The Art of Forgetting Your Cooking

An embellished autobiography of a high desert princess, updated infrequently.

[overthinkingforfunandprofit]

Fury Road and It’s Amazing Grannies

Guys, It’s 3am and I wanna talk about old ladies.

I’m on the later side of 20. I’m still young. But I’m starting to realize I won’t be forever. I’m getting grey hairs. Wrinkles. And even though I’ve never considered myself vain, it started to scare me.

Because really any woman can tell you, society is fucking EAGER to tell you what an atrocity an older woman is. And sadly, older women, women who should be role models, tend to further this narrative even more. Asking a woman her age is treated like a sin. We treat getting carded at the liquor store like a tragedy. Any woman on her birthday will joke that she’s “turning 29 again”. After years and years the message gets pretty clear. A woman becoming old is shameful and sad.

So it started to get to me. Before my beau and I went to see Mad Max, I was honestly venting about how disappointed I was in myself for fearing aging, but how I felt like I was becoming more irrelevant by the day. After all, there’s no stories for old women. No role models.

THEN I SAW THESE BAD BITCHES.

GUYS YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THESE OLD BIRDS MEAN TO ME.

Because HOLY SHIT.

Old Women who look badass.

Old Women who are important.

Old Women who are not a joke.

Old Women who are fighters.

Old Women who are survivors.

Old Women who keep old knowledge alive.

Old Women who protect other women.

Old Women who are respected.

OLD WOMEN

OLD WOMEN

OLD WOMEN

We have so much representation for young, beautiful women kicking ass. Even so much representation of tired old men kicking ass. But to see a grizzled, leathery, tough, wise old woman on screen, as a hero? As a role model?

Mad Max was an absolute masterpiece, but that was the part that made me want to weep with joy the most.

[lilylilymine]

they were very important to me too. VUVALINI ROCK!

[justgot1]

I agree, the vuvalini were the coolest badasses in that whole movie and I would LOVE an entire FRANCHISE of them and their stories.

Also, don’t fear it – that whole “29 and holding,” getting upset at being carded bullshit lasts until, oh, 40 or so, and then you don’t give a shit. If the ‘older’ women you know are angsting over aging, you’re not looking old enough. Level up to the ladies kissing 50 and above, you will find a remarkable lack of fucks. 

[travellyr]

Hell, if you meet the right women, we stop giving fucks at thirty.  I was fortunate enough to have those 40+ and 50+ no-fucks women as friends in my late teens and early twenties, and to have a mother who treated aging as the normal, unremarkable everyday process that it is, and is no more worth getting upset over than weather.  Sure, sometimes snow is a four-letter-word, but sometimes it’s sunny, or the rain is beautiful, or the lightning takes your breath away.

I too love this movie.  I love Max, and Furiosa, and the Sisters, and the Wretched, and the Milkers.  I love the Vuvalini.  They are badass and they are survivors. They have learned how to live and how to do it well.  You can tell that they have decided what is really important to them, and they’ve found ways to not lose sight of those important things.

I am thirty-two.  I REFUSE to allow my oldest aunt, a card-carrying “29 and holding” member despite her having three school-age grandchildren, to pluck my gray hairs.  Twice this has meant fending her off in restaurants with the silverware. Being young was HARD for me and the years between about 13 and 25 actively hurt.  I was not bullied or abused, I had friends, my family loved me, and it STILL hurt.  Being young has a lot of uncertainty and the anxiety attached to it.  It has powerlessness attached to it.  You haven’t really figured out who you are and where you fit, and you can’t even fully grasp how much you don’t know yet or how disorienting that is because you have nothing else to compare it to.  This is your life, and it is all you know.

It’s all a matter of perspective, and the wonderful thing about aging is that it GIVES you perspective.  This is why the fields where our fucks grow are generally barren by age 50.  We live, we laugh, we suffer, and in suffering and joy we learn to decide what truly is and is not important to us.

I have since lived through and dealt with life events that are generally considered Tougher Shit Than Adolescence, such as caring for relatives with chronic illness, dementia, or both, but high school and college hold the years that still top my list of most difficult and painful things I have ever done.  Sure, my mother has cancer, my father has Parkinson’s with dementia, my grandfather died and my aunt is blaming us all for it, I am mentally ill (seasonal affective disorder and anxiety disorder), and I am a first-year teacher with all that entails, ALL AT ONCE, but hey, at least I’m not 17 any more.

I don’t mean to make light of those things, because I don’t want to imply that it should be easy to deal with chronic illness, or mental illness, or the chaos that is spending five days a week attempting to drag 160 adolescents into higher orders of thinking.  It’s not easy.  I don’t want to imply I’m making light of the struggles of people in similar situations.  Those things hurt.  They are not easy to live with or to deal with.  But you know what?  Getting older has been a blessing and a joy, because the bad stuff?  I wouldn’t say it hurts LESS, but it does hurt DIFFERENT, because you learn to deal with it differently.

Being young is hard because life is hard, and when you are young you haven’t learned how to do this whole business of living very well.  You get older, you level up, and life’s boss-fights don’t take the same cost out of you that they used to.  They still cost, mind, and some of them will cost you dearly, but you will be able to survive things that would have utterly destroyed you had they happened when you were younger.

I love my gray hairs; I call them highlights.  It’s weird getting older (I have reading glasses), and sometimes scary (what are relationships I can’t even), but it’s also awesome.  I’m so glad we have badass older women in media- Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Julie Andrews… and the post-apocalyptic biker gang, the Vuvalini.  Being thirty, I think, was the best year in my life so far, but the future is looking up.

After all, I’m going to grow up to become a Vuvalini.

[travellyr-waffles]

Things are looking up for me.  I spent two hours talking to a potential new friend, my bedroom is clean, I'm starting a new career, the depression is lifting (which is why my bedroom is clean).  I'm wanting to write again- not just,, "I want to write," but actually having ideas again.  (Step 2 would be managing to remember them outside of during meetings.)

The more things look up for me the more I become saddened and frustrated by my roommate's inertia and my inability to talk to her about it without feeling either like I'm under Chinese water torture or like a bully.  I can't tell any more if she's depressed or lazy and depressed.  I lean towards option 2, because on her better days she's always very cheerful about all the stuff she didn't do and/or that other people did for her.  I realize we are two different people, and that things that are different are not the same, but "things I didn't do" is this sucking maw of inadequacy for me, not a source of pride.

Then she seems depressed when I get a new rug.  She also ate my bubblegum ice cream I was saving- wandered into my room with the container and a spoon, chatted, and took a long bath, just her and my bubblegum ice cream.  I did not say anything because I didn’t even want to start to go there.  Bully, right?  IDK how this happened.

[travellyr-waffles]

Today I recounted the synopsis of the personalities gathered in a minibus in the French Countryside looking at Gothic architecture, and was told I should go into standup comedy.  Yesterday I completed a bulletin board and display case and accidentally knelt on the metal track the glass doors go in.  That hurt like crazy- kids, do not pinch nerves between steel and bone.  What it did not do was bruise.  Why does the excruciatingly painful stuff not usually bruise?

I am excited to start the school year, excited, tired already, and I feel like I have less idea of what I'm doing now than I did when I applied for this gig.

PS: Saw Guardians of the Galaxy.  I heart Groot.

[travellyr-waffles]

BEHOLD, I AM VICTORIOUS.  The carpets are clean, the laundry is put away, the trash is out, the sheets are freshly changed.  I spent all day in a workshop meeting on a super-hard torture device disguised as a lab stool, and then I moved all my furniture BACK into the bathroom and shampooed the upstairs carpets.  I even did the stairs.  Thank you, Roommate, for borrowing another rug shampooer.  Thank you, Miranda, for shedding like an OLYMPIAN.  I vacuumed twice Sunday, once again today, and was STILL picking hairballs out of the carpet cleaner.

[travellyr-waffles]

Why I missed yesterday's abstract, in one sentence: I moved all of the furniture and found out the carpet shampooer was broken.

Today's summary: I observed teachers taking online safety quizzes, and then spent a few hours with a die cutter.  Much walking was involved, as these two points are not close.

[travellyr-waffles]

Today I ran around with social obligations.  It was busy, and fun, and not too much got done.  Part of this was coordinating a water hose fight with the 7-and-under set, and I am now vaguely sticky.  I have been told that the stickiness of four-year-olds is contagious.

[travellyr-waffles]

Nothing special about today: errands, some housework, played a card game online.  It was better than yesterday, but yesterday set a very low bar.

I am working, once again, on listing what I did do instead of what I did not do.

So, today I did go on the online CAH clone and play that "At ConBravo, Vash the Stampede will be running a panel on eating a five-pound gummy bear in one sitting."

[travellyr-waffles]

Today was hard.

[travellyr-waffles]

I have reading glasses.  Ten hours before that I embraced a stack of storage boxes.  I was just so happy to be done (and also possibly a bit stoned from all the painting despite the fume hood and mask, but maybe not.  You know me).

[travellyr-waffles]

I realized two things about myself today.  I may have already known, and forgotten, or knew, but couldn't put it to words.

Today I hit snooze as many times as it took to get from 5:45 in the morning to 8 am.  That is a lot of times.  And when I finally did get out of bed, I was resentful.  Not at anything in particular, just at everything.  Free-floating irritation and resentment.  It took me most of the way through my morning to realize why.

I've been depressed lately.  I'm familiar with it, I work around it, depression and I are like coworkers, assuming one coworker gets involved in tasks that have nothing to do with her and in the process drags to a near-halt everything vaguely productive.

Irritation and anger are symptoms of depression, but on the slope of depression, I don't get angry going into it.  I don't feel much of anything except tired going into it.  I get angry when I'm coming back up.  So that's something.

The second thing is that I had a sort of phone-date, which is new and thus gave me anxiety and I punted it from yesterday to today.  Punting also gave me time to talk myself back into it, citing the (true) reasons why I gave this guy my number in the first place: He sounds interesting and I wanted to meet him.  I don't actually want to be dating, but I wanted to meet him.  We talked, and we hung up, and I realized: our major interest areas don't really overlap.  And I LIKED that.  I love talking with other artists and writers, other people in the trade, but those two subjects sit so near to my heart that it's so hard to protect myself from myself in that area.  If you are a creative person whose work intersects with mine, I am comparing myself to you, full stop.  And that's uncomfortable.

Taco-Optometrist is not very good with words, which makes conversation a bit of work, but I like that.  He's not an artist.  He's not a writer.  He reads almost exclusively nonfiction (medical journals, finance, newspapers, travel, and whitewater rafting), and while this means I am searching a bit for conversation, it's safe.  He isn't competition the way authors and artists and even ***ing musicians are in my lifelong internal song of "I'm Not Good As Good As You Why Should I Try."  There is nothing I an compare myself to him with that carries any sort of emotional weight.

I like that.

[travellyr-waffles]

Today I finished spray painting the boxes, but ran out of paint before I finished the lids.  I went out to dinner with my family.  I sent a text message to a stranger.  I fed my uncle's dogs, and ate the sweetest cherry tomatoes I've ever tasted warm off the vine.  I came home to the police in my parking lot, and no notion of what that was about.  I would rather have spent the day on the internet with the cat, and I did spend the entire morning doing just that.

Life is good.  I have to remember to take a step back from the to-do-list and the free-floating anxiety and see that, because I didn't even notice how nice my day was until just now, only what I didn't do.  Life is really good.

[travellyr-waffles]

In this day I have had a lie-in rereading good fic while cuddled up with the cat.  (I hadn't fed her yet.  The cat is always much cuddlier before I feed her.)  Then my mother picked me up and I went out and spray-painted "ART" in bright orange on about sixty boxes and lids, with about sixty more to go, and in the process turned my left arm "fake tan" orange.  I also had lunch with family, ran errands, and sent a message to a taco-loving Indian Optometrist, but the spray-painting was the majority of the time.

In the evening I went to a good friend's birthday, saw an adorable Bollywood movie, and ate tacos and ice cream.  Just got back from that, really.

I am not sure about the Indian Optometrist.  I think I've given up on dating for the eleventh time... but I do want to meet the Indian Optometrist.  My mother says I collect personalities, and she's right.  I like meeting new and interesting people.  Hopefully the optometrist is interesting.

[travellyr-waffles]

I think I'm gonna have to do something different.  To be honest, I am not going to do these in the morning any time in the near future.  But hey, maybe I will.  Maybe, if I do them in the morning, they'll be fiction.  And maybe, when I do them before I go to sleep, they'll be nonfiction.

Today was movies and urine.  My life is never fictional when it comes to urine, and I really wish it were.  Mom and I saw "How to Train Your Dragon 2," then she got a massage and I got a taco and some peaches and some tomatoes, not from the same places.  The tomatoes came with a housekey from my aunt and uncle.  The peaches came with a watermelon.  The tacos came with packets of mild sauce.  Then we went to my grandfather's apartment, which is where the urine comes in.  I mopped his guest bathroom floor with white vinegar.  I used vinegar since that erases the smell at least to human noses, and I mopped it in the first place because that is where his dog pees the most.  We also put on a new duvet cover and dustruffle, but bed linens don't curl my nose hairs the way urine-y vinegar fumes do, so that made less of an impression.

Then we went home, made nachos, and watched "Heat."  Boy that's a weird movie.

[travellyr-waffles]

Yesterday I forgot.  Today I have a sinus headache.  Because of this I didn't realize it was a sinus headache until my mother told me it was.  I just thought my eyeballs were going to pop for no real reason.  Brain compression.  It is a thing.

Despite that I did four loads of laundry, answered messages, went to the gym, went to the school district (more on that later), and discovered my soon-to-be high school has mice in the hallways, or at least, something mouse-sized and very fast.

I went to the school district office today because YESTERDAY I met with my soon-to-be principal, who was very interested in learning that I was to be student teaching at his school.  He was so very interested in this because he had had no idea I was coming until I told him.  After he shared this information I was very interested in it too.  Apparently my certification program is lousy at communicating.

This is pretty typical of education and of bureaucracy in general.  Take note, children: if you want something, follow up.  Call, and if you don't get a call back, show up in person.

[travellyr-waffles]

Today I went to the gym again, ate lunch with my mother, changed shoes, moved two railroad ties across the yard with my mother and brother, and left instead of throwing a tantrum.  Coming home and taking a shower was almost a religious experience.

The spoons situation does not seem to have improved, except I am getting more done so I guess it must have.  Funny.

[travellyr-waffles]

I'm late.  I nearly forgot.  Today my back hurt, right above the sacrum.  I did not do much, which did not help the back.  I did put clothes on and go the gym, which did help.  I'm going again tomorrow, which should help more.  I expect to do more things tomorrow, though I don't really expect the spoon situation to resolve until, like, Friday.

[travellyr-waffles]

This weekend my mother and I took my grandfather's dog to see my grandfather.  Not for the dog, for my grandfather.  He's been pining.  It's a long drive to the VA hospital at American Lake, but we did find a really good Italian restaurant across the street from PLU's campus with GF pasta and outdoor seating that allowed us to bring the dog.  (Yes, we had to bring the dog.)

Saturday we went to Olympia (with the dog) and toured the inside of the Capitol Building (with the dog riding in the basket of my grandfather's walker).  Late in the afternoon we decided to go see Mt. Rainier, and before too long couldn’t see the mountain for the trees.  Have you ever heard of Carbonado, WA?  We hadn't either, but we saw it in the futile attempt to find a west-side viewpoint closer than Puyallup.  The nicest part of the evening was seeing my mother’s cousin for dinner.  We ate takeout in our hotel room with him, my grandfather, and his dog.  We don’t see him very often (the cousin, not the dog, we see the dog a lot), and I keep forgetting how much I like him (the cousin, not the dog).

Sunday, after lunch on a golf clubhouse’s patio (the dog), we took another drive: this time along the coast by Steilacoom to look at a large body of water my grandfather consistently referred to as “the noise.”  Then Mom and I (and the dog) went home.