crazy – Page 176 – hannah ananas

Mass, Cats, and Weimaraners

Do you remember Wegman’s Weimaraners, the beautiful pictures and skits of the Weimaraner dogs with human arms? (William Wegman started all of that. Here’s an example.) And we hopefully all know the musical Cats. (Look up some photos quickly, if you need a frame of reference for the picture to have in your head of the style.)

Now, today at Mass, both of these things were relevant. My mom and I have had a somewhat silly time in Mass together the past several years, mostly due to a little book we found at, I believe, a dollar store. (It was a book of comic-type frames, based on The Bible and Christianity, and was entitled According to the Good Book. I can tell more about that another time, though.) We do not actively seek out distractions, of course, but we do inform the other if ever there is something truly worth noticing. This morning, after the priest had pointed out some facts relating to the scene choices of the stained glass windows, my mom leans over to me, and whispers that, “Baby Jesus has adult hands,” and “Saint Joseph is a lion… He was in Cats.”

Momentarily unable to comprehend, I noticed that she was looking at one of the windows. Sure enough, she was right. I let her know that I agreed with her, and that the baby Jesus reminded me of the Weimaraners with human arms. We said nothing more, but both struggled to calm ourselves from the our silent, trembling laughter.

A while later, the little girl in front of us, did something wonderful. She had already tickled us to silent chuckles earlier with an adorable, “Let us praaay,” mimicking even the tones of the priest, immediately after he had said it, as well as her unreal timing with leaning backward in her mother’s arms. During the singing of the Amens after the whole bread and wine changing to body and bread deal, the music powerful and faith being declared strongly through song, we look up to see this little girl facing her mother, held around the waist in her mother’s arms, leaning back as far as possible, arms draped down, hanging limply behind her, and her head dropped back… at the last “Amen”, she raised her arms straight up in the air, as though praying to and praising the great Lord above. It was truly beautiful, despite the comedy of the timing of her actions.

So now, this little girl, just as Mass is almost finished, finds the little envelopes at the end of the pew. The envelopes are for collection (donations) to the Church for a specific cause, and the cause was labeled with a golden starburst-shaped seal on the front of each envelope. When she finds the envelopes, she grabs them, and scoots back toward her older brother, and declares quietly, “I got invites!” The priest says another line or two, and then we hear her say, “Should we go?” I think my mom and I instantly began crying with laughter.

Another few moments later, we hear the brother say, “Your party lipstick,” and we see him doing her lipstick for her with a fake lipstick. I comment to my mother that ‘I bet Cats is playing at the party.’ And we continued crying with laughter.

Now, I am aware that this is not ideal Mass behavior, as we are well taught as children. We are nonetheless human, and so we have our little tidbits of fun at Mass here and there. Besides, it is a beautiful art to find unsuspecting joys in unsuspecting places. And come on, who wouldn’t agree that Saint Joseph must have been in Cats, based on that window?
The Nativity, as portrayed by today’s lovely stained glass window

The “Party Invitation”

Post-a-day 2017

Cousin fun and virgin drinks

Tonight, we had family gathering time. As usual, it ended up in a long music session, filled with guitar and sing-a-longs. I love my family, and I love how musical we are. However, that is not the point here.

The family time tonight reminded me of the first time all of us were together at once: my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary celebration. At the party, my cousin Allison and I, and possibly also one or both of her brothers, took on the task of ordering unique drinks from the open bar. You see, we wanted to take advantage of the open bar, as the rest of the family and attendees were doing, but we lacked the age to enjoy the alcohol aspect of it all.

And so, we improvised. At ages 15 and 12 respectively, Allison and I took full advantage of the open bar in terms of experience. We initially ordered a virgin beverage, because we liked the specific beverage. However, we soon turned to our own game of coming up with ridiculous drink orders. We ordered things like a virgin rum and coke, and a virgin bourbon water. We just picked the drink we actually wanted, and found an adult mixed beverage that contained the desired drink, and then ordered it virgin. That way, we were ordering drinks at the bar, the way a bar is designed to be, and we enjoyed all the regular fun of ordering special drinks at an open bar, with the added enjoyment of the puzzle and ridiculousness.

I sure do love my family.

Post-a-day 2017

The stairs attacked me

I fell on the stairs tonight. More specifically, I fell up the stairs.

You see, I was carrying up my laundry, for which I had no basket. There were bunches of socks in the pile, and I had strategically hugged myself to the pile, in order to keep the many socks from falling to the ground. Unfortunately, as I was stepping up to the top of the stairwell, I found myself suddenly stemmed to the ground with a loud s-smack!

I knew that I was on the ground and that I had somehow tripped, but had almost no brain capacity beyond knowing that. I realized that I was about to cry terribly, and wanted my mom got help, in case I were injured. I managed to call my mom with a very calm voice before I broke into an almost hysterical blurriness of tears.

For some reason, I was filled with a warm feeling of something truly special and loving at my mom’s response. She was on the phone with family, and I heard her say, “Let me call you back in just a few minutes,” immediately after I called her. There was little panic in my voice, but she had heard the splat.

When she arrived, I was crying on the cat-pee-infused floor, – she ripped up the carpet a while back, but still hasn’t gotten the particle board part replaced – on top of my laundry, half-sprawled on my forearms and knee, with my left leg lifted slightly in the air. She asked me what had happened, but I couldn’t speak at first, and couldn’t move almost at all for the pain. She said that she didn’t know how to help me until I could at least show her where I was hurt. After a good set of seconds, I finally forced myself to sit in my right side, and pull my left leg around for her to see in the narrow landing of the top of the stairs.

She instantly could tell that my knee was swelling already. I finally could speak a little, and pointed out that my toe was bleeding. It was slow to begin, but then blood just seemed to be pouring out of it. By the time I was able to stand myself up, and attempt walking, – it hurt – my sandal was getting covered in bright red.

Half an hour later, I am lying here on my bed, occasionally shivering/shuddering in pain as another throb goes through my toe. The ice is helpful, but the weight of it seems to make things hurt more (as is so often the case with an ice pack). I’ve already felt around, and, though it was painful, it seemed like my toe is all in one piece. But that is not so much the point of my sharing this – that I had a big fall, but I am okay.

You see, it reminded me of this other occasion, when I had a similarly odd experience, and it was here, too, at my mom’s house.

Several years ago, – I think it was in high school – my mom had made some soup for dinner. The soup was ready in a pot on the stovetop, and she had told me to go serve myself. I grabbed one of the black ceramic bowls we use, and ladled some soup into it. The next instant, there was soup and shattered ceramic all over the place around me. It covered the floor. I was still holding the ladle, I think, even, but the bowl was gone, in pieces on the floor.
I was paralyzed with shock and fright. I couldn’t immediately comprehend how things had happened, but I knew that the bowl I had been holding was now all over the floor, and that it was dangerous to move. I likely was barefoot or in sandals, making it that much more dangerous to move. I couldn’t comprehend the full situation, and that was an additional scary factor to the shattered ceramic around me.

I began to cry. My mom was already walking over to me from the living room. She told me that it was okay, and she held me while I cried and said that I didn’t know what had happened.

She cleaned up everything, and then brought me soup on the sofa, where I had settled physically to help me settle emotionally. And she wasn’t even the slightest bit upset or annoyed at any of it. She was just there for me, and she took care of me. She loved and cared for me, with no contingencies. I felt like a five-year-old in what I had done and how I had responded, and was initially almost ashamed that I was actually around 17. But my mom didn’t seem even to consider that. Age wasn’t on her mind, even. I needed help, and she gave it. I needed love and care, and she provided. And without hesitation.

Tonight was the same. Usually, her phone calls are not cut short, but she tells the person to ‘hang on just a second’ or just whispers a, ‘What?(!)’ to me as she holds the receiver away from her face a bit. In tonight’s situation, even though it turned out to be my grandma on the phone, my mom instantly responded to my need, ending the phone call immediately – she didn’t even wait for my grandma to finish what she was in the middle of saying at the time -, and coming to help me. Again, I had made what felt like a childish error, and again did she seem not to care less about that fact. I was in need, and she took care of me, without hesitation.

That experience of love is one of the most beautiful ones I have ever known. Talk about being ashamed or at one’s worst, and being loved anyway…

Post-a-day 2017

In the raw… not

Sometimes I wonder if my OCD isn’t the only thing I have. I had a sort of episode today, which is what called to mind this idea (though I have had it regularly for years).

I had just showered, and was using the bathroom briefly before dressing. My mom had just shown me a dress she was considering for my cousin’s upcoming wedding, while I had been wrapped in my towel. When she came back toward my bathroom a minute or so later, telling me to look at another outfit, I told her to wait a minute, because I was peeing. She, in good humor, and not thinking much into it, said, ‘No, look at it now. I have it on already,’ and began to open my bathroom door, to show me the outfit.

Without having my chance to think anything through, I had thrown my arms around me protectively, and was almost yelling – not actual yelling, but much louder and more panicky than regular speech – to tell her to shut the door, and saying that she doesn’t ‘get it’; I was serious about waiting a minute.

I was almost in tears. My mind was able to view the situation with sanity – What on Earth, girl? It really is okay that your mother see you naked and/or on the pot. What just happened in here, darling? My reaction, however, had been instantaneous and automatic, leaving no attempt to consult with my brain on the matter before responding to the situation.

I went to talk to my mom about it afterward, and my eyes teared while we hugged. It had taken me a while to go see her outfit, because something had me feel a need to be fully dressed before going to see her, as opposed to my usual comfort level of a bra and underwear being just fine. It was like an odd means of making up for having felt exposed – compensating by over-dressing.

Growing up, I never was very comfortable with nudity of my own body. My female family members were all incredibly comfortable with being nude around the house. I’m not sure I went a week at any given point in my childhood without seeing at least one of them walking around naked. And it never disturbed me. I even marveled at how comfortable they were with being nude, and respected it. I think I even thought that I would be so comfortable by the time I was around their then-ages (college-aged).

It never happened, though. College came and went, and here I stand totally uncomfortable with my own nudity around others. In college, I was surprised that more girls in the dorm didn’t walk around more often in their towels. I had just learned so well from my sisters how to make a towel stay in place wrapped around my body, that I spent plenty of time down the hall with friends, their constantly wondering and asking how my towel stayed up. I didn’t even have to consider if I were comfortable in a towel – I just was. In the same way, I suppose, I never even considered the idea of being comfortable nude – I just wasn’t.

And I imagine that all of that is somewhat normal for a good chunk of my society. Some girls strip down entirely in the locker rooms after water polo practice, and some just don’t. I have actively pursued being comfortable with my own nudity, just in my own presence, over the years, in hopes of 1) learning to appreciate my own body, and 2) being comfortable with certain close family and friends being around when I’m changing or have to use the bathroom. (There are just certain scenarios that are part of life, and I can’t seem to see myself possibly functioning in them.)

But, just to throw in a sort of curve ball, let’s talk about how I am fine with other cultures and my own nudity. I specify: Bath houses in Japan and a topless beach in Spain all had my full participation. I was slightly nervous initially, but the social acceptance of the behavior allowed me to accept mentally the task. I even appreciated the ease and comfort of the accepted nudity. For the topless beach, I wasn’t with friends, so that made it loads easier. But the bath houses in Japan were easy enough to do with multiple friends, after my initial exposure to how the whole thing worked. So, social context makes a huge difference in my comfort levels, it seems. In my apartment in Japan, with the same friend with whom I had hung out naked in an onsen, I would not be found nude… take away the bath house, and the comfort disappears with it.

So, sometimes I seem to be in good shape and totally normal. I changed at the YMCA the other week after swimming, and I did it in a way that was much more exposed and easy-going than I ever would have done in the past. Perhaps, despite the fact that the general social context has changed (not Japan anymore), since it is a changing area at the gym, I still can grasp the behavior mentally, and participate to a certain degree, after my experiences in Japan. However, since it is not Japan, and the general social context has changed in terms of nudity acceptability, I am only okay with it, because no one I know is around to notice me. Add a family member to the equation, and I’d bet that I would be wrapped up or in a bathroom stall while changing clothes.

And I think all of that is somewhat normal, too. However, when something like today happens, where it is not just a matter of my being uncomfortable, but a matter of my having a panicked, immediate reaction to the situation, I wonder if there is something more to it.

Post-a-day 2017

Write a book, man!

My friend almost has me convinced to write a book. I’m not convinced that it will be the best book ever, however, I do believe that it has a good opportunity to be awesome. And so, I am considering it.

If I set up doing a task per week, I think I could fit it in well with my new schedule. I think I could get that friend to work with me on it all, too, which would be amazingly helpful and useful. It would take time, but I think it could be finished – this is thinking longest possible time-frame of constant productivity – within five months. That means that by my birthday I could have a book finished. Not necessarily published, but finished. Printed and bound on my own, it would be like a birthday present to myself. Now that would be way cool… it almost has me convinced to do it, now…

Okay, here’s the plan: Of I remember about this tomorrow morning, I’ll send the friend a text, asking about potentially getting his help on the project. If he accepts, I’ll e-mail him by Monday night, looking at details in terms of how I could see him helping best, and what does he think about it all? And we’ll set up a timeline and way of checking in for each thing, should he accept again, and then I’ll begin writing my first book (aside from the terrible one I wrote in fourth grade as an assignment for class).

Okay, I can do this.

wind chimes

I love wind chimes. I almost never get to hear them, though. I don’t do much sitting outside in Houston, because there are so often bugs and/or extreme heat. And we really don’t have much wind in the first place. I’m currently thinking over an idea I have to set up my wind chimes (for the rest of my life) in front of the air vents. That would have them tinkling and bonging their beautiful music often enough, I think.

Every year, we go to the Texas Renaissance Festival, and one of my favorite spots to pause is the wind chime shop. Just going through slowly, ringing all of the large wind chimes, I find myself fully content and at ease. And the humongous on there, when I ring it, I can feel it all over and within, and I never really want to stop ringing it. Mmm… I can hardly wait for next month.

I love wind chimes.

Post-a-day 2017

My real voice

In college, I spent a summer studying in Germany. It was a language school setup, filled with foreigners, but in such a small town that everyone knew that we were studying German, and so everyone always spoke to us all in German. I had already studied abroad a few times before this adventure, and I had learned firsthand about what works and what doesn’t work, in terms of language immersion. I was dedicated to learning German, and so I made sure that I only spoke in German with others, even if they spoke to me in English. This made friendships hard among the people in my program’s group, since they all used English together; I came across a bit snobby, but I was just really committed to learning German.

I made friends with other foreigners rather easily, though, and especially ones in higher levels of German, which was even better for me. My German was improving immensely. But this led to a unique situation one day.

One day, near the end of either my time at the school or my friend Paul’s time there (he’s British), I found myself faced with a desperate Paul, actually begging me to speak English. Why?! was my repeated question to his pleas.

“Because I want to hear what you sound like!”

I don’t know if he was pleased or not by how I sound in English, but I spoke a little for him. And it was way weird, using English with him, despite the fact that I’d heard him speak English loads, and that it’s our common native language. I had just never used it with him.

And then this brought up a unique and interesting sentiment. He wanted to hear me, and that meant speaking English. I can guess that my native tongue was the one in which Paul believed my identity to lie. I know that it felt like I was setting aside a sort of mask when I switched to English with him. I even felt a little called-out… as though I had been hiding somehow, and it had been behind German. The real me (I) lay in English, in the English part of me.

Yet, years later, here I am, missing the parts of me that belong to these different languages in which I have lived. A part of me, true me (I), exists only on German, and others in French, in Spanish, and in Japanese. So much so that the real me (I) is this whole combination of languages – I feel a huge emptiness and feel not myself when I am using only English in my daily life. I listen to Spanish-speaking radio when I’m in Houston, mostly because I don’t get to use Spanish often enough. I read every night in French, and trade off an English book for a German one at times for my evening reading, too. I regularly pull out a Spanish book to read, or my German audiobooks. And I have noticed that I have been searching for a tolerably satisfying way to have Japanese in my near-daily life, too. (For now, it has just been the occasional music, and a perpetual repeat of a certain song being stuck in my head.) When I don’t have them all, it is as though a part of me is missing, and suddenly getting to speak with someone in them, almost reminds me of that mask I was setting aside in Germany with Paul… like I am again setting aside some mask I have been wearing.

Perhaps it is now a mask of monolingualism, pretending that I only speak English, while I long for the world to talk to me in several languages, all the time.

Anyway… I’m exhausted. And I miss Paul. He was studying opera, and was a really great guy. I wonder if he’s been really successful with opera these past several years. Maybe I can go see him perform one day. That would be awesome. 🙂

Post-a-day 2017

There is and there aren’t…

My pet peeve lately has been the incorrect use of the phrase “There is…”. I don’t know what it is about this particular phrase, but it currently feels as though the whole of the English-speaking USA got together and decided to stop using the phrase “There are…”, as though they wanted to drive me even more insane right now.

I usually am not so picky on any particular phrase or wording with people’s speech. Usually, I correct it automatically in my head, and I’m okay with everything. Certainly, I always wish the grammar were better than it is, however, I typically am able to accept the grammar as it comes from any given individual. I guess that this one is just really getting to me, because no one seems to be able to use the correct words, but I have spent most of my life experiencing people using the correct words regularly. It’s as though everyone suddenly forgot while I was gone for a year.

Weird.

Post-a-day 2017

Sometimes…

Sometimes, things fall apart, free from control or attempts to do anything else with them.

Sometimes, things come together, free from control or attempts to do anything else with them.

And sometimes, the difference between the former and the latter is that action was desperate and limited in the former, but honest and free in the latter.

Life sure is beautiful, ain’t it? 😉

Post-a-day 2017

an old fashioned telephone and a strawberry?

A strawberry and a telephone – what do they have in common? They have both low-grade injured me in odd ways.

The strawberry – oh, that dear strawberry – actually drew blood instantly in its incident. You see, I was simply pulling off the green tops of my strawberries, and then eating each strawberry. On this particular one, when I grabbed the green leaves atop it, pushing the end of my thumb nail underneath the little green stem that sat in the middle of them for nowhere near the first time in my life, I suddenly felt an extreme, sharp pain in my thumb. Somehow, the strawberry had launched itself into the depths that appeared at the underside of my thumbnail, ripping apart the nail and the skin. I yanked away immediately from the strawberry, and watched the blood overflow from underneath my thumb nail. Despite the pain, I found the occasion a happy and hilarious one. I mean, who gets injured by a strawberry? Since when do strawberries draw blood? I’m not even clumsy, but they apparently do it to me. 😛

The telephone was what reminded me of the strawberry incident today. I was looking at the last bit of a splinter – or what looks like it might be the last bit of a splinter – in my hand just now, and thought of the insanity of what my splinter was: a piece of a telephone. You know the old black, rotary dial telephones, with the receiver that rested across the top? That kind of telephone. Something had fallen on one Saturday night, sending out shards of black telephone onto the black floor. I did not realize that the phone had even been injured until after I took my shot – this was in a photo area – on the floor, playing my ukulele. Hours later, it took some consideration before I discovered what the source of my chunk of black plastic-type material splinter was. When I removed the splinter, the spot bled a little, and then began to hurt. I mean, really, what kind of injury is that? Blood drawn by telephone, and no throwing of any kind was involved, nor were any other people. Silly.

So, an old telephone and a strawberry have a big something in common, see?

Post-a-day 2017