Cuando Los Lagartijos Corren, Tiger.

When I was a teenager, I fell in love with the book "Tiger Eyes" by Judy Blume.

The exact copy I owned.  Cover's not great.  

Every time I looked at it, I reflected on the horribleness of that blouse.

"Tiger Eyes" is the story of Davey Wexler, a teenage girl whose family life is completely overturned by the sudden death of her father.  Early in the book, after trying and failing to cope with normal life while grieving, Davey, her mother, and her little brother Jason uproot from their home of Atlantic City to live with Davey's aunt and uncle in Los Alamos, New Mexico.  

Frustrated with the sudden move and needing to get out of the restrictive embrace of her extended family, Davey takes a bike ride to a local canyon where she decides to hike by herself.  Here she meets a college-aged American Indian guy who tells her that he knows she is not a hiker based on her shoe choice and the fact that she did not bring water with her.  He leads her out of the canyon and when she asks him for his name he tells her that she can call him "Wolf".  Asked whether this is a first or last name, he replies with "Neither."  He asks for her name and she tells him to call her "Tiger" and that it is also neither a first nor a last name.

Over the course of a school year, Davey meets and befriends others- Jane is her closest friend at the local high school who is sweet, a little immature, and drinks more than she should; Mr. Ortiz is a sweet, funny elderly patient staying in the hospital where she volunteers as a candy striper.  She also deals with the extremely difficult relationship she has with her aunt and uncle, who are well-meaning but extremely over-protective in a way that is both stifling and completely unimpeded by Davey's mother, who is too mired up in her grief to check in with her kids.  

As the year progesses, Davey and Wolf's relationship does develop romantically, but more significantly in terms of the support that they offer each other.  Wolf lets her be herself, does not ask too many questions about her past, and shares his canyons with her.  Davey is also a great friend to Wolf during difficult family times of his own.

Tiger Eyes has romantic elements to it, but never completely jumped into being a true teen romance, because it was more about dealing with the loss of a loved one and the changes it brings.  As a teenager, I liked the fact that Davey had other things on her mind besides boys, and that the one boy that WAS on her mind, was a Native character who was not a stereotype or mysticist but a thoughtful, compassionate, extremely intelligent person with a lot of empathy.  Also- let's face it, I had a massive literary crush on Wolf, who I was convinced looked just like Adam Beach during his finest hour in "Dance Me Outside":

Frank Fencepost is my lover, ya'all.

Tiger Eyes became a book that I read at least annually for most of my teenage years until, either because of a move or a pet accident, my copy was lost to me.  Given my history with/love of the book, I was not pleased with the development but also sort of moved on and forgot about it.

Fast forward to my early 20s.  My mother (who lives for her three things: family, art, and thrift-store shopping) came home from a garage sale with a really cool looking older book.  It was a library hardback without a dust cover that had been repaired several times, it was the right size, and I thought, absolutely gorgeous.  She handed it to me and said, "I remembered that you liked Judy Blume as a kid, so I picked this up for you.  Have you read this one?" And so it was that Davey and Wolf re-entered my life and I went on annual visits to the canyons with them.  

Fast forward again to a few years ago, when I found out that they were making a movie of "Tiger Eyes".  I was convinced that there was no other possibility for me but to love it because I would finally see my characters embodied by actual people.  When I found out that it was being directed by Judy Blume's son and that she would be producing it, I was elated.  I was still high on the amazing experience of the film version of "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and the effect of its author's influence (and its ability to take away the crippling fear of Ezra Miller that I had after watching "We Need to Talk About Kevin".)

It was a while before I heard anything else about the movie.  Apparently it opened at a film festival and on VOD but never widely in theaters (a huge mistake on the film industry's part, in my opinion).  A couple of weeks ago, I decided to check and see when it was coming out on DVD.  To my surprise, it had already been released and was available for the low price of $5 from an online-bookstore-name-redacted Marketplace seller (plus S&H).  Small price to pay for great joy, I figured.  

My copy came in the mail last weekend.  The cover of the DVD looked a little like a Lifetime Movie which was disheartening, but I was prepared to overlook that in favor of the actual movie being good.

Davey is melancholy because her mother put the ix-nay on sleeping with danger.

I spent all of this week putting off watching the movie for, you know, reasons- I was tired from work.  I was not in the mood to watch something that was going to make me cry.  I was in the middle of a mediocre book and wanted to get it finished first.  I think the real reason though, was that I was not yet ready to deal with the possibility that anything about the movie might be bad.  "Tiger Eyes" was sacred in my personal canon and I was not ready to have it marred by anything.

I finally sat down to watch it last night, and to my very great relief it was wonderful.  Not perfect, but definitely wonderful.

The actress that they chose to play Davey was not without her quirks (she tended to talk with her jaw clenched shut for some reason), but she was a very good choice for the role.  She managed to pull off sad but not pathetic, and weakened by grief but still strong.  Also- for a movie with "eyes" in the title, she was capable of using them to portray complex emotion, which is something that not every young actress can do.  

(Could name names, but why give bad actors MORE press?) 

The actor they chose to play Wolf was both beautiful and extremely engaging in his portrayal of one of my favorite literary characters, so I was thrilled.  He was also actually Native which was extremely heartening given the portrayal of Natives by Western film and television.  I know I, and many other people in Indian Country, experienced a big pop cultural disappointment when the role of Jacob Black from "Twilight"- arguably the biggest role for an American Indian actor of the last several years- went to a kid who frequently proclaimed that although he was extremely dark-skinned, he was just a pigmentally anomalous descendant of the standard mess of European countries every other white person claims.  Wolf being played by a Native actor- Tatanka Means if you want to look him up- was sort of an enormously big deal for me and I am happy they found such a wonderful young actor to do it.  (I am not alone in this opinion.)

More strongly represented in the book than the movie, I was also over-the-moon to find that the depiction of Wolf's culture was not only respectful but really beautiful as well. I am not Tewa, so I don't know their teachings or practices, but it was very evident from the way that they were represented that the filmmaker consulted with southwestern Native people to show that appropriate respect was given to representing the culture and people (who, by the way, were all played by Native actors.)  This movie also has the distinction of being the first time I have ever seen a film directed by a non-Native director that did not make me extremely anxious when it came time to depict a ceremony or dancing.  I cannot underscore how big of a deal that is.  One of the best examples I have ever seen of how Native cultures SHOULD be portrayed in film.

Do I think I would enjoy this movie so much if the book had not been my favorite as a kid?  Probably not.  Davey's mom IS played by the Pink Ranger after all (or Julie from "Felicity"- pick your favorite annoying role).  Also, although the film was extremely strong in relating Davey and Wolf with one another, the performances by the other actors were a little wooden and their presence in the same film as the two wonderful leads (and the amazing Russel Means who sadly died shortly after the film was made) was jarring at times.  The actress that played Jane was my least favorite part of the film as it appears as though she did not get the memo that despite the poster, they were not going forward with the Lifetime movie angle, and played her character's alcoholism with all the melodrama and crocodile tears appropriate to that type of vehicle.  Still- the wonderful parts were wonderful enough to outweigh the bad for me, so I am happy that I watched it.

I have so much to thank Judy Blume for- getting me through fourth grade; making me realize that although my first periods were bad, they could have been worse (Margaret had to wear pads attached to a BELT!); and helping me realize being chubby, stinks but is not the end of the world.  Most of all, I am just grateful to her for telling me a story that has resonated with me for most of my life, and then deciding to breathe new life and experience into it via film.  Judy's my girl.

Oh- and in case you were wondering, here's the trailer for the movie:

Luke I am either your father or I have whooping cough...

I promised that I would start to journal more for the benefit of long-distance friends but then promptly found something shiny to play with.  Sorry guys.  I'll learn me one of these days.

I am on my first semi-healthy day after a week and a half of being incredibly sick.  Hooray!  If you are at all familiar with the maths of calendars, you will notice that means that I was sick on Thanksgiving. There's something poetic about Indians getting sick on Thanksgiving (warning signs, perhaps?), but I am still a little too drugged up to look for a strong connection. 

Understanding how I was sick requires a little explanation.  See, I have a group of nieces and nephews that I am convinced are actually Delorean-assisted transplants from 1845 because they get the absolute WEIRDEST diseases. A couple of years ago they had an outbreak of scarlett fever in their family.  Who gets scarlett fever aside from characters in "The Crucible"?  No one, that's who.  This year, their glamorous disease of choice is whooping cough, which was pernicious enough to cycle its way through all of the kids in their family and then hop the rails to my father (who watches them after school).  Side note: All of this seems to imply that their mother is some Jenny McCarthy freak who never let her kids see the business end of an innoculation, but this is simply not true.  She is a mindful parent who immunizes her children and sticks to regimented booster schedules.  And she doesn't even like "The View", so there you have it.

After my father being ill for the better part of the month (poor Dad), I finally picked up the disease and got really sick on Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  As you can imagine, this did not bode well for calling in to my new job.  I imagined how it would look to my employer: "Hi!  I am so sick *fake cough, fake cough* and need an extra day off before Thanksgiving.  BTW- I have allergies that are going to kick up on the Thursday and Friday after Christmas and will have cramps the whole week of New Year's."  Still, every time that I coughed, I got dizzy and almost passed out, which I suspected may be an indication of my inability to perform my job to the best of my ability, so I knew I had to call in sick.  This suspicion was confirmed when I nearly sent the following email to my boss:

Pete, 

I am sorry, but I will not be able to come in today as the cough I have been struggling with all-week has developed into a really bad cold.

Thanks,

Pete

I will not lie that my finger was over the "Send" button and ready to click before it even registered that I might be in danger of sending poor Pete into an existential crisis if I did not fix the signature.  The day just got worse from there.

There's really not a whole lot interesting about being sick, so I will not bore you with the snotty details, aside from to say that on Thanksgiving, I coughed so much and so hard that I threw out my back.  Do you want to know how much you have to cough in order to throw out your back?  A LOT is how much.  Thanksgiving dinner for the whole family was Progresso chicken soup (of which I mostly ate just broth) and some pop-canister biscuits that were way more delicious than their $0.99 price tag implied.  It was just a miserable day for everyone.

The next several days were spent primarily in bed with a few pop culture highlights:

1) I had saved some money so I could do some online shopping on Black Friday because I do not believe in bleeding for bargains.  I got a lot of stuff that I wanted for about 1/4 of the price, so I was quite happy.  One could posit that I probably should have spent some of that cheddar on gifts for friends and family for Christmas, but I plead that I was sick and not thinking properly and wanting all the things ala a frenetic Allie Brosch cartoon.  What I am trying to say is that you are all getting dollar store candy canes with bows on them for X-mas.

2) I watched the mid-season finale of "The Walking Dead" and need THER-A-PY afterward.  WHERE IS THE BABY, KIRKMAN?  WHERE IS THE BABY???!!!!!

3) I started JK Rowling's clever little pseudonym book that I purchased last month when I was at Powells, in a hurry, and needing to spend money I got from selling other books.  Side note: twenty minutes after I left the store, I remembered that I still did not own the Jim Henson biography that I was dying to read. ::facepalm::  It's pretty decent.  I mean, it is not crazy good, but it is definitely entertaining and engaging.  I imagine that this must be what she does to relax instead of playing Candy Crush.  Damn, smart people.

4) The fulfillment room at Amazon must be INSANE in the hours following Black Friday because they both forgot that I was not a Prime customer and that I did not pay for a DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack of "This is the End".  The result was that I ended up getting my purchases after only a two day wait and with a lovely little cereal prize in the box.

Last night I watched Amazon's accidental recommendation and LUUUUVED it.  I should say that I love Apatow movies like "This is the End" not for the big laughs but for the smaller moments that are just ridiculous.  Seth Rogen smoking a Gandalf pipe- "Hello young hobbit!  I am a well-known homosexual advocate."  The fact that Michael Cera is a ridiculous and obnoxious coked-out party kid WEARING A WINDBREAKER.  Jason Segel bemoaning his crap work on a wildly successful TV show.  Paul Rudd running down the street losing his shit like a girl while carrying a comically oversized bottle of champagne.  Also, one of the demons looked like one of the Beasts of Gozer from "Ghostbusters", so of course, I was all in.  I could have done without pretty much any scene with Danny McBride (5 minutes fighting about jizz?  Really?), but then there would be no amazing Channing Tatum cameo, so I guess you take the Magic Mike with the bad.

I don't really have a clever way to end this entry, so instead I will just encourage everyone to take their vitamins; drink lots of fluids; and if you have children in your life, please seal yourself up in a hyperbaric chamber unless you want to get consumption. 

Can't decide if I am a Walter or a Jack....

So. 

Back in Eugene.  The city of grocery store-derived contact highs and protests with actual commercial sponsors.  I am back and it is apparently for realsies now.  Well, I mean, I have a good-paying job and I really don't want to start looking for another one any time soon.  So if you want to call that "back for realsies", then sure, I guess I am.

Since this is mainly a way to keep updated my friends who are wondering where I have been since I fell off the earth in October 2012, I figure that it is best to just dive into what's going on here now.  I used to post to an online journal and was thinking about reviving it for public consumption, but there's a bunch of stuff on there that I don't want to share with everyone because it is personal, and old, and I don't even feel that way about cargo capris and Ashanti anymore, so I wanted a new start.  So here's hoping this entertains the masses (aka, the eight people I know will have an interest in reading this) and provides me with an outlet for dealing with all that goes into being home again, home again (jiggedy-jig).

In order to understand this, I have to go back to when I quit my last job.  For five years, I had been working for a national non-profit whose intent was to save the children by killing the adults that worked for them.  Over the course of the time I spent there, I had gone through a period of significant furlough because they lost their funding, was routinely told to lie on my timesheet about doing contracted work that I had never even heard of so that they could get their money, was yelled at for doing my job according to how my supervisor requested it, and was more or less continuously told that I was not doing enough to justify their keeping me (even though I was filling the roles of 2.5 employees).  I finally just mentally checked out on them when they put 1/4 of a long-delayed merit-bonus that should have been paid out in July inside of a Christmas card that they distributed at the holiday party and then acted like I was supposed to be so grateful for this "gift".  Sadly, I am dysfunctional enough that I kept working there for another nine months after checking out.  Yeah, I am that girl.

It is worth noting that right before I quit, I was experiencing so much stress at work that it was tsunami-ing me personally.  I was losing hair, gaining weight at the rate of Violet Beauregarde transitioning into a blueberry, and daily wishing to get into a non-fatal car wreck on my way to work so that I could collect temporary disability and get a long break from all of the other balding, fattening, unhappy people that I worked with.  I developed a phobia around leaving my house for anything but work and take-out food.  I shut up the windows for MONTHS at a time and refused to interact with anyone but my cats.  It was both a literally and figuratively dark period in my life.  Had I been observed by Gollum from "Lord of the Rings" at that time, I fear that his clinical opinion of my situation would have been, "Bitch got proooob-lems..."

By the end of September, things were the worst that they had ever been and after a particularly degrading incident with my boss, my brain finally hit the extremely dusty "NO MORE" button and I knew I had to get out.  Because they were good enough to be fantastically terrible to me right before I left, I felt no guilt whatsoever about coming in the Monday after making my decision to pack all of my personal items, print out my letter of resignation, and play video games at my desk until the time that I had scheduled to leave.  I left copies of the letter- which told them that I was leaving effective immediately- in the box of the HR person (with my parking pass and door key binder clipped to the outside as an addition F.U.) and the second-in-command of the organization and walked out the door with the first legitimate smile on my face in almost two years.

This liberating smile was short-lived however, because eventually it sunk in that I was now SUPER-unemployed.  (Didn't anyone tell you that you cannot quit and collect unemployment, Laurie?)  With the exception of a three-week data-entry job that was so boring it gave me a tic just under my right eyebrow and a one-day temp job with a fancy architecture firm, I stayed unemployed for the next 54 weeks.  This is exactly as awesome as it sounds.

That year had ups and downs.  Big ups: Learned how wonderful my good friends and family were, re-connected with both my faith and spiritual life, discovered Doctor Who.  Big downs: Suffered soul-crippling depression while at the same time menstruating for FIVE CONTINUOUS MONTHS during which time I was convinced I was dying because I could not go afford to go to the doctor because I had no insurance.  (Side note: Ordinarily, I like to remain coy about my menses but given the fact that it was five months and an enormous part of what made that part of the year suck, I feel it deserved a mention.  It is hoped that the men-folk will forgive me.  I will wait until you get done vomiting to continue.) 

At the end of the year, I came out stronger for the experience, but I still wish that I could have learned all of this through an after-school special or a Lifetime movie-of-the-week instead of how I did.  May sound ungrateful, but you try having your period for five months and then tell me how you feel about the benefits of adversity. (Sorry men- last mention of Aunt Flo, I promise.)

It should be noted that during this year, I was applying for jobs (although I am not going to lie, the rate of applications per week varied A LOT).  The continuous rejection was no bueno for fighting off the aforementioned crippling depression and really took its emotional toll.  Every time I got an email that started, "We interviewed many qualified applicants, and unfortunately...", all I heard was, "You suckety suck.  We know that 'suckety' is not technically a word, but we decided that the perameters of the English language were not sufficient to contain our feelings about how much you suck and it necessitated the invention of new words."  Luckily, I had developed skills for coping with the depression that was associated this type of rejection...which is another story that is titled, "How I watched all four of the Tenth Doctor seasons of 'Doctor Who' in two weeks". (Hey, I didn't say they were GOOD coping skills.)

So, how did I get to this better place with a job I actually like, you may ask?  Well....I am not rightly sure.  I know there was a lot of prayer involved, in addition to a complete forfeiture of any degree of professional pride that I may have possessed ever.  Really, this is all just a long way of saying I got the job through Craigslist.

Seriously- Craigslist.  One sunny Wednesday afternoon when I was still in my pajamas and rocking a Not Showered in Four Days Ponytail and the accompanying Unbrushed Teeth of Self-Respect, I realized that if I could not find anyone to hire me full-time, maybe I needed to start looking for something part-time.  Completely spent with InDeed, Monster, CareerBuilder, and the parking lot of Home Depot, I put exactly five minutes of effort into my search by typing in "part-time jobs" into the Craigslist search box and scanning through the dregs of what was available and soul-crushing in Eugene. Among the ubiquitous $10/hour "We can't afford a real bookkeeper, so we are hoisting it on our admin!" positions, there was a really non-descript ad that said they wanted someone for project work that had strong skills in InDesign (which I have) and did not ask for a cover letter asking me to explain why administrative work was the culmination of all my childhood princess dreams (which I appreciated).  I prayed that the job was not putting together take-away brochures for conferences of the adult entertainment industry and sent my resume to the anonymous employer.

What followed was an uninteresting whirlwind of interviews, follow-up calls, and people telling me for one of the first times in my professional career, "Wow.  You are really incredible."  I kept looking behind me to see who they were talking to, but apparently it was me.  At the end of about two weeks, I had a part-time job as a Project Administrator for a local engineering firm.

I have now worked there for a month, during which time I have learned the following:

1. Engineers are really, really awkward, but for the most part, really nice and pretty drama-free.
2. People in my office are ridiculously obsessed with "The Walking Dead" which is ironic because I am currently having a real difficult time getting it up for that show and its complete lack of anything good happening for any of its main characters. EVER.  (I mean, throw them a bone, let them find a candy factory or SOMETHING.)
3. Despite the smaller paychecks, going to work at noon is really glorious.  When I am feeling ambitious, I use the morning to work out, listen to a meditation CD, pray, and read scripture.  On not-so-ambitious mornings I can use the time to catch up on my DVR and laze in my bed with my adorable kittehs.  I am not going to report on the proportion of ambitious to non-ambitious mornings because either way, it is a win.
4. There is a chance that I may kill the guy that sits at the desk behind me.  Or marry him.  Or both.  I really cannot be sure.

I feel really blessed for having gotten this job because it is just the right fit for me at the right time and has a LOT of long-term potential.  They like me enough that, after me coming to them and saying that I would like this to turn into full-time work sometime in the next year, they agreed without even having to think about it.  There is also a darkly amusing blessing associated with this job: the starting pay rate for this job in what is essentially administrative support is approximately $0.32 per hour less than my starting managerial rate at the dungeon from "American Horror Story" non-profit, making my new mantra, "Go corporate or go home."

Where I am now:
Things are looking up.  The job has helped with this A LOT. 

I have long felt that while it is true that money cannot buy happiness, no money buys sadness in bulk.  Being able to take care of myself and having not having to rely as much on others is really nice, and I am looking forward to the time when I can have my own home and dishes and stuff again. 

Also- being single, a lot of my sense of purpose gets derived from having a job because that's most of what I am right now.  Without debating whether or not that type of thinking is healthy, it makes me feel really good to be what I consider a purposeful adult again.  It also gives me a reason to put on pants everyday, which is something that I really need in my life so that things do not descend into complete pants-less anarchy.

The only thing that I am not sure about is Eugene itself, which goes back to my reason for starting this blog. 

I left Eugene in 2006 convinced that I would never return to a city that I felt was rife with so much hypocrisy.  I grew up in a place that is supposedly all about peace and love and acceptance of everyone, but has this dark side of enormous divisions between people based on money, race (where there actual were people of color present- this town is white as hell), and class.  Returning seven years later to find that the city now hosts both the largest homeless camps and most extravagantly lavish student athletic centers in the Pacific Northwest does nothing to make me feel better about this culturally accepted hypocrisy.

But there ARE good things about being here, and I want to be able to remind myself of that so that I do not continually focus on what is really far beyond my control.  The fact that my total time in transit to and from work is 1/3 of what it was in Portland is a good thing.  I can find an amazing burrito made by people from Mexico who own their own businesses, and not some vegan hipsters who use TVP instead of meat, which is also pretty wonderful.  There are all sorts of gorgeous forested bike/ped paths that put anything that Portland has to shame.  People here over the age of 25 seem to understand the universal truth that "skinny jeans are not made for you", and that makes me happy.

So, this blog is about giving Eugene a second chance and reminding myself that it is okay to go back to where you came from with dignity.  Oh- and it is also for complaining about young whipper-snappers with their Gagas and wrecking balls, because when it comes down to it, I am and will cheerfully remain a grumpy old man. (See title of this entry.)