Monday, July 6, 2009

Two Faces Have I.

Do you know that old song?

"Two faces have I...one to laugh and one to cry..."

If you don't know it, you can watch it here, or you can live your life devoid of the pleasure of hearing Lou Christy sing "Two faces have IIIIIiiiIIIIIIII...YI YI YI YI OH-OH-OH".

Disclaimer: I will just state, for the record, that I thought the song was "Do Faces Have Eyes" until about 3 weeks ago. This disclaimer has been brought to you by My Utter Uncoolness.

At any rate, here's why I feel like this song sums up my life at this point.

I want you to imagine that there's something you want very much to be good at (sentence ending with a preposition, suck it). Crochet, for example. Or, for that matter, croquet. Or crouton-making. The list goes on.

Now, I want you to imagine that EVERY TIME you make a feeble attempt at crocheting a sweater, for example. Or for that matter, winning a croquet tournament. Or crouton-making. EVERY TIME you try, all of your friends see the end result of your efforts. Your too-long, uneven scarf. Your terrible croquet score. Your revolting, chewy croutons. All of your friends and family see your failures, and they judge you, over and over, for being a major crochet/croquet/crouton tool and, while they still love you--and they don't love you any less for your failures--a part of them will always feel sorry for you.


"Oh, there goes Blahblah. Such a nice girl...but her croutons bring shame to her family."

This inane analogy, folks, is how I feel about relationships. Every time I get one started--I fan the feeble fire into flame (alliteration. high-five!)--it burns out magnificently usually taking my eyebrows/dignity with it. I hate introducing guys I'm seeing to friends and family, because I know that when it ends--even if he's an idiot with no job or no body hair or mustard on his shirt--ultimately I chose badly. Sure, it's not my fault that he can't spell (like, at all. like, on a 2nd grade level), or that he's obsessed with lousy bands, or that his hair has kind of fallen out in random patches, but I picked him. I picked him, and I coddled him, and I tried to make it work, and it didn't. So not only did I lower my standards, I got crapped on. Standards: lowered. Crap: achieved.

This is not written to be any reflection of how things are going with The Editor. If anything, I am psychotic (please act surprised) and am ascribing jerk-like tendencies to the poor guy when he's just trying to live his sweet little life. It's just to say that this is why no one will meet him any time soon. I had a little taste of how things would go if they ended this weekend--all is fine, no need to break out the Ani DiFranco albums--and I've decided that I'm just not ready to let the world experience my croutons quite yet.

And now, how this ties in to that inane song...

This weekend was rough. The Editor and I were NOT communicating at all, and the results were very hurt feelings and me driving around Western PA practicing The Break Up Speech in my car.

(Go ahead and act like you've never done such a thing.)
(I don't believe you.)

The worst part of it all, though, was that I kept thinking, "How am I going to tell my friends? How am I going to tell them that I failed AGAIN at keepin' it together?" So, I act like everything's cool. I put on my Sunny Disposition and made it through the weekend. And in hindsight, I realize that if I feel like telling my friends is going to be the hardest part of a breakup, well, things aren't that bad.

So, back to current events.

And yes, I realize that if I'd update my blog more frequently, I wouldn't have to write mammoth entries. Thank you for your input.

Things with The Editor are fine. He called out of the blue tonight for being incommunicado yesterday (a minor bone of contention), and stopped over for a quick dinner. We went out on Saturday and saw "Public Enemies" (pretty good), and we had dinner at Bravo (really good).

Do you think I use too many parentheses?
(Yes.)

On to VEGETARIANISM.

I miss meat like the ocean misses the shore. If meat and I were in high school together, I'd write in its yearbook, "Dear Meat, U R 2 Good 2 B 4 Gotten.". I write haiku (haikus? what the heck's the plural to "haiku"??!) to meat.

Meat, you elude me.
I crave you between my teeth
And in my tummy.

Here's today's exceptionally weird meat craving moment (nope, that wasn't it):

I got a text from The Editor yesterday while he was at a concert--the text said, "Got me a tshirt!", and in my meat-deprived state, I read, "I got meat shirt!"

I was all, MEAT SHIRT. MUST GET MEAT SHIRT.

I'm turning into a Neanderthal. I suspect that this does not happen to lifelong vegetarians.

2 comments:

  1. I was thinking about you during fourth of July bbq's and wondering how it was to be a mean-loving vegetarian on a big holiday like that!

    And (speaking as a true parenthetical aficionado), you definitely do NOT use too many parentheses. If anything, you don't use them quite often enough. I figure they need to show up in pretty much every paragraph (multiple times in the same paragraph helps to make up for any paragraphs that are found wanting). You're fine.

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  2. I think a meat shirt is far more exciting of a visual image.

    ReplyDelete