I Do Have Reasons For My Dislikes...Sometimes

I really, really, really dislike SUVs*. I argue with people about this frequently. My mother drives one, which I will fully admit to having borrowed when things needed moving. My car's pretty small.

That's part of the disconnect I feel, I think, is knowing that I have borrowed one from friends or family when I need to move things and I'm sure I will do so again in the future. I recognize that they can be a logical choice for someone that has a huge family or frequently hauls large objects...or both. They certainly have functional bonuses for those of us who move every year or so. Still, I just cannot stand them.

There are all the common reasons to dislike SUVs: they're gas-guzzlers, they have bad emissions track records, people spend way too much money on them to look cool, people think they actually look cool driving them, a driver's need to compensate...

But I have one major reason that I trumps all of these; I drive a small Volkswagen. I know my choice in cars in no one's fault but my own but I LOVE my car. It gets good gas mileage and has been infinitely better than the lemon that was my Cavalier (may it rest in peace).

The problem? When I'm on major highways, most days I cannot see anything in front of me. Or behind me. Or to either side of me. I will be surrounded by a brigade of SUVs whose sole purpose seems to be to confuse and disorient me. I have had several incidents of being behind an SUV and not being able to see the traffic jam/accident/shopping cart in the road ahead and have had several near-misses when said SUV very suddenly stops in the middle of the road and I almost rear-end them. While I have much faith in my car's design and sturdiness, I'm pretty sure rear-ending an SUV would hurt the Volkswagen greatly.

But one of the things that irritates me most happened just a few weeks ago and I still remember it because it happens all the time and it irritates me every time it occurs. When I park in parking lots at stores or wherever I happen to be in a large parking lot, I always try to park between two cars more on my level of size**, even if my walk to my destination is longer. Why? Because when I do back out, I can actually see if someone is coming. When I'm between two SUVs I cannot see a thing, no matter how adept I am at using my mirrors. Sometimes I have to just take a deep breath and back out slooooowly.

While in a grocery store parking lot a few weeks ago, I was doing the slooooow-back-out-and-crane-my-neck-into-an-uncomfortable-position when a car suddenly came barreling by blaring their horn and visibly screaming at me. It would have been nearly impossible for me to have almost hit them (believe me, I am not that talented) so the only thing I could think of was that it was their right of way and I was clearly ruining this moment for them. Which would have been acceptable except for the fact that I could not see a damned thing because of the Tahoe that was to my right! So I reacted like any normal, human adult would...I screamed back. ("IF I HAD SEEN YOU, MOTHER*@&#!&, I WOULD HAVE STOPPED, WOULDN'T I? HUH? YOU'RE SOOOOOO IMPORTANT, AREN'T YOU??!?!?") And then I seethed for a good long while, then treated myself to a Dr. Pepper because I deserved it.

The moral of this dry, long-winded story? I drive a small Volkswagen. I'm a good driver. If I'm pulling out of a space and I don't stop to let you go, it's probably because I can't see you. A lot of people in smaller cars are having this problem now. Also? Get over yourself.



*When I say SUVs, I mean mostly the ones for show. Though I live in a big city where most of them are for show. This term (SUVs) contains, but is not limited to: Lexus SUVs, Mercedes SUVs, BMW SUVs, Tahoes, Suburbans, Hummers, stupidly large trucks such as F350s or any truck that is raised/has ginormous tires, minivans, etc.

**Obviously, there are times when I park in a spot between two smaller cars and when I return to my car, an SUV has taken the place of one of them. Trust me, I take as many precautions as I can but I can't help what people do when I'm not around.

These Are The Things That Keep Me Awake At Night

I have a very long, semi-documented history of sleep issues. Insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, you name it. Sometime between my 24th and 25th birthdays, I suddenly discovered sleep. More like my body suddenly discovered it needed more sleep than it used to. This causes problems when I have a job and school and whatever else that keeps me busy. Being a zombie waitress is not only no fun but also not good for income. When I have even a little bit of free time, any semblance of a sleep schedule goes straight out the window.

Take this week, for instance. This is the second week of my summer vacation. I've had things I should do...I do have a To-Do List written up in my composition notebook that I carry with me everywhere. But I decided that I may take some time to rest this week and be a bit lazy. What has happened is that I've been up super late every night for no real reason. I know that House DVD will still be there tomorrow and that I don't have to watch ALL of the episodes right now, and yet I find myself doing just that. I peruse the internet for dining room tables or to try to figure out what the hell the name of the flower is that I saw at Target today. (It looks like an upside down bell and it's driving me crazy.) I eat way too much food and lounge on the couch in my pajamas with my laptop, food, a book, and a bottle of water. I literally have nothing that needs to be done at this very moment and so I'm letting myself have some time off. But that doesn't mean I should be staying up all night.

I guess I should mention that I work nights? But only on the weekends, mostly. If I pick up shifts during the week, it can be days or nights. Its most often nights and on the nights I close at work, I'm often not home until well after 3am. I've also always been a night owl. When I was 7, my father caught me under my covers at 1am with a book, an apple, and a flashlight. He was furious that I was still up but I couldn't sleep and do I delved into the world of Ramona Quimby and the freaky people that were the residents of R.L. Stine's Fear Street. The latter likely didn't help me to sleep.

Even when I have a day job, I can't sleep. I worked in one bar where I was the morning bartender and had to be there (from my apartment, 20 minutes away) at 10am. 10am is reallllly early for bar people. (Some bar people.) Nevertheless, I still couldn't sleep before 3am most nights.

Unfortunately, my pseudo-obsessive nature keeps me awake many nights. If I have any kind of numbers problem (bills, debts, etc.) I will lie in bed for hours working it out in my head. If my mind becomes set on finding something out, I will not rest until I do. If I decide I want to look something up on Wikipedia, I will become so link-lost that 3 hours later I will have no idea where I started.

Which brings me to tonight and why, at 4am, I'm still awake when I need to be up in 6 hours. You see, like many other individuals in their mid-20's, I lost my job a few years ago and had to move back home. Which is where I'm currently living. I love my mother and my sister, I really do, but my job and school are about 30 minutes from where I currently live and I want to move closer so that when I'm taking 13 hours in the fall and working about 35, I can simply roll out of bed, brush my teeth, attend classes, and roll back into bed. I'm sure I'll eat somewhere in there, too. Any way you slice it, I need an apartment.

Apartment hunting is one of my favorite things in the world. So much so that I have been known to spend almost an entire day off on the internet looking at apartments or even out looking at them in person. I'll make a whole day of it. So tonight, I decided I needed to start up my search again (I've been searching on and off for the past 8 months). That was 4 hours ago. I've been so furiously clicking between rent.com and apartmentratings.com that I may have given myself tendonitis. I've got a large list of places I want to visit in person, as well as a list of things I have learned from apartmentratings.com. I will share the latter with you.

Things I Have Learned From Apartmentratings.com

-The more illiterate a person is, the more likely they are to be melodramatic.
-If you're not the heir to a vast fortune, you will not be able to afford anything with a rating higher than roughly 62%. Curve accordingly.
-Pick your battles. Yes, I realize your mother likely told you this many times in your childhood. It still stands. If you can deal with sub-par parking and loud neighbors, but cockroaches and crime make you want to cry, read the (coherent) reviews and see which places have things you can tolerate over things you can't. No apartment is perfect. You have to make choices.
-Notice the dates on the reviews. A lot can change between 2008 and 2010. ESPECIALLY in apartments.
-Don't panic. These websites serve as a handy guide but really the best thing to do is scout a place out at night (preferably with a friend) and see what goes on. I would suggest doing this 3 or 4 times before you even set foot in a leasing office. That way, if a good look-and-lease special is offered, you don't have to dig your toe in the ground and wonder if you should snap it up or risk losing it to check the place out at night.
-Realize that everyone is going to have a different experience. Maybe the overly-hostile man that wrote the review about that one place DID have a bad experience...but that doesn't mean the sweet lady that loved the place is crazy. Or a liar. And it doesn't necessarily mean that she works for the complex, though that had been known to happen.
-Use your common sense. If one place has many awful reviews and the only good reviews are all around the same time period and use terms such as "sprawling landscapes" and "spacious interiors", they were likely written by that complexes' staff.
-I think apartmentratings.com is one of those review sites that you really have to get the hang of to understand.

My point of this whole post? I'm still awake. I need to go to sleep but I have wasted time and now have decided I want to set my monthly bills into an official budget (I already have an unofficial one). These truly are the things that keep me awake at night.

Hello, My Name is Stevie and I'm a Cheeseaholic.

Okay. I've decided that I want to bring this blog back, and so here I am. I feel like I should do an introductory post (which I realize is not necessary) because there are three of us writing here and we're all very different personalities. An "introductory post" for me would give a little taste of what goes on in my head and what I'm likely to write/whine about in the future. I'm not very good at introductions, so bear with me.

I'm Stevie. I'm an undergraduate psychology student, a waitress/bartender, a feminist, a Dr. Pepper junkie, and a Celiac. I'm also an on-again, off-again insomniac and a cheese enthusiast. All of these things (and more) make me the supposedly high-strung, odd individual that I am. I have a lot to say about several of these things, in particular Celiac disease and feminism.

Due to my (sometimes) grueling work and school schedules, I'm often exhausted. I like to use parentheses a lot. Also, sentence fragments. I realize these are flaws but hey, no one's perfect.

I am fortunate to have many wonderful friends, even more fortunate that they still like me considering that I'm a lousy friend during the semester and some won't hear from me for weeks. (Facebook has made my social life marginally easier.) Two of my closest friends are Jess and Sarah, with whom I've started this blog. We took on this task because we're all three writers who have pretty wicked senses of humor. This was meant as a creative outlet for us but also as a chance to collaborate for the first time in our (roughly) decade-long friendship. These women are amazing and wonderful and made of rainbows and I am incredibly lucky to have found such women.

And hopefully we will all now start writing together. I plan on writing as often as possible because, as previously mentioned, I have a lot to say. The three of us all bring different things to the table and I think our collaborative efforts will, at the very least, be a spectacle of insanity. ;)

Okay, enough about me. I'm going to go relax and watch some episodes of House now. It's summer vacation and I have NO homework. It's lazy time!

Anatomy of a WIB

"I can't remember which one I'm supposed to be wearing."

I was logging into my Blogger account the other day when I saw the following: Choose an identity.  Well gee whiz Blogger, would it were that simple.  I would very much like to choose an identity, but after a quarter of a century I’m still having trouble pinning it down.  The past year I learned from men that I am, at any given time, too pretty, too intellectual, too clever, too moody, too frustrating, too creative, too stubborn, too ambitious, too emotional, too insecure, too opinionated, too much.  I try not to internalize these observations, but who are we kidding?  Of course I internalize them.  We all do. 

                And so we play games, wear masks, hide behind who I think I should be or who you think I should be or who I think you think I should be.  The future of the makeup industry depends upon it.  The whole thing gives me a headache.  We have to do it though.  Because we can’t let our guard down, be vulnerable. We learned very early on that vulnerability is the quickest route to heartbreak. 

                Maybe those guys are right.  Maybe I am too much.  Okay, no maybes about it.  When I am not fabulously effervescent I am ridiculously annoying.  But here’s the thing.  Aren’t we all just a little bit too much?  Deep down, aren’t we all afraid that if we drop the masks and unleash the full force of our personalities on another human being they will run screaming into the night?  

Here's what our response should be: to hell with 'em. I just want to be me.  If that’s not good enough for any of us, so be it.  

Unfortunately that is way easier said than done, and I for one am nowhere near being able to make such a declaration.  Which is a shame.  Throwing away all those masks would sure clear up a lot of closet space.

One Year Ago Today...

I moved to the Emerald Coast to spend the summer working at a resort in Destin, FL.  This is what I love best about the beach: it is, above all else, perpetually temporary.  I’ve always been fascinated by the ocean.  Not just for its beauty, although it is called the Emerald Coast for a reason.  What fascinates me most is the fact that you can never look at the ocean the same way twice.  Everything on the planet may be in constant motion, but nowhere is it more apparent than here, where a gust of wind or a passing jet ski instantly changes the landscape.  It is one of the most beautiful sights on earth, and it is impossible to hold onto.  I realized this a year ago, but what I didn’t get until now is life at the beach is no different from the beach itself.  It may be beautiful, but it’s impossible to hold onto.

                In the past twelve months I have built bridges and burned them to the ground.  I was put on a pedestal and smacked back down.  I lived more from May to August than the previous three years combined.  I have amazing memories and enormous regrets.  Last summer shaped and changed me like the coast itself.   I went home a different person, and each time I come back I look to relive the experience, knowing full well I can't.  I'm here now and having a great time.  I look around at myself and my friends and remember us as we were a year ago.  To the outside world it looks like not much has changed.  But that's not quite true.  Somehow nothing is different and everything is different.  It's fascinating to watch, and I look forward to seeing how the next week unfolds.  One thing's for sure, if life in Destin really is perpetually temporary, I certainly can't plan or control anyone or anything.  Instead, to beat the beach metaphor to death, for the next seven days I plan to ride the waves and see where they take me. 

The name change issue

I posted this awhile back on www.fortworthfeminism.com and at the Feministing.com community, and it got so much response that I thought our dedicated and loyal circle of three readers would find it interesting. A little background...I have been married four and a half years and have found it extremely difficult to navigate the waters of marriage and stay true to my avid feminism. There are so many gender roles that are societally embedded into my head (and most of our heads, male and female alike) and I am doing my best to steer my way through them while keeping my marriage and my feminism intact.

From June 14, 2008
A lot of people ask me why I hyphenated my name instead of just changing it to my husband’s when we got married. Others flat out refuse to use my entire name or ask me rude questions like “don’t you respect your husband?” Here’s the story.
Kyle has always been a pretty easygoing guy, so when I mentioned my decision to hyphenate instead of change it altogether a few weeks before our wedding, I was surprised at his angry reaction. He told me that his brothers would think badly of him and it would seem like we weren’t married, etc. etc. I became irate and scared…the wedding was set and ready to go and I had just stumbled upon something that could ruin it all. By the end of that night, many tears and screams later, Kyle decided he was ok with the hyphenation–but it’s something we’ve had major fights about since. We’ve been married about three and a half years now and I think he’s finally come to terms with it. Below is a list of reasons why I chose to keep my name.

1. Taking your husband’s name is a tradition based in a time when husbands owned wives.
2. I was an author with a hefty amount of articles under my belt and changing my Google search results didn’t seem practical for my career.
3. I love my name. It has a rich history behind it.
4. I didn’t want to.
I could create a vast bibliography to back up the top three reasons but the most important one is number four…if I didn’t want to change my name, why should I have to? This goes for women who want to change their names as well. It’s our choice. Here is a list of the rude and inconsiderate things people say and do to try to make me feel bad about my choice:
1. Write birthday checks to my would-be married name (I can’t cash them easily).
2. Airline tickets have been booked for me in the wrong name, warranting an extreme search process at the security checkpoint.
3. Work colleagues have consistently referred to my would-be married name in professional situations, which ends up confusing people.
4. “Don’t you respect your husband?” By the way, the answer to this question is always, “Yes, and he respects me equally.”
5. How did I raise such a feminazi? (This one obviously comes from my mom.)
6. It’s what a good Christian woman would do (seriously, someone said this to me. I almost punched him). Actually, in Bible times, besides the whole “man owning wife” bit, families needed the same name in order to protect their assets. Today, in the age of marriage licenses and social security numbers, this is hardly a concern.
7. Did you do that so it will be easier to change back if it doesn’t work out? (this was “sort of” meant as a joke. Har har.)
8. You’ll get over that once you have kids. (No, I will not. My decision to retain my own identity within marriage is not a phase that I will “grow out of”).
9. My doctor told me, “oh you don’t want to do that. It’s way too confusing in the paperwork. Our nurses will only use one name.” (Ummm…time to fire some sexist nurses)
10. I wanted to do that but my husband wouldn’t have it! (Sometimes this is said in a rude way, meant to make me feel like bad wifey, but I consider it more of a cry for help.)

When people are rude to me about my name I am always shocked…imagine how people would react if I said, “you took your husband’s name?! Why? Don’t you know that means he owns you? What about your children? They’ll think you’re not equal to him!” I would be even more of a feminazi for uttering even one of these.
All of my married friends have taken their husband’s names and I suspect they think I don’t approve, but this is what choice is about. If that’s what they want, that’s what they should do (although, one friend confessed to me that she secretly wished she didn’t change her name). If a married friend wants to change her name to Princess Consuela Bananahammock (a la Phoebe from friends), that is her prerogative and none of my business–just like my decision is my business.

"I Deserve Someone"

*I wrote this back in 2002 when I was 21 after a particularly not-so-great (not) dating experience. No, no one person can ever live up to your ideal.  But I pull it out once a year or so to remind myself that I shouldn't settle for less than amazing because it's entirely possible that I deserve amazing. I recommend everybody write one. 

I Deserve Someone:

_    who understands me

_    who’ll fight for me

_    to go to the movies with

_    who knows how I order a cheeseburger

_    who won’t criticize my music collection

_    who wants to travel

_    who knows you can’t beat a Big Gulp

_    who can have fun at Chuck E. Cheese

_    who makes me laugh

_    who loves my family

_    who wants a dog

_    to kiss my forehead

_    who I can call at 3 a.m. if I need him

_    who can call me at 3 a.m. if he needs me

_    who loves roller coasters and cotton candy

_    who’ll call me on my shit

_    who finds the word “y’all” endearing

_    who reads something other than magazines

_    who knows (most of) the best music was written before 1979

_    who knows how to be friends with a girl

_    who’ll hurt me, who I’ll hurt, and who’ll still be there despite it

_    who doesn’t take himself seriously

_    who loves his family

_    who has at least one “unattainable” dream

_    who understand some movies have to be seen opening night

_    with imagination

_    who knows the importance of a good road trip

_    who makes me feel safe

_    to pick out clothes for

_    to tease

_    who’s a great friend

_    who can laugh at the little things

_    who’s loyal

_    who’s independent

_    who’s passionate

_    who understands the importance of great dialogue

_    who’ll read my writing, even if it’s really late at night

_    who know that sometimes the best conversations are over a cup of coffee

_    who’ll suffer through chick flicks and secretly like a few

_    who knows that “nothing” is a valid answer to the question “what are you  doing?”

_    who thinks I’m beautiful

_    who believes in me

_    to sit on a porch swing with

_    to cry to

_    who’d never cheat

_    who likes to sing, even if he can’t

_    to banter with

_    who’ll humor me and dress up for Halloween

_    who knows that anything is possible

_    who has opinions and who’ll listen to others

_    who’ll take my breath away

_    who knows the best presents have nothing to do with their price

_    who listens

_    who knows the importance of a good rant

_    who secretly likes something written by Jane Austen

_    who makes me feel good about myself

_    who has at least one wildly opposing viewpoint

_    who can handle a trip to a museum

_    who’s patient

_    who gets along with my friends

_    whose friends I get along with

_    who’s not judgmental

_    who has at least one (legal) vice

_    to have a snowball fight with

_    who’ll still build a sandcastle

_    who’s mature, but still in touch with his inner child

_    who still loves the songs, TV shows, & movies from when he was a kid

_    who knows that yes, ain’t is a word

_    who knows how to tell a good story

_    to save the last dance

_    who’ll question the status quo

_    who can appreciate a Cracker Barrel as well as fine dining establishments

_    to do nothing with

_    who knows I don’t wake up looking like this

_    to steal t-shirts from

_    who smells great

_    who’s curious about other cultures

_    who’ll fight back

_    who understands that sometimes spending the whole day in bed is perfectly acceptable

_    who knows me inside and out, and loves me despite, or because of it