You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October, 2008.
Well, okay, scratch that “often” part. We here at Thunderstorms do not condone the little jig they call vote fraud. But moving on.
I mailed my Virginia absentee ballot today. I feel like such the proactive citizen, it’s amazing.
A part of me really wanted to go to the polls this year, to get one of those “I Voted!” stickers, and to feel like I was actually an active member of our democracy, rather than a pen-and-ink, two-dimensional version of the same. But I’m not really a girl for crowds, and my polling place is deep in Old Town—somewhat far from this office and the fascist man who calls himself my boss. Sure as he can breeze through at noon, but I feel like something terrible might happen if I pulled the same stunt. Also, Tuesday is our busiest day. [Excuses, excuses; when did I become such a corporate automaton?]
One thing about this election season that I’ve totally come to love is the metro solicitors—you know, the guys who stand outside the metro stations wondering if you’ve voted yet, or applied yet, et cetera, and urging you to Make Your Voice Heard!
They first started coming around in September, I’d say, offering me voter applications. “Are you registered to vote? At your current address? Are you sure?” They were everywhere, with signs and balloons and VOTE! vests in varying colors. I always made a point to smile at them. I was registered, but if I wasn’t, I would have been glad for the opportunity and the helping hand.
Then they left, and I noticed a little bit missing from my commute.
And then they were back. Absentee! Vote Absentee! You Can Vote Early in Virginia! They would cry. Yesterday they even had one of the metro musicians joining them; she busted out her guitar and sang a little ditty about how absentee votes count just the same. I love this time of year, and I love this city. It’s just so crazy, and quirky, and perfect.
So, with Russian Teacher as my witness, my vote has been cast. [An aside, does anyone know why VA requires a witness for an absentee ballot? I mean really, what does that accomplish? I've always voted absentee, and have never encountered this. But whatever]. My vote has been cast, I have participated, and life is very good. But I can’t help but think I’m going to miss those metro people.
Last week I was tagged by the lovely notsojenny to share six random facts about myself. It seems so easy, at first, but only six?! I’m such a random person that the selection process was indeed rigorous. We received inquiries from so many qualified applicants, etc.
But without further ado, I present this week’s top contenders. Drumroll, please.
I have my belly button pierced (n.b.: painful. Ridiculously so. Don’t do it). I’ve never changed the ring out, because it kind of freaks me out. It was one of those rights-of-passage things, I suppose. I was a serious goody-goody when I started college. Parties? No. Drinking? Certainly not. I did my homework to the nth degree, woke up early every day to get to the library, and ignoring the shocking grade I took in calculus, did enormously well, academically. But I was sort of an awkward dork. By sophomore year, the charade was up, and it all went downhill in a hurry. I went from spending a quiet spring break in my parents’ kitchen to coming back from wildness with, much to my mother’s continuing horror, a belly-button ring. (I still maintain that that’s pretty tame. She should see my tattoo! Kidding. Totally kidding. No tramp stamps on this chica). She saw it in a dressing room not long after it was done—I was making my first foray into the world of corporate-appropriate clothes, if I remember properly. She did nothing to conceal her distress, but defaulted much of her judgment to the universally feared “Wait till your Father sees that” line of intimidation. I kept it from dad until he saw me in a bikini probably two years later. He just laughed. “Well, Magda, that sure is different,” he said. Mom was most displeased. But really? It’s pretty cute.
I have never taken a sick day for which I have legitimately been sick. I do get sick; I think everyone does. Just not that sick. I’d feel like I was cheating to stay home with just a few sniffles, or a little headache. I wish I cared a little bit less, because I really would love to stay home some Wednesday, say, and just watch tv in my pajamas while the rest of the world worked. As it is, the guilt might kill me. I think it’s just how we were raised, my sisters and I: unless we were visibly incapacitated, we went to school. My sisters often got sick enough to pass. I never did. I took perfect attendance every trimester of every year in high school, and was in prime position to win the dreaded “perfect attendance all four years” prize at graduation. I can’t really imagine anything more embarrassing. I sabotaged myself; claimed deathly allergies when mom was out of town and had her call it in remotely. I don’t feel bad about that at all.
I love greeting cards. Sending them, receiving them, it’s all just glorious. I think hand-written mail is seriously underrated. Even more so when it comes packaged in a funny card. Oh, those clever clever people at Hallmark. I regularly buy cards for no particular purpose, just because they make me laugh and I know I’ll have someone to send them to someday. I have a whole stash at home. Thinking on it now, I should probably sort through them to be sure I don’t buy one more than once. A favorite that I’ve received is hanging on my bulletin board at work; beside a photograph of two oddly dressed Victorian women it says this: “There are probably girls who think they’re as hot as we are, but they’re wrong.”
I might be addicted to salt. Despite the seeming nonexistence of this condition on WebMD, I’m pretty sure it’s real. I used to be all over donuts and pastries and cake and frosting as a kid; every once in awhile all of that still sounds good, but I have much more of a savory palate now. I crave salty things, and I’ve come to believe that the dish of kosher salt next to my stove is the happiest addition to my kitchen since I got a food processor. I get sad when I realize I forgot to salt my leftovers-as-lunch.
I’m not a vegetarian, but sometimes I like to pretend. I eat a lot of tofu. I often feel superior when I order a vegetarian burrito–like I’m cool and healthy; too good for that common chicken. The truth is I love a good steak, and chicken nuggets are far too delicious to give up completely. I rarely cook meat, though, and I do get an odd satisfaction out of being a part-time veg.
Every time I see an ambulance or hear a siren, I say a Hail Mary in my head. This is how I first learned the Hail Mary: in a van on a school field trip, a perky nun our driver (I went to a convent school, so this isn’t as outrageous as it could be). An ambulance passed us by, and she led us all in the prayer; she said we must pray it because someone, somewhere, is in distress, and you never know how far a little prayer can go. I didn’t know the Hail Mary until that day. I’ve never forgotten it.
And now you know.
I’m meant now to tag a few others, and share the joy that is the random. I feel like this is going around, and I know I’ve seen it a few places. I’ve been a bit out of the loop keeping up with all of my blogs recently; if I tag you and you’ve done it, skip it, or do it again! It’s fun. So much more fun that working, anyway. I pick:
and YOU!
They say that once you’ve studied a foreign language long enough, you’ll find yourself just suddenly fluent—you won’t even have to think, the words will just come when you call. The same for foreign places: with the right acclimatization, the customs don’t seem so strange, and you assimilate without giving it a second glance.
It’s happening. I was just at Starbucks, and totally not thinking, I ordered a skim latte.
The word the baristas are looking for is nonfat. It’s a trivial thing, surely, but it’s bothered me for a long time.
Seriously, in any Seattle starbucks, you can order a double-tall nonfat without a second look—the “latte” part is just implied. That’s how entrenched the culture is. Also probably explains why the city-wide “espresso tax” is so very lucrative, but that’s a bit of another story.
Around these parts, the baristas make a point of correcting every nonfat order that comes in. “I’ll have a grande nonfat latte,” I’ll say. “Grande skim latte!” the checker cries out.
Yet. And here’s the vexatious part. At the bar, they write an N on my cup. Big, bold, capital: N is not for Skim, you freaks. If you want to correct me, fine, but at least write an S or something.
But there I was today. “I’d like a double-tall skim pumpkin spice latte, only about half the pumpkin, no whip but still with cinnamon, please,” I rattled off. Not even thinking, there it was—woven in with the rest of the order.
The cup, of course, still came with an N. But it’s starting to look a little less strange.
It’s been one of those days at work. A day where I feel like a glorified secretary for a bad man with no drive or discipline or determination; a man who fails to come in for another publication day on a journal he calls his; a man who makes remote edits that are WRONG and that don’t really make sense and that the associate and I get the pleasure of correcting.
It’s kind of like the three-ring circus of legal editing over here. When I picture myself as the girl in the sequins riding on the elephant, though, it’s not so bad. A silly way to make a living, but really not so bad.
My imagination is a wild place sometimes.
I’ve created a new station on my Pandora radio. I generally listen to the same thing over and over; songs friends call “sad English music.” Keane, Coldplay, Snow Patrol, and the like; it’s really my favorite. Today I spiced it up. And hit on a Nick Lachey song, “You Can Have What’s Left of Me,” popular on terrestrial radio the summer I was studying for the bar. I’m not a huge Lachey fan, but this song has a special place in my heart.
I’d hear it really almost every day on my drives to and from school.
I created new lyrics to this song, and they helped me remember a good handful of the rules for dissolution of marriage and allocation of community property assets. I would sing it, very poorly but with much emotion, as loudly as I could.
Note here, by way of a disclaimer, that I was not in top form on these drives. It was either (a) 5.30a, and I was trying to get the caffeine from my commuter mug into my brain before merging onto 90 West; or (b) I was zapped from nine hours of bar prep and subsequent library-related indentured servitude.
You get half of what’s left of me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prbBg6Lxo6w
I can’t seem to embed it—not allowed, or I’m just challenged?—but click over and check it out if you feel so inclined.
“Cause I hate you, and it’s over; better get a lawyer, babe” was my chorus.
I can’t remember my other ad libs, which is really a shame. I feel like I might have made some of them up as I went along—I could cook some up now, but that’s just not the same. There was something about inheritances, for sure, and mortgages. Probably even something about custody rules.
Such a fun throw-back. I love it when music does that, takes you out from behind your computer, and drops you somewhere else entirely.
A strange weekend has just passed in these parts. I’ve been reminded in varying degrees of my errant youth; my naivete; my stupidity; and my optimism, past or present or both, et cetera.
I met up with the Theresas Saturday night; we were planning to see The Secret Life of Bees. I read the book a few years back; fabulous, from what I recall. So I signed on. But it was sold out. Nights in Rodanthe was playing in ten minutes’ time, so I suggested it as an alternative. Hey, I love Richard Gere, what can I say; I haven’t read any of the reviews, but I think the Diane Lane pairing presents a lot of possibility. I loved them together in Unfaithful. I generally hate Nicholas Sparks books, and have been boycotting since the literary crap that was The Notebook (enviable plotline notwithstanding). Still, the film intrigued me. The Theresas are a persnickety lot, however. One of them whips out her blackberry. “We’re looking this up,” she says. A few minutes on a Catholic film review website, and a critic’s huddle I’m suddenly left out of.
And the verdict is in. “Nights in Rodanthe is OUT! It’s OUT!” they say, a rallying cheer of sorts. “We cannot support such portrayals of adultery. Sinful, sinful media today, chuh.”
Right. Okay, girls, so what’s the backup plan?
Well, none, turns out. NONE OF THE OTHER FILMS SHOWING WERE ACCEPTABLE. I mean, really. They were all at a loss; like schoolchildren, standing around hoping for a guiding hand. I love these women for so much. Indecision at the movies is not among the reasons.
My apartment was closest, so I offered a sojurn back there. (Not telling them, by the way, that I fully intend to see the Gere/Lane flick at some point, and may use it as an excuse to call upon my heathen friends in the near future). (Also: thinking “vodka, I have vodka. Bring me vodka NOW.”).
They prefer wine. One glass per person; no, thanks, I don’t need a refill.
Hi, I’m the wino who’s infiltrated your border; I’d like to finish this bottle and open another, and I rather wish I kept a flask in the bathroom so I could sneak in there and pour it straight down my throat, thanks.
But. And there’s always a but! These girls are so sweet, and so devout. They remind me of myself in, oh, I’d say, high school. Innocent. Unfocused. Confused. I don’t think there’s much I can do for them, really, and maybe they don’t need it. Maybe they’re best off in their uninfiltrated bubble, where everything inside is pure and the world aloft is an evil, evil place. I used to think just like that. Just. Like. That. Something changed. I could guess, but I’m not really sure; I don’t know how I assimilated, but I have, and their world is mine no more. But I appreciate it more than most, I’d wager.
An interesting throw-back evening, to say the least. Kept me up late enough to regret deciding on early church Sunday morning, but still I think it’s worth it to have an entire day remaining when you come out. I was going, for a time, to the 11.15 service. I haven’t entirely discontinued this attendance, but it gets out near one; near two, then, by the time I get home, after stopping for groceries and less expensive gas, and then where has the day gone?
So much promise with the 8.30 (but So. Painfully. Early. Earlier than work! What gives?).
Driving back, though, there was something about the day—the crispness in the air, the lingering Catholicism, the charm of a city finally caving into the autumn—that got me thinking about the Japan man. See, e.g., this post for the backstory.
I could not shake it. I tried, with most every distraction I know. But he was there, lodged in my brain. He was four years ago. He was in the Kerry/Bush era. He was another lifetime entirely, and really, omitting trivial exchanges, two full years have passed between our communications. I do not know this man.
But something in the afternoon took hold of me, and I penned him (with keys in a word template, so perhaps stretching the penned reference, but yeah) a sophisticated e-mail. Or so I thought at the time. It was long and familiar, like no time has passed at all.
I don’t even know what I was thinking.
Earth to Magda, Move On Now.
I really think I ought to be suspended from e-mail for a little while. Due to abuse and poor judgment, your access has been revoked, etc., for a period no less than 30 days.
Of course he hasn’t written back, although my gmail is on a 24-hours-a-day email red-alert. It’ll be months before I hear from him. If at all. He’s in my dreams, and I couldn’t hardly sleep last night; I feel like he was there in my head, but there was no real interaction. I hate how ethereal dreams can be, how tormenting. I hate that it’s my own feelings and fabrications that have brought this on. I hate how I was so over it, but now am pining after him like I’m 12 and he’s the cutest guy on the football team; a senseless, improbable crush.
My heart is breaking a little bit, but I don’t know why. I feel like I’m too old for this ridiculousness, and that makes me sad. I feel like I’m grasping at straws, and I don’t know where to go from here.
Forward. The only way to go, I think, is forward; to move on and keep on truckin’, even when the roads are washed out or flanked by cautionary avalanche warnings. Just keep going, keep moving, knowing that maybe, someday, if we’re really lucky and it all pans out, it’ll all be smooth sailing and clear roads once more.
So, here’s a Friday secret: I know J’s email password. He doesn’t know that I know it (obviously). I shouldn’t know it. And, even knowing it, I certainly shouldn’t abuse it. But I do. And I have. And this is very bad.
I checked in again today, for probably the first time in a week or so (small steps, people). Among other not-so-interesting things, I learn that he’s been e-mailing with a girl called “Jenny.” “It was so great to meet you last night at X, blah blah blah, I’d love to see you again, when are you free next week?” Something like that.
Sent on Tuesday. Right before he met me after my Russian class; right before he told me he wasn’t ready to say good-bye; right before he told me he still wanted to be best friends.
Incidentally, he brought all of my things from his house with him. My hair help, the tennis racket I used once; little make-ups and lots of underwear I’d forgotten I owned (and so cute, some of them! So happy to have them back). It was bittersweet.
And confusing. He gave it all back, but then started getting all teary about how he couldn’t believe we were over, and he’d never stop loving me, and he knew I would always be the one for him. He said he wanted to keep talking, and keep being best friends (really, I challenge that we ever were true “best friends”—but that’s an entirely different discussion).
Oh yeah, and then there’s Jenny. Also in the Tuesday e-mail, he invited her to his new band’s show next Friday here in DC. “The ticket’s on me if you can make it out!” he wrote. A show I’ve never been informed of by this so-called “best friend.” Not that I’d go. I wouldn’t. But just the same.
I’m so upset that I know all of this. I know that it’s none of my business, and I especially know that I—the one who ended it all—should not care if he’s dating Jennys, or sleeping around, or whatever it is music groupies do with hot girls they meet in bars. But still. Baaaa. I hate myself sometimes.
Overlooking the general animosity I have for my alarm, and my recurring feelings of “WHY did I stay up so late reading blogs/checking e-mail/watching Bewitched online,” I woke up this morning with a renewed sense of vigor. (It takes some imagination, I know. But go with it).
On this day two years ago, I was beginning my career, donning one of those “New Employee” stickers they give you before your badge has been processed, and making myself at home in my now-familiar corporate surroundings. Two years of being a working girl; of being wholly self-sufficient; of living in a far away place with only me to take care of me. Two years!
Sad thing is, I still don’t feel all that grown up. I still feel like someday, it’ll just happen … my life will fall into place, it’ll all come together, and I’ll say, Aha, so this is what it means to be adult. That day, however, is not today.
I don’t know if that day will ever come. Sometimes, I think, we just have to keep on going, and get as much from the moment as we can, without worrying about whether we’ll get there, or what it’s all supposed to be like.
I got the most amazing letter from my dad tonight. My mom was gone all of last week visiting her parents in the Great American Homeland, otherwise known as the Midwest/south/whatever the frick they’re calling Oklahoma these days. I’m guessing he had a lot of time for thinking on his hands.
Reflecting back, I wish I would have spent more time with you girls during your high school years, before you left for college. At any rate, we can only look forward from here, he wrote.
Basically, I didn’t want another day to slip by without telling you how much I love you, how proud I am of you (on a variety of fronts), and what an incredible young woman you have evolved into.
I don’t share this to toot my own horn (Dad thinks I’m incredible! Woooo!) but rather to illustrate the preciousness that is our time now. Waiting for the moment may mean the moment passes you by. Say what is to be said now, live to be the best you can be right now, and your regrets, they’ll be manageable.
In a similar vein, I received an at times hilarious, at times heart-breaking email from my ex-roommate yesterday. A part of it struck me as particularly poignant.
By way of background, she recently bought a house. Yes, a HOUSE! Note, she is in the rural south, where the cost of living is such that she can technically afford a real house with a real garage and a fence on her lawyer’s salary. Me? I pass a nice block of rowhouses on the train every night, and they have this banner.
LIVE HERE FROM THE LOW $600s!
The low $600s. This means maybe, MAYBE I can buy a weenie house squished in between two other weenie houses, with no privacy, crap kitchen appliances, and bedroom windows overlooking the train tracks for, eh, $630,000. Yeah. Right. When I win the lottery in conjunction with losing my mind.
I am so excited about my house, but a little scared and a little sad too!, she writes. Scared and excited, obviously. And the sad.
Sad because I always wanted to buy my first home with my husband. So, all those late nights of painting that should have been a part of wedded bliss, will be me, my dog, and my stupid cat. I’m sure I will shed a few tears along the way, but in the end, I will lie to myself and swear that I am okay, life is great, and being single isn’t bad.
I almost cry just reading that.
But the point is, I think, that she’s doing it. In between the tears and the self-convincing, she’s charging forward, and taking life as it comes, and being herself now, here, in the moment. She isn’t waiting to act until everything is in its pre-conceived proper place. That’s the way it should be.
I have my moments of fear for the future, sure. It’s hard to be confident in living only for me. But two years in, I think I’m doing okay. On the right path, learning to really know myself, and being content with life as it comes. The pasta is boiling, and the wine is good. La vita e bella, or so they might say; I’ll drink to that, in any event.
I’m really not a negative person. Sometimes, though, letting all the badness escape can be therapeutic, and productive. Welcome to my current hate list: spilled here so I don’t just let it all build up to the point where I explode and do something idiotic like laying on my horn at innocent pedestrians who are CLEARLY IN THE CROSSWALK while the little green man is CLEARLY ILLUMINATED. New Jersey beemer on 18th Street, yes, I am talking to you.
My associate editor is back today from a week-long vacation … with a hacking cough that sounds like death. I appreciate the principle compelling her appearance today. I don’t want to get sick, though, and I’m peeved that she’ll undoubtedly take leave for what’s looking now like the rest of the week. Boo.
It is warmer outside than it is in my office, even though my illegal not-company-approved space heater is set to 80’. I want so badly to be wearing sweaters and boots. I like fall so much more than summer; plus, the pool closed over a month ago.
There have been lots of sirens outside, but not one of them is because my boss has been squashed by a metrobus. Probably because he’s down the hall, talking loudly on the phone about his teenage daughter’s “respect issues.” ON OUR PUBLICATION DAY. The busiest day of our week. (and I totally understand the respect issues, as it happens. The man’s a bonehead. Respect from this end? Nill).
I agreed to meet J for a margarita after Russian tonight. I’m very frustrated about this. I wish the whole thing could really just be over with. Maybe I should just move to Russia. Or get a new phone number. Or maybe just more of a backbone.
Despite a pay scale indicating otherwise, no one appears to be in charge of this here publication. I enter my edits, then someone changes them around. Files are opening and closing, with zero coordination and no communication. Things going in, things going out, we all seem to be making conflicting changes yet I appear to be the only one who notices and/or cares. NOT A GOOD WAY TO RUN A BUSINESS, people.
My hair is being ridiculous and frizzy and ugly. I hate it.
My apple, I have just discovered, has a giant bruise on the side of it. This may or may not be owing to the jostling it went through at the post office this morning. My sponsored child in Albania has a birthday coming up, so I was trying to mail him a card. I’d put stickers in it, along with some bookmarks I picked up at the National Book Festival a few weeks back: result, it was overweight for a regular stamp. So there I was, standing in a line snaking out the door, at approximately 8.40 this morning. “What’s in this?” snappy post office lady asks me when the counter and I finally meet. “Stickers count as merchandise. You need a customs declaration form. NEXT.” So I filled out the form, mailed the 1.7oz letter as a parcel, was late to work, and dented a fruit somewhere along the way.
Good news, though; my Bar News has just arrived in the mail. When I get my school magazines, I always flip to the back to read the class notes and see what people are up to. With the Bar News, I flip to the back, too … and read all the disciplinary proceedings. Heh heh. The summer season saw two Washington lawyers disbarred; seven suspended; and one admonished. I take some comfort in knowing that their frustrations must indeed be far greater than mine.
Evidently the Washington Redskins played today. My first hint was all the flags waving out of car windows on the way home from church this morning. I don’t know if I just haven’t been paying attention or what, but is this automotive fanship a really big deal? Probably 25% of the cars on 495N this morning had flags fluttering out of one or both front windows. WTF, I thought; I guess I never noticed before.
Then this afternoon, coming back to the Virginia side of things from an afternoon in the district, the train was packed, a sea of red and yellow. If you could imagine business suits instead of jerseys, any workday instead of Sunday, you’d look at your watch and say, it’s 5.15, of course. You wouldn’t be surprised to find no seats at all, but at least then, you’d fit in. I was bumping up against tennis shoes and all variation of Redskins jerseys; looking at hundreds of baseball caps; squished into a Redskins crotched bag. I kid you not. Do they sell such things? Or did an avid grandma-style fan stitch it up one night in front of Wheel of Fortune? Amazing.
I somehow missed the whole football phenomena. Part of this is likely because I went to a really small college that had no football team. We actually had t-shirts for awhile that said X College Football: Undefeated Since 1883! I’m kicking myself for never buying one.
Most of it, however, is that I just cannot understand it. This is an anomaly. Both of my parents, University of Oklahoma alums, are hardcore OU fans. When those games were on, we watched. But I got bored, and usually slunk off to my room to read. We’d have superbowl parties, but the commercials were—and still are, in fact—my favorite part. Even when Seattle was playing! The commercials and the chicken wings; I’m really all in it for the food (but I won’t tell if you won’t).
Much to the chagrin of my last four boyfriends (which is, um, almost all of them—but who’s counting), who have all tirelessly tried to explain the game and its nuances, it just doesn’t stick. My brain just didn’t come football-equipped. I’ll get it for about four minutes after it’s explained; then it fades. I know all about sacking, but that’s mostly owing to the Sports Night episode where Dana goes around sacking the staff to demonstrate the glory of the move. Gold star if you know what I’m talking about.
Unfortunately, it seems the Redskins lost tonight. “Winless Rams Stun Redskins, 19-17,” my Washington Post home page says, accompanied (of course) by a photo of an angry-looking man wearing a familiar baseball cap, talking into one of those walkie-talkie headsets.
While the team was being shamed, I was otherwise enjoying the day—a day which, incidentally, should have been perfect for football. Warm weather, sunshine; more like May than October, really, but really quite glorious with the leaves starting to turn as they are.
A friend and I spent the afternoon in Georgetown, hitting the shops and making a mini-cupcake tour. Baked & Wired cupcakes: two thumbs way up. Just FYI.
I seriously wish I would have taken this picture. The sign wasn’t out today, alas. All credit to the fab ladies at cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com.
Now I’m home, celebrating the season in my own way. The sun is setting over old town, a cozy glass of wine sits here next to the macbook, and a dinner that smells absolutely amazing is simmering on the stove. It’s a magda-style autumn twist on an old German favorite: bratwurst, onion, apple, and sweet potato. Bubbling in pumpkin beer. Shut up, I know it sounds weird, but it’s So. Very. Tasty. At least if you have my arguably strange palate.
There’s something really satisfying about actually cooking dinner. Chopping and stirring; donning the apron instead of opening the freezer. A very good start to the week.
I’ve never been a cursive girl. Sure as I learned it in third grade, and would stare at the cursive letters that were hung as a sort of border over the blackboard as a happy alternative to, I don’t know, paying attention; I completed the requisite assignments, but pretty much left it there. I’m a printer, through and through, though certain cursive elements do find their way into my writing every now and again. A last s, a middle-of-the-word r, that sort of thing.
I had to write an entire paragraph in cursive on my bar application. Identity verification, or something? I’ll never know. What I do know is that it looked like an eight-year-old wrote it, which is probably about right. It was unrefined, unfinished; basically immature, in an I’m-just-learning-this spirit.
I had a post in my head about this time last week called something like “Russians = Sadists.” Or, “Stalin Had it Right: Studies in Why Russians are Evil Communsts, Through and Through.” It was never written primarily because (a) I was exhausted; also (b) I was overwhelmed, and (c) the title seemed too easily misunderstood (and a bit harsh besides).
Then it got harder, and I’m reconsidering.
I’m just back from my second-ever Russian class. We meet Tuesday nights, for a fun-filled two and a half hours of vocabulary drills and elementary conversation.
Bad news, people. I’m basically illiterate. These letters? They’re familiar, in a hauntingly familiar, throw you off track and in a hurry kind of way. I see letters, and my Germanic/Romance Language-trained brain wants to pronounce them. But.
In Cyrillic, B is V. P is R. H is N. C is S. U is E. E is Y. And on, and on, and on.
If I didn’t feel like a spy before, I sure as heck do now. This is alarmingly like secret code.
Roger, alpha niner niner. This is magda, come in, magda.
The thing of it is, I had nearly gotten a handle of it. I was getting faster at sounding things out, and had cheated enough memorizations to know how to say certain key words of this chapter without actually having to read them.
The problem with a once-a-week-for-two-hours class is that you’ll cover a whole heck of a lot of ground with very little time for absorption. I took languages all four years of college, with the consequence that I never had a day with no classes—languages met five days a week. I think they have to. Once a week, you necessarily cram so much in. No sooner are the letters on the page than you’re expected to have committed them to memory, be able to recognize and read them in context, and use them in a sentence to ask the class a question, please.
And then they threw in italics. The letters change shapes in Russian italics. Like, totally. A t becomes an m. WTF, Putin. I’m onto you.
The fun only continues with cursive.
My homework? Lines of cursive. Cyrillic cursive, with totally foreign shapes and elements in the midst of old favorites. I was going to photograph my sad class exercises for display here, but you’d all say, nah, she couldn’t have written that. She’s just trying to be funny. Maybe she was doing it with her left hand, or it was really done by that little girl down the hall. But alas.
We moved on to basic grammar tonight (does it seem like we’re covering a lot of ground, perhaps too much ground, to anyone else? Anyone? Here I can barely introduce myself, and I’m presented with the FIVE cases of Russian grammar, and how I must change endings of objects to match prepositions with nominative or accusative uses. Or something. This is pathetic to admit, but here it is: I generally kick ass in English grammar, but it’s all by instinct. I know how it’s supposed to sound, and I can fix it, but I’ve no rationale to explain why. I would not put money on my ability to correctly identify prepositions here, so where the letters are foreign and the meaning is new? Da, pass the vodka.).
The upshot is, it makes work seem a million miles away. Being busy does that; it takes the stress out of dreading tomorrow, and a boss who is a class A jackass who, I swear, would win so many points if he’d just acknowledge my work, say thanks every once in awhile, etc. But moving on.
I’ve been feeling more of this “distance from work” thing recently. Like last night, a shining example on the perennial list of Idiotic Things I Do In My Spare Time.
My Monday night bible study was cancelled (everyone is sick, apparently), so I did the only rational thing. I went straight from work to shopping. I’ve recently learned that there’s a World Market really close to my office, so I thought I’d check it out. I walked on over, and found the greatest storage ottoman, on sale, and bearing a striking resemblance to one I’ve envied at Crate & Barrel for over a year that has just flat-out failed to go on sale. Speaking of communists/fascists/other bad things …
Anyway, I wanted it in brown, and the floor model was the last one they had. Lots of red in the back, the salesman said, but if you want the brown, this one’s yours! And at an even bigger discount, for being the model!
So I bought it, then and there. I’m not big on risks. “Did you park close, or do you want help with that?” the cheery salesgirl asked me. Um… sure, I parked close. At least that’s what I told her, and proceeded to stagger out of the store, ottoman in arms, all the way to the metro. The metro, out of Washington, at rush hour. Unwise, magda; very unwise. “Ah, smart; you brought your own seat,” a cheeky co-commuter said to me after I’d knocked about a dozen business-people around with my wide load. I just laughed; a polite giggle for emphasis.
My arms are still sore.
Home in my living room, it’s a perfect match, and makes my sofa an excellent place to study up (with the necessary glass of wine safely away from the carpet, natch). So worth the effort, and the struggle. Illiteracy, I am on to you.
