You’ve Got A Family in Pennsylvania

I am back in Pennsylvania to visit my family for a few days. This return trip has made clear how insignificant I am to the functioning of the family unit and how completely independent from my past that my new life has become.

I have also realized that my life is utterly self-indulgent. It could also be called freedom, young adulthood, exploration but I think that self-indulgent is the best possible word. Nobody depends on me, I am no longer part of a family on a day to day basis, and all of my decisions, whims, and lifestyle are completely up to me.

And this is great. After you reach a certain age and a certain level of education, you have to leave the nest – and the fact that I have not been forced to build a new nest in which I am ruling the roost is fantastic. I get to fly free.

But it is always strange to return home to a home that is no longer really yours, though it was at one time and to visit with your family instead of just being part of the family. And it is even stranger when the visit is for only a few days because it is hard to really get a feel for anything.

So far, it seems like everyone is doing well. My 13 year old brother is now 5′10. Last time, I saw him at Christmas, I couldn’t believe that he was taller than me by an inch. Now, four months and four inches later, he has a completely different body. It’s hard to believe that the little guy whose diapers I used to change now wears size 13 shoes (and upon learning this detail, my sister and I exchanged looks to which he replied, “You know what they say? It’s true.” and that statement was filed permanently in the “Things I didn’t want to know about my little brother” –”especially at the dinner table”) and that he now has a cheering section of Jr. High girls – a posse of braces and freckles – at his baseball games. As surreal as seeing a brother go through puberty is, I am happy to see that he turned out to be a nice boy – something that, you know, I wasn’t always sure would happen.

My sister is dating a guy who looks like dead Anna Nicole Smith’s dead son Daniel. And I miss my dead cat, Snazzy.

But the good news is that my Nan is doing alright. She is the reason I came home. I spent today with her and it was nice to see her. Just to give you an idea of how important she is to me, I actually cleaned her house – scrubbed the bathroom, mopped the floor, dusted, everything! You all know how much I love myself and I barely clean my own apartment, so this is the real deal.

And the nice thing about coming home to the familiar having experienced distance is that you can see old things in a new way. As I was cleaning her house, I realized that she really loves me too. I, in some form or another, am all through her house. All of the tacky, cheap Christmas gifts throughout the years – really terrible forms of ceramic, ring boxes and 6 inch vases and soap dishes, are throughout her house. I thought to myself that you’ve got to love the child’s mindset as they buy gifts that they think old people would like. That is, until I got to the gift that I gave her this year at Christmas – a windup musical snowman- and I realized that it didn’t get better with age for me. There are so many great, kitchsy weird things that I contributed to this woman’s life – the eyeless, lumpy duck that I sewed for her during Home Ec and the handwritten list of 100 Reasons Why Nan Is Great that I wrote in 10th grade which she framed and hung above her bed.

And even though, I gave her a lot of junk over the years, she kept it all because that is what grandmothers do. And it is for her that I will drive 1000 miles roundtrip to spend 3 days so that I can eat dinner with her at McDonald’s, dust all of the crappy trinkets that I gave her, and make small talk.

Biscotti and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day/Week/Life

If I have any luck at all, it’s bad luck.

Self pity is terribly easy, but anger rarely comes to me. I never lose my temper or yell or punch a wall in a fit of boiling rage. When wronged, I whimper like the wounded pup instead of biting like the pit bull. But lately I’ve been thinking that maybe every once and awhile, it is ok to be angry with the world.

After all, guys are dicks, the best tasting food gives you cellulite, the bank account always ends up in single digits, good intentions are unrewarded, long hair gets split ends, loved ones get sick, people judge, fears motivate, bad deeds go unpunished and the good is overlooked.

For the past few weeks, I have been downtrodden, but today was one of those rotten days that you just know the gods conspired to say, “Fuck You.” In fact, days like today convince me that God is a woman – and she is one catty biatch.

So, it started out as a Low Self-Esteem Day. The kind of day where you want to wear a bag over your head, crawl in a hole, order the exercise equipment that Chuck Norris sells in infomercials, overall fugly kind of day.

Then I realized that guys are dicks. Especially guys who start out as dicks and then you pretend they aren’t dicks because you start looking “deep down” to find the non-dick part but then realize, in the end, that they are, in fact, actually the dick you thought they were at first glance.

And all of this occurred before I even got to the Statistics portion of the program.

From 2:30-3:50, I was in Statistics class. From 4:00-8:00, I was in Stats Lab. Then, I went to the Add Hell (AddHealth) computer and worked from 8:00-9:52 at which time I decided I should leave to catch the 10:11 bus. After nearly 7.5 hours of Statistics, I realized that I had not eaten the turkey sandwich that I had brought in my humble brown bag for lunch. I grabbed it out of the refrigerator and started walking to the bus stop. I walked approximately 100 feet when the first raindrops fell. Then came the thunder and lightning.

Indiana may not be known for many natural marvels, but it certainly knows how to put on a thunderstorm. It is so flat here that when lightning strikes, it can be seen in all directions and it feels like it is taking over the world. And the thunder is pretty fierce, too.

The rain started coming down steadily, and though I have learned to always, always carry an umbrella, the lightning made me pause. I was feeling just unlucky enough.

However, by the time I made it to the bus stop, the rain was coming down so hard and fast that I had no other option. It was the type of rain that you cannot really tell if it coming down from the sky or up from the ground because it is hitting so hard. Whereas before the lightning bolts themselves had seemed at a distance, the lightning had now moved overhead. But the rain kept pounding down.

At this point, I had to enter into one of those risk assessment situations. Just like unprotected sex and raw meat, you hear the horror stories of bodily harm, but it is impossible to assess how likely it is to happen to you specifically, so all you can do is take the plunge and hope for the best. I opened my umbrella.

But it was too late for my soggy turkey sandwich in its soppy brown bag. And it was too late for fugly little Laura who crept onto the 10:11 bus, weary and beaten by statistics and rain and good for nothing guys and vengeful gods and good intentions met by bad luck.

And when I finally made it home, after this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, was I angry? Did I curse and shout and rage?

Nope, I just sat down and wrote this self-pitying blog. My autobiography will be entitled, “My Tragic Life” – and it will be one tragic chapter after another.

Poor me.

This Day Wasn’t Like the Rest

Bedridden with a sore throat and head cold, I have been watching the news coverage of the events at Virginia Tech all day.

Only two days ago, I was driving and “Youth of a Nation” came on the radio. It made me think about Columbine for the first time in quite a long time and I thought about how nothing like that has really happened recently. I tried to remember their names – Dylan Klebold and who was the other guy? Eric Harris. I thought about their parents, and how horrible it must be to live with the knowledge that their child created such terror and carnage.

I was in 9th grade when Columbine happened. Being in high school, knowing that both the gunmen and the victims were my age, created a surreal connection to that event. These were my people, my generation.

I wondered if perhaps it was a late 90’s phenomenon and now in a post-9/11 world, school shootings were no longer the tragic acts of senseless violence that we would be experiencing. Two days later, I got my grim answer.

The events that mark our generation are Columbine and 9/11. As tragic as 9/11 was, I think that these episodes of school violence define our generation more because they are acts by us against us. 9/11 was a culmination of years or decades of foreign policy led by the generations before us. But Columbine tapped into this alienated sentiment that is unique to our generation. We are not a generation that uses violence for political protest. We are a generation that self-inflicts violence because life is as empty and meaningless as a videogame.

And if Virginia Tech proves anything, it is that the mechanisms which lead to school violence are not limited to 15 year old boys. When I was in high school, it was a high school massacre. Now, I am in college, and now it is a college campus massacre. Will these massacres follow us through adulthood, too? Or is the allure of disrupting the sanctity of the educational system a legacy that we will pass down to the next generation?

"Big" Girls Don’t Cry

Ever since I decided to study issues surrounding the social construction of fat and bodies, I have been perusing a lot of books, articles and websites that argue both sides of the issue – either fat acceptance or pro-skinny. But it seems that in the past week there have been a flood of “news” stories where celebrities are talking about their so-called weight struggles.

Since when did being anything above a Size 0 require a public explanation? The fact that Jennifer Lopez, Mandy Moore, and Scarlett Johansson have to defend being a Size 6/8 is outrageous. J.Lo told a major national magazine that she is a size 6 because she has “always been a big girl.” Gwen Stefani says that she has been on a diet since 6th grade because she is “vain.”

These statements make me so angry because not only are they irrational, they are irresponsible. There is no reason that people who are in single digit dress sizes should ever feel like they are fat. It is incredibly disturbing that women who are thin and at a healthy weight think that there is something wrong with them simply because they are not skeletal and underweight. I remember being a teenager and hearing messages that a Size 6 was the ideal, but I am sure that if I was growing up now, merely 10 years later, I would think that a Size 2 or 0 is ideal.

A Size 0 is basically equivalent to the circumference of a football. Is that really attractive? Is that really what some women are striving to attain through dieting (starving themselves)? The symbolism of being a Size 0 is obvious: you do not exist, you weigh nothing. There is no fat left. You cannot criticize me. But at what cost? Isn’t the exhaustion of trying to be 20-30 pounds under a natural weight preventing them from living or contributing to something worthwhile? Or is conquering fat truly the sign of discipline, success and acheivement? It is this line of thinking that has caused Susan Estrich, an accomplished lawyer who was the first female president of the Harvard Law Review and now a national political pundit, to say that she took more pride in going from a Size 12 to a Size 6 than in any of her professional accomplishments. It’s not just celebrities – real women, smart women do this to themselves, too.

My favorite anecdote about how ridiculous this warped sense of female body weight is when Elizabeth Hurley told a magazine that “I’ve always thought Marilyn Monroe looked fabulous, but I’d kill myself if I was that fat…I went to see her clothes in the exhibition, and I wanted to take a tape measure and measure what her hips were. (laughter) She was very big.”

Marilyn Monroe would likely have been a present day Size 8 at her largest.

Cheers!

Prince William is now single.

In related news, I will be taking holiday in Britain this year.

Hindsight is 50/50

It seems as though I spend a lot of time waiting at the bus stop. Occasionally, when a bus comes by, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in its windows and it catches me by surprise. For an instant, I don’t recognize myself. I see the glow of lots of long blonde hair and a cheekbone dominated face in the smudgy, tinted panes and I think to myself, “Who is that person? I can’t believe that is me.” I don’t know who I was expecting to see, but certainly not someone so old, so blonde and so distant. It is striking. And it is odd to think that this is how I turned out. I remember being 8 years old and wondering what I would look like when I grew up.

I guess this is it.

I wonder what I would think of myself if I met me for the first time. Do I look approachable? Friendly? Intelligent? Unsubstantial? A dumb blonde? (I suppose recently, the answer would be very tired and haggard looking.)

I think that my 8 year old self would be impressed by what I did. My eight year old self led a very bookish and lonely existence. At that time, I had a bedroom in the basement of our house. I spent so many hours of my childhood in that underground solitude. I meticulously kept track of everything within those four walls of my bedroom. I had my own book classification system including a notebook with the author, title, book number and price (!!) of everything in my library. I believe that I ended with 682 books. I kept another notebook of approximately 500 imaginary people’s names and phone numbers that I used when I set up a play law firm. I remember celebrating my 10th birthday alone in that bedroom. At the stroke of midnight, I unwrapped a Little Debbie snack cake and stuck a candle in it. Girl Scout camp had made me afraid of matches so I pretended to blow it out.

The point of this is that my 8 year old self was kind of a loser and would be pretty astounded by the fact that I am fairly outgoing and socially adept now. But I think that if I could go back and talk to her, knowing everything that I know now, I would encourage her to not feel bad about being a loner. I wish I had never wasted any time thinking that there was something wrong with me because I was not athletic or naturally popular. If I had known that being a good and confident person has nothing to do with how many friends you have or being a social butterfly, perhaps I would not have cultivated this bubbly, blonde persona. Instead, I could have concentrated on being a more serious, substantial person. I have to say that I probably would have accepted myself and been a lot more content with my life a whole lot sooner if I had never made a deliberate effort to change the way I presented myself to others.

Hindsight is, of course, one of those interesting but fruitless thought exercises. Life usually unfolds in a way that the not having something tends to matter more to you than when you actually get it. If I hadn’t put in the effort, I probably would still wish that people thought I was confident and funny and fun and pretty. And having mostly attained that, I wish that people took me more seriously or that my mind would not be taken up by trivial vanities. I have perfected bubbly, I have gotten the so-called “hot” guys who normally date girls who are much prettier and much dumber than me, and I have very few inhibitions left.

But now, I wonder, what all of that cost me in terms of living a life of substance and meaning. I should probably be in the Peace Corps right now.

At age 8, I wondered what I would look like physically as a woman when I was in my 20’s. Now, at 22, I wonder what I will look like morally and substantively as a woman when I am in my 30’s.

Maybe it is time for me to stop looking at myself in buses and head back to the basement.

Et tu, Brutuna

I am not very skilled in a culinary sort of way, but every once and awhile, I do try to get my dinner somewhere beyond the freezer or Panera. If I have to turn on the oven for food, I call it high cuisine.

During the great Kroger shopping spree of Spring Break (of which I am still eating the food I bought), I picked up some tuna. I am always looking for “approachable” meats to diversify my eating. I am certainly not one to cook a roast or a ham, but if I can find something as easy to cook as a chicken breast but is not, in fact, a chicken breast, I am quite happy.

Tuna.

I like it, but I don’t love it. I like it enough that I will buy it, but once it is in my possession, I never know what to actually do with it. So, I bought a box of Tuna Helper in order to provide some structure to my tuna consumption.

This evening, I came home from a long, rigorous day of social science and thought to myself, “Self, let’s dust off that old box of Tuna Helper and rip open that pouch of tuna and let’s cook us a great, homemade meal out of a box. Take that, Lean Cuisine.”

It was a great plan. Until I read the back of the box. TWO freaking cups of milk! I ration my milk. I hate using milk in recipes. Milk is for drinking. Milk is for cereal. Milk is not an ingredient in my dinner. I simply cannot afford to live like that. Not on my budget.

Then, I see, a 1/4 cup of butter or margarine. I open my refrigerator. No butter. I check in my cupboard for margarine even though I have never bought margarine in my life. I don’t know what to do. I already dumped in the two FREAKING cups of milk over the powdery cheese and noodles, so I can’t turn back now. Aha! I do have shortening. And the shortening label tells me that I can substitute it for butter or margarine in my “favorite baking recipes.” Hey, if it works for cookies, it can work for tuna….at least in Biscotti’s kitchen.

As I am angrily flinging the shortening into the skillet, I notice a rustling in the garbage can.

My god! It’s Whiskers! And she is rummaging through our garbage can like she is some low class, hoochie, alley cat!

And then I realize that she is after the discarded pack of tuna. She eats most of her tuna flavored meals out of pouches, so she smartly thought that she had somehow been cheated out of what was hers. When she saw me looking at her amid the garbage, she hastily removed herself and went over to the stove where I was combining my tuna dinner.

And she sat there, gazing at me with a look of utter betrayal. I swear to God, she thought that I had eaten her dinner, somehow perverting her seafood flavored wet cat food into some demented stove top cuisine.

And it was apparent that she was completely disgusted by my actions. It was like I had murdered her sister.

I quickly fed her cat approved, Whiskas brand sanctioned tuna, and she forgave me.

But I will never forgive myself for eating that shortening infested, slimy cheese tuna meal from a box.

And for going back for seconds.

Stratospheric Stress

I do not promise you ease. I do not promise you comfort. But I do promise you these hardships: weariness and suffering. And with them, I promise you victory.
- Giuseppe Garibaldi

Unfortunately, I have been neglecting my blog. The month of April is basically the most stressful time of the graduate school year, so I am just trying to keep my head above water. The good news is that this has made any and all personal concerns disappear in lieu of pressing intellectual matters. The bad news is that it makes for a lackluster blog. This will change soon.

My Humps

I have never pretended to have “good” music taste.

And I don’t really care.

This has caused me to constantly/secretly listen to the likes of Ashlee Simpson and Paris Hilton while working out.

My recent guilty pleasure has been Fergie.

But in terms of my favorite female singer, I would have to say that no one can compare to Alanis Morissette. I have listened to her music ever since 6th grade and it has really been the soundtrack to many different phases of my life. She is a goddess supreme in my book, and pretty much the antithesis of those ridiculous, pop girls. Apparently, she realizes this, too and has decided to take on Fergie and poke some fun at “My Humps” which really is the most humiliating of all the embarassing songs I love.

I’ve gotta say the first time, I watched this, I was really taken aback.

But now, I think it is absolutely hilarious.

Love Is Not A Victory March

Last night, my cohort participated in IU’s Relay for Life. During the survivors ceremony, a 28 year old woman spoke about her experience with breast cancer. After she was finished speaking, my friend remarked on how the crowd did not clap when she said that she had survived cancer, but did break out in applause when she said that she has since met the love of her life and is engaged.

So, basically, at age 28, it is more miraculous to find love than to beat a life-threatening disease.

Love is tough. Not on the same level as cancer, but certainly up there. I believe myself to be a true romantic, an idealist, a champion of love. I want to experience a great love. And although I have made a couple of misbegotten attempts at love, nothing great has emerged yet. I know that it will happen someday, because even though I am flawed, I am honest and brave and I have an enormous capacity to love.

Love is a struggle. When do you give up on someone? How do you move past unrealized potential? Why are feelings more fierce when it is unrequited? And what to do when you cannot let yourself stay stuck in a hopeless situation, but fear that he will change his mind only after you have changed yours?

And, where, in a selfish kind of life, is there room for a selfless kind of love?

Love is a selfless expression. Yet, it is always hard to be selfless in the truest form of love, loving without ego attachment, without giving up on yourself a little or loving to the detriment of your self-esteem.

I wonder if I have perverted love by being so attached to the idea that it must be selfless so that I end up justifying to myself that love is sacrifice, love is suffering, love is not selfish so I should not have needs. And the worst transgression of all, that love can be forced, that if I feel bad enough, it is somehow more “real.”

Those are the things that I still don’t know about love and it mostly stems from my desire to mother unavailable men (“Dear Freud, You will be glad to know that today I have opened an account to start saving for marriage counseling. Forever yours, Biscotti”).

These are the things that I do know about love; things that I have learned through maturing and experience. Love is the combination of comfort and magic. Love is trust. It is trusting the character of the person you love, so that even when he makes mistakes and hurts you (which he inevitably will), you know that he is a good, solid person who had the right intentions. Love is about fun and humor. Love is relaxed. Love is “hi” to your best friend. It is about the spark. And the future. There will always be questions in life and in relationships, but you should never question wanting to share what comes next with that particular person. Love is being put at ease. Above all, it is about acceptance- accepting the rawness of an unfinished person, knowing the pains and pleasures, and appreciating who they are right now.

Love is a feat. And in spite of the risk, the rejection, and the failure, love is worthwhile. Love can break your heart, but loneliness is the cancer that is hardest to conquer.