Queens, Uprisings, and the secret Weapon

One of my first confrontations with good versus evil that didn’t involve sibling rivalry went down in the 7th grade.

Let me lay down the scene for you, I was on the parallel bars on the playground with 2 or 3 of my girlfriends equipped with bangs and fluorescent nail polishes no doubt commiserating with my other languid skinny friends about the quality of cafeteria food and Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. The playground was relatively empty with only a few scattered groupings of adolescents peppered across the landscape. I happened to look up when I noticed four or five girls of the “Popular” clique making their way across the playground in their hooded sweatshirts and American Eagle sandals to a portly no-named girl in our school who had the misfortune to be a 6th grader whose family’s income could not provide clothes and style to overcome a genetic shortchanging sitting by herself on the swing. It wasn’t enough that she was sitting alone while others were socializing around her, the “popular” girls surrounded her, linked arms so she couldn’t escape, and proceeded to taunt her about her hair, her weight, her life. I knew this was wrong, but I didn’t do a thing about it. It still bothers me.

These girls were heralded across the 7th grade social circuit as the “it” girls.

Later in that same year in my own group of friends a coup commenced. The establishment of grade school friendships is usually based on who is in the same classrooms from year to year, but in the veritable cosmopolitan central that is Croswell Michigan this hierarchy swayed a little given that there weren’t enough students to really create different groups from year to year. My group of friends was made up of my best friend since 2nd grade, the she devil who shall remain nameless, myself, and a girl named Emily who had moved to the area in 5th grade and I had befriended on a swim outing to the local YMCA. The hierarchy laid down at the basis of Elementary Time calls for a hierarchy to exist internally within all groups with a commander, a lieutenant, and various others whose role is to support the survival of the group. 7th graders assume thrones in much the same way that nobility of old assumed thrones that weren’t allocated to them: by creating an enemy and destroying it for the world to see. The she devil didn’t have an enemy, per say, so she created one by picking off one of her own friends. Emily, for whatever reason, was selected and what went on can only be described as torture and the creation of a personal Hell. It wasn’t enough to humiliate, according to our Queen, the enemy must be isolated and punished. Emily was informed she was no longer our friend.

After a couple of weeks of mustering my courage, I called Emily and apologized for my part in what was happening, and told the she devil who shall remain nameless that what she was doing was wrong.

Queen’s don’t like to be told that they are wrong, and subjects that don’t obey the letter of the law are cast aside. It wasn’t long before I was getting the same treatment as Emily. And girls that I had been friends with for more than half my life at that point would no longer speak to me. But unlike Emily had been, I wasn’t alone, I had Emily, I couldn’t be isolated. Emily and I went on our way, we nestled into another group of friends, and before long the fact that we had ever been associated with the she devil was forgotten.

The group we had been thrown from became stoners and to the best of my knowledge didn’t graduate from college. The she devil of my personal middle school Hell became a professional dog walker.


We became a group comprised of tied valedictorians, a salutatorian, the prom queen, and third in the class consecutively. We all graduated undergrad with accolades, jobs, traveled Europe and received admission to graduate programs. Emily is getting married and I am going to be in her wedding party. “Right” triumphs over “Wrong”.

Today I am grateful to that she-devil and her legion of like minded minions because I learned a lesson that in my mid-twenties that continues to serve me and shape the person that I am today.

The easiest way to defeat an adversary is to isolate them. Young adolescents understand this, but what many fail to understand is that the reverse logic also works, and you can ensure that you aren’t defeated by refusing to be isolated and not blindly following. By surrounding yourself with people you love and care about and people who love and care about you.

That’s the strongest kind of armor.

The "I Shoulda Been a Stripper" Award!

My sister posted to her “status” that she was going to post one thing everyday until Thanksgiving that she is thankful for. In typical little sister fashion I followed suit, and I am planning on posting the complete collection come Thanksgiving. But today, something happened that I am thankful for…an award! A Blogging award! My first blogging award! (dances in cubicle at work).

I’ll get to the award in a minute, but first I need to acknowledge something…until about a month ago, I was not really into this blogging thing. So far as I knew, I had a readership of 5 that mostly comprised people who knew me before the descent of the D’s, which have been around for the better part of a decade. Then I clicked on a “Blog of Note” read their links to blogs, started following, commenting, and participating and now I’m a “little” into the fold. This makes me very happy. Words are important. People sharing thoughts are important. Feeling connected is important. I am excited to further the chain of connection…

Now, to my award! Better than “Citizenship” awards, better than “Student of the Week”, the “I Shoulda Been a Stripper” Award! While the five people who known me since forever spit out their coffee while crying, “I always thought that!!”, let me share with you the guidelines so I can post this award for all to see in my sidebar!



Guidelines:

a. post the award on your blog

- Check!

b. list 7 of your personality traits, as evidenced on your blog

1. Blonde…This “is” a personality trait. Examples: My Greatest Blog Post
2. Adventurous…Some may call it idocy. Greek Ship Sinking
3. Thoughtful…Example:

A world without bananas

4. Brave: Monsters
5. Passionate: Green
6. Funny: Jenna Hates Christmas Collection
7. Protective: I love my family

c. pass the award on to 7 other bloggers with notable personality, and be sure to let them know that they've been selected.

Well, first I must call attention to the wonderful and awesome Canadian who bestowed this prestige upon me: Journey and Adventure! She’s from Canada. Where they say “ABOOT”. Not sure if my award is nullified by giving it back, but attention needs to be paid! A person who begins a post with, “The ongoing saga with my neighbors in HR continues…” clearly has the sarcasm and superior wit to hold my attention.

Following the tradition of following blogs of people who live in places I like, Country Gone Country. She lives in Texas! Where everything is bigger! This girl is adorable, and just reeks of being the nicest person you ever met. She volunteers at habitat for humanity wearing a tool belt equipped with a phone and lip gloss! She flies cross “Republic” to visit sick friends. I pretty much want her to be a part of my crew. Stripper or not!

I met Caroline a couple years ago. She is a very good friend of someone I love. When I read her blog I always suspect she and I would get along, even if I was her potty-mouthed inappropriate friend. Her blog is about Spirituality. A far cry from the “I Shoulda Been a Stripper Award” but as it’s the lone award I can bestow at this time she’ll make do. While sometimes a little deep for my blog reading, some of her posts are really beautiful. Here is a link to my favorite:

The Musing and Misadventures of Carrie Blogshaw. A cheesy rip off of one of my favorite characters ever? Perhaps, but she can do what she wants since her blog is generally pretty humorous. I read this post about faking it and knew we had a thing or to in common, maybe not being spat on, but a few.

I’m going to cheat a bit, there are other blogs I love but they belong to world class authors and people who already have book deals, already have this award, or they are related to purely family based things and thus not interesting to the masses. I’ll gather some in the next week or so and edit.

Instincts of Pie and Men

I have a variety of fantasies that I entertain to break up the monotony of cube life. One of my favorites that I return to whenever I am puttering around my (tiny) kitchen is my single handed takeover as fan favorite chef on the Food Network. Check me out! Chopping up this onion, baking this chicken, opening this bag of Ramen, don't even act like you aren't impressed.

The lone member of my audience, ARI, is not enthused by any of my showcases and expresses his dissatisfaction by attempting to climb into the fridge or napping. I attempt to take his criticism as constructive.

It may be surprising to some, but I do not have cable. My bank account can't really handle the additional hundred dollar expense, especially when I consider my preference for reading, Netflix, and general gallivants that consume much of my time. I occasionally mourn the loss of cable programming, an occurrence that usually occurs on a random Friday when I am lounging on the Grizzly's bed and I realize I would rather watch the Food Network than be taken to get food. It was on one of these occasions that I tuned into the FN and saw a dessert being created: Pretzels, salt, cream cheese, jello, and chocolate. Disgusting. And yet, my fascination got the better of me.

I am not really one to experiment with something that sounds bad. I'll try my hand at sure things, but to take my time and effort to create something that initially made me go "Ick". This was something else entirely. My curiosity got the better of me, I picked up the ingredients on my way home. I whipped the cream, added the salt and pretzels. I tossed the strawberries, and used my microplane to shave the chocolate. The result? A pretty, if not good pie. Not to say that it was bad...but something was off. I think it was the pretzel crust. In any case I wasn't dying to eat it.

I found myself wondering what I could have made if I had turned my attention to something else. Oreo crumble? Cheesecake? Macaroons? I should have listened to my "Ick" instinct instead of wasting my time.

Then my email chimed.

An email from a boy that had consumed me, once upon a time. A boy who had initially made me go "ick", but who I gave all sorts of my time and attention to. He's not a bad person, nor a good one. Something about him is just off. I responded with some quips about Spartan football and told him about my half marathon.

I find myself wondering what I could have made if I had turned my attention to something else.


http//jenna-in-technicolor.blogspot.com

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Goldilocks Grown Up, In jail for B&E?

The cutest little brunette I know is my niece Gwendolyn. Gwendolyn is very adamant about her demands and having them met RIGHT NOW. If she wants a blankie, she will look at you charmingly, with a big grin, and make her request. If she is denied, she will slowly but surely begin to make you regret your decision in a variety of ways that I’m fairly sure are reminiscent of techniques employed by the FBI during hostile interrogations until she has exactly what she wants. Knowing her commitment to the end goal, and not really being responsible in the way her parents are about teaching her valuable life lessons, I usually choose to give in. When I last saw Gwen her obsession was books. She wanted to be read to, and she wanted the same book on repeat guaranteeing her position in the center of your attention.

The usual classics adorn her shelves: Where the Wild Things are, The Nutcracker, Cinderella, etc. These titles made me consider how stories of the generations get drilled into the heads of young ones from an early age. Your parents make you do chores? Maybe one day you’ll meet a prince, and then you’ll make them pay for their role in the use of child labor. Meet a stranger while wearing a red jacket? Undoubtedly he will eat your Grandmother and his consequence will range from severe indigestion to be chopped up by a crazy man wielding an axe.

I got to thinking about one of my childhood favorite the other day, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I liked it early on, because the heroine had blonde tresses similar to my own. Now I realize that Goldilocks was a menace with a penchant for breaking and entering and various acts of larceny. For those of you raised under a bridge who are more familiar with tales of billy goats and trolls here is a brief refresher course in this tale:

For some reason a young blonde girl’s parents allowed her to run amok in her local wildlife preserve/park/dark scary forest. And this little girl with no qualms about stomping unsupervised through a forest with wildlife like bears, has no problem kicking in a door of a house that isn’t hers and helping herself to not just food, some furniture, but the beds of the Bear’s.

Goldy walks in and helps herself to a bowl of porridge thinks its too cold, then continues to rummage through the food that doesn’t belong to her by moving on to the next and thinks it too hot, and finally eats the last which is “just right”.

Goldy continues her rampage by settling into several chairs, breaking one, no doubt invading the liquor cabinet, and mussing with all the decorative pillows in the sitting room. Completely unaware of the laws of social niceties on being a good guest, she climbs into the unlaundered sheets of a bed, and has the audacity to be annoyed about the level of firmness of the mattresses. Because the cottage is not a Sheraton with a guest service desk to bitch at, she merely moves through all the beds in the house until she settles on one that she likes, and exhausted from her day of being a decrepit excuse for a human being, falls asleep.

Meanwhile, the owners of the invaded house return home, and are rightly annoyed about their food being gone, their chairs being sat in, and more than a little cheesed about some blond bia who climbed into all their beds and was still there slumbering away.

Luckily for Goldy, she wasn’t in the USA where intruders are often met with rifles by gun wielding families. She wakes up, screams, and runs back home to her family who were likely hoping she’s get gobbled up and would no longer be their problem.

I’m not sure where the initial lesson for this fairy tale was, but the part that I remember is this little blond lass’s commitment to having everything “just right”, and her ease of navigating between too hot/too cold, too soft/too hard. I’ve been thinking an awful lot about the concept of “just right”. Why is it with the immaterial unlasting items its so much easier to tell? Its easy to tell if you like a food, a fabric, a restaurant. It’s much harder to tell whether or not you like a job, a living location, a person. Even cold is tolerable once you go numb, there is something calming about the crisp, cool, and unresponsive. Heat is something you can adjust to, and extreme heat is exciting, until it burns.

And who is to say, that a “just right” that works right now, will be right in a week, a month, or a year? And just where are the real life bears who will throw you out and force the change to come?

Maybe I should ask Gwendolyn.

Check out more of my ramblings: http://jenna-in-technicolor.blogspot.com/

The Young and the Restless...and the reality of being young and restless

I was marginally irritated when while arranging my visit to Austin for ACL my sister told me I wouldn't be able to drive their car because I didn't have car insurance because, as she put it, "Because the one time you drove would be the day that elephants escaped from the Austin Zoo and made a rampage down Mopac causing an accident. You would call me and say 'You'll never guess what just happened to me'."

I cannot deny the truth of this statement.

Elephants would indeed cause an accident when I was behind the wheel. But I maintain this truth is not my fault. For you see, my mother is soap opera obsessed, and 30 years ago she started to tune into the drama in Genoa City of Young and the Restless. So throughout her pregnancy with my sister she watched Y&R. Then when she was pregnant with me she didn't just watch the show, she named me after one of the characters. Victor Newman. Victoria Newman. Jenna Victoria. To make matters worse, I watched the show my entire childhood. So I saw normalcy in the ridiculous. Ashley's supposedly 4 month old baby was ready to go to boarding school to reappear that spring. Totally possible. Victor Newman was shot 46 times and had a successful heart rebuilding surgery? Well of course, he is Victor Newman.

When I was waiting with my sister to go to ACL on Saturday, I was sitting with my niece Gwen at the table and a tivo'd episode of the "Young and the Restless" was on. Who should be causing mischief and mayhem but the moustached wonder himself. Within minutes, my sister had caught me up on about 5 years of missed episodes that she had caught up when she was on bed rest and pregnant with the kiddos. I smiled when my Mom came downstairs, because every woman in that room had grown up to a certain extent with the king of Genoa City himself.

A few days later I was in my cubicle browsing the daily news, and what should I see out of the corner of my eye but the headline (on CNN) that Victor Newman was leaving the Young and the Restless after 30 some odd years on the program.

What the what!!??

I sat in my cube feeling an awful lot like I felt when I was five and I found out my gorgeous dentist was married. How could a character that was more familiar than Goldilocks be leaving my world. Forget that the show is called the Young and the Restless, characters on that program aren't actually supposed to actually get restless. That's my job. I should be allowed to abandon a program at my leisure and come back to everything being the same.

But nothing stays the same.

Not even a show that has remained constant since before I was born. Gwen won't be familiar with the show and mock it the way my sister, Mom, and I do. Nothing stays the same.

And that's what thrills and scares me more than anything.

Yuppie "Green" Girl

Everyone who knows me knows that I love Oprah. I subscribe to the newsletters in my inbox to get my daily dose. I read the (sometimes terrible) book club books. I actually look forward to getting my copy of “O” magazine. I will freely admit to anyone and everyone that I love Oprah. In fact, I would even go as far as to say there is no famous person I would rather meet and have lunch with than Oprah. She’s a smart savvy business woman using her influence to make a positive impact on the world. Men in my life have rolled their eyes at my Oprah worship and asked if I loved Oprah enough to marry her. My response? If I went that way, and Oprah wanted it, you bet your bottom I would. I love Oprah.

It is because of my adoration last Earth day I had Oprah’s Talk show playing in the background. It was an Environmental topic, which sparked my interest. I’m a city yuppie and in Boston being “Green” is hip, not to mention being green is a item on my 101, so I halted my sit ups and paid attention. As most environmental reports do, Oprah showed visuals of marine mammals swimming and getting caught on plastic bags. Like most people I think this is awful and I feel bad for a few minutes, but within a few moments of changing channels I forget about it. Out of sight out of mind. Not to say that I avoid making the “green” decision, but I just don’t think about it. Oprah being all knowing, probably knows that most people think along the same lines, “Oh that’s terrible, we should do something…ooo-something shiny! What were we talking about?,” and so she dropped her educational bombshell, there is a patch of garbage in the Pacific Ocean that twice the size of Texas that is 90 feet deep in some places and this mass is 90% plastic. Twice the size of Texas. In our oceans. In our water supply. Twice the size of Texas. It’s true, check out these links if you don’t believe me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_debris#The_Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20090422-tows-ocean-pollution

http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2009/05/great-pacific-garbage-patch.php

I was deeply disturbed by this. I immediately got out my reusable grocery bags, popped one in my purse and vowed to never accept a plastic bag from the store again. I called my electric company and agreed to pay the additional fees if my energy would come from wind/solar sources (actually this is only a 35 dollar a year increase), I started using Tupperware instead of disposable packaging for everything, and I began reusing packaging if I couldn’t recycle it.

While I’m not as good as some others about my plastic bag use and recycling, I do feel more conscientious about my impact on the world and how my day to day existence ripples out and into the world. Until recently I thought who I was and the impact I made on the world was limited to the type of person I was, how I treated others, and the values that I believed in. It wasn’t until lately that I realized the impact we make extends well beyond our family or friends and the things we do for a living and the friends we make and how we treat them. The impact exists even in the smallest actions. A smile, a bit of respect, even something as small as declining a plastic bag has an effect, its all just a matter of being conscious of not just who or what you love, but the world in general around you. Because unlike what your mother told you, the world (to a small extent) does revolve around you.

Criminal Minds

After discovering that TDH was wanted by the DMV of the State of Connecticut I spent a few moments congratulating myself that the guy I was seeing wasn’t wanted for burglary or arson, a real achievement when I consider Boston’s assortment of single men (Craigslist Killer anyone????). I then called Grizzly to inform him that he had overcome hurdle #26. Rather than be positive about the happy news I was delivering him, TDH reacted poorly. Apparently he felt violated, and he couldn’t believe that someone as liberal as me, who routinely spit and hissed about the Patriot Act, saw no problem with her father using his position of power to investigate the helpless who tried to date her. He then spent some time vehemently denying that he had committed any offense to Connecticut worthy of having his license seized.

Big Bill’s response to the allegations of privacy invasion, “Better to find out your license is suspended when you aren’t pulled over in Connecticut…cause then it would be off to a group holding cell in the County jail. Then you’d find out what real violation is.”

I was not sure if that was a veiled threat or not.