doldrums

\DOHL-drumz\

noun

1 : a spell of listlessness or despondency
2 often capitalized : a part of the ocean near the equator abounding in calms, squalls, and light shifting winds
3 : a state or period of inactivity, stagnation, or slump

i have to confess that i experience being in the state of DOLDRUMS (doldrumsness?) on a regular basis. it was much worse in my childhood, especially on saturday mornings when the weekend loomed in front of me—48 hours that i had to somehow fill with something.

this restlessness always made me think that i was a boring person. last summer i read a book by Lars Svendsen, A Philosophy of Boredom, that told me otherwise. Lars assured me that restlessness is a symptom of an existential crisis, experienced most often by those searching for a greater meaning. it amuses me that deciding, out of boredom, to clean my mother's entire bathroom using my brothers' shaving cream could have actually been a quest for deeper answers.

adulthood has not granted me immunity to this restlessness. why, i just experienced the DOLDRUMS this past tuesday! i had a full day off, so much free time to do whatever i wanted. i had plenty of things to fill the time, namely piles of schoolwork. but i still felt that plague of listlessness, the urge to continue looking at the clock thinking, are you serious? only seven minutes have passed? every action feels like a desperate attempt to pass the time. it's a special kind of impatience that is not present under regular circumstances. and there is no cure. i just wait until the day is over so i can go to sleep.

i'm seeing a theme here...winter DOLDRUMS, CANICULAR summer days...perhaps mirriam-webster is trying to comment on a culture of boredom. i hesitate to search for a pattern in a mostly random selection of words, even though i'm quite sure that it's some guy's job to pick these words and email them daily to vocabulary-challenged people like myself.

triskaidekaphobia

\triss-kye-dek-uh-FOH-bee-uh\

noun

: fear of the number 13

mirriam-webster does this sometimes—they pick a word that has a special significance on that day. as in, today is january 13th. wow.

since this blog is about honesty, i cannot say that i have TRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA. but if there were a word for the belief in the general significance of a certain number, that may be more applicable.

for some time (maybe still? maybe?) i believed that the number 13 1/2 had a significance in my romantic life. this is for three reasons:

1) i was 13 1/2 years old when my first love, brian, died

2) billy corgan, my high-school fantasy love, was (is) 13 1/2 years older than me. almost exactly.

3) josh, my first boyfriend and BFF, is 13 1/2 months younger than me.

i was really pushing for this to be significant. but it kind of stopped there.

i also have special connections with the number 16 (my birthday), the number 67 (this number is just incredibly aesthetically pleasing to me), and although i claim to no longer be superstitious, i still make a wish when the clock reads 3:33 or 5:55, etc. it's especially exciting that my cell phone shows military time—it's like a whole new set of superstitions when the clock says 16:16. weird.

suborn

\suh-BORN\

verb

1 : to induce secretly to do an unlawful thing

2 : to induce to commit perjury; also : to obtain (perjured testimony) from a witness

in junior high school, i was extremely mischievous. i'm not really sure what the motivation was for this. i don't really feel like i wanted attention—my mother turned her head to most of my mischief and/or volunteered to be an accomplice. i think i was trying to define myself. i was trying to break free from the passive, shy childhood that i lead, and prove (to whom, i'm not sure) that i could be bad. that i was not to be underestimated.

my partner in crime was katy, who i think at an earlier point was my nemesis. katy and i didn't seem to get along in elementary school; she was kind of a know-it-all, and i was annoyed by her incessant self-declarations. but in seventh grade we formed a bond out of a common distaste toward a mutual friend: samantha. in addition to being a know-it-all, samantha was also a better-than-thou and a jewish princess. one night (on a long walk collecting non-perishables for our school's canned food drive, of all things) katy and i mutually decided to ruin samantha's life by letting her long-time crush, lee, know her true feelings.

i will not go into all of the gory details of these endeavors, but i will describe one event that is actually relevant to this blog. one weekend katy and i SUBORNED her younger brother joey with two butterfinger candy bars to call a list of boys from our school and leave messages on their answering machines inviting them to sam and lee's wedding. the following monday was pretty wretched. i'm not sure if i was capable of feeling guilt at that age—i think i really believed she deserved it. it was pretty horrible.

samantha, where ever you are, i am truly sorry. and i'm glad things never worked out between you and lee, because he was kind of a sketchy dude, and i know you probably did a lot better.

pied-a-terre

\pee-ay-duh-TAIR\

noun

: a temporary or second lodging

i was forced to take french for the entirety of elementary school. in sixth grade, before entering middle school, we were given a choice between french and spanish for the remainder of our school years. i chose french for two reasons:

1) i figured that since i already knew so much of it, i may as well pick up where i left off, and

2) this know-it-all girl ANNE, whom i really disliked, gave this preachy speech about how EVERYONE should take

spanish because of the growing hispanic population in our country. i also chose french to spite her.

i hate preachers.

some of my mom's friends have a PIED-A-TERRE in seattle, which is really convenient for me because they once gave my mom the key and offered us the use of their downtown apartment—a small space on the 22nd floor of a high-rise near the market. we were told to lie to the doorman and say we were their cousins so it didn't seem suspicious, but i kept forgetting their hyphenated last name (printz-kupeler? prince-kupelman? prinz-coppola?) so my mom had to do all the talking.

the male half of the hyphen (not sure which) is apparently really fascinated with holocaust literature and film; the apartment, otherwise barren, boasted at least six shelves worth of books and vhs tapes dedicated to this topic. i fell asleep on the fold-out sofa to some sub-par adaptation of the diary of anne frank.

there were also three two-liter bottles of DIET DR. PEPPER on their kitchen counter. this is the soda that might be offered to me in a game of would you rather. like, would you rather eat all of the bum-poo off of the burnside bridge or drink a tall, cool glass of DIET DR. PEPPER.

we only stayed for one night, but it was grand. staying in other people's PIED-A-TERREs is like pretending to be rich for a night. that was the first and only time in my life that i had a doorman. he was nice. i can't remember his name, but he recommended a good mexican restaurant.

je n'aime pas ANNE ou DIET DR. PEPPER. la. je l'ai dit.

cosmeticize

\kahz-MET-uh-syze\

verb

: to make (something unpleasant or ugly) superficially attractive

this word conjures up more memories of experience than it does of people or objects. the phrase, "come on, it's gonna be fun, i promise," seems to have proceeded many of my most unbearable nights ever. not that the speaker intended to candy-coat what would inevitably been a horrible experience, but more that i really wanted to believe it was going to be better than i anticipated.

one such experience that comes to mind is the first and only school dance i ever attended. i was in sixth grade, which, in my school district, was still elementary school. my friend angelina had moved to another school district a few years prior, and was already in junior high. she also already had her period. and she invited me to come to her school dance.

"come on, it's gonna be fun, i promise," she cooed over the phone, blatantly COSMETICIZING the nightmare that is junior high school dances. i agreed to go for the same reason i still agree to do anything social that i don't particularly want to do: i don't want people to think i am not fun.

i don't totally remember what i wore, although i'm pretty sure it involved capri pants and keds, which was par for the course in the spring of 1992. i also definitely remember hairspraying my unruly bangs that i was trying desperately to grow out. there may or may not have been lipstick involved. i have blocked that part out.

angelina's mother drove us, her sister, and some of their heavily made-up friends to the junior high school where we went into the decorated gymnasium and immediately staked out a spot to sit on the bleachers and observe. one by one, the girls disappeared onto the dance floor, dancing with both each other and with nameless, nondescript boys wearing tucked in polo shirts and braces. angelina sat with me for a while, but she too disappeared into the awkward, sweaty crowd of hormones, leaving me sitting alone on the bleachers. i was a little uncomfortable, but the role of the lonely observer was something i already knew well, even at eleven, and it seemed far less daunting than having to be out on the dance floor.

at some point a polo-clad boy with a mouth full of metal approached me.

"do you wanna dance?"

"um...no, thanks."

"are you serious? i only asked cause your friends felt bad that you were sitting here alone. whatever."

he walked away shaking his head. my face was burning and i could feel tears welling up in my eyes, which i fought with every ounce of energy that i could retrieve in myself. angelina stormed over to me a few minutes later.

"what's wrong with you? why didn't you dance with him?"

"cause i don't want to dance, okay? can't i just sit here?"

"fine. whatever. i just wanted you to have fun." she stormed off.

people are always concerned with whether or not i'm having fun. that's valid, because in awkward social situations, i'm usually not having fun, and people can almost always read it in my face. unfortunately, i've never been able to COSMETICIZE my expression. if i find myself stuck in these situations, i truly do have more fun just sitting and observing than i do attempting to force myself to be social with people in which i have no desire to interact. it is my hope that i will one day simply learn to say "no" to the junior high school dances that happen over and over in our lives, and just stay home and watch a movie.

amicable

\AM-ih-kuh-bul\

adjective

: characterized by friendly goodwill : peaceable

there is something about the word AMICABLE that suggests a sort of forced niceness. nice for the sake of keeping peace rather than nice just for the sake of being nice. as if no one naturally possesses this trait; it is, rather, conditional.

while i was in college, i dated a man for some time who had several ex-girlfriends. now, this is by no means abnormal, but many of the girls were still in his life; he had maintained friendships with them, on an AMICABLE spectrum, and therefore i had to interact with them as well.

he saw one of the girls with regular frequency, and i was subject to her company quite often. she didn't seem as much like an ex-girlfriend as an over-protective friend. she kept an eye on him. she also still expected him to do boyfriendly things, like be her date for weddings if she was single and give her rides to the gynecologist if her car broke down.

one night, while he and i were living together, she drunk-called around 3 am saying that her purse and cell phone were stolen from her car. she had called her cell phone number and found out that the thief had already pawned it to some random guy. she stupidly arranged a pre-dawn meeting with said unknown man in order to retrieve her phone, and wanted my boyfriend to accompany her. he relayed this to me in the dim light of the cell phone key pad.

"she's freaked out and she wants me to go with her to meet this guy."

"no fucking way dude. it's 3 am. tell her to call her own boyfriend." and she did have a boyfriend.

he stared at me for a second, as if i was the one out of line.

other than that, i was always fairly AMICABLE with this girl. i even let her borrow a book that i really enjoyed, Colors Insulting to Nature, which she never returned. funny enough, that is really the only thing i truly don't like about her.

canicular

\kuh-NIK-yuh-ler\

adjective

: of or relating to the dog days (the period between early July and early September when the hot sultry weather of summer usually occurs in the northern hemisphere)

mirriam-webster flaked today and didn't send me a word. my first thought was that they somehow discovered my blog and were punishing me for using them as a pawn in my writing endeavors. but it was probably just a technical mix-up. luckily, i have an email folder of words-of-the-days past where i save words i think are particularly interesting. i chose CANICULAR at random. it was sent to me on August 18, 2009.

when i'm confronted with the term "dog days" i think of radio advertising. i remember a lot of commercials beginning with, "dog days of summer getting you down? well, come on down to..." it was usually some local restaurant advertising its air conditioning. i remember those terribly hot and humid days of hanging out at the grocery store because it was the closest place to be where my entire body didn't stick to itself.

it doesn't get humid during the summer in portland, and this is good, except i miss thunderstorms. there was something so naturally relieving about the sky darkening and a storm breaking a three to five day stretch of living in air as thick as molasses. it was an almost sexual progression of tension and release, tension and release that occurred over and over and over during late summers in connecticut.

i try to imagine radio advertising using the less colloquial approach: "CANICULAR months getting you down?" it probably wouldn't work as well, but i might be more interested.