Month: July 2015

BufBloPoFo 09 DayNine (March 22, 2009)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Today’s assignment was to talk about the BufBloPoFo participant below you on the list over there on the sidebar. Today, if the blogger above you on that list was kind enough to ask you a question, answer it! If not, either find a question that was asked of someone else and answer that or, you know, write a post about, um… soup. Look, these topics can’t all be winners, people.

The blogger above me on Garvey’s list hasn’t written a post since January 6th. What’s that about? It’s BufBloPoFo time people! Needless to say, Twine Elms Press did not direct a question my way. So then…soup it is!

My friend Jimmy made a fabulous fish stew from scratch this week. I know this because he invited me and our other friend/co-worker Diane to his nearby convertible downtown apartment for lunch on Wednesday. It had been awhile since the three of us has gone off on a lunch hour sojourn, and I would have liked nothing better. However, with these Miami meetings a week away, time would not allow me to step from my desk for a full 60. So Jimmy was kind enough to bring me some GladWare from his house so I could sample the wares. Mighty tasty.

BufBloPoFo 09 DayEight (March 21, 2009)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Take a look to the right over there and you’ll see a list of the “BufBloPoFo 09 Participants”. It’s pretty, isn’t it?!? Look at them all! Okay, now find whichever blog is below yours and talk about that dude. If you know them, tell us how you met. If you don’t know them, talk about something you read on their site. Whichever it is, end your post by asking that person a question. (That last part maaaaaaay be important later on…)

I like this little homework assignment to begin the second week of BufBloPoFo. Because as much as I have wanted to, I haven’t found the time I hoped for this last week to check in with my competition. The name of the blog below mine, entitled “Whoa Mama,” is written by a lady named Leah, with whom I am not acquainted. However, she is apparently, a highly educated person, a mother (twins!) and an excellent chocolate chip cookie baker. In a few ways, she reminds me of my well-loved sister (though I wish Jen would try a little harder with the chocolate cookies. Come on!). I am impressed that Leah finds the time to blog at all, considering her full and busy life. Once again, this reminds me of the ongoing conversation I have with myself about someday: to mother or not to mother? When you read the voice of someone like Leah, who is apparently doing it very well and has a very sunny quality to her blog space that cannot be false, it’s emboldening.

Anyway, this is where you can look up Leah’s blog:

http://triplethreatoftoddlers.blogspot.com/

My favorite post on her site is one she did outside the confines of BufBloPoFo, before the mayhem started. The post is dated March 13th and it’s titled “Rats.” She really gets to the heart of the emotional roller coaster that comes with the job hunt. The nerves, the excitement, the self-confidence that often comes before a crushing disappointment. I admire Leah’s determination to work her temporary “purgatory” job, and to do so with humor, until the next great career phase of her life arrives.

My question to Leah may seem banal, but after spending some time on her blog, I found that Leah and her hubby genuinely love and support each other. So tell me how you two met and fall in love? I am interested in beginnings because there is usually a great story to tell. Did you know he was the one right away, or like myself and Eddie, was your first instinct to run screaming in the other direction? My gut is usually reliable, but on the subject of men, I have found that the one who repelled me at “hello” was bound to be the one I ultimately lost my head about. So my soulmate needed some time to grow on me. How was it for you?

BufBloPoFo 09 DaySeven (March 20, 2009)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

You get a freebie for Day 7. It’s like the center square of your BufBloPoFo bingo card where you get to use those creative participant brains of yours and come up with your own topic. And hey, if I like it, I’ll use it for everyone in week two…

How many times am I told I can write about anything at all, and yet find myself in the frustrating position of having nothing creative to say? It’s much like a broken pinata full of candy falling in front of a diabetic child. Useless. This is the quandary I find myself in late this afternoon.

It’s been a hellish week, professionally speaking, and I have taken a few hits: to my time, my ego, my ability to blog and update my FaceBook status (the horror!). Don’t get me wrong. I come to work to work. But like everything else in my life, I tend to produce on “10” and typically do find myself with a spare moment or two to waste. Not so much this week. I think what really has sapped my energy is the unfortunate and unfair dressing down I and my teammates received, publicly yesterday afternoon. Actual screaming was involved. I will not bore you with the details, because I am already bored myself.

I had every good intention of going home last night for a workout. Instead, I found myself nursing a 24 oz. can of Miller Lite in the train station bar, alone after my pal Mark left go home. Folks, if there is any image more pathetic than this, please tell me. Normally, I find my own bouts of solo intoxication oddly refreshing (see Hotlanta posts from early February), but this time it appears I was intent on sinking further into my own wallowing, rather than celebrating my fabulousness. When I got home, I figured since I had already had the equivalent of two beers, why stop there? I chased down my train station ale with 3.5 shots of Jose Cuervo. For some reason that only God knows, I often follow these mini binges with a determination to shave my legs. Seriously, I have done this quite a few times over the years. Apparently, I need intermittent reminders that alcohol + razors = blood. Two minutes into my nice warm bath, I nearly required a transfusion, and realized I need better coping mechanisms.

So there you go Garvey, I guess my topic for the day, like any episode ofSeinfeld, is nothing. Or since I am literary-minded, perhaps I will deem it stream of consciousness in the vein of William Faulkner.

BufBloPoFo 09 DaySix (March 18, 2009)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Tell me about your first home away from home. Tell me about the first apartment you had that wasn’t under your parents’ roof. A dorm? A loft? A cardboard box? Give us a tour.

Before I proceed, I have to give a shout-out to Garvey for his most excellent, gut-busting post from BufBloPoFo 09 Day 5. It was a three hankie event of laughter:

http://royaltoybox.blogspot.com/

Truth be told, I am feeling a little winded on Day 6 of this blogging bonanza. I have to find a way to recharge. All the more difficult since my day job literally sucks the lifeblood from my veins these days. But I digress…

I could launch into a tale of my first dorm room at the University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana, the first time I ever had U.S. Postal mail delivered to a place where I happened to live, besides my folks’ pad. However, I think it would be inaccurate to call this my first “home away from home.”

My first dwelling that deserves the title is a tour bus in South Africa, summer of 1996. I was about to turn 18 and I was on a performing tour with the Chicago Childrens Choir. That all sounds very wholesome, doesn’t it? False. One of the more scarring, and thus maturing episodes of my young life, literally thousands of miles away from anyone who shared my DNA.

What didn’t happen on this tour? The coldest winter South Africa experienced in 40 years. Stop laughing. It was cold on that tour bus at night. It was 40 degrees or so, and bear in mind that South Africans generally do not have central heat on their buses, and almost none of us had brought along our winter coats. The weather was a freak thing, naturally.

I suffer from motion sickness. Ironically, I also enjoy daredevil activities, so that is my cross to bear. But on this tour, I just wanted an adventure off the bus. My mother had filled out my pre-trip medical forms, which clearly stated that I suffered in this area. I had brought a fair supply of Dramamine with me, but at 17, I had no concept of what 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for five weeks really meant. My drug supply was cashed quickly. This led to some unfortunate puking incidents, one of which involved an ostrich farm. Don’t ask. Now, I had a longterm boyfriend who also happened to be in the choir, and also on the same trip. Do you see where I’m going with this?

Of the four chaperones on the trip, three of them were women (one a nurse). Women being the gossipy beeyatches they often are, they saw a frequently barfing 17 year-old girl who spent a heck of a lot of time with her fella and drew the worst conclusions. Much later there were accusations in a parking lot from the nurse as we boarded the bus – in front of just about each of the 60 other choir members on the tour with me. But before we reached that hellacious humilation, the leaders made an executive decision to cut me off from any more Dramamine doses. You know, because it’s bad for the baby and all. So I vomited unnecessarily for days until I found a pharmacy in a South African mall that sold drugs way more effective than Dramamine. All the stomach chill without the sleepiness.

But guess what? My mom was a nurse too. After the Jerry Springer-like confrontation in the aforementioned parking lot, I gave Mom a ring and told her they had driven me around for days and let me upchuck with impugnity, despite my denials of being knocked up and given the fact that I had a medical form stating my condition. It is not for nothing folks that Jen and I are experts at dressing people down. One phone call to the choir elders later, and suddenly I was being given a surprise 18th birthday party in a dorm lounge, and all the anti-pukey pills I could ever want.

I could go on about this trip. Who slept with whom and where (fine, some of that involved me – I told you I had a boyfriend). Don’t ever let anyone tell you that “kids today” are so much more awful than previous generations. Kids unsupervised are always going to be little shits the world over in a timelessly predictable fashion. But what was my point again? Oh yeah, I carried my own money, fought my own battles (and lost some), cried, puked, drank, laughed, had sex, stayed up too late – a foreshadowing of my soon-to-come University days. This was my first adult home away from home. Oh yeah, and I was in fucking amazing and gorgeous South Africa too.

BufBloPoFo 09 DayFive (March 18, 2009)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

I used this topic last year, but a) we have a lot of new blood for ’09 and b) maybe your answer has changed. Also, c) I’m lazy. Who would play you in a movie?

I wish I could say Megan Fox or Angelina Jolie. However, the former is too young, thin and way too hot. The latter is also too thin and hot, but also has an overabundance of children. I realize that biography does not matter much since the person playing me, would be, you know, acting. But if that performer were a follower of the Method, in order to get to the heart of what it feels like to be Becky Boop, then avoidng childbearing is critical.

I have been told I have hair like Julia Roberts (in her Pretty Woman days), the curves of Bette Midler (from her Bathhouse Betty period), and the profile of Drew Barrymore. All of these opinions are more than acceptable to me, but since I cannot clone a Roberts/Midler/Barrymore hybrid as of yet, the search continues.

There are certain actresses, no matter what their appearance or calendar age, that I feel a strange connection with: Felicity Huffman or Isla Fisher for two examples, who I feel might be able to access my weird personal mixture of brains, sloth and clumsiness, the myriad millions of quirks I own that have always made me a divisive character. Love or hate me, people rarely find an iffy middle ground, and I like it that way.

Well it seems I am not able to decide this one here. Anyone out there with suggestions? I find myself unusually wishy washy today.