The Unknown Gift

There are very few things that I am actually scared of. (OK, fine, "of which I am scared.") For most people, this kind of list includes things like being shot or stolen. For me, I have been close to those things and they don't scare me in quite the same way that these do:

Clowns

The Sound of Balloons Popping

Outer Space

Spiders

I know you are looking at this list and thinking, "How are clowns possibly scarier than guns?" And if you don't know, I'm not sure I have an acceptable answer for you. But the one thing that everything on this list has in common is the quality of the unknown. Clearly I am freaked out by things with no explanation and no predictors. In case you need this broken down further:

Clowns = Fake happy, which leaves no way to tell how they actually feel or what they will do.

Balloons Popping = No trigger, which leaves no way to prepare. You can stand next to a balloon, act like you love it like a puppy but really be holding a needle to its face the whole time, thereby scaring the bejesus out of me.

Outer Space = Infinite possibilities, which leaves me paralyzed with fear. This is also why I HATE Horton Hears a Who.

Spiders = Ability to drop from the ceiling, which leaves no way to tell where they have gone and leads me to believe they are probably stuck in my hair, biting their way out and I will end up like everyone in Arachnophobia.

Currently I have a GIANT spider living in the side mirror of my car and it might have to stay there forever. Chicago is having an identity crisis and seems to think it needs to rain all the time instead of being summer, which has created a swamp-like atmosphere that my shoes, hair and social life would like to sucker punch. This has also created an abundance of bugs that clearly think they can just set up camp wherever they please. I mean, I know spiders were around before automobiles, but if dinosaurs came back I don't think I would just hang my laundry up outside their caves.

Anyway, every morning I get in my car to go to yoga and halfway there I look to the left and see that there is something too close to the window and then I realize that this is the GIANT spider being creepy in the middle of its GIANT web. This flash causes me to have a mini-heart attack -- the kind where you breathe in so fast that your brain blinks for a full second and when you can see again, your chest hurts up into your neck because your whole body forgot to be alive while your brain shut down.

Sometimes I try to drive fast or swerve a lot in order to shake the spider off of the car. But spiders are sticky and this doesn't seem to work. Since it's been raining, I keep thinking the spider will be washed away or at least be so discouraged at its repeatedly demolished web that it will crawl itself away to die of despair. But this also doesn't seem to work. So instead, I open the door only enough so I can slip out of the car undetected and I keep all body parts above the spider so it can't leap onto me. I shut the door carefully so I don't anger the spider, which would obviously cause it to launch itself in the direction of my hair. And then I promptly forget that it is there, thereby putting this cycle on repeat indefinitely.

My parents have long been baffled by my fear of spiders. When I was little, they refused to kill spiders for me and made me deal with them on my own. They would say, "What's going to happen when you live on your own and you have a spider? We're not going to travel to another city just to kill it for you." This plan failed. Even living by myself for several years, I have managed to find many people who will kill them for me. Otherwise I stare the spiders down or sleep on the couch to avoid them falling on my head. The only way I can kill a spider is if it is on the floor, not moving and I have a large weapon. And also only if I am wearing shoes.

While the element of the unknown is a scary concept for me, it translates well to gifts. Space is scary because of the infinite possibilities of what this means for us as people and the meaning of life. A wrapped present has less infinite possibilities, but these options do not usually make us question our life decisions. Unless someone bought you a clown.

This is why wrapping paper can be a gift in itself. For M's birthday a couple of years ago I forgot to buy wrapping paper. The only option in the back of my closet was a roll of Christmas paper that I found in the apartment when I moved in. So I unrolled it and used the blank side. I was going to decorate it and then got distracted by the internet. Which turned out to be fruitful because I found a website devoted to Chuck Norris jokes. (The ones that say things like "Beneath Chuck Norris' beard there is no chin. Just another fist.") I wrote a bunch of Chuck Norris jokes on the blank side of the wrapping paper in large font. It was M's favorite part of all of the gifts.

Out of the unknown comes an opportunity to be creative. And with wrapping paper, there is no danger of it leaping onto your hair and biting your head.

(And to my credit, Chuck Norris is probably afraid of spiders too. Because you can't roundhouse kick your own head.)

The Smart Gift

You know the age-old female paradox of Pretty vs. Smart? Like, you can't look like Megan Fox and...well, do anything else, really.

Anyway, I give up. I refuse to play this game of trying to be both. Not that I think I am ugly and stupid. It's just that I'm a little weird. So I don't fit in anywhere. I seem to be living my own personal paradox of Strange vs. Boring.

Outwardly I am really boring. I am not a "talk first" person and I have trouble remembering names and identifying details. I don't have exciting stories to share. My response time is often slow and I stumble over my own jokes.

But all of this is because really I am just trying to approximate normalcy instead of my default "weird" setting. For example:

Outward:

Person #1: "Hi Kate, nice to meet you."

Me: "Hi."

Me: (Four seconds later) "Nice to meet you too."

Person #1: "What's new?"

Me: "Nothing. Nothing new."

Me: (Four seconds later) "What about you?"

(Painful. I know.)

BUT 

Inward:

Person #1: "Hi Kate. Nice to meet you."

Me: "OMG incoming handshake. Concentrate very hard on shaking hands without pinching and while maintaining eye contact. You want to look like you have normal hands. Shit, totally missed their name."

Person #1: "What's new?"

Me: "Am I sweating? I might be sweating and now they think I have weird hands and a sweating problem. What's new? Everything sucks right now, I can't tell them anything recent. And all the stories I have are about getting hit on in the middle of the street. These are not appropriate stories. Why am I so fucking inappropriate? Don't swear. Did I swear out loud? What did I say out loud? Oh, God I didn't say anything. Now I am sweating and mute."

See? I am totally weird. And by hiding it I just seem weird AND boring. A few people have recently called me out on this. But I am unconvinced that not hiding this would make me any better. For instance, last night I unleashed my stream-of-consciousness-inner-self on M during Scattergories and it didn't go so well.

Scattergories, "Things Found on a Map," Letter "H"

Me: "Hydra"

M: "That doesn't count."

Me: "On a map of where to find hydras."

M: "No. That's cheating."

Me: "What do you have?"

M: "Hiroshima."

Me: "That's not a thing, that's a place. So mine should count."

M did not think this was funny. He thought I was trying to cheat. I was however, NOT trying to cheat. I was trying to be funny. Scattergories is my favorite board game for this very reason. Normally you get points in the form of other people laughing for totally bizarre answers. Last night I realized that my definition of "normally" is that I usually play this game with my dad. Who makes things up too.

My dad is very good with words and his favorite board game is Scrabble. The only time I have come close to beating him was during a late-night rematch over Christmas this year. And I still lost. Scrabble is the only game where my dad does not relent on whether his words are made up and he will make you take your complaint to the 97 pound dictionary displayed prominently throughout the game. The current edition of Scrabble at my parents' house was a joint gift from my mom and I to my dad several years ago. It is now a family fixture. (And by that I mean it gets used only when the whole family is home because my mom hates Scrabble and goes through three magazines while waiting for her turns.)

Also my dad just texted me and asked what a hydra is. I'm a genius.

It turns out that Hydra is actually also a city in Algeria AND an island off of Greece, so suck it Scattergories, but that is not why I thought of it. My brain went like this:

"Hmmm, H for Car Parts...Hydraulics. H for Things Found on a Map...Hydrauli...no you just used that and it doesn't make sense....Hydraul...No!...wait...Hydra? NO...but maybe..."

And then my brain began drawing an intricate old-timey map of oceans with many-headed serpents sticking out in key places. In green.

This is why I stay mute.

The Obvious Gift

In case I decide to forget this, please do not let me attend large gatherings without eating for an extended period of time. This might be obvious to most people but clearly I am having trouble with it.

The Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup last week (yay) which of course means the city went temporarily insane for a few days (opposite of yay but not nay because that sounds British and/or lame). Despite the fact that a rally in the middle of downtown on a workday that draws upwards of two million people outside in 100 degree heat is the actual definition of hell, I decided to see what it was all about. In retrospect, my rationale that this was "history" and I had to walk through it anyway to get to my volunteer shift was not enough to overcome the massive disaster that is the reality of millions of sweaty people who have been drinking for four days.

I pushed my way as close as I could in the name of research and documentation. I was maybe thirty yards away from what was going on but I was too short to even see the screen that hung high above the players' heads. I could only see the damp shirts around me, a sea of red flags and heads dripping with sweat. There were discarded bottles and lunch bags at my feet and no exit in sight. I was effectively tucked into a pocket of the crowd like someone had dropped me into a fold of a blanket. A really smelly and hot blanket. I hadn't stopped sweating since I woke up that morning to do hot yoga and then a short workout. Also I had eaten four pieces of cheese and a Vitamin Water in the past 20 hours. I panicked.

As the players began talking, I pushed my way out of my sealed pocket of strangers and made my way back to the art museum. After realizing part of the street was blocked, I used this as an excuse to go shopping before my shift started. In case you were wondering, retail therapy keeps panic at bay.

The worst part of this is not that my efforts were in vain. It's that this is not even the first time I have done the exact same thing. Last year I attempted to navigate my way to the Eiffel Tower on Bastille Day in Paris while running on two days of coffee and a nectarine. I may have also been wearing the same outfit.

Given the immensely important similarities of these events (I mean starvation and black dresses are definitely too weird to ignore,) here's a rundown of how they stack up against each other as Major Events in a few key areas:

1. Trash - Winner: Hawks

Bastille: I didn't notice much trash while getting myself over to the Eiffel Tower. I think partly because I wasn't looking for a place to throw up in, but also I was distracted by just finding my way around. When I was exploring four days later, however, I took a series of pictures of all the trash and broken barricades that still littered the ground. It was like the city was not prepared for their own national holiday.
Hawks: When I think "ticker tape parade" I think long strips of white paper, like ribbons or paper for adding machines. What I saw along the streets was actually just pieces of newspaper. Like someone had a tantrum with the Tribune. Along with the discarded soda bottles and Hawks flags, the streets looked like the inside of a gerbil cage. That is, until Streets and Sans came through about 30 minutes after the rally. I have never been more impressed with trash removal in my life full of appreciating the art of removing trash.

2. Drunk People - Winner: Bastille


Bastille: I would have thought there would be enough foreigners in Paris to make this an even match, but aside from a few wine drinkers on the lawn of the Champ du Mars and a few rowdy Americans on their way home after the fireworks, this was the most sober festivity I have ever seen.
Hawks: When I saw the occasional stroller, I cringed. Because that baby is probably now drunk by osmosis and sticky with beer.

3. Smells - Winner: Tie


Bastille: French people think we smell like soap and medicine. We are clearly use hand sanitizer like super clean coke-heads. But you know what the reverse is. When I am in Paris, I certainly do not stop using deodorant but I also don't mind a cloud of cigarettes and armpits quite the same way some people do.
Hawks: Even if everyone showered the minute before they walked outside, the weather that day was like was being zippered into a wet balloon next to the sun. The scent of liquored sweat doesn't do anyone any favors.

4. Push-and-shoveness - Winner: Hawks


Bastille: This might be skewed for me because I just wasn't expecting to have to push so much here. I had clearly underestimated how easy it would be to cross open bridges and streets and how hard it would be to cross blocked off streets in plain sight of policemen. Sometimes you have to push your way through even as you are yelled at and sometimes you have to about-face into a crush of hundreds of people because there is no where else to go.
Hawks: Again this might be skewed because I was expecting the worst after Paris. With the exception of trying to climb the stairs onto Upper Wacker without knowing where the line began or ended, the crowd was fairly forgiving. Or I got better at pushing.


5. Escape Route - Winner: Hawks


Bastille: This was absolutely the worst part of Bastille Day for me. Several Metro stations were closed but not even the policemen knew which ones and you couldn't tell until you actually went into them. Some pathways ended in a barricade without any signs or any way to turn around and only a few bridges over the Seine were open to foot traffic. Not one person knew what was going on. It took me two hours to make the 20 minute trip back to my apartment and I left even before the mass of people arrived for the fireworks.
Hawks: Despite the fact that I panicked inside the crowd, people let me out easily and the barricades all faced the same direction. I couldn't cross north on the East side of State St. but I could on the West side. The fences and blockades all came down within an hour of the end of the rally. Also it might be a little easier to figure out where to go when you live there.


The clear overall winner here is the Blackhawks rally. Which might be in direct inverse proportion to how momentous an event it is. I would never take back going to Bastille Day in Paris but I certainly could have lived without going to the rally in Chicago. However, both of these could have been greatly improved had I the foresight to eat food like a normal person.

All of this is to say that sometimes a great gift can be something obvious, like giving a rally-goer a protein bar before she embarks on a stupid mission. When my brother came to house-sit last summer (while I was off starving myself among the throngs) I gave him a pre-loaded card to ride the El and a map of Chicago. Things that maybe seem obvious to those of us who live here, but save visitors a big hassle. I also stocked the kitchen with food, which I totally should have done for myself too. Obviously I am an idiot.

The Bridal Shower Gift

Sometimes (and by "sometimes" I mean all the freaking time) I feel like I am pretending to be an adult and I'm in way over my head. Like severely sucking at it. Partly this is exacerbated by moving in with M, which feels like playing house. Or being on vacation. And I keep thinking I will be going back to my own apartment soon and I had better live it up in the meantime. By eating junk food and keeping everything clean. (I don't get it either. My brain has a path all its own.)

Anyway, I have succeeded in being an adult in a few ways recently, including impressively making the bed each morning. I have also managed to:
(note that I have been known to do the exact opposite of all of these on a regular basis)

• Buy flowers for the dining room

• Turn off all the lights at night and sleep in a bed (not a couch)

• Keep the coffee table clear of bills, dirty glasses, spoons and drawing pens

• Put almost all of my dirty clothes in the laundry basket (not the bed)

• Not leave the Brita picher empty in the fridge (To be fair, we don't actually use the Brita at all since we bought a Pur filter for the sink. This was a slight point of contention, solved when the filter-free faucet spat out a large bug. No more Bug Water, no more Brita.)

• Also, my gym bag is not residing in the middle of the living room

Unfortunately this has taken all of my adult capabilities, as this is how I have failed at being an adult recently:

• The flowers I bought died and they are still prominently displayed on the dining room table

• I forgot to change my address for 70% of my bills

• I left my comb, brush, razor, conditioner, and a pair of socks at the gym all on separate occasions and have had to buy another version of each of them again

• I am clearly incapable of unloading the dishwasher or taking out the trash

• I have not once watered or even looked at the two plants we have (To be fair, I did tell M that if he wanted to put the plants eight feet high in the kitchen, that I would most likely not remember that they are there as it is a good three feet above my sightline. I was right. Also, I killed a cactus once and have a decidedly red-for-danger thumb.)

• I am highly uncomfortable in adult situations, like bridal showers and graduation ceremonies.

I suppose this last one is not something I just "discovered" while trying to be a real person. This is just consistent with my personality. I don't really like sitting still and making small talk. I am severely crowd-averse and I don't remember names or identifying details very well. Also, I very much think the bridal shower tradition of making people watch you open presents is tedious and weird. Even though I'm pretty sure I did this at every one of my birthday parties until I was 17.

Is this a tradition because the tradition is to show as much extra attention on the bride as humanly possible or is it a tradition because old people go to bridal showers and this is what they expect? (I am picturing a panel of white-haired ladies waving knitting needles in the air and waging a protest against "new-fangled bridal showers" - refusing to attend or send presents if they can't see their own gifts opened to much fanfare and applause.)

If you take into consideration the fact that I have a well-documented inability to lie or otherwise control my facial expressions/compulsive eye-rolling, you can see this as one in a natural line of elements of "The Wedding" that I do not want any part of at my own hypothetical future nuptials. This list includes that damn Corinthians reading that makes me want to strangle people. (Yes, clearly my impatience and rage dictate that I am not in fact the essence of love.)

Anyway, when you are buying presents for a couple who have essentially told you what to buy them via a gift registry, opening these presents is like writing a list of demands to Santa, and then having to pretend you are surprised when you get what you asked for on Christmas morning. Why do we make brides pretend they are not only surprised that you did what they asked, but they are extraordinarily thrilled with how you did? Do we expect that people are innate fuck-ups? (Don't answer that.)

In keeping with my rebellious inclinations toward "The Wedding," I tend to either not buy off of the registry or I try to insert something that will make the gift more than just something to check off of a list. I apologize to any brides that I have annoyed in this process. 

The most recent bridal shower that I went to involved a registry in which almost all of the things I could afford had been purchased already, leaving me with a choice between a $700 rug or a collection of random materials. I determined these were not good enough choices. Especially given that faking your way through excitement becomes even harder when people buy you a box of random crap. My friend A, of the delicious pretzel hostess gifts, is extraordinarily talented at baking cookies and cupcakes. When our boyfriends were roommates, cookies were a running obsession. So, for her bridal shower I bought a baking sheet off of the registry and then found a mini spatula made just for cookies, and cookie cutters in the shape of cupcakes. Neither of which were on the registry.

At this point I was worrying slightly about breaking the rules, so I pimped out the Crate and Barrel box:

To break this down for you - A and J are the initials of the betrothed. That striped panel with the cookie peeking out the top is a library pocket stuffed with shopping cards for cookie recipes. And the green sheets are cookie recipes attached to the handle with a metal ring.

For the shopping cards, I drew a picture of each type of cookie and then listed the ingredients needed for the recipe, directing A to Bon Appétit's website for the full recipe instructions:

The idea is that when you want to make one of the cookies, you pick up the card and bring it to the store instead of copying down the whole recipe. But also I hand-wrote them the night before the shower and did not have time, patience or enough index cards to write out the whole recipe.

Faking it at being an adult is helping me feel like I am sucking at it less.

The Totally Inappropriate Gift

I am no stranger to totally inappropriate behavior. I talk to myself. In public. In French. I also have allergies that compel me to wipe my nose with restaurant napkins. And sometimes I forget that sunglasses do not make me invisible and end up blatantly staring at people for too long. But I do not chase people down the street to ask them out in the following way:

Crazy Man in Range Rover: "Hey beautiful, take a copy of my book!"

Me: (Ignoring crazy man completely.)

Crazy: (Following me in Range Rover, parking car on the street and running after me, waving a crazy arm in the air.) "Hey, I just want to get your number! I just flew in from filming a movie in New York and I have a fashion show coming up I want to give you the dates for."

Me: (Ignoring crazy man completely.)

Crazy: "Here's my card. Can I get your number or give you mine? Wow, you sure walk fast."

Me: "Your number's on the card, right? Then I have yours."

Crazy: "Well, that not my real cell phone number, so take my new one."

Me: (Pretending to type Crazy's number in my phone while actually stabbing at random buttons. This entry is now "Zz8r47Wa" in my phone.)

At this point Crazy has returned to his Range Rover and I am still zig-zagging my way through downtown to teach at the museum. It is 8:40 am. Crazy continues to follow me in his car and is now waving something out the window.

Crazy: "I want you to take a copy of my book. I'm gonna be on Oprah in two weeks."

Me: (Thinking I either have to take this copy or call the police, I take the book.)

Crazy: "You'll see on the back that I have seven kids. But I'll be divorced in three years."

WTF.

Crazy: "I know God brought me to you for a reason."

I hope God doesn't tell him I put a fake number in my phone.

As pointed out by my best friend K, I do seem to attract a certain level of crazy. (She said "hilarity" but if you knew all the stories, you would know that "crazy" is more apt.)

I'm not sure what kind of woman thinks a man with seven kids, a pending divorce and a really terrible book is a catch, but I would guess that chasing even that woman down the street doesn't do you any favors. I did read part of the hardcover autobiography I now reluctantly own. And if "With five kids by the age of 26, [Crazy] didn't think it could get any worse, but had two more kids in the next three years" doesn't just pull at your heartstrings and make you fall in love with Crazy, I don't know what will. He goes on to talk about how when women "get scared, they get possessive of their man" and that at this point "the man doesn't respect the woman at all and the woman makes it worse by clinging to him."

If Crazy goes on Oprah I hope she eats him.

Anyway, as I said, I am no stranger to totally inappropriate behavior. And sometimes this behavior actually makes totally appropriate gifts. As long as it doesn't involve chasing.

Last summer I went to France for a couple of weeks. I did an exchange program in high school in which I lived with a family for a month in a small town two hours southwest of Paris. The girl I was paired with has become one of my closest friends and when I received her wedding invitation in the mail, I decided that even if I put the whole trip on my credit card, I would be at her July 2009 wedding in the town where I had lived for a short time ten years ago. So, last summer I went to her wedding. And maxed out my credit card.

Anyway, what do you get someone as a wedding present when you don't know the wedding customs of their country? If you are me, apparently you draw a sketch-portrait on the plane, tear it out of your sketchbook at the airport and then visit a French Pier One at the train station to buy a frame and frantically scratch off the price sticker while riding the TGV.

Totally inappropriate. Yet, this made a lovely gift. Why? My friend is a dancer and the picture I drew was of them dancing. Also, the frame covered the torn-off edge of the paper.

The moral of the story is, if your inappropriate behavior is behind-the-scenes, or a clumsy means to a tidy end, then the behavior is a non-issue. Or that chasing people down the street is never a good plan for woo-age. Or inappropriate pick-up lines are funnier when invoking the name of Oprah. Whatever. I win.

The Oops Factor Gift

I am a horrible person. Well, not person, but horrible blogger. And friend. Horrible blogger for obvious reasons, such as going missing for weeks at a time. Horrible friend for the same reasons.

I have had multiple concurrent jobs for several years and there is no way I could do this without some decent multitasking skills. However, it seems I have a saturation point and have been functioning at said saturation point for several weeks. Here is what I have neglected in the past few weeks:

Doing my taxes

Birthday-calling one lovely friend in Seattle

Return-calling to one lovely friend in Ohio

Sending a birthday present to one lovely friend in Pennsylvania

Sending a card to one lovely friend in Maine

Replying to emails of several friends in Chicago

This is exactly five states worth of relationships that I have jeopardized. Plus my own good standing with the US government. Not that this is an excuse, but here is what I have been busy doing in the past few weeks:

Turning 29

Spending a week in Florida (minus the 33 hours spent in the car getting there and back)

Getting a new writing job for Examiner.com

Searching for a new apartment

Writing threatening letters to current apartment company to possibly screw up insure safe return of security deposit

So you can see that I have been extremely busy and important and therefore reached code red multi-task-saturation point. And for that I would like to apologize to all of my lovely, multi-stated friends. I hope you are more forgiving than the IRS.

Also, you should probably gear up for some more forgiveness, because this gift is not one given by my AND showcases another of my less-pleasant sides. Just know that aside from my low-saturation-threshold, I am a much better person now than I was in 1995. For my fourteenth birthday, my dad gave me a CD. I had gotten a CD player for Christmas that year, along with my first CD, Ace of Base's "Sign."

Go ahead, I will give you a minute to fully embrace the awesomeness that was Ace of Base.

Anyway, once I had a taste of the greatness of CDs as clearly illustrated by this seminal mid-90s band, I was hungry for more. Particularly Counting Crows and their debut "August and Everything After." (This you may not make fun of, however, as I still love Counting Crows with a reverence that smacks of angst I shouldn't have.)

As I made no secret of how much I wanted this CD, I assumed my dad had bought this exact CD for my birthday. In fact, he had bought Hootie and the Blowfish's "Cracked Rear View." Given the expectations I had set up for myself, I was incapable of hiding my disappointment or otherwise acting like a nice person not filled with brat-tastic hormones. I may have even cried. My dad, sure that this CD was going to be a hit, recovered seamlessly. He bought the Counting Crows CD I made such a stink over, plus an extra CD of my choosing. An Oops Factor gift. This is his term - a gift in addition to the make-up gift to completely erase all mistakes on the part of the giver. I think of this all the time. Not just when I hear Hootie and the Blowfish (and cringe) but when I misjudge the awesomeness of a gift or miss a birthday. I owe lots of people Oops Factors right now. (Way more so than my dad ever did for my Hootie blunder.) I just hope that when you all cash in you make a wiser choice than the Celine Dion CD I picked out in 1995. It didn't stand the test of time like I thought it would.

The Workout Gift

Sometimes I like to think I am training to climb Mt. Everest. Even though I have no desire to actually climb Mt. Everest, and only if by climbing it, I would be carrying a giant bag on one shoulder that contains necessities like Advil, ear muffs and hand sanitizer. (I mean, mountain goats are probably full of germs, right?) 

Clearly I do not need to be trekking all over town with a bag full of "things you rarely use," especially on a day like today when I might as well be climbing Mt. Everest since I've been knocked over twice by the gale force winds. You might think I am joking, but you would be wrong. Literally - off the sidewalk and into the street. I can't walk without bowing forward and plunging head-first into my intended direction. So maybe it's a good thing I have a bag stocked with snacks, an umbrella and gum. You never know when you might be swept into a gutter and need to survive for days. Just like on Everest. 

Of all of the things I stuff into my mountain climbing apprenticeship bags, I somehow did not bring a pair of gym socks today. To the gym. Which means I was forced to work out in giant giraffe socks. And in case the clarity of the pictures of giraffes on the sides of my mid-calf socks is not up to par, in total nerdtastic fashion, my socks say "GIRAFFE" in big block letters along the tops. 

I can't say that I am totally embarrassed by this. These are my seventh pair of giraffe socks and I wear all seven pairs with impressive regularity. As an extension of the inside joke about giraffes that I have with my dad, every Christmas I find a new pair of socks in my stocking adorned with the gangly African animals. My dad gets everyone a pair of goofy or cool or crazy socks every year in their stocking. The first time my mom received a pair of socks covered in horses, she cried. She has gotten horse socks ever since. 

My brother usually gets sports-related socks, and I have gotten two pairs of Colts socks. But usually it's giraffes for me. And I love them. They are like little foot surprises, brown speckled heads peeking out atop my shoes and into the world. My giraffes keep me grounded as they clomp along under my work clothes. They make me a little taller, a little more interesting, a little less serious. A little like I am porting tiny foot Muppets.

And as such, they are not my first choice for workout wear. I like to feel like I am way awesome at working out, like I was just cast in an action movie and my workout is part of the movie’s video montage. Super warm socks that shout “GIRAFFE” from my ankles would not make a cameo in this sequence. What DOES fit in this sequence is an iPod. (Which I also forgot to bring today.)

For Christmas last year, my brother and I combined forces to buy my mom an iPod nano. We found one in her favorite color (purple) and told her it would make her long walks and exercises way more fun. My brother made her a mix CD and a certificate that promised to help her figure out how to use the iPod. (My brother is even broke-r than I am, so we split the cost unevenly, and then G took on these extras to make up the difference. Plus he’s really good at picking out music and I listen to anything that’s on the radio. G is embarrassed to even look at my iPod.)

My mom called a few weeks after Christmas last year to say that her new purple friend had revolutionized her workouts. She had successfully uploaded all of the Broadway musicals in her collection and was walking to work faster than usual. Her iPod was starting to become the soundtrack to her own action movie. It was becoming her own little foot Muppet. Only designed for workouts. Like an aerobic giraffe.