New Blog

Check out my new blog at www.notannlanders.blogspot.com and don't be afraid to contribute. If no one plays along, then it's going to be a rather short-lived endeavor. 

The Curious Case of Thanks, Now I Wish I was Dead

There are a lot of things that serve to remind us that there is never enough time. New Year's Eve; birthdays; the death of a pet, grandparent, fictional character in a movie based on a short story written by someone who is also dead, etc.

"Carrie, did your mother tell you that Polly died?" Polly was the cat that my mother and I rescued from the clutches of an obese, smokey smelling woman at the local pet store. The 6-week-old kitten kept scurrying away from the woman and the woman kept picking her back up and placing her on the side of the cage, apparently amused at Polly's iron grip, the direct result of what must have been Polly's desire not to plummet 5 feet to what surely seemed like certain death. My mother and I bought the kitten and took it home to my grandparents' house, explaining that it would be good for them to have a pet, which it was, for eleven years, right up until the moment the vet on the other end of the phone explained to my grandmother and her sister (who lives with her) that Polly's red and white blood cells were low and that it might be something treatable or it might be cancer, but that they would need to wait for test results to be sure. "Kill it." I don't know if these were my grandmother's exact words, but, as they didn't even wait for the test results, they may as well have been. I don't blame my grandmother. She's been rather touchy about the C word ever since my grandfather died of prostate cancer three years ago. People fill your head with the idea that, once you get to a certain age, you sort of come to terms with mortality. Bullshit. My grandfather lived to be 83. He traveled the world, had a successful business, raised three children, saw those children get married and have children, he met two great-grandchildren. I never heard the man talk about regret or start a sentence with, "I wish I'd . . . " but that man was afraid to die right up until the end. "Yeah, grandma. Mom told me."

The cat dying, finishing out 2008, having a birthday, and seeing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is too much of a reminder that the clock is ticking for one week. As a friend recently pointed out, "you grow up with your parents telling you that you're going to grow up to achieve great things. Then one day you realize that you're just like everyone else." I think Benjamin Button is supposed to teach us something about the way we experience life, but that's not what sticks with me. What sticks with me is, when Brad Pitt's character's daughter turns 1, he skips out on her and his partner and travels all over the world, supposedly it's what's best for everyone. That's the thing our parents don't tell us when they're filling our heads with the notion that, if we want, we can be doctors or astronauts or presidents. They don't tell us that getting what you really want out of life requires sacrificing the other things that you're supposed to really want out of life like family and paying the mortgage. I could write 10 hours a day if I didn't mind the idea of getting kicked out of my apartment and having to move back in with my mother. I could travel all over the world if I was okay with getting kicked out of my apartment and having to move back in with my mother upon my return. I can't actually think of any way to realize a life-long dream that doesn't involve having to move back in with my mother. That is except for the childhood dream of independence from my mother.  All I have to do to achieve that is keep working ten hours a day at a job I don't like, the job that I'm off to now. Take that, Brad Pitt. 

 

School Supplies, Similes, and Shame

I went to Staples yesterday because I had a 6 dollar coupon and 6 dollars can get you 25,000 staples. When you consider that just one staple can comfortably bind together 20 sheets of paper, that's 500,000 sheets or 100 reams of paper once carefree and loose now bound for eternity. What I'm saying is one 6 dollar coupon can save a lot of paper from isolation and loneliness. 

Now I happen to be the kind of person who lives with the kind of person who thinks school supplies make perfect Christmas presents. She's also something of a softy, so I'm sure once I run my staples = cure for loneliness hypothesis by her, she'll be excited about receiving 3 pounds of them for Christmas. That or she'll exchange them for stationary. Either way it's fine because 1) I'm not really stupid enough to buy someone staples for Christmas and 2) this has nothing to to with my actual story. My point is, I wouldn't have been at Staples yesterday if not for the coupon. If not for the coupon, all of the more factual events of my story could have been avoided, and I wouldn't have had to belabor a too long, not funny enough fantasy about buying staples at Staples.

So I'm standing in line with my 3 pound bag of staples (obviously staples don't really come this way, but the image of someone standing in a checkout lane with a bag of 25,000 loose staples in a bag slung over her shoulder amuses me almost as much as the image of that same person trying to load those same individual staples, one-by-one, into a stapler, so I'm going with it) and I glance over my shoulder, and there she is.

The she in question is none other than the subject of my previous blog, But Would You Walk Across Hot Coals?  The woman who inspired me to write every day, no matter how frustrated I got. The woman who offered (without giving me the chance to ask) to write me a letter of recommendation for grad school admission. The woman who I lovingly (and, as far as I know, without her knowledge) refer to as Aunt Erin. This woman lit a fire in my belly that no amount of over-the-counter, prescription-strength acid reducer could relieve. I hadn't seen her since May when I accepted an award for an essay I wrote--you know, back when I still had promise. So what did I do the second I realized that Aunt Erin was standing seven feet behind me? Did I run out of line and jump into her outstretched arms, wrapping my legs around her waist like an excited 3-year-old? Did I tell her how much I enjoyed her last book (which I haven't read because I'm not reading anymore either)? Did I inquire into the health of her husband and her dogs? No. No I did not. I didn't even think to do those things. Instead I turned my back like a girl who's 20 years and forty added pounds out of high school when she doesn't want the homecoming queen to see her in the ice cream aisle. I think, if I don't make eye contact, she can't hold my not saying hello against me. For all she knows, I don't realize she's behind me.  I conduct my entire transaction with my back to my old mentor, knowing that, as she is next in line, she will see me and recognize me. I mumble and make my voice slightly lower than it typically is. I do everything short of putting on a pair of Groucho Marx glasses (which, had I had them handy, I wouldn't have hesitated to throw on for good measure).

I think the why of my behavior is pretty obvious. I haven't written anything in months. The only pieces I submit are essays that I wrote a year or more ago. The well is dry. Not that I've been trying. Maybe I don't want to work. Maybe if it doesn't all come to me in a flash, I'm not interested. Maybe I like having money to spend and the though of going to grad school and trying to live on $12,000 a year doesn't really sound appealing to me (even under the guise of chasing my dreams). Or maybe I'm just trying to convince myself that that's the case. Maybe Aunt Erin saw me too. Maybe she turned around and pretended to see something interesting in the opposite direction, something more interesting than the look of disappointment permanently plastered to my face.

    

 

 

Now for something a little bit different

I didn't blog the entire month of July. Obviously this is unacceptable. Suffice it to say there's been a lot going on. Some of it is not interesting enough talk about (I got a job as a personal banker). Some of it is quite interesting and quite none of your business. The other reason I haven't blogged has more to do with the fact that I am, apparently, emotionally and, therefore, creatively crippled. Yes, it is sad. At this time I'd like to give a shout out to my best friend, Tim. He's on my ass in the most loving way possible, and I appreciate it. "I don't care if it's one sentence, just write something." Well, I've stumbled upon a website that will allow me to do just that, so until I get my words back, check me out at www.twitter.com/carriekosicki

On this new site, I am limited to 140 characters. That includes spaces and punctuation. Even I can handle 140 characters a day, dead soul or no. See, I'm making vague references to Russian Literature--that's how broken my creative bone is right now. Anyway, just click the link. Add it to your bookmarks. Do whatever it is you actual bloggers do. See you there.

I Think I'm Going to Throw Up

I walked into my quite clean apartment a few minutes ago and turned on the light. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted something defiantly frolicking across my kitchen floor. It was, how do I say this? THE BIGGEST FUCKING BUG I HAVE EVER SEEN OUTSIDE OF INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM! Now, I'm kind of like MacGyver when it comes to killing bugs. It's all about thinking outside the box. In this instance I needed there to be absolutely no way of actually coming into contact with the kitten-sized creature. I also needed to not hear the impending crunching sound. Most importantly, I needed not to take my eyes off it or make any sudden motions lest I scare the thing into hiding and, therefore, have to break the lease on my apartment leaving all of my stuff behind in the crippling fear that the thing might wish to feed on me in the night. I was standing between my coffee table and my television. Within arms reach I had a few lightweight paperbacks, a mason jar full of pens and nails, my television, and some bamboo. The thought of throwing my television at the thing (let's call him Beelzebug) was, thankfully, fleeting. I knew I couldn't do much damage with the paperbacks, and, while you can make everything from hardwood floors to bed linens out of bamboo, I didn't think it would be of much use either. Then I spotted it. My large, hardback copy of World Philosophy: An Explanation in Words and Images. Let's just call it what it is. It's a book on world religions. So, I picked the thing up, slowly so as not to frighten my uninvited guest. I did a little mental calculation of the distance so as to determine the force with which I would need to toss the book (I knew I only had one shot at this). I said a brief prayer, "bless me Father, for I am about to crush the shit out of one of your children." I launched. Do you know what it sounded like when it came crashing down on Beelzebug? It sounded like a heavy, wide book being dropped on a tile floor. No crunching noise. I was half expecting the book to just bounce off the back of this six-legged equivalent of a linebacker. Or for there to be a two second pause before Beelezebug carted my book away on his back. Thankfully, the book seems to have done the trick, but now I have a problem almost as dire as the bug being in the apartment in the first place. I can't just leave the book there. I mean, I could, but I shouldn't. At some point cleanup is going to be necessary. Here are some of the things I'm struggling with. Do I first jump up and down on the back of the book so as to ensure that the little fucker is dead? Do I just plow ahead and pick up the book like a girl with ovaries and tell myself that I'm not completely repulsed by the carnage? I think I'll definitely slip the book cover off and put the book back on the coffee table. I didn't need the cover anyway. This is going to be among the most ghastly things I've ever had to endure. Why do bad things happen to good people? Well, I guess there's no time like the present. Be right back........Turns out the answer is, jump up and down on book, remove book jacket, back away in case the thing really is from the devil and it wants to jump out at you just to prove a point, lift book jacket off floor, push contents of stomach back down your esophagus, take picture for blog, sweep up carcass with broom and dust pan, flush carcass, flush once more for good measure (I like to think that even Al Gore would approve of this waste of water) mop floor with undiluted Mr. Clean, forget about sleeping tonight, instead lay awake in bed scratching at phantom itches that can only be explained by giant bugs crawling all over you.

Tim Russert

There are lots of reasons that Tim Russert's death sucks. The thing that makes me saddest is no one loved politics more than this man. Now we're in the middle of the most historic election season of a generation, and now Russert doesn't get to experience it.

Let the Looting Begin

I know we in Columbus, OH don't have much to complain about on the shitty weather front. There's no flooding. We haven't had any tornadoes this year. We're too far inland to worry about hurricanes. But fuck me if we didn't have some crazy-ass lightning tonight. There were downed trees everywhere. I'm not talking a branch here and a limb there. I'm talking entire 30 ft tall trees scattered throughout my neighborhood. When I came home after the rain, more than a few streets were blocked off due to the fact that there was a big fucking tree laid out in the middle of the road. The park by my house looked like a disaster area; however, as a sign that everything would be okay, the local juggling club was outside the rec center tossing and catching various blunt objects. It's like I always say, if the Columbus Juggling Society doesn't get together and practice on Thursday nights, then the terrorists--I mean Thor-Norse-God-of-Thunder has won.

Before I even got to the park, I was shunted all around Third Street which was closed for a couple blocks due to waist-high water. When I drove back through a couple hours later, the water had all gone, but the street was caked in mud, and the poor bastards who'd been parked along the street when the storm came were either having their cars towed off the sidewalk or trying to will their newly fried electric to correct itself.

After driving through town for a bit, I would say that roughly 50% of the traffic lights are out. Speaking of which, I'm sure my educated readers know this, but just in case someone else stumbles across this blog, when a traffic light is out you are supposed to TREAT IT LIKE IT'S A STOP SIGN! I can't say how many people I saw just barreling through busy intersections without even slowing down. See, when people do that, THEY CAUSE ACCIDENTS!

When I finally came back into my neighborhood it was dark. Lots of power out. Not mine, but just about everyone for the 10 blocks north of me. I live in a part of the city where it's never completely dark. To see it that way was a little creepy. Creepier still was the little old shopkeeper I saw standing outside his storefront, sweeping and looking at the big hole in the front of his store where his window used to be. For the first time in my life, I'm glad I sleep with a loaded gun under my pillow--did that fool anyone? I'm trying to practice my bad assness in case there's trouble tonight.