inthelouvre.org

Nail-Bitingly, Excruciatingly Exciting

I’ve been trying to kick the habit of biting my nails. Trying - and failing, miserably. I’m participating in a project aptly titled 101 Things in 1,001 Days (this is appropriate because I compiled 101 goals and will be attempting to complete all of them within a 1,001 day span), and one of my goals is to not bite my nails for an entire month. I’ve been trying since February, when I “officially” started the goal list; but in reality, I have been trying to quit biting my nails since 2004.

When I decided to stop biting my nails three years ago, it was because my boyfriend at the time couldn’t get me to stop cracking my knuckles. It seemed as though he wanted at least one of those habits to stop, so we made a pact (wherein he would also stop one of his annoying habits: smoking). Well, suffice to say, I frequently failed at this agreement, but so did he - and at least I wasn’t lying about it.

Now I’ve decided to stop for much more practical reasons: ones that are more encouraging to the goal. For instance, I bite my nails down to the core. No, really. Sometimes I bleed, or scream in pain when the air touches my fingers. Secondly, I have some kind of oral fixation that requires me to hold onto the previously attached fingernails inside my mouth. A lot of people find this extremely disgusting, but I think it’s a common habit that most people refuse to admit they do. It’s slightly beneficial, because with tricks of the tongue, I can remove any piece of food that might be stuck in between teeth; however, it’s also a large pain, as it’s become a sort of anal retentive quality. I have taken to saving fingernails for later, hoping they will do some good, but eventually discovering that after they’ve gathered dust I no longer want to put them in my mouth.

The third, and perhaps largely less unnerving reason is that the duties I perform at work include the ability to unstick things from other things: more precisely, take stickers off of books. We have razorblades to be put to use, as well as the ever-amazing Goo Gone, but my coworkers often hoard the blades for their own personal use and Goo Gone quite simply smells really badly. What I’d like is to be able to pick the stickers off myself, using my very own fingernails. Those weeks after I haven’t bit my nails are close to heaven for me, but days like tomorrow, when just the day before I felt like I had to get rid of my built-in sticker-scrapers, those days are simply hellish. I actually have to find a razorblade to set out of view, and even then, sometimes you feel ridiculous using the razor on Borders labels. (Those are the easiest and most exciting to pull off books, because they don’t ever leave sticker-residue and usually give a hint as to where the book must be shelved.)

It is exceedingly difficult to quit the biting, as I’ve noticed that I seem to bite my nails while I’m sleeping. I’d gone a week and a half with no problems - maybe a bit of yearning and certainly a large feeling of accomplishment, when one day I realized that the ring finger on my left hand had less nail than the rest. I pointed it out to R, exclaiming, “I don’t remember biting this nail.” It was the truth, and I could’ve sworn that nail was on my finger the same length as the others just the day before. Clearly, I am not only chewing on my fingers while asleep, but also very efficiently removing scraps of fingernails. Of course, I can’t continue to grow the nails after one of them is gone; I must start my month of non-biting over with an even slate. So tonight I bit all my nails down below where my fingers end, and I’ve resolved not to bite them again at least between tomorrow and August 26. (Nail clippers, by the way, are acceptable.)

“Harry Potter Day”

Yesterday was dubbed “Harry Potter Day” both with feelings of excitement and disdain, yearing and sarcasm, obsessiveness and indifference, but to me it was the day I was going to hang out with my boyfriend’s mother. She was coming in for the Harry Potter party at his place of work and staying the night at our apartment - which, by the way, he only recently told her we shared.

It’d been a relatively decent day. We saw Harry Potter 5 in theaters for $5 each ticket, then we came home and napped on top of a mountain of laundry for two hours. Finding it exceedingly difficult to get up, we spent the next half hour lying in bed tossing responsibility back and forth - who should get up first?

However, as soon as we left the house, everything started to plummet at varying degrees. A four-car wreck was pushed off to the side of the parkway by the time we got to it, but it still required switching lanes in front of a bunch of grumpy Friday-afternoon, heated, sweaty trying-to-get-home-from-work individuals. They were surprisingly understanding, though we feared the worst. We were going to 7-11 to divulge in those promised pink sprinkled Simpsons donuts, of which there were none. Disappointment abounds! After seeing Homer Simpson walk across the bottom of the screen retrieving pieces of his delicious-looking donut last night while watching Spawn on FX, he was really in the mood for one of those little delights! There’s nothing like pink frosting.

On our way out, a large pick-up truck full of something covered by blue tarp lost its tire. Well, that’s not completely accurate: the large popping noise dentoed only a flat tire, but it seemed as though it wasn’t driving on anything. Our left-turn lane then took us to face a broken-down vehicle of some kind blocking the next lane we needed to turn into Party City, where we were hoping to find a make-shift Haggrid costume. Finding nothing, not even a beard, we left with a blowhorn (line management) and some sugary treats.

The most meaningful thing I learned about my hopes was that I wish issues could just be concrete problems that happen every now and again, and have logical solutions; however, they always have to be emotional problems that creep up on us and make painful stabs to the heart. After being a gopher for the Harry Potter party and picking up bags of ice, I sat in the car in the parking lot and cried. For a while, I wasn’t even sure why I was crying, only that it hurt a lot, whatever it was. And then I realized the painful truth of most of my relationships: I sacrifice for someone who doesn’t feel the need to extend the same courtesy. I give, they take, and take, and take… And then I give some more. It usually doesn’t hit me until much later after we’ve broken up that, hey, I didn’t really know them at all. Last night, however, I realized that while still in the relationship.

I am pathetically comforted a little bit by the fact that when I avoided looking at him last night, because my eyes were getting teary, he was really geniuinely concerned and worried. I think sometimes I assume the worst from him and he usually surprises me. I suppose I’m just overly pessimistic in that regard.

So, Harry Potter, I didn’t help out with your party. I read Pretty Little Mistakes by Heather Mcelhatton, finding myself raped and pecked to death by ducks while sitting on the floor next to the Customer Service desk. (Anyway, Happy Retirement.) Instead, I felt completely insignificant until a former coworker walked by and told me that I was the greatest person there.

****

Last night he climbed into bed with me and instead of immediately falling asleep, he made me laugh. I suddenly forgot about everything that had gone wrong during the day.

Silverchair

Up until this very moment I haven’t listened to any Silverchair music pre-Neon Ballroom since 2001. In middle school and high school, I was really into this band, in a sort of sickly obsessive way that required several hundred small magazine cut-out pictures covering my bedroom walls, rare posters, CD singles that could only be found through “past fans” who were selling them as they weren’t attainable through any website or record store, T-shirts most of which I don’t even remember anymore as I had so many, and numerous attempts to see the band live though my parents thought I was too young for concerts. They weren’t my first concert, though when I was in ninth grade I sometimes told people they were, because I was so enamoured with the idea of having seen them in middle school that I’d have rather lied to my friends than admit that no, I’ve never actually seen this band which I devote my life to in concert.

Sometime shortly after high school I sold all of my memorabilia except the Neon Ballroom limited edition CD + DVD (apparently going for $52 on Amazon!) which was purchased mid-1999 through the fan club (of which I was also a part, and I still have my Silverchair guitar pics, official fanclub card, and Llama Appreciation Society long-sleeved T-shirt). I decided that I didn’t like Silverchair anymore. I believe this was influenced by a boy, but I can’t be sure; my memory isn’t the greatest sometimes. I also recall disliking what I’d heard of the “new album” Diorama, so this may have had a large impact on my falling-out with this band. But it’s very true that sometimes I wonder what made me sell all those things which I went through so much work to obtain, which I will never have the time, patience, motivation, or willingness to regain. These were things that I would much rather still have, if not just for nostalgia’s sake, than to prove that I was alive and I had an interest that lasted more than five years and which I stuck with until it exhausted me.

Today I was looking at concert listings at a club I don’t like visiting but which sometimes has good bands nonetheless. There, staring back at me with big, blue puppy dog eyes was the word “Silverchair.” I remember them, I thought. I used to like them. I then decided to search for their website and remembered that with the release of the dreaded album Diorama, they also made their website entirely in flash. I hated that, too, and maybe my inability to access comfortably my favorite band’s website made me stray away. I didn’t feel betrayed like I did when Metallica was on the Mission Impossible: III soundtrack with that awful song which helped disillusion me from their awesomeness; rather, I simply stopped listening. Silverchair became a thing of the past, indeed, forgotten like the rest of my memories from that period in my life.

On the media page of their new website, which has colorful boxes that make me think, “yes, this is the direction they went in, and the direction I didn’t follow,” you can listen to minute-long clips of some of their songs. So for the first time since 2001, I’ve been listening to pre-Neon Ballroom Silverchair.

The first song listed, and thus the first song I heard, is “Abuse Me.” It’s amazing the effect those first few notes had on me. It’s not the same nostalgic yearning I sometimes get for Care Bears or Fischer Price Little People, reading Matilda by Roald Dahl or visiting the neighborhood I grew up in. I’m not sure it’s entirely describable, but it strikes me in a place which only ever hurts when my heart is broken. Maybe that’s it - maybe it breaks my heart to think of this past love of my life, this band which I grew up with and from which I drifted apart so easily, forgotten as though part of a passing wind.

I continue listening down the list: “Cicada,” “Faultline” and “Findaway,” and the feeling is wholly different than listening to the Freak Show songs. The Frogstomp songs remind me of a far past and a recent past; I’m listening to songs that have the same influences as the peppy punk songs I’ve listened to in the past few years on recommendation of a former best friend. They have the same elements. It’s not the sad feeling that walking on the moon is such an extraordinary accomplishment which opens up an unknown future that “Learn to Hate” and “Lie to Me” make; rather, it’s the feeling that “Israel’s Son” is like walking on the moon with other outerspace tourists. It isn’t a heart-break, just a nudge.

By the time I’m halfway down the list, listening to a song called “No Association” which I associated with myself and my life very strongly as a younger teenager, with such brilliant lyrics as: “Couldn’t care less if I died right now, who am I? I don’t know, you tell me! You seem to know everything else.” It’s at this moment I realize what’s going on - I’m listening to Silverchair. One-minute clips of the beginnings of each song are enough to invoke these confusing and moving feelings in me. Listening to “Madman” a moment ago, I heard the words in the back of my mind though it was instrumental on the original album. I had the imported “Shade” single with the lyrical version of that song, and I memorized all of it. I knew every one of these songs. And here I’m listening to it in a way that I would have never thought likely - through the website, sitting on my bed with a slight headache from lack of sleep. Back then, when you searched for “Silverchair” in Google, you’d get several pages of fansites and only after that, the Amazon.com link and Wikipedia-type of site.

“Pop Song for Us Rejects” comes on and I smile. It’s so happy and poppy and about such an unhappy and unpoppy subject. I loved this song at one point in time. I sang it, along with all the others, in my bedroom with the volume turned up so loud that I couldn’t hear the banging on the door to turn it down. I was so into it that sometimes I felt as though nothing else mattered. This small trip into the past has shown me how easy it is to be completely effected by something. It sounds entirely cliche, but Silverchair changed my life, and I have to give them credit for it somewhere.

The Silverchair shirts that I bought new are now sold as “vintage.” I’m crushing on this feeling.

20% LESS Than Other Supermarkets

In the frozen foods aisle at the grocery store we visit to purchase our food, there’s a large yellow sign with black print that says something to the effect of: “SAVE 20% LESS THAN AT OTHER SUPERMARKETS.” Less? Really? Should we stop going there?

Tonight I had a conversation with a friend about grocery shopping and I somehow feel the need to put down my thoughts about it. I grew up with a father who was awesome, sweet, caring, and amazing. Sometimes he even let me have ice cream before dinner, and if I was really pouty, ice cream instead of dinner. But as I appreciated a full understanding of money and how it’s spent and what sort of devastation it means when it’s gone, I started noticing the 50 boxes of Raisin Bran, macaroni & cheese, paper towel containers, and food that expires within the next two months. Four gallons of milk because they’re buy 3 get 1 free, and at the end of the week when the milk inevitably expires all at once, the kids are getting yelled at for not drinking it in time. I love my parents, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure how often it crossed their minds how much some kids don’t like Raisin Bran.

For a while when I started living on my own, the concept looked very attractive. You’re technically saving money when you buy a 24-pack of Diet Coke for $5.99. That’s roughly 25 cents per can, instead of the $1.25 that’s charged most other places. But it turns out to be money you don’t need to spend in the first place, because you really don’t need those extra 24 sodas to rot out your teeth. In fact, that first one isn’t even useful. You’re still thirsty and now you’re sticky, because it’s hot and you’re drinking soda that will somehow get all over your hands.

When I realized how silly those deals were after buying an entire package of $1 instant soup and never eating them, somehow misplacing them in the move from apartment to apartment, and not missing them (though missing that $30 I spent for no apparent reason), I was pretty proud of myself. But now I’ve started to notice certain qualities that the BF and my father share: namely, buying things just because they’re on sale. With the Raisin Bran, you don’t end up saving any money because you have to get those four extra gallons of milk just to get through it all. Sometimes, even, you start to get sick of having Raisin Bran all the time, so you buy a box of Lucky Charms, then some Cookie Crisp, then some Cheerios and Honey Bunches of Oats, and pretty soon those 6 leftover boxes are forgotten in the dusty corners of your pantry until you uncover them a year later. Finally, you’re in the mood for Raisin Bran again - but guess what? They’ve expired.

Sometimes what we try to do is go in without a shopping cart or basket. Carts are fun. He likes to mount himself and roll across the grocery store and I like to roll my eyes. We make a good team. We’ll avoid the disaster with the stacked cans of Batman SpaghettiO’s and the out-of-control shopping cart while at the same time limiting what we can pick up while we’re shopping. It requires us to only grab what we can carry. The cart provides an opportunity to pick up whatever looks interesting or is contained within a shiny package. It’s not a big hassle to buy it, so we might as well. Lately, though, we’ve managed to carry a lot between the two of us - garlic bread, various flavors of Hot Pockets, topped with ice cream, a box of cookies, some Raga muffins, bananas, milk, and three boxes of General Mills cereal.

Again with the cereal. Last month our grocer was doing some sort of deal with General Mills - three boxes gets you a gallon of milk. Yet, when we’re in the self-checkout line and our free gallon of milk doesn’t pop out of the coupon machine, we still get these three boxes of cereal knowing full well that we’ll have to buy another gallon to get through them. We eat through cereal fast. We eat through everything fast, except canned food, lunch meat, peanut butter and jelly. Every time we buy bread it expires before we’re even halfway through it. It’s sort of like getting sick of Raisin Bran after four boxes.

And why is it always junk food? I was hoping that this no-cart deal would get us in and out quickly, and that our “extra weight” would be provided by a bag of apples instead of a pint of ice cream. A bag is easier to carry, right? I was hoping this brilliant idea would improve our eating habits. Instead we continue to consume our fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt, but end up eating flavored marshmallows and chocolate pies as side dishes.

Is this what apartment life is like? You move in with your boyfriend and suddenly become broke, only able to afford, it seems, food that will kill you quickly? I keep telling myself maybe if I didn’t have a $777.08 lab bill looming over my head, maybe if I had a better-paying job, maybe if I stopped buying so many books…. But you know what? Maybe the real reason is because at my supermarket I’m saving 20% less than at other supermarkets. Thanks a lot.

Better Than Life

One of those things that I’ve heard throughout my life but never really understood was this: “Things can’t get better for us, but the world can be a better place for our children and grandchildren.” Really? That soon? I don’t think the world will ever be good for you. You have to make the world good in order to find the good. Be the good. Saying “the world can be a better place” sort of implies that the world will just magically be good, that your kid will be born and everything wonderful will somehow get stuck to his sleeve (please, no unicorns). In any case, my world is probably really great. There’s hunger and poverty and theft and cheating, lying, war, death, misunderstandings… But there has always been. I’m not sure why anyone thinks we can defeat these problems. But in addition to those things, there’s also love, laughter, happiness, smiles, hand-holding, foot massages, deodorant, light switches, tennis shoes, envelopes, self-stick stamps, and even the sun is still burning. I’d like to see an activist say something positive some day.

« Previous ·