Daily Newsie

Today I had lunch with some reporters from my former place of employment, which means we spent two hours nibbling appetizers and recounting our favorite horror stories between fits of laughter. (One friend has been at the newspaper for less than three months and already has a stock of crazy happenings.) One of the stories that always gets trotted out at gatherings like these is the Fire Hydrant Story, which I shall share with you here:

I had been at the newspaper for only a few months when my editor came lurching out of his office to my desk. He had a story, see, and it was perfect for this new talent. Someone from a nearby town had called in to say that, the night before, a car hit a fire hydrant outside their apartment complex … and no water came out. Therefore, the hydrant was a sham, and Nearby Town Fire Department just put it out there for show without actually hooking it up to the water main. Editor wanted me to check this out.

OK, fine. “Did you get the number of the guy who called?”

“No.”

“Did you at least get his name?”

“No. But I have the address of the fire hydrant, and I want you to go over there and look at it.”

As reason was in short supply around there, it did no good to point out that most fire hydrants don’t spew water when knocked over. My editor bothered me about it all afternoon, so I finally packed up and drove to Nearby Town to look at the stupid thing. I was unsurprised to find the hydrant in question completely unmarked and surrounded by pristine grass — no signs of tire tracks or gouges. It was obvious that this hydrant hadn’t been disturbed, but, ever the vigilant reporter, I tried to find some locals (no luck), knocked on the door of the fire department/city hall (no luck), and called the Nearby Town VFD chief’s cell phone (no luck).

Finally, having exhausted all my options and still seething that my editor didn’t get the source’s name and phone number (the first thing you ask for when someone calls in a tip, by the way), I let him know the story wasn’t going to make. He evenutally dropped it, but not before a coworker asked me if I’d thought to interview the hydrant for its side of the story.

I did eventually return to Nearby Town to pose for a picture with the fire hydrant, but I never did figure out whether it had ever been knocked over. I guess that’s one of those mysteries that shall endure, like why I sometimes feel nostalgic for the newspaper despite all the idiocy that thrives there or whether there are actually any hemlock trees in my other editor’s yard.

P.S. Courtney — once my voice teacher found out that my hair hadn’t been its natural color in years, she asked me to lay off the dye to let her see what I looked like with mouse-brown hair. She was a funny bird and I liked her, so I obliged. And Monica, if I’m having a good hair day tomorrow I’ll snap a self-portrait in the bathroom mirror and post it.

Having entered as a brunette, I came home from the hairstylist today as a carrot-top. It’s part of my lifelong mission to never be boring, to do the best I can with my incredibly fine hair (fine as in thin, not fine as in fiiiiiine), and to cover up any gray hairs before they can make themselves known. I inherited my hair from my mother, who had beautifully long locks as a teenager but wore it short as she got older; in fact, I was the one who taught her how to dye her hair to cover up her grays. I was always bent over the laundry sink in the basement with a bottle of Clairol, turning my locks from blonde to orange to blue to brown. My natural hair color is a light brown — the kind people call “dirty blonde” or “dishwater blonde” — but I don’t think I’ve sported my natural color since my freshman voice teacher begged me to give the follicle kaleidoscope a rest. If I remember correctly, that was shortly before I let a boy dye it cobalt blue just in time to go home for the holidays.

Before I was brave enough to color my hair, I made do with lemon juice and Sun-In. Remember that stuff? Unfortunately, no one told me about roots and touch-ups, which is why my junior prom pictures featured a smiling DailyNewsie with pretty ringlets that were top-half brown and bottom-half blonde. That was back in the day when my hair actually reached my shoulders and I would religiously apply mayonnaise and egg whites until it slipped through my fingers like silk. (The fashion magazines I read then didn’t mention the fact that your hair would smell like potato salad for the next five days, but I coped.)

The decision to cut my hair came shortly after, if not immediately after, I managed to get a round brush stuck right at my cowlick. I was trying to blowdry while brushing to give myself a little volume, but instead twisted the brush the wrong way and had to have the brush cut out of my head. First, though, my mother coated the surrounding area with baby oil and the better part of a bottle of Show Sheen from the barn, and my brother snapped a picture for posterity. It was then that I learned to accept the limitations of my lackluster hair and to focus on what I could do; namely, dye it every color of the rainbow.

I’m not sure what my point is, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that I have red hair now, and I love it. That’s good enough for NaBlo, and good enough for me.

I used to absolutely love “Ally McBeal.” It was just the tonic my weepy-teenaged-drama-queen self needed, and I drank it down like water every Monday night. In one episode, therapist Tracey Clark advised neurotic Ally to come up with a theme song she could sing to herself when she needed a little kick, and suddenly Vonda Shepard burst into The Exciters’ “Tell Him” while Ally bopped down the street. Clearly, I thought, a theme song makes everything awesome — especially if one can get Vonda Shepard to sing it.

For nigh on 15 years I’ve mulled my theme song options and have yet to come up with anything. A former flame once told me he heard “Isn’t She Lovely” when I came into view, which is sweet but I can’t take it seriously because it’s actually about a baby. An online test I took several years ago said my theme song should be “Walkin’ on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves, which is kicky but tiresome after too long, and another meme I found said I should walk around to “Groove is in the Heart.” I don’t know — if I’m going to have a theme song, I want it to have actual lyrics that mean something.

If I stretch back to high school, I remember my theme songs being “Happy Girl” by Beth Nielsen Chapman and “Killer Queen” by Queen. Daft Punk’s “Harder Better Faster Stronger” was my theme music while I was charging through my internship and my first job in 2004, then for a while it was “I’m Still Standing” by Elton John. But to be truthful, I can’t really think of any songs that have carried me through my entire life, probably because my taste in music shifts so frequently. I guess the closest thing I have right now to a theme song is “Everyday I Write the Book” by Elvis Costello, just because I can’t stop listening to it.

So, what songs play when you walk down the street?

Somehow I managed to delete all the comments from my last few entries, although I’m still not entirely sure how. Blame it on my sheer exhaustion from trying to juggle three babies (not juggle in the literal sense, you know, although that would be a handy talent) in my husband’s Sim world. I made him a character years ago in the hope that he and my Sim would hit it off, but no such luck. Instead, he’s decided that his goal in life is to marry off six children … which means that he had to have six children. It makes me tired just typing it.

So I got him a girlfriend (not nearly as cute as me), and they set to work populating Pleasantville with Sim babies. Melissa, his girlfriend, was waddling around with child when Beloved decided to stargaze on the patio with his telescope. Lo and behold, he was abducted by aliens. Melissa wandered through the house for a while, incredibly frightened and huge, until Beloved was unceremoniously returned to Pleasantville the next morning. But what’s this? He’s pregnant! I was incredibly amused because I’d never had an alien baby before, but my amusement quickly turned to horror when Melissa went into labor and delivered twin girls. Not two days later, Beloved birthed an alien boy.

Now the three of them — Beverly, Deanna, and Jean-Luc — are toddlers, and Beloved and Melissa are exhausted all the time. I usually love playing the Sims to relax a little, but this is really beginning to wear me out. Once they get through the toddler phase and can do things for themselves it gets easier, but for now it’s a constant cycle of feeding, bathing, and potty training. As soon as one of them is happy, another starts crying. And, in real life, the husband and I smile at each other because the most pressing thing either one of us has to do tonight is make sure to start an episode of “Family Guy” before we both go to bed.

Speaking of real life, there isn’t much to tell about the weekend. My university played its last home football game yesterday (and lost), so we went out for breakfast with a friend and then froze half to death at the stadium. Afterward, Beloved went over to the mayor’s house to do some computer work while I made my contribution to the weekly discussion on Blackboard for my crisis communication class, and last night was so uninteresting that I can’t remember what we did. Today I went to the library for a few hours, then decided I didn’t want anything that we had in the house for dinner. A quick trip to Target, dinner at Ryan’s, and we were home again just in time for “The Amazing Race.”

Now that I’ve bored you all to tears, I have a request: I’m going to Pennsylvania for a few days next week and desperately need blog topics I can post on the fly. Is there anything you’ve been dying to know about DailyNewsie? If you don’t come up with anything, I swear I’ll spend five days telling you stories about my other Sims.

I got my official rejection notice today from the Central States Communication Association. It didn’t say much about why my paper wasn’t chosen — the comments included were all quite positive, actually — but, nonetheless, it wasn’t chosen. I’m minorly bummed, but it’s nothing an evening of junk food and cable television won’t fix. I may end up going to the conference anyway, since a close friend of mine got an e-mail saying her paper was in the top four and I can’t let her go to St. Louis and be all academic without me.

It’ll pass, I know, but for tonight I’m going to be mopey and eat too much. Then tomorrow I’ll wake up, pack up my books, and head to the library to focus on the next chapter in my academic career: the Human Subject Review Board application necessary to begin research on my thesis. Things are progressing nicely in that arena, but I’ll explain another day so I can, in true NaBloPoMo style, milk another post out of it.

I thank Stacie over at Buried the Lead for asking to see my tattoos, because it allows me to squeeze another post out of yesterday’s topic. (NaBloPoMo is harder than I thought, so this new development pleases me.) Without further ado, I give you — in chronological order — my ink:

This was my very first tattoo, done in March 2003. My father and I went together to get these, and he has a matching one over his heart (that, obviously, doesn’t say “Mama”). It bothers me a little because the ribbon doesn’t match up like it should, but it’s on my back so I don’t spend a lot of time looking at it. Gray is the ribbon color for brain cancer awareness, which is why there isn’t any color in it.

This was done on the spur of the moment in June 2004. I had just graduated with a degree in journalism and scored my first “real” reporting job, so the Best Friend and I drove to a nearby town and celebrated by getting my right ankle tattooed with a quill and inkwell. I saw a much cooler one on a blog the other day, but I try not to sweat it because, well, it’s rather permanent. I may get the quill colored in one of these days.

Courtney knows all about this one, since she sat next to me and held my hand while it was being done. In early summer 2005, a group of us from the Snooze went to a local tattoo parlor because a colleague and I wanted to get tattoos. This one was another split-second decision, but it turned out beautifully. It’s over my heart and has actually gotten more gorgeous as the years went by.

My best friend and I have always considered ourselves two pieces of the same puzzle, so in December 2005 we got matching tattoos to seal the deal. My piece is dark blue and hers is pink. We left the other sides open to show that we will “fit” with other people as life goes on, but we’ll always fit best with each other. This one is on my right hip and, like the others, has faded nicely.

It seems weird that two and a half years went by with no tattoos, but maybe I was busy. At any rate, in early 2008 I started wondering what to get my father for Father’s Day. My dad is pretty much the greatest person alive, so I wanted it to be something to show him how much I love him. I decided to get a tattoo in honor of him, but couldn’t figure out what I wanted it to look like until I heard this song by James Taylor, an artist my dad and I have always loved …

… and so I came away with this:

I’m sorry I don’t have a better picture of it — here it’s slathered with Vaseline and oozing ink — but I’m too lazy to get out the camera. After this picture was taken he added an ellipsis trailing from “daddy” to the heart to even it out, and it looks wonderful. I got it on my left leg because, believe it or not, I used to be a cross-country runner and so was my dad.

That’s all, folks! The Husband and I are already plotting my next body art move, so stay tuned for more details.

I want another tattoo. I have five of them now, the most recent a gift for Father’s Day, and I’m getting that itch for more ink. I notice that the more I get the closer together they come, which makes me nervous because I’m pretty sure I’m fresh out of ideas. So far I have two for my mom (one of which matches a tattoo my dad has), one for my best friend, one for my (former) career, and one for my dad … and that’s pretty much what’s important in my life. Of course, my husband is pretty cool, but if I’ve learned one thing from celebrity gossip it’s that matching tattoos are the kiss of death in a relationship, and I’ve kind-of gotten used to having him around so it would be weird if we weren’t together anymore.

So I decided I want something huge and beautiful and colorful, but I’m not entirely sure what. I was thinking the other day about things that remind me of home — not necessarily my mother or my father, just home — like morning glories, thunderstorms, candles, grapevines, peacocks, and horses, and the idea struck me to get a morning glory vine climbing up my back or across my shoulders. Or maybe I could get an entire flower garden, with violets, lilies of the valley, morning glories, black-eyed Susans, hyacinths, lilacs, and peonies. Or maybe a horse underneath a grapevine, watching a thunderstorm roll in with a peacock as a candle softly illuminates morning glories twisting up a trellis.

A lot of tattoo sites show mathemeticians’ and physicists’ geeky-but-cool tattoos, like star maps, Feynman diagrams, or pi, but I doubt I could get away with inking Benoit’s theory of image restoration and repair on my person, although it would come in handy should I ever go into teaching. I’ve wanted for a long time now to have a fake mustache tattooed on my index finger so I could go incognito at a moment’s notice, but even my most fanciful friends are opposed to the idea. I suppose aspiring press secretaries should be circumspect in their body art — but how funny would it be to dodge a difficult question by suddenly turning into a Snidely Whiplash look-a-like?

I was sitting on the couch being weepy this afternoon — that’s what I do when I’m sick, and I am most definitely fighting off something right now — when my favorite commercial of all time came on TV. Now, I’m not a fan of the so-called “Christmas creep” that means stores start putting out ornaments in July, but how can you argue with the adorable-ness of this?

So that got me thinking about some other Christmas commercials of long ago, including this one:

And, of course, this one, which always makes me cry a little:

And what roundup of nostalgic Christmas commercials would be complete without the Coca-Cola polar bears?

What are your favorites? Go on, share!

One of the sounds that always makes me think of my mother is the clicking of knitting needles. She had these wonderful long needles, shiny and chilly to the touch, that would rub together so quickly I thought they would catch fire as she wound yarn into scarves, mittens, and sweaters. One of the saddest moments we had together was the day she discovered she could no longer knit — she kept asking me to count her stitches for her at the end of each row because she couldn’t remember how many she was supposed to have. After several countings and unravelings, she put the needles away and never brought them out again.

So I think she would be proud to see this, the end result of a month of knitting lessons:

It’s supposed to be a hat, as you can see in this shot:

(That’s Bearby, for those of you who haven’t met him. He’s getting up in years but has weathered the decades fairly well except for some minor balding. Oh, and his arm almost fell off.)

It was actually Beloved’s idea to take the class, which was offered through the local Community Education office. They have all sorts of interesting courses, including a ballroom-dancing one we may take in the spring. Beloved took a Spanish class last semester, and our knitting teacher is thinking of offering another class in the winter to teach us how to make mittens.

It’s been fun, honestly. My mother taught me how to knit when I was small, but I never knew how to “cast on,” purl, or actually make anything of value. This little hat won’t fit on my head — it was made with a certain nephew’s noggin in mind — but it still felt pretty cool to knit something. My next project is a full-sized hat for a friend of mine, and with any luck it’ll be finished by the time it snows in Kentucky. That is, if it ever gets around to snowing in Kentucky. (A hearty *jab jab* to the Pennsylvanians who’ve already seen snow this fall.)

In scrounging for NaBloPoMo topics, I started probing my innermost thoughts, fears and neuroses, because, frankly, if I were to write about those, I’d run out of space before I ran out of words. I started thinking about my toilet fear, and decided to trace it back as far as I could remember, and suddenly it was clear as day why I’m terrified of toilets, creeped out by commodes, leery of the loo. So gather around, friends, for the day has come for you to hear the tale … of the toilet. *creepy whisper*

It was 1988. I was on the cusp of my seventh birthday, and my family was getting ready to move into a new house. Our old house was just fine, really — I don’t remember any issues with the toilets there. A clothes bar in the bathroom once fell out of the wall and its anchor screw gouged my leg, but that didn’t have anything to do with the toilet. Well, one time I dropped a roll of toilet paper into the downstairs toilet and my dad had to get a stick to fish it out, but the plumbing was, by and large, benign.

I was less-than-ambivalent about moving into the new house, which we rented from my uncle, for one reason and one reason only: The toilet didn’t work very well. (There was also a nest of fire ants in my closet, but I didn’t know that at the time.) The toilet was old and a sluggish flusher, and more often than not was full of discolored water because the well was broken or something. To my seven-year-old self, nothing was more terrifying than watching black water slosh around in a perpetually dirty toilet bowl, never quite making it down the drain.

But Fate wouldn’t have us move into the new place quite yet. The people moving into our old house showed up early, leaving my family no choice but to temporarily move in with my grandmother in her two-bedroom apartment. Her toilet was also sluggish, and frequently unflushable as she wasn’t hooked into the town water system. No one was, actually — I think that was before “town water.” I grew up knowing that sometimes you just couldn’t flush the toilet because, well, it wasn’t going to go anywhere until they pumped the septic tank.

Anyway, six people and one sluggish toilet do not functional plumbing make, and my uncle (a different one — this one’s a plumber) had to come over and shove a pipe snake down there. It was pretty gruesome. My delicate sensibilities were properly horrified, and things only got worse when we moved into our new home and the only toilet available was that one. My hatred of the toilet only grew stronger when I fainted off of it once, banged my head on the clawfoot tub, and woke up between the tub and the toilet — not a good place to be when you have both a little brother who can’t aim and a carpeted bathroom.

We finally did get a new toilet in that house, although you still had to be careful about the septic tank, and eventually we built our own house with more than one bathroom and toilets that functioned properly and with clear water, but I had been shaken badly enough that these new toilets weren’t going to soothe me. I still refuse to be soothed, even though I’ve spent the past few years living among toilets who know no septic tanks, who still function when the power is out, and who flush marvelously with nary a complaint. This fear has blossomed to the point that I have a mental list of the acceptable toilets around town, and will not frequent establishments with poor facilities. All the bars in town have removed the lids from the toilet tanks — don’t even get me started on toilets without tank lids — which initially frightened me until I figured out that the drunker I am, the less toilets bother me.

Ooh, now there’s a thought — I should duct-tape a flask to the plunger just in case. And here’s another thought that’s been bothering me lately: Why do they put the emergency valve down behind the toilet? If my crapper is overflowing, why would I want to stick my face down there to turn it off? Discuss.