{Farce}

by Camille Posted on March 24, 2008

Something’s going on between China and Tibet–I don’t know what, exactly, but the Dalai Lama is involved, so I’m guessing it’s big salami [do they have salami in Asia?].

Watching all of this political turbulence on the news (combined with the tumultuous and heart-wrenching music of The Beatles on American Idol) has moved me to the realisation of something very grave indeed:

I don’t have a cause.

Oh, sure, I’m going green and all that, but really all I do is recycle, use fluorescent light bulbs and buy new appliances. I don’t picket billion-dollar enterprises or attend conferences or raise my own free-range chickens. I don’t take my own grocery bags to the market, buy organic anything, or store leftovers in glass containers.

In other words, I’m a farce.

I want to be passionate about something. Not anything annoying like timeshares or geneology (I hate getting accosted by timeshare people and genealogists), but…something. I want to wake up and hop out of bed ready to lobby–go to war, so to speak. I want to work hard and endlessly for a purpose, whether it be saving the seals and eels, liberalizing women of the third world, or protecting our rain forests. I need a cause.

Know what I crave? Upheaval. If I’d been born in the ’60s or ’70s, I’m sure I would have attended sit-ins, protests, marches and the like–I thrive on that kind of drama. I’d have likely been arrested…more than once. I wouldn’t have done drugs, of course, but I would have surely acted high–high on the action.

The only problem is…there are so many problems–so many good causes. Which one is noblest? Which one is likely to be resolved? Onto which bandwagon can I hop?

And, most importantly…what will enrage me enough to keep up the motivation?

Posted in failures, introspection, self-actualisation | 12 Comments

{Great Many Sufferings}

by Camille Posted on March 21, 2008

*Preface: Inasmuch as Poor Kyle and I are married (i.e. legally lawfully husband and wife), we have, on occasion, been known to take our morning showers together. Might I add that this is not so much a sexual ritual, as it is economical. In fact, it’s neither comfortable nor relaxing–as showers should be–because Poor Kyle likes his water warm, whereas I prefer mine nigh upon scalding. Also, this house’s water pressure is moderate to poor, so there’s really not even enough to go around. Only one of us can stand in the stream at any given time. Alas…such are the sacrifices we make to save the planet’s dwindling fresh water reserves…

*Face: Sunday morning. Our church services begin at 11:00 a.m., so this would have been around 10. In the shower (which is a bathtub/shower combination) fully clothed (just trying to keep this G-rated). I was the lucky one under the spray of water. With my back to the faucet, I crouched down to scrub in between my toes. While there, I went ahead and scrubbed Poor Kyle’s toes too (all in the name of efficiency, you see).

Upon returning to my full upright and standing position, I managed to catch my lower back on the bathtub’s protruding faucet. Hard. Letting out a yelp of pain (okay, I screamed, and I might have even cursed), I swung my face around to see what sort of damage I’d done (to my body, not the !&#@^* faucet). It was bad. I couldn’t see it very well, on account of not having a neck that rotates 180 degrees like that of an owl, but I saw red. I knew instantly that I’d drawn blood, and though the wound wasn’t in an easy-to-diagnose location, I was sure there was a massive chunk of flesh–my flesh–careening through the sewage system beneath our house.

Meanwhile, Poor Kyle was asking, “Are you okay?” over and over, with no solid response from me. I couldn’t answer questions, you see, because there was blood. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there. Coming out of my body. Washing down the drain. I started to feel very dizzy, and told him so. How did Poor Kyle respond? He laughed. He didn’t believe me, even though he knows how I handle blood [poorly].

No matter. I passed out anyway, to the sound of my husband’s giggles, and when I came to, I was nearly on the floor of the tub, in the arms of my now-anxious Poor Kyle. The water was still streaming out of the shower head, and I was very disoriented, you see, because imagine how strange it would be to wake from a seemingly days-long slumber, naked–er…fully clothed–in the running shower. It was disorienting indeed. When finally I realised I’d fainted, I wanted nothing more than to remove myself from the scene of the crime. But Poor Kyle seemed to think it would be more effective for me to rinse the conditioner from my hair and then exit the shower.

Having done so, and growing tired of Poor Kyle’s recount–amidst peals of laughter–of my pass-outage, I shakily announced I was getting out. Poor Kyle escorted me from the shower to the bedroom, where finally it hit me: I was bleeding from my back, I’d passed out like a wuss, Poor Kyle had to catch me, and he was laughing about it still, five minutes later.

I must have looked like an idiot. So to make it better, I started to cry. As if I really thought that would help.

It didn’t.

“Stop laughing at me!” I whined through my crumpled face and streaming tears. “Stop it!” This was bad. I knew I’d looked foolish when I passed out, because Poor Kyle had reenacted the scene, and really: I looked foolish. But to be crying on top of that…I was so embarrassed of myself, that all I could do was cry harder.

My pleas fell on deaf ears, because, of course, I must have really looked a sight.

After ensuring that I was secure and safe, Poor Kyle meandered back down the hallway to finish his shower. Meanwhile I, having endured more than any person should have to suffer on a Sunday morning, put on my underwear and crawled mournfully back into bed…

…where I stayed for three minutes until Poor Kyle finished his shower and apologised (still giggling) for laughing at me in my time of travail.

I only forgave him because he’d shaved his face for me [actually he’d shaved his face because it was the Sabbath, but he told me it was for me].

*Post face: Upon recounting the sordid tale to Poor Kyle’s parents, my father-in-law said curiously, “Camille, I know a lot of people who pass out at the sight of blood, but you’re the only person I’ve ever met who passes out at the thought of the sight of blood.”

Yes. That’s my claim to fame.

Posted in fiascos, Married Life, oh brother what next | 16 Comments

Freshman Year in Review: Timing and Perspective

by Camille Posted on March 19, 2008

I had good grades in high school. Good enough to land myself a full-ride [+ some] scholarship to Arizona State University. I had good grades there, too.

Until…

…I took CIS 180 (Computer Information Systems or some blather). It was basically an introduction to computers. I tried to work through it on a PC, even though it was written for both PCs and Macs, and I was raised Mac.

“PCs are taking over the world,” I reasoned archaically, “so I might as well jump on the bandwagon.” [I have since learned the errors of my ways. Tenfold. I will never again turn away from the glory that is Mac–at least as long as Steve Jobs is alive and out of federal penitentiary.]

But besides that, my life was nevertheless askew. I was going through a very…shall we say…defining time. In other words, I was totally out of it. My life, that is. I was dating a guy who I knew was all wrong for me. I should say, though, that despite my life in limbo, I still made some wonderful memories that semester. Like skydiving. And wing nights at Native New Yorker. And playing Make Me Laugh for hours on end.

But I digress.

I took a class learning on different computers than I was used to, during the stupidest time in my life. Needless to say, I failed CIS 180–failed so badly they didn’t even give me an “F.” I got an “E” for whatever “E” stood for [it slips my mind]. I lost my scholarship. Lost it, and lost it good. I was going to quit college altogether. I loathed ASU, I’d distanced myself from my parents, and I really needed to gain perspective.

Someday I’ll delve deeper into the perspective I eventually found. For now, I want to show you what I did do in my CIS 180 class, (when I decided to show up) since I clearly was determined not to learn anything:


Inspired by the girl doodling next to me, I took it upon myself to fill in the entire back cover of my steno notebook completely…with tiny circles. You have no idea how long and tedious a process this actually is; in time, my quest morphed into something different…something much more profound. Instead of filling in the entire back cover, I let my eyes glaze over, my mind wander off, and my hand toil away. Class after class I drew tiny circles, and before long I’d created the form of a being–a being that has been a cause of deep introspection in years since.

My steno person took on a life of its own. Soon, I jotted down a few choice words to spice up the doodle: “laugh,” “golf,” “becaSUE.” Whether because I heard those words during class lectures, I thought they would add meaning to my creation, or I just figured they would be fun to write, I cannot recall.

Some more details:




I gave my creature eyes, but no mouth–maybe it was my outward depiction of how I was taking a spectator’s stance on my own life (i.e. observing, but never speaking my mind). Or maybe I just liked the squiggle the “h” served for said purpose.


Why did I spell “because” incorrectly? Did I secretly wish I’d been named “Sue?” Was it merely an oversight? Is it actually an anagram for something else? Some secret code I’ve since forgotten? I might never know.

Whatever the reason for it and its nuances, I’ve come to view this doodle as a sort of abstract version of myself–my unreserved, “let-it-all-hang-out” self. I have long since tossed away the accompanying notes from CIS 180 [what sparse notes I took]. That class meant nothing to me. But I cannot bring myself to discard this doodle.

What should I do with it?

*p.s. I retook CIS 180 few semesters later, and scored a 99%, receiving the highest grade on the final exam out of the entire class. It was all a matter of timing, I suppose. Timing and perspective.

Posted in failures, introspection, looking back, thisandthat | 12 Comments

The Big Day–Update #4

by Camille Posted on March 18, 2008

Poor Kyle met me in October of 2005. Two years later we fancied ourselves marrying types.

A recap, in photos:
We got married on a Saturday in October, along with a million other couples in the Mesa, Arizona LDS temple. I chose the 12:40 slot, which meant I only had to wake up at 7 in the morning [as opposed to that time my older sister got married at 10 a.m. which meant she awoke at 3 a.m. She’s neurotic like that]. Poor Kyle was staying at my big sister’s house and we all (me, Poor Kyle, big sister, and mother) carpooled to the temple a few hours early for photos. We forgot the bouquet. My brother in law brought it. It was too hot for October.

There was a great bit of drama about which photographer to choose. So many people had warned me that skimping on their wedding photography had been their biggest regret. I have mixed emotions about ours. She took a lot of photos from down below, pointing her camera up at us, which gave us all double chins the whole day…but she got some really poignant shots, too. I’m happy to have all the photos we did get.

We got into the temple and they almost didn’t let me in on account of my recommend not being activated correctly. I was just about to call the whole thing off, thinking it was a terrible omen, and that my real purpose in life was to move to New York and get discovered in some fancy career that required me to own and wear shiny black stilettos, when the Temple President gave me the okay. [Still, though, there was such a long wait {probably only like 20 minutes, but it seemed like a lifetime} before we actually got married, I seriously did give it second, third, fourth and fifth thoughts. There were lots of short moments that I pretty much figured I’d never go through with it. Luckily I re-thought a sixth time, and by then the wedding had gotten under way, and here I am married.]
The actual ceremony was lovely, I’m sure. One of these days I need to get a recount of things that were said, because I certainly don’t remember a word. I was having a major major overload.
It is both disrespectful and not allowed to take pictures inside the temple, but I like this one the photographer captured of us the moment we exited. Look at how timid we were…I really had no idea what to do with myself. I just couldn’t get over the fact that I was married.

Here’s most of the people at the wedding. Some were in the temple, and some were waiting for us outside. The big drama of the day was getting my grandpa to take off his baseball cap for the photos. He wouldn’t. I didn’t mind, not a bit–like I said, it was too hot for October. Can you find him?

All my aunts and uncles were there–I don’t know why I only got photos with half of them. It was hectic, I suppose.

Most of my cousins were there, too (the older ones, anyway). It’s funny–I never really thought my cousins liked me very much, but most of them showed up for the big day, even though it was so hot [for October]. I was touched. I should tell them sometime. Maybe at Christmas.


Some of my very dearest friends were there (with the exception of a few who were away at school, or off in Brazil on missions). Again: touched.


I never considered having flower girls on account of I don’t like kids (and there weren’t any aisles for them to walk down tossing petals), but Kyle’s nieces were so excited to play the parts, I couldn’t be the one to crush their dreams. I don’t think these two girls know me very well, but they certainly are adorable. And they were passionate about flowers. More photos of them at the reception will follow.


This was the last picture taken of us at the Temple–afterwards, we were off to RigaTony’s for lunch. But it’s one of my favourites–it captures the real importance of the day: not baseball caps or soiled dress hems, but the fact we were able to get married in the temple. That means, should Poor Kyle have the strength to handle me for the rest of our lives, he’ll be stuck with me throughout eternity, too. What’s not to love about a promise like that?

Posted in family, Overall Good Things, photos, wedding | 11 Comments

{A Stench So Horrid}

by Camille Posted on March 17, 2008

When I was in the sixth grade (Grade 6 if you’re Canadian,) my teacher, Mrs. Lewis, had us do a science experiment. We were divided into teams, and each of us needed to bring something different to make slides of, so we could then look at them under the microscope. On the list of items to choose from, there were all kinds of things like apples, leaves, and stool samples. [Just kidding about the stool samples.] I chose to bring an onion, because it was on the list and I knew we had a 20 lb. bag of yellow onions at home.

I was so excited. (Remember: back in the ol’ elementary school days, I thought my calling in life was to be a scientist. Anything science was, for me, quite a thrill.) The night before experiment day, I sat at the counter and watched as my mom made my lunch–I’m pretty sure I got a Lunchable and a Capri Sun in my brown paper bag, which was, you know, the coolest. I was jittery and giddy to boot–I even placed my offering (the onion) in my backpack that evening, ready and waiting for all the scientific fun the next day.

I threw up (vomited) three or four times that night, and when the fortuitous morning arrived, my mom forced me to stay home from school. I was too sick to go. No amount of begging or pleading would change her mind, and I tried both. I was convinced she was ruining my life. [I really hope I am not given the responsibility to raise girls when–and if–I have children. There’s just so much drama involved.]

I spent a semi-miserable day home from school {I say “semi-,” because really–who can be fully miserable when skipping school?} and the next day was a weekend, so there were two more days off school before I got to go back. When I finally did return, all the talk of slides and science and everything I missed made me very sad indeed, but I got over it eventually.

A month or so later, I continued to wake up and go to school, donning my sloppy, unkempt black generic-brand backpack as any good middle class student should do. I noticed, though, that something about me sort of smelled, well, odd. Thinking little of the smell, I carried on through the day and the week, but soon, I became really worried: the smell was getting worse. I showered [almost] daily, and I could tell it wasn’t my self that stank. I thought that maybe my mom had gotten a different brand of laundry detergent, but some minor research disproved that theory. One day in class, I could bear the stench no longer. Sniffing all up and down my clothes, my desk and my chair, I noticed the stench becoming more pronounced as I moved closer to my backpack. Unzipping the offending knapsack, the stench grew overwhelming. I dug through my disheveled mess of homework, report cards, and long-forgotten unsigned permission slips, all the while holding my breath for fear of vomiting from the smell.

And then, I caught a glimpse of a thin orangish flake that looked suspiciously familiar. Suddenly I had a flashback–almost in slow motion–to that day, so many weeks ago, when I missed the science experiment.

“Nooooo,” my mind screamed in protest, silently pleading with the Powers That Be, “say it isn’t truuuuuuueeeeeee….”

How humiliating a discovery to make right there at my desk, during the middle of class time. There, at the bottom of my backpack, rotting away as it had been for the past many weeks, lay a giant black decayed…onion.

Sometimes even today, when I go without showering for a very long time, I catch a whiff of stench…a stench so horrid, it instantly transports me back to that time: the time when a stringy-haired little girl sat at her desk, trying…trying in vain…to pretend it wasn’t she who smelled like rotten onion.

Posted in fiascos, looking back, oh brother what next, thisandthat | 11 Comments

{Disastrous}

by Camille Posted on March 13, 2008

I can’t eat. [Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I can eat–I can always eat.] What I mean to say is, I can’t enjoy what I eat. I am unable to relax. Food has lost its flavour; salt has lost its savour.

I can’t sleep, either. [Okay, I can sleep. I can always sleep.] But my sleep is not peaceful and deep like usual. It is constantly being interrupted by nightmares and hideous hallucination-like episodes. I wake up in cold sweats. Not even the thick luxurious bedding of our Holiday Inn Suites in Great Falls, Montana can keep me sedated.

I’m in a bad way.


I’ve been married almost five months to the day, and I haven’t written a single thank-you note. Not one.


I haven’t even gotten them printed.

Posted in failures, fiascos, Married Life, mediocrity, wedding | 18 Comments

The Unarguable Truths of Road Trips in the Company of Poor Kyle and Camille

by Camille Posted on March 12, 2008

In the two and a half years of our relationship, Poor Kyle and I have taken more road trips together than I can feasibly count. And since the new duty of “trailer fetcher” at the shop has fallen upon him, the number of our road trips together is increasing exponentially. Even as I type this on the stark white MacBook ™ my parents gave me for Christmas last year, we are trekking our way through the plains and grains of northern Nebraska.

We’ve nearly talked about everything there is to talk about (lasting an eternity together beyond this point will take a miracle [or a lot more birth control]), and consequently I’ve had a lot of quiet, contemplative time on my hands. Of course any time I have any time at all, I can’t seem to help but write a blog in my head. It gets annoying, but at least it’s something to do—I’d rather read my own words than some of those trashy tabloids they sell at the Flying J for two dollars apiece.

Here’s what I’ve decided while driving through Nebraska:

The Unarguable Truths of Road Trips in the Company of Poor Kyle and Camille
(in no particular order)

-I can be right in the middle of recounting a fascinating tale to Poor Kyle, but if he sees an interesting truck or trailer on the same road we’re traveling, he will—without fail—whip his head around and gawk as it rolls by, completely losing focus on my story. I have come to accept this as fact. Usually I react by continuing the story (in turn forcing Poor Kyle to pretend he’d been listening all along).

-If Poor Kyle is writing in his logbook, keeping track of mileage or even simply fiddling with the GPS, he will not listen to a word I say, should I attempt to snare his attention. It is physically impossible for him to multi-task. I’ve never seen it done; he has never done it.

-Poor Kyle is a faithful—faithful—keeper of the windshield:

Case in point.

-I have, on occasion, been known to suggest interesting topics of conversation on our road trips together. Rather, I consider them to be interesting topics of conversation. Poor Kyle, on the other hand, views this as “picking fights.” He may be correct in this assessment, but in my defense…he is lugging me all about the country in a baby-poop coloured Carhartt ™ hoodie. And he didn’t necessarily set out any ground rules ahead of time.

-Poor Kyle and I will never agree on what constitutes “good music.”

-Poor Kyle will always trust the GPS (he calls her “Tips”) more than he will trust me. Sometimes I hate that little British snob.

-There are nineteen white reflector poles in between each green mile marker on the highway (give or take a few on account of drunk drivers running them over). I can count miles with my eyes closed, shutting them right after seeing “MILE 258” flash by, and opening them precisely as we approach “MILE 259.” Sometimes I do this for so long that I cannot stop unless the vehicle does; it makes my head hurt.

Posted in introspection, Married Life, oh brother what next, Poor Kyle, thisandthat | 14 Comments