Sunday Top Ten: Temporary Battles Can Take Up Half Your Life

Just so y'all know, I'm leaving this blog to become a Slam Poet, like in that movie SLAM!. I've never seen it, but I saw a poetry "slam" once at Sarah Lawrence, it was retarded, Sarah Lawrence students shouldn't try to slam anything besides each other. The poems were the lovechild of Ani DiFranco lyrics and the sound of fake mall waterfalls, and they were read out loud with lackluster slam-spirit by cherub girls in camisoles smelling like Tom's of Maine. I'm gonna replace Auto-Win with an auto-play flash-player that'll cycle "Umbrella" by Rhianna and the Tegan & Sara "Umbrella" cover over & over for all of time. That'd make y'all way happier than I ever can. Seriously, listen to that song and tell me if you are still sad? I doubt it.

This week's Sunday Top Ten might sound kinda like, glum? But it's not. Also, I'm gonna do "Things That Are Easier Than I Thought They'd Be" later this week, to like, even it out, or something. Feel free to tell me what to think, I'll believe anything.

Also, Lozo put up our vlog. You should check it out, 'cause there's a really productive world-changing conversation on the comment thread w/r/t "Haviland & Riese: Hot or Not?"
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SUNDAY TOP TEN:
THINGS THAT ARE HARDER THAN I THOUGHT THEY'D BE

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10. Building This Dresser
So I've been building this dresser, the construction manual lists approximately 260 steps. It's taken about 100 hours to construct, thus inspiring this post. I'm totes thrilled to've even received it, and obvs putting it together is a small price to pay, and besides, it's good for my arms which don't get a workout now that I'm no longer toting heavy plates of food or working on the railroad all the live-long day. Speaking of hand jobs, I was in such a state with the state of the dresser that I offered Lozo a massage with a happy ending in exchange for dresser construction, but then I thought that'd be kinda awkward probs for our friendship, and wouldn't necessarily entail less upper body strength than the building so I took it back. Not officially, but I never arranged for the exchange. Also, I can do it myself, I'm Bob Vila. UPDATE: Totes DID IT. holla. HOLLA!
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9. Recapping The L Word

[original screenshot from a Season Three Recap]

I guess that if you look at it logically [something I willfully select NOT to do in most circumstances cause looking realistically at one's bank account or one's schedule is often a short-cut to depression and overwhelming sensations of futility. 'Cause if you don't think about it, it's still possible you could finish it in an hour, why not?] this show is an hour long --
-Pausing at least once a scene for screencaps, about 35 scenes per show: three hours
-Transcribing dialogue from the show and from friends: two hours
-Photo-shopping photos of my friends from the viewing party and inserting them: one hour
-Making graphics: one hour
-Actually writing about the show: endless/priceless.
All in all about 20 hours of nonstop fun. Then I added time to it by acquiring a well-needed but obsessive proper grammar & spelling habit [some of the S3 recaps that no one read but me were plagued with grammatical and spelling errors, and rarely cohesive.] Obvs I didn't anticipate this time commitment when I decided to do it. This is why next season I'm getting a screencaps intern. I'll give you college credit and a back rub if you're hot.

Anyhow, Carly and I re-watched the pilot the other day, and I'm excited to currently be hard at work at recapping it for AutoStraddle! I know -- why Riese? Why? The answer is: because I obviously love it.
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8. SAT Math, Five Years Later
I "auditioned" to be a Kaplan teacher and succeeded, I just had to re-take the SATs to prove I could maintain the same high score I'd had in high school. Easy, yeah? No. I brushed up on my math pre-re-test, but I hadn't realised how much longer it'd take to do math now that it wasn't second nature. I only finished half the math section when the time ran out. Then I added "Kaplan tutor" to the list of "jobs Marie thought she had between July '04 and January of '05 that Totes Fell Through, Therefore Ruining Her Life Forever. JK Not Forevs, Things're Better Now."
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7. Getting Our TeeVee Show on the Air Immediately
Sometimes I talk about something constantly then suddenly stop talking about it. I kinda did this with the teevee show but don't be alarmed -- nothing's gone wrong, we're just in a waiting period. Also we've got real clear and direct ways to improve the pilot when the time comes: things that seem obvious now that we've stepped back in order to see it fully.

I imagined the writing-the-teevee-show process to be like Field of Dreams, which is probs responsible for many similarly executed projects, like, there've been all these crap shows that make it all the way to air, surely someone'd see ours and greenlight it immediately. We shall write it, the development deal shall come, like it happens in the success stories you read about. I guess no one publishes non-success stories. Oh wait, yeah they do; it's called "blogs" and "World's Wildest Police Chases." JK. That'd be cool, if we got into a police chase and then, when captured, we'd be like "marie lyn bernard dot blogspot dot com!" that'd be the best viral marketing ever. Reality show marketing. We could get Carly on COPS getting arrested for crack whoring and she could plug the show in between "motherfuckers!" Would that be meta? I'm not sure. I think "meta" is the new "irony" -- "irony" being a grossly misused word these days, especially by me. Maybe Alanis should write a song about "Meta." JK. She'd really fuck it up.
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6. Doing my Hair
Short hair is totes harder than long hair. For example, first thing in the A.M; I look like Season Three Pilot Shane. It magically deflates within about 2 hours [I wash my hair post-gym, unless I'm going somewhere in the morning, which um, I haven't done in a while], but its post-shower behavior is highly unpredictable. Just when I think I've discovered the ideal combo of drying, ironing, product and styling, four days later my hair will rebel and say it's not down with that routine anymore, then I'm back to the drawing board.

Haviland thinks it's grown out to bordering-on-bowlcut and she'd like to trim it but I responded: "No, it's like the Beatles, I like it!"

John Lennon & Friends for Wax

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5. Writing my Book
Obvs this has been a bit of a challenge.
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4. Moving On
I searched my gmail for "harder." Aside from stumbling upon some suggestive "harder! faster! wetter!"s, almost half the results were from a few weeks ago, when I kept saying that I'm waiting for things to get easier, but instead they keep getting harder and harder. Things've been lightening a bit, though, lately. Not the weight of these untangled things aforementioned as "getting harder " [these untethered wrongs with no space to right themselves now in the clear where "real" means the same thing to everyone involved, where perception looses it's fog and becomes fair game] -- those things remain the same level of hard, like other striking losses I've experienced. But the coping part's become lighter lately and there are other areas in which things have been relatively bright, promising, brilliant, huge, everything, enough. I've been blessed, really, in so many ways, by so many things, and, not to sound freaky, or hark back to a time of apocalyptic predictions and various second-coming related verse, but the way things came together to furiously and gloriously distract me immediately and thrust me fully back into living with functional social normality before I had a chance to absorb the possibilities regarding what I might eventually face in the future as well as what I was truly experiencing emotionally at the time -- and then the way things started turning around just as I'd hit all-time incapacitation and agoraphobia levels a few weeks ago -- I was always honest that I believed in G-d, I really truly do, and I think there's gotta be something divine or spiritual and trying really, really hard out there, there's gotta be something like that who's aiming for everything, a strange, tempting, dangerous ideal ...
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3. Writing This Blog Post
Seriously, I feel like every day's mitigated by hardness, so this would be easy -- things that're heavier than I expected, lines longer, processes more complicated, people more unpredictable. But perhaps not, but I don't think that's because life is particularly easy or I'm good at it, I'm totes not, but that I manage expectation really carefully -- that's why when I give someone my heart, it's generally someone who's swept me away before I had time to weigh it out and determine likely I couldn't handle the suspense. This is pretty easy to analyze psychologically -- I've got this little girl in my gut who wanted a warning before she heard he was already dead, this like, fourteen year old who'd just gone to McDonald's with her friends from Theatre Club and had a two-cheeseburger meal with no toppings, who wished there'd been some kind of illness instead, some hours, days, years, to prepare for this premature death, to readjust her mind slowly to the way things really are -- it's not that I avoid unwise choices. I just try to expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised if it turns out better than that, lest it be taken from me suddenly and without warning. I can't prevent sudden tragedy, so all I can do is prevent anyone's loss being truly tragic. I'm careful of people. If I let them in, put something at stake [something=risking substantially life-changing loss], it means I've either been given no choice in the matter or, I guess, I've got no choice in the matter. Love's like that. When choosing -- I choose to not put it all on the line.

And also: I am, like Crystal said today too, afraid that as soon as I let someone in, they might see ME, and then be like, omg, this is not what I signed up for, and then I'm doomed. I know this moment will come eventually with people ... and I guess that's my guarantee that no matter how good and serious anything is, it'll eventually end when they see me, I mean, really see me, and so, therefore, it's best to not get into it to begin with, or to make the revelation matter.

Also: a lot of things falling under this category -- "Things That Were Harder Than I Expected" -- are Private Things or Obvious Things [e.g., "getting my life together," "reducing word count," "staying in touch with friends," getting a six pack" or other topics I often mull over], like I keep thinking of things and disqualifying them for one of those reasons. That's the main problem with writing this.
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2. Walking in High Heels

[This photo shoot was the first time I wore heels, seriously.]

I didn't realise there was really anything to it, aside from just being a bit more on top of things. But it's like, balance. That's fine -- the walking part is fine. It's the noise! I kinda walk like an elephant. I don't look like an elephant. I look like a human girl named Marie, sometimes called Riese. But when I walk, you might be like, "Is that an elephant lumbering by my room for a 3 A.M. drinkie?" and it's actually me, just regulating, just walking. I'm not saying I lumber because it's true, but 'cause people've told me so. And I trust them. In heels though, I just feel like I'm making my presence so unavoidably present, and I hate that. Click, clack, look, at, me, lumber, click/clack.
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1. Getting freshdirect to deliver Sausage, Egg & Cheese Lean Pockets.

I've put in a product request for this several times over the last few years, to the point where they probs're like "her again, really? Tell her to have some toast." Do any of you order from Fresh Direct? Because if so, please go to the product request area which's in the "New Products" area. There's an asshatty looking guy and an aesthetically pleasing graphic and you just click that there thing and tell them that you'd like them to carry Lean Pockets, Sausage, Egg & Cheese. Thank you, I appreciate it.