I’m such a ‘tard, I really can’t get over it. My neurotic insanity has ebbed, and I’m psyched to be getting the hell out of Dodge for New Year’s.

So, $400 later and I’m going to San Fran! It’s a direct flight, so more time to hang out. I’ve never bought a ticket and taken off in days.

If there’s one negative about my mom that lingers, it’s that she drilled into my head fear at every turn that you could lose your job in an instant. One cross-eyed look, your number was up, and you were looking for a bed in the shelter.

I have boatloads of vacation time, and I get teased annually by the people above me for not using more. It’s my irrational safety net — when they shitcan me I could cash out that unused vacation time and buy the catfood I would eat to survive.

So, to say that my fear that somehow my boss would mind if I took vacation time during the holidays is irrational doesn’t even skim the thinnest edge of reality.

Her response to my request for time off, even on such short notice:
” I think it’s great that you’re going. Why aren’t you staying longer?”

My first reason for self hatred today is that this ‘blog is spiraling into a tormented adolescent hell. Boo hoo, my boyfriend moved, I am tragedy incarnate, I suffer for love and writhe in the brimstone of emotion. Soon, I will begin all entries “Dear Diary… M. is sooooooo cute. It hurts when he smiles and he’s as cool as all of the other boys.” What sad emotional depths I fail to plumb each and every day in my teenage banality. I wish I still had a locker to facilitate note passing.

Oh yeah, I’m almost 40. That is pathetic.

The second reason for self hatred today is my sneaking suspicion that I ain’t right in the head. I just ain’t normal. I’ve spent the better part of the day
O B S E S S I N G
about New Year’s Eve and Day.

I hate the essence of New Year’s in that I have spent some horrible, lonely New Year’s Eves pining away in women blues agony. I think the worst of all New Year’s was the one about a decade or so ago where my boyfriend du jour told me to get ready for a very special night, wear something appropriate for downtown, be ready for wining and dining, etc. So, there I sat in my apartment biting my fingernails next to the telephone that never rang, listening at the door that never opened. Yup, he was a no show. Mind you, we had been dating for about six or seven months by then, this date was not a one off, desperate attempt to couple at the dawn of a fresh year. The next morning brought telephone calls, tears, many tears, and recriminations. The story was an unintelligible narrative that involved a toast with his brother over a glass of wine, an alledged trip to the emergency room after a tipped chair really did equal a cracked skull, just like the teachers warned, and some other pathological bullshit that strained credulity far beyond stretching.

In truth I have had some wonderful New Year’s. Last year, I was in a hot tub with strangers (except for one man, who is one of the people I have met in comedy that I consider to truly be a friend). I was sober, drinking organic ginger ale, and I felt unfettered and alive, as Joni once wrote. The year before, at least I think it was the year before, I happily ate Thai food and ice cream alone with a stack of DVDs, genuinely enjoying the rest from a tiring year. In the past, there have been parties and friends and several cold First Nights and some genuine good times.

Yet, it is the negative shitty times on which I choose to focus. And, worse, I buy into the manufactured feeling of “When Harry Met Sally” female inadequacy year after fucking year after fucking year. An average of 364 fucking days of any given year, I am hip to my lifestyle and pleased that I am not a surburban wife and mother. I revel in the choices I have made. But on fucking, godforchristlysaken New Year’s, poof, I’m a loser of epic proportions who no one will ever love. Boo fucking hoo, right?

So, this year, this turn from 2003 to 2004, M. is there. He wants to see me. We have concocted the spontaneous plan that I should fly out on New Year’s Eve and spend the weekend in California. For one of the first times in my life, I even have both the financial means and the motivation to do it. Cool, right? Movie script perfect. Cue the fucking strings all ready, because the music should goddamn swell, right? RIGHT.

Of course. M.’s a great guy. We have much fun together. We enjoy each other’s company. He is cute and funny and sensitive. He talks as much as I do.

It will be great. For once in my life it will be great to take the leap of faith and jump on a plane. Really. It will be.

But, goddamn me and my neurotic behavior. Goddamn the upbringing my mother gave me with the special sense of doom that only the guilt-ridden, shit on, downtrodden spirit of a true Irish Catholic can poetically feel whilst boohoohooing and wryly chuckling in his whiskey.

It’s a great thing. An adventure with a caring person. And, all I can do is worry about the worst.

What must it be like to get through a day and not think about losing your job, the plane going up in flames, the man greeting the plane with his beautiful wife or a dozen assorted calamities imagined around every corner.

My 2004 New Year’s resolution is to be
Alfred E. Newman: What me worry?

So, I pissed away part of the work day looking at flights on Orbitz and various airlines. Why? You may ask (as though there is a you). So, that I can jet off to be with M. for New Year’s.

It’s a great way to spend a work day, believe you me. However, I can’t really figure out what should such an adventure incur in terms of a reasonable price and level of inconvenience. More importantly, it scares the bejesus out of me.

Somewhere in my retarded emotional state, such as it is, I can’t fulfill the dream of being a Meg Ryan character. Where other women swoon, I start hyperventilating.

Running to catch a jet to spend the holiday with the man is just so Meg Ryan-y that I would have to wonder what’s next. Faking orgasm in a diner while Billy Crystal’s mom watches?

I’m not so much a glass half full optimist or a half empty pessimist as I am a middle of the road non-committal equivicator. I overthink the glass.

I was thinking about this today, since I have no definite plans for New Year’s and was feeling slightly lonely and sorry for myself. But, on the other hand, I realized that I had about 10 overdue email replies, which I had neglected over the holidays, etc. So, I vowed to make today my catch up on email day and sent out quite a few. The question might be: Do I have no friends, as the lonely pouting about the holidays would suggest, or am I just too fucktarded to get back to people and maintain the friendships I have? So, here’s a life lesson from recess, be a friend, make a friend. DUH. I’m an idiot.

In the same vein, it’s such a brave new world for me to have a boyfriend who is thoughtful and caring, that I am completely unschooled in appropriate actions. The thought that someone might think of me isn’t something I’m pessimistic about and cynical (no really, I’m not, I swear). It’s just not entirely comprehensible to my overthinking.

Here’s some advice to the ladies out there, if your man moves far away, you probably don’t want to dive into Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls and cable on demand repeats of “Sex in the City.” The unfortunate pattern of those two oeuvres is not exactly male positive. All my life, my male friends have always outnumbered my female friends, and they have been good friends. Yet, I still get amazed that I’m date worthy. I wonder what repressed memory fucked my self esteem.

Here is a first draft, if you will of a character I have an idea for animating. It’s a penguin in honor of the man some might call “Captain Linux.”

By the way, I was looking at this picture, so I remember what Captain Linux looks like. (I was bringing stuff to the laundry today and found his sweater. Not only did it smell like him, but it had a tag from New Zealand. Besides merino wool it was part possum fur. No kidding. Those wackie kiwis.)

Here’re some slightly delayed pics from Christmas. I was at my oldest brother’s family’s house. To say that Susan and Jim decorate is an understatement. I’m refraining from anything more editorial than apparently they like lights…

(In contrast, at my house the decorations consist of a box of 50 percent off, after-Christmas, Pepperidge Farm Gingerbread Family cookies.)

Much of my weekend has been dominated by an unabridged audio version of Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls.

The next time you see me, I’ll probably be drinking vodka straight and popping seconal.

Alternatively, I could play “I Need a Doll!”

I think there is something either very wrong, very different or possibly very right about it. I feel like I get into unusual situations of trying to help, and sometimes failing.

Yesterday’s episode, I’m standing in line at Somerville’s building 19. Building 19 is a trashy store, of which they are proud, and Somerville’s is in a dead mall and is perhaps the trashiest. So, I’m in line, and a boy with batteries in his hand comes up and stands right at the corner of the counter between the register space and the customer space; clearly he knew the woman at the register. I’m mildly annoyed in an entitled yuppie, customers should come first kind of way, because I know the kid is going to want something right when she is done with the person in front of me. My internal dialogue decides to wait and watch, rather than be a haughty, attention-demanding wench. I am smugly self-satisfied and rewarded when the kid jumps in and she starts helping him with no concern for the line of customers.

Right about now, given the intro, you’re probably thinking “What the fuck did that bitch, Dee-Rob, do? Jesus, can’t she just relax for Christ’s sake? It’s the day after Christmas.”

So the woman at the register pulls from under the counter a battery-powered toy, the kid hands her the batteries and after struggling to open the batteries she starts dumping one then two into the hole. Only she’s dumping 9-volt batteries into the compartment, the rectangular ones with both contacts on top. So I stop her and start explaining that there’s no way a 9-volt gets dropped into a hole, since you usually have to plug the two contacts directly into something. (In my head, I’m thinking, “Doesn’t everyone know about the contacts on 9-volts? How else could you lick it and get shocked.”)

The woman doesn’t really speak English, and she’s clearly annoyed at my intervention. “No, it takes batteries. Here.” She points to the hole.

“Yeah, I know, but not that kind. That kind plugs in.” I try to gesture plugging and point to the contacts.

“No, batteries.”

“Yes. Round batteries. Not square.”

“No. Batteries. Here.”

By now, the boy is helping too, pointing, “Don’t the batteries go here?”

“Yeah, yes, they do.” I can now see the battery compartment, where it’s marked “Size C.” “Yes, see here, where it says ‘C,’ you need the batteries that say letter C, these say 9. It’s a different kind. You need round ones,” I circle my fingers.

He runs off to the battery rack.

The woman shrugs her shoulders, stares at me a little and then starts ringing up the calendars I was buying. She says nothing to the boy or me about the toy.

When I’m done, the boy is still at the battery rack, confusedly looking at them all. I can’t help but walk over to “help” some more. Together we look through all of the batteries (it’s a discount store, though, so there is no neat arrangement of all types and sizes.) There are no C batteries to be found.

I can’t tell whether it’s his English or his lack of comprehension of battery sizes, but he basically held up every kind and doublechecked if they would work. I tried to explain that only the correct size would work.

In the end, I had to walk away while he still stared at all of the other batteries and mumbled something about “I guess I’ll have to put it back.”

End scene

I wonder whether I helped him, because he didn’t end up with a toy and useless batteries (by the way she was opening the batteries with abandon, it didn’t seem like money would be changing hands). Or maybe I just got in the way, I don’t know.

Meanwhile, it makes me wonder if all over the country there are various people thinking they have broken items, simply because they can’t follow the complexities of battery sizing.

I am happy to be typing this from my laptop in bed not my office. I should never go into work again.

One good thing about M. not being here, is he might co-opt one of my gifts, a monogrammed fleece throw. Very soft and watching TV on the couch worthy. But, those are my initials, baby.

Here is my most impressive Christmas gift . It’s from my brother Danny. Since I helped him out earlier in the year, I told him that he should get me something good. Now I feel guilty.

A Kitchenaid mixer is kind of a holy grail. It’s perhaps the one kitchen appliance I haven’t been able to buy for myself. So sturdy, so impressive, so timeless, so professional. I am not worthy.

I have a small kitchen, and I live in a horrible nest of clutter. So, with the Kitchenaid mixer as inspiration, today and this weekend I am going to be ruthless in dispatching stuff I don’t use around here. The espresso machine, gone. The blender, hmm, put away (not gone yet). Clothes, appliances, plastic things you are supposed to put things in, the pot large enough to boil jars for canning, the polenta inexplicably in my cabinet, gone. All gone. GONE, I SAY.

Then, I will buy eggs and whip or fold or blend in mechanical wonderfulness.

One gift from yesterday puzzles me in that it represents a complete 180 from the cynicism I embrace–some soap and an MFA membership from one of my brothers (whose name is not used in case the NSA scans this page and associates him with me, since we were discussing cyber policing). Anyway, I love good soap, like French hard-milled bars scented with tea or non-cloying flora. I like the way it feels, the way it smells. I guess like food, it’s one of those simple, sensuous things that it’s just as easy to go for the one that makes you feel good over the one that just works. Or maybe I mean sex, not food. Plug in your own sensuous fun.

Anyway, I have digressed considerably from the point. The point is since soap is not a topic of conversation in the family, it was a startling gift from my brother, who is (1) a boy and (2) my brother. But, M. mentioned soap (and his soap-related business plan that spawned from a day I obsessively looked over all types of boutique soap) to my bro’s girlfriend and mentioned it to my bro and it became part of my gift. I don’t generally dwell in a world in which my boyfriend shares something innocuous about me and it comes back with positive results. That’s far to life-affirming and warm.

Surprisingly (or some other adverb meant to show some kind of contrast), it was the same brother who kept saying “I just don’t get it” in regard to any mention of the now infamous Naked Comedy Show. He also opined that Macs completely suck, especially the new Powerbooks, including the one I am currently typing into), ‘blogs are a stupid trend, like pet rocks, stand-up comedy is just fat, sweaty guys saying stupid things, there is no difference between stand-up and playing music (in re my assertion that stand-up/monologues were the most stripped down of performances) and something about writing that I wasn’t clear on but gave me the feeling that he thought writing and performance were generally pointless pursuits.

I guess that’s the Yin Yang thing right there. Give me a thoughtful gift, but remind me that you hold none of my values as valuable.

Speaking of the Naked Comedy Show, while talking about it with my uncle, I realized something about myself and why I did it. My uncle knew me way back when, when I was literally unable to speak with strangers. My shyness was so acute that among his recollections was my complete inability to even buy gum. He had to take it to the register for me. I remember not eating and not peeing and all sorts of common activities outside of my home, because I would need to speak with someone to accomplish them. (Of course, the plus side is I can to this day hold my bladder like nobody’s business).

I still have a pretty inappropriate filter that tells me I can’t or shouldn’t talk with people (including bringing things to cash registers). That inner feeling also tells me that no one wants me to talk with them or bother them, etc. It is honestly sometimes hard for me to understand that my approaching someone is not a “bother” and in fact might even be a positive occurrence. My core shy person finds that incredible to believe.

My uncle also reminded me of the absolute reserve that was part of every aspect of my upbringing. Public emotions, like crying, and displays of affection of any kind, like hugging, were just not part of the equation. (I was going to say “not allowed,” but it wasn’t a matter of permission. It was valueless in that it just never occurred. period.) My first recollection of my mother hugging me, I was in eighth grade getting on a bus for the field trip to Washington, DC. The occasion of my going away from home by myself was the occasion on which my mother could hug me. It was quick and awkward and startled me.

Basically, yesterday’s conversation with my uncle showed me how much of my adult life is an attempt to be the opposite of that person. I actively make myself do and say things that contradict the shy reserve inside. I introduce myself, shake hands, hug and take the initiative precisely when inside I struggle.

In the end as an adult, I want to speak freely. I want to give and get affection readily and comfortably. I want warmth and depth and light and all of the metaphors of freedom and love. I want to be able to tell someone how I feel without a bit of ironic distance or smug sarcasm or a cloying neurotic quest for external validation. And, I want to be open and receptive and kind without any of the same irony, sarcasm and neuroses, if someone tells me how he feels.

Perhaps performance brings me closer to some of that freedom. Perhaps performing naked brought me further from the fear inherent in my shyness.

On a much lighter and tangentially related note, I flashed on a vision of myself where I was walking in California sunshine, smiling easily and living as a relaxing, easy going version of myself making choices and essentially living one of my fantasies.

“California dreaming on such a winter’s day…”