Katanikotael

I've got the Mondays. I'm doing everything in my power to lighten up, distract myself, but I can't get away from a particular uuuuggggggghhhhhhhh feeling. So I turn to KATANIKOTAEL.

Katanikotael (Let's shorten that to Kat, hmm?) is a spiteful bitch. He gets you in your home- strife, unrest, flaring tempers, and unease. He's a zodiac demon, lounging somewhere in the declans of the zodiac. While most zodiac demons have a specific angel assigned to them to drive them away (My head flashes to Ron Artest guarding Paul Pierce. Bad analogy for 32 reasons.), this doesn't apply to Kat. Instead, to drive Kat from your home you need a cure of laurel leaves, holy water, and meticulousness. I interpret this as the difference between having a reinforced termite-proof house foundation and having to call an exterminator to tent your termite-weakened home as it falls down around your head. Both ways deal with your pests, just one results in far less cost and destruction.

Of course I recognize as I keep trying to pre-empt my own personal uneasiness with diverting blog posts and plans to redo my bathroom, I am trying to cohabitate with my case of the Mondays instead of starting to holy some water for a damn cure. Oh, you effing Mondays...

The Mondays are the silliest and stupidest of the modern demons. They are a glorified hangover. They are only effective on Monday, unless Monday was a holiday. In that case, Mondays double their strength and descend on Tuesday. They make you eat lousy food to fill the yearning-shaped hole in your soul. The antidote to the Mondays is a good night's sleep. They are innocuous and nothing worse than kinda bratty. The only actual danger of the Mondays is their ability to mask a real problem.

I had an office job once, and the Mondays sucked the life from me so much I could barely keep upright at my desk. It's just Monday, I would reason. Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow wasn't better. My Mondays grew to stretch from Sunday night to Friday at about 3pm. I realized the week-long Mondays were hiding a very real depression. I never had an office job again.

My challenge today is to determine: Do I really have a case of the Mondays or am I dealing with a Kat-sized demon? I guess I'll know for sure tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, where do you get laurel leaves?

*Thanks to "Dictionary of Demons: Names of the Damned" by Michelle Belanger. Llewellyn Publications, 2010

On the Other Side of a Saturday

I didn't post last night because... I was out! (GASP!... smattering of applause)

A bestie was in town to visit and nothing gets me out of the house like company. It was a magical weekend of laughing, incredible food, movies, and more laughing. Serendipitous timing at restaurants, minimal traffic, and decent parking contributed to make the weekend a quintessential LA Weekend Visit Miracle. (Seriously, I haven't had a better Saturday night out in too many months to count and not feel like a loser.)

And now? The blues.

For every Christmas morning there is crap-ass December 26. For every college Mardi Gras there is the hangover sponsored by Saltines and Pedia-lite. And for this weekend, I find the frigid quiet of a solitary Sunday night, giving way to the harsh glare of tomorrow's "reality."

I'm being dramatic. It's from all the estrogen. For three days I've been in the company of women. I spa'd. I talked about dreamy movie stars. I read girly magazines. I even watched 20 minutes of the movie "Valentine's Day"... and defended it. I choaked up several times during all 10 minutes I watched of the SAG awards. I'm not this girly in a full month. And now? It's over... (whine, lump, glisten)

It's hard for me to be girly. I hate shopping. HATE. I have minimal patience for children and cooking. I tolerate spa-type procedures like facials ONLY if I have a gift certificate I can't trade for something else. I hate (HATE!!!!!!!) chick lit and every chick flick made after Bridget Jones' Diary.

But when I'm around certain besties, I forget to judge- okay, that's a lie, but I'm game for the girly, and the 14 year-old boy inside me (Let's name him something... Boo?) partakes with open-minded curiosity. It's like we (Boo and I) get to hang out with the cool girls and we play along and get to learn and do all kinds of new stuff. They encourage us to try on the orange mini-dress.They read our horoscopes to us. They ask us about how we feel. Its the same reason, I imagine, that the boy who sat next to me all three years of middle school went through my purse on a weekly basis. It was tourquoise and had dancing bears on it, and it contained intimate secrets (read: period stuff). It's a different Purse World that he (and Boo and I) can only visit because it's not our nature.

This is a long digression from my post-party weekend blues, but I feel on the cusp of a personal discovery so bear with me.

These girly weekends free me somehow. Not like I'm free to be the girl I've always wanted to be, because I don't want to be different- I like me, Boo and all. It's more like, the love, sensitivity and thoughtfulness of my estrogen-heavy girly girlfriends encourages me to be more adventurous, tender, and accepting of myself. And I, in turn, stop analyzing and judging myself and the things around me and just enjoy living.

It just occured to me the above qualities have nothing to do with estrogen or sex but more to do with real friendship and intimacy. I just blew my own mind. (Heh.)

"Okay, so now what?" Boo wonders, growing increasingly impatient with all this emotion.

I don't know. I just know I have the best friends in the world to give me the gift of enjoying my life and my self. The next step is... what...? Being a better friend to myself so I don't have to wait for Girly Blowout Weekends to truly relax and have a time too fantastic to put into words?

Oh. I just blew my own mind again. (Heh, heh.)

Luciel vs The What-Ifs

Another blog, another "Awesome, Inc." template.  (I love you "Awesome, Inc." templaaate! xoxo!)

I'm still new-ish to blogging, therefore newish to what exactly the hell I'm doing, rules, minutia, blah, blah. Yes, I could continue to only write about my own BS, which I'm good at since I'm straight-up self-absorbed (you love me!), but since the only people who care would include the 2 people legally required to and maybe 15% of my facebook friends, I felt the need to branch out.

(For those of you who still want to read the pathetic meanderings of a girl at home on Saturday nights, I will continue airing dirty laundry on Uptempo Plum.)

This blog is about demons.

I love demons. From the broad psychological monsters that push us to drink, screw and squander to the nasty nasties that elevate mediocre horror films into legitimate creepshows with nothing more than crucifix creativity and some body contortions. Check this out:
DEMON, n.
1. An evil spirit
2. A persistently tormenting person, force, or passion
3. One who is extremely zealous, skillful, or diligent

What's not to like?! Evil? I love evil! And the "persistently tormenting... etc, etc"...? Are you trying to turn me on? Not to mention zealous/skillful/diligent is so totally me. So, yes. Demons.

I'll start with one of my personal least favorites: The What-Ifs. Tiny bastards that travel in packs of a billion. Though they look, feel, and sound real, they're not. Difficult to exorcise if entertained for too long, but ultimately a good night sleep and a nice sunny day are the best temporary cure, second only to a good dose of reality. A strong spiritual practice helps.

Today I started to fall down the slippery grease-slick slope of WHAT IF. Igor, my ego, pushed me down the shaft when I wasn't looking and suddenly thousands of What-Ifs started slapping me in the face. What if I never get a job? What if I run out of money? What if I can't feed my cat? Real concerns smacking the rose-tinted shades I love so much off my face, I froze in terror and impotence.

After 2 seconds of torture - because What-Ifs multiply like knats (inside joke, http://biancaarvin.blogspot.com/2011/01/knot-gnat-last-knight.html ) if you let them play for too long - I thought to distract myself. I opened my book of REAL demons (no home is complete without one) to a random page and read about LUCIEL.

Luciel appears as a serpent with a woman's head (ugh) and is one of twelve dukes who serve Hydriel. Luciel may seem middle management, but he's no small potato- he has 1,320 ministering spirits carry out his commands! Luciel's turn-ons are bogs and swamps, and despite his appearance, he's courteous and a nice guy.

Not the Match.com profile I would pick, but whaddayaknow- a nice evil spirit! I like!

As I pondered Luciel, a got a flash of perspective on my What-Ifs. As much as they torment me, a time or ten (or more) What-Ifs have saved my ass. ("Why are you walking through the French Quarter alone after 3am? WHAT IF YOU GET KIDNAPPED, RAPED, AND MURDERED? Hail a cab, you jackass!") Like Luciel, What-Ifs are evil by nature and origin, but don't necessarily mean any harm. They're just doing their job.

Everyone has demons. Most people spend life avoiding, placating, or indulging demons of their own design. I know I do. So, I figure, why not try a little perspective from some real demon friends? And so I begin, with "Demon Sauce"...

*Thanks to "Dictionary of Demons: Names of the Damned" by Michelle Belanger. Llewellyn Publications, 2010

Knot a Gnat Last Knight

I analyze. I belabor. I stress. I'm a perfectionist. But I rarely spell-check.

I woke up this morning to a text from Bestie: "Your gnat?"

I snicker at myself, but then Igor, my Ego, points his fat finger at my forehead, "Idiot!"

I lower my eyes, chastised. Grainy war-footage flashbacks run through my head of every instance I typed "knat" instead of "gnat" in my previous post, as well as ON FACEBOOK.

Holy Christ, I posted my new, tender baby blog on Facebook! WITH MISSPELLINGS?!

Igor is right. I'm an idiot. I look like an idiot. I have hundreds of Facebook friends who will see that I don't know how to spell GNAT.

I decide: I can fix this. It's Sunday morning! People are either at church or asleep! I can delete the FB post, go into Blogger, edit, re-publish, re-post and most importantly, save face.

But... I like knat. It makes more sense than gnat. WAY more words begin with kn than gn- I know, I googled it. Good ones, too: knackered (AMAZING), knife (Love!), knee (essential), knit (very good for stress, I hear).

What other words begin with gn? Probably weirdo D&D names and biology terms... Oh, hm.

Gnarl. That's actually one of my favorite words.
Gnash. Oooo, good descriptive verbs totally turn me on.
Gnaw! I LOVE to gnaw on stuff!
Gnome. Aww, gnot gnome! Gnothing beats gnome...

Okay, just disproved the superiority of kn or gn words. Know (ha!) what? I don't care.

It's knat. I'm sticking with knat. Knat's mine. My own species of tiny, drifty flying bug, closely related to its Parent Trap split-screen identical cousin, gnat.

Screw you, Igor. And get your finger out of my face before I knaw it off. Tee!

PS. I spellchecked this.

Let There Be Light

I'm in the midst of award-winning procrastination (cash prizes?? oh... sulk.) to keep from finishing the script revision I STAYED HOME ON A SATURDAY NIGHT to work on.

(I didn't fool you, did I? There's a reason this blog is called "Views From Saturday Night" and it has very little to do with leaving my apartment-hole.)

I know I already posted my Saturday view, but I can't not share. I have something to confess. Oh God, I've become a blogger. That was quick.

The first phase of Procrastination Mode is Eat. So I do. I eat everything I can get my hands on. I eat anything that will get me away from my computer and to the fridge/stove/microwave to slice/spoon/nuke so I can chomp/lick/slurp. In this particular instance, I was reheating some Campbell's Tomato Soup. Not super important to the story, but was super inportant to me at the time because I like soup.

I've got the soup dregs in my Wonder Woman coffee cup ("As lovely as Aphrodite, As wise as Athena"... oh, sister, I KNOW.), I open the microwave - Lights on, inside! - and slip the cup in. I'm about to close the microwave door- I see a knat flying around inside the microwave...

I don't so much pause as I do register the following thoughts, "hey-knat-where-did-you-come-from-what-are-you-doing-in-there-I-wonder-what-would-"

SLAM! The door shuts and my evil scientist hand punches 20 secs on high.

My conscience eeks out, "reeeeally...?" as I watch the knat fly around my Wonder Woman cup, almost energized by the radiation I'm subjecting it to. Ironically, I have this thought with about 5 seconds to go: "I'm standing awfully close to the microwave. This can't be good." The knat inside gives me the finger.

DING! My soup is done and the knat must be, too. 20 seconds on high took my 2 tablespoons of soup from cold to boiling. The knat couldn't possibly...

Oh, but she did. Wonder Woman, indeed. I pop open the micro door and out lilts my little Frankenstein monster. My conscience is still whining, "I can't believe we did thaaaat! We teach yogaaaa!" My evil scientist hand considers shutting the Franken-knat in again to see what a minute would do.

My conscience wins and I eat my soup. I comfort my conscience with the fact that payback is a bitch, and I've likely strengthened this knat's DNA with so much radiation that she will catapult up the evolutionary ladder. I expect the clouds of Franken-babies to descend on my kitchen in a couple days.