Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate the telephone?

Hate it, hate it, h!a!t!e! it.

The sound of a ringing phone is anathema to me. It sets my teeth on edge. Doesn’t matter if it’s ye olde fashioned bell ring or one o’ them newfangled song rings. Even hearing somebody’s phone whose ringer is set to vibrate jitterbug across their desk will do it. And it doesn’t matter if it’s my phone or somebody else’s or even a phone in a film or on tv—s’all the same to me.

“Answer it, answer it, a!n!s!w!e!r! it,” I theatrically wave my fist in the direction of the accursed ring.

And, oh, am I relieved when the bell tolls not for me.

What I have is not a phobia. I’m not ascairt of the damned things. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever received extraordinarily bad news over the device which has subsequently made me afraid it’s gonna be similarly awful news whenever it rings. It’s also not a resentment that I have towards the intrusion into whatever I’m doing at the time. I mean, if I’m busy having sex dinner when it rings, that’s what voicemail is for, right?

What I have is just an aversion. The source of it, I do not know for sure. I think I can partly trace it back to a time in the late 70s, when I hadda friend who got a phone jack installed in her washroom. The first time I called her and she answered it in there… eww. I don’t wanna talk on the phone to somebody who’s sittin’ on the can. Please, no. (Incidentally, I am not a washroom-sharer, in case the last coupla sentences didn’t make that clear. While sharing a shower or a bath with a lover is certainly fun fine with me, I remember I once hadda bf who expected to also be able to come in and shave while I was peeing or to come in to poop while I was in the shower, and lemme tellya he was sorely disappointed. “Omigawd, get the fuck outta here, youse!”) With the advent of the cordless phone, of course, all bets were off. I mean, who knew where the person on the other end of the line was or what they were doing?! Egads.

It’s weird to think back to the 70s and 80s when I useta have hours-long phone convos with friends. (I also had a coupla pen pals back then, and our weekly letters were routinely 20 or 30 hand-written pages long. With a history like that, you’d think I’d be able to update this fuggin thing more often, wouldn’t you?) ‘Cause something certainly turned me off that. A phone convo that long nowadays would make me contemplate murder. Or mebbe even suicide. (Nah, not that. Murder for sure, tho.) I would try to think of all kinds of excuses to get off the phone. I wouldn’t care if they were transparent, either. Wanna go now. Buh-bye.

And as much as I dislike getting calls, having to make them also twists my mouth into a moue of distaste. If I can email you instead, I will. I think I do know the reason for this part of the phone aversion, though. It’s because I think I sound a lot more intelligent in writing than I do speaking (quit laughing!). I like the time that writing affords me to say what I mean. I don’t always get it right, but I think I get it right more often than not. Because I can take my time and think about it. That’s why I love email. It became my primary mode of communication with the folks back home when I was living down in Utah.

I wonder (as do you, I suspect) if some intensive psychotherapy might help… The so-called talking cure would be okay as long as I didn’t hafta do it over the telephone, I s’pose.

Add to all this the fact that I am a total Luddite when it comes to technology. I had one of Ma Bell’s ancient rotary dial telephones until approximately 1998.

Then I switched to a cordless. (I don’t know what came over me. Ah, the lure of modernity!) I had that same cordless phone ‘til January of this year, when its performance had grown so spotty that I hadda replace it before a scheduled job interview I had over the phone. At that point, I got another cordless phone. I still haven’t programmed any phone numbers into its speed dial. In fact, there are all kindsa buttons on it whose purpose I don’t know. And if having held onto a rotary dial almost into the 21st century isn’t enough to qualify me as a Luddite, I didn’t get a cellphone until 2005. Yes, you read that correctly: I didn’t get a cellphone ’til about a year ago. And I hardly ever used it. It really was just for emergencies. Like if my car broke down. Or for those inevitable times (read: every time) when I was travelling and my flight was delayed or cancelled and I hadda phone to let the people meeting me at the airport know I’d be late (”Yes, again.”) Or—because I had dialup down in Utah and was always online—folks could call my cellphone (when I remembered to turn it on, that is) if they hadda reach me at home. If they were among the (very) few people to whom I’d given the number, that is. I got one of those pay-as-you-go phones. I would get a 20-minute card every coupla months and never use up all the minutes on it. The service didn’t extend to Canada, so I was left without a cellphone when I moved back here. O, tragedy!

As you can prolly guess, I wasn’t really in a big hurry to get another one. So my parents lent me theirs. I would like to point out that they use theirs about as often as I used mine. For months I carried theirs with me to and from work. I never actually used it. But they started to hint that they would like to have it back so that they could (not) use it, themselves, again. For my birthday back in May they gave me money towards a new cellphone. Yesterday I bought one. (Yes, it took two months from the time they gave me the hint gift to the time I actually got around to getting a phone. How long did I actually shop for one? About 20 minutes. Because I just don’t care what it can or can’t do.)

Got another one of those pay-as-you-go ones.

The only person who’s used it so far was the sales clerk at the Bell Mobility store, who made a call on it to the store phone just to make sure he’d programmed it correctly. I got 10 free minutes with the phone. That should last awhile.

If, after all this kvetching, you actually want my new number, email me and I’ll give it to you.

Seeeeeeee?? It happens!!

Body found in garbage bag
Jul. 14, 2006. 10:20 PM
MEGHAN HURLEY
STAFF REPORTER

The remains of a body that was found in a garbage bag near a townhouse complex in the city’s west-end has left investigators searching for answers.

Read it here.

Did I forget to mention that the alarm clock is set to go off at 4:30am on the weekday mornings when I run? Yeah, you read that right: four freakin’ thirty ayem. It’s really dark outside at 4:30, man! On those mornings, I have been running around my neighbourhood—from one pool of street light to the next. For protection from insomniac rapists, sleepless serial killers and their fiendish bleary-eyed ilk, I carry this vicious-looking Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest™ eye gouger

which was brought back from LA by a friend as part of the swag from the recent Disney press junket for the film. Last week, I thought I might hafta use it on the neighbours’ Chow who was put outside for his morning pee towards the end of my run. The furry bastard charged me every time I passed their yard—even when I skirted it by passing their house out on the street instead of on the sidewalk. Not sure if he doesn’t realize their short fence would be easy for him to jump over so that he could sink his teeth into a ripe cheek or if he’s all bark and no bite. I would not like to find out. And he would not like to find out how it feels to have a Pirates of the Caribbean key fob shoved into his eye, methinks…

The perils are numerous out there at 4:30am… I discovered one morning, as the sun started to rise, that I had fortuitously been stepping around a dead sparrow that was lying on the sidewalk along my route. Imagine the sickening squirsh and the godawful swearing that would’ve resulted if I hadn’t been quite so lucky. Rotting bird guts would’ve done a real number on my girlishly pink Peter Pan getaway boots. And I can’t see the (myriad) potholes very well when I skirt out onto the roads unless I happen to be underneath one of the streetlights. Then, this morning, when I rounded the corner down by the park near my house, I was admiring the full moon hanging over a spooky ground mist that was about three feet deep across the park’s expanse. Reminded of the (unheeded) warning from An American Werewolf in London–“Stay off the moors!”–I wondered if that eye gouger happened to be solid silver… somehow, I doubt it. Then I spotted somebody out in the middle of it. (No, not a werewolf.) He was carrying something. Something big and bulky. I’m certain it was a body in rigor mortis, encased in those extra-large black garbage bags. Probably his spouse. Or maybe a nosy neighbour, who’d come to his back door wondering “What’s he building down there?”. Either that or a golf bag.

Alright, alright, alright… Real life intrudes from time to time and masturbatory activity such as blogging is banished to the corner, where it sits and sulks. As does Constant Reader, apparently. ‘Cept Constant Reader also whines. “Why no updates?” “I keep checking, but there’s nothing new!” “Are you evvver going to write anything evvver again?”

I have been on both ends of this problem—fielding complaints from youse lot and getting all sucky from time to time, myself, with cy about late or altogether missing posts in his daily blog—thus, I do understand.

So.

Two new developments have diverted my attention lately—one I will not talk about here (a man I rilly like) and one I will (a hobby I hope to rilly like). The hobby is running—if running can be termed a “hobby”, that is. I mean, when I think of hobbies I think of activities during which glue sticks are used. In this case, there is BodyGlide used, and it sorta looks like a glue stick. So perhaps that counts.

Now, you must bear in mind that I have not travelled on foot (to use Werner Herzog’s oddly akimbo turn of phrase) at a rate faster than a stroll in many years… I tried running—briefly—back in the early 80s, but that was a long time ago. Since then, the fastest I’ve travelled on foot has been at what Our Gang at university called The Harold Bergen Forced March—the pace we kept when we were late for film screenings. It was faster than walking and slower than running—so as not to jostle the mickeys we were smuggling in our knapsacks, natch. Having lived in Tronna sans car for 16 years, though, it’s safe to say I’ve walked a lotta miles (and I’ve certainly ridden a lot of miles on my bicycle, too).

But running? Ummm, no. For one thing, nothing ever seemed so damned important that I should have to run to it. And, for another, there was just something sorta undignified about it, y’know? (And God knows I am the pinnacle of “dignity”… *ahem*) I mean, there’s the sweating and the hair flying in the face and the jiggling boobs and the panting (and the swearing) and then there’s the blisters and the chafing and the charley horses and the blackened toenails (and the swearing).

My sister ran the Detroit marathon a coupla years ago and while I was very proud of her accomplishment, I didn’t understand the urge that drove her to do it. Also that year, I went down to Moab—in southern Utah—with a couple who are friends of mine, where he ran the full marathon and she ran the half-marathon and I remained bewildered by their desire to do this strange thing. I mean, it didn’t sound like “fun”. “Fun” to me is stuff like rollercoasters and scary movies and fast boats on choppy waters… Not sweating and blisters (and swearing). Oh, my. Not to mention the fact that my sis told me about how running marathon-like distances tends to jostle the guts so much that some runners who don’t want to stop and use the port-o-lets along the route end up with shit running down their legs by the final kilometers of a race. (Now, do you remember what I said earlier about running not seeming to me to be terribly dignified?) I just can’t get down with that. I mean, what horrible choices: a port-o-let or shit running down my legs. Tweedle-dee-dee, what shall I choose for my discomfort and public humiliation today?

Nevertheless, I made a snap decision, back in June, that I would give running a try. I have a history of making what have turned out to be life-altering decisions as snaps, for some reason. So far, the decisions I’ve made in this way have worked out very well for me, so I don’t question the instinct. Thus, I went out on June 12th and, with my sister’s advice, bought a pair of Saucony running shoes (in an oh-so-girly pink) and went out for a walk that very evening. I’d been told to start out walking and work up to running. Being the impatient sort (as you might’ve guessed from what I’ve written about my drives between Sarnia and Chatham…), that only lasted four days—even though I was long out of shape, I wanted to start to run. On the advice of another running friend (who just ran the infamous Man V. Horse race in Wales), I tried to start out at 45-60 minutes of running one minute and then walking one minute, running, walking, running, walking, you get the pitcha. Yeah. Hrm. Well, in reality, the first time I tried that, it was more like staggering and panting for 30 seconds and then shuffling and wheezing for a minute. Or two. And it only lasted for half an hour. Ye gods. Not a very auspicious beginning.

But I did get up to 1-and-1s that week (five days of this, and then biking or tennis the other two days) and then graduated to 2-and-1s the next (the two minutes being the running, the one minute being the walking). The next week, I failed to tell time properly and managed to skip over the 3-and-1s straight to 4-and-1s. This week it is 5-and-1s and I find myself amazed when I think back to a month ago when I could barely manage 30 seconds of running!

So far, my only “injury” is the blackened toenail and blister which have rendered the middle toe on my left foot hideous. Nail polish helps but nothing can hide the blister. Ugh. Dunno what happened there, ‘cause the shoes don’t hurt at all.

So far, it’s a small price to pay.

Because I am feeling a considerable sense of accomplishment after my runs. And my self-confidence level is up. Plus I’m losing weight, and getting into better shape was one of my goals in the first place.

So now you know why I’ve been neglecting this thing lately. I’ll try to do better.

(Incidentally, Running with Scissors is a pretty funny novel by Augusten Burroughs. It has absolutely nothing to do with running. The film version is coming out later this year.)