Anxiety Sucks

I've noticed that the more news I hear the more I tend to worry. Really, it's hard to keep up with what we're supposed to be worrying about. should we worry about the plain-vanilla flu or Bird Flu? Should we worry about a recession, A Depression, a global financial meltdown? Is there a child predator in our neighborhood or a crazed kidnapper lurking in our city? Is that pain in my side some rare disease? Perhaps the one I saw advertised on TV just last night. Perhaps I should ask my doctor..... Or perhaps, I remind myself that statistically our children have never been safer, we have never been healthier and our nation has never been wealthier. It is, by almost all measures, the best of times. So perhaps what I should do is turn off the TV, shut down the computer, ignore the alarmist headlines and do what I can: Go for a hike, buckle up, buckle up my children, eat well...most of the time, lend a helping hand, get some sleep, express gratitude. Perhaps then I'll see that we are, in fact, doing just fine.

Dear C, and Mean drunk

I'm not an affectionate drunk but a hostile one. It begins sweet and loving then corners demanding throughout the night. I'm a demanding drunk. Tell me you love me. Let me show you how I love you. It's too in your face. And shit, sometimes I just cry. But mostly, I've never been called a bad drunk, have never hurt anyone, except myself once in a bad skipping accident which landed me in the emergency room. I received a text message today from a male friend, at 9:10 am, asking, "What does it mean when a girlfriend is nicest to you when she is drunk? Would appreciate your honest opinion." Well now. I'd pull up my sleeves and take this on, thriving, as I do, over relationship questions.

Before I share my advice, give him yours because he needs it. Oh, and I know as much about them as you do. Nothing.

Not that I need to, now that the boy has gotten an earful, but as promised, here was my take on it--it's along the lines of what everyone else has said:

It means she pretty much sucks the rest of the time, so keep her liquored up. Well, it's never that simple, or we never let it be, but that's essentially what you're saying. That really, you don't like how she treats you while she's sober. Maybe it's her guard, insecurity, but whatever the reason and whatever we analyze it to be, it doesn't change the fact that you prefer her when she's drunk, because it's then that she's actually nice. That should tell you a little something about how you feel about her.

Too often in relationships we tend to focus on analyzing the other person's behavior, trying to decode their everything. So much so that we sometimes neglect focusing on how we feel, independent on how they feel for us. It's a fear, maybe, of being more vulnerable. Now maybe, as sad as this is, maybe she just feels lonesome and sad for herself when she'd drunk, so she needs more, gives more to get more, using alcohol and you as a crutch, a stand-in to make her feel upright and good about herself. But that might be a little too much analyzing, even for me. The key here is, I imagine your asking has very little to do with her feelings for you and more to do with how alcohol affects her temperament. And as I've stated, how you feel about her. So it says more about you, as does asking the advice of me, instead of just speaking with her outright about all of it. But perhaps that's a lesson for another time.

Long hair on men, eh

.The other night I watched one of the best movies I'd seen in a long time. Not Shawshank best, or Sense & Sensibility best, not even Tootsie best--more like Fried Green Tomatoes best. A total chick flick that left me crying that good cry. The perfect blend of quirky, crave, sass, and hormone treatment, Waitress is a ridiculously adorable film with snappy dialog and peculiar characters so endearing that it makes you want to up and leave the house in a bathrobe to make new friends. If you ask me, there aren't nearly enough over the top, I don't give a rat's testicle what you think of me people. (Do rats have testicles?) Sick, now all I can think of is that little silver ball inside an etch-a-sketch.

I want to go bake pies, to slice up a bunch of peaches on a brand new wooden block, to muddle berries and fold them into a drape of chocolate, and dammit, I want to meet more characters that tell it like it is, don't give a hoot what all you have to say about their business, people who say "what all." And then I want to sing to my babies and put on a yellow dress.

Aside from the strange on purpose people in the film, I found myself rooting for things I'm morally opposed. It's like those movies where you want the killer to get off on a technicality. You don't want them to get caught. You want their sick twisted bank robbery to go off without a snag. You want them to get away with the diamonds or the other woman's husband. Or you're psyched when Sawyer shoots Zeek in the head. Yeah, PSYCHED someone was killed.

What I learn when I watch these films is no matter how staunch my moral convictions, I begin to question them after movies like this. Maybe I can find my way across the line and somewhat understand, even side with, "the other woman." And while I love the ability of art to force me to reconsider things, one thing ain't changin': men who wear their hair down to the middle of their backs are not, ever, appealing.