The Twelve Labors of Gymules

This is the first-worldiest of First World Problems and will probably also sound humblebraggy.  But I had an impulse to write and IT MUST BE SATED.

I was thinking about something John Green wrote on his Tumblr once about how relatively light tasks can seem right at impossible sometimes.  His example was knowing that the dishes need washing and yet persisting for days on end in not washing them - you finally have to acknowledge that for some reason, at this moment, today, washing dishes is the hardest thing you will ever have to do.  I feel that way about the gym most of the time.  Even though I like it and love how I feel when I'm done, getting there and getting through the workout feels like the Twelve Labors of Gymules.

Labor 1: Decide that the gym is happening today

"Moderation is healthy.  Everyone needs a day off sometimes.  What if I haven't had enough salt today and get sick?  Maybe I can just run around the neighborhood instead."

Labor 2: Stop what you're currently doing (which is probably nothing) and put on your gym clothes

"The air conditioning will make me feel cold in my gym clothes.  They're tight and will be hard to put on.  Where are my shoes?"

Labor 3: Make ready to transport yourself to the gym

"I can't find my car keys.  I can't find my license.  I can't find my phone.  I can't find my iPod.  I can't find my headphones.  Should I take a water bottle?  Should I take a protein bar?  Should I pack girl items?"

Labor 4: Quit stalling, actually get in the car and drive to the gym

"But it's cold/hot/humid/rainy/dry/Gainesville outside.  Traffic is slow.  I'll get stuck at every red light and lose the momentum I'm pretending to have."

Labor 5: Don't wuss out in the parking lot

"EVERYONE IS AT THE GYM or possibly the Family Dollar right next to it.  I don't want to park all the way across the parking lot.  What if I'm too weak afterward to walk all the way back to my car?"

Labor 6: Don't wuss out upon first walking in

*sudden rush of cold air* "NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE FREEZING TO DEATH"

Labor 7: Don't wuss out when you see other people working out

"Oh that speed and time cannot be right on that treadmill.  Nobody can run that fast for that long.  She must have chugged a whole case of 5-Hour-Energy bottles and now she's just trying to stave off the heart attack."

Labor 8: Keep going at the half-mile point

*pant* *pant* "A half-mile isn't bad.  It's more than not ever running at all." *pant* *pant* "This playlist is supposed to motivate me and all I can think about is how beat I am and what lipstick color I should wear to comps."

Labor 9: Don't fall into the Workout Bermuda Triangle at the 75% point of your planned run

"DERN, this treadmill has been stuck at 1.7 miles for like three hours.  God has caused time to stand still so He can laugh at my hamster-like persistence and soap-opera-like distress."

Labor 10: Finish that second set of whatever weight machine you hate today

"Only 35 pounds and my shoulders are about to fall off.  That would probably negatively impact my conducting technique."

Labor 11: Stop staring at people who can lift more than you

"Wow.  Those muscles look like they were carved from marble.  OH CRAP AWKWARD EYE CONTACT MAYDAY MAYDAY"

Labor 12: Maintain perspective.  You're just a chick working out, you're not Gymules.

"Bow before me, mortals, for I hath completed Leg Day.  My actual stats holdeth not so much importance as the fact that I finisheth this my workout.  Bringeth me cookies."

My Inability to Argue

I wrote/drew this several months ago, but I tried to make it one giant scrollable cartoon, a la The Oatmeal and it turns out that Blogger does not like that so much.  Right now, I'm in that magical period of finals being complete at doctor school, concerts being done at high school, and only two gigs on the horizon, which means I finally had the time to chop it up into individual pictures, all of which have purple backgrounds because, again, was originally one big cartoon.  Enjoy!

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When I disagree with someone about something, my fight-or-flight instincts come out of Sleep Mode and start warming up.

My brain starts to carefully weight the decision of whether or not to engage in debate.
Pro:

1. We will execute the task correctly

Con:

1. This person will not like being told that he or she is incorrect.
2. This person may become embarrassed or frustrated.
3. Which is pretty much the same as angry.
4. ANGRY AT ME.
5. WILL NOT LIKE ME ANYMORE.
6. EVER EVER EVER
7. Or this person will refuse to accept my evidence as valid
8. And will take the use of allegedly invalid evidence as proof that I am stupid
9. THINKS I AM STUPID
10. WILL NOT LIKE ME ANYMORE
11. Or this person will bully me into acquiescence
12. OW MY FEELINGS
13. Also, there is the chance that we will execute the task incorrectly.
14. Which will cause whoever is expecting a correctly done task to be disappointed.
15. DISAPPOINTED AT ME.
16. WILL NOT LIKE ME ANYMORE.
17. EVER EVER EVER
18. I WILL NEVER HAVE FRIENDS AGAIN

Occasionally, the issue at hand is so important, or I believe my evidence to be so irrefutable, that I do choose to argue my side.  Carefully.

In cases where the issue is not very important or there's not the possibility of someone being hurt or disappointed by an incorrect conclusion or one that I disagree with (and no, I do not always believe those two conditions to be synonymous), there is no pro-con listing to be done.  My decision is obvious.

When someone comes around to my conclusion without any prompting from me, I experience levels of joy that are probably not healthy.

The degree to which I loathe argument really cannot be overstated.  Even in non-argument contexts, if someone employs a tone that implies anger in the slightest, even if it isn't directed at me, my adrenaline starts pumping, my mind freezes up, and my throat catches as if I were about to cry.  Often I find myself unable to talk, because my brain cannot supply me with words and even if it could, my voice couldn't phonate to say them.

Thank goodness for email and texting, which allows me to sequester myself in a solitary location and cry after every reply that says something other than, "It's ok" or "I still love you."  I can let my wave of emotions pass, wait for the Logic Machine to come back online, and make a measured response.

I have many strengths.  I have a pretty good musical ear and am occasionally a competent pianist, I make people laugh on the regular and I can run for an hour without stopping as long as the weather, my diet, my mood, the alignment of the planets and that day's episode of Maury are all right.  But to me, people who can handle arguments like it's no big deal or who argue for fun, like debate team members, may as well be superheroes.

Don't Watch with The Lights Off

Decided to take me a break from grad school work to share with you the movie moments that singularly freaked me out as a kid, some of which continue to freak me out.

1. Charlie dreams about Hell in All Dogs Go To Heaven

Jump to about 2:30 to see what I'm talking about.  Even without this scene, the movie is pretty dark - child exploitation, illicit gambling, attempted murder and general musings on death and the afterlife.  Standard Bluth fare, of course.

2. Professor Screw-Eyes turns the dinosaurs back into monsters in We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story

Or, really, Professor Screw-Eyes does anything ever in We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story.  This dude was seriously scary.  I had already been programmed to fear the vertical-line pupil (Thanks, "Thriller" video), but now that it's combined with some creepy occultic hardware?  NOPE.

3. The Banshee in Darby O'Gill and the Little People

Never failed: I would always have trouble getting to sleep after watching this movie.  Didn't help if my family was watching a sporting event or particularly exciting thing on television in the living room, which would prompt an occasional "Woo!"

4. Aurora being lured to the spinning wheel in Sleeping Beauty

Forgive the weird sound in this clip...if it's even still viewable by the time I post this.  I vividly remember re-watching this movie after having not seen it for several years...I was spending the night at my grandmother's house, it was late and I was lying there in the dark in the guest bedroom watching the movie.  When this scene appeared, I had to get up and turn on the bathroom light.
I was 14 at the time.  Don't judge me.

5. The Gmork in The Neverending Story

I am almost 30 now and I still get the chills when Atreyu sees the prophetic image of the Gmork on the wall.  Yes I realize it's just a robot in a wolf costume and you can direct all rational words to your own butt because THOSE EYES.

6. Chernabog from Fantasia

This is the Fantasia imagery laid over a different performance of the piece, but you get the idea.  And that idea is NOPE.  NO THANK YOU.

Sleep well, kids!

Rant Time: On Grocery Store Etiquette

Although I try to conduct myself with the best manners I know, I usually try not to get too obsessed with other people's etiquette because I know it can so often be misused in classist ways.  Vive la difference and so on.

However.

A recent trip to my local grocer gave me cause to think a little on the question of where being considerate ends and proper "etiquette" begins.  There's the etiquette that says you're a boorish untouchable if you use the wrong fork in a formal dining setting ("Oh," thought the other diners, "what ultimate tragedy to have grown up without the benefit of finishing school.") and then there's the etiquette that says you maybe should try not to actively impede other people from trying to perform a basic task.

With that in mind, let's talk about some of the behaviors I witnessed in the store that made me want to forget my own manners and start flipping the table on them hosers.

1. Poor cart/self parking decisions

There are a few common reasons to pause for longer than it takes to grab whatever product you're selecting; using your phone, checking your list, chatting with a friend or deciding your next move come readily to mind.  All perfectly fine activities, but a little acknowledgement that other people are shopping too would be great.  My personal favorites of the poor parking crowd include the person who stops right at the entrance as zie is walking in, the person who stops right beside (rather than in front of) an island display so that one thoroughfare is completely cut off, and that old classic, the person who stops in the dead center of an aisle, making passage on either side incredibly awkward.

2. Popular items or items you need some time to consider

Related to the previous point, if you need you some cookies ("if"....hahahahahahaha) but it's going to take a moment to figure out which ones you want, for the love of Nabisco please park your cart and/or yourself in front of a less popular adjacent item and be aware of your surroundings in case someone else wants to shop for the item you're blocking.  In my experience, you're usually safe to park near store-brand stuff.

3. Being a jerk about kids

During the trip that inspired this post, I was trying to get something on the same aisle as the toys. At one end, a list-checker was chilling out with his cart parked dead center and him beside it.  At the other, two children lay in the floor playing with toys, splayed out so that no one could even walk past without stepping through their game.  I tried hovering around the kids for a minute to see if they'd respond to nonverbal cues to move, but they didn't.  So I rolled the other way and nonverbaled the list-checker instead until he moved.  Was I frustrated?  Of course.  Was I tempted to pass judgment?  Of course.  But when I was on the internet looking to see how many people have written on the topic of grocery store etiquette (spoiler alert: a lot), I saw a lot of "children should" and "parents should."  Here's the thing: even the most angelic of kids won't always submit to "should".  I don't care what interactions you saw between adult and child, or how you remember behaving as a tyke (your memory of which is likely skewed in your favor thanks to the fading affect bias), you don't know that situation.  Adhering to anyone's definition of perfect parenting isn't going to yield a perfectly behaved kid at all times because kids are like that.  I've seen and heard people loudly and obnoxiously ask, "Where is your mother?" (bonus points for assuming Mom is the primary caregiver and the one responsible for instilling manners) or not-so-subtly muttering to their fellow shoppers about parenting or children in general.  The kids don't understand the subtext you're throwing and if the guardian also doesn't, being more of a jerk about it will, at best, fly totally over hir head or, at worst, make hir defensive and create a worse situation/shopping impediment than whatever the kids were doing that stuck in your craw.  On the other hand, if the guardian is able to understand said subtext, zie is probably already aware of it and is probably choosing to deal with it instead of whatever might happen if zie tries to fence the kid in (and you might want to trust hir judgment).  Bottom line: you're not helping anybody, so shut it.

4. Spacing Out in Checkout

I know, I know: it's the light at the end of the tunnel.  You're almost to the point where you can go on with your day, or go and eat whatever awesome thing you bought or whatever.  You peruse the tabloids, counting how many Kardashians you see (or is that just me?), meanwhile the shopper in line behind you would like to go ahead and start unloading hir cart, but can't because you're standing at the end of the conveyor spacing out.  Another favorite of mine is the person who doesn't warn fellow patrons when things might take a while.  I've got nothing against couponing, people who need to use multiple payment methods, or other situations which commonly make checkout take a little longer than usual.  But how about letting the patrons in line behind you know that it might be a while, especially if they have fewer items?  Most people scan for the shortest line and might not notice that you're juggling coupons or pulling out multiple cards, especially if you're the Spacy Stacy I described a second ago.

5. Starting Fights

I wish I was kidding.  I once had to switch checkout lanes because the two patrons in front of me got into a heated argument over one of the Item 4 situations: one of them had to use a special, time-consuming payment method and the other took exception.  In confrontational situations especially, humans aren't wired to find the best solution, they're wired to win.  So starting a shouting match with someone who is getting on your nerves isn't going to make them have a magical, "Wow, I should change my ways!" revelation, particularly if whatever they're doing isn't something they can change.  It's only going to make you look unhinged.  Take that junk to Wal-Mart where someone might film it and put it online.

6. Being An Entitled Boar

This connects to many of the previous items - some people just don't want to acknowledge other people.  I've been standing quietly, with a pleasant facial expression, in an aisle between two sets of roadblocking customers, only to have an older gentleman loudly and annoyedly ask, "Would you like to get past, young lady?"  Apparently, I am in the wrong for waiting patiently for someone to move rather than hollering at them to GIT OUT MAH WAY.  I've been gingerly making my way out of the end of an aisle, looking both ways, only to nearly get pummeled by someone flying out of the neighboring aisle at 70 mph.  Most of the time, that someone stops short and apologizes or at least gives a distracted "excuse me", but I have had people snort in exasperation and roll their eyes at me as they zoom past.  How dare I not be psychic and get out of your way before you went all Speed Racer out of that aisle!  I'm sure in many of these cases, people were just having a bad day or not feeling well or something...but that's part of what those more basic, not-impeding-people manners are for: stopping us from making our fellow humans miserable for no good reason.

So next time, friends, let's remember our shopping compatriots and be nice people at the grocery store.  Because the thin veneer helping me pass for sweet in these situations is wearing down and I really don't want to end up on someone's YouTube breaking Item 5.

Dance Party!

I have finally finished all of my difficult December obligations and I am in the mood to party!  So hit play and join me in some silly dancing!

The Awkwardest Sunday

I have undergone some physical changes as of late.  As a result, my conducting outfits (which this morning numbered one pantsuit and one dress) don't fit me right now, so I needed a new conducting outfit.  Hooray, I now have three conducting outfits.  But in the search for the third, I demonstrated once again why I am the awkwardest person alive.

I.  Store Hours
In my area of my hometown, there are lots of little boutiques that sell nice clothing suitable for conducting.  They're tucked away in little shopping centers, dotted along the town square or set up in lovely repurposed historical homes.

Which means they don't have those customizable marquees that display such information to drivers as store hours or neon "Open" signs.

It also means that, in pursuit of a classy ambience, they often have soft lighting that, when looking in the windows from outside, is difficult to distinguish from no lighting at all.

They do have hours posted, however!  On a nice cream-colored piece of printer paper taped to the front door with "Monday-Saturday, 10 AM - 5 PM" in Times New Roman, 12pt.

The worst was walking around the square.  There were several people sitting outside a pizza restaurant just down the way from a line of clothing stores.  I walked down the sidewalk, squinting into the windows, trying to see whether they were open or not.  A couple had lights on inside, but no nice piece of printer paper on the door, meaning I had to suffer the awkwardness of trying to open the door and finding it locked in front of all those pizza place customers.

What they were actually thinking: "This Vine I made is funny, but I'm not sure if it's Jennette McCurdy funny."
What I envisioned them thinking: "Wow, that girl is a total loser.  Let's laugh at her when she's out of earshot."

II. Which way from my car?
The square has a little park in the center with a series of sidewalks that cross the park like a big X, with a statue at the intersection.  I parked in a spot along the side of this square, about halfway between two of the corners.  The place I wanted to go was right directly across the park square.  There are no "Keep Off The Grass" signs.  But I couldn't bring myself to cross the park in a straight line - I walked to the corner, got to the statue, walked to the other corner...pretty much made the most ridiculous zigzag pattern on the planet Earth.  My brain envisioned the pizza customers calling the cops to report a stoned woman in the square.

III. Waiting to get at a rack that someone else is already at.
"COULD YOU BE ANY SLOWER.  Fine detail analysis is what the fitting room is for."*

IV. Having someone else start picking through the same small rack or same section of a rack that you are browsing.
"I was here first.  Didn't your mama teach you patience?  Or personal space?"*

V. Fitting rooms with curtains instead of doors.
The only thing keeping an undraped me from somebody's eyes (and/or somebody's Instagram) is everyone else's understanding of closed curtains as a sign that the room is occupied.  Understanding which, I might add, is not aided by a cream-colored printed up sign.

VI. Not destroying clothes in the process of trying them on.
It's always the same story when I try on dresses.  Over the head or over the hips?

Over the head - Potentially smearing makeup and/or deodorant on the garment which the nice employees then have to clean or conceal, or turning my hair into a beastly mane that will make it look like I used the dressing room as a choreography rehearsal site.

Over the hips - Clenching your thighs and hiney, holding your breath and thinking skinny thoughts and STILL you hear the bone-chilling, ego-destroying pop of a stitch snapping as you pull the dress up over your hips.  "Oh no, I broke it.  They're going to force me to pay for it because I broke it."  But then, once you've taken the garment back off and examined it, you can't find a single loose stitch.  WHAT WAS THAT POP?

VII.  The line.
The line is where another behavior judgment paradox takes place, just like the rack waiting versus rack possessing scenario I described earlier.  If you're in an establishment that puts all customers in one line, rather than letting them pick a checkout line on their own, everything you believe about personal space and karma comes to bear on this waiting time.  Specifically, if I stand rather close to the person ahead of me, it will make the Gods of Checkout see my urgency and make the line go faster.  But if the person behind me stands too close to me, that person is a jerk and makes me uncomfortable.

VIII. The checkout.
I had some cash on me, so I wanted to pay partially in cash and partially with my credit card.  So I handed the lady my cash and watched the little credit/debit/PIN thingy with the screen to see my updated total.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally, the cashier said, "It's not doing anything - did you swipe it?"
I replied, "No, I was waiting for it to update my total."
She gave me the strangest look and said, "It doesn't do that."
So I swiped my card, at which point it finally did tell me my updated total...the updated total I had, at that point, just paid.

Folks, this is one point on which I know I'm not crazy.  I used to work a retail job and for the first year I worked there, we didn't even have a point-of-sale system.  We had an old register on which we could only enter "[Department] Item."  The credit/debit machine was a relic of the 80s that wasn't at all connected to the register - we had to enter the total manually.  We'd have to run reports at the end of the day and it would zip off miles of register tape telling us how many dollars' worth of various departmental merch we had sold that day.

But you know what that antique setup could do?  RECEIVE ONE METHOD OF PAYMENT AND THEN UPDATE THE TOTAL BEFORE TAKING THE SECOND METHOD.  And when we finally did get a point-of-sale system that could scan barcodes, create custom reports based on specific items, take credit/debit cards, place orders for us, and even enable us to send messages to each other?

Yep, it updated the total too.

Of course, it's not Checkout Lady's fault that that store's system doesn't do that, but it just bugged me that she thought it was strange of me to expect it.  Just wanted to know how much I was putting on my card before I put it on my card.

And before you ask - no I did not want to do the math in my head because I did not wish to be there past store closing.

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I'll cap off my super awkward mission with a photo of the acquisition made more awkward by the fact that I'm standing on a toilet (we have no full-length mirrors in my house)

But cuuuute, right?  All's well that ends well!


*Thought it.  Didn't say it.

My Thoughts on Miley: LET ME SHOW YOU THEM

Yes, I realize this topic has been positively driven into the ground, but since I finally finished the assignment I was working on tonight and am still very much awake from the coffee, I thought I'd throw in some of the thoughts that have been rattling around in my head regarding Miley's performance at the VMAs.

1. I mentioned this in a Facebook status, but I would like to go into greater detail here: the straight-up quality of Miley's performance was not so great.  I am not interested in having a debate about the aesthetics or morality of pop music and the dance styles that often accompany it because nobody moves or wins in that debate - I will mention, however, that Gaga, Timberlake and everyone else up there employ suggestive lyrics and moves as well and ain't nobody weeping over their blogs about those folks.  Miley is capable of great performances and this one could have been just as good.  Now, it's possible that she obstinately refused to do anything but her mix of Gene Simmons and Ke$ha-style choreography up there, but it's also possible that at every step of the way, her management, assistant, stylist, choreographer or any number of people who have access to her and know what looks good and what doesn't straight up didn't do their job because everybody loves a train wreck.  Shoot, so much about that performance could have been improved if they had made her use a corded mic at a stand.  She could still have wiggled around some, she could have dressed however she wanted, but she wouldn't have looked so insane.  It's entirely possible that everyone around her was saying, "Yeah, everyone will be talking about your performance!" with entirely different reasons in mind than the ones she had.

2. Much armchair psychology has taken place about whether Miley is desperate for attention, crying for help, a lost widdle helpless baby boo hoo.  I'm not saying that these people are wrong - time may prove them to be correct.  However, nobody really knows what's inside Miley's head or heart besides Miley herself; I'll refer you to Ke$ha, who rap-yodels* the same song over and over to different beats and yet made a 1500 on her SAT.  The product doesn't necessarily equal the person.  I'm pretty sure we have all done things, perhaps some of us publicly, that if shown to strangers out of context would make all of us look like we were "crying for help" and yet we turned out to just be having a short-term lark or moment of poor judgment, subsequently collected ourselves, and moved on.

3. There has also been much discussion about the influence of Miley on young women, particularly those who "grew up with her", so to speak.  This makes me the most teeth-grindingly angry because, however well-intended, all of the opinions to this end that I've read and heard seem to assume that teenagers are masters of mimicry who thoughtlessly emulate every action performed by those they admire.  Young girls will see Miley partying and carousing with boys and think that those things are totally ok!

I don't have my own kids, so obviously it is easier for me to be cavalier about these things.  But I do remember what it was like to be a teenager, and furthermore I remember the actions of many of my friends as teenagers.  Even prior to teenagerhood, we enjoyed media which glorified sex, violence, drug and alcohol abuse and other such mainstays of the terrible, horrible, no-good very bad culture or however that book title goes.  We would even watch music videos and performances which the adults in our vicinity raised their eyebrows over and thought it was cool.  But we did possess brains, and we did, even at that tender age, have the ability to differentiate between adults whose job it was to entertain and, to an extent, shock, and kids whose job it was to learn about the world before being thrown into it.  We could grasp the machine of controversy and buzz, of gossip and publicity and, thanks to parents, educators and other role models who taught us to look critically and intelligently at the products of culture rather than to run from them, the nature of actions and consequences.  I don't make such a statement in order to be judgmental; every family has its own unique needs and preferences and I respect that.  The wider point of this sub-point is that by and large, kids are sharper than we often make them out to be.

I don't have a nice neat conclusion.  These were just the thoughts I had.