Incoherent Scribblings

I have “been on” Facebook since the summer of 2007 when, in the process of preparing for a job interview, I started researching Web 2.0 I’ve found new and old friends alike there and I like the applications and games.

However, over the past couple of weeks I have reconnected with some people that I used to consider my friends and truthfully I am not exactly sure how I feel about it.

When I first stumbled across them I was excited. A few of them “friended” me and then, as those of you who use Facebook know, suddenly people that I might know were being recommended left and right. I got caught up in the novelty of seeing where so-and-so was or how you-know-who was doing and I was friending people that I hadn’t seen for ten or fifteen years. (Yes, in Facebookland “friend” is a verb.) It was like a virtual class reunion.

But then like a real-world class reunion, the reasons that I had lost touch with some of the people came flooding back to me. I saw the wedding pictures of a friend from college and when I saw how everyone in our little clique but me was in the picture I remembered a falling-out that I had had with the group. I was happy to find a friend from high school until I recalled how a mutual “friend” of ours liked to remind me how she thought that this friend was so much smarter, prettier, and skinnier than I ever was.

Although I like to think that I don’t hold grudges, I have to admit that I was a tad bitter towards some of my long-lost friends. I seriously wondered what had ever possessed me to seek these people out in the first place.

But then I remembered that I didn’t seek them all out: Albeit virtually, many of them approached me first. Has enough time passed that we can let go of the things that split us apart and reconcile? Or is it nothing more than superficial network building?

The optimist in me hopes it’s the former. The cynic in me suspects it’s the latter.

My Panda Tattoo
Originally uploaded by blondelibrarian

A while back someone tagged me to do the sixth picture thing, so even though I am pulling it from Flickr, here is the sixth picture from the sixth folder in my “My Pictures” folder.

This is a picture of the tattoo on my upper left ankle and was taken by Leonard, my friend Maria’s husband, in the front yard of my house in Mississippi in the summer of 2001.

I remember the day the picture was taken. Maria and Leonard had come over to my house to grill out and Leonard had his new digital camera with him. The fact that he had a digital camera in the summer of 2001 was sort of a big deal because they were pretty expensive and most of the people I knew were still using 35mm cameras.

Anyway, after Leonard had taken about a hundred pictures of Maria and me goofing off, he got kind of “arty” and had me pose for this picture. This is exactly how the picture was taken (in other words, no Photoshop cropping)… from the knees down.

I had this little introduction written up and meant to post it yesterday to launch this year’s Holidailies, but decided to put it on hold for a day after being inspired by kitten fun yesterday. So, here it is.

* * *

Because of many things that were beyond my control last year, I did not participate in Holidailies. However, when I first participated in 2005 I had a good enough experience that I decided to return this year.

Two years ago. December 2005. When I think about my life then I am flooded with bittersweet memories.

I was on a different continent and possessed a different marital status. I was semi-depressed and directionless because even though I didn’t want to admit it, I was slowly beginning to realize that era of my life was coming to an end.

There were precious few hours of daylight but the days were agonizingly long for me. I spent too much time watching badly dubbed TV while waiting for him to come home. When he was at home, we spoke less and less and the tension grew to be nearly unbearable. When he wasn’t home I was almost content, except I couldn’t help but wonder what was really behind the flimsy excuses he gave me for not being there. I refused to cry, but my anger towards him grew until it threatened to consume me.

But then again, I was excited. After almost four years I was getting ready to go home to visit my friends and family. I was anxiously awaiting the birth of my nephew. While I had been overseas, my niece had transformed from a baby into a little girl and I couldn’t wait to get to know her. I was looking forward to eating silly American “delicacies” and hearing my native language spoken all around me.

Days after I wrote my last post of the 2005 Holidailies season I flew across the Atlantic and into the arms of my family. My nephew arrived eight days later and there were whirlwind visits to my old stomping grounds.

I gained perspective and when I returned to Germany I gave myself an ultimatum: If my marriage hadn’t improved in six months I would walk out the door and never look back. Well, despite the effort (on both our parts), my marriage didn’t improve and I did indeed walk out the door.

And though I have looked back a couple of times, it was only briefly.

Because I no longer have a room of my own at either of my parents’ houses, when I go back to Small Town Iowa to visit my family I am required to take up lodging in my mother’s guest room. I don’t mind staying in this room, but whenever I step into it I feel like I have entered a time capsule.

On the surface the guest room contains my maternal grandmother’s bedroom suite, a few pieces of furniture from my childhood, a closet full of clothes that should have been taken to the consignment store years ago, and various other things that my mother labels as her “antiques.”

However to my surprise, as I peered into drawers, opened boxes, and looked under the bed I found more than junk and ancient relics. I discovered reminders of my other lives: There were boxes filled with nearly-forgotten souvenirs of my high school glory days, mementos of my often idealized college years, and evidence of my life as a single career girl.

And as I listened to the cassette tapes of my favorite “hair bands” on my dorm-sized stereo while teaching my six year old niece to arrange books in alphabetical order on the bookshelf that my grandfather made for me when I was her age, I had a thought: The room wasn’t so much a time capsule as it was a living memory.

The first time I shaved my legs I was eleven or twelve. I didn’t really need to shave them, but you couldn’t have convinced me of that for a million dollars.

Because neither my mom nor dad used straight razors, I used my mom’s electric razor. It was dull and I remember being thoroughly disappointed because instead of the silky smooth skin that I was hoping for, I ended up with nothing more than slightly-shorter-stubble.

When I told Mom I was going buy some straight razors and shaving cream, she showed me a scar on her ankle that explained why she used an electric razor. Let’s just say that I was sufficiently traumatized enough by it that it wasn’t until I was fourteen that I braved shaving with a straight razor for the first time.

I am lucky enough that as a natural blonde the hair on my legs is not easily seen even when it is long and as a result, over the years my shaving pattern has varied wildly. Those first few years I only shaved when “necessary” and then during my most extreme shaving phase in my early 20s I shaved nearly every other day.

When I went to Europe the first time, I thought that I might abandon shaving altogether as a cultural assimilation exercise. However, when I learned that, contrary to popular American opinion, European women shave too I was more than a little bit relieved that I wouldn’t have to suffer through that “need-to-shave” itchy leg syndrome one day longer.

These days I still shave, but laziness has whittled my shaving routine down to approximately once a week… or whenever I can’t stand the “need-to-shave” itchy leg syndrome anymore. And as a result, I have noticed some things that my mom tried to tell me (but I purposefully ignored) when I was eleven. The less I shave…

1.) … the longer I can go without shaving.
2.) … the softer and finer the hair on my legs is.
3.) … the less lotion I need to re-moisturize my skin.

I have not yet become “green” and I don’t think all of the hair on my body will ever reach the point that it is the same length, but I have to admit that I enjoy the liberty that such infrequent shaving has given me and if someday I don’t feel the need to shave my legs anymore at all, then dammit, I won’t!