big brass tejones

What’s up, party people? Long time no talk. Here are some things that have happened.

1. A series of circumstances have resulted in my being unemployed. Longtime readers of this site will recall that this is not the first time I’ve ever been unemployed. But it is the first time I’ve become unemployed suddenly after four years at a job. So that’s different.

I spent those four years doing web design work in a pretty traditional office, an office I will now cite as one of the reasons for the absence of posts on this site. Bluishorange is the first result in a Google search for “Alison Headley,” and working in a large conservative office in a position that was not particularly low-profile meant that there were a lot of things I felt I couldn’t talk about. It’s not anyone’s particular fault, and truthfully nobody at work ever mentioned this site to me. But some of my coworkers might have read it, etc etc.

In a way, I sort of felt like I was lying to myself. Or lying about myself, or something like that. As my (awesome) former boss said to me, “Bluishorange is something you’ve had for so long that it’s a part of who you are. To live a life where you can’t do it is wrong somehow.”

And she’s right. I’ve nearly always been able to talk about whatever I want here, and I’m almost sure that that won’t change with whatever I decide to do next.

Almost. What if I become a spy or join the foreign service? Shut up, it could totally happen.

2. I’m currently in Cancun, on a vacation I booked and paid for before said unemployment occurred. It feels weird to be going on vacation from nothing, but I love to travel so I’m not complaining. We’re here for the 30th birthday of a friend who deserves nothing less than to have his milestone celebrated on vacation with a bunch of his friends. Happy birthday, Dusty! Hope your 30th year is much better than mine was.

We got here (where here is an all-inclusive resort-type thing that isn’t usually my style, but again, not complaining) last night just as the sun was setting. On the golf-cart ride to our rooms, we passed these little animals I’d never seen before. They were about the size of Maude, and they looked like some sort of rodent-marsupial-anteater hybrid. The driver told us they were called tejones, which I was able to remember because it rhymes with cojones. I’m going to look those animals up later.

Then late last night after dinner and drinks and some time on the beach, my sister and her husband and I walked past a palm tree, and out of nowhere a coconut fell out of it and hit the ground with a THUD. I thought that only happened in commercials.

In October I became a certified scuba diver, so I’m planning on doing lots of that while we’re here.

3. At the moment I’m sitting on the balcony of my hotel room, watching the sun rise over the Caribbean. It’s 5:30 a.m., and I’ve been awake since 4 despite having gone to bed at midnight. This is a new thing I do these days. Ariel calls it the freelancer’s alarm clock, where you wake up suddenly in the dark, thinking about money. I might call it the money alarm instead, since I’m not currently a freelancer per se, and “money alarm” sounds cooler.

At any rate, I wake up every day by 6 or 7 a.m., regardless of what time I went to bed, and despite not having anywhere to be in the morning. Maybe I’m getting old, maybe I’m in the final stages of becoming my father. I don’t know. It kind of sucks.

But I think it’ll be to my advantage here. I came out to the balcony at 4:30, took some long exposures of the waves crashing on the beach in the dark, and now that the sun’s up I’m going to go for a walk. Not many people will be up, so I can pretend I’m not surrounded by a bunch of entitled American vacationers like myself. Maybe the tejones will be out.

I’ll see you later.

some stuff that happened recently

  1. I am soon to be in need of a new car and a new phone and some studio lighting, and B and I need a bigger bed. That’s a lot of expensive purchases that ought to be made, but before doing all that, we’re getting a dog. Not a replacement dog, an additional dog. Maude has always seemed like she could use an Evil Minion, and who am I to deny her? She’d make a great Overlord. We’re in the final stages of adopting a 5-year-old chihuahua with a history similar to Maude’s, and I’ll let you know how it goes. There will of course be pictures.
  2. I saw Shutter Island. It was beautifully acted and shot and the dialogue was good and stuff. The movie started out looking like it was going to be about WWII, post-WWII anti-communist sentiment, and the history of treatments for mental illness. Those are three of my favorite subjects! But then (no spoilers here) the movie turned into something else entirely, and I was disappointed.  It’s probably just me, though; I’m sensitive about how mental illnesses are portrayed in fiction.
  3. I went to whatever SXSW Interactive stuff didn’t require a badge. Which was pretty much everything I wanted to see anyway. I got to spend time with most of my favorite SXSW people and introduce them to B and Maude. I got to help pay tribute to my friend Brad and see 20×2 where they also paid tribute to Brad which made me cry, and so forth. Good times.
  4. Then I got a cold. This is unsurprising, as I went on a cruise for a week and then worked a lot for a week and then worked/partied for a week. So right now I feel like the critical-thinking part of my brain has shut itself off, which does me no favors at work or when I’m trying to write.
  5. Oh, yeah, and I WENT ON A CRUISE. I’ll have to tell you about that later because I’m pretty busy dealing with #’s 1 and 4. But it was a lot of fun and a lot of weird.

a supposedly fun thing

So. I’m going on a cruise next week. I know, right?

Here’s how it happened. A cruise isn’t necessarily the vacation I’d choose myself, given a week off and X dollars to spend or whatever. But my close friend Sharlee is turning 30 on March 3rd. To celebrate, her husband Dusty picked out a cruise, got a travel agent, and told all of Sharlee’s friends to call and book it! So I called and booked it. I like to do things I’ve never done before, and I’ve never been on a cruise or to Mexico or on a cruise to Mexico, so here I go. It’ll be Dusty, Sharlee, six of Sharlee’s other friends & family members, and me!

A person of my specific temperament (a bit cynical, often cranky, not good with unfamiliar situations, and frankly kind of a snob) is not especially suited to things like cruises, where there are group activities and large numbers of children and forced hospitality and people with no sense of personal space. I’m reminded of this scene from an episode of Modern Family:

Mitchell: One of my favorite childhood memories was attending the Moscow Marionette Theatre.
Cameron: I grew up one mile away from Missouri’s largest waterslide.

Headleys are more Marionette-Theatre than Missouri’s-Largest-Waterslide. When Megan and I were kids, our parents took us to plays and symphonies, mostly. If we went to something like a baseball game or an amusement park we’d get one diet soda apiece, leave before the traffic got too bad, and eat a sensible dinner at home. I don’t think I ever saw the 9th inning of a live baseball game until I reached adulthood. In other words, the Headley family motto should be: If It’s Going To Be Crowded And Hot, We’ll Just Stay Home And Read A Book.

So I’ve had to do a lot of research and give myself a lot of pep talks for this cruise. I know without a doubt that I’m going to have fun—I love traveling, swimming, trying new things, boats, and spending time with my friends—but I’d like to do so without ever turning into Cranky Alison, or Alison Who Hates Nearly Everyone, or This Music Fucking Sucks Alison. So I found out what my cabin will look like; I made a list of what I’d like to do on and off the boat; I checked what time meals are served, how money is handled, where to wash my clothes, what kind of snacks I can bring, what people usually pack; and I even looked at maps of the ship. I am Prepared.

Sometimes people ask me, “Why can’t you just relax and enjoy things, Alison?”  Actually, they ask me that a lot. Well, I’m afraid I can’t do that. It’s not in my nature, and I don’t think it ever has been. What I do instead is maintain enough self-awareness to compensate for my high-strung temperament and make sure it doesn’t get in the way.

To prevent Cranky Alison from showing up, I’ve got my own room on the boat. That way I can go to sleep and wake up whenever I want, take all the naps I please, spend as much time alone as I need, and use up all the space in the bathroom.  I’m going to bring lots of books, and I’ll make sure my iPod is always charged in case I need to employ some Pixies or Phoenix to clear any bad music out of my head. I’m packing nearly everything I’ve seen suggested: earplugs, duct tape, dramamine, alcohol-based hand sanitizer, woolite, two emergency ponchos, ziploc bags, three kinds of sunscreen, flashlight, string, the works. I even sewed myself a little passport cover.

Here are some weird cruise fears I’m having that my excessive preparation can’t eliminate:

  1. The book(s) I bring with me won’t be enjoyable (I’m picky), so I’ll be left with nothing to read.
  2. A wild pack of unsupervised children will throw me overboard.
  3. I  will be forced into a conga line (and I know who’s going to do it).
  4. The becostumed cruise mascot will make me try to have fun, and I will kill him.
  5. Someone will stand at the bow of the ship and say that they are king of the world, and I will kill them.
  6. I will take too long on a shore excursion and miss the boat and have to live in Mexico for awhile.
  7. I will get fish bites.
  8. Maude will die while I’m gone.

But those probably won’t happen.  What will mostly likely happen is that I will wear a ton of sunscreen, be cranky once or twice for short periods of time, have a lot of fun, and not miss being at work one little tiny bit.

(And yes, I did read David Foster Wallace’s “Shipping Out.” DFW, I’ll be thinking about you, wherever you are.)