I'll Come Around to See You Once In a While

A man and his granddaughter at the orchard.

I had a great night tonight. The guy came over to eat. I made enchiladas, rice, beans, de gallo, guacamole and we drank some Mexican beer. Stinky was here for dinner before she went to her youth group, so they got to know each other a little better. Of course, when I say "they got to know each other a little better", I mean they bonded some more by talking about me like I wasn't there and both doubted that I will start swimming laps this Winter, like I keep saying I will. I'm not sure I like this kind of bonding one bit.

On a little different note, Facebook has been good for watching my daughters' relationship progress from a distance. Here is a little exchange I happened to stumble upon on Stinky's Facebook page:

Stinky's status update:

Glow stick night games!! That's what's up!

Coadster's comment:

• • 
  • That's what's up? Please stop saying that! For everyone's sake :D
• 
  
• Stinky's response:
  
  
  • 

    I'm finna punch chuu in da face!
• 
  
• Coadster's:
• 
  
  • 

    If I were home right now, I'd slap you!

    
    
  • a
  • 
    
  • Stinky's: I'd karate chop the shit outta youuu! :)

    
    
  • 

    Coadster's: I'm sooooo scared! NOT :D

    
    
  • 

    Stinky's: Love youuu!
• 
  

So, um. Yeah. I'd say we're really getting our money's worth out of Facebook these days. Where else can you have these kinds of meaningful exchanges with your kin?

No One Knew Me, No One Knew Me

Another recycled photo of me in pigtails in white with my cousins wearing their best disco shirts.

What the hell. I guess I'll just talk about Facebook again. As I've said before, I both love and get annoyed with it. I don't really even know a lot of my "friends". People ask me to friend them, and if we share other contacts, I usually just do it. I moved around a lot and sometimes I don't remember all the people I've worked with, lived by or waited on. So, there are a lot of people I may or may not know asking me to play Mafia Wars or accept their Little Green Plants, or go to their musical events. Sometimes it all gets a bit too much for me and I stay off of Facebook unless I get a message or someone comments on my shit.

I have a hard time staying mad at Facebook, however. For one thing, it is physically impossible for me to carry a grudge, for another, it has also been really great for me by reestablishing old friendships and staying connected with current friends and family. I'm not the best at calling or emailing people, so I can use my 15 minute breaks at work or my lunch to wish people happy birthdays, "like" their photos or links and comment on their status updates.

This week Facebook has been really weird for me. I found the friend who's parents owned the acreage where Coadster and I got into that horse and buggy accident when she was a baby. I'll talk more about that tomorrow. Tonight, though? Tonight I got a request from my best friend when I lived in Chicago.

My mom died right before Halloween when I was in fifth grade. Shortly after that, we moved from Arizona to live in a suburb on the Southside of Chicago with my aunt and uncle who apparently found it very difficult to be nice to us. I really needed a friend and I found one in Cindy. She was the only other nerdy, book reading girl like me in my new school.

At one point, she asked me to tell her my favorite book and she would read it and tell me what she thought. She told me hers, but it was Harriet the Spy and I had already read it. I told her the title of my favorite book at the time. When she came back from the library, she said she couldn't find it anywhere. I asked her if she checked with a librarian and she said, "Yes, but she looked through the card catalog and said they didn't have a book called Tequila Mockingbird anywhere in the library." after I told her the real title of my favorite book was To Kill a Mockingbird, she read it and loved it as much as I did. We were friends until I moved to Iowa right before ninth grade and I hadn't seen or heard from her since. I guess Facebook and I can still hang out together after all.

For useless Twisting of Our Then New Technology

Here is some roadwork.

Do you ever find yourself searching for something on the web? You stalk people on Facebook, peruse blogs, Google shit you don't really care about. You're not even sure what you want. A connection, a sign, the answer to a question you don't even know how to ask? You find yourself frustrated, because out of your hundreds of Facebook "friends", there isn't one who has posted any new photos or had a witty comment thread that went on for hours and stopped making sense about fifteen comments ago.

You are aware that you are a stalker. A voyeur into other people's lives. Not for any scary or violent reasons, you're just nosy. You want to know what other people do, what they think, how they feel about everything. Why not? You put your life out there for public view. It's only fair.

Because you've had this conversation with your friends, especially your single friends, you know you're not alone. No one bats an eye when someone talks about their web stalking habits. Okay, some people do....But you don't. Isn't it only natural? Before the web, there were neighbors and communities spreading the word about people's lives. You chalk it up to the human fear of living in a vacuum.

Cause I Couldn't Bear to See What I Might See

So, I know I talk about Facebook way too much, but it's such a weird thing for me. As I've said before, I moved around so much when I was younger, and I suck at emailing and calling people, so I never got to see what happened to most of the people I knew when I was younger....Until now.

I think I've also told you before that after Coadster and I were in that horse and buggy accident when she was a baby, I've had some memory loss. It's hard to know if the things I've forgotten, especially from high school and directly after, are from the accident, or a lot of me blocking out some really bad times in my life. Either way, Facebook has been bringing it back to me a little. And it's been interesting.

Last week, my friend Jim sent me a message through Facebook asking for my address so he could send me something he found. I gave it to him and yesterday when I got home from work, there was an envelope with that Deadwood photo booth strip (circa 1984/85) posted above inside it.

I don't remember taking those pics at all. He said he found it in a box of old photos at his parents house. I vaguely remember the other girl. She was a year younger than me and we hung out together almost every day for about a month before she moved to Madison and I never saw her again. I have no idea who the Tony Orlando looking guy is and nobody on Facebook has been able to help me with that either. Nice 70's stache, though.

Also last week, a girl I went to high school with got on Facebook. I liked her a lot and we both went to college here together too. She wrote this on my wall:

Churlita, I'm thinking about h.s. alot tonight, missing h.s. friends, and remembering the Anne Boelyn(spelling?) report we did for Cor-key Ste-vens. How did we ever get away with that!

I responded:

Wow, A. You are waxing nostalgic. Ha ha. I'm not sure I remember the report, but if I know myself, I bet I probably felt the need to talk about her third breast or something equally mature.

And then she commented back:

Churlita, how could you forget, we made her out of playdough and shot her head across the room.

After she wrote that, it did sound a little familiar, but it makes me wonder what other incredibly awesome things like that I did (because that is incredibly awesome) in high school and don't remember. It was actually nice to have a fun memory from high school, since most of mine are so horrible. Because I normally have such great recall, it bugs me when I forget something, but I guess I should have thought about that before I smoked all that pot and drank all that beer in my late teens and early twenties, huh?

If You'll be My Bodyguard, I Can be Your Long Lost Pal

Here is a photo of me in a store in Chinatown in San Francisco from 1986.

So, I was right. I hit the ground running and didn't stop until after 9 tonight. I got home from work, made Coadster food, drove to Stinky's basketball game, watched her team get trounced, went grocery shopping, came home, and made dinner for me and Stinky. I'm hoping I can start slowing down at least a little tomorrow. Also, I really am trying to catch up on my blog reading. I hope to be back to my normal daily reading by tomorrow sometime too.

The other thing is that I got this message back from Neal's brother yesterday:

Hi Churlita,

Yes, I do remember you when I visited home way back then. Neal was pleasantly surprised to get your message. Hope all is going well for you. Now we can keep up on Facebook . Here's Neal's address: some small town in the Napa Valley area. He's doing fairly well these days. Catch up with you more next time.

Neal's Brother

He asked me to be his friend on Facebook, which I thought was very nice. I sent him a note back thanking him for doing that. I guess I hadn't read his note closely enough, because I said something like, I was glad Neal was doing so well. Then when I reread his note, I noticed that he said "fairly well". I certainly wouldn't describe myself as doing fairly well. In general, I think I'm doing really well. So, now I'm thinking I may have responded incorrectly. Oh well. It's not like I can unsend the message. I'm going to do one last photo search to make sure I have all of his pics, write him a little note and send all of that stuff off to Neal, hopefully this weekend. Even if I don't hear anything back from him, at least I tried and got his photos back to him. I'll also hope that fairly well, is better than it sounds.

It's Like a Kind of Torture to Have to Watch the Show

You know how when you mix all of your paints together, they combine to make a weird shit brown color? Well, I'm going to attempt to put a couple of different blog projects together today and see if it turns to shit too. Sound good?

First of all, the Saturday Scavenger Hunt word today was chosen by the Woman With no Regrets. She chose Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. I wasn't quite sure what to do with that, but then I found a friend on Facebook and remembered that I had written a post about him on my old blog. That's when I decided to mix the Scavenger hunt with my imaginary Facebook letters to people with my stealing posts from my old blog. I figured that word reminded me of being a kid and I would just post a photo (unfortunately not taken by me) that also reminded about something from childhood, that just so happened to go with the other two things. Exhale. Okay, so here's the post I wrote in February of 2006 about my friend Jim:


At work yesterday, we got on the subject of Fraggle Rock. You know how it is at work when everyone starts talking about Fraggle Rock, right? And then we had to move straight to The Muppet Show and everyone did their Beaker and The Swedish Chef impersonation and then we all realized what an unhealthy environment the office was in general. Next I wondered how I'd ever get through the next couple of hours until I got another brilliant idea and emailed my friend Rachie and asked her to kindly walk over and shoot me in the head but she didn't oblige. I'm sure she was only thinking of herself and how she couldn't go to prison AND grad school at the same time. She's so selfish.

Once I finally resigned myself to being stuck in the office for the next hour or so, I figured the only way to deal with it was to crack myself up. Talking about The Muppets reminded me of a time about a hundred million years ago when I was walking in downtown Iowa City right as the Spring football game was getting over and there were tons of people headed toward the bars. A guy I worked with at The Mill named Jim must have been walking directly behind me and thought it would be really funny to yell, "Hey, bitch! Excuse me whore." I'm sure he imagined that I would turn around and we'd both have a good laugh in front of all the bumble bee colored Hawkeye fans. He didn't count on my boundless sense of humor (apparently, no one ever does).

I thought it would be funny to pretend I didn't know him and so I ignored him and the huge pack of people were looking at him all shocked like he was the biggest asshole they had ever seen - and that was coming from a bunch of drunk people walking back from a football game. He tried one more time, because maybe I just hadn't heard the first two names he called me. "Slut! Slow down!" Which only made me speed up. He finally had to run to catch up to me so everyone who already shunned him would know that he really did know me and was only being funny. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha fuckin' ha.

"Oh my god. You are so mean," Jim said when he caught up to me. "You really are a bitch. I never wanted to tell you this before because it's not very nice, but now you've forced me. You know when you walk, you look exactly like Janice from Animal's band on the Muppet Show. Not your face or hair or anything. It's more the way you guys move. Have you seen how she bobs her head and her hair moves with it? Oh, and she slouches just like you do too. That's what you look like when you walk."

So, now every once in a while when I'm walking down the street and I catch my reflection in a store window, I think, "Fuck. I really do look like Janice from Animal's band when I walk." I guess Jim had the last laugh on that one. Although, he moved to Chicago a long time ago and doesn't know I still do that so maybe we'll just call it a draw.

I Was Working as a Waitress in a Cocktail Bar

Here is my friend Jeff's profile picture on Facebook. It could possibly be the best profile pic ever.

Tonight I'm going to start this new thing. Who knows if I'll ever finish it, but I like to at least start things. So, I'm still obsessing over Facebook. If you'd like to tell me I need a life, you'll have to get in line, and believe me, it's longer than you can imagine. The thing that's so crazy about Facebook, is how many people from almost every part of my past are on it. I told my friend K. she should get on it, and then a friend of hers from high school emailed her about it, and once she did, she realized they had a whole group just for people from her high school class.

So, the thing. Remember I said I was going to start a thing? Okay, what I really want to do, is write little notes to each of these people (some I haven't spoken to in well over twenty years) and tell them the things I remember about them, or miss about them or the thing I got from them that really made a difference in my life. Yes, I know. Actually doing that, would be weird and possibly creepy. So, I decided to take a person here or there and write all those things about them here on my blog, where they probably won't ever see it. Is it still weird and creepy? Yes, but hopefully they'll never find out.

The first one I'm going to write about is my friend Jeff. Ready?

Dear Jeff,

I can't remember the first time I met you. I knew your sister Tam and then when I moved back from California, we started hanging out and along with our friend Lia, were almost inseparable for a few years there. We had a class together, taught by the most boring man I've ever met. We were both at about the same spazzy, ADD levels, so we decided to take turns going to class and then sharing notes. Except, you never went, so I would go and share my notes with you and then you'd lame-out and finally, I just went all the time and gave you my notes. I couldn't even be annoyed with you.

Hey, remember that one time they had the Kurt Vonnegut hoax? I don't think he lived in town anymore, but he came back to visit a lot. Then there were suddenly fliers all over town that he was going to give a reading on the Pentacrest. We skipped our classes and hung around for a couple of hours, before we and however many other hundreds of people realized we had been duped and Kurt wasn't showing. We both appreciated the prank and you said next time you were going to do one, but you'd tell everyone that Judy Blume was going to read from Are You There God? It's Me Margaret instead. I told you I'd still skip classes for that and you told me I better.

You were also there the time I swallowed mace. Earlier in the day, my friend Mary Beth, showed me her key chain and asked me if I wanted some Binaca. Then later that night when we were really drunk at the Foxhead, I was thinking that I hadn't tried Binaca in a long time and sprayed what turned out to be mace directly into my mouth. Yeah. Tears instantly came out of every pore and orifice on my face. Craig was tending bar and there was a cute girl ahead of me, so I knew I was never going to get a glass of water from him. I went outside where it was 20 below zero, and you followed. You tried to act all concerned, but the second you saw that I was not only fine, but laughing through my tears, you said, "Oh thank god. Because I didn't want you to see me laughing my ass off if you were really hurt." I was fine 10 minutes later and then someone drove us to Donutland in Coralville where you continued to tease me about it for the rest of the night while we ate chocolate fudge donuts.

We both graduated in December of 1990. I think you, and Mary Beth Eastwood and I were all putting our English BA's to good use slinging coffee for minimum wage. At that point, we lived across the street from each other and you and Mary Beth used to come over in the afternoon and lament our joblessness together. We used to sing "Don't You Want Me" to our potential employers at the top of our lungs on my back steps.

The last time I saw you, was when you came to town shortly after I split from my husband. I told you why, and you said, "I knew it had to be something bad. You usually put up with more shit than anyone I know." I'm sure it was true. My girls were three and five, and you had never met them before. You got them so spazzed and riled up, I didn't think I'd ever get them to sleep after your visit.

When your sister came to town a few years ago, she talked me into riding the last day of RAGBRAI with her. You just wrote on my wall and told me you were coming to visit me next Summer. I can't wait to see what kind of crazy, spastic shit you'll get me and my daughters into then.

Love,

Churlita