Sometimes I love Ben so much I could just squeeze him and pop him! Like when he remarked while writing wedding thank-you notes that he felt like Luca Brasi.

Other times, I'd just like to lance him with a sharp tweezer, but this post is about love.

nothing left to lose

I think it's time to admit that something is missing from my life; I just teared up a tiny bit at the opening scenes of The Biggest Loser season premiere.

Stephanie, do you think maybe you could set me up with your friend, the first Biggest Loser? I think a dose of his can-do spirit would do me good.

old post written last weekend

I want to be a better person.

Yes, that’s right, I have reached a turning point that is rare in modern life. In this world where everyone is perfectly, deeply content with themselves just as they are, I realize that I am going into uncharted territory here.

Step one on my list: Stop using sarcasm as a communicative style.

Obviously no one doesn’t want to improve him- or herself. In this Sunday’s paper—this is the West Hawaii Today we’re talking about—I counted five ads for dubious ‘dermatologically-affiliated’ offices offering Botox, Restalyne (Restylane?), microdermabrasion, glycolic peels, and everything else short of complete facial transplants. I admit I was paying extra attention because on Saturday, I had my eyebrows “shaped” (i.e., ripped from the follicles with hard blue wax), wax which was apparently a little too hot, because I now have an angry red mark between my brows, and another splotch in the arch of my right eyebrow.

Point is, everyone is out to look better, and I am not immune to such perversions. But I want to be a better person. One who is opposed to such things as waxing for reasons political, ecological, and of personal integrity. One who, after being burned by hot wax, refuses to go out and purchase expensive cosmetics in a vain attempt to cover the scars, but instead wears them proudly to remind herself that vanity is ugly. One who doesn’t buy clothes from the new fall J.Crew catalog, no matter how flattering the “new classic fit” cords promise to be, because of who might have woven them, how much gas it will take to ship them, and how much good could be done with the $79.50 it would take to buy a pair of them. One who wears, instead, jeans bordering on Mom-waisted, enduring the ridicule of both her high school students and her high school-mentality-having peers whom she feels sneering at her when she goes out to dinner. Oh, also, one who doesn’t go out to dinner.

I want to be a martyr.

No, just kidding. Sarcasm again! I just want to achieve the following, and preferably before the end of the month:

1. Eat a balanced diet full of leafy greens, darkly-colored fruits (instead of the apples that all the magazines say are nutritional duds) and thick porridges of whole grains. Return comfort foods like cinnamon grahams, Kraft singles and frozen burritos to their once-a-lifetime, guilt-inducing status. Only eat macaroni and cheese if it’s made of cashew-cheese and spelt-seaweed pasta.
2. Take a moment to breathe deeply and meditate when I feel the urge to growl, wail, or thrash at Ben for whatever reason it may be that day (I’ve found another dead bug in the kitchen, he left a wet towel crumpled in the spare bedroom, he thought it would be funny to put a can of corned beef under my pillow).
3. Stop fantasizing about horrible fates that will befall my students a few years from now, causing them to think, "I sure wish I'd listened to Ms. Mussy instead of ignoring her lessons as my (now-multiple-child-bearing, still unable to speak proper English) friends and I tried to best each others' stories of copious pot smoking!"
4. Cut out this bitterness thing.
   

Jeez! (I hate) earnest singing

One thing that really makes me cringe—I guess you could say it’s the one thing I absolutely can’t stand, excluding bugs and filth and bird beaks and cats and creeping vines that seem to have minds full of pure evil—is hearing a group of girls sing in earnest along to the radio. The scene in Harold and Kumar where they sing along to “Hold On” is hilarious, because it’s a self-conscious, ironic scene playing for laughs, as opposed to a trio of college students belting out a self-empowering anthem they feel was written for them, like…..well, . As is the commercial for some car where a bunch of hip young guys drive through the desert and one guy goes a little too far with his enthusiasm for “(Man!)” I Feel Like a Woman.”

It was just that song that recently made me turn the corner from thinking, “Yeah, it would be fun to raise babies to be teenagers” and run smack-dab into the truth, which is that they alternately endear themselves to me (when they remind me of the humiliating moments of my past) and make me want to run far, far away from the knowledge that I was once like them.

This whole high school business can be surreal. Last weekend, I spent 24 hours chaperoning a “camp” (more of a retreat full of Smores, silly games, and giggling in sleeping bags) for a club of the high-achievers of the school. It was like seeing a whole new species to hear them talk about upcoming tests, projects, and even current issues, such as when one girl explained that she decided to be a vegetarian after researching the issue and learning about the ecological costs of meat.

So back to belting out tunes in the car. I’m all for it. But when a group of teenaged girls sings in unison, even if they’re impressively in tune and know every “huh,” “ow!” and “whoa-oa-oa,” it makes my chest hurt to hear these things: the cadences that could only have been perfected with hours of singing alone in one’s bedroom, the glissandos that only studied listenings—countless listenings—to a freaking Shania Twain or Pussycat Dolls album could enable one to emulate. Why does it bug me so much? Why? Did I not pour my heart into “Fast Cars” or “Right Here Waiting” every time they came on? Do I not still do the same with “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You”?

What is it with song titles containing parentheses that makes them particularly amenable to heartfelt renditions?

Anyway, it’s the singing in earnest that gets me. I mean, I, too, know many of the lyrics to “Dontcha,” but only because it I bought it on iTunes so I could replicate the abs routine from my Body Pump class. But that doesn’t mean I sing along to it, at least not in a way that reveals I am fully invested in its lyrics and Forever 21 aesthetic.

It’s a fine line between those teens and me, and I’d better do everything within my power to etch it ever deeper.