friday mania

The whole lot
Originally uploaded by alisoninaz.

I called KT this evening. "I need you to talk me down from the ledge," I said.

"Which ledge now?" HA! I love my friends.

In this case it was the boredom ledge, she did, and I funneled my extra energy into making homemade pretzels for the first time. It was relatively easy--about 2 hours start to finish for the proofing, kneading, rising, baking and garnishing. But pretty much the only thing I learned from this adventure, as you will note in the picture, is that I can't roll a pretzel shape to save my life.

things i can count on

Ooh, artistic.
Originally uploaded by alisoninaz.

December, though often chaotic and hectic, brings stability. There are things, people, experiences I can always count on in December and there's nothing finer than knowing that.

My mother will always, always make several dozen pounds of fudge between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's never enough because people always want to be on her special Fudge Love list.

There will always be handmade caramels from Clasen's in my stocking.

Mom and Dad will be generous to a fault, allowing me free reign of the vehicles and house, picking up the gas tab, understanding when I am constantly dashing out the door. They will shower me with so much love and so many gifts, it's almost embarrassing. I will always feel grateful for them.

My Christmas Eve will always be spent in Milwaukee with my mom's family. There will always be polish and beef and potatoes and lots of bad for me food to eat. There will be gifts of cash and robes slipped to me surreptitiously by my aunties. There will always be cheek kisses and lots of pictures and many, many hugs.

The Christmas Eve service at my church will always be warm, inviting, and one of the highlights of my whole year. It rarely changes. There will always be tingles when the lights are dimmed, the congregants light their candles, and we sing Silent Night. Sometimes, there will be best friends in attendance, sometimes, I will be there alone. Either way, I will always be glad for the company.

There will always be Christmas brunch with my parents, featuring some of the finest food available anywhere, made by my mom.

There will always be a Christmas Day celebration with my dad's family, replete with merriment.

There will always be several nights of boozin' and gossipin' with my friends. There will always be the moment of "ah! I haven't seen you in ages and I am so glad to be holding you now and looking in your eyes and matching your voice to you, instead of matching your phone voice, the only connection I have to you most of the year, to you. I am so glad to be your friend" when we are first reunited.

There will always be a fun tiff at which the rest of us can laugh and talk about later. This year's featured Mel and Kelly at Fyfe's. JOY TO THE WORLD!

There will always be a strangely unsettling feeling about being around so many loved ones at one time, after being apart for so long. This feeling will always, always be welcome.

There will always be the grey purple sky of winter in Wisconsin. Always.

There will always be snow on the ground, and sometimes actual snowfall, and the grey nasty piles on the side of the road. There will always be salt rings on the bottom of too long pants.

There will always be a day after Christmas meal with Grandma and the other kids in town. There will always be Christmas money slipped to us at the end of the meal, with a wink and a smile. She will always pick up the bill, and we will always be glad for her company and generosity.

There will always be laughter in copious amounts.

There will always be some tearful phone calls, some adjustment period when all of this comes to bear on our lives. That's okay.

Most of all, there will always be love in December, standing in as a symbol for the love shared, but not always expressed, the rest of the year among family.

My perfect day begins somewhere around 9:30, in my perfect bed under a perfect down comforter my mom bought to keep me warm in my not-so-perfectly insulated bedroom. I have finally embraced break and slept later than is really necessary, sans alarm. I read in bed for awhile, working on In Her Shoes and finally succumb to the call of breakfast and putter around downstairs.

An hour or so later, I take my time showering, doing my hair and makeup and pick my outfit carefully, because it has to cover at least three different social occasions and I am not sure when I'll be back. I hop online, chat with a few people, one in particular who leaves me laughing and smiling, and figure I have about an hour before I meet my baby cousin for lunch at the mall. I grab mom's car keys and head towards the mecca. My phone beeps a few times as I'm parking, but I figure it's someone I can talk to later, so I head inside the store without checking it. I am here to buy the perfect winter coat.

Instead, I find the perfect leather jacket, a near replica of the one I gave away this summer and it is, of course, the perfect price. My phone rings and it's my cousin, who wants to know where I am and why I am a half hour late. Oops. I was on Arizona time at home and don't have time for shopping after all. We meet, hug and hurriedly put the leather jacket on hold, so I can think about it.

We have a perfectly delightful lunch on the west side. Good conversation, plenty of laughter, lots of familiarity. When it is over, I ask her what she is doing--I have no plans til 6 and she suggests we go to her house and bake cookies. The perfect plan.

Awhile later, I arrive at my aunt and uncle's house, the only structure that feels nearly as close to home as my own parents' and I greet my aunt, who is happy to see me. The three of us hang out, chatting and laughing and my uncle comes up. He pokes me and says "Hey, kid. How ya doin'?" The four of us chat some more and Jessie and I retire to the kitchen to do some baking. Her boyfriend joins us later to decorate and we laugh easily, all of us happy to be where we are.

I dart out at quarter to six to meet some friends for dinner. They are late, but it's no problem--I am just happy to see them. We settle in and wait for our fourth and when she appears, we chat over our breakfasts-for-dinner, trading stories and gossip. We part with hugs and gifts and I am racing back to the west side to drop something off for mom.

I dial Matt and we decide to meet up at his place when I'm done with my errand. I dash into the house, drop stuff off for mom, touch up, and head back to the car. A quick drive later, I'm at his complex, using "Jason's Door" per his instructions. I greet him and his new girlfriend, Courtney. We spend several hours lounging around and laughing--Courtney pumps me for dirt and information and we share a mutual laugh at Matt's nervousness. In all, a lovely evening of friends new and old.

Yeah. A perfect day might go something like that.

you would think they're carefree

Our part of town nearly shuts down when the students aren't here. There are no cars in the giant parking lots. The convenience stores are empty, the rec center is desolate. It is strange, suddenly, life. Working at a frenetic pace, dozens of emails to be read and answered daily, just trying to keep your head above water and get those thoughts out onto the page. And now, endless days of laziness and reading and loafing.

7, 6, 5, 2, and 2.5 months since I have seen Kevin, Nicole, Melissa, Matt and Kelly, respectively. I don't know what it says about me that I haven't mustered much enthusiasm for my trip home until I took stock today and realized how empty the next few weeks in Tucson might be..but I miss my friends and I am so excited to see them.

It's a tossup really. Do I take the more public, better lit, yet longer route thereby giving myself greater exposure to drunken harassment, catcalls, etc? Or do I take the shorter, more desolate and dark route and minimize my exposure to such lovely campus behavior, yet almost certainly guarantee that should I meet any unsavories on my walk home, I will very likely be unable to identify them in the lineup the next morning?

I almost always choose the shorter route. But I practice using my Nalgene as a weapon in my head the whole way home. I think, in a pinch, it would function not unlike a nunchuck.

I have nothing exciting to tell you. I know--you're crushed. Today was pretty uneventful. I woke up and decided my seminar paper was done, gave it some scrutiny and declared the class over for me. Then I headed out to run a few errands, came home and talked to my cousin on the phone using this program. I finished another Jodi Picoult book (I've been reading her earlier stuff) and I have to say--she's losing her lustre for me. I think her most recent stuff is far, far better than her early novels. I did a few hours of work on the bibliography I need to finish up for my research project. I'm really dragging my feet on that one--if I work hard tomorrow, I could probably come close to finishing it, but it's soooo boring to me at this point that I can only stand to do a handful of annotations at a time. Instead of spending an exciting evening on that, Lauryn and I went to the cheap theater and saw the Wedding Crashers, which was delightfully hilarious and fun. That's my Sunday!

confusion

Today, KT, Lauryn and I headed down to the 4th Avenue Street Fair. For you Madisonians, this is similar to the Art Fair on the Square combined with Maxwell Street days, but with much more affordable art and a more diverse crowd.

So diverse, in fact, that we found this:



In case you can't read it, the tag says "PEOPLE OF COLOR" CARDIGAN, $85. I am perplexed by this because 1) I didn't know there were cardigans especially for people of color 2) if it is not made especially for people of color, then I did not know that people of color come in wide boxy shapes without faces 3) it's not even a cardigan, it's a sweatshirt and 4) who sells a motherloving sweatshirt for EIGHTY FIVE DOLLARS? Tucson sure is schoolin' me.

ah, technology

or...Why the Flip Phone Has Improved My Quality of Life, an essay by Alison.

You remember back to the Dark Ages, right? When people were just starting to allow cell phones to rule their lives? Back then, the flip phone was a rare, rare commodity. It was cutting edge and not many people owned one. My friend Jared was the first among our friends to own a cell phone reliably (I flirted with prepaid stuff for awhile, but he had one 24/7 forever and ever) and he owned a flip phone that he kept forEVER. When it was finally retired, his new model was approximately 1/3 the size of his original.

Back in the Dark Ages, when people were first starting to own and use cell phones consistently, I was consistently first in people's phonebooks. Makes sense, right? Alison. AL is a pretty early letter combination. I was easily accessible because of my name. Score, Mom and Dad!

Except for one little problem. The accessibility of my name meant that anyone who didn't lock their phone and then, say, put it in a pocket or purse and went along their merry way usually ended up making a rogue phone call. At first, I was totally fooled by these calls:

RING, RING

Me: Hi!

Them: [rustling]

Me: Hello? Matt/Melissa/Whoever? Are you there? I can't hear you very well!

Them: [rustling, maybe distant laughter]

Me: HELLO!!! I CAN'T HEAR YOU. CAN YOU PLEASE SPEAK UP? WHAT'S GOING ON?

Them: [...]

Me: IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG? ARE YOU OKAY??? DO YOU NEED HELP? SHOULD I SEND LASSIE??

Around this point, I realized what was going on and that I had been the victim of yet another random dial by cellphone. Worse yet were the random dials that I didn't answer and so, they went to voicemail. They went a little like this:

Me: do do do, will check my voicemail. Says I have messages!

Voicemail: You have 1 new message from phone number 555-1234.

Me: Hm. Wonder why she called so late?

Voicemail: BRGHGHHGGHRHRRRRRRRGH [crackling, rustling, distant voices]

Me: WTF?

Me: [ponders staying on line to see if I can hear anything juicy]

Voicemail: BRRHGHGHGHGHGHSRHRHRHRHGHRRRRRGH

Me: Dammit! I can't hear what they're saying. My plans are thwarted.

And so on.

But then! The flip phone got popular! With the advent of the flip phone, I no longer get 1AM random dials, or 10-minutes long voicemails in which I neither receive mail nor anything but a disembodied voice. So yes. Thank you, technology.

bullseye

You know, this whole putting my money where my mouth is/living my values/walking the talk thing is getting more difficult by the day. First, one of the stores where I routinely grocery shop here in Tucson was in the news last month because one of its pharmacists refused to fill a Plan B prescription. The girl had allegedly been a victim of sexual assault and went to this Fry's to fill her EC 'scrip. She was turned away without any referral or recourse. Now, Target has instructed its pharmacists that they are allowed to refuse an EC or BCP prescription as long as they refer the patient to another Target pharmacy or hand her to a different pharmacist. UNACCEPTABLE. Why should a legal request be denied at the hands of someone's moral beliefs? I don't get it. I'm pretty much over the discussion about not forcing pharmacists to do what they believe is morally wrong. So all I want to say is: you're not swallowing that pill, my friend. If you're so convinced God is gonna strike, don't you think S/He'd strike the person taking the pill?

Anyway, I want to know where I should be buying my toothpaste and toilet paper now. People, at this rate, we will need to start harvesting the leaves in our YARDS just to have some sort of material with which to wipe our asses that isn't tainted with stupid business practices, red money, and discriminatory employment. GAH.

What no one tells you when you move to somewhere like Arizona is that time stops. Time, here, becomes completely meaningless. I can look out my window today and see the same sky I saw on August 4 when I arrived. Never have I lived a faster four months than these. How am I supposed to relentlessly mark time if time has ceased to exist?

my use for words is limitless

I talked for 27.75 hours on this last cell billing period. That's more than a whole day of my life spent on the phone in the past month. Whoa.