Tag Archives: writing

A Tail of Two Kitties

18 Jan

In my post from yesterday on ChafingIsReal.com I alluded to the fact that I would explain to my readers why it was that I missed writing a blog post this past Friday. Over on that blog, for those of you who don’t know, I am documenting my progress in a challenge to run 2,015 miles in the year 2015. In case you are wondering, it is going pretty well. So far this year I have run 64.64 miles which means that I have another 1,950.36 miles to go before I can call this journey a success. It is a little bit daunting, to say the least. This all means that, if I were to run every single day for the rest of the year (which I will not do because I don’t want to hurt myself and also that sounds miserable) I would have to get in roughly 5.6 miles daily. So, yea, that’s some work. If any of you readers (a) live in New York City and (b) are runners please let me know. I wouldn’t mind a touch of company every now and again.

Moving on. The other part of the challenge, which is an aspect that I designed for myself in order to improve my writing, is to post a blog post on that other site every single day. Obviously, I have failed. But that’s okay! I am not throwing in the towel! Sometimes life gets in the way and keeps us from doing the things we set out to do and we can either be mad at ourselves about it or just shrug our shoulders and realize that we are not in control of everything and sometimes cats, and a movie and a night that both turn out to be a lot longer than you anticipated, just happen. So, without further ado,* the story.

This coming Wednesday at 6:50am (uuuggghhh) I will be departing for New Orleans for my annual visit. I have friends down there so I like to get down there and hang with them for a week, give or take. In anticipation of this, I decided that it would be smart to bring my two kitties, Clark and Grete, over to my parents house so I didn’t have to cobble together people to feed them and give them scratches for the 9 days I will be out of town. My parents were not incredibly pleased about this turn of events but they love me so they agreed. (Thanks Mom and Dad! You’re the best!!) I happened to be watching my friend Katie’s car while she was in Costa Rica this past week (so jealous) and so I figured it would be easy to put the kitties in their little houses and drive them out to my parent’s place in New Jersey. So, while my friend Ben looked on, I packed my kitties into their little houses which caused some not so serious injuries to my shoulders. I should have cut Clark’s nails shorter. Live and learn. We then loaded the kitties, kitty accoutrement, and laundry into the car and I made the relatively short, but incredibly stressful, trek to my parents’ place. It’s actually not usually that stressful but have you ever driven for 40 minutes, including some time on the BQE (the lanes are so tiny!) with two yowling cats in the back seat? I do not recommend it. They make the craziest noises. Ben said they sounded like dolphins. I don’t know about all that but what I do know is that I spent the entire car ride cooing at them and oscillating between incredible guilt for having taken them from the only home they have ever known and crammed them into little carriers and fear that I was going to get rear-ended and my kitties were going to fly through the front windshield. Poor, poor kitties. Anyway, we got there safe and sound. Physically speaking, anyway.

So I called my mom and she came out and helped me carry the two little beans (that’s what I call them) into the house and down to the basement so we could show them where the litter box was. Clark quickly emerged from his box and hid underneath a shelving unit and Grete remained in her box, where she apparently felt safe, for the next 4 hours. Just in there. Sitting, staring, occasionally crying. It was heart breaking. Eventually she came out and hid herself, face against the exposed brick wall, behind some paintings that were leaning there. I am still unclear as to why that seemed like a good place to hide but there you have it. After dinner I decided that maybe the proper course of action would be to carry each of them upstairs into the less scary part of the house where my parents and I were hanging out so they could begin the adjustment period. Big mistake. Huge. They were shaking. Grete spent the first hour of upstairs time wedged between my left arm and the arm of the sofa, with her head behind a cushion. Clark spent his time hiding behind Grete. You guys, they are the wussiest kitties ever to have kittied. It’s really something. After some time Clark got spooked and went into the living room and hid between the back of the sofa and the wall. He remained there for something like 12 hours. I brought Grete up to my bedroom, thinking, again erroneously, that maybe being with me would make her feel more comfortable. She slept on the bed for a little bit but eventually ended up jumping down and hiding underneath it. Where she remained for the next 48 hours until my mother, bless her, went upstairs and pulled her out and brought her down to the basement were the litter box was. Oh, yea, I forgot to mention that in an act of both bravery and seething anger Grete took a shit on the bed.

Cats are such assholes.

As a person who considers herself a better-than-average cat mom, and who was really trying to do what was best for her little kitties, I spent almost the entire 24 hours I was at my parents house worrying about the kitties, talking about the kitties, trying to find the kitties and laughing at the kitties. I feel sort of bad about that last part but I can’t help it. Poor, pathetic little fuzzballs.

So as of the update my mom gave me last night at approximately 10:30pm, things had not changed much. My mom did manage to get Grete to come out from under the bed by sitting on the floor and reading. Eventually Grete, who is very much in need of attention pretty much whenever she is awake and not eating, came out purring and let my mom scratch her head. My mom then brought her downstairs where Grete is currently hiding. Clark, although he has still been taking refuge under the sofa in the living room, has used the litter box. I think both of them have eaten some snacks. Grete loves snacks.

Anyway so that is the Tail of Two Kitties (teehee) and also a long, drawn-out explanation as to why I did not run on Friday and also did not write on my blog. I simply couldn’t run. I had to meander around the house trying to figure out where the kitties were hiding and also at one point I had to drag Clark out from underneath the oven where he decided to wedge himself. That is not a good place to be a kitty. Also when I got back into the city I saw Boyhood with my friend Revaz at IFC. It was good. You should all see it. But maybe wait till it comes out on DVD (or streaming or whatever the kids are doing these days) because it’s almost 3 hours long. And that’s a long time.

If anything of note happens with the kitties I will be sure to let you all know. Feel free to send messages of love and concern. Also, read my other blog. It’s not that great but the posts are short and sometimes have something to do with running but usually have more to do with my imagination. Okay thanks.

* “Without further ado” is a phrase that I have said and never written and so I went on the internet and learned some things! Apparently people oftentimes write “without further adieu” instead of without further “ado,” even though if you were to translate the former it would mean without further goodbye? And that doesn’t make sense although it does look awful pretty. There is something to be said about the aesthetics of a bunch of vowels in a row. The word “ado” actually means hubbub or fuss, which I am sure all of you well-vocabularied people already knew but I thought I would throw it in here anyway. And also this one last thing because I didn’t know this and I think it is really cool. When people confuse words like “adieu” and “ado” it is known as an eggcorn! That’s what it means to confuse two words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings. Eggcorn! Who knew! I will now try and work the word “eggcorn” into casual conversation on the regular so be on the lookout.

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I’m Sorry!

7 Jan

You guys, I have been the absolute worst at this blog recently. The fucking worst. And for that I apologize. I actually don’t think that I have gone this long without posting on this site since I caught my stride like 2 years ago. But fear not for I have returned. And also I am full of excuses for my recent absence which I will now fill you in on.

I have started a new writing project! Yay! So here is the deal. As many of you avid readers know, I had a shit year in 2014. Oh it was the pits. But now it is 2015 and everything is different. And by everything I actually mean my mindset. Now if something bad happens I won’t just attach it to all the other bad things that happened to happen within the same 365 days. The bad things will just exist on their own, as independent events that sort of blow but don’t have any huge meaning or impact on my happiness or sanity. Or so I hope, anyway. And, to be entirely honest, it is going rather well. I feel upbeat! And part of this, I think, is due to my project!

So since I am an adult, I have many years of experience in being me. And one of the things that these years of experience have taught me is that I need a project. I need something to focus on, something that has an end goal, something that is forward moving. Because if I don’t have something like that, then I focus on what is right in front of me and what is right in front of me is bartending. Well, not literally at this moment. At this moment my cat, Grete, is right in front of me and making typing this blog extremely difficult but you know what I mean. So here’s the thing about bartending. I actually kind of like it. But the only way I can like it is if I don’t care too much about it. I want to do my job well, make money for myself and the bar, but I also want to leave work at work. I want to lock the gates, go home and go to sleep and not really worry too much about it until I am back at it again. But in order for me to be able to do that, I have to have something else going on, something that I am in control of. I mean, I am in control, to some extent, of the bar when I am working (or so one would hope) but I am not in control. I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them. I make money on the front-end when I am working, not on the back-end because I invested. I am replaceable. All of these things are key. And so to make the way that I earn my money sustainable and palatable, and to make me a better, more zen-like bartender, I have to have something in my life that is using up my need to be spearheading something that, in some ways, matters to me personally in my journey of being a Rebekah. And so, without further adieu, I bring you my new blog,

ChafingIsReal.com

So here is the deal. Over the course of 2015, I, along with some 10,000 other people worldwide, will be running 2,015 miles. That is the equivalent of something like 77 marathons. It’s a lot of miles. And I will be writing about it every single day whether I run or not. I am hoping to keep it Rebekah-style, meaning full of funny things, snark and maybe a little anger at the inevitable street harassment I experience along the way. I am also hoping to see bunnies. There will be a little bit of cheese, of course, but I really don’t want this to be one of those silly fitness blogs that is all full of “fitspiration” and lame quotes and me saying things like “working out is so great and everyone should do it all the time!” Because honestly, sometimes working out sucks. Sometimes I hate running. I ALWAYS hate lifting weights. But I am going to do it anyway and gripe about it on the internet. So check me out over there. It might take up a lot of my time, but this blog is not going anywhere. It will be reserved for stories of me getting shit on, feminist rants and letters to random people who wrong me. Also maybe some new bartending tales, if I work up the courage.

Alright, guys, happy new year and welcome to 2015! I think it’s going to be a hell of a year.

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This is Me, Trying not to Give a Fuck About Assholes

21 Oct

I originally learned to bartend from a guy I used to date. He had just opened his own bar and had been in the game for awhile. I had done pretty much everything Front of House but bartend, save for pouring a few beers here and there. So there I was one night, having a glass of wine at his bar after coming back from a shift of my own in the West Village, when all of a sudden he got busy. I hopped back behind the bar to keep him ahead of the quickly mounting piles of dirty glasses and, while I was at it, I poured a few pints, giving him time to make all the carefully crafted cocktails he was known for. I decided right then and there that if I was going to continue in the service industry, I didn’t want to be anywhere but behind the bar. It felt safer, more in control and, dare I say it, a little bit cooler. So he started teaching me. He set me up with a speed-pourer equipped liquor bottle full of water, a jigger and a rocks glass and set me to work pouring out glass after glass of perfectly counted neat waters. He gave me a book of drink recipes and went through, X-ing out all the drinks he didn’t think I would ever have to know, and telling me to memorize the rest. He also gave me a piece of advice that I held on to, tightly, until, well, now. He said, and I am paraphrasing here, that bartenders are like a community, and it is each of our responsibilities to educate people how to behave, and how to tip, so that other bartenders don’t have to deal with the crap. But today, October 21, 2014, something like 7 years after I was initially given that advice, I am calling bullshit. Not on the community thing, or the fact that in some way or another many of us are in this together — we warn other neighborhood drink slingers about dickheads and problem customers, call each other when there’s an incident, send our friends good customers when they decide to drink in another bar. I am calling bullshit on the idea that a lot of people are open to learn how to be, well, human.

Here is the thing. I have a super strict standard of behavior for myself. When I deviate from the standard, I am sent into an incredibly intense moral hangover that involves long walks, sulking, ill-fantasies, maybe some tears, apologies and, on more than one occasion, the purchasing of small (admittedly unnecessary) gifts. I really don’t like to act like an asshole. It doesn’t agree with me. And I operate under this misconceived notion that other people also don’t like acting like assholes. Or, perhaps more specifically, that they shouldn’t like acting like assholes or, even more specifically, that they actually don’t think they are acting like assholes at all. They are just being themselves. But realistically sometimes “themselves” actually just means “assholes.” Did that make sense? The point is that some people are just dicks. They are dicks and they don’t care. Well, you know what? As of today, October 21, 2014, I no longer give a fuck.

So here’s the deal. My dad once told me, and this is one of my favorite pieces of advice, that we can only have expectations of people that are in keeping with what they have previously demonstrated is possible for them. Like, if someone is a liar all the time, we can’t expect them to just randomly start telling the truth and we can’t really be that mad at them when they behave the way that they have always behaved. They are doing what they always do, I am just placing my unreasonable, in context, expectations on them. So I get to make a choice. I can either be cool with the fact that they are a liar and deal with it to whatever extent is necessary, or I can get myself all bent out of shape about it. But then who’s the chump? Me. I’m the chump all bent out of shape about an entirely predictable situation. And I don’t like being a chump just about as much as I don’t like being an asshole. So now let’s put this in conversation with bartending.

I like to think that when I go into a bar and order a drink I am pretty polite. I sit in my stool, I take out my $20 and place it on the bar (especially if I don’t know the bartender), I know what I want to drink, I wait my turn, and then I ask for my drink, book ended with pleases and thank yous. I love please and thank you. I might make friendly conversation, I might just read a magazine. I rarely, if ever, tell people I bartend unless they ask (sometimes the 20 gives it away) because to me that just reeks of asking for buybacks which is something that polite people just do not do. In the process of drinking my drink, I do not rip up my coaster or stir up shit, and when I leave I tip. Plain and simple. I like to think that I am a good bar customer more often than not. I even think that if I were serving me a drink I would like me and I might even say to myself,

“Self, that girl drinking the Powers sure is polite.”

And there are plenty of people who drink in bars that are polite. Or at least well-behaved. Or maybe they just don’t offend me in any way. But then there are lots of people who just down right suck. They also seem to travel in packs. They are rude, demanding, condescending, sexist, messy and all sorts of other things. Bartenders can smell them when they walk in the door. I don’t know what it is about these people but you just know, from first sight, or first order, that they are assholes. And in the past, I would want to let them know they were assholes, to educate them, or to prove a point, but not any more. Because you know what? That is not my job. It is not my job, or really my right, to force my own moral compass, my own standards of behavior, on other people. They want to be dicks, to a point, then fine, let them be dicks. That’s cool. They want their drink strong? “Okay,” I’ll say with a smile, and I will make it the same way I always make it. They want less ice? That’s cool, they can just get more mixer. They want to wave their glass at me, snap their fingers, flash their cell phone screen? I won’t tell them they did anything wrong, I will just send them to the back of the line. They might think I’m a bitch. They are welcome to their own opinions. Because here is the thing:  I am doing this for the foreseeable future. Maybe not forever, but for now. And the name of the game is self-preservation. And you know what makes it easier? Not letting it in. (Also, the fact that the new bar I am working at comes staffed with security. At a certain point, shitty behavior actually stops being my problem and that is a luxury I am happy to accept.)

So all you people who are awesome? Come see me! It’ll be fun. And all you people who suck? I will gladly take your money. And I’ll turn all the negative energy into creative motivation for my book. Because, yea, I’m doing that.

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My #1 Fan is BACK

31 Aug

That’s right, folks.  After a months-long hiatus during which I gave my #1 Fan basically no thought whatsoever he has returned with a vengeance!  This past Thursday morning I awoke to a new comment on my blog.  Since it came at 1:53am from a person who called himself “Anti-Fail” I figured it was just spam.  I figured wrong.  I looked at the comment and discovered that, from the email address rebekahfranklifefail@yahoo.com, I had been sent the following message of support and love:

Instead of worrying about events happening halfway around the country and world, perhaps you should worry about how you came to be a 30-something year old bartender living on $2 an hour. That in and of itself is a greater travesty than ISIS or Michael Brown. Perhaps the only greater travesty is pretending that going to the New School equates to having a real actual degree. It’s like bragging about graduating from the University of Phoenix. Hahaha. Keep writing your whiny Feminazi hairy armpit gibberish. How it amuses us so.

Now, and forever…

Your Superiors

Just a little back story for those not in the know.  This message came from one of my old customers at a bar I worked at for years.  He would come into the bar 3-5 times a week and get totally hammered and act like a dick.  He called me a cunt a few times.  Some female customers complained to me about the way he aggressively hit on them.  Oh, and he asked one of my coworkers out while his fiancee was sitting like 2 stools down and, when my coworker called him out, he lied about being engaged.  And he one time snuck a bottle of vodka into the bar.  I could continue, but it’s too depressing.  This is a stand-up dude who loves and respects women.  Obviously we got along famously and I was always so happy when I heard his voice from halfway down the block while I approached work.

For those among you who might want to email this person back with some opinions of your own, don’t bother because he undoubtedly deactivated the email account immediately after sending it.  But don’t worry, we play the long game at FranklyRebekah.  As my friend just said, “I am the Scorpio here so my revenge thinking goes to total life destruction even if it takes a long time.”  Everyone loves to have a little vengeful imagination adventure, right?  So if anyone wants to plot revenge and use my #1 Fan as the target, even just for your own amusement, feel free.  He’s shareable.

Anyway, to just sort of hammer this home to you guys a little bit, the last comment I received from this person was 6 months ago.  Six.  Which means that for the past six months this wonderful man has been silently stewing, awaiting the perfect time to appear and call me a loser.  And the perfect time, it seems, was when I wrote a post about a young, unarmed black man being shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, his body then left in the street for 4 hours, which sparked a (much needed) nation-wide conversation about race in America.  Oh, and in that same post I discussed an innocent man being beheaded by ISIS.  It seems a little crazy to me that the amount of money that I make per hour should matter so much to someone who, it seems, hates me.  I mean, if anyone should care a lot about that it should be me, right?  But as it turns out, money is not particularly important to me.  Also, as it turns out, the minimum wage for tipped workers in New York state is actually $8 an hour, with bars and restaurants obligated to make up the difference if our tips don’t amount to that much.  In (legal) theory anyway.  Which I would think this person would know considering, you know, he’s a lawyer.

And as for my armpits?  I shave them.  My legs, on the other hand, are sort of touch and go.  I have sensitive skin so I’m a waxer and sometimes I just don’t feel like going all the way up to midtown.  So, I mean, if you are going to criticize my feminism you could at least be accurate and call it my “whiny Feminazi hairy leg gibberish,” ya know?  Although I do take pause at your use of the word “gibberish,” but I’ll leave it.  No need to split hairs (no pun intended).

And as for the stuff about The New School?  You’re welcome to think it sucks.  That’s fine.  It’s not like I established it or something.  But truth be told I actually learned a lot of stuff and was taught by one of the people responsible for the creation of the Human Development Index which is sort of a big deal.  Also, I made some really good friends who are awesome and supportive and also write a lot of “whiny Feminazi hairy ______ gibberish” so at least I found my people.  And, one other thing, I would imagine that the University of Phoenix is a perfectly fine school and the people that graduate from there learned things and are proud of themselves and go on to do awesome things in life, be that bartending or working in finance or becoming a nurse or whatever.  Poo-pooing someone elses education is some elitist bullshit.

So, in summation, I am actually left wondering how this person came to be a 40-something year old man who spends time at almost 2 in the morning on a Wednesday making up email addresses and sending ridiculous comments to people’s blogs.  But, you know, people make choices.  I made my choice to write and bartend and he made his choice to be a cyber bully.

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Sharing is Caring

6 May

I am really busy finishing up school stuff (first thesis draft submitted yesterday!), dealing with my life, and entering this contest through The Guardian to get something I write published (thanks to Keesler for putting it on the listserv!) so I have been neglecting my blog. Also, my brain has been so consumed by the aforementioned things that I have been having a hard time formulating an opinion on basically anything.  Except eggs.  I have been eating a lot of eggs and enjoying them.  So, eggs are good. Opinion formulated. Anyway, because I have no interest, at this current moment, in writing a full blog about my appreciation for eggs as of late, I am going to share with you* all a few quotes that I have discovered over the past few months that relate to writing that I found really…inspiring.** So, here they are!

1. John Patrick Shanley: “Writing is acting is directing is living your life…I see no difference between writing a play and living my life.  The same things that make a moment in my life succeed, combust, move, these things make a moment in my playwriting have life.  And when I move in my writing, I have moved in my life.  There is no illusion.  It is all the same thing.”

2. C. Wright Mills: “By keeping an adequate file and thus developing self-reflective habits, you learn how to keep your inner world awake. Whenever you feel strongly about events or ideas you must try not to let them pass from your mind, but instead to formulate them for your files and in so doing draw out their implications, show yourself either how foolish these feelings or ideas are, or how they might be articulated into productive shape. The file also helps you build up the habit of writing. You cannot `keep your hand in’ if you do not write something at least every week. In developing the file, you can experiment as a writer and thus, as they say, develop your powers of expression. To maintain a file is to engage in the controlled experience.”

3. John McPhee, in a letter to his daughter: “Dear Jenny: The way to do a piece of writing is three or four times over, never once. For me, the hardest part comes first, getting something  — anything — out in front of me.  Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall.  Blurt out, heave out, babble out something — anything — as a first draft.  With that, you have achieved a sort of nucleus.  Then, as you work it over and alter it, you begin to shape sentences that score higher with the ear and the eye.  Edit it again — top to bottom.  The chances are that about now you’ll be seeing something that you are sort of eager for others to see.  And all that takes time. What I have left out is the interstitial time.  You finish that first awful blurting, and then you put the thing aside. You get in your car and drive home.  On the way, your mind is still knitting at the words. You think of a better way to say something, a good phrase to correct a certain problem. Without the drafted version — if it did not exist — you obviously would not be thinking of things that would improve it.  In short, you may be actually writing only two or three hours a day, but your mind, in one way or another, is working on it twenty-four hours a day — yes, while you sleep — but only if some sort of draft or earlier version already exists. Until it exists, writing has not really begun.”

So, with that, happy Monday.  It is Monday, right?

*A demonstration of how much I care!

**Due to current brain state (fried!) it took me way too long to come up with that word.

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