positively december

i was sixteen-ish the first time i made out with my first serious boyfriend. i remember we were lying on the mauve carpet in my bedroom and my head was pressed against the baseboard heat vent which was awkward and annoying, but i was making out! so i tried to ignore it. all we did was kiss that afternoon, but after he went home, i was convinced i was pregnant.

yes, i attended the sex ed. student assembly in the fifth grade. but during the answer and question period all the kids got hung up on what happened when two mentally disabled people had children and subsequently i didn’t walk away with much useful info. (and no, fyi, the child will not also be mentally disabled). technically, i knew that clothes had to come off and lots of other things had to happen for pregnancy to occur, and yet, this is the memory I take from my first make out session. not fond giddiness, but horrible, unrealistic, stomach-clenching worry.

years later, not a whole lot has changed.

at thanksgiving, when i was updating my cancer researcher cousin about the status of my novel, Parted, she asked if i was putting good thoughts out there. she told me to envision not just the novel selling, but myself signing copies and going on book tours.

envisioning good things for myself? i'm the girl whose old ex took to saying whaa-whaaa at the end of many of her glass half-empty sentences. the panic attack insomniac. the girl whose first thought when her cuz said you get back what you put out was, "oh terrific. i'm in store for a big basket of doom and gloom." 

frankly, i'm sick of being that girl. after a particularly bad bout of anxiety over the holiday, i've decided to shelve the habit for the month of december. my upstairs housemate is embarking on the mission with me. we're stealing our positive thinking three step process from something called Women Who Think Too Much, which is, yes, a real book and, yes, one that i own. (thanks mama!). it goes like this:

1. break the grip

2. move to higher ground

3. avoid the trap.

or in Corrie speak:

1. realize you've just spent the past hour growing obsessively more certain that X will never happen.

2. mentally shout: stop it! and quickly insert an insanely positive thought to replace X.

3. quickly dig out headphones, click on Replay by Iyaz, and sing loudly, thereby thwarting brain from permitting gloomy X to come back and assassinate the sunny thought

at heart, i'll always be the girl whose afraid she's pregnant after kissing the fully-clothed boy. but i can try not being her. worry free december, you're mine.

want to join in? or have ways you deal with your worries? i'd love to hear. and just so things don't get too heady on the unfortunate behaviors blog, here's a cute picture of my uncle eating crab dip on a chocolate chip cookie.

party game or how to annoy friends and family this thanksgiving

my pal introduced me to this fella at a show we went to" fella and i chatted, talked books, and neither was the worse for wear from it. best that could be hoped for when meeting a guy in a bar? no! it gets better.

his opening line (sorry fella, but it was) is my favorite new party/bored at work game. the fella told me that he read about this game in a psychology book and that it was a fairly accurate indicator about a person's personality. i've been inflicting it on my friends ever since, because if stranger in a bar says so, then it must be true!

remember, there is no right or wrong answer. say the first thing you imagine and get ready to have your soul exposed.


first picture a desert... got it?

now picture a cube in the desert. how big is the cube and what is it made of?

okay, now imagine a ladder... where is it in relation to the cube and what's it made of?

lastly picture a horse. what does it look like, what's it doing, and again, where is it in relation to the cube.

okay. done.

the cube is supposed to represent you. the size of it represents your ego. what it's made of is up to you to interpret. the ladder represents your friends and family. what it's made of and location is up for your interpretation. the horse represents your relationship. again, interpret at will.

how insightful was yours? mine was pretty cool. be warned, this game can get a little awkward. case in point, a friend at work wouldn't stop going on about how boring and ordinary the horse was.

"well, what's the horse doing?" i probed.

"nothing," he responded with a shrug. "it's just standing there."

after i told him what it all meant, we giggled about it for the rest of the night. for the record his horse is quite lovely and exciting. if i haven't played with you already, i'd love to read your answers in the comments section.

have a great thanksgiving all. eat some extra stuffing for me!

shutter-bugged

so i'm doing this blog thing (clearly) and had my red haired sis' look at it.

"i wish you posted a picture," she said and i sighed because i ain't one bit photogenic.

i'm not trying to be coy. i'm not one of those people that waves a hand at you and says, "come on stop, i look terrible" and everything about them oozes gorgeous. on the whole i think i'm pretty decent looking. which makes it even more frustrating that my face is allergic to photographs. it's like a demon lives under my skin and it's only exposed on film. what else could explain how puffy, googly eyed, double chinned i get?

anyway, so red haired sis' says, "where's your picture," and i think, alright, i'm not bad looking tonight. screw it. i'm the photographer, there'll have to be one good photo even if it takes twenty shots, right? no, very wrong. so very, very wrong.

disclaimer: blogging is weird to me because it's so self-absorbed. however, my agent is making me do this (hi katie! you are the bestest) so let me acknowledge that yes, taking photos of yourself and then dissecting them is even more self-absorbed. but hey they're awful photos, so that's okay, right? i know, quit stalling.

here we go....





seriously, when did my nose starting taking up half the real estate on my face?

it's clearly a bad picture when you send it to your own mother and her response text reads, "yikes!" a few shots go by this way and i think, "forget this from the side business." take two. full on.





it's like i have two different faces mushed together.

maybe it's still the nose, i'll hide it all together.

now what the heck is up with my eyes?

 i call in backup. my mom says, "i have cute photos of you on my phone, i'll send them."





sigh.




dear lord.

i read an interview in which the interviewee said know your angles. cool. here are mine, because to be fair, there are a few instances when i take nice photos.

a. when they're blurry.



 b. when they're dark and blurry.

c. taken from above. this angle probably helps with the giant shnoz problem. (i miss that haircut)

 

 d. when my head is cut off.





anyhoo, regardless,  these are more photos than any stranger (or friend) would ever need to see of me.

at least it can't get any worse than this.





this is why coffee comes before anything else in the morning. man, i need another cup.

i do this thing....

i slipped up. and momentarily let a friend down.

but before i get to that, a word about this thing i do.

so i truly believe i can be beneficial to the world, that we all can. and i'm not talking recycling, which is very beneficial btw. i'm talking more immediate, smaller scale. it's a lot easier than we think.

when i lived in buffalo, i organized a twelve street, thirty-six block, 150 member Community Collaborative. we sponsored mass daffodil plantings with the help of a City Parks official, donated and wrapped gifts for neighborhood families at the holidays, sponsored student/resident neighborhood clean-ups, turned vacant lots turned into community gardens, held a massive thirty block street sale, and planted 149 new trees in the neighborhood. and it all began with the simple act of me sticking “let’s start a block club” flyers in my neighbor’s doors.

but here's the thing...i know i can make things better, but then i spend the whole duration of the time doing it, being completely, utterly, overwhelmed.

i do this all the time. it’s especially bad when mixed with this other thing i do, in which my imagined sense of fun ignores what is actually fun. watch your puppy and kitten in my tiny apartment for three weeks so you can go get married? sure no problem, i can help. need someone to housesit your geriatric dog for ten days so you can travel out of town? sounds great. it’s only when kitty litter is splayed all over my floor, the puppy’s breath smells of poo and the geriatric dog is barking me awake at 5 a.m. that i begin to question my judgment.

needless to blog, i did it again. one of my best friends is in need and i offered her, and her two young babes, a place to stay. only when she took me up on it, did i remember that i live in a very tiny apartment, with lots of cords, things on the floor, open shelving and no bathtub. my friend and i spoke on the phone and she could hear the panic in my voice. what was worse, i could hear it in hers. i'd thrown her a lifeline and was pulling it back just before it reached her. i instantly felt ashamed.

the thing is, just because it’s scary and a little uncomfortable to step outside our normal, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. isn’t that what makes life cool? that when we attempt to steer it and not just ride shotgun, we’re forced to feel the exhilaration of driving? i think so. and even though i chide myself repeatedly for my judgment, and will grumble about them once accepted (i’m the grumbling sort, i can’t help it), i don't regret a single one of my “i can help with this” impulses. trite, i know, but true.

except for that geriatric dog sitting thing. that was a stupid decision, period.

so i’m sorry for the faintness of heart, my dear friend. please forgive me and bring those girlies. we'll have a crazy, messy, sleep-deprived, awesome time together. and i promise this time, there won't be a speck of overwhelmed in sight.

blog

hello you! it's me, corrie.

i've been industriously writing in small, borrowed, or underground rooms for the past few years and it's long past time for me to come out of all those hidden away writing rooms.

what will the result be? part diary of an angsty writer, part commentary on a few of the absurd, quirky, and downright dumb episodes that occur as corrie goes through life. afterall, those are the ones that make the best stories.