The New Year a la '07

I will have all of you know that I’ve been trying to write this post for the past week. But it kept getting mopey, and I kept disgusting myself. Except for this paragraph:

“I don’t want to be a cynical person. How does one make that move from cynical to joyful? Certainly everyone knows how to go the other way, from Joy to a Cynic. All it takes is years of trampled self-esteem, dashed dreams and a sprinkle of substance abuse! But how does one go from a Cynic to a Happy Chipper Christian? Without barfing?”

That made me laugh. And if I can’t crack myself up, it’s not going up here.

Let’s see. According to last year’s post, I was going to make purposeful steps towards not worrying. Well, I guess I kinda did that. Not worry, that is. The buggerall of it is, I still was sad. I still cried a lot, more than I thought I was going to.

I’ve been temping for over a year now. That’s never happened before. It frightens me, but I don’t worry about it. Is there a difference? Sure there is. Frightened is when your internal organs drops three feet inside you upon a sickening realization like you’ve been temping for over a year. Worrying is dwelling upon that sickening realization for more than five minutes. I clock it right up to four minutes and fifty-seven seconds, I do, but then I go write in order to focus on something else.

When I was home in Alabama for the holidays, I had my annual breakfast with Miss Eunice. Last year, Miss Eunice said that you allow things like compassion and God’s grace in, that they’re not things you work on. (yes, that may seem blindingly obvious, but Christianity has a way of making you feel like you’re repeating the first grade over and over again.) This year, I was stuck on the concept of Enough, and what is Enough, and how will I know, who’s gonna tell me the Amy equivalent of “That’ll do, pig, that’ll do.”

And Miss Eunice said there is no such concept as Enough in Christianity. The idea circling back around to Grace, and how God sent Jesus to be Enough, and I don’t have to be enough (I’ll never be able to reach it anyway), because He is. All I have to do is accept it.

Ha ha. Accepting God’s grace and love. Accepting the fact that He loves me, cares about me, will pick me up and hug me and kiss me and call me George. Ha ha ha. I know better than to say that’s a goal for 2008, accepting all of that. That’s not a goal, that’s a journey that’ll take the rest of my life. Yay (said with a sigh.)

If you had told me on New Year’s Eve in 2006 that 2007 would find me doing the following (this is the Deliberately Positive Version):

• Embracing my girlyness via wearing skirts and boots on a regular basis.
• Willingly coaxing cranky babies to sleep by singing 80’s songs.
• Drinking champagne and eating chocolate on a balcony overlooking the ocean on my birthday.
• Assisting at a camp for kids with brain tumors
• Overcoming my fear of needles to the point where I’m spearheading a blood drive at my church in two weeks
• Skinny dipping in the housesitting house’s hottub.
• Acting as a pseudo mentor for Act One newbies who are too new to realize that my advice is worthless.
• Thinking of a particularly evil way to kill off a character in my zombie graphic novel (iron spike through the eyeballs. It’s thematic and everything!)
• Coming up with a compelling argument for the devil on the night that Jesus was born (Devil tells God that God needs the Devil around because “Can't give the people freedom of choice if there is no wrong choice to go with the right one.”)
• Hit a dog and not only NOT kill it, but able to find its owner through bumbling adventures across Los Angeles and the power of Google and senior citizen roommates.

Then I would’ve probably told you, um, okay. Not really what I THOUGHT I’d be doing. Wasn’t I, you know, gonna sell a script or something?

It’s never enough. Because there is no concept of Enough, apparently. HA!

And here is where I was SUPPOSED to post the Ren and Stimpy Happy Happy Joy Joy song. Had it all prepped and everything and youtube has since taken it down. I could look at it as an ominous omen for 2008, but I choose not to. You all just don't get any pictures with this post.

Thanks for reading. See you in 2008.

My Mother The Phone Harpy Is So Short....

I've talked before about how short my mother the Phone Harpy Whom I Love Very Very Much is, but I think this conveys it much more eloquently than all my many words could:

Behold, a tiny duckling STREEEEEEETCHING to reach the stone shelf where the party is obviously happening.





















And here is my mother, STREEEEEEETCHING to reach the laundry detergent so cruelly placed out of her reach on the top shelf of the grocery store.











Also implied is the evil daughter taking a picture of her shorty mommy instead of helping her get the laundry detergent. Which I did. Eventually. Ha!

So if you watch late night TV in Alabama...

You see this commercial. I can't say that it's solely directed at a Southern audience (the Spears family tree from Louisiana not withstanding), because there's not a Southern accent to be found anywhere in there. But I've NEVER seen this one on Los Angeles TV.

To watch this on TV with your dad across the kitchen table is just plain hilarious. And wrong. But I survived.

Soon, people, soon.

I promise. Got a five hour plane ride tomorrow, so there should be something I can come up with.

As we say in assistant world, "Please hold."