Oh nothing, I replied airily. Just taking pictures of train wreck that is my life.
He sighed, the long tired sigh familiar to me from anyone who has been in a relationship with me for more than three years. Why do you always have to do that? Why do you have to shit on the carpet?
It's in my nature. I like to think it's part of my charm and on some days it is and on some days it isn't. It likely makes me relatable at the very least, an aspect that's important to blog readers according to a book I'm reading. Relatable and glamour are not two things that go hand in hand very often in my experience but as long time Charmers will attest to, I suffer from word vomit-itis and I don't know how to keep the less desirable aspects of my life off the internet because I started blogging when I was twenty-two and everything is on parade for the world to see at that age.
Anyway. I've been working too many hours and my weekends have been too busy. I'm getting tired, I'm getting depressed, I'm getting worn down. I'm starting to question why I do any of the things I do, it's like the slowest, most boring version of churning the ocean of milk.
I want glamour, I want to make an impact on other people, I want to wear my sexy shoes, I want a signed (in blood, preferably) book deal, I want thousands of Etsy sales, I want to feel desirable, I want all of my merchant events to be incredibly profitable, I want to be thirty pounds lighter, I want to have lazy days, I want more fun, I want to read books, I want to go to my pool, I want to be out of debt. Wanting. I'm always Wanting and burning. I'm always exhausted.
I am so sick of falling for guys who don't give a fuck about me! I need help! I need a facial! I need to go on a diet! I need money! I need new shoes! Oh, God, just do something! - Threesome
Usually, I escape by listening to lots of books and biographies in my car. Lots of Tudors, some teenager spies, some teenaged rebellion, whatever takes me away from my 10+ hour days of toddler toil. I'm listening to The Omnivore's Dilemma Because of Reasons and I swear to god I'ma wind up wrapping my red dented 2008 Honda Civic around a telephone pole. I need to see this through, so I will. Just like everything else I'm desperately trying to see through.
The people closest to me (except Jow, who knows better) keep futilely suggesting I stop something, anything. One of my day jobs, merchanting, something, anything. No. I say. No. I've always stopped when I got close to success and I'll be goddamned if I'm going to stop this time. There were a lot of things I could have been in this life that I walked away from. I cannot this time. I rarely talk of souls but for the sake of my own tattered soul, I can't stop now. Can't stop. Won't stop.
I can't have anything given to me, I never appreciate it. So She stretches me as thin as my daily whispered prayers and then a little thinner, just to make sure I really mean it this time. And I hang here, on this rack of my own making. The Hanged Woman. By this time of day, my thoughts collide into a soundless, wordless wail.
Let's take a look at my gallery of my current day.
I never know how I feel about this dress. It's a dizzying seesaw between love and hate. Sometimes I think it makes me look willowy. Sometimes I think it just makes me look fat. I've veer back and forth between these options about eleventybillion times a day. I still feel weird about having my arms bare.
My nails are ragged, thin, dry and chipped.
To encourage me in these artist pursuits that require a full time day job, my body has decided to start attacking me with eczema over my eyelids, hives and a super dry scalp. Delicious.
Our oven has not worked for several months. The new one we ordered has been backordered of course. Why not us? I'm trying to be saucy here, like I'm a NYC girl on the go who doesn't need an oven so she stores her back issues of Vogue in it. Have I had time to read this issue? No. Blake Lively/Serena Vander Woodsen sure looks full of life though, doesn't she? She's an entrepreneur, you know. Oh wait, so am I. Sads.
So. The story everyone in my circle of friends likes to tell about me and my domestic skills is this one. Bucks/Maidens/Whatever, take note. If you are lucky/cursed enough to have the same friends ten years later, it doesn't matter how many thousands of readers you have on your blog who think you're domestically capable. It doesn't matter how many lavish parties you throw for these ungrateful motherfuckers. It doesn't matter that anyone who has only known you as a (full) adult thinks you're an alterna-chick Emily Gilmore. THIS IS THE STORY THEY WILL TELL ABOUT YOU. So if you're hoping for a career in the domestic arts, chose your words carefully, youngs.
When I was twenty three-ish and feeling very weighed down by working a full time job (MY MOTHER SELF SPITS IN YOUR FACE, MAIDEN SELF! YOU WERE A WEENIE!), I had a live in boyfriend and my two besties (the triumvirate) were over. I was trying to make cookies from scratch using one of my grandmother's written recipes ("Use a hot oven" Thanks, Grandma). Our apartment was so small, we didn't even have a kitchen table. I kept telling myself it was bohemian. It wasn't. I was tired from a long day of getting yelled at in the workplace, crying in the bathroom while wearing fake pearls (tres grown up!) and trying to pretend like I knew how to bake anything. But I made dinner for then-boyfriend. I carefully plated his food and set it in front of him. What is this? he asked. Something inside me went snap. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK IT IS? IT'S DINNER! He looked at me for a moment. I meant. . .like . . .what's in it? The girls practically pissed themselves falling on the floor, laughing at the magnitude of my hose-beast-ness for what was meant as an honest question. Now whenever I look like I'm going to lose my shit at a party but have enough years to have my Emily Gilmore face on (until there's been say, four martinis) one of them will whisper in my ear, It's dinner! What the fuck do you think it is! This phrase is also used when dinner is a not terribly great showing, like the half eaten rotisserie chicken that was dinner, as pictured above. I mean, I could have shown you the finished product, all pretty like in the Wegmans recipe but this is what it started from. This is how I feel for most of my day. Like a fucking half eaten rotisserie chicken in a plastic container.
Fin.