I’ve been struggling with this whole, what to write dilemma that has plagued me ever since I took to the blogosphere, so naturally I was thrilled to have a few moments of alone time last night as I drove to my brother’s work to bring him dinner (I know right….how sweet…blah blah blah). Anyways, as I was deep in thought mulling over an idea to rate restaurants where Mr. Abandonment (Michael’s nickname until he can give me a better one) and I have eaten, I pretty much blanked on where I was going and missed my exit……and to my horror I actually heard the phrase, Shucksie Darn, come out of my mouth!! Wait a minute….what?! Shucksie Darn? Who says things like that other than my mother?! And that’s when it hit me folks, it was a realization that I have been avoiding like a long line at Disneyland…but this, this inadvertent use of mommy slang was seriously, out.of.control.
In an attempt to once again deny deny deny, I surveyed my surroundings….Disguising my motivation to learn all the details of my brother’s life in the form of ‘bringing him dinner out of the goodness of my heart’? Check. Speedometer set at 65 mph? Check. Glasses firmly set at the tip of my nose with my hands at 10 and 2 all while gently bobbing to the musical stylings of one Mr. Kenny G? Check. Check, and holy crap, Check!!! I hoped that quickly plugging in my IPod and blasting some random 90’s rap song, something about more money and more problems, might restore my dignity and possibly allow me to slip back into the oblivion known as denial, but to my demise all I could think about for the rest of the drive was all of the little characteristics that I have inherited and exhibit on a daily basis…and so I have created a list for your reading pleasure of how you KNOW when you are becoming…..dahdaaadadahhhh, your mother.
• While your significant other is driving, you; wordlessly tap your passenger side window to indicate what direction you want the vehicle to go, make sudden and overly dramatic gasping noises for no apparent reason, white knuckle the dashboard anytime another vehicle approaches within 20 feet of your car, use this valuable time of not actually having to do anything but sit and stare at the road ahead, to catch up with all 21 of your nearest and dearest BFF’s, on speaker of course.
• You call your husband, boyfriend, favorite child, dog or naggy neighbor, it really doesn’t matter who it is, as long as you feel the need to chat, as many times as needed until they finally answer the phone. I will go on record as stating that I in fact have received 25 missed calls from my mother in the span of 20 minutes, oh and don’t forget….if you can’t reach whoever it is you are trying to get a hold of, you go ahead and start calling their best friend’s mother’s uncle to find out where they are and why they are not answering your phone.
*******I particularly utilize this trait when my abandonment issues really kick in and Michael will not answer his phone, I don’t care if he is in the middle of injecting Novocain into someone’s jaw, I need to talk, and I need to talk now….
• The drawer next to your refrigerator, aka the one that used to be filled with keg taps and ping pong balls in college, is now overflowing with Round Table and Cultive coupons…even though you will never use them.
• While you demand that your roommate, hubby or child wake up at the butt crack of dawn to play Cinderella and scrub down the bathrooms and take down the dirty clothes before school or work (helllloooo, my childhood)…you STILL obsess about people coming over to your home, and it being haaahhh..gasp…messy! In other wards you live and die by Pledge and Windex, and you take it as a compliment when your guests make a slight choking face when they walk into your house and are asphyxiated by Island Mist Febreeze.
• You’ve had a bad day, and instead of going to Taco Bell to buy out the entire Value Menu…you exclaim that anyone who depends on you for food supplies is on their own for dinner, and you hop on down to Raley’s picking yourself up a nice German chocolate cake and box of Pasta-Roni Stroganoff (I know this is pretty specific, but it is probably one of the traits that I most fear to inherit…)
This list is only the tip of the ice berg of what I have to look forward, the minor traits that can be brushed off as ‘cute’ and possibly ‘endearing’. It won’t be until my DVR lineup includes ‘Days of Our Lives’, ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and syndicated episodes of ‘Survivor’, until I really start worrying.
I am not going to lie, this post definitely had me chuckling to myself as I recalled all of my mom’s quirks and eccentricities. And in the end, I have realized…so maybe I have an irrational view of what is really clean, and maybe I get worked up into a tizzy when I go to a restaurant that I have not already pre approved…but if I have inherited these quirks, then I can only hope that I have also inherited even a pinch of the kind of mom my mom has always been to me, because I think that would be totally va bene.
***Authors Note: The term ‘Shucksie Darn’ is not an original phrase, please direct all credit to Ms. Lindzy Anderson and her shared fear/wonderment of becoming her very own madre.
Ciao Ciao,
La Regazza Pazzesca
As I pull my laptop out from under my bed, dusty from months of abandonment and my refusal to even look at a computer after the hours of 6pm and certainly never on a weekend, I get the sudden urge to abandon my plan. Am I foolish? Who would ever care about anything I have to say? Do I really want to be that girl who thinks her blog is ‘special’ and insightful, when all she really does is brag about life experiences she has clearly never had, and boyfriends she has conjured up in her daydreams? The answer to all of the above is a resounding, heck. to.the.n.o…..
But I’ve done it anyways, I have finally jumped off the deep end of the social media cliff and accepted my generational calling as a hhhhhaaaaaaaa….gasp….another gasp…..blogger, or as I like to refer to it, a blogette. For months now my coworkers have been trying to convince me to join their ranks and claim my own little piece of e-real estate, and for months I have informed them that my life is not either a. nearly as interesting as theirs’ b. while they may have the sass and wit of a youthful and much better looking Chelsea Handler, I on the other hand can barely tell a knock knock joke without confusing myself, and c. I am already 100% dedicated to facebook as my only form of social media involvement, with the occasional Twitter cheat, I don’t think I could sacrifice my facebookage time.
With the recent move, or as I like to refer to it….desertion, of my boyfriend, Michael, to SF to start his much anticipated studies as a dental school student, I have been left in SacTown with nothing to cling to at night but Boo Boo and Grover (my much loved stuffed animals from baby-hood) and my hot pink bottle of pepper spray….you can never be too prepared when living in hippie-chic, bum-filled midtown. I hope it’s becoming clearer to you about why I have embarked down this foolish road…long distance boyfriend+ too much free time/abandonment of all senses=blog.
In addition to this desertion...i mean, recent move/huge change in my life, I have just passed up my one year anniversary of working and living in Sacramento. The one thing I will never gripe about is how lucky I am to work where I do and how thankful I am that my coworkers have become a quasi Sacramento family for me, but of course with any milestone it is hard not to reflect on the possibilities of what could have been.
While I’ve been blessed with a job right out of college that I absolutely love, sometimes it’s hard not to wonder what if?…..what if I quit my job and joined the traveling circus, after all if you catch me early enough in the morning, pre CHI and concealer, you may concur that I could easily be classified as ‘circus freak’….what if I had followed my dreams and become a Disney princess, specifically Belle, and didn’t have to wear my costume behind closed doors, but was free to prance down Main Street USA hand in hand with Mickey Mouse….what if I had pursued my childhood obsession with Dinosaurs and had become a Ross-from-FRIENDS-esque professor…with those life options clearly behind me, I guess there was nothing left for me to do but to blog.
And so I’ve come here, abandoned by my boyfriend and struggling with a quarterlife crisis. I warn you, I’m a lot to handle right now, just ask Michael, if this blog is really going to reflect my life, be prepared to enter a rollercoaster of insanity. But if you choose to accept me and all of my blogging deficiencies, I promise not to be that girl who thinks that just because she’s seen sex in the city she is qualified to give cute and perky relationship advice, or the chick who lives to make sure anyone who reads her posts is aware of how overwhelmingly fabulous she is. No, if you are interested in my blog I will promise you sensationalized random stories, emotional tirades, lots of rambling, and of course the obligatory craft/recipe/vacation photo op posting, after all this is my life in a blog and as far as I’m concerned it’s all va bene.
Ciao Ciao,
