Two-Pronged

Returning a book to a co-worker with a small token of my appreciation/taking the opportunity to showcase my work:

Also: The book is utterly adorable, entirely accurate, and mirrored my own experience with roller derby—as an adult—a little too closely to merely call it "relatable." Highly recommended!

b.go lark (my work)
Roller Girl by Victoria Jamieson

Showcase

I make these. You should buy some. Do it here.

Launch Party!

Hey, all—I'm trying this new thing and I'd be super-appreciative if you'd check it out and spread the word...

Everyone likes surprises, and micro-gifts are cute and cheap! So stop by sometime and give it a try—it's fun and for a good cause (namely, my rainy-day fund). Thank you bunches!

FYI: I'm open to extras and package pricing being a little more lenient than what the website allows. If you're interested, feel free to send me a custom request—let me know what you'd like, and we'll work it out. #Cooperation!

My Fiverr Gig

Placeholder

I just want you all to know that the reason I haven't posted anything this week is that I started a serious post the other day about love and it made me so sad I had to stop halfway through and order a pizza and binge-watch Les Revenants on Netflix instead. So yeah.

An Open Letter To The Cranky Old Lady At My Blackjack Table This Weekend

Dear Bitch (may I call you "bitch"?),

I'm going to assume you know what you're doing, based on your advanced age, that sizable stack of chips sitting in front of you, and your audible exasperation at my decision to stand on 12, but just in case you forgot a few key points [see "advanced age" above], I thought I'd offer some helpful hints.

First off — just a quick reminder to start — we are at the $10 minimum table at Foxwoods, not the high roller room at the MGM Grand. Just putting that out there, in case you were confused.

Second, blackjack is a card game — the operative word here being "game," implying a sense of playfulness and fun. Your attitude and general demeanor imply neither of these things.

Also, it's called "gambling" for a reason: there is risk involved. Sitting at an open table means you risk people at that table occasionally making stupid impromptu moves like standing on 12, just like I am risking my health by exposing myself to your steady stream of secondhand smoke. That’s just how casinos work.

And finally, next time you feel the urge to loudly declare to a stranger, "You're gonna stand on 12? Jesus Christ, I have to leave now," maybe you could spare us the gin-soaked preamble and just, you know, leave. After all, like the song says, you gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to shut the fuck up — you don't make the rules and I'll play any way I want.

Best of luck!
Becca

The Bitch Is Back.

So that last post wasn't a fluke; I've decided to restart the blog. For numerous reasons, but mainly because I'm an attention whore and it's cheaper than therapy. I'm going to try to post at least once a week, which is slightly less ambitious than my original goal of posting something ~EVERY SINGLE DAY!!~, so I might actually stick to it this time, but who knows — I'm unpredictable like that. It's what makes me fun!!

Anyway, I've experienced some pretty major life changes since last we spoke, so let the updating commence:

1. I don't live in Brooklyn anymore.

Surprising, I know, and it broke my heart to leave, but as a wise man once said, the rent is too damn high. I live in Washington Heights now, way up near the border of Inwood, or as some of us like to call it, Upstate Manhattan.

For real, y'all — my subway station is INSIDE A MOUNTAIN.

My place here costs almost $500 less a month than my old place in Park Slope. There's no exposed brick, but there's twice as much space and it's far more functional. I have a kitchen with cabinet doors on hinges that actually work, a freezer that defrosts itself, AND A DISHWASHER. It's in an elevator building with laundry in the basement, flowers bordering the front walkway, and an art deco entranceway. Did I mention the dishwasher? And I can paint the walls any crazy color I want, because oh yeah — I own this one.

Both of these spectacular items obtained courtesy of my awesome sister.

2. I no longer work for an engineering society.

Ironic, no, that now that I live in Manhattan I no longer work here? How I lost my job and gained this new one is a saga in itself, but suffice it to say I now work for an edtech company, in Brooklyn. And it is SO Brooklyn. Etsy headquarters are in the same office building, just a few floors down; West Elm is right across the street — the cobblestone street. We have a roof deck with ping pong tables and a killer view of the Manhattan Bridge:

There are beanbag chairs and exercise balls scattered amongst the cubicles and a designated quiet room filled with funky couches on which I frequently take naps during my lunch break. There's no dress code — I've worn jeans and sneakers every day since I've started; several of the guys in my department regularly roll in wearing flip-flops and shorts, like they're just stopping by on their way to the beach. There are free snacks and drinks. At my last job, "going downstairs for a snack" meant grabbing some Fritos from the vending machine. Here, it means visiting the "specialty mini-grocer" next door for some Garden Herb Triscuits and smoked salmon cream cheese. At my last job, my hours were 9:10 to 5:40 — not 9 to 5:30, but 9:10 to 5:40 — they were that specific and that strict about time. Here, my official hours are something like "anytime before 10 to sometime after 5, unless you're working from home, or whenever, really, as long as you let me know and the work gets done and it adds up to 40 hours at the end of the week." Did I mention the free snacks? As an added bonus, my boss is a fellow Star Wars nerd, and my debut assignment here consisted of copyediting a reading lesson for 4th-graders about Don Quixote at a puppet show with a monkey, so...so long porngineering.

I have very nice handwriting.

3. I got married.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Psych!!

Stay Positive. Love Your Life.

I love pools. Like, LOVE pools. Like, I stayed with this one ex-boyfriend for a month after finding out he cheated on me just because it was still summer and he had a pool. Like, one time I was at a party at a co-worker's friend's house and I hadn't even been drinking or there for more than about 10 minutes before I borrowed a t-shirt and a pair of gym shorts from this girl I didn't even know just so I could go in her pool. Like, looking back, the single biggest regret of my childhood is not my deeply problematic relationship with my father, but the fact that we never owned a pool. I can't even swim and still have to wear earplugs and hold my nose when I go underwater, but I love pools all the same.

So this weekend I went to a public pool. Which, after reading that first paragraph, probably seems like kind of an anticlimactic way to start a story. But trust me, it was an achievement, because this is the first time in almost a decade I have been out in public in a bathing suit. Literally — almost a decade. I honestly couldn't remember how long it had been, so I sat down and did the math and it blew my mind: The last time anyone besides an immediate family member had seen me in a bathing suit was at a pool party at my roller derby team captain's house in 2007 (I remember because it was the summer we skated at Warped Tour). And again, after reading that first paragraph, that probably seems inconceivable, so let me explain.

For the vast majority of my life, I've been skinny. Not "slim" or "fit," but skinny. And not just skinny, but known for being skinny. Like, if someone in high school or college was describing me to a friend who'd just met me the weekend before, they'd invariably say, "You remember Becky — the tall, skinny one?" And I never even had to work for it. I was just naturally skinny. And I never fully appreciated it.

I'm the gangly, toothpick-legged one with the longer hair.

Now I'm on meds and officially a full year into my forties and yes, I could probably (definitely) eat better and exercise more, and I'm not so skinny. It's not even that I've gained weight, it's that all the weight I've gained seems to be centered right in the middle. I'm not so much fat as weird-shaped. Disproportionate. I have like, a converse hourglass figure — not-so-big boobs, a big belly, no hips to speak of. Which makes finding clothes that fit properly difficult: plus-size clothing assumes all parts of your body are equally plus-size, so a dress or clingy top that fits my midsection will usually be too roomy in the bust. "Skinny" jeans that fit my waist turn wide-leg at my thighs. And swimsuits are their very own epic misadventure. After a lifetime of effortless skinniness, of the biggest challenge I ever faced while shopping for clothes being "Cash or credit?", I now found this morbidly embarrassing. I mean, I used to wear bikinis, for crying out loud — how could I let people see me like this?? I decided I could not let people see me like this. I didn’t even own a bathing suit for years.

Then it occurred to me recently, probably while I was sweating my ass off on a tropically humid subway platform and frantically fanning myself with a fold-up map of Brooklyn I had dug out of my purse in desperation, that the only person this self-imposed exile was affecting in any way was me. Seriously? Outspoken feminist and contrarian who loves being in a pool almost more than life itself is going to spend another sweltering summer in the city avoiding FREE PUBLIC POOLS because she no longer looks hot in a bikini? Who even am I??

So I did it. I bought a bathing suit. I went to a public pool. I spent 2 hours floating in the shadow of the High Bridge Water Tower, surrounded by strangers. And it was glorious.

***

"What does body positivity mean to you?"

"So, look. The relationship we each have with our bodies is one of the most important and challenging relationships we'll ever have to cultivate, seeing as we're stuck with the one body our whole lives — and if dealing with the basic messiness inherent in owning a human body isn't enough to be getting on with, we also live in a culture that seems determined to poison that relationship from the get-go. We're slammed with body-shaming messages from the moment we're old enough to interact with society at all."

"The thing that happens when you teach people to be ashamed of their bodies is that you instill in them a deep belief that they're never enough, and the feeling of not being enough is a desperate feeling. Some people respond to it exactly the way capitalism wants them to — they pour money into products, clothes, food, and gym memberships that they think will help them measure up. Some people respond to it by hiding from life in an effort to avoid what feels like inevitable scrutiny from a world that tries to tell them they aren't good enough to exist. I have played both of those games, and let me tell you something: there's no way to win either one of them. You're setting yourself up to fail in both cases, because in both cases you are allowing someone else's rules to determine your worth. And NO ONE else has the power to do that — you're a human being, and as a human being, you're inherently worthy. That's just how that works."

"One of the things that kills me about body shame is that it can paralyze. Body shame is how we end up unable to enjoy our food. It’s how we end up afraid to show up at the gym lest some imaginary meathead gives us the stank-face for not looking perfect in our workout clothes. Body shame is how we stop ourselves from buying certain kinds of clothes because we 'can't get away with it.' It's how we end up having sex with the lights off and hiding our perceived 'body flaws' with strategically draped sheets. It's how we miss out on fun social opportunities because we don't feel attractive enough to be seen in public. It, in essence, kills our ability to enjoy some of the best things in life." — Megan Ribar

I'm extra glad now that I got that ice cream cone on the way home.

***

Inspired by Smart Glamour.
And my niece: May you always be this happy in your skin. ♥

Official Endorsement

Put A Ring On It

Memo To Any Potential Fiancé(s):

Please don’t buy me a ring.

Really.

Rings are useless. I’d prefer you put the money towards a down payment on a brownstone, or a Balinese vacation, or a lifetime supply of tattoos. Or donate it to charity. Or better yet: just save it.

If you must get a ring, don’t buy me a diamond.

Really.

This one’s non-negotiable. Diamonds are blood on your literal hands. They are vile, consumerist, and ostentatious. Least of these, they’re not even original. If you buy me a diamond, you don’t know me well enough to marry me.

If you insist on a ring, I prefer emeralds or pearls. Really.

I come cheap, but I’m high-value.

New York State Of Mind

100% accurate:

Why I'd Rather Tweet About The Oscars Than Watch The Oscars

@ThisGuyIDon'tReallyEvenKnow: "Who doesn't love Meryl Streep?"
@BeccaGo: "The angry Viola Davis fans."
@Guy: "Racists."
@BeccaGo: "I didn't know you were Republican now."
@Guy: "I'm not. I just hate freedom."

C'mon, tell me that's not funnier than a single thing Billy Crystal said.

Zero Tolerance

Today I went to an open house at Park 51, otherwise known as "The ZOMG Muslin Terrist Amercan Taliban Ground Zero Mosque." Here's a brief summary of my experience:

• They did not make me wear a head scarf. Out of the approx. 25–30 people there, only one woman was wearing a head scarf. (I thought it was two but the other one was a little old lady in an appliqued turban.) Only one man was wearing a kufi. (I had to look up that word, so you can, too.)

• Next to the brochures about their spring classes and the mailing list sign-up sheet, there were flyers for The Anne Frank Museum, located across the street.

• Of the approx. 25–30 people there, about 75% were white. Of that 75%, another 75% looked to be middle-aged or older.

• The demonstrations for the two exercise classes offered at the center were capoeira (Afro-Brazilian) and karate (Okinawan).

• I had a conversation with the woman wearing the head scarf about cookies, our nieces, and Dora the Explorer (Spanish).

• Some of the radical words taught in the Beginner Arabic For Kids class are "turtle" and "baseball."

• Didn't see a single prayer mat.

• And here's the view of the offensive, disrespectful facade that you can't even see from Ground Zero (I walked past the memorial; I checked):


I just checked, and I haven't been converted to Islam or trained to be a terrorist. I don't think I've been brainwashed to hate America.

That was a pre-existing condition.

The Mother Load [sic]

Found all of these in a single chapter:

"Sensitive Leak Tests"

"Multiple Openings and Extruded Headers"

"Expanded Joints and Special Joints"

"Fabrication and Erection" ["9 inches, baby! I swear!"]

"Hardness Testing Acceptance Criteria"

"Bolting and Tapped Holes" [I always thought the guy bolted AFTER tapping the hole...]

"Hot Taps"

It's Not What You Say, It's How You Say It

Playing Catchphrase with my sister's friends makes the "BABY FISH MOUTH!" scene from When Harry Met Sally seem totally plausible.

A sampling of some actual guesses that some reasonably intelligent people actually made:

"Blind mailman!"
"Clothes laboratory!"
"When someone has a heart attack it's called...?" "A heart attack!"
"This is the name of a toothpaste and also a famous painter." "Aqua-Fresh!"

Status: Delivered

A guy in my office just had a baby (well, technically, his girlfriend had the baby) and sent this announcement via e-mail:

"Baby Causes Havoc In Brooklyn"
Stats:
Birth date: Dec. 20, 2011 (1st day of Hanukah; exactly one year before end of Mayan calendar)
Weight: 7 pounds, 1 ounce (3+ kilos)
Height: approximately the height of one baby
Eyes: very dark
Hair: too much for a baby
Feet: small
Languages: baby patois, fluent Yiddish, Yoruba, and several Cantonese dialects; restaurant Spanish
Interests: making fists with both hands and feet, looking at stuff in a confused manner, small business development, small gray cats, environmentally friendly diapers, public radio

I love my job. ♥

Alphabet City

An engineer left this comment today on the manuscript I gave him to review:

"I do not understand the symbol that looks like a big lower-case u written the size of a capital."

In other words, a capital U. He doesn't understand a capital letter U.

I love my job.

Where It's At

My great-grandfather was from Armenia. The only thing most people know about Armenia is the Kardashians. The only remotely positive thing about this is that it's a perfect example of how all Armenian surnames end in some form of "-ian." For further proof, please see the guys from System of a Down. (If you know my last name, the answer is it was shortened when my grandparents emigrated to this country.)

People ask me all the time, "Where is Armenia, anyway?" My standard answer to this query is "near Turkey." The irony of this, if one can call it that, is that between 1915 and 1923, the Turks slaughtered approximately 1.5 million Armenians in what is known as "The Great Crime." It's possibly the second worst genocide in history, behind the Holocaust. The word "genocide" was even coined to describe this particular massacre. I'm sure the Armenians don't exactly appreciate this association.

A better answer, I've found, to the question of Armenia's location is "ancient Troy." Which technically, of course, makes me a Trojan.

I prefer this explanation.

Why I Don't Drink, or, "If You See Something, Say Something"

So I decided to go out last night. Yep, you heard me — to a bar. In Williamsburg. To see this guy I only know from Twitter play a show. With his girlfriend. On a night when I had work AND school the next day.

I have no idea why I thought any of this was a good idea.

(Yes I do: I wanted an excuse to wear my awesome new boots again.)

Anyway, as you may already know, I'm on a few medications. One of these specifically states that one should not drink alcohol while taking it. Another is alternately prescribed for smoking cessation. I smoke "socially," as in, I smoke because I'm socially inept and it gives me something to do when I feel awkward in public. I think you see where this is headed.

A friend from home once said I'm like a cicada — I only come out once every 17 years. This may or may not have to do with the occasional experience of an evening ended slumped over a garbage can on a deserted subway platform moaning, "Oh God, why do I do this to myself?"

At least my boots stayed dry.

Rise Of The Dead

Little Dead Riding Hood:

Happy Halloween, bitches!

Reading Comprehension FTW!

Me: "As much as I want to support them, #OccupyWallStreet reminds me of my junior year of high school when a bunch of kids organized a walk-out to 'protest' the Iraq war just so they could get a smoke break. #Cynicism"

Me: "[To be clear, this was the 1991 Iraq war.] #DejaVu"

Random pompous douche who lives in Canada: "@BeccaGo: Yea, it's just like that. Except not at all. Outside for 4 weeks, 700+ arrests? You can tell HS wasn't very long ago for you. #exp"

Me: "@RandomDouche: High school was 23 years ago for me, if you bother to read my next post. And I live here. So you can shove your #exp."

God, I love Twitter.