Things My Sister Ate to Make Me Sad and/or Mad

I have four sisters.

Each one of these sisters presented their own unique set of challenges as I was growing up. The two oldest ones were only concerned with boys, makeup, shoulder pads, too-long sweaters with obscenely large belts, and hairspray...lots and lots of hairspray.

It was the eighties, so there was an unnatural amount of neon everything and ridiculously large hair.

Of my other two sisters, one is older and one is younger. We three were all so relatively close in age that we were often thought of as the little kids by the two older girls. I'd like to say that we all got along wonderfully and were the best of friends, but I really don't want to lie here. Mostly it was the older one and I who didn't get along.

I honestly don't remember a time before I was seventeen in which we were actually friendly toward one another. She was always trying to get me into trouble and I was always trying to avoid giving her a reason to try and get me into trouble. I'm not sure when this rivalry turned into a sort of Culinary Cold War, but it started with the mayonnaise on the toast. Seriously...who does that?

We must have been out of butter one morning, so instead she spread Miracle Whip onto her toast. Have you ever smelled toasted bread slathered in Miracle whip at 6:45 in the morning? The two smells just don't belong together. I made the mistake of letting her know that I thought this was disgusting. That was the subtle declaration and acceptance of a years-long war of preferences between the two of us.

Over time she learned all of the various foods that I had a particular disdain for and she often requested these foods. She set her own preferences for candy, soda, ice cream, and fast food in direct opposition to my own. I liked Coke; she liked Pepsi. I liked Burger King; she liked McDonald's. I liked flavorful food; she liked bland meals.

Some of her favorite dishes that where among my all time worst were spaghetti and boiled dinner. Notice, I did not say meatballs. There were never meatballs in our spaghetti. We had a box of spaghetti noodles doused in some kind of pasty red sauce that came in a jar. We almost always had canned peas with spaghetti. I was always the last one to finish because I would make a show of how much I hated it and we stall until everyone left the table so I could slip what was left back into the bowl.

The boiled dinner was just that...a dinner that was boiled. Whenever this was served, it seemed to take all day to cook the ingredients in a giant aluminum cauldron. This dinner consisted of potatoes, carrots, cabbage and ham, all boiled to a perfectly bland grayness that stunk like wet underwear and tasted even worse. This seemed to me like something hobos would cook under a bridge in an old boot, though I'm certain their recipe probably tasted better.

Is it illegal or somehow unethical to eat any other soup than Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup with grilled cheese? I absolutely loved grilled cheese and would gladly scarf down a half dozen or more, but we always, always, always had a big old pot of red, pasty soup with it.

Now that we are adults we actually get along. She makes some pretty good brownies. I would gladly eat any meal she cooks, as long as it's not spaghetti and hasn't been boiled.

Into the Wild

I wish I could switch my brain off.

I try to limit what I'm thinking about, to stay focused on individual threads of thought, but it rarely works. My mind jumps randomly and frequently from thought to thought. I often find myself having to backtrack, attempting to trace a path back to the original thought. It's not uncommon that I will have multiple projects going simultaneously.

I think I've gotten worse at this the more "connected" I've become via technology, the more disjointed and fragmented my thinking and focus are. I'm constantly checking email, facebook, twitter, work email, chat, IM, internets. I have so many followers and followees that I can't focus on any one thing in particular for too long before I'm jumping into something else.

Recently, I went offsite to lunch at a nearby fast food chain. I deliberately left behind my iPad, my Kindle, and even my hardcover book. I ordered my food and chose a seat in the very corner. For about forty minutes I ate lunch without checking my email or phone interwebs. I looked around at my fellow diners. I thought.

It was a small step, but it was a step nonetheless.

Several years ago I wanted to take a solo camping trip to get away and just think. I never took that camping trip. Now, as I write this, I think again about that trip. I don't want to disappear into the wilderness like Chris McCandliss. I just want to go far enough away that I can no longer hear the din of modern society. No phones. No internet. No traffic. No computers. Just me and the solitude. A pen. Some notebooks. Thoughts.

I have trouble reconciling this desire with my fear of being alone. I don't like being by myself for more than even a couple hours. I get anxious when my wife and children are gone even for an overnight trip. I am a highly social person and I crave the attention and interaction of others.

Maybe my solo trip should be a guy trip. Still without all of the entrapments of a connected society.

Just not alone.

Drowning

When I began tipping the bottle back, it was intended to numb the pain, the pleasure. I don’t normally drink, but tonight I wanted the whole bottle. I didn’t even bother with a glass. Straight bourbon to still torrential emotions. Halfway through I wept. I don’t remember when the sobs turned to laughter, but it didn’t last long.

Now, the bottle is empty and I cannot remember why I needed it in the first place. I cannot even remember what I look like. I tried looking in the mirror, but I must have broken it. That explains all the blood.

This post was written based upon this week's 100 word prompt (pleasure) from velvet verbosity.

Emerging from the Chrysalis

I stepped through the double-glass doors and into the cool twilight. With a subtle shrug of my shoulders I let fall to the ground the burdens and pressures of a busy day at the office. I walked slowly but deliberately across the nearly empty parking lot to my car. I did not hurry; I did not tarry.

Before I opened the door, I glanced skyward. Night was rapidly overcoming the evening, leaving behind a faded orange wash as the only proof that the sun had shone recently. I saw not a single cloud in the vast expanse of sky…only two short jet contrails and a thumbnail sliver of a crescent moon. I don’t pay enough attention to her monthly cycles to know whether she was coming or going, only that she was there.

I climbed into my car and began the forty-minute commute that would take me home. Along the way I had an epiphany: I should write near the end of each day as a form of decompression. I used to have a blog. I used to write everyday. Why not start it up again? I knew that I did not want to get caught up in designing the blog. I didn’t want to spend days thinking up a clever name verses actually writing. I had a concept: decompression. What are those decompression chambers called? Hyperbolic chambers? No. Hyperbaric. But…I like the word “hyperbolic”. I’d used it once in the title of a short fiction piece. And I’m prone to exaggeration, so hyperbolic seemed appropriate. Witness: the birth of the Hyperbolic Chamber.

And so, I decompress. I exaggerate. I write. Already, I feel as though I am emerging from a chrysalis. I am a new creature with hints of the old. I have always been a writer, but I rarely unfurled my wings and took flight. But like every other rare time I took to the air, I feel the thrill flying. I rise high on the updrafts and dive low to the ground pulling up at the last possible moment to soar on the thermals and jet-streams of imagination and thought.

Now is the time for new words, new thoughts, new hyperbole. Today I have simultaneously entered the decompression chamber while emerging from the chrysalis.