But what am I doing (other than blogging?):  cooking.  I’ve already tidied the apartment and done most of the dishes and taken out the recycling and browsed the papers.  I’m making another pot pie before my remaining celery gets all rubbery, and I’ve decided to try to make rugelach.  Messy.

I know that getting this grading done (even for just one of the classes) will be a huge weight off my shoulders, but ugh, sitting down with it makes all my hackles rise.  So I’ll just prep this dough…I’ll just slice all the veggies…I’ll just clean the catbox.

When cleaning the catbox becomes attractive, you know you’re in Deep Procrastination Territory.

I don’t know anyone who isn’t a procrastinator, at least about some thing or other.  My students always admit it sheepishly, as if they must be the only ones who put things off until the last minute.  I don’t excuse them, because I know–and I want them to know–that procrastination results in poorer quality work.  But I also can’t really judge them for it.

The good thing about my procrastination is that at least I do get things done.  I usually don’t procrastinate by watching crappy TV.  I can fall down the internet-hole, but that’s less likely than busying myself with other useful (or arguably useful) things.  Grading is the thing I hate the most, and writing is the next biggest task I’m likely to avoid (although I have days where I can dive right in, too), so at midterm and semester’s end, my apartment is sparkling and my fridge is full of treats.

So, obviously, today’s FFT is about what you procrastinate on, and what you do instead what what you should be doing.  Or are you that mythical creature that never puts off things?  (If so, I will be sending you a SASE for your newsletter.)  Spill it, foot-draggers!  You know you’re just avoiding work, anyway.

A french kiss, in more ways than one. Via philippe leroyer @ Flickr.

I was not the type of little girl who dreamed about my wedding day, or spent a lot of time writing “Dorklet Jones,”  “Dorklet Smith,” “Dorklet Pierce,” or whatever combination of my first name and my crush’s last name (thank god I never liked a boy named “McCorkle”).  But I did think a lot about kissing.  I never went through the “ew, boys” phase, and even before I had any business kissing, I thought it would be pretty great.   A boy named Gerald gave me a peck on the cheek at a party just before I started sixth grade, which sent me into perfect spasms of “eeeeeEEEEEEEEeeeee!!!” so I figured that a real, on-the-lips kiss would be The Height of Romance.

And so, as I lurched through puberty, I thought an inordinate amount about how various boys might kiss, and created elaborate (but chaste) scenarios that involved candlelight, or crowded dancefloors, or secret assignations in the choir room at school.  By the beginning of eighth grade, I had already envisioned The Perfect Kiss with a boy for whom I had extra-shiny eyes.  We were friends, and would socialize together in big groups at weekends, but I wanted him to be The One. 

Eighth grade seemed to be when people first began pairing off (at least among my crowd), and so when Ted* and I started sitting next to each other on April’s couch to watch Psycho and eat pizza, I knew it was only a matter of time.

Sometime in late September, a fateful note was passed to me by Ted’s best friend, who wanted to know if I would “go out” with him (which didn’t mean to actually “go out,” but whatever).  Ted was smart and funny, and really quite handsome for a 14 year old boy, with a lovely olive complexion, dark floppy hair, and a lanky sportiness that made him just a little bit cooler than the rest of us.  I exulted inwardly, replied in the affirmative, and returned the note via my friend.  Then I waited for Saturday night, when the regular weekly hang-out was to be at my house.

I don’t remember what movie we watched, or what other sort of adolescent intrigues were going on, because I was completely high on anticipation and the details of my plot, which involved flirtatiously coaxing Ted down to the lake behind my house, where, with only the moon reflecting on the water to highlight my sparkly eyeshadow and expertly fluffed bangs, he would tenderly whisper his love.  Then we would lock eyes and draw together slowly, so slowly, embrace with a heretofore unknown passion, and kiss, each entwining the other’s hair in our fingers. 

The evening was winding to a close, and parents were coming to pick up my friends.  I was hoping that Ted was thinking along the same lines as I, and so I managed to get him onto the back porch.  Before I could suggest a lakeside stroll, his father was at the front door.  Okay, no lake, no reflected moonlight.  We stood there for a few moments, both realizing that This Was Happening, before he shuffled forward a step and said “…my dad…”  Okay, no tender declarations. This is still salvageable.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well,” he said.

And then he was on me.  Hands on my shoulderpads, seething hairless ferret of tongue in– and around–my unsuspecting mouth.  I was too shocked to reciprocate; all I could do was hang on, literally, so I wouldn’t be knocked over, and try to figure out where things had gone so wrong.  No initial embrace, no gentle kiss, no twining fingers.  THIS WAS NOT THE PLAN.

When he came up for air, I managed to refrain from wiping my mouth on my sleeve before stammering a “goodnight.”  He launched himself inside and out the front, and I stood in a daze on the back porch, my slobber-coated chin, not my eyeshadow, glistening in the light.

I broke up with him on Monday.  THE END.

* Name changed to protect the ridiculous.

It was a terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-kiss, but I treasure the memory, anyway.  Good or bad, what’s your first kiss story?

Not again! Via Alzwww @ Flickr.

It happens again and again and again, but I always wake up, relieved that I’ve never actually forgotten to fully dress myself before leaving the house.

I have to use the bathroom. The only restroom is communal, without separate stalls. There are just toilets everywhere so I have to go in front of everyone. And it’s disgusting. There is feces and blood and piss and toilet paper everywhere.

Again, I wake up, amazed that this horrible scene keeps playing in my unconscious mind. I wish these imaginary experiences would leave my brain so I don’t have to be tortured repeatedly by something both foreign and familiar. What’s odd – or maybe not odd at all – is that these two recurring dreams of mine both involve revealing my private parts in public. They are so distressing! A less frequent recurring dream is the one where I find myself on stage at my high school auditorium, and SURPRISE! it’s opening night of the play. But I haven’t learned my lines. I guess I still have some residual anxiety from my Drama Club days.

Do you have recurring dreams and/or nightmares? What are they like?

p.s. The Harpies won’t be posting much, if anything, for the next few days, because the five of us are spending a long weekend at the beach! A Dude is coming too but we did a security clearance on him. Have a great weekend!

Wish I was there! via lachlansear @ flickr

- Getting into a verbal sparring match with a Bible-thumping proselytizer outside of the Alamo and being told that I was going to burn in hell.
- Eating at the Hobbit Cafe in Houston and washing down my meal with a Pippin pina colada.
- Seeing a life-size cardboard cut-out of President Clinton in the lobby of the Econo-Lodge in Hope, Arkansas.
- Killing time on the long stretches of the Interstate by taking turns with my friends reading passages from a bodice-ripping romance novel entitled The Princess and Her Pirate, in which a rogue, kilted Scottish pirate named Laird Cairn MacTavish seduces a headstrong princess. The pirate’s penis is its own character, complete with a name (Hoary) and its own dialogue! A sample of this literary masterpiece: “Beneath his kilt he hardened and grew. Sometimes Hoary, as Cairn called his favorite nether part, forgot the greater good, preferring to embark on his own endeavors.” Seriously, click the link to see the insane cover.

Hopefully my upcoming vacations will create more awesome memories. So, the question for this Fun Thread is: what was your best vacation? And what is your dream vacation?

Via Giant Ginkgo @ Flickr.

We’ve already had at least one post on the ins and out of naming  here at Harpyness, but here’s another.   Names have always been weirdly important to me, perhaps because names are meant to give us some individual mark, and my birth name might as well  be “Blandy Ann McBlanderson.”  Really.  My tenth grade history class had about 15 girls in it, and six were Blandys.  The teacher (who was a coach, not a teacher), assigned us each a number, based on the row we sat it, to go with our name.  I was Blandy 6.

That’s the most egregious example, but there have been hundreds of other occasions where being one Blandy among millions has led to frustration and or embarrassment.  Suffice it to say, I’ve always had nicknames.  Lots of them.  I’ve sought them out.  Some were derived from my name:  “Blan,”  “Blanderella,” “B-Mac,”  etc., since my equally generic older brother, “Blandon McBlanderson,” had already been given our last name as his go-to moniker.  Others had to do with characteristics, or weird in-jokes with friends:  “Lady Lovely Locks,”  “Nugatory”  (or the short form, “Noog”), “Girf,”  and my favorite:  “Newt.”

It’s my favorite for a couple of reasons:  I came by it at a camp that makes up a very happy chapter of my youth, and I sorta picked it for myself, after introducing myself as Blandy, but then joking “but please call me something else, anything, like Turtle, or Lizard, or Newt.”  It stuck, and for a small group of people who knew me when, I’m still Newt.  Or Newty.  Or Newtron.  Or Newtella.  (Nicknames of nicknames!)  If any of those people read this blog, well, I’ve just outed myself.   Hi MSA!  Find me on Facebook under my real name!

Anyway, the question for today’s FFT is:  What is your most common and/or favorite nickname, and why?

Purty. Via srsalme @ Flickr.

What, that doesn’t sound fun?

The last time I got my hair cut, I realized that, at 34, I have my first grey hair.  Hairs, rather.  Two of them.  Right on my hairline, just about an inch to the left of my widow’s peak.  And they’re not actually grey, they’re silvery white.

And they’re awesome.  Barely noticeable, but awesome.   In the last few weeks, I’ve been keeping an eye on them, wondering when they’ll be joined by more.  I’m really really hoping for an beautiful white streak, like Susan Sontag, Bonnie Raitt, or the Bride of Frankenstein.  ”Pied Beauty,” as Hopkins called it.  It probably won’t happen, and it’s far more likely that I’ll just start getting random wiry greys that kill the elegant image I have in my head, but still, it’s something about the aging process I’m kind of quietly excited about.

Which got me thinking about aging, and how it is reputedly devastating to women, since of course culture tells us that our shelf-life is barely more than that of a banana.  (How old is “old” now?) I don’t doubt it has its challenges, because aging means changing, and changing always brings challenges, but devastating?  A life-threatening illness is devastating.  The loss of a loved one is devastating.  Not being able to get work–despite the fact that you’re more than qualified  but the poor economy and the shift in university hiring practices are preventing you from doing what you love and are trained to do so you’re facing penury and a life of jobs that require you to wear a paper hat–is devastating. (Ahem.)  Aging?  Not so bad, really.

So I was thinking about aging, and my beautiful silvery twins, and wondering what others are looking forward to about getting older.  I know we have readers from their 20s through their 50s, at least, so I’m very curious to see what sort of range of responses this elicits. It can be shallow or profound; physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial, sexual, anything.

So:  What are you looking forward to as the months and years pass?  And/or, what about getting older has been a pleasant surprise to you?

Exile in Girlville. via hector torres @ flickr

15 years after I started listening to Courtney Love & Co. (Live Through This is still one of my favorite albums), my collection now features a lot of Kim Gordon, Exene Cervenka, Fiona Apple, Ani DiFranco, Annie Lennox, Chrissie Hynde, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Beth Orton, Sinead O’Connor, Veruca Salt, Kim and Kelley Deal, Jill Sobule, and Liz Phair. I’ll add a special mention for a terrific and unfortunately defunct Canadian band called Cub, that introduced me to the notion that pop songs could handle lesbian romances with humor and pathos — and not in a Katy Perry way. Sure, my collection features the odd track by Iggy Pop and Lou Reed and Pearl Jam and Chris Cornell and Tchaikovsky and The Lord of the Rings soundtrack thrown in the mix, but they’re anomalies. The women hold the majority, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

So, it’s your turn. Who are the women who make music that you love listening to over and over? (Or do you rarely listen to women musicians, just as I rarely listen to men?) Share whatever thoughts you might have in the comments, and Happy Friday to all!