Hesitant
Just got back from hubby’s Christmas party, where we had a nice time (apparently a chocolate fountain is the latest hot new gadget), and I put on my PJs and started thinking about self-defense.
I’m not natural fighter, you understand. I’ve been taking classes for a year now, and I’m just learning how to throw a good hook punch. I still forget to put my body into punches.
Once you know how to fight a little, there’s the question of what to do with it. Should I take on the annoying person at the movie theater who saw my jacket on a seat (in a row with 4 other empty seats, you understand) and threw it on the floor? But then I imagined myself trying to explain to a jury why I couldn’t sit in one of the other 4 seats and just get over it already.
“Your Honor, he needed to be taught a lesson.”
“Here’s a lesson for you: a week in jail and anger management lessons!”
I don’t quite understand how a guy can come along, act like a jerk, and then put me in the position of looking childish. But that’s what happened.
I suppose I could have asked them to move, but I was afraid to. I was afraid it would start a fight that I wouldn’t be able to finish. And the only way to get over that fear is to fight, so it’s something of a dilemma.
When I started this post, I meant to write about fighting from a different angle. Even if I’m not the most perfect fighter, I’d be pretty good at teaching other people how to fight, at least the basic stuff. Some days I dream of going to some part of the world where women are really being dragged through the mud. A place like the Congo or Darfur, where women are being gang-raped to send a message. I dream of going there and teaching them to fight and making everything better. I know in my heart it’s nonsensical—what good is a left hook against shoulder-launched missiles and men on horseback with guns? But I still can’t get the idea out of my head.
Is it possible it could have a ripple effect? That it would make women start fighting back in all sorts of ways? That’s what I hope for. But I don’t know how to begin.
I don't like it, but I love it
I’m not really a Christian.
Oh, I was raised that way, and I still looooooooove to talk to Jesuits about religion (not that I meet that many these days), but I can’t be a Christian because I don’t believe in sin. (Though I’m just as qualified to comment on what Christianity is and should be as a true believer. An upbringing in a faith is enough to make you a judge of that faith. Even a faith that tells you to “judge not.”)
If you don’t believe in sin, you don’t believe you need to be saved, no matter what all the Christians you know think about the state of your soul.
But this is not a post about religion, even though I love to discuss it. It’s about Christmas music.
I’m determined to have the largest Christmas music collection in the world.
Here’s what I have so far:
Aaron Neville’s Soulful Christmas
Alabama, Christmas
A Very Gospel Christmas
A Very Special Christmas
A Very Special Christmas 3
Beach Boys, Merry Christmas from the Beach Boys
Barenaked Ladies, Barenaked for the Holidays
Christmas with the Stars, Volumes 1-3
Christina Aguilera, My Kind of Christmas
Cyndi Lauper, Feels like Christmas
Elvis Presley, If Every Day Was Like Christmas
Heart, A Lovemonger’s Christmas
Judds, Christmas Time
Kenny G. Miracles: The Holiday Album
Linda Ronstadt, A Merry Little Christmas
Luciano Pavarotti, O Holy Night
Lynyrd Skynrd, Christmas Time Again
Mahalia Jackson, Silent Night, Holy Night
Manhattan Transfer
Shawn Colvin, Holiday Songs and Lullabies
Temptations, Give Love at Christmas
Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Christmas Eve and Other Stories
Ultimate Christmas Album, Volumes 3 and 4 (never got 1 and 2)
Willie Nelson, Pretty Paper
As you can see, I have a ways to go. I haven’t even cracked 30 total yet! In 2004, I only bought 1 CD. My kitchen was torn up, we had a fridge in our living room instead of a tree, and I just wasn’t in the mood.
Feel free to send me something I don’t have or to recommend something.
My least favorite was the Manhattan Transfer CD, although I think I should listen to it again. I always need to listen to CDs several times before I know what I think of them.
My favorite now is the Cyndia Lauper CD. Most of the songs on it are not traditional Christmas songs. Some are silly, and a couple are beautiful, but most are original.
I don’t understand why some artists make Christmas CDs. The Barenaked Ladies, for instance. They sing the songs with no conviction whatsoever. Why bother? Do they need the money that badly?
It’s hard for me to understand what motivated this project of mine. It must be nostalgia, the kind that grips me every time I return to Kansas City and feel compelled to visit all my old haunts, including the house where I lived until I was 11. I don’t really want to get to know the contemporary Kansas City; I just want to recapture the past, boredom and loss and joy and all. That’s how I feel about Christmas.
Here are my favorite individual songs:
Ave Maria, Heart
Beautiful Star of Bethlehem, The Judds
Blue Christmas, Sheryl Crow
Christmas Blues, Willie Nelson (instrumental)
Christmas Everyday, The Temptations
Christmas Song (Roasting Chestnuts), Christina Aguilera (the only version of this song I’ve ever liked)
December Child, Cyndi Lauper
Jingle Bells, Willie Nelson
Go Tell It on the Mountain, Mahalia Jackson
No Room at the Inn, Mahalia Jackson
O Holy Night, Pavarotti
Oi to the World, No Doubt
Pretty Paper, Willie Nelson
River, Linda Ronstadt (“I wish I had a river I could skate away on,” written by Joni Mitchell)
Silent Night, Stevie Nicks
Skynyrd Family, Lynyrd Skynyrd
Such a Night, Aaron Neville
What Child Is This? The Judds
If you want, I’ll burn you a CD with my favorites on it.
This is about a cat, or, I’m desperate to meet people
Rufus is our cat. He’s a 10-year-old black tabby whose owners gave him to us because he didn’t “travel” well, but really they got tired if him biting their other cats on the butt. I’ve seen him do it, too. The other cat always shrieks indignantly.
But we seem to have acquired another cat, an orange tabby with a beautiful white breast and the most wistful eyes. When he tilts his head and looks at me that way, I’d swear he’s a girl, but it’s just his expression. At that point, I usually let him in.
Todd and I wondered if this cat had an owner, but it looked well-cared-for, so we assumed it wasn’t feral. Just to make sure, though, we bought a collar and a little message holder—you know, like a bottle tossed in the ocean with a note?—and wrote on a slip of paper, “If you own this cat, call us at this number.”
And she did. Her name is Sarah, and the cat’s name is Bailey. For a while we called him Pedro after the character in Napoleon Dynamite. He answers equally well—that is to say, not at all—to either one. But he will come to “kitty, kitty, kitty.”
(Everyone should do what our friends did and name their cat “Kitty.”)
Sarah and I had quite the conversation about Bailey/Pedro. We agreed that he was getting fat, even though he’s eating Rufus’s diet food. We agreed that he was very friendly. I learned where her house was, and vice versa. I even told her to come over sometime, though I doubt she ever will.
It would be fun to know everyone who lived on the park. We should have a Lac Amora park party. With our cats.
This is not about a cat
Just got back from Krav Maga with scraped knuckles and a bloody elbow. When I was first doing Krav Maga this sort of war wound impressed me. Now I just think, “Damn, I just got rid of that scab and now it’s bleeding again.”
The woman I was fighting—or maybe I should say girl, because she’s in high school—was not gentle. She hit me in the head and kneed me in the belly and a few other things I can’t remember. It made me want to be more aggressive.
I think in a fight the main ally of the winner is aggressiveness, or determination, or, perhaps, heart. The ability to keep going despite all evidence that it’s a bad idea. It’s something you learn in competitive sports, but I never played them much—or wanted to. I’m learning it now, in a fight class, but it’s hard to battle so many years of trying to be “nice.”
The problem is, nobody likes “nice” people that much. They say they do, but they would rather spend time with the feisty ones. And how many guys struggle with being labeled the “nice guy”? If being nice is so great, then why are there buttons reading “No more Mr. Nice Guy”? If someone’s in your face, telling you to be nicer, then that person is trying to manipulate you so that she can get what she wants. It’s that simple.
