Author: Carie

The Anti-Christmas

~ Carie ~ Leave a comment

I loathe christmas. Yes, with a lower-case “c.” In my eyes, there’s not a lot of Christ in it any more. Why? Let’s go back to the fact I work in advertising. We’re in full gear on holiday advertising. We’ve talked about it, run the estimates, negotiated the prices, ordered the product, worked on concepts and attended far too many meetings. By the time the Clydesdales make their appearance on TV (and, oh, how I love those beautiful horses), I will want to slap anyone who brings up Santa or shopping.

Don’t get me wrong. I take every chance I get to spend time with my family and friends. I just don’t enjoy the holiday. It is too commercialized. Look at it. People camp out for days in front of stores just to get a cheap television, cheap toy or cheap t-shirt. Is this really how we give thanks? Is this what we want to teach our children? I guess so. Our gods aren’t solely made of gold anymore. They’re made of plastic, glass, motherboards and flammable fabrics. That aside, wouldn’t you be better off spending all of that time with your friends, spouse or children?

Granted, my job is to make you want to do these things, but what happened to your brain? My own godchildren are too busy checking out the labels to understand the meaning of the gift. I give because I care about the person. And watch out, if I write you a letter (which I try my darndest to do amidst my tumultuous schedule), I am expressing a high level of admiration for our friendship. I’ve broken out the stationery and the fountain pens to express my thoughts. I have more love for the epistolary arts than I do for the holiday season.

This might be why I search for the right Christmas cards. I like to be inclusive of all of my family and friends. I like the cards which wish peace and joy for the season and the New Year ahead instead of focusing solely on Christmas or Santa. Don’t start with me about dropping “the reason for the season.” The reason is peace on earth and good will toward man. I wonder if we could all remember that every once in a while.

Why the Summer Cold?

~ Carie ~ Leave a comment

I’m sorry, everyone, for my lack of writing prowess last week. Rain clouds and scattered showers invaded my hot Texas summer and brought with them every last particle of allergy-ridden air. When I was a kid, I didn’t suffer like this. The only thing I was allergic to then was down, which was easy to avoid. The allergy to the fluffy softness did cut out my option to time travel to plush homes in ante-bellum or Victorian era times, but I thought of other things to do. Now I am stuck in buildings all day in which they pump cool recycled air through the vents, and I get sprinkled with all of the dust and germs from the 5,ooo plus occupants.

As an asthmatic, I rush into action to crush the allergy attack. If I let it linger, the allergies turn into a sinus infection, and I turn into a mouth-breather. That leads to all out warfare to stave off Bronchitis. Asthma and Bronchitis are those neighbors that build an eight-foot high fence between each other because someone at some point didn’t RSVP on time to the Fourth of July block party or the kids’ My Little Pony bash or the Next Great Thing MLM. It’s localized chaos—in my lungs.

I tried to write you something pretty and witty, but my synapses weren’t firing correctly due to all of the snot and antihistamines. I did spend time admiring the teal ink color of my newest gel pen as I doodled various things on my white sheet legal pad. My brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen as I hunched over the desk, mouth agape, trying to suck in enough air to think. I felt like a kid trying to catch their breath before they tattled on their brother (which I did, a lot). It was that kind of mouth breathing.

I am not good at being sick. Even in my delirium, I have to be doing something. Do not recommend I sit down and rest. Don’t bring up taking a nap. I have things to get done. Don’t I? Somewhere in the haze of my thoughts is a to-do list that needs doing. I’m sure of it. So I get to work doing things which don’t need to be done.

One time, when I had the flu for a few days and was confined to my house, I taught myself to knit. I made two scarves and a hat for my dad during said illness. My mom hates the hat, but Dad loves it. I don’t care either way. Learning to knit kept me occupied, and I gained a new skill. During yet another illness, I completely repainted the house. I had painted it the month before, but the living rooms walls bothered me as they started to close in on my boredom. Their pale yellow color threatened me with their semi-bright cheeriness, so they had to go.

I don’t understand the people who can lie around, wallowing in used tissues and chicken noodle soup. My soul needs more than mere soup. It needs over-the-counter drug fueled purpose. When I’m fine and dandy again, it’s a bit depressing the purpose couldn’t have been a little more purposeful—and actually on the to-do list.

Off to Work I Go

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I work in advertising—not the dramatic world of Mad Men, but in actual advertising. My specialty at the moment is deadlines. I’m not the one setting them. I am the one racing toward them. I take massive print and digital projects and whittle them down into the understandable and achievable. I manage art directors, layout designers, and copywriters in the dog eat dog world of retail advertising. It’s fun to be in the grit of the creative process, but, for me, it’s even more fun to see the work completed and out the door. I’ve always felt that way.

If I weren’t juggling multiple projects and didn’t need to rush headlong into the next one, I’m sure I’d be wrapped up in the anticipation of the launch. The break of a campaign is a delight, but the next big thing on the list is there to distract me. As it is now, I wake up one morning and WHAM! There it is.

When I was younger, the strangest moment was seeing someone I didn’t even know walking around with my work. It lit the oddest emotions. A flittering of shock in which it took a second to realize, yes, I did create that. I didn’t dawn on me what the reach of my occupation truly was until one vacation I took in upstate New York. I walked into a tiny boutique, and when I checked out, on the counter next to where I set my purse stood a holder filled with a brochure I had built for a basketball team. The sales clerk picked one up and held it out for me. She suggested I go to a game, “All the info on the team is right here.” A long, drawn out “wow” echoed in my head.

Over the span of years I have been in advertising, my work has appeared in all 50 states and several other countries. It’s a strange thought for me, even now. Someone in another country, let alone just another state, has seen something I created. Granted, it’s not a Picasso, but it is the work that pays me.

If you’ve opened a newspaper, had a USPS address, or signed up for emails from several corporations over the last several years (I won’t say how long), you’ve touched something I either created myself or helped through the creative process to get to you. You may not like me for that. You may be ranting I’m just a cog in a giant machine, but here’s the truth: I know almost every American between the ages of twenty-four and sixty-four have seen something I’ve done. That’s a pretty powerful thought.

The Hell of Revisions

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Books and Boots
Books and Boots

I’ve been working on a novel for the last year and a half. More so learning the trade and the potential of my abilities. Abilities I thought were so striking and creative have been encouraged, judged, praised, condemned, and are now being put to the final test. I’m in Revision Hell.

I now see that my first draft of this particular piece was one big ol’ brain dump, and maybe my brain is not the best and the brightest. From examining what I sat down and read through a few months ago, my brain is a remedial reader with an attention disorder. That’s okay. I can objectively say, looking back with the knowledge I gained, that every large work I’ve done to date has been a fight to get the story on the page—to get the pictures out of my head. The problem is I am attached to these ideas. They are my creative brainchildren. I protected them from every slight and offending remark because they are so much a part of me.

No more.

The book I am working on at the moment has become an unruly teenager. Full on bad attitude and unwillingness to bend. Ha. I’m tougher than that. A little tough love would do it some good. I am ready to get the revisions done and kick the overgrown kid out of my house. This pompous little piece of work needs to get out and start proving itself on its own.

That’s how you have to see the process. When you start, the idea is grand and wonderful. You look forward to nurturing the seed and completing the first draft. It is a great accomplishment when there’s a thick pile of double-space pages neatly tucked in a box. I can imagine it now—the smell of printer ink and the feel of the warm paper. My idea has been given life. Some people stop here. They guard it and protect it from the outside world. I know I did. But was I right in doing so? If you stop at this point, the idea on paper will never truly flourish. It will never grow to influence another. It will sit in a box or on a flash drive until it dies hidden away from the judging eyes of the world.

Get past that. Walk away. Give it breathing room, then come back and see it for what it is. It’s still just an idea. What could be better? What problems does it have? How can you fix it? And the scariest of all, what does someone else think of it?

Revision is not about reviewing for passive phrases and adverbs. It’s not simply running it through a spell check. This is about getting in there and tearing it apart. It can be stronger. How are you going to do that? It can have more depth. How are you going to give it more emotion? It’s hard work, because this is your child, but you can do it.

I’m going through it now. I am throwing out entire portions of the manuscript. Characters are being set aside because I realize I had them in place for only one reason. I see the holes for what they are now. I will make it the best I can, and then I will send it out into the world. I can’t promise I won’t be hurt when that first criticism hits, but I will be in a better place to understand.

The Worst Roommate

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I need to admit something right now. I am not a good roommate. I detested being a roommate or having a roommate even when delineated in college housing bylaws or by the size of my paycheck in comparison to my mortgage and expenses. I despise the situation because I know I suck at it. I am not fond of other people touching my things or, more important, moving them. I like them where they are—where I left them in the first place. I don’t let people know my exact boundaries, so they think they can get away with anything. This situation ends up at some point with me yelling at them and telling them where they can stick themselves. So. Not good roommate material.

But here I am in a great social experiment. I am requesting to be a roommate. I am asking others to overlook my poor abilities to interact properly in society. I am asking for others to take me in, and what have I learned? I, of all people, can be a decent roommate. Surprise. My mother would be so proud of me. Putting me into preschool decades ago in order to socialize her unsociable daughter finally paid off. It took some thirty odd years, but here I am.

Inside, I question how someone who has spent most of their adult life independent of someone else occupying their personal space could achieve this sort of balance in an uneasy situation. Maybe things work now because I am at that point where you’re too old to care so much about all the little stuff. Who cares if someone eats one of my Fage® yogurts? It’s yogurt. I’ll live. Where was this little bit of bliss in college? Wait. What about before that?

How did my parents make it through my brother and I being in the same household? That is one social experiment for which they might never forgive us. Sorry for all the screaming, Mom. Sorry about our behavior on car trips, Dad. I’m amazed at how you survived with two highly competitive children. I’m amazed we survived. Of course, we were quite amiable when sent to our rooms. Once confined to our own, individual spaces, my brother and I got along. We were lifers outsmarting the warden, but we weren’t outsmarting anyone. We snuck into the hall that separated our rooms and played games. We yelled to each other through the air conditioning vents. We were safe in our own bubbles of the universe, and as long as we were there, we were well behaved.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe I have figured out how to carry that bubble with me—a little piece of a common peace that can live wherever I live. It’s a nice thought.

Killer StairMaster®

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Image
The StairMaster® StepMill

If you’ve ever been in a gym—one of those workout mecca places half-filled with cardio machines—you’ve seen the step mill. It’s not a pretty machine. It’s not sleek and inviting like any of the new, high-tech elliptical machines that can take your pulse and make a cappuccino at the same time. The stair mill looks painful. And lonely. Every other machine is occupied with a waiting list covering the next hour and a half of workout time, but over in the corner sits the StairMaster®. Look again. That’s right. There are two. The size and bulk of one machine hides its companion like buffalo roaming the plain. They protect their mate—the giant lovebirds of the cardio world. Those two massive machines will sit there alone, only each other for company.

I’ve never understood them. “Oh, wow. I’m walking up stairs to nowhere.” My knees and I have an agreement about stairs. We don’t like them even when they lead somewhere nice. I have the same feeling about treadmills, stationary bikes and ellipticals. They’re boring. Plus, I always get that Talking Heads song repeating in my head. We’re on a road to nowhere. Come on inside. Takin’ that ride to nowhere. We’ll take that ride. But the stair climber thing called to me. It begged for a companion, for just one person to drape a sweaty towel over its frame. I guess my new knee braces bolstered me, because I answered the call.

Just one note, there is a time limit during peak hours at the gym of thirty minutes for every cardio machine—except the stair mill. “Why?” you ask, because there doesn’t need to be one. Anyone that survives for thirty minutes deserves a medal of valor. They should get something to recognize their pain and suffering. They deserve a medal and an immediate infusion of fluids.

In a few years, when I forget the experience, remind me to never try it again. I swear the behemoth tried to kill me. My thighs fell off somewhere around what it said was the “fifteenth floor.” It didn’t feel like fifteen floors in a normal building. It felt like had climbed to the top of the Space Needle™. I couldn’t take the pain anymore, and I won’t mention my derriere. There is no description for such an ache. And here’s my question, why? What sort of sadomasochistic SOB are you that that is your machine of choice? A perfectly shaped rear end and thighs of steel are not worth this kind of suffering.

There is one positive thing I learned during my adventure on the stair mill to hell. I now know that if the elevator is ever broken, I could make it to my meeting. I’d be hot and sweaty, out of breath, but I’d be there all thanks to the StairMaster®. Of course, now I have a completely different Talking Heads song beating a path through my brain cells. Psycho killer. Qu’est-ce que c’est? Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far far better. Run, run, run, run, run, run, run away.

Athena: Goddess of the Big Girl

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Every time I register for a race, I contemplate which category to choose. Do I go with my age group—a group in which I will never place? Or do I suck it up and choose Athena? That’s right, Athena, the ancient Greek Goddess of Wisdom, Warfare and Divine Intelligence. How does that translate into a category of women that weigh more than 150 pounds? Is it the warfare part? How do those women feel that weigh 155? Sucks to be them in the same category as me. I might have to use some of my Athena-like powers and kick their scrawny derriere.

I laugh at the Athena requirements. 150 pounds? Hah! That’s nothing. I can leg press almost three times that weight. I’m 5’10” tall, and I am not a model. No woman at my height and age needs to weigh less than 150. I don’t care what the doctors say. I think the medical chart for “small-frame” women my height shows 145 pounds as the lowest suggested weight. Have you stood close to a woman my height that weighs that? I have. I’ve been one of them. I’ve been lower than that. There are a few words that come to mind. Sickly. Cancerous. Bony. Pick your word. It’s not pretty when you’re up close to it.

I loom over the average woman and a lot of men it seems. I will never be under 150 lbs, and that’s a good thing. Only when you’re registering for an athletic activity is it pointed out to you that you are not “ideal.” So I will let them know that Athena describes only my attitude, not my size. Although I do bear a striking resemblance to the bronze statue at Piraeus.

When you think of marathon runners, you think of people who are slender and lithe. They have “runner’s calves.” You know, those incredibly skinny legs with a giant knot at the top of where their calves should be. They’re light on their feet and have too much nervous energy. On a 90-minute training run, they’ll get out there and do ten, eleven, even twelve miles.

Me? I’m doing six or seven miles with my pace group. And I will admit, I’m packing a Gu or some Chomps for when I get done with mile three. While the faster, lighter runners are dressed in light shorts and a tank top and sporting their fancy minimalist running shoes, I’m in my extra comfy, cushioned shoes and packed to the gills with sunscreen, Body Glide, Gu, Chomps and at least an extra twenty ounces of fluids. Let’s add all that weight to my already impressive demeanor. That’s a lot of extra pounds for any runner.

This is how I train. I’m out there logging the same times, the same long runs. I’m carrying myself, and all that extra weight, up hills and through speed work. I’m practicing my marathon pace. I’ve got a couple of marathons under my belt. Heck, I’ve done three sprint triathlons. I pace beginners, wounded runners and those just wanting to take it easy. We come in all sorts of heights and weights, so how does it come down to age vs. Athena? At least I don’t have to pick “Clydesdale” like the men’s category. What a pile of horse—.

Seasonal Roommates

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I’m homeless.

Strike that. I own a home. It’s a just bit disheveled at the moment due to a “pop up” hail storm last year. That and the fact that the storm gave me the perfect excuse to rip off the back of the house. An awning that looked like a meth addict’s front teeth, a holey roof, coordinating holey siding and eight destroyed windows. Opportunity pounded at my door. Although technically, “opportunity” destroyed my classic 1950’s Sears aluminum awning. A momentary sadness set in until visions of an office, powder bath, and a beautiful new dishwasher danced through my dreams. So, I can’t live in my house right now because it doesn’t have the things necessary for survival in modern society. Things like running water and bathrooms. Luckily, I have friends that are willing to take in a shiftless wanderer like me.

I’ve come to call them my seasonal roommates. I don’t want to overstay my welcome, as they have plans, family obligations, etc. I stay several weeks and move on to the next welcoming guest room. If I had to, I could make the sacrifices necessary in my expenses to rent a temporary residence during this time. I understand minimalism in ways that others do not see in me. I can survive. I will survive. I have been raised to be independent, and I am. I do not ask of others, even when I am in need. But here are friends, some known for only a short time, who are generous and open. In the midst of their own lives, they have welcomed me into their homes and have asked nothing in return. How can that be? We are all financially capable people. We are each strong and independent personalities, but they have brought me in as if family.

I can only ask myself how in any way I have deserved such generosity. A brief image of a bookie’s debit column flashes in my mind, but I shake it off because that idea is wrong. As humans we are wired to be doubtful, superstitious creatures. We seek explanation, as I do in this moment of my life. But do we need answers? In the face of such kindness, the only things I see are beautiful minds and open hearts.

Howdy

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Howdy. I’m Carie. Maybe you stumbled over that. It’s pronounced “CARE-ee,” and yes, it only has one “r.” You’re still stuck on the howdy, aren’t you? Get over it. It’s a great word. It’s a wonderful combination of “hello” and “how do you do.” It’s concise, to the point, and wonderfully happy. You can’t bemoan your existence as you greet someone with the word “howdy.” You just have to smile and nod as the word rolls off your tongue. But again, you might have thought, “How quaint,” and smiled that thick, molasses kind of smile that makes me sick. Or many more of you just stopped and said, “Shit. She’s a southerner.”

I’m a Texan to be exact, and if you know anything about those few of us who are actually native to the state in which we live, we don’t consider ourselves Southerners. It’s a stretch for us to even think of ourselves as Americans. We’re Texans. We’re Texans before we’re anything else. When I’m traveling abroad, there’s a wave of relief when they find out that you’re not just another American. You’re from Texas. They know you’re different. There’s a sense of excitement—a building anticipation that anything is possible. Anything could happen.

In my travels, I’ve been asked hundreds of questions about horses, boots, cattle ranches, oil rigs, the Alamo and Southfork. I answered yes to so many of the questions on my first trip to Europe all those years ago, that I realized I was a true Texan—almost a stereotype, but without any of the rhinestones or big, bottle-blonde hair. I didn’t have to fake it by polishing up a pair a silver-tipped boots and donning a white cowboy hat. I was a Texan with all the right trimmings. Family ranches, farm houses, horses, cattle, an ancestor that died in the Alamo, another ancestor who was a Texas Ranger, a few more that were cattle-rustlers, and my bright life under the stars. I own my fair share of boots and cowboy hats, but not because I like to frequent Gilley’s or have ever been to the Cattle Baron’s Ball. I have these trappings because they are part of who I am. They are my history and heritage as much as all of the family stories. I’m a Texan and damn proud of it.

So, howdy. I’m Carie. Who are you?