Jan. 29, 2005

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O-Negative [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 6:19 pm
I gave blood a few weeks ago, and today I got the card in the mail saying my blood is good, and I’m O-Negative. I’d never given blood before, I can’t say why exactly, except because I’m lazy/bad, but I was pleased to see that O-Negative is a fairly uncommon type, AND it can be used for ANYBODY. Only 6.6% of people have O Negative, but boy, our blood is good to share.

By the way, I don’t feel like writing anything at all, not today, not for about the next million years approximately. But Christine told me that if I quit writing, people will quit reading, so I’d better KEEP UP. I’m fairly certain that my audience consists primarily of my friend Jerri, sometimes Christine when she remembers, and maybe even my friend Gary. But if there are actually other people out there reading, well, here I am, I haven’t abandoned my writing.

Actually, I’ve been writing a lot lately, but I’m not going to share it with you.

And let me just say this – My heart continues to bleed (the rare yet friendly O-Negative blood). However, I’m attempting with all my might to be like other people, and just act like things are fine. I have realized (but only lately) that most people don’t go around venting and telling everybody their woes all the time. Adult people are RESTRAINED. I’m working so hard on that. I haven’t confided in EVERYBODY I come in contact about my latest heartbreak, which is a huge, huge accomplishment for me. I’m doing my absolute best to maintain a cool exterior. Somebody asks how I am, and I say “fine,” I don’t break down and start sobbing, which is my inclination. See, restraint. But I just want you to know right now, that things are THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF FINE, and I don’t see them getting any better in the foreseeable future.

But OK, here’s me, hiding all the turmoil, plastering on the smiley face. Grace Smith, perfectly fine person.

I was talking to my friend Jerri on the phone the other night, doing a great deal of whining and being whiny. Jerri then called Christine, and Christine called me. Christine said, “Jerri said ‘Grace sure is funny.’” Christine and I don’t know what part of the whining and moaning Jerri found amusing, but I guess I’m doing a good job of trying to not sound like my life suddenly has no meaning. Now Christine, she’s probably pretty sick of listening to me being morose, but luckily, POOF, all better.

Not really, but BOY I’m a good actress (see the photo below if you don’t believe me).

So, I’ve been back here in Springfield for two and a half years now. Quite a while, it seems to me. I’ve been fired twice and have had my heart broken twice, in this time. Not such a great record. I’d never been fired before, and now, two times.

Actually, I was fired once before, but they called it “laid off” then. I worked for a video division of a Savings and Loan, don’t ask me WHY they had a video division, but I had a great time making all kinds of videos, including a motivational video for bank managers. I got to write it, and star in it, and I tap danced in it, and it was very, very strange but lots of fun to do. But the S&L got bought out, because the CEO was a little bit irresponsible with the money, so they fired every person in the whole corporate office. It was slightly sad to be laid off, but I got over it pretty quickly. I got to be on unemployment for a while, which was nice. But about a week after I was laid off, my boyfriend at the time, Scott, broke up with me, which wasn’t so great, and I seriously thought about moving to Florida, went down there and stayed with friends for about a month.

I came back, Scott and I got back together (one of the many broken up times), and well, I’ve gotten off track here.

After moving back to Springfield this time, about a year and a half ago, I was fired from one job because too many people were working at the place I was, and I’d been the last one hired. So that wasn’t so bad. It was a shock initially, of course, but I did move on to better things.

The other time was, of course, the Illinois Times debacle. Just last weekend, I was at a play and the woman sitting behind me leaned up and started grilling me about why I was no longer writing for them. I told her I’d been fired and she was horrified and spent the rest of the intermission telling the friends she was with, and they were all outraged and said they were going to write the editor. Yeah, that’ll do some good. The week before that, I was at a party, and a woman rushed up to me and told me that her husband was addicted to my column, and I was a little surprised at the number of people there who wanted to know WHAT HAPPENED?? As people continue to tell me how much they adored my column, as they continue to be outraged that I’m no longer writing it, it’s nice to hear, but it’s starting to bug me. Sometimes they say stuff like “You’ll go on to better things,” which is a nice sentiment although I don’t think a new paper is going to start up anytime soon that will want me to write for them.

I am finally realizing, after writing the way I do all my life, that not everybody can be funny, and it’s pretty impossible for lots of people, and I have a natural talent there.

So I need to figure out how to use it.

Besides writing this blog for Christine, Jerri, and Gary, that is.

As far as the heartbreak goes, well, I’ve had my heart broken quite a few times. The first time when I was just 19, and was sure the experience would be the end of me. That man and I had talked about our future, happily-ever-after, all that crap. And I believed it, all of it. After the rude awakening there, though, I realized that heartbreak seems to be my destiny. Each time, horrible. And now, once again…I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just say, worst ever. Doesn’t make sense, can’t understand it, doesn’t seem real, I don’t want to think about it.

But if you see me on the street, I’ll deny it all. “Fine,” I’ll say, with my quick smile. “I’m just fine.”

ok then,

Grace



Jan. 25, 2005

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one more thing [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:45 pm
i had this photo taken today, in updating my massage therapist website. i look happy don’t i? this shows you what a BRILLIANT actress i am.



NOT HAPPY IN ANY WAY

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not a good day [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:40 pm
last night at play practice, a friend said to me, “tomorrow will be better, and then the next day after that will be even better...”

but today is tomorrow, it’s actually about to be yesterday, and i don’t see better on the horizon anytime soon. if she wasn’t my good friend and trying desperately to cheer me up, i’d have slapped her. if i ever slapped anybody, which i haven’t. too bad i’m not a getting angry kind of person, it seems anger would be easier to live with.

actually, one time i did hit a boyfriend. we were in washington d.c., driving near the capitol, he was driving, we’d spent the afternoon looking for a place to live. he’d moved out there before me and looked around, and i was out to visit before actually moving, and he told me he didn’t think he wanted me to move in with him, after all (we’d been living together in springfield for a while before this). i was so outraged and surprised that i hit him, which of course was not such a good idea, especially in traffic.

instead of hitting him, i should have stayed in springfield.
?
hard to say, and i really try to not spend undue time regretting every single thing i’ve ever done in my life. we ended up living together again, and then breaking up again, and getting back together and breaking up...shouldn’t this have been a very, very good learning experience for me? at any one of those times when he broke up with me, why didn’t i say, enough is enough? Uncle? I get the message - YOU DON’T LOVE ME.

but no, i can’t regret things. but WHY don’t i learn? if a man breaks up with you, he’s saying he doesn’t want to be with you. if he breaks up with you more than once, he doesn’t want to be with you AND you’re a fool because you somehow thought that in getting back together you could make things magically work out.

things don’t work out. this is the lesson here, and i’m a very very poor student.

boy, i’m tired.

grace


Jan. 23, 2005

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*sigh* [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 8:44 pm
i read something recently about somebody saying that he was trying to do what he felt his purpose in life was. i realy think that a main point of me is to try to give people something to smile about. i like to cheer them up, i like to make them laugh, and i think i have that power, and it makes me happy to do it.

right now i don’t find any humor in anything.

tonight i told somebody that i believe the reason i started trying to amuse was to cheer myself up. because my nature has been too much about being sad.

ok then,

gs


Jan. 21, 2005

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new phone [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 11:09 am
i’m moving my massage business to a new location at the end of next week, and i have to buy some stuff in order to do so, and i can’t be squandering money left and right, higgegdly piggedly, hither and yon.

so, the day before yesterday i decided to buy a new cell phone. mine is old, very old, not too huge but not tiny enough, and i’ve dropped it approximately a billion times, usually on really hard pavement, so it’s all dinged up. and i’ve spent about six thousand dollars on new hands-free things. i’m a firm believer in hand-free things, so i can drive and talk on the phone all the livelong day. but i keep losing them, or i step on them and break them, or they spontaneously fall apart, or sometimes all of the above. the latest one i have suddenly started making horrible, high-pitched noises in the ears of people who i was talking to.

i decided that since my phone was so old and battered, i might as well buy an all-new one. it was cute, shiny, a samsung flip phone. it didn’t cost so much with the huge rebate, and it seemed like a happy new thing.

money can’t buy happiness? maybe not; i’ve never had enough money to test that theory, but i think that i might be able to prove them wrong, because there are all kinds of good things i could think of that i’d like to have that cost plenty of money. but i can say that new things don’t really buy happiness, on the other hand. maybe if it had lived up to its shiny potential, i’d have been happy. but i dialed the phone and it would say “all lines or busy,” or it wouldn’t connect at all. the hands-free thing caused lots of static on the other end, so i bought a different one, but i had the same problem. the new phone didn’t seem to have as many features that i liked as the old one. it had a bunch of fancy junk, like more games, and the possibility of internet access and stuff like that, which i don’t care about. and i didn’t like the way the volume had to be adjusted. plus the ring tone i liked automatically vibrated as well as ringing, and i don’t want any vibrating unless i want it.

so this morning i took it back, including the nice little case that would have kept it from getting bashed in constantly. i have my old phone again, with all the features programmed just like i want, and i’m very happy with it. this afternoon i’m going to go invest in a new hands-free thing, and then my old phone will be perfect. i’m saving money, i learned a valuable lesson, all is good.

well, ok, all isn’t actually good, not at all, but at least things with my phone are fine. i’m sure i could draw some kind of parallel here, about being content with what you’ve got, and the fact that sometimes it takes something different to make you realize how you were much better off with the familiar thing you loved, no matter how imperfect it may be, and all of that.

but i won’t.

ok ok ok,

grace

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brad and jen [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 10:57 am
a couple of weeks ago, in case you never pay attention to anything really significant going on in the world, brad pitt and jennifer aniston broke up. i wondered how such seemlingly perfect people could not want to be together anymore.

this morning, as i was giving chair massages at the hospital, katie couric was talking to some celebrity-interviewer woman, or maybe she was a celebrity pyschologist, i don’t know, about the breakup. this was poor timing, as the last thing i wanted to hear about was brad and jen’s failed marriage.

they concluded that people want to hear about bad things like this happening for twofold reasons - first, it makes them feel better about themselves. if brad and jen, two of the most perfect-looking people in the world in my opinion, who have more money than they could ever spend, have fabulous homes, fun careers and a seemingly ideal life can’t make things work out, well then, my life must not be so bad, right? so money, beauty, fame, all of that really doesn’t buy happiness?

also, the woman said that everybody is kind of sadistic. think of people watching gladiators, or bull fights. or any of those dreadful reality tv shows. people like to see pain.

like i said, none of this was good for me this morning. last night mom read my latest postings and announced that i was just blue because it’s cold and grey crappy winter, and that everybody feels that way. she was wrong, but at least she did come up with an explanation.

so, now what, now that things have sunk once again? Sleep, i’ve written about the joy of sleeping before, and i hope to make that an important part of every day. also, i started reading a book a few days ago, and i know that in the past, i’ve loved reading books. reading, another excellent way of escape without having to buy an expensive plane ticket. plus, when all you want to do is sleep, usually the one thing you can’t do is sleep, which is a conundrum. but if you just want to read, all you have to do is get a book and start in. and finally, movies - i haven’t been to a movie in i don’t know how long. i’ve decided i should go to all the movies now. except not really; i’d never see a horror film, i usually don’t like action films, and actually, i’m in no mood for any dramas, either. so i’ll go to all the comedies i can find, although unfortunately there aren’t a lot to choose from here in spfld. Now, if i went to la, there would be PLENTY to choose from...

but fleeing won’t solve anything, because there’s always having to come back. plus all the expense.

so, my plan - sleep, reading, movies. plus i did actually do what i said i was going to do last time; i wrote down a bunch of stuff i’d like to do with my life, and who knows, maybe i’ll actually try to follow through on some of it. you never can tell.

i was really looking forward to the weekend, but now it looms ahead of me, like some big black ugly frozen monster.

ok then,
grace


Jan. 19, 2005

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more joy [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 12:41 pm
ok, to continue with the end of yesterday’s note about finding joy - yesterday morning i was on the phone with my friend christine; we were both in our cars, going to work, me here in spfld, she in denver. she pulled into the mcdonald’s drive-thru, which she does every morning, and she was ordering, and she wanted the “#1 with no ham” and the guy told her she could get the #2 with no ham and it would be a dollar cheaper, and then he told her she could get MORE hash browns if she wanted. she was so DELIGHTED with this news, and felt that the fellow was a genius. it made her day!

now, as mcdonald’s continues to supersize most of america (and eventually the world) into ever more fat fatness, at least my very lovely and genetically thin friend christine has benefitted from mcd’s largess.

so, my friend randy will watch tv, christine will find more new and exciting things to order for breakfast from mcdonald’s, and all will be right with the world. actually, christine likes watching tv, too, and is perfectly content to lie on the couch watching, and being alone. there’s certainly something to be said for that; both of us have been in enough relationships in our lives to realize that the possibilities for things going wrong are pretty inevitable, and the frustration we’ve felt involved with one man or another can sometimes be too much. she told me that she was lying on her couch, enjoying TV, and she thought about having somebody else there, somebody to cook dinner with and have around the house. she thought it might be nice, but decided, ultimately, that it would annoy her.

i told her i thought that when she meets a new and wonderful man, she’ll feel differently, she’ll like having him around. she agreed, but pointed out that each time that has happened for either of us, it has always ended, and usually ended badly, and then there’s that horrible, horribly long period of feeling shitty and depressed, sometimes it doesn’t go away and you can’t get the man out of your mind, not ever...

this play i’m in, “you can’t take it with you,” continues to be a lot of fun. last night we rehearsed act 1 scene 1, where i do the most leaping around, performing bad ballet all over the stage. it was a little tiring, but also energizing and quite enjoyable. in the play, my sister, alice, meets a lovely man and they fall in love and he proposes to her. they have a couple of plot-necessarry obstacles, but mostly it’s all in my alice’s head, and everything gets resolved at the end, and of course the ending is a happy one.

last night as i was driving home (in a pretty good mood), i thought about that, wishing that somehow life could be that simple. i know it can’t, it isn’t, life is complex and ever-changing, and really, if there’d been a sequel to the play, maybe the marriage wouldn’t have worked out, maybe they’d have gotten tired of each other, or bored, or maybe they found that they really were just too different, or they found out things about each other that they just couldn’t tolerate.

but that’s life, right? good with the bad and all of that. this morning while doing the stair master at the fit club, i read a fitness magazine, and it was so chock-full of advice on everything, as they tend to be. two articles i thought about, though - one was that as the new year is starting, it would be a good time to think about what you value in life, and what you want out of it, what’s important to you. since i have some free time this afternoon, and i’d otherwise spend it probably working myself up about issues i have going on right now, i decided that instead, i’ll write out a list like that. writing things down, it does make things more clear.

taking a trip makes things more clear, as well, and believe me, every day i think about how i could escape to someplace warm for a few days. maybe i’ll manage it somehow...

the other thing in the magazine that interested me was an article about meditation. when i used to take yoga, we did a little bit of meditation, and then i tried to do it on my own for a while, but i quickly lost interest. but this article said that meditation can really help you think about things in a more positive way, it said it can make you more focused, calmer, more clear-headed. i certainly need all of that. it also said that meditating buddhist monks were able to read people much better than the average person. i guess a person has about six or so different fleeting expressions going on in their face every...minute? and most of us, even trained professional therapists, can’t read all of that, because they happen so fast. but the article claimed that the meditating monks could read almost all of the expressions. it said this would be good for helping your relationships, because you could get a better sense of what the other person is thinking.

i feel that i probably won’t be able to reach that level, but on the other hand, i could use a big dollop of that positive attitude stuff, so i’m going to attempt the meditating, too.

whew, suddenly i’m very busy.

oh, and one more thing in the magazine, it said that taking a foreign language class is an excellent way to keep your mind sharp. so i’m thinking about that, too, but not so much. sometimes i do try to think of the french i learned, and perhaps i need to go to paris to see if i could get around.

travel, i can tell you that, that’s one thing that’s important to me, seeing new places. i haven’t travelled much lately, and it’s time to figure out how to make it happen more. i’ve wanted to go to a place i’ve known about in the south of france for about eight years now, and maybe if i start to think about actual, concrete plans, i can make it happen. maybe next september, when the weather will be good and it won’t be so crowded.

ok, while i’m at it, one more thing i want to accomplish is to do another “grace talk,” my one woman-show. since i’m not writing for the paper, i don’t know how i’m going to advertise, but i think i should figure that out. my friend randy bought me a gorgeous green skirt&sweater for xmas, plus some fabulous pointy green shoes, so i have the outfit for the show. all i need is some topics, and then i need to do some writing, some rehearsing, advertising, and then POOF! easy as that, it’s done.

ok. gonna get right on things now. maybe the dam has broken, huh, the inactivity/lethargy/ surliness/anger is abating? let’s hope so.

ok then,

grace


Jan. 18, 2005

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early tuesday morning [ General ] -  grace - grace@graceuncensored.com @ 8:31 am

here’s Shortie on xmas day -



here’s mom and me, looking very glamorous on xmas morning -


Ok, the new year hasn’t gotten off to a great start. When I wrote that last entry, on xmas morning, I was planning on writing more later in the day, and then a bunch more the next day.

The day after xmas, though, I was horribly sick. Weirdly sick, but only for a day. I got out of bed, but felt so sick and drained that I had to get back in bed. It went like that all day, sleeping and feeling bad. I’ve had the flu, sure, but never to the point where I couldn’t lie around and watch game shows on TV. A weird day. After that I felt better, but kind of weak.

So what’s been my excuse for the past three weeks? Hmm, I just don’t know. Apathy combined with bitter cold temperatures. But that’s not entirely accurate either. The bitter, bitter cold only started last Thursday. As a matter of fact, last Wednesday was fantastic – the temperature reached about 66 degrees, and it was heaven. I sat out in the yard in a t-shirt eating ice cream, because I could. I went running in shorts and a t-shirt. I felt like life was suddenly an old-time Hollywood musical, and felt like breaking into tap dances all day long.

I knew this was one atypical day, though, and that the cold was coming. And it did, and it was supposed to be MINUS one last night. Today it’s going to “warm up” into the 20s, and it makes me a little crazy, thinking that it’s come to that – thinking that the 20’s are somehow warm. It may be 37 tomorrow, and that seems crazy warm.

Perspective, it’s all about perspective. Today my parents are getting back from a Caribbean cruise, and I talked to Mom on the phone yesterday. They’d docked in New Orleans, and she talked about how it was “chilly” there. It’s all relative, isn’t it?

So anyway, apathy. Yesterday I decided that maybe I have writer’s block. I’ve never felt any writer’s block in my life, but I decided that maybe this feeling of not wanting to write one more word about anything to anybody ever again might be writer’s block. I’ve felt too surly to reply to e-mails, and if you’ve ever corresponded with me, you’ll know that’s quite a radical statement. I’ve generally been fanatical about writing long responses to missives immediately after receiving them. But lately, nothing. Yesterday I finally managed to write a few replies to things that I got a few weeks ago, and I felt I’d really accomplished something.

The good thing is that I haven’t had to worry about getting attacked by any kind of evil computer hacker spammer hijacker bad people. There’s a very small risk of getting attacked when the only thing you use the computer for is playing solitaire. I have been managing to open the laptop to play some solitaire, which I consider to be a bad sign of my mental state. I’d sit there playing over and over again, and after days had passed I’d finally pry myself away. But I felt like playing solitaire on the computer was a step up, actually – before that, I was playing it with actual, real playing cards. But on the other hand, maybe the playing cards were better, because at least then I wasn’t dully staring at the computer screen, and I was exerting the effort of actually counting out the cards and physically turning them over and shuffling.

Yesterday morning I forced myself to go work out at the fit club. I got on a stair master, it started out, but after about a minute it suddenly stopped. I started it again, and the same thing happened, so I gave up. I figured somebody was going to kill themselves on it, and it would probably not be so great if it was me. I decided to run on a treadmill, instead. Because it was a holiday, most of the treadmills were full of people (sometimes two and three on one machine). I got on one and started running. I plugged my headphones into the headphone jack in order to listen randomly to the eight different tv channels, but there was a loud SCREECH in my ear. I jiggled the cord, kept trying to get it to settle in a position that didn’t produce the screech, but to no avail. Annoyance upon annoyance. I glumly watched the screens, reading the closed-captioning on the bottoms. Sometimes I’d turn the sound on low, just to get an idea of what was going on, but the screeching was starting to make me deaf.

But at least I actually worked out, right? I got ready to go work out this morning, too, but then I thought that maybe I’d write, instead. So here I am, at 7:04 a.m., writing away. The problem with NOT writing is that I love writing. Last night a guy asked me, which do you like better, writing or acting? Acting I said, but then I said, no, writing. I like them both. What I wanted to say is that I really liked writing and then performing what I wrote, but I felt that would sound like I was bragging. I was at dinner with some people, and I had a steak to celebrate my earlier running accomplishment. It was delicious.

I went to a party on Saturday night, forced myself to go out in the bitter cold plus it was snowing and I had to drive all by myself down a very dark deserted country road. Gee, I do manage to force myself to do things sometimes, don’t I? But not enough.

Anyway, I’m very glad I went to the party, because my mood had been VERY VERY BAD before going, and it helped to go mingle with people. It was a Mardi Gras theme, and I’d planned on wearing my very fancy new green skirt that my friend Randy gave me for Xmas, but I decided I couldn’t bear the thought of wearing anything that didn’t completely cover me. The food was delicious, there was a band that was great, and I met some interesting people.

The one thing there that kept happening that made me feel both good and bad was people talked about the column I used to write. And I kept telling them I’d been fired because the editor made the retarded claim that nobody wanted to read me anymore. And they’d then tell me they LOVED the column, and one woman told me that her husband had been addicted to it, stuff like that, all night long. It felt flattering, but mostly it made me mad all over again. I need to get over that, right now. Move on.

MB gave me a digital camcorder for Xmas, so I can continue making videos and putting them on the website. So why don’t I do that? I can see I’m going to have to do a bunch more forcing here. I can be pretty darn resistant to the forcing, though.

The one thing that’s made me ever so slightly less mopey and surly lately has been the play I’m in, “You Can’t Take it With You.” I like being in a play. I like rehearsing, I like doing the work, I enjoy working with talented people. There are some very talented people in the cast, which is really nice. I’d like to perform more. SO WHY DON’T YOU START MAKING THE VIDEOS, THEN, GRACE? MB also got me editing software, so I can edit them myself, and I love doing that, too.

One problem with feeling surly is that I’m too crabby to want to do things that I know I’d enjoy. So illogical. Why can’t I be more logical?

Ok, close on some kind of positive note, surely there must be something, something good, something positive and life-affirming.

Well, TV. I don’t watch TV anymore, but my friend Randy watches plenty of it. He was telling me the nights he couldn’t do things because of the various stuff he watches, and I told him he watches too much tv. “But I like the shows, watching make me happy!” he said. So that made me think, go ahead and watch as much as you want. If you’re watching a lot of TV because you’re entertained and you like it, go ahead. I guess this would be along the “follow your bliss” line. If you want to do it, and it doesn’t harm anybody, why not? Watch TV! Run in sub-zero weather! (I met a woman who did that and I don’t understand how it could be anything but utterly torturous, but she seemed extremely happy about it.) Go to lots and lots of movies! (why don’t I go to a movie, for goodness sake? I like movies! OK, gonna do that this weekend.) Eat Indian food! (Why don’t I go to the Indian restaurant more often, since it’s so darn delicious? I’m going to do that, too!) Go sledding! (My friend Randy keeps insisting that we should go sledding, but I try to encourage him to sled with somebody else. I’m pretty opposed to going fast downhill in the cold. Look what happened to Sonny Bono.) Move to a warm climate! (I’ve been thinking about that a LOT these past few days. but I haven’t actually packed up the car. Yet.)

Ok then, enough already, maybe next time I’ll attempt to think up some sort of plan for the new year – not resolutions, just a strategy for living the best way possible.

Whew. Ringing in the new year with surliness and apathy. But I try to look at it this way – it has nowhere to go but up (and next time I’ll have to tell you about how I spent my new year’s eve).

Ok ok ok,

grace

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