So I'm sorry that it seems as though my blog is turning into some sort of introspective rant on my part, but I just need to work these things out and this is my blog so this is where I'm gonna do it.

I'm fairly certain that I don't know what I look like. You think I'm an idiot, right? How does a person not know what they look like? Very easily, in fact. And it's not that I don't own any mirrors or anything. I have quite a few of them, actually. I just never seem to concentrate on them when it's my own face staring back at me. And I mean, I look at myself when I get ready in the morning, but I never really notice anything.
I'm not a make-up kinda gal and my hairdresser always has to remind me that "I should really do something about those eyebrows." I've been told that I have nice skin. I like my green eyes. I think my nose is a bit big, but it was taken straight off my father's face, so I can't really do anything about that. I suppose I have an average sort of mouth. But I'm just not sure what all of these pieces add up to as a whole. And that's all just on my head. I only seem to look at myself in pieces. Smallish boobs, bit of a belly, a big puerto rican ass on top of some diesel thighs. But again, what does it all add up to?

I honestly surprise myself sometimes. On the brief walk that I have from my train to my building in the mornings, there's a ton of mirrored storefronts. And on the rare occasions where I happen to catch a glimpse of myself in one of these windows, I'm downright floored to find a full grown woman staring back at me. When did this happen? My minds' eye still sees my 18 year old image, and I seriously need to update that file, cause no way do I look like that anymore.

Maybe this is part of why my brain shoots itself down all the time. Because a part of me thinks that I'm still too young to handle things. But then, I've always been told I've got one of those old souls, wise beyond my years. Perhaps I really was wise at such a young age that no one took me seriously back then. So I censored myself in order to prevent ridicule and I've never stopped censoring. So maybe, if I can get my brain to realize that I'm almost 30, I'll finally think I'm old enough to handle myself.

Geez, I should start thinking about changing the name of this blog to something with "Therapy" in the title.

I'm really sick of hearing it.

- "You're not good enough to do that."
- "You're not cute enough to pull off that shirt."
- "You're not smart enough to speak your mind."
- "You have no right to say what you feel."
- "You're not pretty enough for anyone to notice you."
- "You'll never actually be able to write that book you want to."

It's all very insulting, isn't it? Especially when you take into consideration that all of this comes from within my own head.

I might just be the best self-defeater that I know. And no one else suspects a thing. Becuase no one sees it happen. I shoot myself down before an idea even has a chance to fully form itself. I suppose this could sound like a confidence issue, but here's the funny part. I KNOW that I'm smart enough, good enough. I just don't think that other people will agree with me.
Funny, right?

So, somewhere in my brain is such concern and fear over what others think of me, that you could almost call me conceited. Cause really, THAT many people care about what I say or do or look like?? I don't think so.
So I've got this viscous cycle going around. I'm aware that other people really don't give a fuck, yet I'm so concerned that they MIGHT care, that I prevent myself from doing anything to possibly draw thier attention. Still with me??

And who are these people, you ask? Fucked if I know.
So I'm essentially holding myself, my thoughts, my desires, my wants and my needs back in order to prevent the possible dislike of complete strangers? Check.

My god, I'm a fucking idiot. But I'm really getting sick of being an idiot. My brain (the dumb part, at least) needs to shut the hell up. I want to stop filtering and censoring myself and really be able to say all the things that I want to without giving myself a chance to shoot me down. I want to act on the impulses when they strike. I want to feel pretty enough to rock that shirt, Fashion Police be damned.

So you're done, Brain. I'm shutting your filters OFF, from now on.

Keep a lookout for a more impulsive me. And suck it if you don't like it.

And thank you for enduring this manic meta rant. I'm done now.

Names are really a funny sort of thing. Your parents give them to you, so you don't really have much say in the matter, but you have to deal with whatever name has been given to you for the rest of your life. For me, this has been a bit difficult. See, my mother named me Ryan. And yet I am female. The trouble with this name started on the day that I was born. The nurse who came to get my name, after being told "Ryan Patricia", put a hard look to my mother and asked her "You ARE aware that you've had a girl, right?" to which, of course, she replied Yes. She should've known then.

Ever since then, I have gone through a myriad of problems regarding my name. When I was young, it was just kids being evil kids and making fun because Ryan was supposed to be a boys name. I've been told that my mother must've REALLY wanted a boy, and that's why she named me that. Then when I moved into Junior High, I had the joy of being placed in boys gym three years in a row. I would always have to go and explain at the office that no, I was not, in fact a boy, and could I please be switched to girls gym. It just baffled me that they couldn't figure it out by my third year there. There were also people who, after asking my name and me telling them, looked at me funny and asked "Are you sure?" to which I had no other reply than "Are you SERIOUS?"

Then there was high school, which was sort of alright. I had been with a lot of the same kids since 1st grade by then and most people were used to me. I've since had some of these people tell me that they were taken aback later in life upon meeting boys named Ryan, because I had been the only Ryan they knew! My breaking point in high school, however, came from a substitute teacher in what was I think my freshman year. He was a sub, so of course, we were all slacking off and goofing around and sitting wherever we wanted. He got fed up with us and insisted we all sit in our assigned seats. He had the delaney book out and once we were all seated correctly, he went through attendance, checking us all off one by one. When he came to me, he looked at me, looked at the card again and said "Ryan E-------?" and I said "here". He then proceeded to grow thunderclouds for eyebrows and acidly asked me what I was trying to pull. I had no idea what he was talking about and said nothing. He then demanded that I go to my real seat and stop messing around and to tell him what my real name was immediately. I was on the verge of tears from getting yelled at like that and my classmates began to come to my rescue, telling him that Ryan really was my name. He still didn't believe me. He went so far as to call me up to the front of my class to write my name so he could match the handwriting on the delaney card. With the rest of the class upset with me at this point and shouting at him to leave me alone, he finally told me to go back to my seat and didn't apologize for being an ass.

I went home furious that day, screaming at my mother, asking her why she thought she had to make an example of me by giving me a weird name. I think that was the first time that I got away with cursing at my mother and not getting slapped, because she saw just how upset I was and that it was because of her that I was so upset. I had carried on so much that she actually agreed to let me legally change my name if I really wanted to. Upon hearing that, I was straight away to Barnes and Noble for a baby name book. I searched and searched and tried on different names. Could I be an Andrea, a Rachel, a Sarah? I walked around, poring over that book for three weeks and couldn't come up with a single name that I felt better suited to. So I guess I had resigned myself to a life lived a little more difficult than other people.

Now that I'm older, my name issues are still there, but they're a little more interesting. For instance, when I call my cable company to make changes to my account, they always inquire if they're speaking with Ryan's wife. I assure them that no, I am not Ryan's wife, but Ryan herself. Which often garners profuse apologies which I'm then able to turn into a bargaining chip of some kind. I think I got 3 free months of HBO cause of it once. I've been on several interviews in which the first words our of the interviewees mouth is "Oh, I was expecting a man." And this really baffles me, because I have intentionally put my middle name of Patricia on my resume. I went so far as to point that out to one potential employer and his reply was that he thought it was a typo for Patrick. I really had to hold my tongue then, because I wanted to ask him "And you called me back for an interview even after you thought I spelled my own name wrong?"

The kicker in all this, however, comes when you pair me up with Hungarian Hottie. Her first name is Ildiko, which is a very common Hungarian girls name and is repeatedly butchered by us dumb Americans. It is also often assumed to be a male name due to the O at the end. So imagine my surprise last year when I got a call from the receptionist at my GYN's office, laughing her head off. HH and I had been in for regular check-ups about a month prior. And my company is nice enough to offer domestic partner benefits so we are on the same health insurance. The receptionist said that they had put in our visit to the insurance and it had come back as rejected because they do not provide GYN services to men. The receptionist and I had already shared a laugh over the name debacle, so it was in good fun that she told me that was the first time they had had a claim rejected for those reasons. And you would not believe the hoops I had to jump through in order to get the insurance company to change our status to women! I had to send birth certificates, licenses, everything short of going down to the office and flashing them my tits and it STILL took them 3 more months to correct everything.

I suppose now that I'm old and wise, I don't mind my name so much anymore. Considering some of the names that are out there now, a female Ryan is hardly turning heads anymore. But I swear, if I ever hear "Are you sure?" again, heads will roll!

Ok, so I know I haven't posted in quite some time now. But life's been crazy and then there were the holidays and a million other excuses that I'm sure no one cares about. But in the last week or so, I've been spending a lot of time with my animals and figured, why not post about them?
So, without further ado, here are my children, in order of acquisition.

Official Name: Chadwick

Time of acquisition: June 2004
Age: 4.5
Nicknames: Fatboy, Chaddie-son, Chunkin, Wet-head, Panda and sometimes, Chunkinfatboy
Likes: Food, water, especially when run out of the faucet and onto his head, beating up his sister, gazing out the nearest available window, chewing on human hands and cheese
Dislikes: Being touched (most of the time), his sister, the vacuum
Special Talents: He has developed a method for conveying his needs to us in the middle of the night, by sitting on the toilet seat and using his powerful little nose to push up on the porcelain top of the toilet tank and letting it slam back down. Repeatedly. Until we get up to see what he wants, which is usually more water.

Official Name: Gia

Time of acquisition: July 2004
Age: 4.5
Nicknames: Mamagirl, Beautygirl, Gia-mummel, Mummels, Squirly and Schitzo
Likes: Rubbing her head on her mommies heads, cuddling, shrimp, Redbug (otherwise known as the laser pointer), sitting on the radiators and trying to trip you wherever you go
Dislikes: Loud or sudden noises of ANY kind, her brothers beating her up, doing anything you ask of her if she doesn't want to.
Special Talents: She is a master of escape. She somehow managed to navigate her way out of our house, onto our second floor porch and down to the ground level without injury. She is also the only one to successfully fly across the seven feet between our porch and the next door neighbors, which are both about 20 feet off the ground. If I didn't see it with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it.

Official Name: Tucclli (pronounced Tootsley), Hungarian word for "Milk Sucker"

Time of acquisition: August 2006
Age: 2.5
Nicknames: Tootsala, Tootsie, Toots, Snow Leopard, Purring Machine and Tootsle-butt
Likes: Milk, any dairy product containing milk, playing with his stuffed monkey, purring, rolling on the floor to kill you with his cuteness and milk.
Dislikes: Being cold (he actually shivers), toothpaste, getting told no.
Special Talents: Locating milk. No matter how quiet you may pour yourself a bowl of cereal, or how deeply asleep he may be while you do so, once you sit down to actually eat it, he will miraculously appear next to you, trying to get his face in your bowl.

Official Name: Wormies (1000 of them)

Time of acquisition: June 2008
Age: 1 month to a year, depending on worm
Nicknames: Garbage Disposal
Likes: Eating Garbage, climbing up the walls of their home, and darkness
Dislikes: Onions of any kind as well as tomato skins
Special Talents: Turning my kitchen refuse into "black gold" fertilizer. Yes, I am vermicomposting in my home.

Official Name: Master

Time of acquisition: August 2008
Age: About 6 months
Nicknames: Master-Beta. he he he
Likes: Swimming in circles, eating, creating beautiful bubble nests for his babies
Dislikes: Anytime we disturb his bamboo plants, cause it messes up his bubble nests
Special Talents: Um, bubble nests?

Official Name: Hercules

Time of acquisition: December 2008
Age: approximately 1.5
Nicknames: Goldfish murderer
Likes: Turtle pellets, goldfish, swimming backwards (I swear) and his ceramic turtle friend who lives in the tank with him (though we suspect he might like his friend a little TOO much, if ya know what I mean).
Special Talents: I'm gonna go with swimming backwards

Official Name: Either Tweety or Kid - to be determined

Time of acquisition: January 16, 2009
Age: We're thinking 7-8 months
Nicknames: Baby, Tricky
Likes: Sleeping, being held, purring, cuddling, chasing paper balls and trying to play with the other cats who want nothing to do with him yet
Dislikes: Haven't really found any yet but he will probably not like having his balls removed very much.
Special Talents: Making noises on a decibel level that would make most dogs cry. He sounds like a bird.


So those are my children. They alternately drive me insane and then keep me sane. It's a catch 22, but I love em!

Author's note: I have no idea what the problem with the hugeness of these photos is, but I can't seem to fix it. I guess we'll just have to deal.

Sometimes in life, there are certain people you meet who you just can’t wrap your head around. Like they are so off-kilter that you’re not quite sure how they’re managing to live amongst the rest of us comfortably. Like, shouldn't they seek out their fellow weirdoes (yes, this is the correct spelling for the plural of weirdo) while having contests to see who can be the most outlandish and eccentric or something, right?

Wrong.

I have one of these at my job. I don’t really have any function to actually deal with her on a work level, but she sits in the same area as me and I just can’t help but notice her. I’m only in this building roughly once a week so these observations have taken place over quite a span of time and I was finally given the inspiration I needed by another coworker of mine when she said to me “She might be the biggest weirdo ever. You might have to blog about her.” The universe biffed me in the head and I thought, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

So that brings us here. Of course we’ll have to name her so I’m going to go with Crazy Cat Lady or CCL for short. (I swear to god, she just burst out into a fit of hysterical giggles as I’m typing this. I hope she’s not psychic.) So CCL is, of course, obsessed with her cats. All four of them. One of which is one of those freaky little hairless things and of course, this one is her favorite. Or, “My baaaayyyyyybeeeeeee!!” as she loves to squeal. Now, I have three cats myself, but I also am able to hold down a life outside of my furry creatures. CCL? Not so much. If you so much as mention an animal in her pressence, you will automatically be subject to a photo album of her babies and thier various personality traits.

I realize that being bohemian and artsy is sort of in style and cool right now, but she’s outside that realm. This woman is somewhere in her late thirties, lives alone save for her four precious shnookums and rides a bicycle with a basket on the front of it to work. I wonder where she parks that bad boy. I’ll have to take a look around the parking lot when I leave.
She has hair that’s longer than any self respecting woman in her thirties should really be wearing it, and she’s recently adorned herself with rhinestone encrusted cat-eye glasses a la Lisa Loeb circa 1994’s “Stay (I missed you)” video. Her desk has been thoroughly decorated with a veritable sea of unnecessary crap including a wooden snake figurine perched precariously atop her computer monitor, juggling balls, a tiny globe, a bamboo lamp, several different kinds of rocks, carpet samples, a silver RV figurine circa 1959 and a pink construction helmet. I mean, we work for an investment bank, not Miss Cleo’s Tarot Card Readings, at which job I would assume this desk decoration would be commonplace. I and a few other coworkers have also witnessed, on several different occasions, her eating honey with a spoon straight out of the jar whilst staring off into space in front of her computer.

She also has several different voices. I have heard her speak in a normal tone of voice on one rare occasion so I know that she is capable of it, but she very rarely uses that one. I really thank god that she chose cats over dogs, because the voice in which she normally speaks would drive any dog in a three mile radius absolutely insane. It’s this extremely high pitched annoying voice that’s normally associated with equally annoying Saturday morning cartoon shows like Spongebob Squarepants or high school girls from the Valley. How she conducts business like this is absolutely beyond me. She also giggles uncontrollably at the drop of a hat in a similarly annoying way. Her giggle actually uses the syllables “hee hee hee” in rapid high pitched succession.

Now today, I’m at the same location as her and I generally keep to myself and just do whatever it is that I’m doing, but I just couldn’t help overhearing her popping up over her cubicle wall and asking one of the guys she works with if he happens to have any lighter fluid. Rightfully so, the coworker asks her what she needs it for. She says, “Oh, I’m trying to get these stickers off of the side of my computer and I just thought I’d use lighter fluid.” I’ll let that one sink in.

So they proceed to have a conversation on what the best method to remove said stickers would be and he’s trying to convince her that maybe Windex or alcohol can do the trick. But no. She’s quite insistent upon the lighter fluid. I’m wondering if she’s maybe finally had enough and she’s planning on blowing up the building using lighter fluid and sticker friction. Thank god no one carries lighter fluid around in their pockets anymore.

So I am a walking wardrobe malfunction today.

I think my brain shut itself off and laughed it's ass off at me while dressing this morning.
As my wife was dropping me off at the ferry, I'm getting out of the van and realize that I have left my cell phone home. Strike 1.

So ok, I can live for a day without a cell phone. I'm reading my book on the ferry and it occurs to me that something feels a little different on my body. I for some reason feel like my bra is not doing it's job properly. So I discreetly reach in to adjust my strap only to realize that I have not actually put on a bra at all today. Strike 2.
How does this happen??? I've been wearing a bra pretty much every day of my life for the last 15 years and today, my brain says "Let my boobies go!"

But the bra is apparently NOT the kicker here. I go to the bathroom once I get to work and when I go to zip up my fly, I realize that the zipper has done that retarded thing where you think it's working properly but what should be closed is really not. So I have to have a fight with my fly in the ladies room. I actually utter "Are you KIDDING me?!?" out loud. Thank god I was alone. Strike 3.

And on that note, I'm going home.

So I remember being in my late teens and starting to notice that "older people" (you know, like, in their late 20's and such. Ahem.) were always listening to the music that they listened to in their teens. Like my parents and aunts and uncles were always rocking out to Pink Floyd, The Doors, Led Zeppelin and even some Grand Master Flash thrown in for good measure. Even older siblings of my friends were all into Debbie Gibson and Metallica and always had that stuff on in their cars when they were forced to pick us teens up from one practice or another. And I remember thinking to myself that I'd never be "one of those". That I would always stay up on whatever the newest cool stuff available was.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Joke's on me. Cause yesterday, as I'm driving home from my oh-so-boring late 20's job, I found myself incessantly pressing skip on my ipod for all the new supposedly cool songs of the present in favor of the stuff I listened to in, you guessed it, high school. I mean, I was bringing out the old school No Doubt, 311, Third Eye Blind, Ben Folds Five, Fiona Apple, Poe, Fugees and Natalie Imbruglia and even some out of the college mix like Jack Johnson, G Love & Special Sauce, Incubus and Stroke 9. Jill Sobule's "I kissed a girl" was even in there and it pains me that the teens of today only know the not-so-homo-friendly "I kissed a girl" a la Katy Perry and not the wonderful original circa 1995 that helped me become the good lesbian I am today.

So it's official. I've become "that girl" I said I'd never become. Now that I am one of them, I feel comfortable in giving my analysis as to why this phenomenon happens. I think it's because those few years between say 16 and 23 are those times where you have the most freedom, yet the least responsibilities, thereby making it the most FUN time in your whole damn life. And fun, in a general sort of sense, is very often accompanied by good music. So therefore, whenever you hear these songs, it brings you back to those good times in your head. And even though we'll never get those times back, we'll always have their music to take us back, at least figuratively.

What do you think? And what are your favorite teen songs?