A rambling post about death

I have a somewhat morbid fascination with man-made and natural disasters. As a little kid, I used to pore over The World Almanac, memorizing statistics about the worst railroad accidents or plane crashes or mudslides or hurricanes. I could care less about the financial toll of some of these disasters; the human toll was what piqued my interest, which is not as sick as it sounds. I think everyone has some kind of curiosity about death because it's the one thing you can't really experience first-hand and then describe.

For me it's unexpected or accidental deaths that completely engross me. When I read about deadly accidents, I wonder what it would be like to be in that position. What would my thoughts be were I in a situation where death is suddenly an imminent certainty? What if others were with me -- how would they react to this same realization?

These thoughts rise to the surface whenever some tragedy is headline news; recently, it's been the West Virginia mining accidents and that car wreck here in Florida that killed seven children. I read as much as I can about accidents like these, hoping to get some glimpse of the victims' final moments.

Before you think I'm completely sick, realize that I'm not getting off on tragedy. I feel sad for the victims and their families and I think about my own mortality and how everything can slip away so quickly.

***

Every January, I think about the Challenger space shuttle explosion. I don't remember when it actually happened; I was five then, living in southern Ohio with my mom (dad was in grad school), and I wasn't in school yet, so I was still in little-kid-egocentric land. I do, though, remember the first anniversary of the disaster. I was in Mrs. Brown's Kindergarten class, sitting in the middle of the room during morning announcements, when our principal Mr. Gilchrist came over the intercom and asked the school for a moment of silence in remembrance of the shuttle. After the announcements were over, Mrs. Brown explained to us why we had to be quiet for those few moments. She showed us pictures of space shuttles and the seven Challenger astronauts, including Christa McAullife, the teacher in space. I remember Mrs. Walsh, my second grade teacher, kept a laminated article about McAuliffe on the wall behind her desk. As the years went on, I learned more and more about what transpired on that cold January day in 1986 -- from o-rings to the shuttle program itself. I think there may have even been a very special episode of Punky Brewster about the tragedy.

My grandfather, a high school physics and calculus teacher, was one of the 12,000 applicants for the Teacher in Space program. Surprisingly, he's not the reason I think about the explosion every year. Rather, it's the knowledge that the astronauts did not immediately die when the shuttle started to tear apart 73 seconds after launching. It was another 2 minutes and 45 seconds later that the crew's cabin hit the water after arcing away from the shuttle. The last words on the cabin's flight recorder, were "Uh-oh." They were alive for nearly another 3 minutes.

It's such a grim thing to think about, I know, but I warned you that I'm a little morbid. Just the idea that seven people died in such an avoidable way and that they were aware of their impending death...it just does something to me...makes me sad, makes me mad at NASA, makes me respect astronauts even more...

My lack of sleep lately has completely killed my concept of time, so I was a little surprised to look at the calendar yesterday and see that it's already the end of January. I was even more surprised when I realized that it's 2006, and, therefore, the 20th anniversary of the accident. I hadn't seen anything in the news, which is surprising -- everyone is pretty plugged into what's going on on the Space Coast here in Florida. Maybe it's not that big a deal to anyone any more, although I don't know why. Where have the last 20 years gone?

Do you remember where you were when you heard about Challenger?

Happy 2-week anniversary to me

Today is the 2-week anniversary of the last time I slept. No joke. The most sleep I've gotten in a single night in the last 14 days is about two hours. Most nights it's no sleep at all -- just me laying perfectly still, trying not to count my heartbeats or think about work or wonder why I'm not sleeping. As a result (I think it's a result of insomnia...I hope it is), I've been experiencing vertigo and a loss of depth perception. My kitchen floor is covered in tiny shards of glass from all of the drinking glasses that I've tried setting on the counter. You know how insidious broken glass is...you think you've cleaned it all up, but then, what do you know, you slice off your little toe.

Monday night Traveling Man gave me a call. I leapt at the chance to meet him at the lovely Hampton Inn, his preferred hotel, and not just because of the potential for booty. Honestly, my first thought was, "A different bed! Maybe that's what I need to sleep!" I was relieved when I got to his room and found him all drowsy and already underneath the covers. Sweet! No sex!

I crawled into bed and he was all warm, which was nice. For a few moments, I was excited -- maybe this would be THE night. I was in a new bed in a different room with a (somewhat) familiar sleeping partner -- how could I not sleep?

The Hampton Inn, lovely as it is, has very obnoxious room fresheners in its rooms. These bizarre devices noisily release an unidentifiable scent every 15 minutes. I can't explain why any hotel would put loud air fresheners in its rooms any more than I can explain why a manufacturer would produce loud air fresheners in the first place. All I know is that I spent the next six hours thinking that each "scent release" was the final one, only to be abruptly disturbed minutes later.

My agitation was such that Traveling Man moved to the other bed in the room. I toss and turn a lot when I'm sleeping soundly; I can't imagine what it's like to sleep next to me when I'm fully conscious and completely annoyed.

So, the new bed plus warm bed buddy didn't work. This sleeplessness is, not surprisingly, affecting my ability to concentrate at work -- or at anything; I've been trying to write a Lepidoptera Lady post for the last two hours, but I just can't get my thoughts to gel.

Now, you know I'm in bad shape when I can't write about butterflies and I don't want to have sex.

I'm going to the doctor on Monday, mainly just to find out if the insomnia is the symptom of something other than stress. I have mixed feelings about getting any drugs. Traveling Man pointed out that since I already have vertigo, I don't really need any other drugs. I can make the world spin all on my own, thank you.

I would give anything to sleep again, but I don't want to be getting used to sleeping pills right before my Montana interview next week. Then again, I don't want to be nodding off during my interview either. Although that would make for a great post.

"Dude, one moment I was talking about my experience developing youth programs; the next moment I was passed out, drooling on Meriwether Lewis' journal. They made me buy it."

What does this mean for the week ahead?

I was driving to work today when this asshole in a shiny white Mercedes cut me off. It really steams me when people drive like jerks during rush hour -- look, we all have somewhere to be, so just chill.

I watched this guy as we crawled in traffic. He would pull into the turning lanes to pass people. Start honking as soon as the light turned green. Straddle the middle line and drive in between cars. And naturally, after being such a jerk, he wasn't any farther ahead. We got caught at the same red light; I was on his left, a few feet behind him.

Now, remember for a moment that I am the coolest 25-year-old ever and I drive a minivan. Before you mock me, realize that minivans are not only practical, but very comfortable, too. Plus, minivans give the driver a higher vantage point, which is important when you are barely 5'2" like me.

So, there I was, sitting at the red light, trying to get a good look at the moron in the white Mercedes (just what does such a huge jackass look like?) when I noticed something in his interior rear view mirror. The mirror was angled down a little bit, so instead of seeing his eyes, I saw his hands, which were fiddling with something. Then I observed a kind of familiar, repetitive motion...he moved his hand to the side and in the mirror I had confirmation of what I suspected:

Dear friends, he was masturbating during the Monday morning commute.

American Idol is good for the soul

I apologize for my non-sensical post from yesterday; I was in between bouts of vomiting and crying hysterically, so, despite being fuckin' articulate, I couldn't really harness my feelings...it was like verbal diarrhea of the fingertips. Sexy, no?

To clarify what transpired: my coworker (hi, coworker! Thanks for all the joy you brought me yesterday!) found this blog, read my post about 2006 and how awesome it's been so far. Hmmm, this reminds of me of the time I wrote about how awesome my cat is and then he died two weeks later.

Anyway, so coworker extraordinaire -- about whom, I might add, I have never written one negative word -- read the part about me interviewing in Missoula, then went into the office and told three people. Granted, two of those people already knew. Still, she told one guy who has absolutely no reason to know. If he were my supervisor, perhaps, but he's not; I'm his supervisor. I was so incredibly hurt -- why would she tell everyone before talking to me about it first? I don't understand. The only explanation I can think of was that it was the pure thrill of having a juicy piece of gossip that motivated her.

What's really sick is that she didn't want me to know that she knew (I feel as though I'm in 6th grade again) and that she told the other dude. How fucking sick is that -- to keep me in the dark, let me think that I had some modicum of privacy? I don't know what I'm going to do now if I don't get this job.

So, there was that yesterday and some dumbass thing involving my credit card company and me getting screwed out of $40 for trying to do the right thing (it's okay, I didn't really need to eat next week or anything). I was not a happy camper.

My spirits were a'lifted a bit in the evening at our staff Christmas party (yes, in late January) where I drank loads of vodka and ate my weight in sushi. What really made everything okay in the world, though, was American Idol. Who needs to drown their sorrows in booze when you can turn on AI? It's instant reassurance: "Wow, look at these morons. I don't think I'm such a loser after all."

I've been an AI fan since the beginning. I have fond memories of the summer of 2002, walking over to my friend AS's house (funny story: after getting married, her initials are now ASS), making mai tais or amaretto sours or margaritas, sometimes ordering Chinese food from Honey Teriyaki (we got to know them pretty well so that by the end of the summer we were getting a bag of fortune cookies with our delivery), getting hammered, and watching AI. Afterward, I would stumble home, totally not passing out in a park along the way. Those were simpler times.

I think I'm one of the rare AI watchers who doesn't like the bad performances. Not only do I feel sorry and embarrassed for the contestants, but I have to stop what I'm doing and cover my ears whenever someone commits crimes against pitch and rhythm. Sometimes I just want to listen to 8-second snippets of lite pop and knit, you know? My yarn gets all messed up from constantly throwing down my project so I can put my hands on my ears. I don't need more stress in my life, man.

Still, though, you can't watch American Idol and be sad. It's a fact.

You know what else lifts one's mood? Reading the updated Lepidoptera Lady. Also a fact.

To the people I work with who are apparently reading this blog

Thank you for bringing to my attention the fact that I am not as anonymous as I thought. Thank you also for respecting me so much that you would tell other people my private information before talking to me first. Obviously, I didn't want people to know some things -- hence, no one knew about this blog and I even said that I didn't want everyone to know some things yet.

Just so you know, I've already puked twice this morning because of all this. The thought of everyone knowing before I was ready for them to know makes me physically ill. I am dizzy from anxiety.

What gets me is that you knew I was unhappy and not sleeping. Did you think that spreading my info would help me? How much do you hate me?

2006: So far, I'm a fan

I think 2006 is really going to be "my" year. Much has transpired in BPW-land (population: 3) in the past two weeks or so. New Year's Eve was an unexpected good time. I went down to the beach with KP (she's not the one who tricks me into going to church -- that's KW, with whom I had a falling out just before Christmas. She snooped through my personal belongings in my apartment and decided I was a bad person. I decided she was a freak. You see, these are the kinds of things that happened in that crappy year, 2005).

Anyway, as soon as we got to the beach and started walking to the bar, KP's shoe broke. Then 100 feet later, her other shoe broke. So, we hobbled into 7-11 and bought some superglue -- that's what she's doing in the picture, just a'gluin' her shoe. The glue didn't seem to take (yes, all those commercials in the '80s of a construction worker gluing his hard hat to a beam were all lies), so we went to the store across the street and bought the most hideous flip-flops ever. Functioning footwear was important to us as this was going to be the night where we went to other bars, new bars, places we'd never been.

Of course, once we got to our regular bar, the farthest we walked was from our barstools to a table, where we camped out for the rest of the night with some other Nature Center folk (thank god KP had functioning footwear for that trek). Before our incredible journey to the table, though, I brazenly hit on a 45-year-old -- I made googly eyes at him from across the bar while he was buying his drink until he came over to talk to me, whereupon I said such things as "twenty years isn't that big an age difference" and "oh, your daughter's a sophomore in high school? So, is my little sister!" He was cute, but his name sounded more appropriate for a candy bar (first name Kit; last name begins with a K and sounds a lot like "Kat." I don't know if I could ever yell the name of Michael Knight's car whilst in the throes of passion and not break out into fits of giggles. I don't think guys like it when you laugh at them in bed).

I had grand plans to make black-eyed peas for dinner on New Year's Day for good luck because CLEARLY that is where I went wrong in 2005 -- no meal of lucky black-eyed peas. However, by dinner time on January 1st, I was still too drunk from the night before to focus on cooking, so I killed a few hundred brain cells by listening to "My Humps" and made black-eyed peas when I sobered up the next day.

The days since then have been a whirlwind of activity. The intern who quit before she even started showed up unexpectedly on January 2nd, yammering about how she made a commitment to us and would work until we found a replacement. So, I scheduled her for programs because I was counting on having an intern at this time of year. Naturally, she flaked all over the place and when she showed up unexpectedly (again) yesterday, wanting me to show her how to do a particular program while I was prepping for my program with 90 Girl Scouts and getting ready for Creepy Crawly Day that day (on my day off, thankyouverymuch), I fired her. She's lucky because, really, I wanted to kill her.

After I fired her, I ate some crickets with the Girl Scouts, which made me feel better. Crickets taste like sunflower seeds, except with more legs and antennae.

The biggest thing to happen in 2006, though, (ALERT TO THOSE WHO'VE BEEN SKIMMING THIS POST: YOU CAN RESUME READING NOW) has been my interview with the museum in Missoula, Montana, this past week. I had a phone interview on Tuesday night with the Director and a few people from the Board. At one point during the interview, I thought to myself, "Wow, I'm fucking articulate," and afterward, I was pretty jazzed -- the interview seemed to go really well.

Thursday morning I got a call from Missoula County Human Resources to let me know that they were going to check my references, at which point I got to have the superfun conversation with my boss that, oh, yeah, hey, by the way, I've interviewed for another job and now people are going to call you and ask you how great I am, so could you do me a favor and really lay it on thick because I badly want this job. Thanks, man.

After my boss gave me the evil eye when he finished talking to the Montana people, the museum director called to invite me out for a second interview; the county would be picking up the tab on airfare and hotel. And since Fort Myers is half-way around the world from Missoula, it's cheaper to fly me back two days after my interview, so I have one whole day in my old college town to piss around and do nothing. If I don't get the job, at least I'll have gotten a free trip to Montana.

However, I really feel like this one is mine to lose. The director said that I got a standing ovation after my fucking articulate interview and my boss got the impression that I had already gotten the job after he'd talked to the Montana people (not to be confused with the 'mountain people', an entirely different group of people). So, we'll see. I have to give a 15-20 minute presentation to the Friends of the Museum on anything I want; initially, I thought I was going to give a talk on alligators and giant toads, but now I'm leaning more toward a butterfly talk. I know, I'm as surprised as you are -- who could ever imagine me yammering about butterflies?

Still, though there is the possibility that I may change my mind yet again and give a presentation on how to make bongs out of everyday objects. I think that would really impress them.

So, I'll be gone February 2 through February 5, getting back two weeks before I leave for Costa Rica. No one at work knows that I'm going out to Montana except for the director and the administrative wonder. Since I can't tell any of the others that I'm leaving town, I've had to really stretch to find a dog-sitter. So I've asked my bartender. Granted he is the bald friend of The Ex-Boyfriend who I dated briefly, the one who really wronged me, so he kind of owes me. First and foremost, though, he is Bald Bartender.

When he said that he would take care of Foxy, I thought, "Do I really want to leave this place where the man who pours my drinks is willing to babysit my dog for four days?"

As I sit here among all the cranky white-haired ladies and snoring old men at Barnes & Noble this morning, I think that maybe -- despite my kind bartenders -- yes, I do want to leave.

Sweet Jesus, I finally updated Lepidoptera Lady

It's true. Feeling an overwhelming sense of accomplishment, I am going to reward myself with a trip to the movie theater to see Brokeback Mountain. I really earned some gay cowboy love.