Those Forgotten

There's so many people I"ve lost touch with in my life that I miss. People I worked with, people I hung out with, people who made me laugh and people who saved my life. Here are some I wish I could get in touch with:

Carrie Brill - you were my guardian angel in Memphis, Tennessee. I envied your bohemian lifestyle and carefree attitude towards life. Your trip across the country went terribly awry after a one-night-stand ended up a serious relationship. My favorite moment; you were working smoking on a crowded Friday night, and came out of the kitchen with a huge tray of food and then CRASH! You dropped it. Instead of getting flustered, you stood there and laughed. And when I came out of the kitchen with a huge tray in the non-smoking dining room, I saw your mess, started to laugh, and dropped my tray, too. We both stood there, in two crowded dining rooms with irate customers laughing at each other.

Brandon Metheny, the grill cook with the devil in his pants - I never thanked you for the day you emptied out the kitchen and chased my stalker out of the parking lot. You probably saved my life; you definately saved me from getting a black eye, which would have been hard to explain to the management. I hope you never cut your hair, even though they kept threatening to fire you. I hope your followed your dream to be a musician and got out of that kitchen.

Tammy Kelley - I owe you the biggest apology ever. You were the friend who had my back at the lowest time of my life; if not for you, I might have ended up dead in the woods. You were strength when I didn't have any. I allowed our friends to treat you horribly. I should have been more mature. I should have not gotten involved in petty girl crap. I should have asked you to stand in my wedding. If it makes you feel better, I ended up divorced. You really didn't miss much. I hope things worked out for you. I hope you found happiness.

Faye, the waitress with Rod Stewart hair - you were my mother in Memphis. You allowed me to vent, you took me under your wing, and you were always there to listen. I hope hormone therapy helped you; I know how bad you felt.

Kathy Corkern - You pretended to be flaky, but I knew you were always much smarter than you let on. You were the most tolerant person I ever knew, long before I came to appreciate tolerance for what it can accomplish. I hope you got your job teaching art. You really should teach a lesson on balloon animals. I miss you lots, and hope your marriage is as great as mine.

These are just five of many, many people that I wish I'd kept in touch with. Sacha & Stacey Swenson, Billy the linebacker, Ashton Williams, Jack Montgomery, Kevin & Jason, everybody at Cracker Barrel #36 in Memphis, a few from #138 in Slidell (I still know all my letters & numbers, by the way), people who made me what I am, I miss you all, and wish I'd been as good a friend to you as you were to me. Have a great New Year, where ever you are.

A Reminder

It's so easy to forget, nestled in my my snug, warm little home, that there are thousands of people in Louisiana who are suffering through this Christmas. But after months of "Please Help Katrina Survivors," the rest of the country has become weary. They've given millions of dollars and tons of merchandise, so Louisiana should be okay by now, right?

I visited home last weekend, and I am sad to say, it's still not close to normal. Piles of debris are still lined up on the sides of the streets. The twisted pine trees serve as a constant reminder; Mother Nature waits in silence, until she's had enough of the human race's pollution and selfishness. The work has only just begun.

I know in my heart that it is wrong to shut out the pain and suffering of these people, but I've given and given until I just don't want to hear about it anymore. It's never enough. If I gave up everything I owned, there would still be more need, so much more than anyone can afford to give. This year in particular, I am more aware of people's needs than ever before. But for the sake of my own sanity, I have to push it away, just for a little while, so I can appreciate what I DO have. I need to snuggle up to my daughter in our nice, warm house, under our pile of non-American-Red-Cross issued blankets, eat a bag of chips without regard to the thousands without food, just for ONE DAY.

Tomorrow there will still be need. Tomorrow I will have the resolve to face it without a sense of hopelessness.

But today, I just want to be selfish.

Christmas Card Envy

How do people do it? Every day the amount of Christmas Cards in my mailbox grows exponentially, and I look at the stack of half-addressed cards on my kitchen table and go into a guilt kvetch. The worst ones are when you get a card from somebody and realize, "CRAP! They're not on my list!" Then you have to scrounge around the house for an extra card (because you're always ONE CARD SHORT), but to no avail. And then it's back to the store to fight the other last-minute shoppers to grab one package of cards (which will ultimately get lost before next year) so that you can make sure everyone you know gets some form of correspondence.

But the real question is, why didn't I keep up with these people throughout the year? People I worked with, old friends, family... Sure, I had a baby this year, but some of them have two and three children of their own, and they managed to get a card to me already, smiling baby pictures included.

And let's not even talk about the Christmas letter... if you do it one year, it becomes a tradition, and you can't break tradition... it's unlucky. So I must sit down and try to think of something clever and witty, but when the pressure is on, I crack. Two days after I send the letters out, it will come to me.

"Damn, I wish I had written that down!"

Underage Blogging

I think blogging is an awesome idea for the next generation. To have freedom to speak your mind and actually have people interested, that's a great thing. Blogging is an outlet; everyone has something to say. And just like the radio, if you don't like it, don't go to that site.

But do teenagers have the right to blog? Should their parents have the right to tell them that they can or can't post their thoughts to the Internet? Definately a sticky situation; in the role of a parent, my views on this have changed. I don't want pictures of my daughter floating on the Internet for creepy child molestors to peruse. Nobody is safe on the Net; IP addresses are fairly easy to locate with the slightest bit of computer knowledge. Like you, reading right now, I can track your IP address. But I don't. And most people won't. But as a mother, you worry about that kind of stuff.

And as a mother, you also worry about the mental state of your child. But the Internet is a good place to figure out what's going on in your kid's head. If they're posting an online diary, they make it pretty easy for you to check up on them. So do you tell them to take it down? Or do you give them that outlet, and use it against them later? My mother read my diary when I was growing up; I hated her at the time, but I'm sure I gave her good reason to do it. I was running with a really bad crowd, and she was worried for my safety & well-being.

But blogging makes it incredibly easy to check up on your kids. There's no lock to pick. In essence, it's simply a means of communication. If you read something on your kid's site that you don't like, maybe you should take a look at yourself as a parent and wonder why they didn't share it with you to begin with. Use it as a tool to help you understand your child better. But don't try to stifle their views; in a few short years, they'll be gone, and that chance to communicate will be long gone, too.

Chivalry is NOT Dead, Just On Vacation

A response from a previous post got me thinking about chivalry in our society today. Men seem to be caught in a politically correct quandry. Basically, if you do practice good manners, you're considered old-fashioned. You probably still live at home with your Mom, drive a Ford pick-up truck, talk softly and labor with your hands. If you don't, you're a high-powered arrogant ass who has no regard for women or an ignorant redneck from the sticks whose mom lives in a trailer. What's a poor guy to do? What the hell do women expect from you, anyway?

In the case of my husband, chivalry prevailed, sort of. On our second date, he opened all the doors for me (and still does to this day, most of the time). I was impressed by a telephone conversation he had with his mother, very polite, very caring. When I appeared cold, he adjusted the air conditioning in his truck (Ford) without me having to utter a single word.

And when he took a sip out of his water bottle, he spit on me.

Not like hocking a loogy or anything, more like a cherub in a fountain. Spit water directly at me. I was in shock. Here's this guy, only the second time he's seen me in his life, who had opened the door and complimented me, talked with his mother and was acutely aware of my comfort factor, only to complete the destroy the whole illusion by spitting on me.

I figured, "What the hell?" and stuck around to see where it went from there. I figured any guy with the cahones to spit on a girl he barely knew as a means of impressing her might have a new perspective on life that I hadn't thought of. And what do you know? I married him....

Working Mom Meltdown

There are a lot of days that I leave my house with frizzy hair, smeared makeup (if any), and no keys. It's the plight of a mother to always be frazzled, but add "Working" in front of it, and it's a whole new ballgame. So it is with great wonder that I observe some of the women when I drop my daughter off at daycare. How do they get so polished? How do they keep it all together? Some of them have two and three kids, and still maintain perfect French manicures. It makes me feel inadequate, unorganized and at times, horribly alone. Until today...

As I pull up, I notice a beautiful, skinny blonde in crisp business attire talking to a walking Baby Gap ad. This little boy had cherubic cheeks a la Norman Rockwell, but the scowl was pure rotten three-years-old. Mommy was trying to coax him into the building, but his Baby Timberlands were glued firmly and solidly to the concrete sidewalk.

"C'mon, Jeffy, Mommy has to go to work," cajoled the blonde, her perfect anchorwoman hair framing a sweet and caring expression. She held her hand out to Jeffy, but Jeffy was not the least bit interested. His chin was now almost hidden from view in a perfect preschool pout, head down, lip even lower.

"C,mon, Jeffy, NOW." The tone a little more firm, Mommy reached over and tried to pull him by the hand, but Jeffy yanked his hand away and tucked them high beneath his armpits. I could see the tantrum bubbling like lava in a volcano. Mommy was completely oblivious to the impending doom, still thinking she could persuade little Jeffy to bend to her will.

"JEFFREY, I said NOW!" She grabbed his elbow (since his hands had disappeared), and that's when it happened. Bubbling, up & up, until BOOM! And out comes the ear-splitting screech of a seriously pissed-off three-year-old:

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" And that was follwed with a machine gun volley of "NO's." "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, etc."

I watched with intense fascination. Here was Deborah Norville's twin sister, a portrait of grace and sophistication, the woman with her cake, the ability to eat it, and not even gain an ounce while doing it. Lincoln Navigator, Prada bag, Botox smile. I know she would impart to me some ounce of Mommy wisdom so that someday, I, too, might be able to get it together and balance it all effortlessly.

And that's when she picked up the screaming toddler, tucked him under her arm like a linebacker headed for the in-zone, and plowed straight through the daycare door.

I couldn't help it. I laughed. And it made me feel so much better. Even perfect people aren't perfect.

Door Etiquette

At least twice a day I get caught in some kind of door predicament. In an effort to be polite, I often hold the door for those behind me, or if an elderly person is walking towards the door, I will try to walk faster to open it for them. But this can sometimes lead to some pretty awkward situations:

Door Limbo: When you open the door outwards in an attempt to let the outside person in, but they stand there and hold the door for you. You go. No, you go. No, YOU go. Then you both try to go at the same time and the whole scenario repeats itself.

Door Stop: You open the door for one person, and a barrage of people come through.

Door Jacker: A woman opens the door for an older man, who takes offense to it and decides to stop and hold the door for you instead.

Elevator Door: The doors are closing, closing, closing when you see someone dashing for the crack, and you struggle to press the right button but end up pressing the DOOR CLOSE button instead. Oops. Sorry.

Fat Lady In A Little Doorway: A rotund person tries to hold the door open for you by leaning against it, but their, um, ROTUNDNESS sticks out and prevents you from making it through without rubbing up against them in some way, which results in a dirty look. Like you were trying to be perv with a fat chick.

Bird Flu

I am not one who is easily scared by the media. After all, I AM the media, and I know that some stories are exagerrated for sensationalism. But this constant barrage of bird-flu stories is starting to get to me.

Last year it was sharks. Anybody who swims in the Gulf of Mexico is going to be eaten alive by some monster great white. I grew up on the Gulf of Mexico; the only thing that ever bit me was a jellyfish. So I looked at the attention as just another slow news day.

But the flu... it's just the flu, right? An annoying cold that only kills old people with weakened immune systems and poor children with ignorant parents. How many times in your life have you had the flu? So what's the big freaking deal? How does it actually kill someone? Then I read an article in National Geographic this weekend, and suddenly, I am SCARED. Not for my own life so much, but I have an infant daughter in a ethnically diverse daycare, and it only takes one traveling person to bring this flu to Houston and it will spread like wildfire.

The big deal is that, with a new strain of flu, the body has no immunity to this particular strain. The flu that you get every year is basically a mutation of the prior year, so your body recognizes parts of it, adapts, and you blow green snot while your immune system figures out how to kill it. Few days of missed work, lots of hot tea, toast, and warm blankies. But when a brand-new flu strain arrives, there is nothing for your immune system to recognize; it basically sends a barrage of white blood cells to your lungs, which acts like "trucks of dynamite," until your lungs fill with fluid, you suffocate slowly and die. There is no cure, and it usually happenes within a week that you contract the virus.

Until scientists can isolate the virus and develop a vaccine, it will continue to spread. The big deal is this; will we have enough vaccine if or when this creepy crap starts to spread? A few years ago, I'd just shrug and say, "Well, I'll just play the odds. If God wants me, he'll take me." But now, I have a baby to think of. If I had to watch my daughter suffer this way, I would be ready to go with her. The thought makes my heart stop.

She goes for her nine month checkup tomorrow. She will be getting a flu shot, and this year, I will, too.

Websites

Websites are a major pain in the arse. I put mine up shortly after January 1st of this year, and it's STILL not finished. How do these other designers find time to keep updating constantly? And I was so proud of myself for keeping it dynamic, but I'm too lazy to even type out a dumb little text file or format a few pictures....

Cody

Last week, a sixteen year old boy was struck by a van and died. He was riding to school on his motorcycle, and the van decided to make a left turn onto the street he was riding on. He was thrown from the bike and apparently broke his neck on impact, dying instantly. The van had eight Hispanic workers in it who fled the scene at first, but then returned.

There are two entrances into my neighborhood, and that morning I took the other one, missing this scene. Unfortunately, many of my neighbors didn't. It happened around 7:30am, right about the time everyone is heading out. Many of my neighbors had their small children in their cars. Here at Christmastime, it truly put a damper on the spirit. Later that day, stuffed animals and cards started to appear. By the end of the day, an ornate gold cross was added to the scene. The next morning, that cross was gone.

(What kind of bastard would steal a cross from an accident site?)

His name was Cody. His ghost lingers there; none of us can pass the site without wondering how it could happen, and in a sick way, thanking God that it wasn't one of our own children.

Blank Slate

Today I am faced with one of the hardest design challenges of my entire career. I have an ad, the size of a business card, to be designed for one of the bitchiest, pickiest, and most critical clients ever.

Me.

I finally made the commitment to advertise, (and when I say commitment, I'm talking CONTRACT, legal & binding) and I only have one shot to get it right because once it's done, it's DONE for an entire year and there is no way to change it. There's only one other designer with an ad, and it's very simple, small, and tastefully done. My ad will be bigger and fall in front of hers, so the pressure is immeasurable. Do I go for techey, or classic? Color or white space? Do I list everything I do, or just put my website & hope they'll come? ARRGGGHHH! Add the pressure that the other three designers here are looking ("Sure, Kristie, it looks great!" & then they turn to each other with that OH MY GOD look), and I really am starting to understand why other designers send in a blank slate & tell me to design their ad. It seems like sacriliege; letting another designer design YOUR ad, but I swear, it suddenly makes sense! Of course, his will never be perfect either, but at least when someone comments on it you can be catty & say, "Oh my God! That piece of crap? I was just SO BUSY with all my REAL work that I let some poor little designer do it for me...."

Funny. That poor little designer is me!

Traffic Vultures

On my way home yesterday, I was detained in some hellish traffic on a side road. As I got closer to the flashy lights, I expected to see a ten car pile-up; all that was there was a broken Civic and THREE tow trucks.

I'm not real good at math, (that's why I became an artist), but I'm pretty sure it doesn't take three trucks to tow a tiny little Honda. But there they were, side-by-side-by-side, blocking the turning lane and causing traffic to back up all the way to I-45. That's when I got mad.

I've seen them before, in the strip mall parking lots, congregated together in little flocks, just waiting for some poor, unsuspecting motorist to screw up. God help you if you're in their way when the call comes; I've almost been flattened more times than I can count in their hurry to get out of the parking lot. Circling, circling, waiting to devour the remains of some busted compact car or wounded SUV. Completely oblivious to the flow of traffic (or lack of) that surrounds them.

I watched with growing agitation as they stood by, waiting for the poor unsuspecting motorist to finish her cell phone conversation. Do they argue over who gets to peck first? Do they quote prices in a little pecking war?

Do they HAVE to block the damn turning lane???

Observation On An Off-Ramp

There's a vagrant standing there with the standard vagrant sign, "Will Work For Food." A man in an SUV reaches out of the window and hands the vagrant some money. Immediately, the scruffy-looking man returns to the side of the road, gathers his backpack and plastic bag, and walks over to the overpass. He tucks his cardboard sign admist the gnarled vines along the side of the overpass and sets off walking in the direction of Wal-Mart.

Coffee break? Or unspoken act of courtesy for the next vagrant at the same overpass?

And what would happen if somebody stole it?