Cheerios, Cottonballs, and the Futility of Life

So, I've been resisting reading this book for a long time now. The title of the book is A Year of Biblical Womanhood; the subtitle is How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband "Master," which makes it more palatable, I guess. The author, Rachel Held Evans, decides to explore living out, as closely as possible, the literal dictates and examples of femininity in the Bible in all their absurdity and irony. I've been avoiding it not only because it seems a bit gimmicky and because if someone found it open next to me and realized I was reading a book about "Biblical Womanhood" they might assume that I am a submissive domestic Bible-thumping type (I'm not), but because I'm a little jealous that I didn't come up with the idea to write the book first. Kind of like the "Reasons My Son is Crying" tumblr, I'm avoiding it out of jealousy. I'm a great person.

Anyway, I eventually ended up reading Evans' blog, which was witty and insightful, and as a result, decided to revisit her book, which was funny, thoughtful, and intelligently wrought. But this post is not about the book. It's actually about me, because I'm crazy narcissistic. The book, however, is essential to this post for the few moments in which Evans found herself in existential crisis for the most lovely, quaint and ridiculous reasons:

"While cooking strikes me as an essentially creative act, cleaning seems little more than an exercise in decay management, enough to trigger an existential crisis each time the ring around the toilet bowl reappears."  (27)

"My aversion to crafting goes way back to an incident in kindergarten during which, upon gluing something like the fortieth Cheerio to the inside of a giant O-shaped construction paper cut-out, I was suddenly struck by the futility of human existence." (79) 

I love these because I can relate so closely to them (I hate cleaning and gluing things). Maybe that's because these are universal moments of crisis, maybe it's because I'm a bit similar to Evans, or maybe it's because I have an especially delicate psyche and most things cause me to question the meaning and validity of human existence. I'm not sure. But it asking just what sorts of things throw people into existential crisis? I questioned a group of friends, and the general consensus was "the vastness of the cosmos." Bor-ring! I mean, isn't that kinda cliche? Not me. Bring on the entirety of infinite space and time. But these, these are the things and the moments that destroy me emotionally and psychologically. In no particular order:

• When the clouds in the sky aren't well enough defined
• Adult contemporary music
• Grocery shopping
• Being forced to listen to adult contemporary music while grocery shopping
• Driving through industrial landscapes
• Any town or city built primarily in the mid 20th century (those buildings are so freakishly small and cubicle, and where oh where are the sidewalks? DESOLATION!)
• Gluing cottonballs to anything
• Weeding the garden (nothing like playing God to mess with your neatly defined concepts of theology/theodicy)
• School buses and the accompanying school bus-y smell
• Treadmills
• 4:00 am
• Sleep deprivation
• Any repetitive, futile task, such as cleaning (as the state of my house will attest)
• Packing school lunches 
• Realizing how old I am, how many opportunities for success I had as a child, and what I actually do for a living
• Flowers with broken stems
• Roadkill
• Subdivisions and strip malls
• Any novel or movie that deals with the death of an animal
• Straight, level roads
• When I want pizza, but can't have it
• Being the new girl at work

Currently, I am the new girl at work, am surrounded by subdivisions and strip malls (through which I drive on straight, level roads), have an intense awareness of what I do for a living, pack school lunches, and write this as I gaze out into a sky full of woefully undefined clouds. So yeah, I guess you could say I'm in a good place right now. The good news is that am not listening to adult contemporary music and my grocery shopping is done. I am also not currently being forced to engage in a project employing Elmer's glue and cotton balls, so things could be worse...a lot worse. Because I hate cotton ball/glue projects with an unbridled passion...so much stickiness, stringiness, fuzziness...why was I born?! Yeah. It's like that. 

So I'm curious, what sort of things throw you into existential crisis? And whatever you do, don't say "the vastness of the cosmos." 

Coffee Shop Breakup

A week ago, I learned that I would lose my job as a bad barista at what we shall call Unnamed Coffee Shop, as Unnamed Coffee Shop would be closing its doors forever. I was surprisingly devastated because, as it turns out, I actually thoroughly enjoy underachieving, working on my feet, and serving people caffeine for a living. I really do. Also, my amazing boss, the Eternal Optimist, had managed to turn our particular location of Unnamed Coffee Shop into a lovely community. It was truly a nice place to work. Customers cried when they found out we would soon be closing our doors for good, in order to "consolidate the Unnamed Coffee Shop market" in remote and inconceivable places like the Dakotas and Iowa. Turns out we had been bought by a German investment company who also own another coffee shop corporation from the West Coast--we'll call it Stupid-Name Coffee Shop because it has a stupid name--and preferred to expand Stupid-Name Coffee Shop to the Midwest, shutting down most Unnamed Coffee Shops in Michigan and opening Stupid-Name Coffee Shops in the place of those locations that remained. (If that didn't make your brain explode, then you're a great deal smarter and more focused than I am).


Our location is closing in two days. I'm very sad about this. I feel like I just went through a terrible breakup that I didn't see coming. "It's not you. It's me. I just think...I feel like it's not working out. I don't even know who I am anymore. No. I don't think we should give it time. I think we just need to make a clean break of things. And never see each other again. Ever. Here. You can have your things back. Just...get out." I've never actually been through a terrible breakup, but that's what a breakup feels like in my imagination. I have an active imagination. Anyway, because my coffee shop broke up with me, I have been through a period of mourning including, but not limited to, binge eating, impulse shopping (Sorry, Bureaucrat!), and bouts of irritating sentimentalism. As it happens, so have my dear children.

Having only visited Unnamed Coffee Shop a grand total of, like, ten times in their lives, the Anarchist and the Dictator still feel the trauma of separation. The Anarchist has been wailing about "poor poor Unnamed Coffee Shop" all week in her most tragic mourning voice. If I can get her to rend her garments and beat her breast, I'm going to hire her out as a professional mourner (someone in this family's going to have to make some money).

The Dictator, on the other hand, has become highly interested in German investment companies and buyouts:

"A good reason Unnamed Coffee Shop is closing is because some more people can get some good things for their jobs and their families. Kind of like it's going to be like um the people who work in the new place get more money...the people that bought the company...the Germans. And it's good for their families because they can get lots of new things with all their money, but then the people that used to work there have to lose their jobs, which is a little bit bad."

I think the Dictator doesn't understand that she isn't related to the owners of the German investment company, and will thereby not stand to profit from the buyout. Or else, she understands that without a job I cannot afford groceries, but cannot hide her admiration for such a crafty money- making maneuver. She's probably plotting  her own corporate takeover as we speak, imagining the mansions full of American Girl dolls she could acquire as a result.

But even the Dictator finally participated in a brief fit of wistfulness as we attended the store closing party for my Unnamed Coffee Shop tonight. On the car ride there, both girls sang Taylor Swift's "We-ee are never, ever, everrrrr getting back together!" incessantly as a kind of funeral dirge for a coffee shop they would never see again. It was both somber and annoyingly upbeat. The Anarchist announced, "I'm going to Mommy's work and hug Mommy's work and say goodbye because it's so tragic that Mommy's work is closing. Mommy, if it turned out your work wasn't closing after all, then you could be happy again!" Because when Mommy is sad, everyone suffers.

Our customers were supposed to write happy memories on this
chalkboard. And they did. My children, on the other hand,
covered as much of the board as they could reach in tragic
frowny faces and words like "sad"...

...and "wah." As in the crying noise.
See it in the center, there? The Anarchist
really loves drama...and crying.

Both kids pretty much forgot about the horror of it all during the party, because the party had tortilla chips and a captive audience and an employee the Anarchist was intent on stalking. But afterward, the Dictator cast one last lingering glance at the place. "I wish all of this weren't really happening. I wish it was all just a dream and we would wake up and it never would have happened...and Unnamed Coffee Shop would still be open and would stay open forever. Because it's a really nice place and those are really nice people and it makes people happy." I started to explain that this is the reality of free-market capitalism and that human labor is just a depersonalized commodity and that she shouldn't be surprised that the greed of the powerful trumps the needs of individuals, and that this is why we probably won't be able to afford dance classes next year...but then I realized that I should just be glad she had paused in her plans to use a multinational corporation to take over the world long enough to see the human cost. Also, my angry jadedness had almost made me sound embarrassingly like a teenager who had just discovered Marx for the first time. Not cool. But the good news is, my jaded cynicism isn't lasting for long. Because I am totally rebounding. Unnamed Coffee Shop might have seemed perfect, but I was too good for him, anyway. I have a new coffee shop now. And he's super popular.

So if you happen to be in need of coffee and are in the area, you should definitely come visit. We're nestled between the Walmart and a shady apartment complex. Look for me. I'll be the new girl sporting an apron with a topless mermaid on it and weeping as I screw up your drink. Like I said, I'm rebounding.