Origami
It was with a diffident heart that I entered into my first poker match as part of an internal agency competition to raise money for charity. My team leader opted out of the traditional fundraising ideas, such as car washes and bake sales, and decided instead to gamble. I had little choice but to participate, but was assured that there would be plenty of beginners in attendance.
Well, obviously, this would not make for a blog-worthy story were I not to say that I was the only one who had never played before, and, furthermore, was among tables of serious-faced, tournament-level competitors. I had printed out a cheat sheet of hands to play, which earned me some light-hearted ridicule. While I was able to quickly gather what certain terms meant (small blind vs. big blind … or was it large blind vs. half blind?), I had no idea what I was doing, which earned me some heavy sighs.
Because, as is the case with these things and the “beginner’s luck” rigmarole, I did well. Like, stupendously well. I frantically tried to stack chips, but was eventually forced to slop them into a giant salad bowl. So many of my moves were so consistently stupid that they seemed deliberate, and people started naming them–”The Elizabeth Fold,” “The Elizabeth Bluff.” One by one, national-level poker champions looked at my cards, shook their heads and conceded defeat. I naively said things such as, “Oh, is that what that hand is called?” which only made the sting of losing worse. Amused, one player handed me a cigar along with all his chips, while my boss maybe-joked about taking me to Vegas. Over three hours of playing later, I went all-in on a hand I knew would lose–I was too exhausted to keep going.
And I’m not boasting. While not one who always needs a white-knuckled handle on life, I loathe looking like an ignoramus. It was three hours of feeling in over my head, jargon shooting straight through the space between my ears, and math–effin’ math, for god’s sake!–and trying to fold when I should’ve been checking. Everyone seemed to be mumbling quips at decibels beyond my ability to hear; I just gave my best knowing-smile, reading the facial expression as sarcastic. Otherwise, I played my poker face, which was a facial contortion brought on by befuddlement rather than a practiced tactic. Every win felt like a fraud. I know it is largely a game of knowing the odds, and I never understood why I was defying them. As a visitor in a foreign country, I placed my wealth before me and sheepishly asked which coins to give. I was devoid of charm, having expended all my wits on trying to not look like a buffoon. I felt as purposeful as a duck in a boxing match.
Playing for money leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Betting money somehow seems more flippant and careless than paying for a movie, although both are worthy experiences regardless of winning. But who knows if playing for popsicles would be better.
So, despite finishing third out of a group of twenty-something, I felt defeated. It’s hard to take pride in something when you blundered your way through it without any internal narrative of your moves beyond “Why not?” or “These cards look good.” Generally, everyone was very kind but didn’t stand a chance against me because I clearly lacked any discoverable tactic to take advantage of–I did everything wrong, which, magical irony, was the right move. It was a challenging experience from which I learned little and bathed in none of that cliched strength that one is supposed to get from emotionally straining events. Woe.
In short: Tonight, I’m going to bed early.
Grandfather Earl navigated bombers over Germany.
Grandfather Marvin played golf with locals in the shadows of the pyramids.
Conversation from the Homestead
[italic portions are asides, not part of the conversation]
Me: Have you ever been full? Like, not full in the sense that you know you ought to be, but actually uncomfortable.
Dad: Have I! There was that time at Earl’s [maternal grandfather; cooked hickory-smoked ribs every Fourth that turned otherwise sensible people into things akin to desperately starved lions on drought-dried plains] when I thought I would literally pop. [Since my father’s prodigious ego allows him to believe he has thought, done and said, literally, everything before anyone else, I have no doubt that he actually believed he would explode.]
Me: Wow. So, there was some fear involved?
Dad: I thought I would burst like a damn pinata! I knew I could not drive home. I could not do anything that would place my body in an L-shaped formation. The only letter shape I could do was like an I or a lowercase L. But I knew if I got in that car I would get the bends, and I would not suffer that unless I could drive standing up.
Me: Which wasn’t an option.
Dad: Right. So I had to walk around the block three times. Didn’t I? [He requested confirmation from my mother, who listened to this story with crumpled brow, as though he were telling me about the time he retrieved her ring from the belly of a whale shark; I’ve been thinking about whale sharks a lot recently–they freak me out!]
Me: That sounds terrible.
Dad: Worst I’ve ever felt in my life!
[My favorite portion is how he redefined what it means to be afflicted with the bends.]
It’s Saturday. Here’s Catstronaut.
Have you ever been to Twentynine Palms? I went two years ago.
For me, the crazy thing about traveling, particularly across timezones, is that home and “life” exists on a separate clock and, therefore, what is current seems like a cheat against time. If in San Francisco a woman is stealing my coffee as I am talking to my mom on the phone, and it is nine a.m., well, to my mom this event is happening at noon—lunchtime! Everything I do while on the phone, despite existing concurrently with my mom’s experience within the context of our conversation, is, by my clock, on a timeline three hours behind home. Almost too far behind to ever really catch up to “real life.” So, being aware of this very stupid, all-in-my-head thing and the fact that it is happening, always, and on even wider time differences, returning home feels like a diluted form of time travel. And everyone has been saying this for as long as timezones have existed, so I’ll shut up.
I can tell you, though, that nothing in the desert seems real. It’s all toys, automatons, Christmas lights and cellophane, backdrops—a great escape.
(Source: Flickr / elizcason)
As a single woman, I am told I ought to keep talk ‘bout cats to a minimum. I mean, I don’t know, they seem like pretty inoffensive creatures—women with cats. I don’t, like, inadvertently step out of the house with a cat-fur shirt.* I just like animals a lot, OK?
Anyway, people’ve been asking about Olive, and I’m here to tell you that she is good! Ham&Olive are a pretty good pair. While not inseparable, the cat friend has been good for Hamilton. Their friendship’s big breakthrough came when he got in the laundry bag and she attacked him (then she promptly left, but he was so excited that I pretend my hand was Olive for several minutes).
I’m not sure Olive has any toes. Her paws could be all hair for all I know.
* Admittedly, she is sitting on my new cat-patterned shirt in one of these photos. Cats! Everywhere!
If you wake up wanting pickled okra, then make it. (Taken with instagram)
I made a pretty slapdash pattern of cats and cat toys (duh, I drew Ham and Olive). Although I went on vacation, I did not forget that I am teaching myself how to make stuff. Annnyyywayyy, I’m meant to be doing lots of hand drawn type this week, so here’s a start—lots of mews!
This pattern came by request, so I made a zillion sizes just in case you want to put it on your computer, iPad or iPhone.
A video* from my five days in San Francisco. You won’t know what’s going on half the time. You’ll just have to trust me that in one part, we are dancing in a room filled floor to ceiling with balloons. Also, this is missing about 95% of the happenings, including having my coffee stolen by a woman in a yak-inspired sweater. I’m not the one crying at the end; I’d already done that in the SFO restroom (not really).
*It’s a Picle video, so still shots + 2 seconds of audio (except for where it hiccups in the midst of our discussion of potentially petrified bobcat scat).
The times in San Francisco have been good.
