Girl Bookworm Looks for Silly Boy Bookworm

Tuesday posts are going to be romantic in nature (though not always a misadventure in romance), and probably, since it is me + romance, it will be funny. To follow up the Cobbler story arc, I decided to post a stand-alone blog. Of an on-line profile I once used. One of several in a two-month period. Because I edited it once a week. Seriously, how can you boil yourself down to 1,000 words and the illusion of your perfect pairing? Which changes every time you go on a bad date.

For your enjoyment, here is an on-line profile with [present-day commentary]:

An independent gal [code: I don't want to be called/texted all day or see you every day] who can bake an apple pie [I'm a domestic goddess (but only in the kitchen)], watch a baseball game [my father once hoped I would be the first female pitcher in the MLB], and has a crush on Teddy Roosevelt [intellectual, physical, political, spiritual, presidential. In hindsight, I should have just described him in the last couple paragraphs]. 

There are at least three shelves of my multitude of bookcases for my to-read books, and I have several lists floating about for books to buy or check out at the library. [i.e. bookworm] I have two rescue dogs with whom I enjoy taking daily walks, going to the dog park, and hiking at the lake for a bit of off-leash fun. [Animal lover a must, and look! I am sort of outdoors-y.] My coonhound mix even goes volunteering with me as a therapy dog. [Okay, this kind of registers as bragging, but I was hoping for a "Heck yeah! Volunteering is important!" response.] 

Going to the movies is one of my favorite weekend activities--pretty much any genre but horror--and I get out to OKCMOA for titles that tickle my fancy when I can as well. [I am a cinnephile and I like Indie films--jeez, this also is reading pretentious. Maybe this wasn't a good exercise.] I enjoy traveling, preferably once or twice a year for a week or longer to a national park or overseas. [Short vacations should be staycations where you relax or catch up on cleaning and feel "in control" of your life again. But a long vacation is necessary for breaking free of ruts and boringness. To remind yourself there is more to life than what exists in your small bubble. You lose that bigger perspective if you never leave the bubble.] My brother lives in India, and I’m excited about the vacationing opportunities! [He totally does! And I totally am!] Of course, a weekend road trip to see a favorite band in another city or down to Texas for ACL is also a lot of fun. [This was meant to sound fun and free spirited and make clear that I love music and going to concerts. But the ACL reference seems elitist. I'm up to 3 jackass self-descriptors. Good thing this was only up for a week!]

Looking for someone to go adventuring with. [More precisely, someone who can turn everyday events into an adventure.] Someone who enjoys being silly [I'm ridiculous and I like people who bring out that side of me--serious is boring], has an even temper [I've had enough experiences to know someone with a short fuse is not only unattractive but also a terrible match for someone who tends to dig in her heels and match tones], and has his own interests and hobbies [Again, I cannot abide being smothered. Also I think it is so attractive when a guy is really good at something I'm not. As long as it isn't sports (baseball is okay--actually, baseball is great. Have you seen their uniforms?)]. 

I enjoy learning and being challenged. [A guy who knows words I don't? Instant attraction. Someone whose life philosophy challenges me to be a better person--to be nicer, to be more involved, to think of others before myself. I want that kind of challenge in my partner, and I want to provide it for him. (You get that from that 6-word sentence, right?)] Growing up with two brothers, I feel the need to prove that if you can do it, I too can do it (maybe not better—but I can definitely do it). [So this weird little tidbit was because I kept getting matched with rock climbers. What about my profile screamed, "I need a rock-climbing boyfriend"? For whatever brief amount of time I thought, Yeah, I could date a rock climber, this sentence served as the tomboy proof I would totally be up for rock climbing or camping or whatever. Totally not, it turns out.] And I like someone who can be spontaneous, or at least appreciate spontaneity. [Sometimes, I will blow your mind--and you better not be pissed about my random whimsy. Rather, you should be enamored of this whimsical elf.]

YA Addict Anonymous

Six months of working from home and I’m more than ready to return to the workforce. No deadlines, no schedule, no structure make Buttercup a very slow girl. The work ethic is there, just not the diligence when I could be watching Adventure Time or reading books. Gobs and gobs of books.

And what have I been reading? The only legitimate book is Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. Began it in November, and have steadily made progress so that I’m in the middle of the story. Unlike the other books I’ve been reading (we’ll get to my silliness soon enough), Tolstoy cannot be read in a single day…or night, as the case is more likely to be. Like all Russian literature of that time, Anna Karenina is encumbered with too many points of view and sprawling explanations of characters’ personal philosophies and the events that change those philosophies. The character develops not by overcoming some heroic flaw, but by showing a progression of social and religious beliefs. Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment “overcame” his belief in Nietzsche's superman to Christianity’s Christ. Levin in AK has an evolving social-eco-political understanding of muzhiks and how they fit into his life as workers on his farm. As his understanding evolves and changes, so do his actions rationally align themselves to reflect those changes, and so we see the character develop as his relationship with the Russians peasantry develops.

It makes for slow reading. A few things have lodged with me, and eventually I might get around to exploring them in a blog. I have always sympathized with Russian internalization. The characters are forever analyzing themselves, their actions, and others. In that way, I feel very Russian. However, this rational alignment of actions to beliefs I do not find to be true in life. People just don’t behave in accordance to their personal philosophies most of the time. But more of that in some future Russian post. (I know, what fun!)

So Anna Karenina is my legitimate reading, but I’ve had quite a few illegitimate page turners as well. Young Adult fantasy fiction. Shiver me timbers, is it addicting! I didn’t always love YA. In fact, when I was a young adult myself, I read adult books such as Murakami, George R. R. Martin, classics (of course!), C. S. Lewis, Neil Gaiman, and loads of historical fiction about Queen Maud, Mary Queen of Scotts, and other primarily United Kingdom-centric personalities. Now that I’m in my middling twenties, I’m reading YA like a teenager. What’s that all about?

It began with Harry Potter—that seemingly innocent series of J. K. Rowling that makes the magic world seem so fantastically and ridiculously opulent and somehow plausible. It took me a year to finish the series because I just couldn’t bring myself to read of the death of beloved characters, but by then I had the YA bug. The next book club I was in was Looking for Alaska by John Green. Mister Green, I believe, has more to with my unnatural obsession than any other author (even J. K., though she got the ball rolling).

Hello. My name is Buttercup Harding, and I am a female whose favorite genre is male coming-of-age novels.

John Green is a master. Hilarious. Each character is quirky but believable and identifiable and endearing to the nth degree. After reading Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Will Grayson, Will Grayson (not his best), he landed on my list of literary loves. His talent totally deserves to be on my list, but the fact that I a) identify with high school-aged male protagonists, and b) identify with the themes/messages of the books worries me about myself.

For instance, An Abundance of Katherines ends with three different epiphanies by the three main characters: 1) I’m not a doer, 2) I’m self-centered, and 3) I want to matter. All three of these I identify with, and that worries me that at twenty-whatever I am still struggling with the same issues of high school students?

What book genres do you read and why? What’s the appeal? Do you think that your late twenties is an appropriate time to be coming to terms with such issues as selfishness and wanting to matter? What literary character do you most identify with?

A Retelling of the Cockamouse Tale

I admit it. I’m a How I Met Your Mother fanatic. Don’t worry. This isn’t a romance story (or I’m sorry, this isn’t a romance story). This is verifiable proof that the cockamouse is real.

This weekend I’m in Tulsa. I was supposed to meet with a potential supplier—Topeca coffee—but that fell through, unfortunately. Fortunately, I was staying with my good friend—we’ll call her Sprinkle—and we managed to fill up our time. I had previously done some work for her, and in repayment, she was going to list and ship all of my used books I was trying to offload. My bookcases are so heavily burdened I have run out of places to stack books, of which I could not possibly stop buying/borrowing/burglaring. I only brought two giant tote bags of books.

It bears mentioning that the previous night she found a spider in the apartment. I have full-fledged arachnophobia. She’s not much better. I’m way worse. Sprinkle had to coerce me from all the way across the room to within five feet of her and the spider so I could be on standby with a shoe in case her broom didn’t kill it. And then instead of whacking the hell out of the spider, I simply threw the shoe at it, screamed, and ran back to the other side of the room. She ended up picking up the shoe and stomping it to death. The next morning we saw Spiderman. (It was good. You should totally go see it.)

So that afternoon, after Spiderman made us want superhero boyfriends, we ran into a situation requiring a superhero boyfriend…or at the very least a boyfriend.

I was sitting on the couch working on Pinterest—a full-time occupation in my unemployed status—while Sprinkle pulled tome after tome from the depths of a truly cavernous black tote bag. With a gasp and a bang she dropped several novels at once.

“What is it?” I asked, but considerably more strident in tone than necessary. I had not forgotten the spider of last night.

“Okay! I’m done. It’s a spider. A huge spider.” She held up her fingers to indicate a near tarantula-sized monster that now lurked in the depths of the bag.

She didn’t have to say it out loud. We both knew after my cowardly behavior last night that it was my turn up to bat. I slowly placed my laptop on the couch beside me. Stood up. Tentatively approached the bag resting on the coffee table, which I swear was radiating evil or something. And timidly peeked into the shadow opening.

Nothing. I only saw books at the very bottom. I shook the top of the bag a little bit as I muttered about Andrew Garfield knowing what to do. Something truly giant ran out from under a book and up the side of the tote bag—directly toward me. I screamed and fell over Sprinkle in my mad scramble backward.

“Not a spider!”

“What?” (She was yelling at the top of her voice too.)

“Giant cockroach. Radioactively large cockroach. Oh my Lord. The cockamouse is real.”

Except I wasn’t laughing. I was near puking at the size of the thing. And while I’m not scared of cockroaches—I’d even had a considerably larger Moroccan cockroach riding around on me at the OKC zoo when I was a junior curator—this beast didn’t belong in my tote bag in Sprinkle’s apartment in Oklahoma. It belonged in a zoo. Or halfway around the world. Or in a lab. Cockroaches are gross, and I had a full case of the willies.

But still, it wasn’t a spider. So I could handle it. I could handle it. I could handle it. I repeated my new mantra as I sidled back up to the bag, poking at the side so it would scurry back to the bottom before I peered in once more. Sprinkle joined me.

“Here, let’s each take out a book—two. Two books.”

She pulled out two, shaking them quickly above the bag and stacking them. I jerked two out as if the bag was on fire. An idea I quickly latched on to.

“You know, we could just light the books. They’re flammable. A cockroach can survive a nuclear attack, not a fire, right?”

Sprinkle just stared at me, nonplussed.

“No? No? All right. No, yeah, you’re right.”

She pulled another book, so did I, and screamed. That thing had it out for me. It was charging up the side of the bag at my hand every time. I flapped my arms in fright.

“Maybe…maybe if we got the vacuum cleaner out…”

“Yes!” I shouted. “Yes, let’s do that.” I tried to talk more quietly. We were in an apartment after all. Someone was going to call the cops. But really I was beginning to think that that would not be an overreaction. At the very least it needed other eye witnesses.

Sprinkle got the vacuum out and I had to take the attachment off the hose because there was no way that the cockamouse would fit in the small opening. That meant that the hose and my entire hand had to disappear into the bag to find the monster. It was hidden again. With the vacuum cleaner on, I shoved around books with the hose, poised to suck the sucker up. There was a flash of black. I thought I had him. I crowed in victory. And then he was there, by my hand, and I fell backwards on the vacuum cleaner, screaming like a loon once more, and took down Sprinkle and the vacuum with me. We lay in a pile regrouping.

“Okay, okay. I can do this. I’m not scared of cockroaches. It isn’t a spider. It’s not like it will bite me.”

Sprinkle gave me an even look. “Yeah, but it’s so big!”

At least she understood. She wasn’t laughing at my fright.

Shaking my hands to get the willies out, I stepped up to the bag of terror once more. Hidden again. That cockroach was wily! But I was determined he would meet his end. This time when he charged at me, I was ready, and for sure sucked him up. There would be no uncertainty though. I vacuumed all around that bag. Sprinkle’s vacuum cleaner has a clear canister, and she saw him in there. Scurrying through the dog hair (she has two pugs and a cat and I brought my two up for the weekend). We had caught him. And he’s still in her vacuum. We’re scared to dump it.

So if anyone has a good name for a cockamouse… leave a comment!