Some things are best left unsaid

Since this week we had a get-things-off-your-chest week (or rather, day), it seems as good a time as any to jump on a bandwagon I've seen rolling by a few times. I have no idea anymore where I first saw these "Things I wish I could say" lists, but I know Lara's done it and -R-'s done it and Abbersnail's done it... (Who am I missing? NPW? You did this too, right? Sorry to you and anyone else whose lists I'm too lazy to find.)

I'm going to limit my list to five because... well, because it's Friday and I need a Friday Five, but also because if I write any more than that, I'm apt to write things that people who actually read this will wonder about, and then they'll be all "Was that about me?? This one's towards me, right?" So let me just avoid any trouble and say right now: if you're reading this, it's not about you! (If it is about you but I don't know you're reading this, well, then, that's hardly my fault, is it? It is? Oh. Whoops.)

ANYWAY. Five things I wish I could say, or I haven't said, or I really probably shouldn't say.

1. No one wants to hear you sing.
   
   
2. Why aren't any of your pants long enough? I am taller than you are, and MY pants fit! Do you not own a mirror, perhaps?
   
   
3. You really, really don't need to touch me just to get past me in a two-foot-wide hallway. In fact, you don't need to touch me ever. At all.
   
   
4. I'm over it, but I still sometimes feel you owe me an apology for breaking my heart and a thank you for fixing yours.
   
   
5. I know you've got some stuff to work through, but I still wish you'd try harder.

Blog Share 2.0

Hey kids. Guess what today is? You might not have realized that it's Blog Share day, because for some reason, I neglected to mention I would be participating. You know what they say about Blog Share, though: The first rule of Blog Share is you do not talk about Blog Share. Oh. Right. That's Fight Club. Never mind.

Anyway, in case you forgot how this works, the post below was not written by me. It's from another blogger who shall remain anonymous so that she can speak her mind freely. In turn, I've got an anonypost floating around somewhere on the Internet today as well. We did this once before; remember? My guest poster confessed her love for Leonard Nimoy, and I told the Internet all about... well, never mind what I told the Internet all about. It was anonymous for a reason, right?

Today's anonymous poster has some pretty intense and serious things to share, so I'll quit my rattling now and give her the floor. Let's give her a warm welcome. Take it away, guest poster.

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People often fondly discuss how and when they lost their virginity. I listen, laugh or sympathise but, for once, I don't have a witty anecdote of my own to share.

I didn't lose my virginity. Mine was stolen when I was 16 years old, in a brutal and terrifying attack that lasted the best part of 24 hours. The three men who attacked and raped me were never found and whilst I hope they never tortured anyone else in the same way that they did me, I was glad in a way that they were never brought to justice as I don't think I would have coped with reliving what happened in public at a trial.

I didn't really cope anyway. No-one did. I think sometimes it was harder for my parents than it was for me. I wish they had not had to see the state I was in when I was found, or listened as I tried to describe to the police in detail exactly what had happened. It would have been easier for them and in the long run, probably easier for me too, if they had not been there. Because I don't think the attack was the worst of it really, it was later I needed them most.

The attack was terrifying, mostly because I thought they would kill me. A sort of self-preservation instinct set in and I did none of those things you might expect, I didn't scream, struggle or fight back. I just let them do whatever they wanted in the hope that they would let me go. I've read lots of accounts of rape since and I think that this shut-down response is quite common, a way of preserving not only your life but also your sense of self in a situation where you would think you could not.

The real pain came later. After the initial furor was over, there was a sense of relief that I was not pregnant and that physically I was largely all right. My parents could not understand why I did not have the sort of reaction you might expect, I never broke down in tears or clung to anyone. They tried many times to speak to me about it but getting no response retreated back to normal life and familiar routines. My friends didn't know what to say so they avoided me and I couldn't smile and be jolly and pretend nothing had changed so I just shut myself in my room and got on with my schoolwork. There were no counselling sessions, no-one to tell me it was OK to feel the things I did. I felt guilt that I hadn't done more to escape my attackers, I felt revulsion at what they had done to me, I felt grief for the life I had suddenly lost and I was confused, frightened and intensely lonely. I threw myself into my schoolwork, I didn't go out with friends, I just worked and worked and worked. It was a form of therapy really and it did help. I got the highest marks anyone had ever scored in the public examinations I took in my final year at school. I had my picture in the local paper and easily secured a place at a University in the big city. For once I was famous for something positive, I wasn't just the rape victim.

Escaping from my home town was a good move and it was easier for me in the big city where I felt anonymous. I made a friend and together we cooked up the sort of mischief I had enjoyed as a schoolgirl and still do to this day. Emotionally I was fragile but I regained some of my confidence and it is this friend I have to thank for that. She was my saviour. She helped me to accept that whilst what had happened to me could never be changed, it didn't have to determine the course of the rest of my life. She listened to me talk about it, held me in her arms night after night, without any expectation of anything more. She arranged for me to see a counsellor who helped me to develop strategies for dealing with the memories of what had happened. With her unconditional, undemanding love and support my wounds slowly healed and I learnt to live and love again.

I know you will feel revulsion at what happened and feel sorry for the 16 year-old me. But that is not me any more. I no longer need sympathy and understanding. More than 25 years have passed since I was raped. Whilst I know I will always have nightmares, will always bear the physical scars of the assault, it is just one very small fragment of my life, just one part of what makes me what I am today. The only reason I keep this a secret, the reason I am not writing about it on my own blog (although I have considered doing so and may still do so yet) is not because I feel ashamed of or embarrassed about what happened to me, but simply that when I have told people in the past I think it has changed their opinion of me as I am now. And I do not want that to happen to me in blogworld.

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Want to read more anonymous posts? Here's the list of participating blogs (a list that's over twice as long as last time... detectives, you've got your work cut out for you if you're trying to match post with blogger this time).

The Adventures of Shelagh
Alice's Wonderland
Alyndabear
And You Know What Else
Bright Yellow World
Daily Tannenbaum
Du Wax Loolu
Elise
Everything I Like Causes Cancer
Face Down
Fretting the Small Stuff
For the Long Run
Galoot's Hoot Page
Granted Null
Grumpy Frump
Just Below 63
Lawyerish
Life After AC
Liz Land
Malfeasance
Mamma Ren
Muse On Vacation
Muze News
Nancy Pearl Wannabe
Not What You Think It Should Be
One New Duck
Rankin Inlet: A Journey Northwards
Red Red Whine
Reflections in the Snow-Covered Hills
The Reluctant Blogger
Sass Attack
Sauntering Soul
Sparkling Cipher
Stefanie Says
Three Carnations
Tracy Out Loud
Way Way Up

I was probably also the kid who didn't like slumber parties because it messed with my sleep schedule*

Hey, you know what's fun? Tossing in my two cents about a movie that the rest of you either saw eight months ago or decided never to see. Maybe next I'll weigh in on that whole Britney head-shaving debacle. (No I won't. And it actually sort of pains me that I can't come up with a better example of the untimely than that.)

That said, what did we all think of Ratatouille? (Or, as -R- calls it, Rat-tat-tooey, which I'll agree does make the title that much more fun to say.)

My take? I feel there are moments in life that sort of crystallize who I am as a person... defining thoughts or comments that make me say, "Oh. Damn. That is who I am?" And who I am this time is someone who really needs to lighten up and take things a little less literally from time to time. Why? Because charming as Rat-tat-tooey was purported to be (what with the 95% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes and the Best Animated Feature Film Oscar and all), throughout the entire movie I simply could not get past the fact that there was a wiry-haired RAT in the kitchen, touching food with his pointy, rodenty little paws. And it revolted me. I know rats are supposed to be cute and harmless in animated form, but all I could think was "Rats! In the kitchen! Excuse me while I lose my dinner..."

Internets, help me out on this. It wasn't just me, was it?

It was? Yeah, I thought so. I'll take my pocket protector and antibacterial wipes and move along now. Thanks.



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* No, I wasn't that kid, actually, but I went to Girl Scout camp with her. And man, if ever there was a 35-year-old woman trapped in a ten-year-old's body... Actually she'd probably be with me on the Ratatouille thing. Oddly, I take no comfort in that.
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I use The Google

My friend Carrie is in Milwaukee visiting her mom this weekend, and earlier today she sent me a text message with a comment she thought I'd enjoy:

I asked my mom if she knows what a blog is, and she said, "Yeah, it's kind of like a Google, right?"

My reply?

That is the best thing I've heard all week. I may have to put it on my blog. I mean, my Google.

And so I did.

It's easy to laugh at the late middle aged and borderline elderly... I enjoy Carrie's stories about all her mother's baffling quirks (consolidating her kitchen by storing her microwave inside the oven; fearing that pretzels might go bad if she doesn't store them in the fridge and leftover salad is precarious enough to require the freezer), but really I appreciate these bits of information not because I'm judging her mother in any way (I've met the woman, and she's a terribly sweet and well-mannered lady towards whom I certainly mean no ill will or disrespect), but because it makes my own parents look a little less strange by comparison. They actually have the opposite problem (spreading out more and more stuff across every possible surface in their home, and testing the limits of expiration dates and proper food storage on an all-too-regular basis) but old and crazy is old and crazy either way.

Truth be told, maybe I appreciate these stories just because I feel a bit old and crazy myself at times, and I like to think maybe age has nothing to do with idiosyncrasy; maybe we should embrace our quirks as charms at any age, without worrying that they might compound over time.

I'm saying all this, of course, at the end of another of my weekends of hermitude, so maybe I'm trying to justify my lifestyle in some way. Yesterday I didn't talk to anyone (unless e-mail counts as conversation), and I stepped outside my house only far enough to get my mail, and today I left only to buy fabric for a quilting class I'm taking soon. Apparently I'm practicing for old age: as if being a shut-in who knits isn't enough, I've decided I need a few other proper and traditionally ladylike hobbies as well. Oh! And I'm buying things in bulk, too, as if stock piling for a nuclear disaster. But instead of canned goods or toilet paper, I'm stockpiling lip gloss.

Yes, I said lip gloss. Neutrogena has this nasty and annoying habit of discontinuing products immediately after I've fallen solidly in love with them (oh, HeatSafe spray, how my dry, split ends miss you so), and MoistureShine Tinted Lip Balm seems to be the latest perfect item in their collection to fall to such fate. First I saw the near-empty bins with clearance tags at Target; next I saw the same sad thing at Ulta. Today I searched online and bought approximately half of the remaining stock at Amazon. I spent $36 on drugstore brand lip gloss, and my only regret is that perhaps I should have spent $36 more.

Moving on. I may have been an old lady and a hermit this weekend, but I was also quite productive and domestic. I made some solid progress on my basement beautifying project, and I also cooked three times in three days as well. Cooked! For real! With mostly non-processed, legitimate ingredients and with use of pans and stove burners! No Kraft singles! No microwave! Forgive all the exclamation points. It's just been a while is all. Incidentally, dinner both Friday and Saturday went just fine, but breakfast this morning? Not so much. I think I've decided that making pancakes, simple a process as that should be, is just going to rest solidly and permanently in the "Things I cannot do" column. I don't know what the science is; I don't know why I need to throw out not just the first pancake, but the four after that as well... All I know is eleven hours later, everything in my house still smells like burnt pancake, so maybe making pancakes is just something I'm not meant to do.

Luckily, mastery of grammar and spelling is still in the arsenal of skills I can call my own. The 2008 Poppy Awards were recently announced, and I took home the Grammar and Spelling award for the second year in a row.

This year I apparently had some competition. I had to share the award with another worthy contender. Maybe if Poppy knew Aaron's preemptively named me Grammar Czar for his soon-to-be-elected administration? Maybe that would have tipped the scales in my favor? Who knows.

I received another Poppy award as well, though it's one I was a proverbial shoe-in for, as Poppy created the category with me in mind. (Thanks, Poppy!)

In case you've forgotten, that award is in reference to this post, and is in honor of my recently departed grandmother, god rest her crazy old soul. Her funeral last week actually brought up a few things I thought bloggable, but I've already forgotten most of them by now. One still stands out, however, and seems appropriate to mention here. Following the service there was a lunch in the church basement for any family and friends who cared to come. My mom chose to include mashed potatoes because my grandma always made them for me, and kneecaps because they were my grandma's favorite at the Easter and Thanksgiving buffets. I'm guessing she did not have anything to do with the vegetable selection, however. I was directly behind my younger sister in the buffet line at the lunch, and as she peered in the pan of mixed vegetables on the food table, she looked at me and said, "Look: Lima beans." Without missing a beat, I said, "Dammit." Good thing Grandma wasn't actually at that lunch, I guess.

I couldn't help but wonder...

OK, seriously, Universe. Did you not get my memo? It is the Year of Stef, dammit. I proclaimed it; you are to make it so. And that means all bullshit where dating is concerned is to vanish and Mr. Considerate and Right-for-Me is supposed to appear. This new "positive attitude and optimism" thing I'm trying can go only so far; you really do need to pitch in a bit and throw me a bone.

All this is to say that I am home alone on a Friday night, partaking in long-neglected household chores like doing laundry and cooking a proper dinner and purging expired food from my cupboard and fridge, instead of hanging out with either of the prospects I was so excited and optimistic about a mere week ago. Mind you, I am actually not at all bothered by my home alone state right now... I'm sort of a hermit by nature, and frankly, all this exciting whirlwind single girl stuff does tend to wear on me fairly quickly and make me long for my couch and solitude. But still. It would be nice to have some options.

Date #2 with The Scientist was far from awful; it had its "on" and clever moments, I'd say. But thanks to either my near complete lack of sleep the previous night or the precarious phase of the moon (or some unfortunate combination thereof), the overall event was shrouded in a disconnect and awkwardness that I'm not entirely sure he's convinced is worth trying to charge past. Never mind the magic of that first date; apparently in the early stages, one "off" night just can't be overlooked. We shall see.

As for The Neighborhood Giant, I'm entirely baffled. Trust me; I have dated enough to know when to expect a vanishing act. I've been on both sides of that act more times than I care to recount, and I'd like to think I have a good feel for when to expect some follow up and when not to be surprised by a quiet slinking away. Last week's date (for which I'd rate rapport and conversation as comfortable and lively, respectively, and post-Boggle action as a second-date-appropriate PG-13) did not warrant any sort of vanishing act. In fact, it did not even occur to me to say, "So, give me a call..." as we parted, because it did not occur to me that he would not, in fact, call or write.

And yet, here I am, a week later, with no contact whatsoever, even after I gave in and broke all those stupid rules by sending a cleverish follow-up myself.

Since my life is apparently Sex & the City to some of you, I can explain this only in terms Miranda taught me. Remember that episode where she was stood up for a date, and decided it was so unforgivably rude that she was going to call the man on it and give him a piece of her feisty, red-headed mind? Remember how she phoned his home only to have his mother answer and find out he'd very recently died of a heart attack? Well, I'm going to presume The Neighborhood Giant clearly succumbed to some similar and dismal fate. It's the only excuse, wouldn't you say?

Except that no--it's maybe not the only explanation, and it would be harsh to wish him dead anyway. I haven't done a proper Friday Five in a while, so how's about I give you five other possible explanations for the unwarranted and unexpected disappearing act?

1. He carelessly walked his 6'7" self into the upper edge of a door frame (whilst daydreaming about me, most likely), and the impact caused short-term amnesia. The poor guy can't even remember where he works, I suspect; how can I fault him for forgetting about me?
   
   
2. Being a less-than-brilliant computer user, he foolishly visited a Web site that infected his computer with a virus and wiped out his entire mailbox, thereby losing both my e-mail address and any reference to my phone number. He's currently wandering my neighborhood, trying to remember exactly which blue house on which nearby street is mine, so he can come over to apologize and reunite in person.
   
   
3. He was more bothered than he let on by his tragic loss in Boggle, and he's simply too ashamed and wounded to ever show his face to me again.
   
   
4. He ate some bad sushi the day after our date and has been in a hospital bed, writhing in pain from a horrible bout of food poisoning ever since.
   
   
5. I have a secret admirer with a disturbing possessive and violent streak who didn't like the idea of any competition for my affection and therefore found The Neighborhood Giant and chained him to a pipe in a dark and scary basement, where no one can hear him scream.
   

All of these are valid explanations, I'm sure. It's just a matter of deciding which is most plausible, right?

And with that, I'm going to get on with my spinsterrific Friday. My oven timer just beeped, my dinner looks and smells awesome, and I've got a Netflix envelope I've been ignoring for weeks to open. Hope your weekend is less tinged with confusion and bitterness than mine's started with, and I'll catch up with all of you a bit later.


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Update 2/24: OK, so he actually did e-mail me, approximately two hours after I posted this. His message was so maddeningly flip and casual, however, that I still don't know for sure what to make of it. Also, The Scientist finally called me tonight, so perhaps he has not written me off just yet either. See, this is why I generally avoid documenting date details unless I'm sure I am or am not going to see the guy again. This sort of back-and-forth overanalysis is really best left in my own head or in a private journal. Carry on.

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Little records

First off, I want to thank all of you for your kind words in the comments on that last post. I really appreciate all your lovely sentiments of support, and I'm sure if I ever told my family about this little corner of the Internet, they would, too.

I'm actually trying to decide just what my grandma would say if she knew her picture was on the Internet right now. She never understood the Internet, of course, and probably never touched a computer keyboard in her life. I remember my mom trying to explain e-mail to her... The closest she ever came to any wording my grandma understood was, "I write letters to people through the TV." On a semi-related note, CDs have always been "little records." We never even tried to explain MP3 players to her. Technology was not the woman's forte, obviously. Frankly, if my grandma knew that a stranger in China could, if they were so inclined, pull up a picture of her on a screen in their living room right now, it would blow her fragile little 96-year-old mind. Let's hope there's no Wi-Fi where she is now, shall we?

Dead relatives aside, I had a busy and mostly fun weekend, and I hope all of you did as well. Last night into today was a two-part birthday party for a good friend, and Friday night was date #2 with the man we're apparently now calling the The Neighborhood Giant. We had drinks at an Irish pub near my house, which was interesting because at the same time, my friend Carrie was enjoying drinks with an older gentleman I know as The Bohemian Woodworker at a different Irish pub across town.

I got an e-mail earlier this week from One Smart Cookie, saying she enjoys reading my dating stories because she feels like I am her own personal Sex & the City episode. I say that if that were true, I would be getting decidedly more action and I would require decidedly more fabulous shoes. But still. If I were writing this in Sex & the City style, it would be hard not to segue from my date at Keegan's to Carrie's date at Brit's by saying, "Meanwhile, in an Irish pub downtown..." I'll resist the urge to take that comparison any further. Instead I will just say that following the drinks, I took the Neighborhood Giant back to my house, where instead of doing Carrie Bradshaw (or Carrie [LastName]) proud by engaging in the sorts of things that require a cut-away camera shot, I simply kicked his ass in Boggle. "You bring dates back to your house to seduce them," I e-mailed to Carrie yesterday. "I bring them over to destroy them with my superior word power."

All right. Between some deadlines at work and a trip home for my grandma's funeral, I'll probably be pretty scarce on the Internet this week. Try not to do anything too exciting while I'm gone, OK? I so hate being the last to know.