the secret no one knows

When I was in high school, I came to a realization rather quickly: boys will say almost anything to get you to touch their penis.  Now, I know that many girls have realized this without experiencing any kind of "a-ha!" moment, just years of learning the hard way, but thankfully I was spared most of the humiliation and heartbreak that seems to go along quite comfortably with being an adolescent girl.  Instead, I loved three boys who never once tried to get in my pants, only wanted to reach out for my hand and come to me when the night was dark and stormy.  Yeah, you know Hanson.  Remember?  The three brothers with the long, blond hair?  They sang that song "MMMBop" that was on the radio every three minutes in the summer of 1997 and set off a frenzy of girls (including me) to scream and cry whenever they came on television, on stage, or any local mall that was stupid enough to think they could control a horde of hormonal, young ladies not to throw themselves on top of a few cute boys who were famous AND their own age.  I continued to love them as I got older, and instead of moving on to some other teenage obsession like popping pills or getting pregnant, I fantasized about these guys out there who said things like "All the minutes in the world could never take your place," and "You were my ten thousand roses."  I mean, who says that in real life!?  Nobody I knew!  But, Hanson did, and so I loved them and pretended that they were my boyfriends who said pretty things to me and didn't try to grab my boobs while they were doing it.

I didn't want to know anything about their actual personal lives.  Taylor Hanson got married, and I remember my best friend calling me to tell me; she told me to sit down, she had some bad news.  I saw the wedding picture that appeared in People magazine and I was irrationally jealous, but also really happy that she was a brunette because, you know,  at least I was on the right track.  Then, Taylor Hanson had a baby and all I could think was, "WHOA. WAIT.  They're having sex!?"  Babies and genital herpes are good signs that somebody is having sexual intercourse, and I was not prepared for this kind of hard evidence.  It wasn't this delusional (okay, all of this is pretty delusional, admittedly) idea that, "Well, gosh-darn-it, Taylor Hanson isn't having sex with me!" it was the fact that he was having sexual relations at all.  Let me be clear, I was always picturing them as Ken dolls, just a smooth mound where the normal parts would be. This was pretty good proof that Taylor Hanson had testicles; and if Taylor Hanson had testicles, did that mean that Isaac and Zac did, too!?  Were they going to use theirs one day!?

And, yeah, they totally did.  They got married and had babies and they probably said things like, "Oh, come on, baby, just give me five minutes," or did things like whipping out their manhood, looking at their wives, and saying "Wanna do it?"  They were probably the gross, inappropriate men that all men were.  They probably told fart jokes and left their wet towels on the floor to get all smelly and mildewy.  I heard them on Howard Stern talking about Zac's honeymoon, and as Howard Stern is want to do, the conversation focused on the "doin' it" part of the vacation, and although they only played along without really saying anything explicit, it was enough to make me wildly uncomfortable and I was forced to stop listening.  I just wanted them to make records, go on tours, and do interviews that only focused on the first two things.  There should be no time for sex, boys -- those are the rules.

I get it, I get it.  Just because they're Hanson doesn't mean they're not people.  They do what all people do, and they do those things sometimes imperfectly.  I just like the fantasy.  I like that when I put on a Hanson song, I can pretend that they are perfect male specimens who sing you songs and rub your feet and make you coffee and never argue with you and always put the toilet seat down.  I don't need to obsess about their wives and children like a lot of other ladies I meet at Hanson shows seem to do.  We all came to know these guys when they were children and so were we; they are imprinted on our hearts not just because they are talented musicians and we like their tunes, but because they represent that moment in our childhood when things were easy and carefree and fun.  I grew up -- I have a child of my own and a soon-to-be-husband who comes pretty darn close to  being the ultimate "nice guy" that I was dreaming about Isaac Hanson being but had no actual clue if he was really like that, at all.  Hanson did their job -- they kept me out of trouble, kept me hopeful, and kept me dancing and singing all along the way.  I know that I don't know  them, really, but in a way, I feel like I do; whether they know it or not, they grew up with me, they were there for all the good times and the bad,  and their love for making music that made me happy translated into their love to just simply make me happy.  I know I'm never going to marry a Hanson brother and I'm never going to have Hanson babies; instead, they're three good buddies who don't know I exist, which I'm absolutely okay with because I don't really want to know what they're actually like in real life.

Well, no, one thing.  If I was locked in a room with any one Hanson, all alone with nobody to see, nobody to hear, nobody to walk in and disturb us, I would sit him down, get right up in his face, and very softly whisper, "Tell me everything you know about how to get your kid to sleep in his own bed through the whole night."

In an MMMBop, a lot can change.

may 18th

I have this tragic love story that ends in the way most tragedies do -- with death.  But, instead of a crazy suicide pact or homicidal rage, we mutually murdered our own love and friendship, chopped them up into itty bitty pieces and then scattered them all over the town  That was three years ago, but I can still hear the beating heart under the floorboards, in the walls, up in the attic; how much longer until that incessant pounding turns me into a crazed lunatic?  Its not so much that I can hear it still, I can learn to deal with the monotonous rhythm, its that nobody else seems to notice the sound at all.  There is one person in this whole world --in the whole universe -- who should be able to hear it, too because he was my partner in the crime, my right hand man in my murderous plot, the strong arm that squeezed the life out of all that we once held as sacred and then helped me bury the body.  He should hear it, too!  He should be banging on my door, begging me to turn it off, pleading with me to come up with another way to get rid of it all, to plan some better disposal method that will keep it buried and silent!  For all I know, he doesn't hear a peep, while it keeps bearing down on me, louder and louder and louder and louder until I'll tear my eardrums out of my ears to make it go away.  That beating heart only has me to torment, so it gives me everything its got, it spares nothing in its tortuous pumping because it believes that this is what I deserve most.  The one that plunged the knife deep into the chamber, over and over again, memories splashing all around like droplets of blood dotting the floor to be wiped away later to make it look as if nothing sinister had happened here, nothing some soap and water couldn't take care of -- that person deserves to hear it beating all day and all night all day and all night all day and all night.  You see, he only held the love down and kept it still; I did the actual killing.

Love treats me differently now.  It never lets me get too comfortable because it remembers what happened the last time and it will never be the weakling again. It reminds me that the people I have shared love with -- not familial love that is natural and easy to nurture, but the love that people work at to keep alive -- that love has never lasted for me.  Those people have found it easy to pack their love up and take it somewhere else, and with it went friendship and trust, like baby ducklings following their mother.  Love holds its intensity away from me now.  It doesn't allow me to feel it all, only a portion of it, and never enough to eliminate doubt and hurt and the sound of that past love, still beating, maybe even still gasping for breath, blood gurgling in the back of it's throat, knowing it will never, ever be saved, but it cannot seem to die peacefully, either.  Love lets the memories haunt me, lets me live them again and again in dreams that seem too real, that touch me too close to the wounds inflicted by the struggle, picking off the scab, showing me the infection I have no idea how to cure.

And all I want is for somebody else to hear it.  I want somebody else to see it.  I want somebody else to say, "Yes, I feel it with you, you are not the only one who faces the doubts, who dreams the dreams, who remembers the days when love and friendship were alive and well."  I want the beating to be less the pounding of a heart that broke and more the beating of a drum that marks each step toward forgiveness. To closure.

the project

I would like to introduce you to a new project I have started that benefits me greatly and may also be interesting for you to read.  I live in Frederick, Maryland, and for those of you who have never been, I’ll try to sum up the place as simply as possible.  Frederick is a little bit country because of the surrounding mountains and farmland; it’s not uncommon to be stopped on a major roadway because of a tractor.  However, Frederick is also a little bit rock and roll, thanks to a thriving downtown that I have dubbed “Little Brooklyn.”  There are more hipsters per square mile than probably anywhere else in the world, which helps to contribute to downtown Frederick’s expansive art and music scene that is most impressive because downtown is only 22 square miles of shops, restaurants, bars, and historic homes.  If you’re thinking you have heard of us before, it might be because Top Chef alum Bryan Voltaggio owns three restaurants in Frederick, the longest-running spot being Volt, located on Market Street, downtown’s main strip.  His appearance on the show brought some attention our way, and it definitely made an impression on the food downtown.  This is where my project begins; I love downtown Frederick, but I have hardly experienced it. I love good food, but I never go out to find the best.  So, I have embarked on a mission to go to every single restaurant in downtown Frederick and to tell you all about it right here.  I am not a food critic and I know absolutely nothing about the culinary arts.  I’m not attempting to review anything, and there are no stars, thumbs, points, ratings, etc.  The point is to have an experience and then to share it.  And, if in the end, it makes you want to come downtown and experience an adventure, well, you can totally crash on my couch.

To begin, Tyler and I decided that we were going to go to the restaurants in alphabetical order because, if we didn’t, we’d just end up going to the same four places that we know and love first before we tried anything else.  So, first on the list was Acacia.  Luckily, both of us had never been there, although I had heard a million things about how great it is.  It is the place where our friends got engaged, so in my mind, Acacia was this magically romantic venue where Tyler would turn into Isaac Hanson and I would live out all my fantasies.  Although that didn’t happen, it was the spot where Tyler and I had an opportunity to recalibrate and find each other again without having to dodge flying Matchbox cars and argue over whose turn it is to change the poopy diaper.  I guess that would happen anywhere our toddler wasn’t, but in this case, it happened at Acacia.  The lighting was dim enough for me to feel attractive (those bright lights can do a number on your self-esteem,) but still brilliant enough that I could see where the silverware was in front of me.  The room we were in looked like somebody’s finished basement, cozy and well-decorated with wood cabinets and conservative flower arrangements.  When you’re accustomed to going to places like TGI Friday’s with ten thousand souvenirs plastered on the walls all around you, a room with a pretty candle and not much else is like a breath of fresh air.  The tables were a little close together, but it seemed to me as if we were all friends dining there, hanging out, and we were all going to play a riveting game of Scattergories in just a few minutes.  It felt like a place college English professors go to have dinner with their wives and the friendly couple one of them works with – is there a place like that?  I don’t know for sure, but if there is an opening for such a place to exist, Acacia should take the title.

We ordered from the specials because it made the meal more momentous – these are the “special” things to eat tonight! From the appetizer, to the soup, to the main course, to the dessert, it was a meal that would end all meals.  I will never enjoy food from a freezer ever again (and I had the ultimate affection for frozen pizza before this date.) I ordered the butternut squash soup and it was as if I was eating a bowl of candy.  Tyler ordered the tomato soup and almost started clapping, it was the best soup he had ever had (after explaining to me that he didn’t like soup. That’ll teach him to ever question soup again.)  Dessert was the greatest of all (as it usually is) – bread pudding with maple syrup and bacon.  Not bacon that is salty and greasy and takes your taste buds hostage, making it impossible to taste anything else; no, this was subtle and sophisticated.  I have never been so satisfied after a meal, although I was a little disappointed we didn’t actually get to play Scattergories after dinner.  Apparently, our neighboring diners were not interested in bonding.  

Despite that, Tyler and I connected in that room, over that meal.  It’s easy to find the beauty in each other when all your senses are being entertained.  We made plans, we made jokes, we made googly eyes across the candle Tyler burned his hand on – just as any date night should be.  A couple glasses of wine, a couple bottles of locally brewed beer, four courses of deliciousness, and one crisp, winter night totaled a change of thinking about what happiness is and how we were going to find it, grab it, and bask in it.  We decided over smooth and creamy panna cotta that we were going to be better to each other, be better to our bodies and be better to our hearts.  Acacia turned out to be the romantic paradise I was looking for in my little village of downtown Frederick, and a great start to a new journey of appreciating everything I haven’t met yet, just around the corner.

opening arguments

I haven't posted anything in a long time because I often run into this problem where I cannot, for the life of me, think of anything to say that hasn't already been said.  It will start to feel to me as if all the greatest ideas and the best writers and the most original thinkers have either come and gone, or are people who are much more obviously better than me, like they have chips inside their palms that designate them as "Creative" or "Worth It."  Actually, the only reason I'm writing anything right now is because I took this part-time job with the intention of blogging and using my time more wisely in my quest to live an actualized life, and how embarrassing if I just sit on the couch and watch The People's Court and How I Met Your Mother all day instead.  Who could possibly be interested in anything I have to say, anyway?  I haven't gained an exceptional insight on parenting or life just from being a mother, I haven't tried to cook through Julia Child's cookbook, I'm not spending a year living like Jesus or like Oprah (are these basically the same thing?) so, really, what in the heck could I write that would make any difference to anybody?  My generation and the generations following mine are so self-absorbed, it's sickening to me that I could even be participating in the act of telling strangers about my day and then expecting them to read it, like it, comment on it, and share it.  We have Facebook to tell everybody that we're tired, we have Twitter to tell everybody that we're hungry, we have Instagram to show everybody the food we're eating because we are hungry (with the 1977 filter because then it's not just a picture of a taco, it's art,) we have Pinterest to show everybody that, yes, we like curly hair for our wedding and a really big bookshelf in our house and this easy, fun craft project that I'll never have the time to do because I can't stop pinning everything I see!  We are all on information overload, how can my blog ever make an impact on a world that already knows way too much about me??  In college, I read "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot and it became my favorite piece of literature -- so much so that I named my son Eliot.  Anyway, the reason that I loved it was because I believed Eliot was saying that all of this art and literature and music and culture meant nothing.  Like they are all shells on the beach; each one could be beautiful or ugly or special or typical, but even though there were so many of them covering the sand, making the beach look populated and full, the shells themselves do not constitute a beach.  They are a piece of, an accessory to; many of them contribute to the picture, but many more are washed away and are never seen and, so what?  What does any of that mean to the beach?  The beach will be the beach no matter what -- if 10,000 shells are littering the shore or if only 10 are scattered in the sand.  How nice it is to find a great one, and yet, finding a magnificent shell does not extinguish the truth that life is lived and then it is not.  At any rate, this was not a popular opinion with anybody in my class, and even my professor toyed with the idea and then ultimately dismissed it, and I wasn't surprised -- of course, paying $30,000 a semester to discuss literature and poetry and then discover that it's meaningless to discuss it is a real kick in the nuts.  Nonetheless, it didn't change my theory that sometimes there is no metaphor, no allegory, no deeper meaning.  Sometimes words are just words and sometimes they are worth reading and sometimes they are not.

My point (and there wasn't a point to this before I started writing, it just came to me a minute ago) is that I'm just going to write (type?) down words.  I'm just going to put them here and then tell you that I put them there.  I'm no T.S. Eliot, I know this, and I'm no Virginia Woolf, but I'd like to be.  Maybe I'll find a purpose for this (FASHION!?...no...CELEBRITIES!?...no,) and maybe I won't, but fuck it, I'm going to ride this wave.

home is where the shore is

I live in Maryland and I have since I was eight years old, but people always tell me that it seems like I'm not from around here.  I proudly say, "I'm from New Jersey," and I get a laugh and a nod, like, "Duh, of course she is."  I can't tell if my DNA is coded for "Jersey" or if I just pick it up like a parasite when I'm around my family, all of them from the Garden State, but no matter -- I am a Jersey Girl disguised as a Marylander and my true nature drips out like a leaky faucet, I can't help it.  More specifically, I'm a Jersey girl from the shore, and that little girl who spent her summers at Point Pleasant Beach, NJ and riding the rides on the boardwalk at Seaside Heights is weeping at the destruction that Mother Nature brought to her favorite childhood places.  It's difficult to explain to the people around me -- my fiance was born and raised in Frederick, MD and none of my friends are from that region of the country -- but the shore takes up such a huge and vital part of my heart and is the background to most of my memories from some of the happiest moments of my life that seeing it in shambles the way that it is makes me feel weak.  It's not like I don't understand the concept of rebuilding after a disaster; I get that the Jersey Shore will still be the Jersey Shore.  But, it won't be my Jersey Shore.  The buildings will be different, the beach won't look the same, and as things get replaced and reinforced so that the next hurricane won't be as devastating to the infrastructure, it will be less and less the place I remember.  When I shared Point Pleasant Beach with Tyler and our one year old son, Eliot, this summer, I had never been more proud.  My son was able to ride the same rides that I did, he was able to play on the same beach and see the ocean for the first time in the exact same place as I'm sure I first did.  I shared so many stories, some so trivial and irrelevant that they probably weren't even worth telling, but I wanted them to get the point that this place was MY place.  I wanted to get across that although my house was miles away in the state of Maryland, where it had been for, honestly, most of my life, the shore was my bona fide home.  Even after many years of not going back there, years of turmoil in my family and within myself, being in that place still felt natural.  It felt like I had always been there because, frankly, my mind never stopped thinking about it and my heart never left.  The Jersey Shore is where my parents still loved each other; where my cousins and my sisters were my best friends; where I rode my first rollercoaster; where I was the most excited about growing up, being one of the cool college girls with boyfriends and bikinis and coolers of adult beverages; where I wrote a nauseating amount of Hanson fan fiction; where my cousins and I pretended to to be the Power Rangers and fought off the ocean as one of Rita Repulsa's evil monsters; where I created the jingle "No pail gets you as pale as a pail, unless you try petroleum jelly," because we were bored and silly; where I walked up and down the boardwalk like I owned the place; where renting a house down the shore was tradition; where Hoffman's donuts and Hoffman's ice cream was the beginning and end to the most perfect day; where Bruce Springsteen was like a distant uncle, telling us stories about the working-class and a young man's hopes and dreams about a better life, but we just giggled at his butt on the CD cover.  Tattooed on my right arm is an image of a boardwalk with a Ferris wheel and a sunset;  it could be any place with some sand and some ocean and some wood planks and some lights.  But, around it it reads, "Maybe everything that dies someday comes back," and that can only be one place.

I love NJ.

media bias

Because I enjoy being judgmental and righteous, I would like to establish some basic Facebook rules that I think all your FB friends will appreciate. I'm not saying I haven't done these things before, but I am saying that, currently, I am not doing them, which justifies everything. (Duh.)  If you believe I am talking about you, I probably am.

1. Avoid all shameless cries for attention.  If you have to say, "No, this isn't about you," more than once, then you have created a status update that is intentionally vague with the purpose of having people ask you what is wrong.  If you are in middle school, you are exempt from this because you obviously can't help yourself.
2. Check your spelling and grammar.  It doesn't need to be perfect, and by all means, a conversational tone is to be expected.  But, when you can't spell more than half of your sentence, you need to look that shit up.  The Internet has tools for you.
3. There is no need to tell everybody you are tired in the morning and going to sleep at night, unless you are going to elaborate.  Example: Do not say, "I'm tired."  Instead, try, "I'm tired because there are ghosts trying to have sex with me in my dreams."  That is something worth reading, thank you.
4.  Do not have a fight on Facebook.  You will always, always, always look like a total douche.  
5. I feel like this one goes without saying, but I think I need to say it -- stay away from taking bathroom mirror pictures.  We'll make exceptions sometimes, say if you just got a new haircut or recently had gastric bypass surgery, but for the most part your flagrant love for yourself is disturbing and gross.  Special note:  If you're half naked in your bathroom shot, you should probably not use social media at all.  We all know what happened to Tila Tequila, don't we?
6. Speaking of pictures, seventeen consecutive photos of a close-up of your face that basically look exactly the same in an album called "Me:)" is a waste of time for my eyes. 
7. If you're 30 or under and female (or a very progressive male,) keep your maiden name with your married name so that people know who the hell you are.  Unless you invited all your Facebook friends to the wedding, then, of course, do whatever you want, you bought those jerks dinner.
8. Oh, and while we're on relationships, if you're somebody who breaks up and makes up with the same person a lot, you don't have to keep changing your relationship status.  Just say "It's Complicated" and leave it alone. That's why Mark Zuckerberg made that an option -- for you.
9.   Yeah, that's not even true.
10. Every now and then take a look at your profile and reevaluate if this is the persona that you would like to share with the world.  If it is, then maybe I should just back away slowly and pretend I never knew you.  Oops. 

lady bits exposed

Women love to be exploited. Actually, more than that, women love to denounce exploitation while they are vigorously, undeniably, being abused. When a politician talks about "womens' rights" or the "female issues" they are mainly referring to a woman's sex organs -- pregnancy, rape, abortion. These are not female issues. All these problems have something to do with -- even caused -- by men. These are simply human affairs, and yet the burden is almost always stacked on the shoulders of the female, while men concern themselves with greater matters like economic policy and international nuclear programs. The idea is to keep the lady folk spinning with talk of birth control and prenatal healthcare while the boys talk real business. Every now and then, there will be a political ad of a woman in her living room talking about how scared she is that her rights are being denied and the female population will nod in agreement and believe that their politician is on their side and defending their freedom. But, no. They are not defending their freedom. They are being used. Women are a campaign topic, but they are not worthy of presidential policy. As long as men believe that pregnancy, rape, and abortion are simply "womens' issues," and as long as men are the ones in positions of power, women will be exploited for their votes and for their vaginas. When educated, competent men continue to imply that rape is a consequence of being a woman or that abortion is only for sluts with no morals, and the country gasps and shakes its head for a day and then allows these people to stay in positions as decision-makers and representatives of our wants and needs -- that is the moment that the female agenda is completely exposed. We make for good controversy and a great headline on the morning talk shows, but ultimately, we are ignored and worse -- we believe we deserve it.