Epidemic?

So, I'm an average looking woman. I'm about five seven, weigh just what the Wii fit says I should, have medium-length dark hair with gray sprinkled throughout, dark eyes, and glasses. I don't wear revealing clothing and I don't really have an unusual clothing style. Small children don't recoil when I am near, but neither does the paparazzi attack me, mistaking me for that famous Brazilian supermodel.

So imagine my continued surprise at the number of wolf whistles I receive while walking around my fair city. It happens downtown quite a bit, but I just chalk it up to the downtown vibe. But today, as I was waiting at the bus stop, not two blocks from where I live, two men drove by in a pickup, whistled at me, and yelled out a semi-lewd, unimaginative proposition. *sigh*

I wonder what the actual beautiful people have to deal with. If the Julia Roberts lookalike is walking down the streets of an average midwestern city, does she deal with more than this? Maybe not just the whistles, but also the oglers and the gropers? Do I have to start feeling sorry for the pretty people?

Biker Boy hypothesizes that people who whistle/yell out at pedestrians are equal opportunity asshats and that the pretty people don't get it any more than I do. He also has a theory about how I look "approachable" and that might have something to do with it. I have another friend (who is from a small town, so I don't know how she would even know) hypothesizes that the people who do this actually don't do it to the pretty people because they know they don't have a chance with them, but with the average looking woman in the Old Navy tank top and jeans, it's an entirely different story.

I don't know. I guess I'm just puzzled by the phenomenon. I also wonder if I should do something more defiant than ignore it or pretend it's aimed at someone else. It's hard because as they are usually in a motorized vehicle and I am a pedestrian, there's a limited time frame for a reaction. Do I stare at them? Do I flick them off? Do I curl up on the sidewalk in utter shame and embarrassment?

Do you remember the Sex and the City episode where Miranda gets up in the faces of the construction workers who have been making her uncomfortable with similar type behaviors and they FREAK out when she does? I wonder if that would happen if I showed reaction?

And why are they doing this? Do they think it's flattering? Do they think that they will score with this method? Has it ever earned them a second glance, let alone a date?

The confusion stands.

And the nerd shines through

Jenny at She Likes Purple put up a list of books printed by the Big Read, an organization promoting reading. They claim that the average American has read only 6 of the following 100 books. (Okay, I can't find that anywhere on the actual site - it could be because I am technologically incapable or it could be that it's not there. Regardless, this is an interesting exercise because I never stop reading.)

Key
1) Bold the books you have already read
2) Italicize the books you intend to read
3) Personally added: Make fun of other books in parentheses.

***********************
1) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (read in high school - does it count?)
2) The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
3) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (another high school read)
4) Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling (does it add to my total that I've read them all many, many, many times?)
5) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
6) The Bible
7) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
8) Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell (again, bonus points for multiple reads, please???)
9) His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman (a friend recommended this like a million years ago)
10) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (Hated.)
11) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (the hours I've spent with this book...no wonder I don't have a dissertation written...)
12) Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
13) Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
14) Complete Works of Shakespeare (ummmm...this is given the same credit as Harry Potter, because, really?)
15) Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (I read half of it and gave up, so it's only half bolded)
16) The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
17) Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
18) Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (this is my best friend's favorite book - I kind of wanted to slap Holden Caulfield for being such a brat, but apparently I am one of the few)
19) The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
20) Middlemarch by George Eliot
21) Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
22) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
23) Bleak House by Charles Dickens
24) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
25) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (brilliant, just brilliant)
26) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (huh? shouldn't I have at least heard of this?)
27) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (we had a reading from C & P at our wedding! no joke, either)
28) Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
29) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
30) The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
31) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (my friend the English major had to read this and she referred to as Anna fucking Karenina the whole time she had it and that made me not want to read it - ever)
32) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
33) Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
34) Emma by Jane Austen
35) Persuasion by Jane Austen
36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis
37) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
38) Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
39) Memories of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (Own.)
40) Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
41) Animal Farm by George Orwell
42) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
43) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I read the first ten pages or so when I was in my friend the English major's room in college and it was SO boring - I know people love this, but, ummm...)
44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving
45) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
46) Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery (between this, Little Women, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, you know how I spent my junior high years)
47) Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
48) The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
49) Lord of the Flies by William Golding (total boy book - hated every minute of it)
50) Atonement by Ian McEwan
51) Life of Pi by Yann Martel
52) Dune by Frank Herbert
53) Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
54) Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
55) A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
56) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57) A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
58) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
60) Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
62) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
63) The Secret History by Donna Tartt
64) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
65) Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
66) On The Road by Jack Kerouac
67) Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
68) Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
69) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
70) Moby Dick by Herman Melville
71) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
72) Dracula by Bram Stoker
73) The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (again with the junior high love)
74) Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson
75) Ulysses by James Joyce
77) Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
78) Germinal by Emile Zola
79) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
80) Possession by AS Byatt
81) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
82) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
83) The Color Purple by Alice Walker (I was assigned this in college and did a half-hearted skim right before the test - it hardly counts)
84) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
85) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
86) A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
87) Charlotte's Web by EB White
88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90) The Faraway Tree Collection by Enid Blyton
91) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
92) The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93) The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
94) Watership Down by Richard Adams
95) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
96) A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
97) The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98) Hamlet by William Shakespeare
99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
100) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

I've read about a quarter of these. Not too shabby, I guess. How do you do?

The Summer of Heat, Humidity, and Horribleness*

It was a chore, getting my heavy pannier and only slightly lighter bicycle down the stairs. I was halfway down the block before I realized that I wasn't wearing a helmet. By the time I retrieved said helmet (purple! with flowers!) and hopped on the bike again, sweat was pooling on my back.

Getting here was half the battle - I had sat on the sofa for twenty minutes preparing myself for the exhausting mental game about to take place. And had laid in bed for two hours before that, pretending I didn't have anyplace to go today. It's getting harder and harder to leave the house on my own and I'm waiting for the day when I just can't do it anymore.

Five blocks down. I pause at a stop sign and grab my water bottle. I guzzle. Great. Half of my water is gone and I have gone about 1/16th of the way. I can feel the sweat sliding down my back.

Pedal. Pedal. Pedal. I had come back from a trip last weekend and Biker Boy said, "I made a small change to your bike." I circled around my bike and saw nothing different, so I just went with it. I see now, as I am riding, that he changed the stem. Stems connect the handlebars to the rest of your bike and I had been bitching for two years about how my shoulders and wrists get sore when I ride. BB thought this might fix it. I can't really tell much of a difference, but hell, I've only gone eight blocks.

It's the scenarios going through my head that make this trip so difficult. What if a bus comes? What if that small child darts in front of me? What if the light is about to change, but hasn't yet? What do I do? I spend most of the trip focused on thinking about what might happen, not thinking about what is happening.

I want to be relaxed. I want to enjoy the moment and the freedom of riding. But eleven blocks in and I feel my shoulders tensing up. My jaw is clenched so tight that my throat hurts.

I turn on the bike path. This should be better - I am on this path for most of the rest of the way and I avoid traffic. No cars, no buses, no trucks.

Sweat is dripping into my eyes. I use my gloves to sop some of it up. Now that the worry over the motorized vehicles has gone, I worry about the pedestrians, if I will be late, if I am prepared for my meeting, what will happen when I have to get off the bike path. The tension continues moving from my shoulders to my lower back.

People going in the opposite direction often smile at me. It is the streamers, I know. BB says that rarely do people smile at him when he rides alone, but when he rides with me, people are very cheerful. I try and smile back. I fear it looks more like a grimace. Sweat drips.

There is a group of a couple of dozen children riding bikes with a few adults along for supervision. It looks like they're part of some summer program. It does my heart good to see all these little bodies working so hard. Their helmets are tiny. Their bikes are bold colors - pink, purple, lime green, and red seem to be popular choices. Their legs pump and pump and pump. I see one little girl struggling to make sure her hair is just right under her helmet. The girls all giggle at me as I pass them (please don't hit a kid, please don't hit a kid, just pass them and continue on). One courageous girl calls out, complimenting my streamers. I try to smile at her.

Pedal. Pedal. Pedal. I'm so eager to have this done, I am going relatively quickly. The only people passing me today are the men with skinny legs.

The scenarios are good for me, they say. I can work out in my head that I am capable of handling any difficult situation. But I spent two hours this morning working through scenarios before I even made it to the sofa. This, they would tell me, putting off the inevitable, is not good for me. Scenarios in moderation.

For a moment, I lose myself, step outside of my body, and enjoy the peace and quiet and exhilaration.

The next moment, my throat has closed up and I can't breathe. I grope for the water bottle. I have been practicing getting my water and putting it back while moving. I hope to impress my husband with my new skill. But not now. Now I pull off to the side of the path and drink deeply.

This is what anxiety feels like. I am stuck here. But I can't stay. I have to either go forward or go back.

Slowly get back on. Count pedal strokes. Counting will focus me. One, two, three...ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred. Breathe. Focus on breathing. Now focus on releasing the tension in your shoulders. The miles pass as I just count. And count.

By the time I get to the path exit, back to dealing with traffic, I am okay. Sweat. This summer is killing me. The heat. The humidity. I hate this. I hate how sweaty and sunscreeny I am when I get to work. I hate not being able to breathe. I hate the allergies. I hate my itchy eyes. But now I am relaxed.

But now is the true test. The last part of the journey has two obstacles. One, an intersection that is practically lawless and two, that building that gives me hives. I want to face both with honesty and bravery, but instead I skirt around both, pretending they are not there. The tension has crept back in. Jaw clenched, I cross the river, wiping the sweat away from my face with my glove. The panic starts now. What if I have forgotten everything and can't do it? What if this person knows I don't know what I'm doing? Will she know I'm a fraud?

As I'm locking up my bike, the sweat is pouring down my face. I have sealegs and can barely walk up the steps. I smile (grimace) and hold open the door for a girl wearing a skirt and sweater. She's wearing a sweater. I look at my arms, glistening, and wonder how she does it.

I take note of the fact that, although my shoulders are sore, my wrists don't hurt. I will tell BB that the new stem is a good choice. I will not be telling him about the rest.

Then I go to work, knowing the whole time that the process will be repeated on the way back home.

TV Confessions

When I was a small child, my father would let me stay up late to watch American Gladiators. There was something awesome about all those regular people doing those crazy events. I enjoyed Atlas, Assault, and Joust best, although the final obstacle course, the Eliminator, was also pretty darn awesome. We would watch these together, my dad toking on his cigarette, while I drank my sugar-filled KoolAid, and pretend that someday one of us would be on this show.

Before I moved in with Biker Boy, I lived in a house with half a dozen other people. When ESPN Classic started showing reruns of American Gladiators, those of us who were, let us say, underemployed, would group around the television and stare. It seemed dated, in a way, but the events still looked impossible. We laughed at the mullets and the costumes, but it wasn’t really in a mean way. The contestants were bad asses and we’d sit around on our lazy grad school asses and pretend one of us would be on the show one day.

When NBC took note of the huge response to ESPN Classic’s reruns and started producing new American Gladiators episodes with Hulk Hogan and Laila Ali hosting, few people were as excited as I was. New, bigger, badder gladiators. Same normal, everyday folk as contestants. Every Monday, BB and I pop popcorn, cuddle up on the couch, and wince repeatedly as contestants are hurled down this giant Pyramid, crashed into during PowerBall, and forced into a giant pond after being hit repeatedly in the head during Joust. We laugh at ourselves because we know it’s cheesy, but it’s awesome. We can’t stop.

About a month ago, the television didn’t get turned off immediately after American Gladiators. And this show called Nashville Star came on. It’s like American Idol for the country music set. I was hypnotized. Some of the contestants were awesome (Melissa Lawson, I’m talking about you), some were so boring I could hear them on country radio with the likes of Clint Black, Keith Urban, and all those men named Trace (Gabe Garcia, I’m talking about you), and some were so awful I just sat there, dumbfounded, as they made the finals (Lauren and Sophie and Coffey, you are who I have in mind). I was unable to turn it off. BB wandered in and out of the living room at this point, rolling his eyes at me, but the striking difference between the good and the bad was so apparent, I thought it was a joke.

In addition, as if it weren’t cheesy enough, the host is Billy Ray Cyrus. I think I’ve defended Cyrus before. He’s actually a decent country artist, if you ignore that annoying song that everyone seems to know him for. It’s more difficult for me to think he’s made appropriate decisions in his personal life, what with his daughter splashed all over the news in inappropriate photographs, but still. It’s Billy Ray Cyrus. The judges include Jewel (country? you decide), John Rich (of the duo Big and Rich – country? you decide) and Jeffrey Steele (a songwriter who has written lots and lots of pop tunes – country? you decide). The judges most frequent criticism is that the contestants aren’t country enough. John Rich, who are you to talk about being country enough? You include RAP in your songs. I can’t wrap my head around it, but I also can’t stop watching. Okay, fine. And voting, repeatedly, for my girl Melissa Lawson.

I must say that watching Nashville Star has made me realize that these phone-in shows are doing it the wrong way. It should be like Survivor, where you vote to eliminate contestants. For instance, this Coffey character should not have been allowed on the show, let alone made it to the final four. If I had the chance to vote him off, I would have kept my cell phone busy for the entire two hours, just so I never have to hear his whispery falsetto with the INSANE vibrato one more time.


The other awful television show I watch is Wipeout, that ABC show with the impossible obstacle course, where two very funny men do commentary, and people fall and get muddy, and BB and I laugh and laugh and laugh. Television really does bring you down to your lowest mental denominator.

Passive aggressive?

BB's sister, the resident at Mayo Clinic, called the another night and told us that she had read a story in a medical journal that people with Celiac's (the gluten intolerance BB has) don't absorb nutrients in the proper amount, even when their diet is fine. It's especially important for these folks to take a multivitamin, which BB does,* and that they eat a varied diet within the limitations of their diet. I stand firm that we're not very limited - a protein, vegetable, and starch (rice, corn, or potato) - in our meals. But, anyway, this freaked me out. (Have I mentioned that I'm still having the dreams where BB dies? And that my level of anxiety has reached such a peak that I can barely function? No. Okay. Well, it's another post that will soon be written.)

So, then I "accidentally" spun more salad greens than we needed for dinner last night. I put the extra in a tupperware container in the salad and this morning when BB was packing his lunch, I mentioned that it might be a good idea to include the salad. Because his body isn't absorbing enough nutrients, everybody!! Argh!

*All Centrum products are GF, although One-A-Day products are not

Tales from the Bus

#1
Woman and man behind me are talking. It is clear they have just met; they are chatting about how he has a game night every week and likes to spend time with his friends and how she is reading some book about the mind/body connection and getting healthier.

Man: "My name is Steve."
Woman: "Uhhh...my name is Carrie?" Her voice goes up at the end, as if in question. I believe she has made it up. Maybe I am Sex in the City obsessed, but I imagine Carrie Bradshaw is her muse.
Man: "So, Carrie, would you like to have coffee with me sometime?"
Woman: (abruptly). "No!" Small pause. "But thank you for the offer."

Two blocks later.

Man: "It was nice talking to you, Carrie."
Woman: "See you around."

I turned around to face the woman. "Nicely done. You did that without really hurting his feelings."
She thanks me and I move on, proud of a woman who was polite, but capable.

#2
NGS is reading a book on a nearly empty bus. Glory in Death, if you must know. I like the early books in the JD Robb series. I like the slow introduction of characters - Peabody, Mira, and Mavis, in particular. Roarke is a bit of a dick, but not as much as he seems to be starting in Vengeance in Death. ANYWAY, I'm reading.

Some guy butts up right next to me, violating all bus norms. I mean, there are plenty of seats empty - go sit in one that doesn't have someone sitting next to it. He stares at me, as I pretend to continue reading.

Eventually he gets up to get off the bus. As he stands up, he pokes at my shoulder. I glance up, almost a bit frightened, and he says, "you're beautiful," as he gets off the bus. I smile because what else are you going to do? I continue reading. I am not so proud of myself here. How have I become polite, but not capable?

Later that day, I ask Biker Boy if this is normal etiquette. Do you normally invade a girl's personal space to show you are attracted? He assured me that it is not normal behavior for the male species. Does my shiny wedding ring not give me the protection I have been thinking it does?

#3
A little girl, maybe seven or eight, comes on the bus with her mother. The little girl is not interested in sitting by her mom, but sits by some lady and starts chatting her up.

"Where are you going?"
"What's your name?"
"Do you live here?"
"Do you have any pets?"

The lady looks startled, but eventually is charmed into answering the questions by the utter guilelessness of the child. The mother apologizes profusely, but everyone on the bus has fallen under the spell. We all stare at her and listen as she tells us stories about swimming at the park and going to the library.

As I get off the bus, I smile at the imp and say, "nice shoes." She looks at her red ballet flats with the little bow on them and then looks at my red ballet flats with the little bow on them, and says, "thanks, you too."

Thanks for that, too!

We were dreading registering for gifts for the wedding. I mean, it's not like we had ever sat down and said, " so what's your vision for decorating our home?" We had heard nightmare stories about couples arguing about what to register for. But we needed to do it. We randomly decided to register at two stores, Crate and Barrel (mostly because, at the time we registered, there was one in downtown Minneapolis and I will do a lot to avoid going to the suburbs) and Bed, Bath, and Beyond (mostly because there is one down the street from Biker Boy's parents' house, so it made registering easy).

We walked into the Crate and Barrel downtown and both of us were immediately drawn to the same dinnerware. We present to you: Kita.


It's hard to tell from the picture,but it has a fantastic crackle-glaze on it. We got four-piece placesettings and saucers. The first wedding gift we got in the mail was a placesetting. Shortly after the wedding, we took the trip to the suburbs (the C & B downtown had since been closed) and got a bunch more placesettings to finish our registry. Running the dishwasher with all our new dishes was pretty darn exciting.

But last week, after a few weeks of daily use, we started to notice staining on our dishes. No matter how many times we washed them or ran them through the dishwasher, they would not come clean. We did a little internet research and realized that this is a fairly common problem with the Kita dishes. We were pretty disappointed. We had agreed on these - it was so easy. We had gotten these as wedding gifts and they hadn't been inexpensive.

We called Crate and Barrel and they agreed to take them back. So we returned our stained dishes and stood in the store for about half an hour debating what new plateware to get. Seriously. This is what we had dreaded when we were thinking about registering. This was the the thing that would force BB to murder me in my sleep. We went back and forth - no more crackle glazes - they will stain. No plain white - I will die of boredom in my breakfast. We both really liked the red set - will it look dated in five years? Will our food be hard to see on the red? We really like this other set - but it's like $30 more per placesetting, which we could certainly afford, but do we really need to be so extravagant?

Eventually we settle on Nuit. Welcome to our family, new dishes!