The World Is Your Garage Sale

When I was a child, about once a year during the summer my neighbors would do something fantastic. They’d set up card tables in their driveway, pile all of their junk onto them and sell the items for pennies on the dollar. That’s right…I’m talking about a garage sale (or ‘yard sale’ depending on where you’re from).

The idea of garage sales always thrilled me and I found myself looking forward to them year after year. Watching the parade of thrifty hoosiers* milling about and bartering for things that probably should have been in a dumpster somewhere was amusing and intriguing to me. Of course my father refused to allow us to host such a gathering. He claimed that encouraging strangers to come to our property was pretty much like issuing an open invitation for them to ‘case the joint.’ Our house wasn’t exactly filled with Faberge eggs and original Monet’s, mind you, but eventually my mother, sister and I gave up the battle and accepted the fact that we’d never host our own garage sale.

Since I’d never experience the joy of setting up my own card tables, I’d usually do my best to latch onto a neighbor’s sale and toss a few of my undesirable items into the mix, hoping to turn a profit so that I could immediately take my earned riches to the gas station and blow it on lemonheads and Flaming Hot Cheetos. I don’t recall ever making more than $20, but I found the exercise to be exciting and a good means to clear out my bedroom to make room for newer, better junk.

As I got older, I’d occasionally go to garage sales myself. I went through a phase where I had the burning desire to buy old chairs so that I could sand and paint them different colors. Don’t ask. I remember the joy that would come with each bargain. It was like finding five dollars on a sidewalk. Pure joy. I found that garage sales weren’t just a means to buy and sell crap…they were a way for things to have another life.

So recently when I was in the midst of moving to a new place and in desperate need of bedroom furniture and a washer and dryer, I considered perusing the classified section of the Post-Dispatch to find garage sales. That was until someone pointed me to a 24-hour online garage sale encompassing the entire region called Craigslist.

For those unfamiliar with Craigslist, it’s essentially an online marketplace where you can, among other things, buy and sell all sorts of stuff ranging from bicycles to leaf blowers, and even hideous pink purses that sort of look like dresses.

Once I began my search, I found myself checking Craigslist throughout the day in search of various items to adorn my new apartment and cringing at the majority of household items that I saw. I found that much like garage sales, there is an abundance of heinous items on Craigslist. But in the midst of a bunch of tasteless crap, I eventually found gold. Not only was I able to procure a new washer and dryer for $250, but I also found a cute dresser to, you guessed it, strip down and paint. And best of all, I didn’t have to leave my computer chair to find them.

It seems that in the span of about 10 years technology has enabled the world to become one giant garage sale and I think it’s fantastic. No need for card tables or dot stickers. No risk of being ‘cased.’ Only the risk of buying an item that will either quit working in a week, or contain something completely bizarre…like, oh…I don’t know…an old pair of SuperWoman underwear once worn by the girl that sold you the dresser.

I guess there will always been something inherently hoosier about the buying and selling of used items. But it’s a risk worth taking in my opinion.
Who knows, maybe this summer I’ll have my own garage sale. It may start with taking pictures instead of setting up card tables, but I assure you that it will end with me buying lemonheads and Flaming Hot Cheetos. I guess some things will never change.

*"hoosier" is a St Louis term describing people who in other regions may be referred to as "hillbillys" or other, less flattering terms

Brush With Death...Or Not

It's been entirely too long since I wrote last and I appologize for leaving you, my faithful (and by now, possibly nonexistent) readers without any musings to help you pass the time. I'll try harder to think more, observe more and subsequently write more. Crissy, this blog is for you…so you'll stop hounding me to post something new. Stern encouragement is obviously effective with me, so thanks!

Anyway, enough of the niceties…I've got a story to tell you. Like to hear it? Here it goes…

The other day at work the minutes and hours passed much like they normally do, with me hunched over my computer occasionally leaving my cubicle (or 'office' as I refer to it when talking to people who are unwise to the fact that I'm not of senior enough stature to actually possess a door in my work space) to refill my drink, shuffle to a meeting, or ride my Razor scooter to the bathroom.

Around noon I made my way to the kitchen, prepared a peanut butter and honey sandwich (the first I'd had since high school, easily) and went back to the salt mines. An hour or so later my stomach felt like it was cramping up. Tolerable, but mildly uncomfortable, and not the sort of cramping that is a result of digestion issues, if you catch what I'm throwing. It just hurt.

By 3:00 I was reeling. It felt like someone had reached into my stomach, wadded it up in their giant man hand and then started poking it repetedly with tiny sharp objects. I was miserable. After a team meeting I decided that I had to go home, curl up in the fetal position and hope that it would pass.

Around 3:45 I packed up my things and began the journey home (all 3 miles of it). I barely made it to the car and climbed inside in the same fashion that a pregnant woman would, easing into the seat, lifting my legs up and pulling them under the steering wheel and then groaning as I reached for the door handle.

"What on earth could be causing this," I thought to myself. "I don't think I've ever been in this much pain."

After going through the list of probable causes, I simply couldn't figure it out. Perhaps I'd developed an allergy to peanuts and my stomach was slowly shrivvling up like a sliced banana in a Ronco food dehydrater. Maybe the Crystal Light that I had with lunch was made with a rare sugar substitute that my body couldn't process…it was pretty sweet after all. Or perhaps I just needed to pee really bad and my body somehow wasn't able to let my brain know it.

As I drove home I literally did breathing excercises and when I finally arrived at my front door it appeared to be backlit by a heavenly light. Upon entering I immediately changed into pajama pants, and the second that I did, the pain was gone. Not like, sort of gone, or hurt less…it was completely gone.

Amazing huh?!

Well, not really…here's where embarassing tidbits are revealed to provide explanations for a miraculous recovery.

You see lately it's been pretty cold and I'm not sure if you're aware, but tights are magically back 'in'. I don't necessarily like this trend, but in an attempt to keep up, I bought a couple of pair. So unbenounced to colleagues or anyone else who doesn't watch me get dressed in the morning (which is pretty much everyone) I've been trying to pull one over on Old Man Winter.

That's right, sometimes I wear a pair of tights under my pants in an effort to layer up and keep warm during Starbuck's runs, etc, etc. It's not a big deal. That is, until the very tights that were supposed to keep me safe and warm instead started squeezing my guts so tight that I could barely move without yelping like a wounded dog.

You see, kids…apparently tights and eight hours of sitting on your ass don't mix…like oil and water or Red Bull and anything. I experienced that most intense pain of my life thus far as a result of wearing an article of clothing that's name is in and of itself a warning. They're not called "comfort hosiery" or "body hug" for a reason, they're called "tights" because they're f'ing tight!!

After figuring this out and having left work early with an assumption that I'd be curled up in a ball for the remainder of the day, I wasn't quite sure what to do. So I did the only thing that made any sense…logged onto the internet, checked my work email to make sure that I wasn't missing anything and flipped on Oprah.

Let this be a lesson to us all that wearing tights under pants for more than a few hours is a bad idea. Not only that, but when or if people find out that you wear tights under your pants…they'll make fun of you.

Go ahead and laugh it up. But I will say that that day my legs were warmer than usual.

Things I know for sure

Every month in ‘O’ magazine in an attempt to be insightful and inspire millions of women and gay men across the country, Oprah lists something that she knows for sure. So maybe mine aren’t really inspiring, but I thought I’d give it a shot anyway. Here are seven things that I know for sure:

• Wanting to run a marathon is a lost cause if you never run. I used to really desire to train for a marathon and one day have strangers lining the streets to give me dixie cups of water. Then I realized that my ability to run mile after mile isn’t an indication of my inner strength. I also realized that I just really don’t like to run more than a block at a time.
• Even when you think you’ve met the most stupid person on earth, there’s always Flava Flav.
• I will never own a mini van. Unless SUV’s are suddenly banished from earth, I really just don’t see the need. I know that vans have come a long way since my mom’s blue Dodge Caravan, but they still make me uneasy.
• Sex and the City and Seinfeld reruns will never get old.
• God exists - I know this because when I look really closely at my eye - slightly pulling down the bottom lid towards the center of my face, there’s this tiny pinhole that I assume has something to do with air pressure in my eye. If I was not created, or if I (and every other human) was the result of a cosmic incident or evolution from apes, or sand or whatever, then how come we’re all not a bunch of weird blobs? Go ahead…find a mirror and check it out.
• Chicken never tastes as good reheated. Pasta, yes. Chicken, no.
• If a tiny Asian woman in Chinatown tells you to follow her through a maze of alleys and up two flights of stairs to a discreet apartment, do it. It’s a little scary at first, until you see walls of knock off designer purses at unbelievable prices.

Pass the Invisible Red Ball

This past week I traveled to Chicago to do something that many people don’t have the opportunity to do. I went to live a dream; one that I’ve had since Jr. High school, in fact. This may shock many of you (or absolutely none), but I was horribly awkward in Jr High…not like a nerd, or geek, just an athletic twig of a person with braces who wore a ponytail everyday, refused makeup and everything girly. I babysat on the weekends to avoid social outings and spent one Saturday night after the next watching a show that made me laugh and realize that popularity and self actualization (hey Maslow’s hierarchy) was possible even for those of us who weren’t blessed with cheerleader figures, sensibilities and charisma. Saturday Night Live was a ritual for me; an escape from one reality and an entrance into another…the reality that it was possible to be witty and be loved for it. A dream was forming in my mind.

After watching the comic geniuses perform week after week I became intrigued and had to know more about the people behind the sketches. I began researching the performers and found a link between many of them. On the road to the Rockefeller Plaza stage, stars like Chris Farley, Tina Fey, and Gilda Radner had made a life-changing stop at The Second City in Chicago to train in the art of improvisation, sketch comedy, and other sects of the religion of comedy. The Second City has given birth to some of the world’s most notable and beloved comedians and I knew that I simply had to go there.

Fast forward to my sophomore of college. The dream still living inside me, a conversation between my mom and me ensued. It went something like this:

Me - Mom, I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I think I’d like to go to Chicago for a while to train at The Second City.

Mom - What’s that?!

Me - It’s like college, but for comedians…like the people on Saturday Night Live.

Mom - So, it’s not an actual college?

Me - No, it’s more like training and a lot of the people who study there go on to do TV shows and other stuff.

Mom - That sounds interesting honey…but no.

I started the communications program at Bradley the following fall. While I never fully regretted the decision to not pack up all of my things in the cover of darkness, drive to Chicago in the car that my parents had given me and make a phone call later to explain myself, with 300 miles of distance between us, the dream still lingered. The Second City traveling troupe came to Bradley and I of course went. That was as close as I thought I’d ever get.

Fast forward again to earlier this year (2007). I wrote an essay about my dream and my wish was granted by perhaps the most unlikely genie that anyone could think of…my employer. My company has a program that gives employees the opportunity to live a dream by simply submitting an essay about their dream and hoping that it’s chosen. My sister was the first to read the essay and knew that mine would be picked, but I had some doubts…mainly afraid that someone else would have written about their desire to help save babies from wells and end world hunger…I mean, who can argue against that?! Luckily no one did and I was on my way to a circus performers equivalent of clown college. Yippee!

On Monday, July 23rd I made my way to Wells Street (which required paying a taxi to follow to my destination…I got a bit lost and started freaking out). I spent six hours a day for the next five days training/learning the art of improvisation and sketch comedy writing at The Second City, a place that I’d known about, and was finally experiencing. It was incredible. There were about 15 other people taking the classes with me from all across the country. Some were actors, others writers, some both, others neither. But everyone was there to learn from the best and that’s what we did.

You’re likely thinking that my time was spent learning jokes or studying the anatomy of a comedy bit, but it wasn’t. During improv training we spent some of our time in a giant circle playing a game that involved tossing an invisible red ball, throwing an invisible arrow and passing an invisible mouse to one another. Our time was also spent playing a game that involved chanting “Big Booty” to one another, dancing one at a time in the middle of a circle, pretending to be inanimate objects, telling stories through each other and putting together skits without notice. All of our activities were designed to help us connect with one another and enter into a place where we could anticipate what someone else was thinking and react accordingly with little warning. Amazing.

During the writing training I learned the principles of sketch comedy writing and wrote quite a few sketches of my own, working with my fellow trainees (which I struggled with due to my propensity to write alone). At the end of the week, we wrote sketches and then cast our characters. I was flattered to be cast in every other sketch that my classmates had written. I’m no actor, that’s for certain, but they trusted me to play the roles that they had created and that meant a lot. So I went to Second City on Monday as a publicist who was interested in comedy and I ended it by playing Lindsay Lohen, the tooth fairy, Hilary Duff, Gretel, and an anteater. Not many people can say that after returning from a vacation!

Part of me hoped that I’d go to Second City and have a light bulb moment, where the clouds would part and Chris Farley’s ghost would announce that comedy was my reason for being, but it didn’t happen. The experience was amazing, certainly something that I’ll never forget, but it’s not my calling and knowing that is certainly worth the cost of admission (which was incidentally paid by Weber Shandwick…incredible).

On the final day I approached my improv teacher to thank him for the comedic wisdom that he’d imparted. He replied by telling me that I should audition to train at Second City full time, adding that they’d love to have me. I didn’t hear him say it to anyone else, but I do have selective hearing. Sweet validation was mine! If it was my dream, I left knowing that I could live it…or at least have a fair shot. Since I found that such a career is not my dream, I left with a smile and memories that I’ll pull up from time to time. I also left looking forward to coming back home, going back to work for a company that allowed me to live my dream, and maybe occasionally tossing an invisible red ball to my friends and coworkers.

Dog Eat Dog

I recently became a mom. Well, not a real mom or even a step mom…I became a temporary dog mom. That’s right, I dog sat for four days and I learned a thing or two in the process.

Lola, the medium sized, brown haired mutt whom I was trusted to care for, is a dream. She does nothing. She sleeps all the time. She eats twice a day. She only barks at cats and squirrels. Apart from some mildly annoying following of me around, she was a breeze to care for (although I did arrive home after a great date to find that she’s piddled on her bed, but that was quickly forgiven due to my happy post-date mood).

During my short stint as a dog mom I discovered that there is an underground (or maybe just invisible to non dog owners) club, to which all dog-owning humans are entered into upon purchase/adoption/rescue of their pooch. I got a glimpse into the club by walking the walk (aka strutting around, leash in hand, occasionally giving stern tugs to assert my authority) and doing it in front of the world (aka, my neighborhood park and the streets of downtown).

Neighbors whom I’d never met made introductions, dog walkers gave me an affectionate nod and sometimes a wave, total strangers would ask questions for which I would make up answers. It was like the world gave me a hug and all because I had a canine in my midst.

On Sunday, Lola was returned to her real owner, thus revoking my membership into the underground dog club. To be honest, it was sort of a relief. I’m not sure if you know this, but dogs have to pee quite often and when they go “#2” you have to pick it up and throw it into a trash can with about 10 gallons of it’s counterparts. They also stare at you while you sleep, which is something that I don’t like unless it’s in an adoring fashion and coming from a being with a opposeable thumb. And even then, it can be unsettling.

Nonetheless, it was a good experience and I left it knowing that when it comes to being a mom, I’ll be a much better human mom than dog mom any day of the week. Informing my neighbors that Lola isn’t actually my dog was tough though. It was a harsh reality for one gentleman in particular. I’d never spoke or even seen him before taking Lola for a walk last week. He made small talk then and when I saw him out the other day while taking a solo walk (you know, because I don’t have a dog) he asked where my dog was. I told him that I was dog sitting before and she wasn’t mine. The conversation ended somewhat abruptly and I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll never see him again.

I was sad for a minute, but when I reached in my pocket and didn’t pull out a plastic bag that was meant to carry around doodie, I smiled again and picked up the pace.

*Edited by Bridget Westhoff