Massive Scarves and The End Of The World

Two things have been on my mind:

 

Today is the end of the world,

 

and;

 

Sometimes scarves make me nervous.

 

The other day after work as I was running Christmas- and Redbox-related errands, I could feel this ball of tension winding around my gut like a mouse on crack chasing cheese with legs...also on crack. Everything's on crack.

 

The thought of simply parking my car in the dark seemed to bring this feeling of imminent doom. To drive through parking lots strewn with the shells of humans as they frantically ran errands similar to mine conjured a thrill of panic. So I parked in one spot and walked through the lots so as to return Wanderlust and simultaneously rent Ruby Sparks from the Jewel (can you tell I don't have internet or cable yet?). All to avoid having to get out and drive in and around the masses on a cold, dark, windy night.

 

As I'm walking back to my car and contemplating why I feel so fevered to just be HOME already and not be wearing this godforsaken SHOES and be done DRIVING for fucks sake, it strikes me that a portion of the anxiety is rising straight up from my throat and all twisty through my head and body. And around my throat I'm wearing a scarf.

 

TO CLARIFY: I don't just mean "a scarf." Winter scarves to me are more like half-blankets that somehow sit on the shoulders and need to be constantly adjusted and manipulated so as to stay on the shoulders. They tend to cover half my face and a large portion of torso. This scarf in particular could hide a small child with room to spare. I'm obsessed with it, but it is also my downfall as it brings about the aforementioned stress response when I'm anywhere save for the safety of my couch. With wine.

 

So I'm still considering why winter scarves have this effect on me -- I'm pretty sure it goes all the way back to grade school when I could never figure out how to make a scarf simultaneously warm and functional as it constantly came untied and/or slipped off my face rendering it seemingly pointless -- as I drive home trying to swivel my head this way in lieu of the Massive Scarf so as to actually get home, alive, in one piece, and not miss an oncoming manic shopper en route.

 

I live like 5 minutes from the Jewel, by the way.

 

But I think I realized during the brief pondering and subsequent days of it since that the Massive Scarves that I love so much stress me out in this way because there's something physically constricting about them. On one hand they are preventing me from inevitable Face Burn and Throat Chill, but on the other they inhibit my natural movement. Like if I had to whip my head around real fast to see the old lady headed my way with a shopping cart full of Dr. Pepper at an intersection. Massive Scarves are unnatural, to a point. Plus sometimes I feel like my shoulders are at constant attention trying to hold the damn thing up. Hence the physical reaction of stress sans-stressor. Sigh. What a world.

 

Speaking of, today is that whole Mayan calendar where's-the-rapture-you-zelouts thing. I actually stayed up last night (not entirely intentionally, but there you go) and watched the first winter lightning I have ever seen flash the sky bright blue repeatedly. Around midnight a little piece of me thought, "maybe?"

 

Alas, I haven't seen much Armageddon today. Aerosmith will still be waiting. I have felt exhausted for staying up so late but not so much as to regret spending that time with someone I would gladly greet the End Of The World with. I have thought a lot about scarves, though.

 

Because look, here's the thing:

 

I understand that because the Mayan calendar never accounted for leap years this day has come and gone by a few months already. And I hear that it's all a bunch of hoo-ha or maybe you take it quite seriously. Or maybe you didn't even know.

 

But what I'm looking at, and especially granted the winter solstice that today marks, is what such a time as now might mean for all of us. For me, it's a time of change. In my cobbled-together-don't-ask-because-I-might-make-a-fool-of-myself spirituality, this is a time of great expansion and evolution for each and every person on this planet. Read: live this time what you want it to be and watch it unfold.

 

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, MOLLY? Have the aliens come and fried your brain? Scarves and now this mumbo-jumbo?

 

Possibly. What I'm trying to sort through in my brain is what I was thinking about as realized what wearing Massive Scarves does to me and why it's been on my mind so much, as today approached and now quickly moves past us. I'm thinking about all the things that I do in my day-to-day that seem entirely unpractical but are essential to my survival, and all that seems entirely necessary but eat up far too much of my time. And how the hell to marry the two.

 

Kind of like my entire life is a Massive Scarf. Things that I do that are uncomfortable but necessary; practical and simultaneously ridiculous. And what I can weed out and what I can transform into that practicality. Basically, I'm wondering what this time means for those that have dreams they want to make reality. And realities that need to be put to sleep.

 

It would take a lot more woo-woo for me to go into what I really think this time on our planet means. To be short, I think this is the time when we start making things happen. I think Dec. 21, 2012 was not a date marking the end of the physical world -- but a signifier that the end of the world you don't want to a part of anymore is here. So stop fighting with the things you don't want anymore and just let them go. And begin chasing everything that's waiting for you.

 

 

 

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Playdates ARE Funny

Around almost every corner I turn on the Interwebs I find myself face-to-screen, drooly-cheeked and squinty-eyed, reading Mommy blog after Mommy blog. Don't tell me you haven't noticed.

 

I'll trade you all the Zoloft in the world to assure me it's not a sign or something.

 

I don't know how this has happened. But most of the blogs I read on my fancy google follow-y thing cycle themselves through each other in varying stages of hilarity, as I am churned through the workings of the Next Generation of mothers. The funny ones. The ones that drink and don't lie about it; the ones that laugh at their kids' mistakes (maybe if not in their faces); the ones that say "fuck" and "shit" and "tits."

 

Somehow, as I rounded the corners of web space a few months ago and stumbled upon these hilarious people, I found my kinship. I found people that made me laugh out loud though I have no idea what they're talking about when they wax hysterical on their children's lisps; make fun of grammatical mistakes in a two-year-old; and somehow make staying at home all day with tiny almost-humans simultaneously horrifying and The Best Thing Ever.

 

I would be lying if I didn't say that these are the women that give me the courage to write.

 

But I don't think they notice me. Sigh. It's like I'm in high school all over again and I'm pretending not to stare at the most popular girl's jean skirt. Like, how does she pull that off, exactly? What does a "thong" do?

 

I never did have much fashion sense back then, not to mention courage with my words. Though I did have a teacher comment on a poem I wrote in sixth grade with "depressing dark." Thanks, Mr. Forgotyourname. It's not like I was slitting my wrists or anything. But my timid wordsmithing and sparkly eyeshadow aside, there is more to my love affair with mommy bloggers than what it's pulled from within these depths of coffee and self-doubt. And more than the obvious hilarity.

 

I love the Mommies of the blogosphere because they don't give a shit.

 

Ok, well, hold on a minute. That's not exactly it. Or that's not all. Allow me to dissect the frog in my brain for you. Mommy bloggers had me at "diapers" because:

 

1) They actually don't give a shit about what you think of their parenting. A model that can and should be adopted by the rest of us in every other facet of our lives. Ridiculousness be damned.

2) They are funny. This is obvious.

3) They talk about the most serious of the serious AND they are funny about it. Try that when you're concocting your next "we went to the park today" post.

 

See number 3 for the clincher in my own humble, un-mommy, stalker-geek opinion.

 

It is a strongly held belief of mine that while life is full of every kind of serious; a modicum of tangled darkness and shit storms of all colors; none of this is worth a damn if taken too seriously. I believe that there is nothing worth experiencing if not learned from, and if you can't do it without taking the light along with the dark then you probably aren't getting all that you can out of it.

 

Because there will always be shitty diapers, not enough sleep and hallucinogenic side effects of both. But there is also the laughter that accompanies a speech impediment and the hilarity in uncoordinated toddlers.

 

The lesson that the rest of us can take from this is that when life seems overwhelming enough even for the toughest of us, if we can't just learn to take it in stride and say "well, that happened today," then there isn't much hope of getting to the other side of it. When we can learn to feel the bad and feel the good in everything, then we've really made it.

 

I haven't always been very good at taking things lightly. I tend to freak out at how much money I have in my bank account or whether or not my tights are the right shade for my outfit. The deeper ponds are even harder to wade across. But I try and learn from the wisest among me -- even if they don't see their wisdom, either.

 

So thank you, mothers out there. Someday I hope to describe playdates with as much titillating gusto. Even though I'm still banking for a very, very long time from now.

 

 

 

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