Four things By Catherine on 1/30/2008 07:48:00 AM
I don't want to make a habit of posting this stuff, but I was amused by this little survey and figured posting it here was less invasive than flooding everyone's inbox with such inane little factoids on myself. If you feel like responding, permalink and I'll check Technorati for linkbacks.Four (4) things about me that you may or may not have known.
1. I really like sushi
2. I really hate onions (unless they're cooked until they don't resemble onions anymore)
3. I am taking the English MTEL exam next month
4. I have a slight case of OCD... and by slight I mean not slight. Large.
Four (4) jobs I have had in my life
1. Camp counselor
2. Waitress/hostess
3. Cashier at BCF (was Decelle then)
4. Teacher
Four (4) movies I've watched more than once:
1. The Big Lebowski
2. Mary Poppins
3. Independence Day
4. Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Four (4) places where I have lived
1. Northborough, MA
2. Bridgewater, MA
3. Amherst, MA
4. Shrewsbury, MA
Four (4) TV Shows that I watch:
1. Law and Order
2. Forensic Files
3. Jeopardy!
4. Project Runway
Four (4) places I have been
1 . Grenoble, France
2. Ann Arbor, MI
3. Washington, DC
4. Richmond, VA
Four (4) people who email me regularly
1. my mom
2. Amanda
3. Jen
4. Gram
Four (4) of my favorite foods:
1. New England clam chowder
2. Sushi
3. Spaghetti and meatballs
4. Tiramisu
Four (4) places I would rather be right now:
1. Cape Cod
2. Paris
3. Home (am at work-- assembly = no kids)
4. Myrtle Beach
Four (4) people I think will respond:
1.
2.
3.
4. No one.
Four (4) things I am looking forward to this year.
1. Going to France
2. Speaking French (finally)
3. Sunshine and spring
4. Not working a full-time job this summer so I can focus on writing more.
Labels: favorites, s, summer, vacation, writing
60 years mirrored by the moon By Catherine on 1/21/2008 09:00:00 PM
Something touching emanates from the older woman, slumped and sleeping across the table. Involuntary quakes ripple through her, unnoticed--she is quite asleep. Her pen rolls to the floor.We sit here, sixty years apart, and are the same. We work: I'm designing history papers for my students and she's writing copy for a newsletter for others whose bodied shake and shatter without permission.
We've both worked in consensus-based collectives. Her daughter's life there stands her apart from her peers, whose store-bought wheat bread pales next to her homemade loaf. My father quakes like she does. She writes and produces and publishes, while I'm too much of a bleeding heart to send anything out in seriousness.
My heart shakes like her hands; if I had half her courage I'd go on and stand next to the muses, still as a statue until they blessed me with a light. I'd have confidence to move forth and stop pretending to be tethered by some invisible blue thread.
Watching her pen roll slowly away, I'm tempted to wake her, ask her if she's like some help down the steep back stairs to her room. This woman is strong, I feel sure she'd balk at a young thing like me, offering to brew her a cup of tea. I now she'd insist on doing it for me instead, and I'd have to watch her hands betray her with an earthquake of muscle and glass.
Labels: working through the block, writing
The moon was thin last night By Catherine on 1/12/2008 08:50:00 AM
I've been feeling pretty yucky lately.It's not really important why, but the last 6 weeks or so of posts does a pretty good job explaining. It was buildup mostly, something small and something small and something small can often make you feel defeated before you even wake up in the morning. We've been really busy since I got better, but for the first time Christmas and the New Year brought change and death and a general feeling of mortality that is hard to grasp as a younger person. You feel like your whole life is ahead of you, impatient for everything and desperately wanting to grow up and then... When you're 23 you still feel like that in a lot of ways and have the freedom and means to act it out. You never expect people your own age to go, and yet here we are.
That's a long explanation for why I've lately been feeling, for lack of a better word, condemned. Condemned to die, and it could be sudden and tragic. It could be Adam, my mother, the cat, it doesn't matter. I can successfully put it out of mind up until a point, but lately I've been consumed by it. I've been thinking about my grandfather constantly, because he really epitomized to me as a small girl what a man was: he was strong but gentle, fair, devoted entirely to his wife and family, and very very smart. He left law school to raise his family and took care of them well. He learned the art of bonsai and kept meticulous care, lecturing around colleges to other scholars of the art. He read constantly, loved PBS, kept a "Victory Garden" with me in his backyard. He was the best man I could think of. If I could make anyone proud, it would be him.
So yesterday a friend and I were talking about writing, and she asked if I was planning on trying to get published in literary magazines or newspapers, etc. I've got a lot of balls in the air, but I obviously haven't been feeling very confident and have just sort of pretended that I don't have time. I told her no, and was honest about why. Two hours later I received an email from the editor-in-chief of Quill and Parchment, who is a member over at pathetic.org where I keep my poems. (It's good because anything on the site is copyrighted to the author due to the terms of service, so there's no better place to keep them as far as I'm concerned. Paper burns.) Anyway, this editor wants to publish not one, but TWO of my poems, one in May and one in July.
I was shocked, because I didn't solicit the invitation, she just read them at pathetic and liked them and asked. I said yes of course, there's no reason to say no, but I thought it was funny and ironic that I'd just been doubting myself aloud earlier that day. It's not The New Yorker, but for all the work I did to get it, it might as well be. (I really do heart irony.) Adam decided we had to celebrate, and I finally started to cheer up. It was pretty great. We decided to try an Indian restaurant in Worcester with fantastic reviews, but when we got there it was closed for renovations. We were momentarily slowed, but Adam suggested O'Connor's, which is the opposite of Indian. The place is decorated to the hilt with Celtic knots, Gaelic sayings, and every inch of wall-space is taken up by framed advertisements, maps, beer mirrors, and anything related to anything Irish. We hadn't gone in years so I agreed and called ahead to get a spot on the list. On the drive there, I decided that yes, my granddad would be proud of me.
It was packed when we got there, and a waiter accidentally knocked over a stack of menus, which I caught, to the great amusement of the owner. He found us a big table in a quiet part of the restaurant even though there were two-top tables scattered near the bar. When he sat us down, I looked over Adam's left shoulder. On the wall was a framed coat of arms, bearing the name O'Shea. That was my grandfather's last name.
I don't believe in signs.
But that is an awfully strange... Coincidence.
Labels: memories, poetry, publishing, signs, weird coincidences, writing
Yup, I was right. By Catherine on 1/10/2008 12:40:00 PM
I fail at New Year's resolutions. BUT the good news is that Virginia and I are really starting, really really, tomorrow. I know Friday seems like a weird time to start gymming, but this was a particularly busy week at work and a particularly sad week personally, so what better time to start than when you already feel like crap? I used to feel great after working out, very refreshed and surprisingly energized, and looking really good didn't hurt either. I'm ready, it just took awhile.That being said, we went to Katie's wake on Tuesday. It took two hours to make it through the line, and the whole thing was too heartbreaking to put into words. Add in the fact that the family was Catholic (translate: open casket) and I was sufficiently freaking out.
I was never exposed to enough Catholicism to understand it well, or to get anything spiritual out of it-- no, what I got out of being Catholic was a lot of guilt feelings and a healthy dose of repressed sexuality. Oh, right, and a TERROR of death and dead bodies. My granddad died when I was 6, and I think I knew enough about the mystery of death not to question what it meant. But what remains with me, to this day, the moment I relive at every wake and funeral and Catholic church service, is when I saw my precious Bup, the nicest and gentlest man I knew, who doted on me like I was Queen of the Nile, laying in his casket, cold. Cold, cold. I touched him, not expecting him to feel like that-- it was shocking, and I couldn't even cry. The whole time, I just sat there, with my eyes on fire... But I couldn't cry.
The big man who grew up next door to him in Southie, the priest, gave the services and then gave me a rose. I brought it home and put it next to the one my Bup gave me, encased in clear fiberglass and with a short string of pearls wrapped about the stem. I still have that rose sitting on the bookshelf in my living room. I still think about my Bup all the time. I wonder, is he proud of me? Would he like who I've chosen to be my mate? Would he love me like he did when I was 6 or would he be disappointed that I didn't go to law school like he wanted and that I don't have more discipline in my daily life? I'd give just about anything for one more day with him, as long as it didn't end with an open casket.
Labels: bad mood, death, unfunny
Obligatory post on New Year's Resolutions By Catherine on 1/07/2008 08:33:00 AM
New Year's is my favorite holiday-- a symbolic fresh start on life, when pretty much everyone bands together and tries to improve life with small (or large) changes and at least a little motivation to follow through on it. Historically, I fail at New Years resolutions. The only exception was senior year of college, during which I was inhumanly productive. Also very thin and stylish and feeling fabulous, but the Real World has beaten that out of me. I reached my goal of wearing a size 4 pants, kept my resolution to gym at least 3x per week, ate so little crap that my cholesterol was like a newborn baby's, and maintained a 3.8 GPA (for the year, not my whole college career. I had a life, jeez.)Last year, my goals were simpler-- one year out of college and my resolution was to lose the pants size I gained in being a couch potato workaholic half-time grad student, wake up earlier for work, do my laundry consistently and save money for a computer. Well, none of that happened, and though I do have a new computer it's more because of a good deal than because I saved up enough for it.
This year, I didn't even think about resolutions until this weekend. I've been ill-ish and tired, as I'm not 100% healed from tonsil surgery and we honestly haven't had a blessed minute since I started functioning again. The Real World makes one cram as much as possible into weekends, which is both cool because you feel popular and in-demand, and annoying because JUST ONCE you'd like to sleep past 8 on Saturday. So here's my obligatory list of resolutions for the year 2008, which I will now start implementing one week late:
1. Wake up earlier for work.
2. Eat breakfast.
3. Go to the gym or do a video 3 times per week. This will be slightly easier since I joined a weight-loss group at work.
4. Do 200 sit-ups per day. I used to have awesome abs.
5. Write for at least half an hour a day. Ideally the new laptop makes this easy. :)
6. Blog 2x per week.
That's really it-- I just want to make my life more streamlined and organized so that I don't constantly feel like I have no time to do anything. Maybe I should stop complaining about it and actually do it... I'm so good at procrastinating. :)
Labels: clutter, frustrations, List, working through the block, writing
I really hope Barack Obama doesn't get assassinated: An assessment of the Iowa Caucus, with citations and everything. By Catherine on 1/03/2008 11:26:00 PM
And I say that because after listening to his victory speech after the Iowa Caucuses tonight, I've heard 2 newscasters say the exact thing I thought as he closed: he feels the same way Robert Kennedy did-- and he makes us feel that way as well. The amount of hope and promise his campaign embodies is reminiscent of RFK in so many ways, and we know how that turned out. My generation puts its hopes into Obama the way my mother's did for Bobby Kennedy: we want change, we want our rights to remain our rights, we want to socialize healthcare (don't deny it, it is what it is, and "socialize" is not equal to Godless Red Communists. Eyeroll.)We were all at Nobscot's tonight, obviously discussing politics in light of today's voting, and I was the only one enthusiastic for him. At that point we had the projected results, thanks to Dawn's neat BlackBerry (which is for her work as Big Important Full-Time Writer, go you!) and while my heart leaped, others groaned in discontent. I know from the context of the conversation that it certainly wasn't because anyone was very conservative, so I couldn't understand how they could be so unstirred by his obvious faith in and love for the fundamental principles of this country.
This just reaffirms everything I was trying to say then, because my preference for Obama is indicative of a generational gap as well as another War Generation. The war in Iraq is the defining, overarching characteristic associated with the 18-23s and 24-30s. I think people older than that have an easier time overlooking what it's going to do to our economy, because the majority at that point had already secured education and housing and benefited in full from the Clinton Golden Years. We have to make it on a crap economy with massive debt from college in a society of a shrinking middle class. We need help, we've got a big mess to clean up. I wasn't really excited about anyone until tonight, mostly because I'm soooo alternative *snark* and couldn't really find something solid to get behind. But hearing that speech, seeing all those people and feeling their excitement for a clean slate, for a new chance to make the right choices and with hope that we can fix some mistakes along the way. I can get behind feeling like there's someone who finally wants to be part of a government "of the people, by the people, for the people*", just like it's supposed to be.
This just in-- according to MSNBC, 57% of voters under 30 in the Iowa Caucuses voted for Obama. I'm not a political genius, or anything, but my guess is there's a reason for that. Also according to MSNBC, the reason Mittens lost to Mike Huckabee is because "they just couldn't account for the large number of Evangelical voters." I find this amusing; it's probably in light of his panties.
But more importantly, one of the fringe candidates pulled way ahead of Giuliani-- Ron Paul is polling at 10%. That's pretty gold standard, if you ask me.
*Abraham Lincoln: Gettysburg Address, 1863.