A tale of flames and boxing

When I first started my current job, I took on a fight. I meant to take it on, but I didn't have any idea how outmatched I was. I got beaten up, knocked around, threatened, and told I was ruining civilization itself. In sum, I lost. Badly.

Recently, I encountered a problem to which I offered a simple solution. Here's the rub; the problem occurred in the same arena as my lost fight. I knew I was stepping close to the edges of that fight, but I had allies now, knew where the punches were likely to come from, and really wasn't starting up the fight again.

Last night, I found out that the old opponents, unbeknown to me, had stepped into the ring and started punching me. To say I was angry was an understatement.



Sigh. I miss Madeline Kahn.

Anyway, I was furious. Flames on the side of my face furious.

There is nothing, and I do mean nothing, I hate more than having my integrity questioned. Nothing.

It was being questioned. Beaten up, really.

I thought about what to do. I backed up and looked at what I wanted to have happen. The problem is not solved yet, but I pushed it out of the boxing ring and sent it down another road. I have back-up. I have firepower. I haven't yet used my fists or my guns, but they're loaded and ready. (Am I taking this metaphor too far? It's all rather martial, admittedly.)

Four years and a lost fight can make a difference in perspective, but I also think I've gotten pretty good at what I do. Late this afternoon, in another context entirely, a guy I'd been having a little trouble with of late, came up to me and said something really nice just because it occurred to him. I know external validation is fleeting. In that moment though, with this other issue on the road I prepared, I felt good.

Sometimes, if you're lucky, you figure out what you're good at and somebody lets you do it. Still and all, if someone can tell me how to protect my integrity from attacks, I'd be grateful. Bubble wrap? Plastic couch covers? Maybe it needs boxing gloves?

It's real--my integrity--even if not everyone can see it. That is also true of my invisible friend.

Vines

A couple of summers ago, as is my wont, I traveled to the beach with books I had carefully selected over the course of several months. As is also my wont, I didn't find any of them satisfying as beach reading. The level of my restlessness at our annual beach trip with my family would rank high on any machine designed to measure such things. I'd love a machine of that type for myself. I could tune it on on various people and see how tense/restless/about to flay their skin off they were. It would be much easier that reading the tension in the corners of people's eyes.

Anyway, the place where we usually go to the beach has just the one bookstore and prominently features authors from the South Carolina lowcountry. (It drives my copy editor Honey wild that there is no consistency in how one "styles" (as she would say) those two words referring to the swampy beachy part of the more southern of the Carolinas). I'm not a big fan of most Southern writing, post, say, Yoknapatawpha, so the lowcountry fare wasn't going to do much for me. I chose, instead, a book called The Ruins. I didn't like it, which was a pleasant serendipity for Honey, who promptly started it and then recounted the plot to me when she was done.

I liked her telling of it much better than the 30 pages or so that I read of the book itself. Now, if you pay any attention to the current movie releases, you'll know that it has just been released as a film. The LA Times review described it as: "depressingly inert and blithely gruesome." The basic story of the The Ruins centers around killer ivy that eats you inside out.

Killer ivy should not be confused with Poison Ivy.



That's Poison Ivy.



That's killer ivy that eats you from the inside out.

I think I ended up reading a Spanish novel whose name escapes me right at the moment at the beach that summer.

Flash forward to this morning. I sometimes read the Sunday paper in what we call "the middle room."

Aside: does everyone have these kinds of labels for rooms? When I was growing up we referred to one room in our house as the "green room" even though it wasn't. I do understand it had been at one point.

Anyway, Honey and I are two people with many more pets than we need. We also have more bedrooms than we need. The "middle room" is a very small bedroom that we've turned into a sort of denette. I like to use it sometimes to escape the various technologies in my life. So, this morning, I retreated into it to read the paper. I was finishing the travel section (always my last section--paper section preference sorting is important to me) and I rolled my head around on my neck as I sometimes do.

As I did so, I noticed a vine. A vine. IN THE HOUSE. Poking out from under the blinds. Killer ivy. In the retreat room. It had grown THROUGH the window. Ok, really, it had grown through the gap in our 50 year old windowsill, but still.

Ten minutes of mild effort and I pulled all the ivy off the side of the house and Honey got the inside ivy into the trash can.

I'm not sure what lesson to take from all of this Sunday drama. One, lesson to be learned certainly focuses on using the middle/retreat room more and scouting it for unauthorized plant life more often. Another is that neither Honey nor I should really be allowed to own a home if we can't control our ivy.

Finally, for those of you who see me IRL, could you keep an eye out? If I start looking like that girl in The Ruins, help me somehow. Calling me "depressingly inert" might be a place to start.

Hands

I feel as if all I'm doing lately is complaining on my blog. Might as well continue the theme...

Can anyone explain to me why I keep getting little cuts on my hands?

I've eliminated the glass-shards in my soap dispenser theory.

I moisturize regularly.

Are little cuts on hands also a function of turning 40?

I'm not going to start wearing gloves.

I band-aid and disinfect them.

Some cut causes are known.

Others cuts simply appear.

My hands are less than pretty, what with the cuts, the band-aids and the little teeny scars.

I have not started a new job in a razor blade factory.

Ok, maybe gloves.

Any other ideas?