56/90... so 90/90 = 90/100

Ok, it's time to acknowledge a small non-failure.

My increased blogging was began as a challenge from a professor. We were to post 90 blogs in 90 days.

There have been weekends without Internet access, and I thought about scrambling tonight to put together posts I've been building for a while now. I thought about blowing of my French homework yet again and catching up on blogging, the only thing I'm really caring about lately.

So, I decided against it. I decided that I'll accept publishing 90 posts in more like 100 days. 90 posts that are true to my writing. 90 posts that show more of who I am than I thought I'd dig into in this blog–so I guess that was the whole point anyway, right?

There was a time in second grade, a day in early autumn weather when I sat down with crayons and the computer paper that comes attached in rings. I wrote a story about a ghost going trick-or-treating. I showed it to my parents and my teacher. As all good parents and teacher should, they encouraged me to get it published. They were astounded by my natural talents. I was encouraged to read more, to keep plugging away.

My parents show the same enthusiasm with my writing today as they did with that first story, written in crayon on those blue-and-white likes we're already forgetting. Now, my network of support is building and thanks to this long series of blogs that truly has become a habit, my desire to write is stronger than ever.

So, there may not be 90 true posts in 90 days, but now I know that that 90th post is not the end of anything. I've been reminded. I've been forced into the habit and allowed to forget what it feels like to go for a day without "a pen in hand," though many days there is no pen and only a keyboard.

The habit has gotten so strong that on those weekends without Internet (or my journal, forgotten in my backpack in Muncie) feel itchy, empty in some way– a bit idle and dangerous.

So. Here we go.

An' here I go again on my own / Goin' down the only road I've ever known...

You said it, Whitesnake. The writing is the only road I've ever known, the only one that's always been there, always been essential. Now, I have it every day instead of only those special days, like the ones in autumn where the air feels ripe with story. There's a story in every day–not always a ghost, not always a true narrative arch, but it's in those moments, the details like that forgotten computer paper, that bring it all together.

55/90, from Saturday

I left the SLU symposium early on Saturday. I presented my paper, ate my free lunch and talked to a girl about the difficulties of teaching yourself French on the side while earning two other degrees and speaking three languages. The conversation was a bit-one sided. I sat next to the girl, sipped my diet Coke, faked a phone call and sprinted to the parking garage.

I needed to catch up on some homework. I stopped in at the bookstore, where Joe was spending the day earning some money for our France fund. He was busy; the store was buzzing. I decided to head down the street in search of a place to spend my afternoon.

I settled into a near-empty restaurant. It was 2:30– after the lunch crowd and hours before dinner. Perfect. I ordered a glass of wine, got out my school books and set to work.

"Are you sure you don't want any food?"

"We have a great lunch menu.'

"Are you sure you're doing alright?"

"Still holding out?"

The questions came at five minute intervals. I forget sometimes that, outside of less corporate cafés, it's not quite socially acceptable to take yourself on a wine date, all alone in a city. Nor is it acceptable to take up a table in a restaurant for hours on end with a glass of wine. I was trying hard to put myself back in France. My waitress was trying to earn tips.

I could understand if I were making a wealthy family of four wait for the table. There was no one. On a flyover question bomb dropping, I stopped the waitress. I explained that no, the wine was sufficient. That I really just wanted the table and the quiet. That I had time to kill, had paid for the wine and now just wanted to read for a bit.

Then two boys in army surplus jackets came in. They were roughly nine years old. Their glasses fogged when they hit the warm restaurant air. They paced the floor, looking at couples drinking afternoon cocktails. They looked at each patron anxiously. They asked me if food was served here.

I nodded and said, "Ive never had it, but they say the lunch is great." The boys walked up to a waiter, asked for a menu, retreated through the door they'd come in and took turns pouring Doritos into their mouths from a bag they found in one of their coat pockets.

The boys returned several times, looking at the television and then reading some of their hostage menu. I could hear their friends outside, a weekend street band eager for an audience.

I wanted to offer them a seat at my table, to please both the boys and the waitress by ordering french fries and Cokes and some messy, cheesy appetizer. I thought better of it, thinking of their friends outside and considering that I was holding my copy of Lolita.

 When I left the restaurant, the boys were still... "playing" their instruments. I dug in my pockets, around gum wrappers and gas station receipts, looking for change. $1.43. I dropped it into the open guitar case.

The boys stopped, thanked me and said, "You're that lady from the restaurant." I nodded, thanked them for their music and turned. Their guardian was seated on the opposite side of the sidewalk, on a concrete structure for flowers or bike locks or some other street decoration. He said thank you, and through the spiderweb tattoo that criss-crossed his cheeks and forehead, he offered a kind smile.

54/90, hot sauce

I'm not quite sure when hot sauce made it onto every table in America. This is not a condiment I remember from my childhood.

There was a time, approximately eighth grade (roughly 2001), when my friends became fascinated with 25 cent wing nights. I didn't go with them, wasn't allowed to go with a group of minors to a place that was part-sports bar. I didn't even really understand what "B Dubs" was until about my junior year.

I'm sitting in a French-inspired bistro, eating a homemade English muffin, debating whether or not to put hot sauce on my eggs. I realize that in my home, this was never a question. We didn't have hot sauce. We didn't eat spicy food, really, outside of my Mexican dinner requests.

I thought this was the norm. Hot sauce was a Tex-Mex thing. It was a sports bar thing, but a small thing. A thing easily forgotten when a waitress offered you ketchup instead. I didn't know that it was on par with Ranch dressing, the condiment of choice for 50 percent of Americans.

Now I'm confused by this. What did Buffalo Wild Wings do to get this wing craze going? Was there a hole in my childhood that just allowed me to miss the hot sauce on tables for so many years? Where was I when this was happening?

I never expected to be a hot-sauce-egg person. I never expected to move beyond hatred for the sticky bottle with its peeling label that has now made its way to every restaurant table. So this morning, when I thought about shaking this runny, red sauce onto my perfectly scrambled eggs, I resisted. Like so many things, I pushed the popular thing away and refused to eat my eggs like so many others. Not until I understand how it got onto my table without my noticing.

53/90, good morning, person

I woke this morning at 6 a.m. like I always (always) do. I hit my snooze button, thought for a minute and slept for four. I woke up to my alarm at 6:05. I got up at 6:07.

I walked downstairs, fixed a toiled that was completely clogged with Charmin, washed my face, made my pancakes and tried to wake my mind up.

You're not supposed to eat first thing in the morning. But I can't think and I can't bend my knees, let alone do yoga, so what else am I supposed to do?

You're not supposed to have coffee first thing in the morning. I'm trying to abide by this one, so I turn the kettle on.

I walk back upstairs to my room, mug burning one hand and the other hand precariously carrying a plate with a fork balancing on it. The water from the mug is turning red as it steeps, each step sloshing it a bit and adding another surge of color. The sloshing only jumps from the mug and burns my toes once. An improvement.

And then productivity stops. I'd brought my laptop to my bed, ready to finish the next paper I've been working on. I sit with pancakes and book in front of me. When I take my last bite of pancakes, at what's not 6:34, I realize that I've spent the entire time I was eating them just staring at my bookcase.

I believe that it's time to make some coffee. It's time to do yoga on a full stomach, leave the paper and figure out how I'll explain its being late to my professor.

I already know this isn't true. I'll do my paper, print it in my roommate's room, change my clothes five times, pack for St. Louis and decide which class to skip for the day.

52/90, our endless numbered days

Title taken from Iron & Wine

I never underestimate the power of Early to Bed, Early to Rise. I set my alarm for 6:05 a.m. and do not allow myself to snooze. My feet slide off of my bed and into my slippers. I drink red tea at my desk while I read the newspaper.

I drink a glass of wine and become drowsy, curling against my fiancé’s chest as he watches late-night television. He wakes me when it is time to brush our teeth and put in my retainer. I twirl my hair back into a bun and moisturize my face. I pull my quilt up to my chin.

This routine brings great comfort to me, as it only occurs one weekend a month. Our long-distance relationship has me eager to be older—old. Not tea-cozy-and-blue-rinse old. Comfortable old. Joe will have a permanent indent on his left pectoral, from my head resting there. We will no longer have a twin mattress. The full mattress will be carved into our S-shape, a soothing worry stone.

On four years, I was a barista on weekends. Those mornings are filled with family tradition. At 7:30, I dip toasted wheat bread with butter into cinnamon-sugar. Two pieces are too much for the retired couple, and they share. I imagine myself taking the two small triangles when Joe is not looking. I would scrape much of the sugar off onto his slice and dip the corners into coffee. At 10:00, two children and their parents come in. The parents slip arms around each other and ask us to warm their muffins. The mother cups her son’s face in her hands. He is not embarrassed; he uses it as an opportunity to ask for a mocha. She whispers to me that it needs to be decaf.

I imagine spending Sundays after mass with a dog attached to the fence outside and a boy with a one-syllable nickname and glasses bouncing between the dog and his coloring book and the book we are reading to him—Hans Brinker or How to Eat Fried Worms. We would look back at the pictures and say that we tired of reading that same book; we would call his glasses “spectacles.”

We haven’t discussed all of these things yet—which books will be gender-neutral enough or promote certain roles, how to answer when he asks why Dad doesn’t go to mass. We have discussed names, giving the countdown of days between visits a purpose.

I would find myself drifting into these fantasies instead of buttering the toast. The families ask if they can pay or have a seat. I apologize and hand them the toast, which slips to the left and to the right on the saucer. There eyes widen as they watch, then they glance at me with a worried expression. I imagine my expression to be sparkly and happy and day-dreamy. In reality, it must seem like the apathy that they say permeates our generation.      

I smile at whatever they think, knowing that when I am that age, I will recognize this look on a young girl’s face. I will squeeze Joe’s hand and move his arm around my waist.

51/90, eat the cake. eat iiiiiit.

I ate a piece of cake at work yesterday.

Then, I went back and gathered all of the crumbs and globs of icing on the tray and ate those, too. And hand another glass of iced tea.

While home for Spring Break, my mom bought me a piece of chocolate. It was raspberry cream. She also baked cookies, and I repeatedly dipped my fingers into the batter to steal several white chocolate chips at a time. Then we went grocery shopping together. While walking around the store, I grabbed a jumbo ag of trail mix, the kind with M&Ms. I walked around the store eating one peanut, then one M&M.

For the past, I don't know, several weeks, I had made banana-peanut butter pancakes with carob chips for breakfast. They're healthy, so I'm not really counting these.

This may not seem like a big deal.

It was a big deal. Walking up and down that row of chocolates, deciding if I really wanted the raspberry cream–if I could afford those calories and that sugar–is a conversation I've had before every dessert since I felt fat in middle school.


But when I picked up that raspberry chocolate, that cake server, that bag of Reese's cups I started eating in the line at Target this week, I said what I've found myself saying a lot more lately.

Fuck it.

No, I have not been able to get myself back into my fitness regimen. No, I have not even done yoga more than twice a week for over a month.

No, I have not been eating the kind of meals that I like to make–with solid, organic ingredients, a bit of time and a chair to sit in and eat it.

No, I have not refused any sort of free food that has been offered to me since the semester started. No matter how processed, how loaded with sodium or sugar, how not hungry I am.

Because I've realized that this is my body. I am living in it, and I'm going to love it. I am not Swedish. I am not a model. I am not paid to have a flat stomach or a tiny size. I am not forced to stand on a scale ever.

I am German-Irish. I am short, but not quite petite. I am a woman. For the past three years, I've been longing for the 105-pound frame I had in high school. Then, when I saw my sister and realized that she had reached that true teenage-frame, that she looked so much like me and that she was still a kid, things got put in perspective.

My hips have settled. They've widened themselves past my waist, curving out to prepare for, well, life really. The obvious purposes and the less obvious–the work that we do each day. This body was more built for manual labor, for bratwurst-eating and heavy beer. So why not enjoy it?

Maybe I've read to much Lady Chatterly's Lover lately. But instead of wishing for the boyish frame that changed fashion and expectations in the 1920s, when your beads had to hang flat against your chest, I'm starting to look at my curve for what they are. I'm starting to look at that bit of stomach that hangs over the top of jeans and notice that everyone else has it, too. So maybe the body isn't the problem. Maybe the jeans are too low or too tight or cut too off for your body.

Maybe I look just exactly as I'm supposed to. This isn't what Hollywood says. According to them, my height looks like Selma Blair or Christina Ricci or Eva Longoria.

Natalie Wood was 5'3". Ok, I'm not saying I'm a Natalie Wood, but at least there's hope. At least there was a moment when the small height wasn't limited to the width of their bones.

So for now, when I have stressed about everything else, I'll let this one go. I may never be truly satisfied with the softness of my stomach, my little pooch of a belly. But for now, no piece of cake or handful of M&Ms will kill it.

For now, I can say it will only get better. The air will get warmer, and I'll be out more. I'll be home, doing Tae Bo with my sister, riding my bike across town for whatever job I manage to find. My energy will be back. Life will be pumping through these veins again, in a whole new way.

50/90, preparation

I'm preparing myself for tongue-biting. I'm preparing myself to walk into an office run by religious conservatives, following a large step in the right direction toward health care reform.

Please, explain to me how one can follow the ideas of Christianity so openly, point to God so consistently, but miss the message that guides not only Christianity, but religions around the world.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. Matthew 22:36-40

If your religion is what guides this country, and not the freedom of religion, then how can we not turn to this example Jesus established? How can we not consider how our actions affect our neighbors–our fellow countrymen?

How can we continue this overly individualistic approach that not only costs us more money, but forces the have-nots to lose hope and continue living in near destitution and dependent on the government? How can we say that this follows any Christian principle, when Jesus reached out to tax collectors, lepers, prostitutes and showed them as equal?

How, then, can we allow or reform to set back women's rights? How can we allow this policy that goes against the core of Roe vs. Wade and the choice it gave to women? How can we give so much weight to one side of this argument?

While the Stupak's success does not limit a "women's right to choose" (society does that well enough on its own), it does allow the government to reinforce the idea that the woman is making the wrong decision, not matter the circumstances. I am not asking for the government to pay for a woman's decision. If I can't get them to pay for my birth control, I'm not holding my breath. I'm not even asking Congress, which is 83 percent male, to understand what that decision means.

I am just asking them not to limit my rights and further the social construct that removes the ability to make a decision and instead reinforces a social construct by saying the government will not recognize your decision–which, in case Congress didn't realize this, they had already made nearly impossible anyway.

It did not take a government action to prevent the nation from suddenly killing millions of children. Stupak knew this. It takes a government action to continue tying the actions of the state to the principles of a conservative, Christian religion. Now, isn't this odd for a political group that views any integration of church and state or anything in any way removed from American individualism as Marxism, communism, fascism and socialism–all at the same time?

But I will bite my tongue. I will hold my breath and let my cheeks flush until I walk out of the office doors, and then I will cry, complain to Joe and be reminded why I am afraid to have children.