Classy and Shit

"I’m just going to go ahead and post this photo once every few months or so, whenever I have a..."

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:27:41 -0800

“I’m just going to go ahead and post this photo once every few months or so, whenever I have a hankerin’ for some UV tanning bed action. Like right now.
Don’t overdo the tanning, kids. Or the bleach. It is possible, as I demonstrate here, for your head to look like an Ugg. Except worse because it’s a head and not your collegiate footwear.”

- vom dot com

My mom tells me

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:51:18 -0800

that my type is too narrow and that all the boys I find attractive look like the guy I was obsessed with in the 7th grade. This is a classic case of the chicken and the egg: my mother believes I’m attracted to these guys in order to work through my feelings of inadequacy from middle school and I believe I’m attracted to them because they are (were in the case of the 7th grader) all hot. My type is not so specific or bizarre that it would imply I’m seeking to reenact my pre adolescent eroticism. Here is a loose example of what I’m talking about:

I agree that I might place too much emphasis on physical appearance, which has resulted in me dating some pretty questionable but super fine men. Because of this, I’ve started to pathologize my own tastes, dissecting and analyzing the trajectories of my attraction. I sort of ran on the assumption that men I’m inclined to sleep with are Bad, my lusty wires being crossed or compelled by the Devil or something, and men that I do not under any circumstance want to bang are Good. The Bad will lead me towards binge eating and eventual death while the Good will restore me to affluence, farmer’s markets and mature and selfless love. It just can’t be right, though, that I must sacrifice attraction in order to gain a guy who makes me laugh. I want both.

Mom tells me that attraction can increase or decrease through exposure. I’ve tried that. A lot. It has never, ever proven true for me. She says, it’s just coffee. You don’t have to sleep with them. They aren’t morbidly obese or anything.

Since when did not being morbidly obese become my only standard? I understand the sentiment, Mom, and I do think beauty without kindness is a deal breaker. Yet for me personally, I’ve accepted that the depths of my romantic inclinations are unfathomable and that to interfere with the stirrings of my heart is contrary to the dating process and, frankly, my hopes for love.

Hi my name is Cate

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:47:45 -0800

and I’ve started internet dating and wearing a bathrobe around the house.

I'd probably die within two minutes of living in the wild.

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:40:58 -0800

(I see either a cat or a raccoon run under my mother's car parked outside her house.)
(I stop my car and honk.)
(I wait.)
(I honk again.)
(I open my door and peer under my mother's car.)
(I see a tail.)
Me: Are you a cat?
(A cat appears.)

Hi my name is Cate

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:36:29 -0800

and I’ve started internet dating.

Erik: i know did i tell you im having reacurring dreams about...

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:11:50 -0800

Erik: i know

did i tell you im having reacurring dreams about you?

Me: no!

Erik: well i do

Me: what about?

Erik: i dunno, anything, with you in it

Apparently the correct answer to the question, "What two forms of birth control will you use while on Accutane?"

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:37:08 -0800

is not “a dry spell” and “abortion, obviously.”

In the weight room of my mother's YMCA

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:11:55 -0800

Mom: There's a cute guy in the other room I wanted you to meet.
Me: Guy? A male--a man? What do you mean guy? Oh my god hide. Wait. Where? Oh no I look albino. I'm like basically an albino whale. Wait. Is he really cute? Where is he? Why didn't you introduce us? Ok go back in there and introduce us. No actually I look terrible. I can't believe you didn't introduce us, though. What does he look like? Give him my number. I'm serious just give him my number. No--what are you doing! Not NOW but like next time obviously. Actually take a camera pic of him first. Next time I'll make sure my socks match and then we can meet. I dunno though, maybe he should meet me on a blind date first. Is that him on the mat? I can't see him. I could wear that new black dress with red lipstick. I wonder how it is living in Seattle as an interracial couple... We could always move to California. That is where I want to ultimately end up. Hm. But I don't know about that if he's working out in the middle of the day. Unemployed probably. I don't see this working. Maybe if he's hot enough though.

Me: Mom, dating is honestly so tiring.

My face is a veritable

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:37:46 -0800

kaleidoscope of dermatological disorders.

I can't wait to get old.

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:57:00 -0800

The truth is that at some point in life, certain middle aged women start dressing monochromatically—including hair dye and purses. Do they one morning decide that those fun purple socks would look nice paired with a purple blouse? And then does the purple on both ends bleed together through purple pants? Why not top it off with a purple polar fleece? they might wonder. Are they then obliged to buy only purple clothes and accessories because they’ve committed and red or green would just look weird?

Or is it a specific mania that occurs during midlife? Is it only in the Pacific Northwest? Is it an illness indigenous to a woman’s own psyche or spread from one person to another? Does the all-blue woman relate to the all-purples or is she more alienated from them than a casual purple wearer? Why have I never seen an all-green before?

There are myriad ways to let oneself go but here in Seattle we are continuing to be innovators in the field.

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to...

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:19:14 -0800

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

Youtube, I mean Mark Twain

Healing

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:46:00 -0800

I read about a little girl who awoke every night crying due to a non-descript, floating pain which doctors believed to result from no real physical ailment. The girl’s parents (also the authors of the book) asked her to find the pain in her mind. She told them it was a dark red spot meant to be pink. They asked her to visualize coloring the red spot pink and she agreed that this could be done with small imaginary felt tip pens. They asked her to tell them when she finished coloring her pain. The authors say she never cried out from that pain again.

I decided during a somewhat vulnerable early morning in London last week that I was going to solve my anxiety by washing out my heart. It was beating so fast and I tried to imagine what was wrong with it. I first imagined that my entire upper body was filled with some poisonous ether but that didn’t fit. Then I fantasized that it was icy and shivering, covered in sad black tar. This thing was all in and around my heart and it was cold and dirty and sick. I visualized laying my heart in a warm bath and gently washing away the grime. I fell asleep.

The pain that has ridden with me for the past eight months and more acutely the last two is now gone. My thoughts have not changed but my visceral reactions to those thoughts are gone, hopefully.

The Secret tells us that ANYTHING can be yours if you visualize it. I think that’s insane. I do not believe we can attract physical objects or random events using only our minds. But when the illness is psychic I suppose I can see its uses. Then again I read this book and wrote this post in the wee hours of the morning, always tired, maybe crazy.

Lead Up to Elementary School Reunion

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:08:33 -0800

Me: so what's camille up to these days?
Katie: I PrOCrAsInAtE WHen It COmEs To HoMeWork, DrInK OcCaSioNaLLy, LiKE GuYs ThAt CaN MaKe Me LAuGh and BE MySeLf, LOVe HanGiN WiTh My FriEnDs, I WaNt To PuBlIsH My OwN NoVeL SOme Day AnD I DecIDeD RaNcH TaStE GooD WiTH PiZZa(Hey DOnt KnoCK If YoU HaveNt TriEd iT), LiKe HAvIn LaZY SUnDAYs

Katie: thats what camilles up to

PETA

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:44:00 -0800

I’m not quite sure why PETA insists on every last one of its ads looking like a Maxim photo spread. There used to be some semblance of a connection between the nudity of the model and the message of the ad but even that was a stretch because the obvious opposite of wearing fur is not rubbing glitter on your body and walking around naked. I’ve been successfully avoiding both fur and nudity now for the past year or so and it’s been a great success. So, with its most recent campaign featuring Joanna Krupa nude holding a cross as she floats above a sea of non-pet store dogs, it’s clear PETA has decided that the only alternative, not only to wearing fur but to all animal cruelty, is to deal in the skin of women.

My Grandmother wrote me

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:20:58 -0800

Happy Birthday to the family trail-blazer; in search of new vistas one slips out the beckoning open window.

Always my love,

Nonnie

Farmhouses in Kingslutter, Traveling Alone

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:30:58 -0800

This is why I can’t travel:

I couldn’t stop thinking about the heinous crimes against humanity the driver of my mitfahrgelegenheit was undoubtedly going to inflict upon me on our way home from Heidelberg. I wasn’t alone with him but the zitty French girl hitching a ride was of absolutely no self-defense use to me since she claimed the backseat and then fell completely asleep. Our driver was a gaunt older man who basically never spoke but would, on occasion, unhinge his jaw and breathe out a tremendous yawn—the sound of which was much less like a yawn and much more like a scream. He had spindly hair coming out of his ears and on the bridge of his nose and I somewhat preemptively judged him to be a violent lunatic. But really, picture a balding man wordlessly facing the windshield, opening his mouth at random intervals and screaming throughout a nighttime ride with the cracked windows blowing cold air in to prompt his ear-hair to octopus out at you and then tell me I’m a bitch.

The autobahn is of course terrifying and in this small European car I felt exposed to the road and other speeding vehicles, always my thin skin a centimeter from cement or metal. I kept imagining us careening into a BMW, flipping over the divide and then smashing into a semi-truck. I saw all my organs splashing into other people’s windshields and my skull popping under a tire.

Once the sun set I became convinced the driver had plans for us. I stopped seeing signs for Berlin, only for towns with terrifying names like Kingslutter, Glibgutter and Ribtugger. Miraculously, the French girl slept soundly in the back of the car; she was not, it seemed, the least bit concerned about our fates. Meanwhile, I shuddered every single time we passed a darkened country home. Come to think of it, hadn’t I seen her nod to our driver like she knew him already? Was she in on this? Was she his inbred psychotic daughter? Probably. I began to furiously conjure up images of this man’s mother cooking up a soup in an empty farmhouse somewhere. I imagined him hiding his predilection for pickling female travelers from her as he ate this soup. I imagined that maybe the soup was made from these traveling girls.

I narrowly escaped this horrible end by sitting silently and turning my ipod up every time I got scared. Obviously, nothing happened to me but I always imagine the moment when that isn’t true. There could possibly be a moment in which I realize that something is actually about to happen to me and is not in fact a morbid flight of fancy.

I arranged several more mitfahrs during my time in Germany. These things never stop me.

Gothenburg

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:08:48 -0800

Erik said he would marry me and take care of me after he became a doctor. I would give him my US citizenship for his Swedish. He dreamed he married me in a church but he doesn’t believe in churches. He doesn’t believe in marriage, either. Dreams! His friend told us about a wedding in the mountains and how the bride’s sister discovered she could sing from one mountaintop to another like in the old days. The woman waited far away and sung for her sister as she walked towards the wedding party, waiting in their backyard. She stood alone on some mountain while her sister got married and sang like they used to.

I thought everyone here would look like my ex-boyfriend: personifications of fjord, ice and milk. It turns out that Sweden is just a country, meaning, that Sweden is real. It’s a real place; you can step on its ground, which is solidly wet and mucky. There are drunks and vomit on the streets on Mondays. There is donor kebab and pizza places like everywhere else. Swedes too, have obesity issues. There is rampant brunette-ism.

I really, really like it.

GriesSSrei (griesbrei)

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:03:07 -0800

Is a Germanic pudding made with cream of wheat, sugar, egg and whole milk. At some point things are going to devolve even further and I’ll stop being fancy and just eat sugar and butter out of bowls with my face.

People here in Germany think of Seattle as the city of love

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:28:00 -0700

which is hilarious considering, for instance, that I heard this in front of a castle on an ancient bridge over a moonlit river. Seattle is gorgeous but (at least for me) is less the city of love and more the city of sex with farmers and cooking with your mom.

If you’re going to invite people you meet on...

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:10:00 -0700

If you’re going to invite people you meet on couchsurfing.com to go on walks, presumably you’d want to avoid a photo like this. Honestly, who in their right mind would agree to hang out with a total stranger who looks like they hunt humans or build tents made from women’s hair?