The Evolution of Glitter, Part 3

 

 

 

Someone, please take me back to a time when I didn't know what Lost was. Or, a time when I didn't have Netflix and the ability to watch the entire series consecutively without ever having to leave the couch. By my calculations, I'll get back to standard productivity by Never.

 

That's why today's update on the Evolution of Glitter will spare us all the awkwardness of me trying to explain it. All you need to know is that now I have eyes. And they might even stay where they are. Now to continue frying my optic nerves.

 

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Fourth Boobs and The Middle

Considering I stayed up until 2 AM two nights ago watching the entire second season of New Girl, it's safe to say that I thoroughly miss having roommates. Except when I remember the pink hair dye in my sink, mountains of unwashed dishes, creepy Skype-relationships and that none of them were awkwardly endearing men with janky plumbing skills. Also when I remember that time I lived with my ex-boyfriend and the toilet didn't flush for two weeks and we almost tore each other's throats out and then we broke up.

 

I watched the epic Poignant Moment between Jess and Nick approximately five times that day, in exactly the way I watched the Poignant Moment with Pam and Jim repeatedly seven years ago; and the Poignant Moment with Allie and Noah two years before that. Oh, and let's not forget when Nichola and I were lusting after Ashton Kutcher's Poignant Crying Scene in Just Married -- in eighth grade. Who else thinks that hot men crying is the hottest thing ever, ever? And that watching hot men cry and then carry their woman up a flight of stairs while simultaneously ripping of their clothes makes you want to reenact that very scene in the very near future? And maybe if you've got someone to reenact it with, you feel kind of warm and fuzzy about them in the climax of said Poignant Moment?

 

That's how I was feeling all day, until I went to grab my headphones for a nighttime stroll and found them Not Where I Left Them. After a search of any other possible resting place, I found them Nowhere. Why? Because Buddy Holly.

 

It took me about two seconds to envision a scene in which said boyfriend wakes up late for his train, frantically makes the bed (APARTMENT RULE), STEALS my headphones and dashes out the door. This highly accurate summation owes credit to the absence of one ipod. One that had been resting on my entertainment center for approximately one month before -- and in conjunction with -- it and my headphones suddenly went missing. Even Michael Phelps could put it together.

 

Luckily for him and his manhood, we were meeting for dinner and I was only conscious of this Great Piss-Off for about ten minutes before being reunited. But please ask him about my face when he pulled them out of his pocket. Please, just ask. I'd like to see you shaking in your boots, too.

 

This is the difference between all the Epic Poignant Moments we're fed through our eyes and the actual heart-singing, heart-pulling, heartbreaking Loves we feel as human beings drawn to other human beings. It is what ignites my weekly lady-wine nights, allows for political conversations with my father, fuels posts like this about my mother, and keeps all of us coming back to those same moments of impracticality on the screen. It is the difference between two people separated from each other by a mother's fear and two people separated by a grudge over a pair of headphones.

 

Because look, here's the thing: love is neither as great nor as trivial as anything you've witnessed. Simply, because you must feel it to understand it. No one can tell you the power of a first kiss, nor the death -- and I mean that literally -- in true heartbreak.

 

CLICHE, cliche. Sure. But in the middle of the excitement in the beginning and all the disappointment at the end is everything in the middle -- the meat that takes so much effort and care to chew through. The middle is everything, in exactly the way a McDonald's bun has no nutritional value. It's no secret that Buddy Holly and I have been through our fair share of Middle lately. I know you remember that melodramatic post I wrote about us breaking up, and then getting back together, and then breaking up again...we're better now. I owe that to the great effort we both put forward in being the best filet mignon we can be. It's not easy, and anyone that tells you it is is full of shit. And you can tell them I said so.

 

One night very early into our relationship, Buddy and I were engaged in...things. Unbeknownst to me he mistook my abnormally protruding ribs for their fleshy northern neighbors. A few weeks later, he actually told me about it. I knew then that he was someone I wanted to share a lot more awkward moments with. This evening he made me dinner and we shared a Poignant Moment of our own. We've created a relationship out of the middle, one from which I don't see myself emerging for a long time. And you know what else is a middle? Ice cream. In ice cream sandwiches. So like, Suck It, Nicholas Sparks.

 

 

 

 

***In other news...if anyone else is interested in knowing more about how to overcome a partner mistaking their Fourth Boobs for Real Boobs, I'm considering adding a relationship + advice column to the blog. Any takers? Any masochists? Just kidding, we all are!***

 

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First World Problems

I want to write a memoir. A memoir of a 24-year old. A memoir with self-deprecating overtones interspersed with the self-righteous and a generally lackluster plot line. Someday, that memoir will divulge the secret wisdom of writing in bars and avoiding MRSA without ever buying band-aids.

And then I fell on the ice again (bringing the score of Molly vs. Sidewalk to 0-2) and Buddy Holly asked me if I had any band-aids to which I responded, "no, I usually just tape some paper towel on my finger when I cut it making eggs."

Considering those two little factoids and the following photos depicting my secret domestic ineptitudes, I'd say my ego's about even for today. Manic-depressive? Surely not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My apartment is cute, goddammit. You have to SEARCH for this shit. And I am not ashamed. Except maybe about scooping garbage out with my hands. Commence self-deprecation.

 

 

 

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The Evolution of Glitter, Part 2

This is the second installment in my masochistic process of documenting a painting. I'm still not sure if we'll ever get to the point of completion, because at the moment I want to tear the canvas in half. But if you want to read part 1, check it out here.

 

 

 

This is the part I was dreading. It's like the time when a child stops being cute and hasn't yet become beautiful again -- or mediocre, average, presentable or whatever -- usually right before the discovery of braces, flat irons and tweezers. This is when a painting stops being exciting in its newness and potential and begins the long, sloppy road toward completion. It feels a lot like the years I spent with fanged teeth and a unibrow.

 

I knew when I dedicated to documenting a painting that I would spend more time agonizing over its adolescence than admiring its emerging beauty. That's because most of the time it takes a lot of shoddy brushwork, wonky color schemes and awkward areolas to get to the point. There are mistakes to remedy, compositions to pin down and eyes to be brought down from the top of foreheads. And the incessant game of ping-pong my ego plays with itself.

 

There's nothing like seeing your vision be beaten to a bleeding, disproportionate pulp to bring you back down to reality. That's when my ego takes to her sick bed. But then, when the paint starts to wrap itself around an actual human form, she peaks her head out. We'll talk when the fever breaks. And when my eyeballs are in the right spot on my head.

 

 

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Psycho Babble

Yesterday I called The Mother on three separate occasions, only to be unknowingly answered each time by her butt, Douchetooth, or any of the other technological advances we've devised to bi-pass the highly inconvenient human task of answering the phone by pushing a button. At any rate, each time one of these intervening factors connected my phone to her purse or whatever, I became an anonymous ear to her very intense, very uncomfortable, very PUBLIC conversation. A conversation that included such gems as "I don't think that's very appropriate for you to say, do you?" and "I'll let you think about what you just said before I speak again."

 

IT WAS A FIGHT, GUYS.

 

I don't often eavesdrop on other people's conversations. Ok, I don't often eavesdrop on other people's boring conversations, especially if they're not about a) me; b) someone I know getting pregnant or; c) a couple breaking up publicly on a Metra train. But I couldn't help it. I wasn't even eavesdropping. I was researching.

 

The Mother has never been shy around conflict. She used to tell my brother and I to wave to the nice man tailing our car before slowing down enough to let him get a good view of her prized finger. She's not mean. She's not angry. She just don't take no shit.

 

Which is why, after deciding that it was not my fault that her phone answered THREE DIFFERENT TIMES to the same rolling argument, I continued to listen to the woman from whose womb I sprung verbally pwn two unsuspecting instigators. I sat in awe in front of Starbucks, wondering just how the fuck someone learns to stick to their shit that hard. Wondering if I'd ever have the conviction to tell someone as close but not close enough that, quite frankly, your talk is bullshit. And I'm leaving.

 

The thing about how The Mother asserts herself is in its effectiveness. Over the years, she has honed the skill of pointing out the complete assholery in which the offending party is engaging -- calmly, assertively, effectively. The problem is it really pisses people off when you go all Ghandi on their asses in an argument. Add some big words and a valid point and you've got me at 15 trying to argue why I just HAVE TO HAVE A CAR THE SECOND I TURN 16. Or, a really pissed off offending party in an argument no one knows is being studied like a college final, from a car 10 miles away.

 

Ok, let's get real here. Of course my own mother and I didn't always argue like "Molly, I believe the capacity at which you expect what you want to be validated is a little grand;" to which I'd respond "GAAAAAAAHHH!!!! (wall punch)." No. It didn't go like that. We threw chairs at walls and hit our beds with tennis rackets and stuff. We called each other names and I ran away a few times. It's called adolescence, folks. And the [terrifying, at this vantage point] task of parenthood.

 

But what those arguments, and the ones I witnessed her have with others, taught me about being a woman is the strength it takes. I learned early and I learned quick how to decide my point, articulate it, and not to back down when the going gets going. I'm not a cold-hearted bitch; I learned compassion, too. I learned how to hold my ground but how to communicate effectively enough to find a middle ground. The Mother taught me how to be A Woman and someday how to be A Mother in my own right. I can talk to ComEd with the tongue of a Medusa and woo cops with the eyes of a martyr. I know how shit works. And I owe the model of womanly strength to the one that calls me every single morning to tell me what just happened on It's Always Sunny.

 

But look, here's the thing. I'm kind of tired of being strong. I'm a little over telling ComEd they can suck their mistaken surcharge in one hand while forking over the cash in the other. I'm tired of telling the man at the gas station that actually yes, I do find your comments horribly sexist and offensive so kindly fuck off. I'm bored of working so hard to show the world hey SHUT UP, I'm here and you better not mess with me motherfucker, because sometimes it's just so damn exhausting. I can understand the woman that wait their whole lives to tell their husbands they'd rather sleep with other women; or the ones that let their 40-year old sons live off their Jewel paycheck; or every single one that's let someone do something to them that they didn't like but never said so. I feel for you. Because sometimes, being strong is just as hard as being weak.

 

The rub is, being strong always pays off in the end. I may be tired of bringing home the bacon for my table of one, but I'd rather it than a table of four with much larger appetites. I'd rather lose friends that never got the message before the message gets me. And I'd always, always rather speak my own truth than let it be spoken to me. It pays to stick up for your shit, even if you have to make a few uncomfortable along the way. And even if that discomfort happens at your father-in-law's doctor appointment.

 

 

 

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The Evolution of Glitter

I had a Dr. Pepper today. For about 10 seconds I was 12 again, crinkling bags of Cheetos, drinking cans of the 23 flavors and eyeing a package of Skittles on standby. The afternoons I spent watching The Mother wrangle pre-teens into aprons and the concept of color theory were where I developed an affinity for vending machines and Einstein bagels. Also glitter, magic markers, and hitting my brother in the balls for fun. I feel bad about that one now.

I can't remember how many years The Mother taught at the studio. I don't think I could even calculate how many hours I spent wandering its rooms, making paper crafts and aggrandizing my skills with a calligraphy pen. Or otherwise scheming on how to capitalize my only airbrushing skill: spraying one area long enough for the tiny flecks of paint to accumulate and drip slowly down the page. So much for concept art.

Maybe it was the glitter. Maybe it was the haphazard shredding of stacks of construction paper. It could even have been that one time I became obsessed with the other kids' rich moms wearing pearls, and proceeded to sculpt several of the "fancy ladies" in various forms; both functional and "decorative." But now I think it was at the blessing of my shitty airbrushing hand that I'm here.

 

I'm a heavy-handed painter. When I say "layering," I mean that a painting usually takes three or four adjustments of a palette to finally start breathing. And a subsequent few months of tinkering before the paint starts to "lay right," as I like to justify it in terminology. So that still-not-sure-if-it's-offensive strip of canvas up there is the bones of what will--hopefully--become a fully-fledged "person," of sorts. And that's only if I don't decide to do something really EDGY AND CONTEMPORARY at the end. Remember that episode in Malcolm In The Middle when Hank becomes an artist? And then Jackson Pollack's all over the garage wall, only for the paint to come peeling right on top of his not-yet-Breaking-Bad-bald head? THAT'S what it's like. Though I've yet to encounter a paint-related assault. YET.

But at the end, there are times that I miss the points in the middle when the painting was still awkward, still out of proportion, still potentially racially offensive. Sometimes I regret not having documented what has been before it becomes what it is. I was just a kid obsessed with crayons and copy paper before now, right? And where the hell are THOSE pictures?

Some say that it's no good to dwell on the past. But I say that the past teaches us why we are in the present. I've wanted to do this forever, so I'm doing it. I'm documenting a painting. Just pray this one makes it past its black-face stage and we'll all get to see the end result. Stay tuned, eh?

 

 

 

 

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Conversations with Siri

I didn't think English was my second language, but I guess Siri does. Way to make my mid-afternoon friend-love weird, Siri. THANKS A LOT.

 

 

 

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