The Merry Spinster

I can do nearly anything. You know that Nelson Mandela quote, "Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, it is that we are powerful beyond measure?" Well that is me. I promise I'm not being conceited. I have the appropriately low self-esteem of an overweight middle-aged woman. I just have to also acknowledge that I am a magnificent creature. These two states can coexist. And it freaks me out. Not having a husband means everything in my life that needs doing, I have to do myself. And it is usually something I never imagined I could do. And then I'm in such abundant awe of myself that I then become depressed that I'm such an underachiever.

This website wasn't the hardest thing in the world to put together. But I would've loved to have just asked someone else to do it, or at the very least help me. It would've been nice to have casually said over dinner, "Honey, we need to work on my website later." Instead like 7 years ago I bought this domain name. And I had parked another blog on it. The blog was popular among my friends and mostly consisted of me complaining and sharing my misadventures, because my life is ridiculous. I basically just did the cyberspace version of "set it and forget it" with the whole thing. And then I started getting frantic emails from Google telling me I needed to update billing and registration information. All of which I blew off until the day before the deadline. I spent 4 hours tracking down old logins so I could get into the administrative account, but I succeeded in updating everything that I needed to.

That should've been the end of it. But then I got annoyed that I had spent time and money on something as blah as that blog. So I decided to put up something better that I could build on over time. And because every podcast I listen to advertises Squarespace I picked them to help me do it. And I get that it would be inside baseball to praise Squarespace when it is obvious that this website is "Powered by Squarespace" but I'm barely doing it. I actually found it really hard and confusing. And in order to transfer the domain name I had to manually go in and enter in different CNAME and @ codes and all kinds of stuff I don't understand how to do. But I did it. There is a tutorial for everything. If I was stranded on a deserted island but inexplicably had wi-fi I could take out my own spleen right now. I followed steps and copied and pasted things and failed painfully for hours but here we are. Mark Zuckerberg is sleeping comfortably tonight knowing I am not coming for him, but I took care of business.

Another incident is what I call the Nighttime Mouse Murder Mystery. I used to live in a charming apartment that was about a hundred years old. My roommates were ants, brown recluse spiders, and a weird smell. And for one stressful 72 hour period at least six mice. One night I got up at 2am to go to the bathroom and a mouse ran across the hall in front of me. I screamed and then groaned. I was tired, it was below zero out, and mice are disgusting. A married woman can send her husband to the store for traps and poison, or at the very least have him watch where the mouse ran and stand guard so he doesn't come back out while she goes. But I'm a spinster and I had to get dressed and trudge in the snow to buy the traps, then spend an hour online learning the most effective strategic placement. I was a proud independent woman. Until a few days later when I came home and found six bloody dead mouse bodies scattered around my apartment. They didn't look like they'd been poisoned and none were found near the traps. Their deaths looked violent. I didn't have a cat and the only friend who had a key to my apartment only used it for midday naps. And he wasn't a killer. We're both vegetarians.

I hated those mice. In my mind they weren't common grey field mice guilty of nothing more sinister than eating a box of Special K cereal, pooping in a shoe, and chewing up an old power cord. No, to me they were plague rats, vile creatures who would cause my death. But regardless when I happened upon the unexplained carnage I wept for them. And then because there was no one else to do it, I had to scoop up the corpses and dispose of them. I was upset but also confident. I had faced down the Black Death and seen my enemies vanquished. To this day I have no idea how those mice died. There is no CSI:Rodent.

Any collection of anecdotes about me being awesome in defiance of my instinct to be a damsel in distress wouldn't be complete without my couch. I ordered a convertible sofa online from wayfair.com. And I didn't realize that it came in many pieces. I had to assemble it. First the frame, then the convertible mechanism, and lastly the actual back and seat cushions. ALONE. I didn't even have tools until that day. I sat on the box and cried for at least 10 minutes. And then I spent the next two hours putting it together. And the last seven months bragging anytime someone so much as glances at it.

I have fixed my own garbage disposal, negotiated contracts, and fought off potential assailants not because I wanted to, but because I had to. I am all I have. Luckily I am a badass motherfucker. And if something doesn't involve athletic ability or carrying a tune, I can figure out how to do it. Even if I'm scared, even if I'm tired, even if I don't want to. I am powerful beyond measure...so far.