this is the semi-grown up blog of liz markus, showcasing her ability to put letters and symbols together in a pleasant and correct manner.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

dear sir/madame: i love you.

long ago, i signed up for an account with onemodelplace.com. it had nothing to do with wanting to become a model (though, if by chance the world of fashion were suddenly turned upside down and short, chocolate-loving girls with dreads became the new trend, i wouldn't turn it down); rather, if you're into figure drawing and want a constantly updated source of women contorted into odd positions in extreme lighting with vapid looks on their faces, then haute couture shots are where you look.

so i signed up, a while ago. so long that i can't quite remember why i stopped looking at it. i think the layout pissed me off. anywho, i got an email from them today:

Dear H,

We love you and we miss you! :-) We'd love to have you back on OneModelPlace.com.


really? you love me and miss me? what do you miss the most, exactly? my stunning contribution to your online community via signing up and then immediately forgetting you exist? my original intentions of using your online portfolios for my own personal gain? please, tell me, i really want to know.

this was the first thing that jumped to mind upon reading that:



apparently, the future is now, and a random modeling website that i put about six minutes of my time into loves me. i'd love to go into more detail, but i have some errands to run today. perhaps while i'm out i'll stop by starbucks for my latte and a happy ending.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

oh yes it's ladies night, and the feeling's wrong.

ok, body, let's have a talk.

you are twenty-eight years old. hear that? twenty. eight. not fifty-eight. not even forty-eight. twenty-eight. so please, explain to me why i don't have full useage of my left arm, or practically ANY useage of my right hip?

explain to me why, at twenty-eight, on a saturday night when my peers are out sloshing it up with their zimas and shimmying their hula hoops about to their dan fogelberg, i am in bed in pain?

ok, to be fair, body, even if i wasn't in pain, i probably wouldn't be out anywhere shimmying anything, but still, it's unfair of you to decide that, since i'm not doing anything BETTER with my time (at least in your opinion) i should just go ahead and hurt.

OH AND THERE GO THE CRAMPS. god, you are so PREDICTABLE, BODY! "pain? you call that pain? FOOL!" now of course the hip pain is, once again, radiating down to my shin. like i said, predictable.

when i talk about my various body pains, it isn't so much in self-pity as in self-disbelief. i really, honestly can't understand why, at a relatively young age, i am beset with the joint problems of a pentagenarian (way to be prejudice against 50 year olds, spell check, real classy). granted, i'm not in the BEST physical shape in the whole world of ever, but all my cell counts are normal, my fluids are flowing, and my blood pressure is almost negative. i'm not overweight, just soft. the only overeating i really do is at indian buffets and right now ("right now" being the holidays, which of course doesn't count, so forget i even mentioned it).

ok, yeah, i have fibromyalgia, but that's not a very good excuse. after all, my mother and sister didn't seem terribly bothered by their fibromyalgia until they got older than i am, so what gives?

unfortunately, my habit when confused and frustrated is to voice those confusions and frustrations. this leads people to believe that i am an attention whore, which is mostly untrue. i say "mostly" because, of course, who doesn't sometimes crave a little attention, and if that attention can be in the form of pity and sympathy, well, sign me up for some of that. some. however, even pity requires some kind of response from me, and as i hate the back and forth of someone who doesn't know how to respond to someone else, it just ends up making me feel awkward. i guess the ideal situation would be to scream about my shitty body at the top of my lungs, and for everyone around me to kind of look at me for a second, then go about their business.

so if you're out on the street and you happen to see a short chick with dreads yelling at the sky about why her leg hurts, don't worry, just keeping walking along.

Friday, December 3, 2010

the torture of christmas tree shopping: X-TREEM personification

yesterday, i beat my sister and b-i-l to big lots by a rather wide margin, and as a result, i had some time to burn. the situation was made more interesting by the fact that i had just left my therapist, where we'd discussed, among other things, my anxiety over time that isn't filled with purpose. the purpose doesn't have to be particularly purposeful, but it does have to be planned, something specific. so when i found myself with about half an hour between "therapist" and "spend my money on stuff that i'll decide really is needed", i got a chance to practice not being a fruitcake.

i wandered around beverly's fabrics and crafts for a bit, musing over wtf i was going to do about christmas presents this year. i played with the idea of buying paper mache boxes and doing... something to them, to make them cookie-holding-worthy. nothing says love like paper mache, right?

i went across the street to starbucks to procure my yearly cranberry bliss bar. the girl at the register really, really liked my hair, it seemed to just delight the hell out of her. cue another internal episode of "keep the dreadlocks because they seem to encourage positive attention, or accept that i'm kind of over it and keep walking around with hairy sausages on my head?"

i then went back across the street and into the christmas tree... area? stand? section? i'm not sure what to call it, and the knowledge that everyone knows what a section of parking lot fenced off and filled with trees looks like doesn't help me at all, this needs a name. and "lot" won't work, because then it's a lot inside a lot, and that's just ridiculous.

ANYWAY. into the christmas tree amorphia. something i've noticed this year is that all the trees seem really nice. green, shapely, fragrant--i've yet to come across a tree that wasn't pleasant to be around, and these trees were no different. i was initially drawn in by the short little fatties that were as big around as they were tall, and from there on drifted through huge towering nobles and the stereotypical 6' acute angles. these last ones were the problem, unfortunately. i'd touch a tree, run my fingers through its branches, and think, what a lovely tree.

and then i'd feel it.

the tree next to it. staring right at me. it had branches too. they were also covered in velvety soft needles. it was as tall, and its backside didn't have a space near the bottom like that one did.

and then, over here! look at me! see how my branches flare at the bottom! you are the only person capable of truly observing my tree-esque glory, and if you don't buy me, i will be hacked into logs and burned while i'm still alive.

THAT is what EVERY tree in that lot was saying. i was quickly and painfully made aware of my role as the tree messiah, and i couldn't just take one tree, because then what would happen to that tree? how could i just leave it there, in the cold? the sky darkening, the lights going out, it would just sit there, alone, crying spindly foliage and dreading its black future as a wreath. WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME, WOULDN'T I PLEASE THINK OF THE TREES?!

i experienced a great despair as i thought of my tiny, pathetic bank account balance and how my house, while comfortable for two people, two cats and a lizard, would be a poor substitute for sprawling acreage and nightly mistings from coastal fogs. more pathetic than my bank account, however, was the fact that i was seriously entertaining the idea of buying every tree in a lot so they wouldn't be hurt.

i left, quickly. i went to big lots and returned my malfunctioning cat laser toy. and no, i did not think about what would happen to it when it was no longer in my sight.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

viva la "lots and lots and lots of words with no end"

it has come to my attention that i write very easily when i don't worry about little things like run-on sentences. when i just allow a thought to ramble on endlessly, everything just kind of flows on its own.

case in point, a recent email to a friend:

"i bought the taste of home holiday magazine because i'm weak-willed and i saw the most adorable idea in it ever and immediately knew that if i didn't buy the magazine i'd forget it and cry the rest of the season, even though i haven't forgotten it at all and i probably could've saved the ten dollars, but dammit, it was so damn cute. they're these little dove-shaped cookies, but what makes them so cute is you layer sliced almonds on them, so they look like feathers. i know, right? there was also a recipe for sugar cookies using cream cheese that i wanted to try, thinking that the cream cheese would bulk them up and make them not so delicate so maybe half of these year's batch wouldn't come out on fire. also, i have parchment paper."


that paragraph is constructed from a mere five sentences. and two of those sentences make up about 70% of the information given. long sentences are FUN. who decided that people shouldn't be able to just write long, meandering, winding lines of text? who decided that my desire to write two pages to someone without a single period was bad form? show me that person, and i'll show you someone about to get punched in the face. with words.

sometimes i think grammar and punctuation rules were invented merely to make writing more intimidating and difficult than it needs to be, to keep the "masses" in check. if word got out that anyone could be brilliant, then what would all the self-proclaimed brilliant people do? cry into their crumpets and silk scarves, that's what they'd do.*

well, ladies and gentlemen and dicks and hos, i am here to tell you, right now, from a completely uninformed standpoint, that YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TAKE IT ANYMORE. jump up out of your seat! thrust your fist in the air! then immediately sit back down and thrust both fists at your keyboard and TYPE WORDS ENDLESSLY.






*all brilliant people wear silk scarves and eat crumpets. this is science.