hornofoverflowing

too rash?

12 May 2012 4 Comments

by hornofoverflowing in Uncategorized Tags: apologize, chatting, contrition, delete, name-calling, rash, respect, spoiler

Was I too rash? I know you’re thinking: “Catalina, rash? Seems hard to imagine!”

I was chatting online with a guy I had just met about a TV show I recently started following on DVD. Thus I am way behind the current episode so he promised not to spoil it by telling me what was going to happen later. Virtually the next thing he tells me is that so-and-so dies at the end. I couldn’t believe it! I politely told him that I didn’t feel like talking to him anymore. Of course he got mad and called me names. I told him exactly what he did that upset he me and he seemed to understand and said he wasn’t going to apologize. So I deleted him.

At first I thought maybe he was right and I was being too harsh. Now if he had misunderstood what spoiling the ending meant then I could see forgiving him. But he understood it all perfectly well and did it anyway, without contrition. The more I thought about it, I don’t want a friend like that. It seems to show a complete lack of respect. I don’t know any other way of seeing it. If there is one, please let me know!

So was I too rash to stop talking to him just because of that?

Existential Crisis

01 May 2012 5 Comments

by hornofoverflowing in Uncategorized Tags: ambivalence, betting, comfort, comfortable, complain, depression, ease, fail, failure, fall, fat, fear, gained weight, God, half-hearted, listless, no purpose, roulette, scared, smoking

Here it is: I’m not a failure, I’m worse. I’m someone scared to fail so I don’t even try.

I started realizing all this when I was smoking out last night and I had been too scared to write about it all day. But now it’s time to face it. I’ve lived my life halfway for many years now. When I was in high school and beginning college, my life was full of possibility. My dad and teachers had me believing I could be anything. The sky was the limit. I got into a good college and life was limitless. I was thin, people liked me.

Part of me still believes all that. Under all this fat, depression, ambivalence, fear and listlessness, I am still all that possibility. But I am scared to reach for it. I’m scared that if I reach out for the stars, I’ll fall trying. I’m scared of how hard it will hurt when I fall. Worse yet, I’m scared to find that there is no purpose to any of it, no God, no nothing. I’m more scared of this than the plain failure. What if I follow what I think is “my destiny” or “God’s plan” for me (or whatever you want to call it), and there is no such thing?

The sad fact is that I’m comfortable as I am. I’ve been living like this a few years since I gained the weight. Yes, I complain, but I guess I’m not that upset about it or I would try harder to make a change. I rather sit here and complain than try to become what I believe inside I can be because failing in that way would be much worse than the petty things I complain about now.

Oh God, I’m making no sense. I know I’m not, but I’m not sure how express myself more clearly. What if I try to become who I really want to become and I fail? What if I suck at it? What if I hope that the plan for me is to become a therapist and I go for it only to find I’m a terrible therapist?

I rather sit here in relative comfort and ease and make half-hearted attempts at being something more. That way, if I fail, I have two good arguments. I failed because I didn’t try that hard, and, plus, these mini-failures put me back where I am, which, admittedly, isn’t that bad.

I feel like I’m at the roulette table betting on both black and red. Either way I know I’ll win. I just keep forgetting that either way I’ll lose too. Plus, what happens if I am on my deathbed regretting I didn’t try harder? Instead of “rosebud,” my last words will be “what if I . . . ?” And who wants that?

Please please share your thoughts with me. I need help sorting this out. I didn’t realize it would be so painful when all the pieces fall together like this. I’m sure there are more pieces I am forgetting. Maybe I’ll remember later. Maybe writing and posting this is an attempt to reach up?

drinking beer is a metaphor for life

17 Apr 2012 8 Comments

by hornofoverflowing in beer Tags: anxiety, anxious, beer, calories, decision, drinking, fat, flummoxed, gulp, issue, junctions, let it be, life, metaphor, obstacle, screw it, Sweetheart, swig, worry, zen

I think life is a series of tiny junctions. Each junction is an issue, and obstacle, or decision point. At each junction, I seem to have two main choices: get anxious and worry about what I should do, or just screw it. Wow, even just writing “screw it” is hard. Obviously I nearly always choose the worry and anxiety option. Look at how much good that has done me! Lately, however, especially when drinking, I am more likely to choose the “screw it” option and just let it be. It works like this: something comes up, I immediately get anxious and flummoxed, then I stop, take a big swig of beer, and just let it go! It’s drinking zen.

“But oh no! I can’t afford the calories!!” So I gulp and say, silently, to myself, “screw it!”

“I’m getting so fat!”

“Already there Sweetheart!” (See, I am trying to refer to myself nicely). Gulp. “One more drink won’t hurt.”

“I should really go out with my friends tonight to see that movie, even though it sounds dumb.”

Gulp. “They’ll go with or without you and have just as much fun anyway.” Gulp.

See how it works? Drinking beer is a metaphor for life!

going out?

12 Apr 2012 2 Comments

by hornofoverflowing in Uncategorized

why do I invariably want to go out after a few drinks when it’s definitively a bad idea?

staying in and not going out

09 Apr 2012 4 Comments

by hornofoverflowing in Uncategorized Tags: accumulate, bad scene, binge, cancel, danger, drink, eat, embarrassment, flake, flock, fracas, friends, haunt, health, hurt, inside my head, judgment, louder, shy, threaten

I hate it when I cancel or flake on my friends. I almost never do it when I am just meeting one person, but, sometimes, ok, often, if there is a big group meeting up, I cancel or flake out. I mean I let them know, but I don’t go.

I’ve been thinking about why this is and I came up with three main reasons. Tell me if any of these are true for you. In no particular order, I worry about physical danger, embarrassment or judgment.

Physical danger is not highly likely, especially with a group of friends. But I may not be with my friends the whole time. After all, I have to get where we are going and get back home again. I usually take cabs, but, still I don’t always feel totally safe. That’s especially true at the end of the evening when I may not be 100% sober. I know with the way I look I can tend to be a target and god knows I’m not going to run away. I’m not being stuck up, I just know that people tend to remember me. Even though this is the least likely danger, it’s the most potentially damaging. Judgments and embarrassment hurt, but they don’t threaten my health or endanger my life.

Embarrassment and judgment are twins. I would call judgment unexpressed embarrassment and I’m not sure which is worse. Judgment means I can see it in their eyes but they’re not saying it or acting on it. Embarrassment means they’ve expressed their judgment in such a way that I, and usually many people around, know their judgment. I’m pretty shy by nature so I usually just turn red, smile, and try to laugh it off. There is no sense in making a bad scene worse and drawing more attention to the fracas. But those words and action hurt and I think they accumulate in a secret place in my brain and they build up. Then, when I next am considering going out, those old hurts come back and haunt me. These are the same thoughts that flock when I am in mid-binge and I am trying to eat and drink those judgments away. And it’s always hard because they are always louder inside my head than outside.

roadkill

08 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment

by hornofoverflowing in Uncategorized Tags: animals, bump, dead, kill, living, living creature, rear view mirror, roadkill, squirrel, telltale, vet

I ran over a squirrel yesterday. I saw it running across the road but didn’t have time to slam on the brakes. Plus, there was a car behind me so I was scared of it hitting me from behind. Animals have run under my car before and emerged healthy so I just hoped this squirrel would somehow make it. But I heard and felt the telltale bump behind me on the left wheel and saw it, sure enough, in my rear view mirror. I felt so bad. My heart came up into my throat but what could I do? I only realized about five minutes later that I could go back and make sure it was dead. But what if it weren’t, what would I have done then? Take it to a vet? Kill it myself? What if it was dead? Would I pick it up by the tail and throw it to the side of the road? I don’t think I could. So what’s going to happen to this barely living or already dead squirrel? What kind of world do we live in where it is so easy for me to kill another living creature and then carry on my life as if nothing happened?

the discrimination I should have followed

29 Mar 2012 1 Comment

by hornofoverflowing in Uncategorized Tags: adventure, awkward, beer, blabber, chest, clerk, disaster, door frame, eye-contact, fat girl, flustered, horndog, insulted, jammed, judging, kindly, loot, precarious, stacked, stammer, stare, surprise, wizened

Appropriately enough, this adventure was set in about the same place as the one I wrote about before:

http://hornofoverflowing.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/the-reverse-of-discrimination/

I was leaving my friendly neighborhood beer wholesale store and a kindly old Asian clerk asked me if I needed help getting my loot to my car. I said I was fine, thanks and proceeded on my way. But he stopped me again. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I stammered, surprised. Usually they only ask you once. I felt increasingly awkward because throughout this exchange he hadn’t made eye-contact with me once. Even though he stared at my chest, he seemed too wizened and kindly to be a horndog, but maybe not too generous to indulge in some good, old-fashioned judging. “I’ve done this before…” I blabbered.

But his eyes still said “this fat girl is never getting all that beer into her car.” He repeated, “are you sure?”

“Thanks anyway,” I pushed the cart to the door.

But the joke was on me. Flustered, I forgot that the door frame makes a big bump on one side of the door and I ran the wheels of my cart right into it. All my beer cases were stacked on my cart, which would never be considered precarious for ordinary rolling circumstances. But, hitting the door jam, the top two cases shook violently, threatening to fall. Luckily, I steadied them just in time to avoid disaster. My beers secure, I turned around, but he had gone and no one saw my near-spill.

I got to my car and unloaded most of the cases successfully. The couple on the bottom, however, underneath the cart, were jammed and I couldn’t lift them out. I had to sit on the ground of the parking lot, grab a case with each hand, and push the cart away with my feet to get them loose. What a sight! Luckily, again, no one was around.

As insulted as I was, the kindly old gentleman was right: the fat girl needed help.

cybernate

27 Mar 2012 1 Comment

by hornofoverflowing in Uncategorized Tags: chatting online, cyber, cybernate, hibernate, surfing, winter

CYBERNATE, noun

When one thinks one has spent “just a couple hours” chatting and surfing online and suddenly one discovers winter has come and gone.

my latest batch

11 Mar 2012 1 Comment

by hornofoverflowing in beer Tags: beer, brewing, hopped, long time, mistake, overconfident, re-yeasted, yeast

This post is for a friend who says I haven’t written in a long time. Ooops.

So I started brewing a new batch of beer. I guess I got overconfident after the last turned out like I hoped – or hopped LOL. Anyway, I made a big mistake this time. I went to the brewing store and bought all my ingredients and then left them for a few weeks without opening the bag. Ooops. I forgot yeast was one of the ingredients and needs to be refrigerated. So I brewed the beer anyway with the bad yeast. I called the helpful friendly beer brewing guys and they told me to get new yeast – which they gave me for free – and I have now re-yeasted it (I love making up new terms!) and hopefully all will be well soon.
That’s my story.

Hilly

29 Feb 2012 1 Comment

by hornofoverflowing in Uncategorized Tags: big, big hair, big personality, bustline, buzz, car accident, CEO, cringe, depth, developing, echo, expectations, gorgeous, hate, haunt, heaven, hildegard, Hilly, Honey, implants, important, insignificant, miss, misstep, mortified, notoriety, outlandish, ready, secretary, spotlight, topic of conversation, tough, trashy

My dad just told me that Hildegard was in a car accident and didn’t make it. I’m not sure how to feel. I haven’t seen her in years, probably not since I was ten. I can’t say I’ll miss her or even that I liked her, but I also can’t say that I haven’t thought about her. She’s one of those figures from childhood that sort of haunts.

When I was little, Hildegard, or Hilly or Honey, as she was more commonly known, was my dad’s secretary. I think she might have been born in Germany but she lived all her life here and didn’t have an accent: just a weird name. Everything about Hilly was big; her hair, her laugh, her voice, her personality, and her implants.

She was often the topic of conversation between my dad and his friends. Long before I ever met her, I knew who she was. Even when I was seven I often asked my dad what Hilly had done that day at work. I knew he’d tell me an amusing story invariably involving her making some misstep and gaining even more inner-office notoriety. She was one of those people who always seemed to be trying too hard.

Before I met her I thought she was an important person at the company. People seemed to talk about her as much as the CEO – I figured they were equally important. I don’t remember exactly how I learned of her relative insignificance but I remember hearing the words “just a secretary” echoing. I met her soon thereafter because those words were still ringing in my ears, coloring my perception. I suppose I had all sorts of expectations, but none of them were close to the woman I met.

Other than giving the CEO a run for his money and being the other most important person at the company, I expected someone larger than life (and there she didn’t disappoint), but maybe with more depth to her. I secretly wondered if she would be my new mother, but, by the time I met her, I think I knew my father didn’t take her seriously.

I only saw her a dozen times but that was more than enough. She was tough, she was outlandish, she was gorgeous, she was trashy. She dressed in ways that made me cringe but made the men talk. There always seemed to be a buzz around her.

She commented once on my breasts developing (I started really early) and I was mortified. I ran to the company bathroom, crying. I don’t think she even noticed. I feared becoming her and I dreaded that my adolescence was bringing me closer to being her – certainly in the bustline. But in some ways, I envied her always being in the spotlight. Can you hate someone and want to be just like them at the same time?

Heaven better get ready!