ab·ject adj \ˈab-ˌjekt\

by Camille Posted on April 9, 2011
1: sunk to or existing in a low state or condition (to lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fallen — John Milton)
2 : a. cast down in spirit, servile, spiritless (a man made abject by suffering) b. showing hopelessness or resignation (abject surrender)
3: expressing or offered in a humble and often ingratiating spirit (abject flattery; an abject apology)

Examples of ABJECT

  1. They live in abject misery.
  2. He offered an abject apology.
  3. He thought she was an abject coward.
  4. … the time would come that no human being should be humiliated or be made abject. —Katherine Anne Porter, The Never-Ending Wrong, 1977
  5. … my critical intelligence sometimes shrivels to an abject nodding of the head. —Lewis H. Lapham, Harper’s, May 1971
  6. … nothing seemed to have changed at the Beehive across the years. The same pallid employees were visible in the same abject state of peonage, cringing under the whiplash of overseers. —S. J. Perelman, Baby, It’s Cold Inside, 1970
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Origin of ABJECT

Middle English, from Latin abjectus, from past participle of abicere to cast off, from ab- + jacere to throw — more at jet

First Known Use: 15th century
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Comments closed because I don’t want consolation I just want to lie and bleed awhile and then get up and fight again.
Posted in introspection, mediocrity, woe is me | Comments Off on ab·ject adj \ˈab-ˌjekt\

Abandon Ship!

by Camille Posted on April 4, 2011

Poor Kyle and I were having a little bit of marital weirdness a couple of weeks ago. I don’t really know what else to call it besides marital weirdness. To say it was marital strife makes it sound more divorce-ish than it was, but to blow it off as just a little glitch in the hitch would be unrealistic and overly bubbly and I’m just not either of those. It was just weird, is all.

Below is the beginning of a post I drafted during that week, but which post I stopped writing when I realised that to tell the story right would probably cause undue strain on our already-stress-fractured marriage, and to tell it without all the exciting details (the safe way) would just leave you all disappointed and feeling left out and lonely and possibly violent.

So I just gave up, as I do with most every unsolveable problem in my life.

Never did finish it, but for lack of anything better to post, and to let you all know I am not in fact dead, and because honestly I sort of liked where it was going (how could it not be kind of awesome with references to Titanic and all-you-can-eat tartar sauce), I’m posting it below.

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If you were to ask Poor Kyle what it’s like to be married to me right now, he probably wouldn’t say anything.

Because he’s smart.

But if you were to read his mind’s response to such a question, you would probably see images of black holes, buildings going up in smoke, and sinking ships.

And that desperate-looking fellow clinging to the aft rail of the lido deck there? The poor guy who looks about like he’s ready to say his last Hail Mary and fling himself overboard while a string quartet plays a touching rendition of “Nearer, My God, to Thee?”

That is my husband.

And that crazy-arse ho shoving people out of the life boat to make room for all her luggage?

That is my husband’s future second wife who he marries after I die because I’m trapped in the midnight buffet room where an enormous sculpture of shrimp cocktail fell on me during a feeding frenzy, which I was enjoying when—

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But you get the idea.

Hangin’ in there for another couple of weeks,

cpsf

Posted in Married Life, mediocrity, oh brother what next | 6 Comments

Hearthurt

by Camille Posted on March 21, 2011

I don’t know.

I’ve been in a weird place lately.

Not depressed, but…susceptible. Yes I think susceptible is the exact word I need.

Maybe it’s the fact that we had a couple days of spring—just enough to get me thinking about busting out the flip flops—and then got catapulted back into winter, just BAM.

Maybe it’s all the crap happening in Japan and [enter country here].

Maybe it’s that I haven’t had time to write and get it all out like I normally do.

Or maybe it’s that I’m in my hundredth trimester and this pregnancy is really starting to bug me.

I’m like, eating chocolate all the time. Seriously all the time. Could be all the extra weight I’ve put on that’s, well, weighing me down.

Things have been weird with PK lately (not like divorce weird, just cabin fever type get out of my hair with the spousal stuff weird {me get out of his hair, not he mine}). It seems like when one of us is grouchy the other is cheerful, and vice versa, but never at the same time (well, we’re often grouchy at the same time but not so much simultaneously happy). I guess that could be a different post in itself. Or a different couple’s therapy session. (Don’t laugh; I’ve been considering it.)

But and so I’ve been keenly sensitive these days, both to marital discord and to sundry other sad things.

Like, for example, at the bowling alley on Saturday night (don’t ask), there was this guy, this old guy, probably 75 or so, who sauntered in with his own gear—shiny shoes, hand powder, sweatbands, and not one but two of his own personal bowling balls each with its own leather stubby-handled custom bag—around 8:45 p.m.

He reserved his own lane, the one next to ours, and proceeded to make quite a show of practicing. Bowling. All alone. On a Saturday night. The peak time for bowling alley busy-ness (which, why do bowling alleys EVER have busy times is what I want to know, but don’t mind me I’m just the pissy girl in the corner).

Jeff—that’s the name he typed into his score screen (yes, he fully typed his own name into the score screen despite the fact that he was the only one who was using the thing)—was actually pretty good, but that just seemed even sadder to me. Like he came to the bowling alley on a Saturday night when he knew it would be crowded so that people would watch him bowl and maybe someone would talk to him about how good he was at bowling. Like as in he was probably paying $30 an hour to rent that lane because it was worth it to him for its inherent conversation potential. Like he was willing to pay for the chance that someone might actually talk to him, maybe the only conversation he would have since he went bowling last Saturday night. Be good at fishing. Be good at knitting, or metal-detecting, or gardening—it’s supposed to be solitary. But please, Jeff, don’t be good at bowling. Bowling and movie-going and chess and Caribbean cruises and three-legged races are strictly off-limit entertainments when you’re alone and eighty. Don’t be so freaking good at bowling, Jeff; you’re killing me.

After sitting for a few minutes next to what was easily the most depressing sight I’d seen all month (I guess not counting Japan, but in truth it was pretty high up there with Japan, emotion-wise, for me), the twist of despair in my heart became so intense that if there’d been any sort of illicit drugs nearby, and if I’d known what to do with them, I would’ve consumed them, OD’d probably, just to escape the pain of it all.

Because that’s what life comes to, doesn’t it? All of us—you, me, Jeff—will end up half-dead and bowling alone someday.

And the worst part is that I can’t even think of a bright-side resolution to this post.

Because there is no resolution.

This’s all there is.

Posted in failures, in all seriousness, introspection, mediocrity, sad things | 11 Comments

Shine a little light where you need it the most

by Camille Posted on March 10, 2011

Hey guess what?

The high today was somewhere around 40º F. Positive. Maybe even a little higher. Above freezing, though, is the point.

I don’t want to be jinxy or anything, but spring is HERE.

Hey guess what I did today?

Rolled the windows down while driving. For the first time in like ever. It didn’t last long because I remembered that it bugs me to have my hair in my face whilst driving, but I have always believed in measuring the quality of life’s Little Moments…not duration.

Hey and guess what else?

I felt a sort of exuberance in my—preemptively aware that this will sound corny here—soul today.

But I predict that you will listen to this song and feel likewise…

If the sun is not currently shining in your neck of the woods, take it from me:

It will.

It just really will.

Posted in awesome., good tunes, It's All Good, quickies | 2 Comments

Inaccessible

by Camille Posted on March 6, 2011

Remember summer?

Me neither.

I was looking at some phone pictures leftover from the summer, and it was like looking at someone else’s photos—browsing through someone else’s life. I looked at the pictures and I literally could not remember the events leading up to the snapping of said photos. It’s like an entire three-month chunk of my life is just gone. Wiped clean. Tabula rasa. Like summer never even happened.


Just look at this incredible view out some girl’s backyard circa July 2010. The night before this photo was taken, the girl with the phone had slept in her bed with her bedroom window open—wide open, with the gentle breeze of summer smells lulling her to sleep. When she awoke the next morning to the slow billowing of her white sheer bedroom curtains and saw the breathtaking fog hovering outside her window, she reached immediately for her phone on the bedside table and snapped a quick photo. Then she yawned, stretched, got out of bed and ate a delicious ham and cheese omelette for breakfast (made by her own personal chef) and bathed in a shower of liquid silk, and didn’t have to shave her armpits in the shower because she had had her armpit hair lasered off for thousands of dollars just days before. Also she had a book deal. She was happy then.

Just look at this girl: flip-flops. Short-sleeved T-shirt. Faintest hint of a tan. She looks so happy, so carefree, like she’d seen the sun that day and the day before and was guaranteed to see it the next day. What a ho-bag. I hate her.

Here’s a photo taken from the same place just six months later. It might as well be a different country.

Someone else took those summertime photos, and that someone was happy and carefree and probably really beautiful and had no pimples and no extra weight around her waist and also she was a millionaire.

No—billionaire.

Or maybe not but that’s how I feel when I look at these photos—I feel like summer is just as inaccessible to me right now as a billion dollars. Like I will never again be able to walk down the street in flip flops and short sleeves and just one layer of pants.

I don’t know when I saw the sun last. Or the colour green. I don’t know when I last took a breath of outdoor air that didn’t turn my snot to ice. I can’t remember what tomatoes taste like. I’ve forgotten the smell of grass.

If it ever comes back—summer, I mean—I vow to appreciate it more.

I will live a lifetime every day that sun rises and warms my skin.

I will pack away my winter clothes for reals this time, not just leave them hanging in my closet.

I will get rid of every pair of socks I own and wear nothing but strappy sandals from June to October, even when strappy sandals are inappropriate footwear for my chosen activities, like hiking.

I will hike this summer.

I will open the blinds at 5 a.m. and sit cross-legged on the living room floor until the sunshine touches my skin through the window panes and I will not move from my position cross-legged on the floor until 11:00 p.m. when the sun goes down once and for all.

I will give myself a brain freeze drinking an Icee™.

I will pick strawberries from the strawberry farm and eat them all—a whole bucket full—while sitting in my swimsuit on the back deck.

I will mow the lawn butt nekkid and laugh when my neighbors stare.

I will make popsicles out of freshly-squeezed juice.

I will buy a citronella plant for my back deck.

I will watch the July First fireworks from a lawnchair on my roof.

I will swim.

I will attempt to cartwheel.

I will find a pair of shorts I like and wear them every day.

I will eat a tomato sandwich.

I will eat ten.

If summer ever comes back, I will climb a tree and sit in it for an hour with a notebook and a pen.

I will figure out how to hang a hammock once and for all.

I will roll around in my front lawn and take pictures of the grass stains.

I will save the pictures for the winter.

I will need them.

Posted in Canada | 8 Comments

Saturday Steals: Meubles

by Camille Posted on March 4, 2011

Hello, and welcome to another rousing round of Saturday Steals, where what you get is what you see and what you see is cheap or free!

To participate, simply:

1) Steal a steal.

2) Write a post about it on your blog, mentioning that you’re participating in Saturday Steals (you can steal the above image if you so desire), and

3) Add the link to said post to the list at the bottom of this post.

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Over the summer

[What?

Summer.

What’s that?

A glorious thing you used to know but now it’s gone and pretty likely never to return],

I got into the habit of cruising Mayberry’s regular weekend yard sales (I am a yard sale expert, you know) armed with quarters and void of all pride, scavenging the town for good steals. (Come to think of it, I was kind of like a little woodland creature back then, squirreling away good steals during the abundance of summer to last me throughout the upcoming winter.)

Anyway, one such steal was this:

A vintage, Canadian-made, solid wood side table. I bought it for $5.

It was in pretty poor shape, and undeniably very ugly, but I in my infinite wisdom saw beyond its shell and found: good bones.

The plan back in the summer was to sand it down and paint it some trendy colour and re-sell it on Craigslist.

I got so far as sanding it and priming it before school started again and that was the end of my entrepreneurial venture.

Fast forward to February. My in-laws decided to give us their forty year-old deep freezer to replace our fifty year-old deep freezer (which has been out of commission and I’m pretty sure growing mold in our garage for the last year or so), since they were getting a zero year-old one to replace their forty year-old one. The process of sorting through, cleaning out, hauling away, and playing Tetris with all of the crap cluttering our garage took up the better part of a Saturday last month and involved swear words of such violent a caliber I really shouldn’t repeat them here, but in the end my father-in-law did not die of a heart attack while moving freezers with PK, so all was well.

And we had a working freezer again.

‘Midst this process, though, I came across my old side table from the summer, primed and missing its hardware, which I had removed for said priming purposes.

After enduring some really top-rate jabs from my husband about why do we have so much junk in our garage (answer: me, it’s all my fault), I swallowed my shame and jumpstarted myself into action:

I can sell that just how it is, I thought. Market it as Primed-and-Ready-to-Paint (rather than half-finished, failed potential).

So I did. I rounded up the hardware (it’s actually pretty nifty: see above), took some pictures of it and posted it online. Within hours, I’d gotten five emails from people wanting it.

I’m not going to lie, I seriously considered taking the ad down and just keeping it for myself, because if so many people thought it was great then it was probably worth keeping, but lack of decorative prowess combined with my lack of space for the thing and also my dear love of all things coin- and cash-related (exacerbated these past months on account of this), compelled me to move forward with my plan.

I bought the table for $5 at a yard sale in July.

I sold it for $55 on Craigslist in February.

My $50 profit will pay for a whole lot of crepes à Paris in June.

And that is my steal.

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Now it’s your turn! What have you stolen lately?

Add your steal to the link list below. It will be open from now till Sunday at 11:59 p.m.

Posted in awesome., Saturday Steals | 8 Comments

Please stop

by Camille Posted on March 2, 2011

Hi stop

Have been incognito stop

Apologies stop

Not that you care stop

But just in case stop

Will resurrect soon stop

I hope stop

For realz stop

But probably not till next week stop

Excepting Saturday Steals stop

Of course stop

This weekend stop

It’s on stop

Like donkey kong stop

Steal something stop

Join me stop

Be there else be square stop

R O O stop

 

 

 

p stop s stop

R O O means Roger Over Out stop

Duh stop

Posted in blogger finger, failures | 4 Comments