Mrs. Franzos: March 2019

photo: Joshua Franzos

David Attenborough voice over: "Here we see a rare glimpse of Meryl in a wintry habitat. Extraordinary!"

photo: Joshua Franzos

Name: Meryl Franzos
Species: Homo Sapiens
Class: Mammalia
Natural Habitat (November - March): Light hibernator.Warmth seeking. Going to gym before sun is up, moling in a sunless cubicle between the hours of 8:45am-5pm, then leaving work after sun is down only to go home, put on thick raglan socks and sweatpants, and mummify self in a fleece lined blanket until she retires at 10pm.
Symbiotic relationships: sharing body heat with Canis Lupus Familiaris friends and pair-bonded male Homo Sapien mate.
Winter pelage: (December - March) rumpled oxfords under sweaters with cardigan toppers. Taut dress slacks with long underwear lumps underneath. Dismal, unimaginative, and utilitarian weatherproof boots. Hats that make her look like a homeless. Suspendered snowboard pants have also been sighted as appropriate all day office attire.
Pelage once external thermometers reach 40 degrees Fahrenheit: More artfully pulled together outfits but still drab looking gray layers of woolen and pleathery textures.
Late spring/summer pelage: More observation needed once temperatures soar past 72 degrees Fahrenheit. Please check back for future developments. Perhaps something more colorful or even a patch of bare skin will emerge.

photo; Joshua Franzos

photo: Joshua Franzos

Cold, inclement weather was always a perfect excuse to stay inside and get a lot of writing done, but the universe conspires against my plans more often than I'd like. This winter has thrown a lot of curve balls my way, in fact, I kinda feel like the last person standing in a dodge ball game. The red rubber ball stressors, big and small, are raining hellfire on me all at once. The small rubber balls that I can talk about: ASOS can't seem to find one of my returns worth hundreds of dollars and they don't seem keen on believing me, great. A week and half ago, I was rear-ended while I was stopped at a traffic light. Sure property damage sucks, but I'm mostly mad about the bureaucratic insurance processes I was volunteered to babysit. My workload has been unrelenting since October...Tax season is here...We're still walking on eggshells with Meatball... But wait, there are BIG rubber balls too. My workplace moved at the end of December, just one mile farther away. I've kept an open mind, but after two months there is no denying that my new commute is eating into my mid-day writing time in a big, big, bad way. It is agonizing to be this far a long on my novel and incapable of moving faster than a glacier. Actually scratch that, I think glaciers are actually melting faster than I can edit at this point. My back problems have re-emerged, sending me to twice a week doctor's and physical therapy appointments. Physical therapy rehabilitation has replaced my intense daily BBG and cardio workouts, putting my fitness and weight loss goals on hold too. I get up earlier and earlier so I can hopefully walk on the treadmill enough that I don't gain all the weight back that I've lost over the last 12 weeks (it's still creeping back). In short, I'm just annoyed. Annoyed to be slipping backwards physically, annoyed at my lack of progress on my edit, and if a booger inside your nose is making a weird whistling noise everytime you breathe, I'm probably super annoyed at you too. Franz Kafka once said, "a non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity." So, think about that, but subtract two major outlets for stress relief, ruin my car, and liberally sprinkle in some annoying stuff like baco bits and... you get me. (show of jazz hands) So even though it's above 40F degrees, and there isn't any snow on the roads, my bridge is frozen. I have to proceed, not full speed ahead, but gingerly, gingerly. (Meryl doesn't do gingerly.) Meryl wants to burn that icy bridge down.

photo: Joshua Franzos

I'm talking figuratively, of course. Having burnt a few figurative bridges in my time, makes me extra aware of the corner I could paint myself into (oooh mixing metaphors) if I continue to limit my paths of ingress and egress. But burning bridges is also a defiant act, a giant middle finger to whatever. Sometimes that is exactly what's needed. Sometimes you do need to stop someone from hurting you with an ultimatum that could end that relationship. And sometimes (probably more often than not), you're just hot under the collar and it's just a rash something you do when you feel stuck in your circumstances. I feel stuck on this icy bridge alright. My physical therapist has me doing "supine bridges" at least twelve minutes a day, but preferably 24, ironically my PT exercises are on this physical therapy app called, wait for it, "MedBRIDGE." So yeah, I have bridges on the mind and a lot of time to contemplate all the stuff I want to do but can't while I repeatedly thrust my hips at the ceiling and repeat Dylan McKay's quote like an caustic yoga mantra, "Let the bridges you burn light the way."

"Let." HIP THRUST. "The." HIP THRUST. "Bridges." HIP THRUST. "You." HIP THRUST. "Burn." HIP THRUST. "Light." HIP THRUST. "The." HIP THRUST. "Way." DOUBLE HIP THRUST.

photo: Joshua Franzos

Maybe that's my problem. I'm focusing on destruction. I don't think we often consider how difficult it literally is to burn a bridge though, and since most wooden bridges are going the way of the Dodo, bridges don't actually burn anymore. You gotta blow them up and it actually takes a lot of planning and teamwork. Ever watch the movie, The Bridge on the River Kwai"? I know you haven't. Don't lie. Here's the best scene out of the whole movie, here. We also have a bunch of bridges in Pittsburgh, many of which are crumbling pieces of infrastructure like the Greenfield bridge which was destroyed in 2015. It takes a lot of effort to destroy a bridge, but even more work and effort to rebuild one, as evidenced by the Greenfield Bridge which only re-opened in 2017, just shy of two years later.

I meant to write about how my late winter outfits tend to take on Jedi like properties, cuz I wear all the grays and layer like a mofo, but the honest truth is I just haven't been feeling much like a jedi master lately. I feel like the dark side of the force is trying to break me. If you hear that I've gone to jail because I defenestrated someone whose nose was whistling, then you'll know the dark side has won. It's a constant battle to be a good person, but it helps knowing that fires from big explosions die out quickly and leave a big mess. I don't have time for it. I have promises to keep and many miles to go before I sleep. I think I'll some how harness my explosive energy and keep a small and controllable slow burn going in my soul. Afterall, as Stephen King so aptly put it, "Life is not a support system for art, it's the other way around."