I'm Baaaaaaack......

Oh my friends.  It has been too long.  Once again, I've been absent from blogland for an extended period, and once again I come back to you ready to take on the virtual world!  I will refrain from making any promises about writing more regularly, since we all know that's very rarely the case, at least not for very long.  I will say, though, that this most recent absence was due solely to the fact of my unemployment for the past nine months.

Curious, you say, since you haven't written for 18 months.

Fine.  For a while I was just slacking.  And by slacking I mean gardening the shit out of it.  And painting.  So really not so much slacking as focusing my creative energies elsewhere.  While recovering from a traumatic surgery.  And then I enrolled in what has turned out to be an incredibly rigorous stenography program, while working full time and raising a teenager and still gardening and cooking my bounty and - not to be outdone by my former self - moving.  You know, it was summer after all - time for my gypsy caravan to roll out, as usual.  Actually, I loved my former house.  It had a gigantic garden, plenty of space, super rad neighbors, and a rooftop deck with a 360-degree view of the mountains and valley.  I would never have moved except that the landlord decided to sell it and I had to.  This ended up working out in my favor though, because the cherry on the sundae of my blissful life came when I lost my job a month before having to move.

Bummer, you are thinking, quite empathetically.

Thanks.  It was, for about an hour.  And then I realized that I would be fine financially on the 60% of my salary I would receive from unemployment (especially since I was moving to a house with lower rent and utilities).  To say nothing of the absolute fact that it would be better for me, for the well-being of my body and soul, to forge down this new and, admittedly, daunting path than to draw another breath of the stuffy, toxic, forced-air in that Old Boys Club ever again.  And in fact, I mean no sarcasm in the bit about the sundae.  Being unemployed was one of the best times of my adult life.  I was able to pack up and negotiate my move without much stress, I focused a ton of time and energy on school, on growing my garden and canning food, and preparing most all of the rest of our food from scratch for the next nine months.  I was for the first time able to greet my daughter when she came home from school, attend events at her school which are always, unfathomably, scheduled in the middle of a weekday.  I did my grocery shopping during the week, when there is no one at the store.  I walked my dog all over Sugarhouse and took him for hikes throughout the summer.  I went to coffee with my friend Nora once a week and chatted and laughed and cried about life.  I flew home and spent a week visiting my family and lounging with my best girlfriends at Ariel's farm this summer, spent another week with my fam at Christmas, and then spent the rest of this tragically short winter skiing my little heart out.  And if all of that weren't idyllic enough, out of the ether (ok, the internet), came the man of my dreams -- or rather, a man I couldn't have dreamt up if I tried -- with whom I have fallen completely and totally in love.

Hang on, you say.  That's awesome and all, but if you didn't have a job, and had so many cool and interesting things happening, why weren't you finally writing more?

You make a valid point.

However, shortly after losing my job and getting a realistic feel for the present job market (read: expansive vacuum where job opportunities used to be), I figured that for the sake of obtaining future employment, I might be better off hiding salty chelle (rambles on) from the prying eyes of prospective employers.  We do get a bit raunchy around here after all.

My mother was ecstatic.

Oh Michelle, she sighed.  Good!  I can't tell you how happy I am to hear you say that.  The last thing you need is for some employer to decide they want to hire you, and then do an internet search for your name -- they do that now, you know.  They really do, I read an article about it, and then they were talking all about it on the Today's Show the other day.

I know, Mom.

No -- now listen.  They do that kind of thing all the time.  You should have heard all of what they were saying on the Today's Show.  And, you know, I can just see an employer searching you and finding your disgusting blog with all of its foul language and stories about vaginas and god-knows-what.  It's just terrible.  You'll never get a job!

Ahhh, Mom.  Ever the optimist.  This is my mother though, and I'm quite used to it.  I'm sure at this point in the conversation she became inordinately exasperated with me because I was laughing, which is generally how these conversations go.  My mother is the original rambler-on; I suppose the apple didn't fall terribly far.  The difference between us though is that she rambles herself up into a fit of high-pitched tones and worry-bordering-on-anxiety until she's just beside herself, and I am not much of a worrier at all.  This also worries her.

But, as is sometimes the case, my mom was right.  Or, well, she was correct in that the possibility did exist for my blog to become a problematic factor in my search for work, especially in this weirdo religious town.  The rest is just a lot of wasted energy from my perspective.  So to my mother's great relief, I put the thing on lockdown for a while, vowing to open 'er back up just as soon as I obtained secure employment.  In other words: now.  (Hi, Mom!)

Well why didn't you just do more writing while you were unemployed and had the time?  Even if your blog wasn't public, you could post stories and people would eventually see them once you went back online.

Ok.  You got me.  To this line of reasoning I have no good excuse except that writing on the blog isn't nearly as fun when I know I don't have an audience.  I say that in all honesty, while at the same time feeling like mostly I only do this for myself.  Writing stories, rambling on -- it's an outlet.  My brain spins and spins and it helps to get some of it out.  And frankly, I'm now on paragraph way-too-fucking-many of what was initially supposed to just be a short "hello" to you readers out there, and I can't imagine that anyone other than maybe a few very close friends, and my mom, would actually want to read so much useless drivel about my small little life.  But I suppose that's one of the fundamental questions for artists.  Do we create to share something with the world, or do we create because we need to, because it helps us to process, to think, to feel, to calm down, to get it out, to heal?  I think it's probably a bit of both.  For me, although I had the time to write more on my blog, I just didn't.  Maybe I was calm enough in my newly low-stress life of copious amounts of TIME that my brain stopped spinning and spinning for a little while.  All I know is that the drive wasn't there, so I didn't do it.

And now the drive is back, just about the time when my free time has run out.  Although making myriad promises to myself about never going back to work for a law firm, and creating a life in which I make a living doing something that truly makes me happy, and pouring myself headlong into school so that I could finish my program before running out of money, amongst others, I am once again working as a legal secretary at a law firm.  And though I certainly don't love spending 40 precious hours of my week engaged in activities that have almost nothing to do with my actual life aside from funding it, I most assuredly do love my new job.  By some mysterious alignment of the fates, I have found myself employed by a small firm that shares my values.  It is a diverse mix of people, mostly non-Utahns from what I can gather, and mostly of a decidedly left-leaning socio-political bent.  The firm won't buy any supplies from Wal-Mart or its affiliates.  They give considerable time and money to support public radio and various other community partners.  They don't have a lot of HR policies, but seem to rather favor the approach of providing everyone with a really great place to work, with ample time for their own lives and families, so that they are more productive when they are at work and choose to do the right thing.  They are flexible and friendly and everyone from the president of the firm to the receptionist intermingles in the kitchen at lunch and talks about the news and does crosswords and laughs a lot.  And they take this up another notch every Friday afternoon at the "wine and scotch party," which is basically just anyone who wants to join hanging out in the kitchen from about 5:00 p.m. onward, drinking wine and scotch.  I don't know how fun this gets or how late it goes as I haven't had the opportunity to stay yet, despite much prodding from the other partygoers.

My particular position is just busy enough to keep the days full and interesting, but not so much that I feel stressed out.  I work with a team of tight-knit, intelligent, funny and super nice people.  Today was an asskicker of a day, the kind of day where I did not use the restroom even once, despite having to pee from lunchtime until I made it home at 6:00.  My eyes were tired and my brain was full after 8 hours editing two separate 50-page memos that were both due today.  I was busy, to say the least.  But I was not harried or stressed, I was never once yelled at, and I was genuinely thanked for my assistance throughout the course of the day.  It doesn't really sound like rocket science, but you might be surprised how rare this kind of environment is in the legal world.

I'm happy there.  And yet, still, every evening without fail, while driving or biking myself home from work, I have the conversation with myself that goes pretty much like this:  What the hell am I doing?  To which I very rarely have an answer.  A bit of a one-sided conversation, really.  But it is hard trying to work and do school and raise my kid and run a household.  Usually during these "conversations" it's 6:00 and I have class in an hour and dinner to make and the dog needs a walk and I'm pretty sure I need to rewash those towels in the washer and we're out of something vital like milk or tampons and I'm still not even home.  For the first week of these homeward bound discussions with myself, I cried.  After three and a half weeks, the crying has subsided into a sigh and a resolve to just keep going.

I saw a quote the other day that read, "Don't cry because it's over.  Smile because it happened."  And I hesitate to even write it here because it is admittedly corny and kind of lame, but it was exactly what I needed to hear.   The last nine months of unemployment have been incredibly enjoyable, and now that I'm working, I miss my unemployed life.  I miss drinking my tea on the patio, doing homework in the mornings, making myself breakfast, doing whatever I wanted to do with myself each day, feeling very present with my thoughts and emotions and intentions, and, mostly, just having a break from the last 14 years of my crazy busy life of kid/work/school every single day.  It was like a giant vacation from the reality I've known all of my adult years.  The transition back to a completely full plate has been huge and hard.  Less difficult, however, than I was imagining it would be, which I attribute mostly to the fact that I don't wake up and dread going to work.  In fact, I enjoy the work and the people I work with to the point of actually looking forward to the day.  Not necessarily at 6:47 a.m. when the alarm goes off, which is by far the most trying part of this whole transition, the getting up early.  But by the time I'm out of the shower, I'm surprisingly fine with going in for another day of work.

For now, I'm smiling that the last nine months happened.  I had a break from my real life, I became legions healthier, I fell in love.  It was a gift, and I treasured it while I was lucky enough to live it.  Being grateful for something you no longer possess is not the easiest thing in the world, but I'm finding it's a good exercise for my emotional health.  This, combined with gratitude for my good fortune in finding such a fantastic job, helps me in those moments when I long for a day at home alone making pickles and listening to music.

Not to mention friends, a new job means (1) the blog is back online, and (2) I am now actually venturing out into the world of people much more regularly, which only serves to stoke the creative fire that lights up the pages here at salty chelle.  Oh yeah, and we're not poor anymore.

Welcome back everyone.

Vaginas! Vaginas! Vaginas!

So I went and saw The Vagina Monologues at Westminster last weekend with my dear friend Bonnie (whose nuptials are taking me to Kailua, Hawaii in a mere 4 days!!!), and was fully awed, inspired, impressed and moved. Really, wow. I didn't expect to like it so much, to laugh so hard, or - especially - to cry so pitifully. I'm not really a cryer. Or someone who feels the sad stories of friends very emotionally. I hear them, I empathize, but more with my mind. As in, I understand that must have brought you considerable pain and sadness, and I'm sorry. But the part of me that really feels, deeply feels, has been in a sort of hibernation since, well, my childhood. (But that's another story.) Lately though, I've been going through a bit of an emotional awakening, which is nice. And, um, emotional. But so, it was a really fantastic experience. And Bonnie bought me a chocolate vagina pop, which is still swimming around in my purse and gets pulled out at awkward moments in the elevator at work when I search and fumble for my key card. (That's another story too. A much, much funnier story. Let's just say that errant vaginas - even chocolate ones - in the land of Mormon have a tendency to create socially awkward moments.)

But I know you're here for the real vaginas. So let's just get on with it, shall we?

So, here's my story about vaginas. Or, well, one vagina. And it's not mine. It is a friend's story, as relayed to me this past Tuesday evening. For the sake of anonymity, let's call her Angie (which is the name most resembling the word 'vagina' I can come up with at present. I am, however, open to suggestions and editing this post at a later date if you can best me. Yes, that's a challenge.)

"Oh my GOD. So, I go to work today and everything's fine for the most part. I mean, I'm busy as hell, but, you know, that's how it is, right?"

As in: that's how it is after you've taken a few days off and come back to a teeming email inbox and raging fires to put out. We all know how this goes. Veritable shitstorm. Angie had taken last Thursday, Friday and Monday off work. By Tuesday, she was in for it.

"So, you know, at some point in the afternoon I go up to the reception desk and am talking to Mary and I SWEAR I can smell something."

I raise an eyebrow. Unlike you, I knew where this was going. Angie had taken Thursday through Monday off work in order to travel 3000 miles across the country to visit her new, long-distance boyfriend. (Who just also happens to be the first boy she ever kissed, 20 years ago.) They reunited via - take a wild guess - facebook. Of course, right?? Anyway, so they reunited, and had a blissful two-week telephonic reunion wherein they mutually decide they are completely in love. So, this is their first real in-the-flesh encounter for over 20 years.

Exciting stuff really.

And you can imagine the weekend that transpired.
Which is why I raised an eyebrow.

"You can SMELL something?" I ask. Just to clarify.

"YES! I can SMELL something! And it smelled like sex! Not like vagina, not like that metallic menstruating vagina smell, but just this musty, briny smell of sex!"

Love it. "Briny" pretty much nails it, yes?

"You know that smell?"

Yes, I know the smell. I assume that was rhetorical, and wait for her to continue.

"So I immediately cut off my conversation with Mary, fairly awkwardly really, and run down the hall to the breakroom to make some tea. I figured if I made some really strong tea it would overpower the vaginal odor emanating from under my skirt. And that way if anyone got close enough, they would just smell the tea and not me."

Does this logic seem flawed to anyone else? I mean, really strong coffee, maybe. And even that's only a maybe. But even the strongest tea I've ever encountered I wasn't able to smell until I stuck my beak down to the rim of the cup.

Anyway.

"So, I'm standing there making my tea, and I see a big thing of that hand-sanitizer stuff on the counter. And suddenly it just occurs to me, this great idea! There have been times after I've smoked a cigarette that I wasn't able to wash my hands, and then rubbed them with hand-sanitizer and it completely eliminated the smell of smoke! I mean, something that can completely rid the smoke smell from your fingers after a cigarette is pretty amazing, right?"

Right.

"So, I pump a bunch of globs of that in my hand and make a run for the bathroom. And I get in the stall, and start rubbing it ALL over down there, to odor-eliminate and just freshen things up. And at first, I think this is a fantastic idea. I mean, I bathed before I went to work and if that wasn't enough to rid the love-stench of my weekend, then this was surely the next best solution. I mean, that shit is like 90% alcohol, I figure it will kill whatever bacteria and leftover whatever that's down there."

Now, some of you ladies may have some experience that will inform where this story is headed. Some of you may not. I, for one, have never ended up with a vagina full of hand-sanitizer. There was one night though when I used some homeopathic icy-hot kind of stuff on my inflamed back muscles, and then, HOURS later, having completely forgotten about the earlier application of said ointment, ended up with - you guessed it - an icy-hot vagina.

For the record, not recommended.

"So, I get all slathered up and am just standing there in the stall waiting for it to dry so I can pull my stockings back up, and then OHMYGOD. OH. MY. GOD! It started buuuurning! Everything was absolutely on fire - just inside, where it had barely creeped, all over the outside where I guess there were probably microscopic tears from three days of non-stop, wild, crazy sex. EVERYWHERE it burned! It was awful!"

Not to mention, she shaves.
Say it with me gals: OUCH.

"So I start jumping around, and getting a bunch of toilet paper to wipe it off, but at that point it was dry 'cause you know that shit dries in seconds. And I'm dabbing - I had to keep telling myself, "Don't rub! Just dab! Gentle dabs!" And so I'm dabbing and I'm doing the thing where you cross your thighs as tightly as you possibly can and trying to muffle my moans of pain and biting the back of my hand and praying to GOD that no one comes in the restroom."

At this point the story came to a natural pause as my laughing inhibited all incoming auditory stimuli. This is one of those stories that I wish I could tell in first person, so that you might get the full effect of how absolutely hilarious it was. But then again, I'm actually pretty glad this is not my first-person story. So is my vagina. In fact, it reminds me of the old saying, "A smart man learns from his own mistakes; a wise man learns from the mistakes of others." If nothing else, this episode made Angie smarter, and me a lot wiser. Because I cannot honestly say that I wouldn't have tried the same thing in that situation. I'd like to think I'd have a bit of foresight, what with the old icy-hot experience, but then again, I might not. It had never occurred to me before I heard this story to not rub hand sanitizer on my vagina.

But now I know. Turns out it takes a solid ten minutes for the raging fire of a hand-sanitized vagina to wane.

Just FYI.

Late again! As usual.

Happy belated New Year readers!

Can it really be that I haven't posted anything since November? Shameful. And I call myself an aspiring writer! And SO MUCH has happened that I should have reported here, to my 4 loyal readers, which after 2+ months of non-posting, probably don't come back anymore anyway.

Sigh.

I mean, there was the whole computer virus debacle in December, which was not terribly funny at the time, when I was crazy busy at work and didn't have a computer to use for a few days, as mine had been hijacked by the SPYWARE VIRUS FROM HELL. Looking back, though, the day that the giant, flashing photo of the pierced vagina popped up onto my screen whilst the most devout morman man in the world stood at my desk rifling through a file... well, that was pretty hilarious.

And my first ever warehouse Christmas rollerskating party! And my friends who showed up dressed in Christmas skating finery (and drag)! I haven't roller-skated since I was in junior high, and man do I suck. I used to be good! But the fun quotient hasn't changed all that much since then, and that's what really matters.

Michelle H., foreground, looking like a hot elf on wheels.
Matt, background, wearing Michelle's clothes.

And then there was Christmas! Not one post about my Christmas in St. Louis, or about how increasingly strange it becomes for me to go back "home" and visit my fam. I love them and miss them madly, and yet I go for a visit and all I want to do is get back to Salt Lake. I want to bring them all with me. I wish we all lived in the same city, as long as that city wasn't St. Louis. I just don't feel really comfortable there anymore. Although, this is most likely due to the fact that when I am there, I am living with my mother, and no matter how short a span of time, if it is more than 24 hours, living with my mother becomes a challenge. And that's an understatement


The Hitler Youth. Oh, I mean, my neices and nephews.

My dad giving us his annual Christmas saxophone concert.

And then there was New Year's in SLC, and my week of love-vacation with my new man while Elise was visiting her dad, and taking my new cross-country skis (and my legs) out on their maiden voyage up Emigration Canyon. Brian (said "new man") instructed me thus: If you can walk, you can cross-country ski. Well, HA! Not quite so, though I understand his intent. However, after a few more excursions with other friends, I think I've sort of figured it out. I did make it to the top of Millcreek with my dog in the same amount of time as my very badass and in-shape friend Karan, so I was feeling pretty good about that.

A fair representation of New Year's Eve:

Me on my new x-country skis:
And then there was back to work and back to life and wintry SLC. But, more on that as it transpires!

Most.Beautiful.Day.Ever.

Today. In the Salty Lake. Jeebus. I went outside at lunch and just wanted to start running to somewhere, anywhere, far far away from the Gallivan courtyard, and leap and skip and smell flowers and never stop. And now I'm back in the fluorescent box, trapped smack in the middle of a zillion floors of stacked fluorescent boxes. Why are there never windows that open? What the hell is wrong with designers and architects? Do they really think it is healthy for all of us to spend 40 hours every single week in a box with NO FRESH AIR? At what point did we as a society decide that fresh air was not important, or not conducive to productivity? And at what point did we decide that our good old American work ethic meant spending eight (for those of us who are lucky enough to ONLY have to work 8) hours of, say, 16 waking hours, working? In closed up boxes? Breathing recycled air and everyone else's germs? And I work in a pretty swank spot with fantastic views and lovely blond woodwork and the like. But the windows still don't open. And that really is the one major ingredient in my always-simmering stew of feeling trapped.


But that's not really what I came here to write at all, actually. Although I'm not sure what I came to write exactly. I have so many stories from my wedding weekend in St. Louis, and my following wedding weekend in Salt Lake. Three weddings in one week - a record for moi. Has made me a bit glum, actually, as I reflect on the fact that of all the boyfriends I've had, serious and not-so-serious, I have never once come close to feeling like I could marry a one of them. Never. Felt that way for a bit with the most-recent-ex, but upon moving in together quickly realized the trainwreck a marriage would be and thus gave up on the idea entirely. I'm not terrified of being a lonely spinster or any such nonsense they tend to pound into young women's brains in the Utah environs (Don't worry Michelle, you're still young and cute. You don't even look your age. Still young enough to have more children too. - this is the bullshit some co-workers & neighbors said to me after leaving the boyfriend, in an attempt, I suppose, to assuage my sadness. Thanks assholes. But no thanks.), but the whole idea of being that in love with someone, of it being that right, just seems about a thousand light years away. At all three of the weddings I went to, I saw how wildly full of love the grooms were for their brides, how proud to be committing to a life together, how amazingly, soul-wrenchingly happy they were.


And that makes me happy. Happy for these friends of mine, happy that there is more love being made in the world, being poured out into the energetic fabric of our time. As war rages on in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Georgia, god knows we need it. So I'm not quite sure from where my personal ennui springs... maybe just that I'd like someone to look at me like that someday.


Correction: I'd like someone that I am crazy about to look at me like that someday, and return his loving gaze in equal measure. Because for christssakes I don't need any more unrequited crazies gazing longingly in my direction, or any more mullet-crowned men's unsolicited advances, or any more weird stalkers. I'm sorry, but just because I made out with you once does not mean I want to talk to you again. I'm not quite sure in this 21st century where all of the confusion lies. I do know that I receive a lot of attention that I do not want. And very little attention that I do.


So perhaps the crazy-cat-lady life awaits me after all. At least I'll get to sit on park benches and poke people with my cane.