Twas Brillig

I’m about to tell you something about myself that I think will surprise the dickens out of ya.

I’m sitting here watching College Football with my cute hubby.  Not because he likes it, though he does, but because I like it.  In fact, I’m obsessed with it.

Surprised?  Oh, it gets weirder, I promise.

Who, do you suppose, is my team of choice?  The team for whom I bleed blue?

That’s right.  The BYU Cougars.  Yup.  The school that I had a full-ride scholarship to, until they threw me out on my duff for allowing my best friend to make out with my boyfriend.  Ummm…

I know, you’d think I’d be running away screaming.  I was treated so completely unfairly there, and while I realize that a lot of people have great experiences there, I didn’t!

But it doesn’t matter.  I’m a die-hard fan.  I don’t miss a game.  I bought the cable package that lets me see every single game.  I schedule my life around this team.

All three of my children who talk (because one, you know, doesn’t) all yell “GO COUGS!!!” when I tell them that the time is appropriate.  :-D  See, I just call that responsible parenting.

Tonight, I’m blessed with a Thursday game.  Ahhhh, I love Thursday games.  The kids are in bed, so I can actually WATCH the whole game.  AND, it leaves Saturday free for all the other important games.  Because, um, (and now I’m feeling sheepish) I’m kind of obsessed with college football in general, not just my team.  Hubby couldn’t be prouder.  I know more about this sport and all the big name teams than any of his guy friends.  Hahahaha.  I will even confess that occasionally I spend an entire Saturday watching various football games while Hubby cleans the house.  Hahahahahaha. 

I know that this seems incongruent with everything you know about me, and I really couldn’t agree more.  But I can’t examine that just now, because half-time’s over!  Gotta run!  Go Cougs!!!

Brillig has engulfed me.

Quite unexpected, really. I’d seen other bloggers use fun names, and I knew that I needed one. I decided very spur-of-the-moment-ly to start a new blog and on a whim I thought of “Brillig.”

It was very sudden, and not thought-through at all.

But now, this Brillig person has taken over my life. When I go to introduce myself in the real world, I’m more likely to call myself “Brillig” first. In fact, when I went to vote yesterday, I honestly scanned the roster for “Brillig” before I looked for that real name of mine. When the woman-voting-official-person asked my name, I bumbled and stammered, as though she’d just asked me a very complicated question (it was seriously so embarrassing—I then blurted out my maiden name, and then took it back and said, “no, that’s not it either.” When I finally came up with my actual name she was trying not to die laughing at me. She was like, “are you sure that’s your name?” “Yes,” I replied. “That’s really my name.” She then told me that I didn’t need to be nervous— the voting process was really straight-forward. Hahahaha. You KNOW that if she has a blog, she TOTALLY wrote about me yesterday).

I think of myself as Brillig. That’s all there is to it.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I used to have another blog. A very sad, boring, empty, and totally un-designed blog under my real name. I was very careful about what I said, which meant that I really had nothing to say. I met no one, and the only person who ever commented was Kate, and she only commented because as my BFF, she’s required to.

It wasn’t until I assumed the name of Brillig that I really found my voice. It’s amazing— this Brillig chick has unleashed the inner me!

Who would have guessed that I’d find the “real me” by creating a fake name?

Wordless Wednesday

So, just after my Gramma D died, she was sent an invitation to attend a “rock concert”, with VIP seating and backstage passes and even a fancy banquet afterwards to meet the artist. Apparently, my Gramma D (who was an ancient and hideously wealthy widow) contributed to one of the non-profit organizations that was sponsoring the concert, and this was their way of thanking her.

The concert? David Cassidy.

An important thing to remember is that my Gramma would have been 101 years old at the time of the concert. This is not one of my exaggerations, Gentle Readers. She literally would have been 101 years old. Can you picture her at a David Cassidy concert? Hahahahahahahahaha.

However, Gramma was dead. So, my brilliant and beautiful sister Laura took the tickets (three in all) and invited me and our other sister Jenny to go. Girls’ Night Out. Washed up 70’s Teen Idol. VIP seats. Banquet. The absolute perfect, perfect evening.

Now, my sisters are quite a bit older than me. Jenny by 10 years, Laura by 12. That means that they actually watched the Partridge Family back in the day, though even they only caught the tail end of David Mania. But Laura had had a David Cassidy lunch box in elementary school. I, however, kind of missed that ship by a decade or so, and I really didn’t know much about him…

So, we go to this concert and we settle into our VIP seats, still trying to picture Gramma D here, and after great delay the concert starts. And I do what normal people do at concerts—I jump up and dance and scream and so on. I was fully aware that I was the only person in the “expensive seats” doing this, and that I was being stared at. Ummmm… it’s a CONCERT, people! I was also painfully aware that I was the only person under the age of 35 (I was 25 at the time, I’m 29 now) in the audience all together, except for a few young children running about. I think David and I really connected—I was representative of the audience he wished he had. Alas, there was only one of me. I grabbed Laura and made her stand and dance with me (which she is prone to do anyway, though perhaps with less vehemence than I), but Jenny absolutely would NOT stand up. In fact, Jenny was really quite bugged by the whole thing. Oh, she snickered here and there, but mostly she rolled her eyes—at us, at him.

As the night went on, Dear David, as I affectionately call him, was also in a really bad mood, and kept telling us how sad he was and how hard it was to be there, etc. Um, kind of a big fat downer, really. We never quite understood his misery and sorrow (I remember him saying there was a death of a loved one, but my sisters don’t remember that—it’s possible I concocted it, and he never really said it) and I felt bad for people who had, you know, paid to be there. Here we were, ready to hear his happy, perky music, and he kept stopping the music to tell us how bummed he was. It was so, so weird.

I have to say, though, that Dear David had aged very nicely—he was still considerably attractive. And we were close enough to see the sweat roll down his face and drip onto his obscenely tight satin pants. Jenny was so weirded out by the tight pants and the hips beneath them that occasionally gyrated. I think all she wanted was to go home. But no! We had a banquet to attend!

So, we went to the banquet, where we were able to meet Dear David. It was awesome. Jenny and I are quite tall, at 5′9″, though our height is really the only thing we have in common. She is a scrawny red-head, and I’m a round dark-brunette. Laura, on the other hand, is this gorgeous, 6′2″ blonde beauty. When the three of us are together, you’d never know that we are sisters. Now, I don’t know how tall Dear David is, but I felt like I was about a foot taller than he. HAHAHAHA. He was sweet and threw his arms around me and gave me a big hug. Then he hugged Laura, who explained to him that we were all sisters and he had a hard time believing it, and it was decided that Laura was the freak of nature (being so darn tall and beautiful) and we’ve often laughed about that ever since. But then, he got to Jenny, and he not only hugged her, as he’d hugged me and Laura, but he kissed her. HAHAHAHA. Of all of us to choose to kiss, he picked her! She was really trying to hold it together, but as soon as we moved past him, she gripped my arm, digging her finger nails into my flesh, exclaiming that she thought she might puke. She was so, so, so bugged already and this was the icing on the cake.

Laura and I, of course, thought it was HILARIOUS. (Nowadays, Jenny thinks it’s pretty stinkin’ funny too.)

Anyway, I ran out and bought a David Cassidy CD right after this and I probably would have bought a lunch box if I’d been able to find one. Hahahaha. We kept going through Gramma’s mail, hoping to find more invitations to random concerts, but we’ve never scored anything so wonderful since this one. Hahaha. I think that all three of us (even Jenny!) look back at that night as one of the funnest and funniest of our career as sisters.

And I leave you all with this, because, after all, I think I love you.

Is it cheating to just write “NaBloPoMo” and call it a post?

Our guest host for Soap Opera Sunday is Thalia’s Child. Be sure you link your SOS back to her so everyone can find the other posts. And be sure to enter your link into her list! And, from now on, the host of the week will be announced in my sidebar where you can all see it easily if you remember to look! Also, if you are interested in being the Guest Host one of these weeks, and you have not yet indicated thus, let me know!

This SOS is inspired by a question from Penny Lane (who does not leave her URL, so I can’t link back to her!) about whether or not I’ve ever had to call 911.

The answer is yes, I’ve called 911 once in my entire life! The story goes like this:

When I was in college, my roommate had a BFF, Kristi, who practically lived in our apartment, and I considered her both a roommate and friend. She was a bit of a follower and she got involved with a guy (who we’ll call Creepy Boyfriend) who took advantage of her and her easy-to-push-around-ness. She announced one day that they were in love and she was going to marry him, and in the meantime she was going to move in with him.

This was a rather alarming announcement, first of all because she was extremely religious and had always firmly believed that premarital sex was a sin. This sudden change from absolute chastity to moving in with her boyfriend was shocking.

But the other thing that concerned us was this weird, creepy, and completely intangible something about CB. We, Kristi’s friends, were all completely uneasy around him, but none of us could put our finger on why.

So, Kristi moved in with him. Months went by. She became withdrawn and when one actually managed to track her down, she would be bruised and full of detail-less stories of falling down. It didn’t take us very long to figure out what was going on. We sat her down and tried to make her feel as safe as possible so that she would talk about the obvious abuse. Once we cracked through the wall she put up, she poured out her misery and terror. We were there to hold her and cry with her, and then encourage her to get out.

She did decide to move out. She arranged her grand move for a time when CB would be out for a few hours. And so a couple of us girls asked a couple of our guy friends (including Ben—you remember Ben, right?) to come with us and help her get her stuff out—not only to have them help us carry stuff, but also because we figured they would be insurance should CB decide to come home unannounced.

Which he did.

He walked in and saw immediately what was going on. By then we were almost done with moving her stuff. CB sweetly grabbed Kristi’s hand and kissed it and begged to be able to talk with her alone for a minute. Ben and I said, “NO. No way.” But Kristi decided to anyway, and she and CB went into the bedroom together. Ben went to listen at the door, while the rest of us finished carrying out the last of her stuff. After I loaded the last pile into the van, I turned to go back in, but noticed that the curtain to the bedroom was slightly parted, so I stopped to peak in.

I watched him slam her angrily into the wall, knocking her head really hard against a door frame. Then I saw him push his hands up her skirt, and force her legs apart. She was crying hysterically and begging him to stop.

I instantly threw myself at the window, pounding and screaming like a mad woman, startling them both. I ran inside and found Ben with his hands all bloodied from trying to break down the bedroom door. Just as he had almost managed to get in, CB opened the door and flung Kristi out at us, as though she were a rag doll. One of the other girls held Kristi and helped her to the car, but I was in a psychotic rage. I literally wanted to kill him. As I ran after him, screaming who knows what, Ben grabbed me around the waist, lifting me off the ground while my limbs were all still trying to chase and attack. Ben calmly said, “let’s go home. Let’s go home.”

He was right, of course. What could I have possibly accomplished by attacking him?

So, we went home. And then we proceeded to push Kristi around. Looking back it’s funny because Kristi never actually made her own choices. CB pushed her into the relationship of abuse, and then we pushed her into getting out of it. I’m not sure she ever really learned anything, or if she even cared. She was just shoved from one way of thinking to another.

I still think we did the right thing, but I felt like I was being as big of a bully as CB had been. I’m not sure if there was a better way or if getting her out of the situation immediately was more important than doing it the right way or what.

So Kristi moved in with us, unofficially of course, and she filed a restraining order against CB. One day, I noticed his car in our parking lot—he was sitting inside his car, watching our apartment. This was a violation of his restraining order! So, for the first time (and last time, so far) I picked up the phone and dialed 911. The police showed up and chatted with him and they left—I’m not sure what happened after that.

I moved away from Cedar City soon after all of this, so I never heard the end of the story. I know that Kristi had been planning to file charges. I signed all sorts of testimony against CB about what I’d seen through the bedroom window that day, but I was never called or talked to again. I can only assume she dropped the charges. I don’t really know.

I would love to say that she is happy now, or that she’s strong, or that she’s figured out what she wants, rather than what everyone else told her that she wanted. But, again, I have no idea if any of that’s true. Here’s hoping.

I want to extend the biggest, fattest THANK YOU to Jenn in Holland for awarding me with the Perfect Post Award for October (for this post).  Because I think Jenn is the one of the most beautiful, brilliant, and fascinating woman in all of Bloglandia, it makes me a bit dizzy to hear her say such nice things about me.

The post itself was written after a sleepless night, and I wasn’t even sure if it was coherent.  The response has been amazing and overwhelming, and I’m so grateful for everyone who received it and understood what I was trying to say.

So, thanks, Jenn.  I’ll wear my new badge with pride.

Yeah, okay. Generally, when there’s a bandwagon, I run away from it screaming. If “everyone’s doing it,” I try very hard not to do it at all. I’m ME, and I’m all I’ve got, so I try to make the most of it. Turning me into someone or something else would seem like a complete waste of myself. This is perhaps why I have never read a Harry Potter book.

Oh, don’t look at me like that.

Or, perhaps, why I never owned a pair of Birkenstocks. (Seriously, who looks like the idiot now?)

Occasionally, though, something comes along and I just can’t resist. I know, I KNOW everyone’s doing it. But I hereby announce that I’m officially throwing my hat into the NaBloPoMo ring.

There was a time, not so long ago, that we here (and when I say “we” I just mean *I*, of course) posted every single day ANYWAY. It’s just how things were done here. But then life happened, if that’s what you want to call it, and I’m lucky if I manage to throw up more than two posts a week. And guess what! I’ve missed the every day thing. It just seemed like it was time to do something drastic to help me get back on my bloggy feet. And so, it’s official.

Now, how in the crap am I going to pull this off? Well, I’m going to start writing drafts, for one. That way when life happens again, I can just hit “publish” and be done. That’s assuming I can think of things to write and leave in draft form. Yeah… that’s totally not gonna happen. Still, it’s a good idea, right?I’m also going to go back and look through the topic-suggestions I bummed off all of you a few weeks back. Many of you may have seen that my dear friend Luisa from Novembrance has asked for topic ideas (a “scavenger hunt,” she calls it) for NaBloPoMo and that she’s created a spreadsheet for her November posts. Hahahaha. Oh, you can always trust Novey-Lu (as I affectionately call her) to be way more organized and brilliant than I am. I kinda like the idea, and she has given me her blessing to steal it, though you and I both know that no spreadsheets will be used, as I have zero knack for organization of any kind. So, if you think of any more topics for me, you just let me know. It can be silly (like, “use the word ‘gopher’ in a sentence”) or a direct question (like, “what is the weirdest thing you ever found while flossing your teeth?”) and there will, of course, be linky love for those whose topics I use. I know, I know. You feel like you just did this for me, and it’s true—you did. But look at how much fun we had! I mean, my last topic-begging led to me posting my Donny Osmond story once and for all, which was actually picked up by the official Donny Osmond Fanclub Website. HAHAHAHAHA. Just think of the jewels I may still have in the recesses of my memory that will make grown women who are still obsessed with teen idols giggle like school girls! (Hey, did I ever tell you about the time David Cassidy hugged me? Dead serious. He’s forty years older and two feet shorter than me—and I was wearing platforms, because I’m pretty sure that there’s a law that if you go to a David Cassidy concert, you need to be wearing platforms— so perhaps there was some awkwardness. But he totally hugged me. Hmmmm, maybe I need to tell that story.)

Hmmm, I seem to have strayed from the point of my post. What was it again? Ahhh, yes. NaBloPoMo. And me needing you. I need you!

Hey look! I’m already TOTALLY ROCKING at NaBloPoMo! Of course, it’s only the first day…

Okay. The end.

(No spreadsheets were harmed in the making of this post.)