes you feel like they are telling you that all this time you were really a 6 dating a 10. Even though, with time and distance, you realize it may very well have been the other way around.
The screwdriver is twisted further into the wound by the language corporations use to describe these dispassionate yet very personally disruptive decisions.
“Let go” – You know, because they really love you and they just want to set you free to see if your love is strong enough to endure.
“Fired” – Like Frankenstein, you were chased out of town by an angry torch-bearing mob.
“Laid off” – Don’t worry, they’re just placing you off to the side for a while, like a winter coat stowed away in a closet for the summer.
“Terminated” – Heads will roll. Very apropos for this Halloween-y time.
“Lost your job” — Maybe you were driving to work and suddenly forgot where to go, or you inadvertently left your job behind that time you, Ali and Shaheed visited El Segundo.
I suppose no single term could come close to describing what you go through when your job is eliminated. The feeling of rejection, even though it’s “strictly business.” The panic of not knowing how you’re going to pay next month’s rent. And of course, for most of us, losing health care coverage as well. Because being depressed, having no money AND no prescriptions is really a great idea.
Today I realized something about myself: I have latent butch tendencies. Sure, my hair’s shoulder length and I don’t wear flannel. But I’ve recently moved, and in the process of doing home improvement projects, it hit me: I’m not just doing these to make my new home more comfortable. I’m doing it because I love to to fix shit!
For instance. I’m currently working on attaching a hose to my tub nozzle to make it a shower. I was fascinated as I listened to my Dad (my go-to source of home improvement information) explain to me how the threads of the shower hose fit nicely into the threads inside the nozzle. Also, over the past week, I got a significant thrill from using a power drill on not one, but two separate occassions. In fact, I also busted out the level, the screwdriver, and a stepladder. I’m a regular McGuyver.
Have you lost interest? Well, try these on for size…a few interesting tidbits about home improvement:
Tools and hardware are embarrassingly sexualized. The little metal thing that connects a hose to a shower head, for instance, is called a nipple.
Hardware is gendered. The side of the hose that you insert something into is called the female side; the side that is inserted is male. True story. These things started to make me uncomfortable when I was talking to my dad about them.
You never know how many trips to Home Depot you might have to make in a day, but you can always return shit if you need a different size. Really, they’re very understanding about it.
And finally, a piece of advice: if you’re working on a tub, don’t turn the water on while you’re sitting in there, even if you think you’re far enough away to not get wet. You aren’t.
There are some pieces of my past that don’t come up in casual conversation. For example, when I’m talking to someone about how much they love the Grateful Dead, I don’t mention that when Jerry Garcia died, I didn’t really know who he was. Likewise, I don’t often mention where I was when Jerry Garcia died… in a university lab, drinking chicory coffee with a deadhead and slicing rat brains for a neuroscience experiment. Just one of those stories you edit thoughtfully when your friends are hippies.
Given that my career has largely consisted of un-scientific desk jobs, I wouldn’t be stunned if this piece of my history came as a surprise to some people. I did not, however, expect it to come as such a shock to my life partner of 7+ years.
The other day, he asked if I had read an article about lab mice in the recent issue of Mental Floss. I hadn’t, but I started talking about my experience working in a lab. He looked at me curiously, as though he was waiting for the punch line of some bizarre joke.
Neither vegetarian nor hippy, my husband wasn’t disturbed with deep moral concerns. Well, at least not at first.
I could almost hear the alarms go off in his skull as I explained that I used a very sharp blade on a regular basis. Given that I still walk into walls in the apartment we’ve lived in for 5 consecutive years, I can understand his concern. As I described the process for cleaning the blade (acetone, WD-40), I noticed him glancing surreptitiously to verify 10 complete fingers.
And the other thing that really disturbed him… see, I never had pets growing up. So the summer I spent playing with lab rats that were slated for execution is really the most time I have ever consistently spent socializing with animals. As I explained this, I could see him imagining the family dog he would someday like to have and contemplating whether or not it would be safe in my care. But I liked the rats. I think it was healthy to know that they would die, as we all will. The difference was that I knew exactly when their day would come. (It was on the project calendar).
I guess it’s all on the table now. I know I’m not the only one with an odd job in my past. I’m just hoping that in time, my spouse will stop looking at me like I’m Wednesday Addams every time I notice a cute puppy.
I am a Jew. And to prove it, I have an article up today at Jewcy.com, in which I attempt to sound like I know something about Jewish holidays. To be fair, I do know a few things — a Jew did spend an inordinate amount of time at Hebrew school — but some of it, admittedly, I had to look up.
Anyway, read it and weep! No, don’t. Please. Read it and laugh. And ponder. And then leave a comment.
Lately Beyonce has single-handedly been getting me through my days. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you, B.
Recent playlist (and yes, several are from the Destiny’s Child days)
Dangerously in Love
Halo
If I Were a Boy
Emotions
Survivor
Bonnie & Clyde (featuring Jay-Z, amen)
Why all the sappy jams, you ask? I have no idea. Maybe it’s hormonal, but a Jew has been feeling very melancholy. Well, it could be hormonal, or it could be the super long days at work, the writing projects stacking up and stressing me out, or the strange flash of heat that I keep getting every few hours in my left pinky. It’s really been throwing me off.
