Lucy's Spleen

To Santa from me, circa 1984-ish

Runs deep and builds on itself

So, how's your Christmas guilt coming along? I'll tell you, mine is totally banging. I've only procured/shipped maybe a third of the gifts on my list so naturally I'm furiously self-flagellating because, you know, it's all about the presents. How will folks know I love them if not via a mountain of UPS boxes piled up at their doors? I don't know when I developed the deep urge I have to go overboard for birthdays and holidays. I do recall Christmases and birthdays of my childhood feeling like periods of glorious excess, so I suppose my urge is partly to uphold the tradition, but there's also a component of guilty overcompensation. I start feeling compelled to give objects to people  for deep emotional reasons entirely unrelated to objects: I will never be able to repay my parents and Stan's for all they've done for me = I should at least try to buy them stuff; I am awful about returning calls and emails from friends and family = I need to host the birthday party, make the decorations, buy a beautiful gift and bake the cake from scratch; I am selfish and think about myself too much = I need to give socially responsible presents like locally-produced goods or, better yet, my own artily handcrafted items. This guilty need to give has resulted in some occasions of buying my way into a financial problem; other times, finances being prohibitive from the get-go, I've overdone it with little "amplifier" gifts that wind up feeling totally meaningless once given.  Of course, finances are always prohibitive so that is a special reason to feel guilty in and of itself.

My partner has the same problem, both with the guilt and the finances, but he has a very different way of dealing. Whereas I tend to want to overdo for holidays, Stan prefers to pretend they don't exist. Thus I am able to adopt additional Team Guilt in virtue of our affiliation, and assume responsibility for wanting to overdo on his behalf, as well as my own. So obviously the only way to assuage all this guilt is to make hand printed, ribbon-festooned, sequined, origami pop-up Christmas village holiday cards with a gorgeous picture of us wearing beautiful white-toothed smiles and get them all out in the mail with an eloquent personal message to every single person I've ever met for delivery no later than October 17th. Everyone knows the most heartfelt greeting card will be rendered null if the sender didn't have it together enough to make sure her good wishes for a joyful holiday and a happy New Year were delivered before Christmas Eve.

This is a very time-sensitive season, you know. I believe Hallmark has actually patented a design that causes any cards still in the mail on or after December 26 to spontaneously combust. Same goes for gifts, you can buy your nephew a Wii but if it doesn't arrive in time for Christmas you will find him calling you up on Boxing Day, with your sister prodding him in the background as he grumbles, "ThankyoufortheLincolnLogs." 

Alas, timeliness has never been my strong suit. I am the guy who buys all the materials to make the cards, then either gets too busy to make them or becomes paralyzed by the prospect of so overwhelming an ambition. And so every year I grind along in this awesomely self-propelled guilt cycle: a year/lifetime of guilt makes me want to go overboard for holidays, I get stalled up  by trying to be a perfectionist to make up for all the reasons I'm guilty and next thing I know I'm out of time, Christmas is over and I never got my shit together, thereby planting the first seed for fresh guilt that will bloom in the New Year. Happy Holidays!

Burn It To The Wick

Lieutenant Dieter Dengler has turned out to be a very nice fish. He's a peppy little guy and I have him sort of "trained" (you could almost call it that) to know that food will follow when I/someone approach/es his bowl. So whenever I walk up to check him out he goes ape shit swimming really fast back and forth at the side of the bowl and gaping his mouth like MAW MAW MAW. Thus I am able to semi-deceive myself that he is capable of such cognitive feats as facial feature recognition and, you know,  enthusiasm and such so I can pretend that we have a mutually adoring relationship. I've tried to make giving him a happy home my chief preoccupation; I check on him first thing in the morning and last thing before I go to bed at night, and when I come home from work I call out to him, like so, "YOO-HOO! DEE-ter DEH-ngler!" and then reward him with food for losing his mind while I coo and drool over him as though he has any awareness of it. 

You can see I'm well overdue for getting a dog, already.

Anyway thanks to Chris for her suggestion of including a title in Lt. Dieter Dengler's name; Stan seems to have a lot more respect for the little guy now that he holds rank. Also my mom says to tell that his theme song is this old military running cadence that my Grandpa always used to sing, only substituting the words, "dingle dangle," with you know what. I'll let you in on something, though, his real theme song is this one:

P.S. Can I just say thanks Ann Wilson in this video for helping me establish an Official Hair Goal 2008? Now I know exactly what I want to be aiming for.

P.P.S. Sorry I don't have a great picture to show of Lt. Dieter Dengler. I've been trying to photograph him but he's too swimmy.

Let's Just Say I'm Starting Low and Planning to Work My Way Up the Vertebrate Subphylum

Ever since the loss of our two ladybugs, Jumbo and [the other one], I have been thinking nonstop about getting a pet. I've been thinking how I need a living thing around the house to take care of. Something besides Stan. A small thing. This weekend the urge really peaked and all I could think about was how I really needed a pet; how much more settled I would feel and how my life would be improved if we were a pet-having household with a little angibal to care for, now. So yesterday after work I mounted an expedition across the newly dangerous black ice-slick sidewalks of Porter Square and (after a rather anti-climactic experience in what is possibly the dingiest, most dismal pet store run by the most depressing pet store owners ever) came home with someone very special-

His name's Dieter Dengler.
Unless we decide on a different name. Those who are clever at devising names for fish and such (you know who you are) are welcome to enter submissions for consideration. It seems like it would be fun to have a contest or prize or something, but I think we've learned that I'm not so great with the follow-though in this type of event. Plus I'm not hating the name I've come up with, yet, so let's say the contest is this: anybody who comes up with a fish name that is undeniably better than Dieter Dengler may win the prize of naming a fish from somebody's blog one time.

I will furnish a few facts about Dieter to abet your creative processes:

• Dieter is small, with a rakish dorsal  fin.
• He is a peppy fellow.
• His face is slightly asymmetrical; one of his- uh... nostril-like-flap-things* is more pronounced than the other.
• Dieter enjoys eating and... um... bobbing.
• He is a goldfish.

Okay? Good luck everybody!

* Snout-scale abnormalities? Bacterial infestations? Scabrous lesions?

Hello you.
I've missed you over the past couple of days.
My but you're looking good to me right now.
Indeed, you're smashing!
I've really been enjoying our time together you know.
I'd like to keep seeing you- to see more of you, even.
I guess what I'm trying to say is
I think we should take it to the next level.
I'm going to try to keep blogging at a
higher rate of production than I was before the BloMe challenge.
I know it's going to be rough sometimes,
but I will do this, knowing that
for Us
it will all be worth it.
That's how much you've grown to mean to me.
So I want to thank you, honey.
Shit yeah.