Communication Nation

by Camille Posted on September 27, 2009

Wedding Thank Yous

I have been married for almost two years, and it has only been within the last few months that I have really started to feel like a wife.  It’s true—until recently, I felt like just Poor Kyle’s girlfriend and not his wife at all.  It was very bad for my conscience—there was a part of me that felt very wicked because I wasn’t actually married to Poor Kyle, but instead just some hussy living in sin.

Isn’t that bizarre?

I suppose part of the reason I never felt like a wife was because we’d dated for longer than we had been married.  We dated for two years, and now we’ve been married for nearly two years, but before this, we’d been boyfriend-girlfriend [hello, seventh grade terminology!] for longer than we’d been husband-wife.  In my mind, because of some nonexistent formula I made up, years dated and years married add up to zero, so now it’s like our lives can actually start.  [What?  That doesn’t make perfect sense to you?  Meh.  I have always been lousy at math.  It’s high time I make up my own equations, don’t you think?  Can’t stand Algebra?  That’s okay, go ahead and create a different kind of math.  Don’t worry if it is logical or not—just wing it!]

Aside from my Marriage Theorem, it seems like it’s taken two entire years just for us to figure out how to communicate with each other.

For example, I have come to realise that I expect—require, even—clear, straightforward conversations with Poor Kyle.  I don’t understand him when he beats around the bush, because Hi, I’m Camille And I Overthink Everything.  So when he says, “What are your plans for dinner tonight,” I’m all, “Why is he asking me that?  Is he wanting to hang out with friends?  I don’t really have any plans, but I’ll make something up if it will keep him at home tonight.  Or maybe he wants to go out to dinner, just the two of us!  Awww…so sweet.  Wait—he’s only sweet on my birthday, and that was days ago!  He’s probably just checking to see what’s on the menu so he can brace himself if it’s something he can’t stand, like cream of mushroom soup.  Such a jerk.  Doesn’t he know that I work hard to plan meals around what’s in season and what’s on sale so that we can eat frugally and healthily and not blow our entire paychecks on fast food and wasted produce?  He might think it’s easy to plan meals, BUT HE HAS NO IDEA HOW HARD HE MAKES IT, AND WHY CAN’T HE—JUST ONCE!—EAT LEFTOVERS FOR LUNCH?!”

And what I say is, “You know what?  I don’t care what you do!  You don’t appreciate me—you never have—and you can eat your OWN MOTHERLOVING DINNER TONIGHT!”

When really all he was wondering was what we were having for dinner.  What he should have said, then, was “What’s for dinner?”

So I need straightforward communication.  Obviously.

But for Poor Kyle, when I am blunt and to-the-point, he interprets it as being abrupt and unfeeling.  Like when I say, “I hate it when you leave for trips,” he feels like I’m saying, “I hate YOU when you leave for trips, and I’ll never get over my angst, so you might as well not even bother coming home!”  What I need to be saying, in a more gentle manner, is “I hate feeling so sad and lonely when you leave for trips.  I wish you didn’t have to go.”

I’m glad that now, two years into our marriage, I can finally feel like a wife instead of a brazen harlot from Madame Mimi’s House of Whores.I’m so glad we’ve finally approached (note I said “approached” and not “reached” {because we’re still working on it}) this point of open communication.  It has been very helpful to our marriage.  Really, it was only a matter of time before Poor Kyle innocently announced he was going out with friends and I would freak out because HE’D TOLD ME HE DOESN’T LOVE ME ANYMORE AND HIS FRIENDS MAKE BETTER COMPANIONS THAN I DO OR EVER COULD!

I’m really glad we never got to that point.

And also, in re-reading this post, I’ve come to realise just how deserving Poor Kyle is of his prefix.

Poor, poor Poor Kyle.

What about you?  Let’s all take this Monday to reflect…  What breakthroughs have you reached lately?  Have they been a long-time coming, like mine, or were you lucky to be a quick learner?

Posted in change, It's All Good, looking back, Married Life, mondays suck, Poor Kyle | Tagged , | 20 Comments

Cheerful Charles P. Wiggins the Third

by Camille Posted on September 25, 2009

Charles P. Wiggins the Third

Charles P. Wiggins the Third was tired of reading stories with miserable endings.

“Why does every short story require a morbid, twisted ending to be a success,” he wondered.  “What’s wrong with good, old-fashioned happiness?”

He couldn’t recall exactly when happy endings had fallen out of style—only that they had, and that was that.

Happy Reading, Charles P. Wiggins the Third

It seemed as though one evening he read himself to sleep—dozed off to the encouraging lilt of heroism and bravery—and awoke the next morning to the cacophony of The Realists.

Damn Those Realists, Charles P. Wiggins the Third!

“Damn those Realists,” he cursed every night in a British accent as he sat at his desk to conquer his writer’s block.  “Always sucking the life out of every noble plot.  They can turn a love story into a horrific tragedy in less time than it takes to say deus ex machina.”

Being a writer himself, he naturally had to live a double life.  He was not granted the privilege of writing what interested him at any given time.  When the world wanted woeful words, he wrote them their sorrows.  When times changed (as times are wont to do), and people again itched for pleasantness, it was his job to provide it.  It made no difference whether he felt melancholy or cheerful—he was forced to perform when called upon.  As a writer by profession, Charles was cursed with the grave misfortune of living one vast, perpetual lie.

Oh, he supposed he could see the enticement of cynicism—he, himself used to fantasize of being a social recluse…

He dreamed of holing up in some cave or perhaps a cabin—yes, a cabin would do capitally—penning [not writing, but penning, the more tormented verb] his anguished thoughts and depressing the world, like Hemingway.  He would never leave, not even to meet publishers.  Instead, he would tame a wild woodland animal—not a bear [too ferocious], but perhaps a fox or possibly a buck-toothed beaver—and whenever a new manuscript was polished to his satisfaction, he would bind it to the beaver’s back and send it into the city to deliver the prize.

Thoughts of Solitude, Charles P. Wiggins the Third.

Upon publication—for in his fantasy, every word he wrote profited him a pound in his pocket and a mouthful of meat—entire cities would read his work and promptly dress in black and go into mourning for the Sad State of the World.  He would change people that way.  Make them a bit more serious.  Sober them up—it would do them all a heap of good.

He would be God’s gift to troubled souls.

It was all very clever, his antisocial fantasy, but it ended when he realised the world had enough passionate, melancholy writers.  He needed to be unique—apart from the crowd.  By the time he had earned his degree, hermits had become so commonplace, they’d formed entire neighborhoods up in the hills—they had block parties and everything. United in their solitude, the hermits were.

And so it happened that Charles P. Wiggins the Third—always Charles, not Charlie, and especially never Chuck—decided to bear a cheerful disposition.

You're a Master of Your Craft, Charles P. Wiggins the Third

Charles wrote wondrous tales.  He spun magnificent webs of golden days and innocent nights; melodramatic episodes of the most delightful nature.  He concocted vast volumes, chapters full of enchanting…enchantments…and they were always carefully constructed with tidy characters and plots.  He was a master of his craft.

But not a soul in the world cared to hear his happy endings.

Poor Charles P. Wiggins the Third

Poor Charles P. Wiggins the Third—his jolly sagas were out of style and simply wouldn’t sell.  A man can’t very well starve himself to death, and so, by that rationalisation, he was faced with the hardest decision a frustrated writer ever has to make…

Eat, or be eaten.

***Click here to find out what he chooses!***

Posted in short stories/vignette | Tagged | 17 Comments

“This dignified silence seems to be producing an unpleasant effect.”

by Camille Posted on September 23, 2009

For my dramatic literature class, I am reading The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.

It’s not the first time I’ve read this play; it won’t be the last.  I have, as you all know, long been intrigued by English matters of all sorts, and literature is no exception.  This play was introduced to me during my early teens, when a good family friend took me to see the just-released movie with Colin Firth and Rupert Everett.

Importance of Being EarnestIt changed my life.  Image from here.

I immediately procured a copy of the play’s text and devoured it in hours, or less.  I found myself underlining and earmarking nearly every page—it got to where my markings meant nothing, so abundant were they in quantity.  I could not fathom the wit one person must have developed in order to write such a masterpiece.  To this day, a huge section of my “Favourite Quotes” list is compiled of one-liners from The Importance of Being Earnest.

Lines like…

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

“If I am occasionally a littler over-dressed, I make up for it be being always immensely over-educated.”

“It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn’t a dentist.  It produces a false impression.”

“I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.”

“Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people.  The thing has become an absolute public nuisance.  I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.”

And those are only in the first act—imagine!

But there was a line I must have missed when first I read the play back in my high school days; leastwise, I may have caught it, but its truthfulness didn’t register until now, years later.  Observe:

ALGERNON: The truth is rarely pure and never simple.  Modern life would be very tedious if it were, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

JACK: That wouldn’t be at all a bad thing.

ALGERNON: Literary criticism is not your forte, my dear fellow.  Don’t try it.  You should leave that to people who haven’t been at University. They do it so well in the daily papers.

“You should leave literary criticism to the people who haven’t been at University”—what a delightful notion.  Now, if only I didn’t have to critique this particular literary work for a paper at University.

I know, I know…it was only last week that I committed myself to bearing through school with a dignified silence, keeping my mouth closed when questioned how I like my classes.  Well, as it happens, I have the self-control of a turnip green, or perhaps a massive turd.  Whichever you choose, I have found my new close-lipped attitude excruciatingly painful.  It’s like trying to keep a secret when you know—you KNOW!—you are the first to know the news.  Plus, it’s really hard for me to produce decent posts when I deny myself of cynicism.  {It’s my fall-back, you know.}

So allow me to vent just this once, and then I’ll recommit myself to the noble cause.

I am majoring in English because I thought it would be a good credential for an aspiring writer.  An aspiring writer of fiction…novels…humour columns in the local paper…  Not, however, a writer of literary criticisms.  I don’t care for formal essay-writing methods.  I dread writing research papers.  It’s ironic that, on my path to become a writer, I am met with so many tasks of loathsome writing.

My life is one giant, tangled, coughed-up hairball of ironies.  I slay myself. Literally.

Anyway, since I’d much rather be reading the play or watching the movie than writing an essay on it, I’ve decided to share with you one of my favourite (though indeed, there are many) bits of the 2002 film production.  If you’ve seen it, have a good laugh for a second time.  If you haven’t seen it…you really ought.

To those of you sneakily reading this post from a cubicle at work, I’m sorry to have posted a video clip.  I know it’s annoying.  But do try and watch it at some point before the day is through—it’s charming and lovely and embodies everything about this play that captured my heart those seven years ago.

Seven years?  Geeze louise, I’m getting old.

Posted in Book Reports, do what I say, looking back, my edjumacation and me, reviews, short films, thisandthat, what I'm about | Tagged | 15 Comments

One for One.

by Camille Posted on September 22, 2009

I GOT A PACKAGE IN THE MAIL YESTERDAY.  It was so exciting.  Here in Mayberry, we all pick up our mail from the community watering hole, which is open for business on Monday through Friday from 9-5 {though we can still pick up our mail from the P.O. boxes at any time of night—we just can’t talk to a human unless it’s during business hours}.

Anyway, last Saturday night, Poor Kyle and I stopped by the watering hole to pick up our mail, and what to my wondering eye should appear, but a “You Have a Package” card!

Mail Card

We Mayberrians get these cards in our boxes whenever an oversize package comes for us—we have to go talk to the humans behind the counter and trade our little card for the real deal.  I was so excited, because I am a normal human being and therefore thrill at the idea of getting packages in the mail.  My bubble soon deflated a bit, though, when I realised it was a weekend and I wouldn’t be able to pick up my package until Monday.

Don’t worry though—time passes.  It always does.  I was like a little kid before Christmas on Sunday night, for all my anticipation of getting my mail the next morning.  I kept telling myself, “The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner you can wake up and get your package.  Go to sleep.  Go to sleep.  GO TO SLEEP.”  Finally my positive self-talk worked, and the next thing I knew, it was Monday!  Hurrah!  I threw back my down comforter, LEAPT out of bed, ran out of the house to get in the truck, ran back in the house to put on a bra because it’s the watering hole and you never know who you’ll run into there, ran out to the truck once again, flew down Main Street to the watering hole, raced inside, and held up my golden ticket victoriously, for all the world to see.

The lady behind the counter looked at me like I had two heads, but it didn’t matter.  Nothing mattered except that I got my package.

Panting, I declared, “Hi…(gasp)…I’m here to (gasp) pick up my package.  (Gasp…gasp…)  I have a card, see?”

She was unimpressed—it was almost like she saw cards like that every day, or something.  Anyway, I was not about to let Little Miss Pattycake Pessimist rain on my parade.  I just grinned and waited for my surprise.  She went to the back room and rummaged around, and finally—FINALLY!—I was awarded with my package.

I about peed my pants when I tore it open.  It was a cardboard box, and inside that box was another box that looked like this:

TOMS Gift Box

It was a gift card/DVD set for a pair of my long-coveted TOMS shoes, compliments of one of the maybe 10 friends I have in the world—my dear, dear Chelsie.

If you haven’t heard about this awesome company, you’ve been living under a rock for the past year.  They have revolutionised a new business/charitable model that allows them to donate one pair of shoes to a poverty-stricken person for every one pair purchased.  What does this mean?  It means that you are paying top dollar for what is probably a very inexpensive shoe—the price of one shoe has to cover the cost of making two pairs of shoes, plus the expenses of traveling throughout the world on monthly shoe drops for poor countries, and still make a profit on top of that.

So yes, the cheap shoes are expensive.  BUT it’s for a really good cause—it’s more than you see Nike™ or Adidas™ doing right now. [If you’re interested, you can see a two-minute movie of what they’re about right here.]

Anyway, I’ve been meaning to buy a pair with my own money for a long time now, but Chelsie took care of it for me, which was so sweet and thoughtful of her.  I can’t wait to order my shoes—I spent hours yesterday debating online which pair I should get.

But that’s where I’ve run into some trouble, my friends: I can’t decide!

So I need your help, if you please.  I’ve picked out my top choices, and I would like to put it to a vote.  I’ll order whichever pair gets the most votes in the comment section, so choose carefully—I don’t want to get stuck looking like a nerd with bright purple shoes (don’t worry, though—I didn’t include the bright purple ones in the choices {I’m too conservative to walk around with purple feet}).

Of course, I don’t expect you to help me for no good reason, like you like me or something.  So what’s in it for you?

If you all choose well enough, and the shoes come and I like them as much as I THINK I’m going to like them, I will take the money I would’ve spent on my own pair, and instead spend it on YOU.  Kind of like TOMS’S One-for-One policy, but on my own terms.  Well, not all of you, but one of you.  I will not be holding a second giveaway—I will select from the comments on THIS VERY POST.  You can tell all your friends, or you can keep the secret to yourself (better odds that way).

How’s that for a read-the-fine-print giveaway?

Anyway, so here’s my top six picks (all images courtesy of TomsShoes.com):

BLACKTOMS1015-SBlack.  Straightforward and conservative.

GREY-TOMSGrey.  Straightforward and slightly less (but not much) conservative.

Natural Canvas TOMSsNatural Canvas.  Straightforward and are you sensing a theme?

BROWN SUEDE TOMSBrown Suede.  I like the idea of suede.  And brown.

POETOMSPoe is the name of this pattern, but it looks more like Herringbone to me.  Either way, it’s the only patterned style I picked of the entire six choices.  I guess that’s saying something.

SAND_BROWN SUEDE TOMSSand & Brown Suede, lined with fleece.  Would be good for the brrr of the upcoming Canadian winter.

So there you have it.  My TOMS™ choices.  If you think all my choices are atrocious and you’d like to place a write-in vote, check out the other women styles available here.

Please help me choose—I don’t want to waste this precious gift.

Posted in fashion people, giveaways, like-it-link-it, Overall Good Things, what I'm about | 50 Comments

We All Got Boogers.

by Camille Posted on September 21, 2009

So it’s right freezing in our house, because…well…we live in Canada.  It’s really cold inside, but I refuse to turn on the heater before October (November would be ideal, but, well…we live in Canada) in what is officially the most ridiculous moral stand ever known to Earth.  It’s like people in Arizona who won’t turn on the A/C before May—I’ve always thought that was so ridiculous because what would the Pioneers think?  We’re shunning all this amazing technology—we have the power to be cool when it’s sweltering outside, and we ignore it?  I bet the pioneers would give their best oxen for a good ol’ blast of A/C.

But anyway, I can mock the air conditioning moralists all I want, but now I’m one of them.

As I type this with my shivering fingers, it is 60 degrees in our house.  I’ve given myself a cold.  I wake up every morning with a stuffier nose than the day before, and it’s especially bad because they aren’t even the good, dry, ultra-pickable boogers—they’re wet and slimy and my fingernails can’t get a grip on them no matter which angle I try.  Of course, they won’t come out by blowing, either—I ruptured my left eardrum trying.  That was painful.

I’m not shy about picking my nose.  When I was dating Poor Kyle, after we had already come to terms with farting (ugly word!) in front of each other, we had a conversation about nose-picking.  It went something like this:

Me: I have a booger that I need to pick.  Do you mind?

Kyle: Really?

Me: Yes, really.

Kyle: But isn’t that…like…not allowed?

Me: Well, my parents told me not to when I was a little kid, if that’s what you mean.  But I’ve been breaking that rule for years now.  I mean, it’s not like I pick them and EAT them—I stopped doing that after Kindergarten.  And I don’t normally do it in front of people, but I figure we’ve already seen each other at our worst, and this one booger is really annoying…

Kyle: Oh.  Okay.  Yeah, that’s all right with me.

Me: Don’t you pick your nose?

Kyle: Yeah, but…I didn’t think you were a nose-picker.  It’s not very…ladylike.

Me: Well, you can date someone else if you want.  I mean, if this is gonna be a deal-breaker, you better tell me now.  But I’ll be a die-hard nose picker til the day I…die.  If I had to choose between you and the boogers, I’d pick the boogers.

Kyle: That is the most amazingly romantic sentiment a woman has ever told me.  I have never felt so loved in all my life.  MARRY ME!

(Okay, not really about that last bit—in fact, it’s a miracle we’re still together at all, with the way I was slash am.)

Camille and Poor Kyle.He looked thrilled to be with me, don’t you think?  It’s because he knew I was a real catch.

But the point of all this is that I’m not—and never have been—shy about my boogers.  Everybody has boogers.  Everybody picks them.  It’s a worldwide favourite pastimes.  If there is one element of humanity that is a cross-continental constant, regardless of race, gender, poverty, or wealth…it’s boogers.  The village people in the South Pacific have boogers just the same as elitist socialites on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

We all have boogers.  And we all pick them.

Anyway, the point of all this is to say that it’s cold in my house, and I’m in a bad way.

And how is your Monday looking?

Posted in Married Life, mondays suck, Poor Kyle, thisandthat, what I'm about | Tagged | 11 Comments

“Media Monkeys and Their Junket Junkies.”

by Camille Posted on September 17, 2009

Really?  Really, readers?  Only nine comments on my last post about the latest fashions with which I’m clothing my body?

Picture 1How disappointing.

And I tried so hard…I thought it was some of my best work, but I only got nine comments on it, so obviously it wasn’t very good.

When I don’t get the expected number of comments on a post that I’m pretty sure is good, I immediately begin to descend into the doleful dredges of blogging self-doubt.  I go through the same basic routine every time:

“Maybe it was some holiday and people weren’t online as much…no, my stats are normal.”

“Maybe it wasn’t as funny as I thought it was…  Maybe they didn’t get that I was poking fun at myself when I said, ‘I’m so, like, totally trendy…’  No, there’s no way they could think I was being serious when I said that.  If I’m trendy, then the Queen of England is penniless and balding…”

“Maybe they wear their boots with their skinny jeans.  Maybe they all own that hideous sweater from Anthropologie™.  Maybe they don’t appreciate that I just called it hideous. Maybe they’re un-friending me on Facebook™ as I’m typing this.  Maybe, maybe, maybe.”

Fact is, I can’t please everyone.  I can’t even please anyone.  A lot of people hate me.  Maybe you hate me.  I’m not going to say I don’t care, because that would be cold and unfeeling; plus, it goes against my blogging creed, which is to say, I blog For the People.  For you. So I can’t say I don’t care what people think, because I do care—leastwise, I care what my darling readers think.  I want them to like my blog, so they can tell all their friends about me, and I can get bigger and famouser and maybe someday make money blogging, which will, in turn, allow me to quit my day job and dedicate my entire life to the creation of ever more fascinating blog posts.

So of course I care. But I can’t allow myself to judge my own worth on whether or not I get more than twenty comments on any given post.  It’s not healthy.  I’ve got to stop.

Still, I hope you don’t hate me.  Hate is a strong word. [“But I really, really, really don’t like you!”  Anyone?  Who knows the song?]  I have felt hatred towards lots of things and people in my life, but I can honestly say I don’t, to my knowledge, hate a blogger I’ve never met before.  It seems kind of hard to feel such passion (because indeed, when I hate, I hate with PASSION [as in, I cannot STAND that wretched, vile, monstrously sinister English 101 professor whose life goal it is to sit around in her swank office and contemplate ways to make my life miserable through tactics mainly involving exorbitant sums of GROUP WORK assignments, the evil psycho hosebeast]) for someone I’ve never actually met.

I hope you don’t hate me.

But if you do, and there’s nothing I can do to change your mind about it, please, by all means…TELL ME OF YOUR HATRED.  I want to hear about it—every seething, scathing word.  Hate mail kind of thrills me, to be honest.

And once I gather enough, I’ll do like Dooce™ and make some money off it.

***This post is written in conjunction with Sprite’s Keeper’s weekly Spin Cycle, the topic of which, this week, is “Hate.”  Click here to see more of this week’s most hate-ish posts on the internet.***

Posted in blogger finger, what I'm about | 26 Comments