Running With Scissors

Quote book

2010-04-23T16:07:00.000-07:00

I find myself slapping some long quotes and poems up in various places these days, mostly because I like them, and they're more than 1.5 sentences long, and I have lost the art of pulling out a pen and paper or actually adding to my quote book.

This one is from Elizabeth Gilbert's new book, she of Eat Pray Love fame. I haven't bothered to get the new one, Committed, yet, but my mother sent me an excerpt. It's all about making peace with the sometimes-unsettling idea of promising to be with one other human being until the end of your earthly days, and in this particular section she talks about loving someone enough to want to protect them, even from yourself, if necessary. So she makes a list of what she perceives to be all her horrible faults, a "prenuptial informed consent," she calls it. This one, I'm just going to have engraved on some nice business cards and pass out to prospective friends and suitors.

"I have far more enthusiasm in life than I have actual energy. In my excitement, I routinely take on more than I can physically or emotionally handle, which causes me to break down in quite predictable displays of dramatic exhaustion. You will be the one burdened with the job of mopping me up every time I've overextended myself and then fallen apart. This will be unbelievably tedious. I apologize in advance."

Rumi

2010-04-19T17:15:00.000-07:00

Oh soul, you worry too much...

Look at yourself,

what you have become.

You are now a field of sugar canes,

why show that sour face to me?

...You say that I keep you warm inside.

Then why this cold sigh?

You have gone to the roof of heavens

of this world of dust, why do you worry?

Oh soul, you worry too much.

Since you met me, you have become a master singer,

and are now a skilled wrangler,

you can untangle any knot

of life's little leash

why do you worry?

Your arms are heavy

with treasures of all kinds.

About poverty,

why do you worry?

...Oh soul, you worry too much.

You have seen your own strength.

You have seen your own beauty.

You have seen your golden wings.

Of anything less,

why do you worry?

Spare Change

2009-12-22T20:58:00.001-08:00

I realized recently that I've lived at this house longer than at any other address (2 years 2 months) and in LA longer than in any other city (4 years 3 months) since I graduated from high school. Until I got laid off, I'd been at that agency longer than any other job (3 years). Apparently I like change, but I appreciate that it's increasingly on smaller terms.

Cheesy, I know...

2009-11-29T23:54:00.001-08:00

... but whatever else the next 6 months bring, I am so, so, so, so grateful this Thanksgiving for amazing, wonderful, dear friends. I spent the entire four-day weekend with various people I love, who make me feel loved. And I do not take that lightly.

Tonight I fell asleep on the couch watching Elf. I am full on sausage, cranberry relish, and the sweetness of knowing that at the end of the day, even if I am alone in my house, I am not alone in the world.

Dear Diary

2009-10-22T16:13:00.000-07:00

I got a letter back from Washington today. They accepted my hours, and approved me to take the licensing exam. If I didn't want to, I wouldn't have to do another minute of therapy in California in order to be licensed and work in Seattle.

So, if I just got the news I thought I wanted to hear, why do I feel kind of like throwing up?

Home is where the stomach tells you that it is

2009-09-25T22:16:00.000-07:00

Why does it always happen that just when you threaten to leave a place, you start to feel more at home than ever before? What is it about the act of turning to move on that highlights every wonderful thing you'd be leaving behind?

Yeah, that's my big secret. I've been thinking quite a bit about heading home (which is causing me to see LA a little rosy-tinted, but that is for another post). It's a secret, because I always leave space to change my mind as new information arrives, and what if I tell you all, and then I don't go home? Oh well.

I can't go yet, I have a bunch of inter-state license wrangling to do, but the idea of going back to Seattle keeps surfacing, strongly, whenever I'm in a period of massive transition. I felt this way in Berkeley four years ago, but missed SPU's application deadline by 9 days. I didn't want to wait a year to start grad school, so I decided to go to LA "just for two years, then I'll go home." Four years later, I'm still here.

I guess, on some level, I just want to be somewhere that when everything else in life changes (as it probably will always continue to do, every few years), I don't think about taking off. I can't promise myself that home would be that place, but I'm getting closer to wanting to take a chance that it could be (and hey, if not, I seem to be on four-year cycles, so I'm taking suggestions for 2014). I don't want to start over, personally or professionally. And I have no regrets that I moved here, or that I stayed here for a boy, or that I then stayed here for myself. But I keep trying to get myself to decide to just keep staying, to call it home, and my stomach's not entirely OK with that (ever since I hit 30, my stomach is the place I feel it when my heart hurts). I'm nervous about taking a full-time job. I canceled plans to move that would require me to sign a lease. I'm happy here, for now, but when I think about a few years down the line, I don't know that LA is where I want to be.

I don't know what will happen in the next six months. But whatever comes, the staying or going, the strange thing about all this is that it gives me a totally different perspective on, well, the source of the primary topic of my blog for the last year. When my heart was freshly broken, I couldn't understand when G said that there was nothing wrong, everything was "fine," but that he just couldn't go forward. Which sucked, because there wasn't really any way I could respond to that. But how I feel now, about LA, must be what he felt like. It's great, I'm happy, there are a number of really amazing things in Los Angeles that I couldn't get anywhere else. Sure, it's far from perfect, but I've gotten used to its quirks. I would even say (who thought this day would ever come?) that I love LA. But I can't commit. I can't promise I'll be here in the future. I'm trying to tell myself to just stay and be happy, because that would be a lot easier than starting over. And if I felt it, in my stomach/heart, that would be different. But it's just not what I want. It's not personal. It's not even about LA itself; hell, a lot of people would be lucky to live here and call it home. It's just about what feels like home to me. I can date this city, introduce it to my friends, bring my parents to meet it, play house, make a life here with it. But if push came to shove, if LA needed to know where my heart really was, I don't think I could pretend that I didn't sort of always have one toe out the door.

Well, I could lie, but then it might find out that in August, I picked a Google Voice number in area code 206.

Day 3

2009-09-15T22:42:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,
Today was Day 3 of unemployment in LA. Today is The Day I Did Not Get Out Of My Pajamas. I figure everybody needs one of those.

But I think one is plenty.

Dear Diary

2009-09-10T09:49:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,
Today is my first day of unemployment in LA. I got up and went for an early morning bike ride. With Lance Armstrong. Then I came home and ate leftover birthday cake for breakfast. Now I'm going back to bed.

I think this is going to work out just fine for a little while.

julie

Updatey-ness

2009-07-25T22:03:00.000-07:00

Gah. So, I have to admit that my plan for the late evening was to be plopped on my couch, watching what really amounts to vampire soft-core porn (True Blood) (but dang that vampire is hot). But my neighbors have decided to throw another loud party... which means I can't even hear myself think, and I'm mentally counting down the minutes until I feel justified calling the police and making a noise complaint. I mean hey, who wants to be the lame neighbor who calls the cops at 10pm? I think maybe I can hold out until 11:30 or so. They always know it's me, anyway, although I have no idea how I am the only one who cares enough to call. I live in a canyon, so pretty much the whole neighborhood gets to hear their music until 3am.

Anyhow, on another, random note, I don't know when this song came out, but it makes me happy. So give it a whirl. It will have to suffice for tonight, because the Mexican dance party across the street precludes actual pensivity.

2009-07-12T22:57:00.000-07:00

Stealing this from Addie over at The Softer Side of Cynical - it made me happy today, too. Mostly I really liked the guy whose gun turned into an ice cream cone...

White and Nerdy

2009-06-20T23:11:00.000-07:00

View LA Social in a larger map

Because I am a nerd, I created a Google Map to approximate the general circumference of my life in LA, hopefully to help me discern where I should look for a new place to live. I am the big house in the middle, blue is work, red are my girlfriends, green is Ultimate. (If you live in LA and are not on my map yet, sorry! Doesn't mean you're not dear to my heart. It's an early version that doesn't account for anything not on my radar on a weekly basis). As you can see, basically I am at the hub of a non-trivially-sized wheel. Central to everything and close to nothing.

Now, perhaps, I need someone nerdier than I to write a program weighting the personal value and traveling frequency of each point on the map, accounting for negative values such as locations that would add traffic, and giving me a geometric weighted average location of where I should move, to maximize my geographic happiness.

Volunteers? Anyone?

Or, I could recognize that every decision involves loss... that to move towards something means moving away from other potentially valuable things (literally and figuratively)... and that eventually (though I'm not sure if I am there yet) I am going to have to just choose a side of town and get on with my life.

Upswing

2009-06-16T22:35:00.001-07:00

Ah, finally. Getting a bit of my groove back after a long spring.

I became a part-time case manager, watched one of my clients come very, very close to dying at his own hand, went to Utah, went to Berkeley, injured my ankle, spent a weekend at a tournament with both of my exes, went out on a few dates with a guy who was 6'10" and drove a corvette, biked a century, went back to church, went back to therapy, went to an 80s party... and cried through almost all of it.

It's nice to be back on an upswing!

I think I'm realizing (again) how sensitive I am to social connection. Something as simple as my roommate being pretty much MIA for two months and counting has made a huge difference in my outlook. Coming home to an empty house, ending the day alone, doesn't do good things to my psyche. I'm managing work stress enough these days to go out and do things in the evening, which is helping immensely, but I think my long-term strategy needs to be to find some communal living.

Yes, your bad. Your very very bad.

2009-06-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

I just had words with a hospital social worker who was supposed to get my client (who has a habit of wandering three cities away without shoes) into a locked facility, but sent him home instead.

Her response?

"Oh, sorry. My bad."

Talking to Strangers

2009-05-27T23:00:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to be open to the world these days, to put out into the universe what I hope to get back from it... you know, little things like smiling, patience, silliness, and general friendliness. Some days this is harder for me than it should be. But I don't like who I'm becoming and I'm out of excuses. However, if I'm going to pull some sunshine out of my butt a few times a week, I've gotta figure out a way to de-stress. New work responsibilities are derailing me. Seriously, I've cried so much in the past month that if there wasn't Absolutely No Way it was possible (immaculate conception notwithstanding) I would have guessed I was pregnant.

I recognize I've developed this weird way of being friendly without really being real. Or, when I don't have to be friendly, I kind of wear this "stay away" look on my face, as if to let the world know that the account where I store my soul is overdrawn until further notice. Unfortunately, I seem to sometimes pull the chatty version of this bankrupt ATM out on dates... because she's good at talking and making conversation but really, really bad at actually giving anyone a chance. I mean really, I talk to people I don't know for a living, and make them feel comfortable. I could go on a blind date in my sleep... basically I just turn it into an intake, minus the part where I ask when they met their developmental milestones, or about their family legal and drug histories. But to really be open to people? That's asking a lot these days. I suppose some people compensate for their anxiety by talking, I compensate for mine by asking questions.

Anyhow, this is not who I want to be. I'm trying to be more mindful about being real when I meet people. Mostly it's working so far, or at least I recognize the days I'm totally maxed out and just go home instead of bothering to fake it. I think "two strangers a week" is a good starting point. That means I have to have a real conversation, that I actually show up to, with two new people every week, and work doesn't count. Mostly I just realized (after telling my clients for three years straight... and because I work with surly adolescents, I can say it exactly like this) that sitting around whining, waiting for things to change with little effort on your part, seems like a really fantastic idea, until you realize it's a really shitty one.

Why?

2009-05-19T23:52:00.001-07:00

If you are a boy, could you explain to me why boys like to talk so much on dates?

As in, tell a 15-minute story about themselves, ask you a question, let you get two sentences into your answer, and then remember another 15-minute story about themselves they need to tell?

I actually got to the point where I wondered if "looking interested" was a bad idea, possibly encouraging this pattern to continue. I caught myself wondering what would happen if, mid-sentence, I interrupted and said "OK, now we've come to the part of the evening where you pretend to be interested in me."

Tina Fey rocks my world

2009-04-07T00:08:00.000-07:00

How is it that I have about 50 movies that I thought I was really interested in watching in my Netflix On Demand queue, and all I ever watch is 30 Rock?

Spring Cleaning

2009-04-04T20:47:00.000-07:00

As my roommate and I are both expecting multiple rounds of family in town during the month of April, and as I may have a sliiiight tendency to make nice neat piles of crap all over the house when I don't feel like looking at it in my room any more, we decided to have an official spring cleaning day today. We put on some good music and got very wrapped up in the whole thing. And if there was a camera around, which, thank god there wasn't, there might be photographic evidence of me riding the vacuum cleaner around like a wooden pony, feather duster in one hand, margarita in the other.

And no, I wasn't posing. That's just how I clean.

2009-03-29T13:19:00.000-07:00

I had one of those deep, dark moments again last weekend. The boo hoo, poor me, this sucks, why-doesn't-he-realize-what-he's-missing moments of sheer emotional turmoil (over the first breakup, still, which I seem to have gone through another round of mourning after my rebound ended) in which I realized, finally, that am choosing to die here, alone, at my own little pity party. While making a great show of going through the motions of moving on, but really, going mostly nowhere. Or maybe I just put in an order for new feelings, but they've been on serious backorder. I have spent the last nine months content to be defined as The Girl With The Broken Heart. I am the cliche. And I'm kind of tired of it.

I finally got enough perspective to actually listen to the things that were coming out of my mouth when I was sad, and realize how ridiculous I sounded. I wish I could have gotten here sooner, and without doing some of the embarrassing and unhelpful things I have to admit to, but I'm here now. When I was sad, I listened to all those voices that told me I missed him, and we were so great together, and I'll never meet anyone like him again, maybe nobody else will ever love me like that, and after all this time apart maybe we should talk again (which I told myself was for closure, but I was lying, I wanted him to want me back). And I'm throwing up a little bit in my mouth realizing how long I thought those voices were rational.

I'm pretty embarrassed about this, but keeping secrets to look cool hasn't been getting me anywhere. I was on his side of town recently, and was trying to drive home after dinner with a friend who lives a few blocks from his place, but somehow pointed my car his direction. I'd seen him that day, and he was all nice to me, and invited me out to happy hour afterward, and asked about my family, blah blah blah. And I resisted going out, keeping plans with my friend, but the siren call of reconnecting was soooo... strong... tractor beam... kryptonite... cannot... resist..... I was newly single, and really, why bother learning how to miss someone new when missing someone old is so much easier, more familiar? "I'll just go talk to him," I thought, "tell him how stuck I am and maybe get more closure." I parked outside his apartment. But then I thought about walking up to the door, unannounced, and what I would say. I sat in my car for a half-hour, playing out every possible scenario, every possible conversation, every way it could go. And I realized there was no good answer. No possible conversation was going to give me what I wanted. He can't give me what I wanted. So I just drove home. In the immortal words of Heather Armstrong, it sucked, and then I cried. Although, really, looking at it from this rational place I am in today, wearing my pajamas at 2pm on a lazy Sunday, enjoying my totally cushy life, she had a baby and clinical depression, and I just had one giant pity party that I was starting to realize was coming to an unceremonious close, as I was the last one standing around in a room full of dirty dishes and stale chips.

I went to the library and checked out this, and this, and even this. I checked them out from the old lady librarian, of course, because I only check out smart-sounding titles from the Hot Librarian, but I brought them home and bolstered my self-respect by gladly allowing the author of He's Just Not That Into You to tell me stories about women who've done much more psychotic things in the wake of a miserable breakup. I mean really, all I did was have a hard time dealing with losing someone I loved.

And I planted my tomatoes.

Plan B

2009-03-27T21:38:00.000-07:00

I am now taking recommendations for books in the category of "memoirs and wisdom-in-the-form-of-humorous-anecdotes from people who have realized that life does not turn out the way you planned."

Even though I never really started with a plan, that part, too, seems not to have gone much as planned.

Hippy

2009-03-23T23:32:00.000-07:00

I used to be... ummmm... chunky. No, really. Ask anyone who knew me from ages 10-15. My dad used to put me on diets. Long legs, big belly. I was hott. Maybe that's why I got called Big Bird in middle school. Anyway, I know I'm not fat now, but I live in the world capital of oh-god-please-make-me-look-like-Barbie and I'm still a big advocate of learning to love the body you're in. Mostly because I know mine is probably, realistically, beginning its long, slow downhill slide and I anticipate needing to remind myself to love my wrinkles and moles along the way. Anyhow, that all came to mind tonight because I saw a video of Kelly Clarkson. Who I love. The woman actually has hips.

In which I look like the Jolly Green Giant...

2009-03-17T20:45:00.000-07:00

I bought an absolutely ridiculous jacket at Goodwill. I mean really, green fur?! It's fabulous, in a totally I-can't-imagine-where-I'll-wear-it-but-I-needed-it-in-my-closet sort of way.

Something about it reminds me of a long-lost friend. The one and only KC Lynch, from my college newspaper days, Daily photog extraordinaire, funky and spunky, artistic and creative and brilliant (no, really... she started college at 14) and one of those people who made you feel more alive just to be around her and twitterpated just to know that she counted you among her friends. We worked together for a few years, spending countless midnight hours in the darkroom and slaving over the light table in the orange-walled newsroom. She helped me execute a staggeringly huge fashion guide one year, covering for me when I lit the curtains on fire in that sorority house we were shooting in, trying to jerry-rig a diffuser. When she moved to New York, I spent a week in Manhattan with her, staying up all night, smoking on her fire escape, just blocks off Times Square, and we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. She knew herself and spoke her mind, and she made me want to do the same. That was 10-plus years ago. Then she moved to Chicago and disappeared. I've used all the old emails I had, googled her... but no luck. Hope she's out there doing well somewhere... here's a shot from the Daily days of KC with her artsy-fartsy-fab boyfriend.

Hmm... ooh, I think this is what we were shooting when the curtains caught on fire...

Funny what a jacket brings back...

Ashes and Updates - in which I continue to blog my heart on my sleeve

2009-02-25T22:01:00.000-08:00

It's Ash Wednesday. I gave up Facebook, I went to church, and remembered that for all of my angst, "De polvo soy, y al polvo volvere" (I am from dust, and to dust I will return). I was happy for the ashes on my forehead, and sad that church is still a lonely place for me after 3 1/2 years in LA. From college on, up until LA, it used to really be the center of my community and social world. Now I go, I sit by myself, and I try to find things to get plugged into but somehow, I haven't put much energy in to the right place at the right time yet. So I sing, and think, and enjoy it for what it is, but it feels somehow grey and lifeless compared to what I know church can be.

I frequently wonder what I want out of church anymore. With work being exhausting these days, and having too many cases that feel hopeless and overwhelming, I think what I want is a place where people gather to celebrate and hope. Where I see (relatively) healthy families. Where people work in community with a sense of hope (even when it's naive) that Yes We Can! make a difference. But sometimes I don't want to spend time thinking about anything big or grand. I just want to keep embracing the community I have, and dig my fingers into dirt, literal or figurative, and live. Read, play frisbee, walk with friends, grow tomatoes, waste time on facebook, do crossword puzzles. I used to want big, grand, idealistic Life all the time. Now I kinda just want normal.

In other news, I'm single again. Sans heartbreak this time, but certainly still bittersweet. I think we were two people trying to fit each other into a space left behind in the shape of someone else. As far as rebounds go, I think it was a soft landing. I have no regrets. He was different from Goat in a lot of ways... some of them were really healing, like realizing that I do not, in fact, have overwhelming emotional needs and that, say, wanting to know where a relationship is going after two years is not asking too much. But he lacked some things that really helped me connect with Goat, and when I felt disconnected from him I just found myself missing Goat more. I had inklings that he was going through something similar, and they were confirmed in a kind of painful way, but interspersed with the usual getting-over-and-readjusting to single life, I find myself excited, once again, about having a life in my own life. Not living out of a bag and traveling to another county every weekend. I may want to be an old married woman - sooner than later would be nice - but not at any cost. I'm not opposed to dating again, but in the meantime I want to play frisbee and get on my bike and go to church and see my friends and plant those tomatoes.

Friday Night Plights

2009-01-30T21:14:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure when I became a person who gets really excited about staying home Friday nights and having the house all to herself... maybe shortly after I bought a kitchen table and started listening to NPR.

Anyhoo, here it is Friday night and I've been wandering around the house in circles for hours, doing what I love to do, but rarely do: going on a rampage of cleaning, straightening, recycling, Goodwill-ing, and generally feeling like I have some small measure of control over my space. I called a few friends who both had plans tonight (OK, so they were both sick, one from being pregnant and one going insane from having a crazy boyfriend 3000 miles away who puts off making plans for weeks and then announces he's coming 10 hours before his plane lands), so I've actually been relishing the chance to spring clean. While listening to Neil Diamond.

I saw the old boy this week, too. We got a beer, and chatted on our own (i.e. not in front of hordes of mutual friends) for the first time since break-up therapy. When people ask how it went, I have to classify it as good/hard/good. Good to catch up, hard to remember all the things I love about a person who was my best friend for most of my time in LA (and who I did so much growing up with, in many senses of the word), and good to remind myself that no matter how wonderful someone is, it would be masochistic to be with someone who isn't ready to jump into change with you. Perhaps the best part of it, strangely, was being able to talk about things that were hard and sad, and not to feel responsible for each other's feelings, or for making each other feel better. It was hard to tell him about the new boy, though, and to hear him say that it was hard to hear it.

Despite crying all the way home, I still felt like moving foward is moving in the right direction. The only way I can describe it is to say that it has started to feel like my sadness is about something lost in the past, no longer something lost for the future. I have had very few plans for my life, but I thought I was going to marry him; it was the first time my ideas of the future ever had a common thread. And when we broke up, my entire picture of the future disintegrated, as if I had been hiking up a mountain and the trail had suddenly ended in a jagged, barren chasm. But it doesn't feel that way anymore. I can see options and trails again, and I don't know where any of them go to, but I'm cool with the fact that I'm wandering through the woods again. I'm OK that the common thread right now is just me.

Office Spacey

2009-01-22T18:13:00.000-08:00

me: I need a band-aid... do we have band-aids?
Office Manager: In the first aid kit.
me: Where's the first aid kit?
OM: I don't know, check the disaster plan, it should be listed there.
me: Where's the disaster plan?
OM: I don't know.
me: Ummm.... thanks.

Bruce Almighty

2009-01-13T01:23:00.000-08:00

I think this quote may sum up a good chunk of what I've gleaned from the past couple of years:

"Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is uniquely your own"
- Bruce Lee

Let there be light

2008-12-12T20:54:00.000-08:00

The lightbulb in my bedside lamp just burned out. For the first time. In SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS. I have a spare, somewhere... which I have moved with me, SIX TIMES, waiting for this day.

I have no idea where it is.

Updates

2008-12-09T23:56:00.000-08:00

Well hello there... why yes, it's been a while. Life has not been boring, I've just been sorting through things that I seem to be very guarded about, and have found that somehow, even the blog has not been a place that's felt entirely safe.

Truth is, I'm doing well. Very well. But the older I get, the more I realize that "doing well" is not always equated with feeling good, or understanding everything. I'm wrestling a lot. Crying some. Trying to equate it with the idea of giving birth... that it is painful and joyful all mixed together and that hopefully the end result is something hard-earned and very worthwhile.

A few posts ago, I mentioned a new crush, and was feeling quite upbeat about the prospect of letting go of the past. Turns out, it's not always as easy as I would like it to be. The crush became a date which became a world traveling companion which became a boyfriend. All very well and good. He is, by all accounts, incredibly genuine, and kind, and generous. And he's actually doing pretty well in the area of emotional intelligence. As in, able to talk about his own, and able to roll with some of my more overwhelming ones without needing to try to make them go away.

But the problem seems to be that the process I was so glib about in my last post -- making space for someone new and letting go of someone old -- just doesn't feel as good as it sounded when I wrote about it in the rose-colored light of a new crush. The problem is that along with this round of wonderful seems to have come another bout of grief, like a shadow. Is that normal? I mean, I kinda think it is, it makes so much sense that part of the reality of saying goodbye to someone can't start to be real until you find someone worth giving a chance in the space they left behind, and you can never be "ready" for that before it happens. But part of me feels like I'm cheating on the new boy even by being sad about the old one still. Although I recognize that a lot of this is exacerbated by having had to see the old one every week during the fall beach league... I think a little less social overlap is in order.

In any case, like I said, doing very well. Trying very hard to just relax, keep being honest, and enjoy the potential.

brief, unsatisfying update

2008-10-23T23:46:00.001-07:00

I am not dead, I am in fact, very busy, but also doing very very well.

As in, proving-to-myself-that-life-does-in-fact-go-on well.

More soon.

Fire rant

2008-10-13T19:50:00.001-07:00

It's time again. Out of the east, the Santa Ana winds tear through the valley, like clockwork every October, a hot desert wind. It's just the way things go here. And yeah, I complain about it, because my allergies kick up, and besides, it's October, for cryin' out loud, and I just bought a new sweater, and I'm tired of it being 85 degrees because I want to wear it, whine whine, but I know what's in store and I choose to live here.

And it's fire season. The winds leave a wake of smoke and destruction. The San Fernando Valley is burning tonight, about 10 miles up the road from my office, and thousands of people are being evacuated, and it's all over the news. So I'm reading the story tonight, in the LA Times, and I notice a few of the "comments" people leave after the story, and I can't believe the response. "These winds are so predictable," they say, "why doesn't the city do something to stop this from happening every year when they know the winds are coming?" Over and over in the comments, people keep complaining that every year, we have fire.

Do I really have to spell this out? What, exactly, do these people hope that the city does to stop a force of nature from time immortal? Fire is fire, people, it's a fact of life. If you're gonna build a house in the mountains, in the path of hot desert winds, and in the vicinity of oh, maybe one or two adolescents and/or sociopaths who think it's funny to set a fire when the winds come just to see what happens, just what exactly do you expect the city to do about that, other than knock on your door at 3am and kindly tell you to get the hell out before you go up with the place?

I think this kind of stuff ticks me off so much because it's just part of the general American M.O. to think that we are capable of being completely, utterly safe from harm. I'm not sure where, in our survey of human history, we came up with this idea, but as a country we seem to have done a decent job of propagating the idea that we can buy our way out of the consequences of everything from germs to terrorism to acts of god.

And even within that genre of complete hubris, I think the "fire" uproar pushes an extra-special button of mine. Fire is such a necessary part of the ecological world. The landscape gets decimated, the landscape recovers. Whether we do controlled burns, or leave it alone, it will all burn, someday. Even the canyon where my house is. Someday. And while I feel deeply for the losses of the people who are affected by it, I'm still irritated by the assumption that we might have superceded the laws of nature just because we needed to sprawl.

Three months

2008-09-30T21:13:00.000-07:00

Zoinks, last week was one of those weeks. I went from 2 clients to 13 pretty much overnight, and added 8 students for my other job, and discovered that trying to keep track of 21 people other than yourself is do-able, but only if you don't stop to think about your personal life during the day. Or, really, any point during the week.

It's been over three months now; I don't know where I expected to be three months down the road, I just know that was the timeframe I gave myself initially to get over the worst part of a broken heart. Right after breaking up, I told myself I would wait at least three months before I made any major decisions, like to move to Kansas or quit my job or get another tattoo. I'm three months in and none of those things sounds remotely appealing, so I guess I'm glad I didn't make any rash decisions. I'm still settled, I still like my life, I'm still mostly content where I'm at. Even more so, in some ways, because losing the cross-town commute and double-life-mode has deepened my roots in the life I'm in. But doing "mostly well" possibly makes it harder when one of those days sneak in, when I still feel like my heart has been partially carved out with a dull grapefruit spoon. They're not frequent, but another one recently hit. And when they do, I feel like everyone must surely be tired of hearing about it by now, so I mostly keep it to myself, until I can't anymore, and I find a safe place/person and lose my shit for a half hour or so, then I pick myself up and move on for another month. All in all, I'm not too worried.

Dating has been interesting to throw in the mix.... mostly I've been meeting people that I didn't end up being interested in (was that Transformers tee-shirt supposed to impress me? It made an impression all right...), but then out of nowhere I realized I had... gasp... a crush on someone. It's been almost three years since that happened. I knew I was crushing, I suppose, when I realized I'd passed up a chance to go to an REI garage sale just to see him at a party... and if you know how much I love REI, and how much I love a good bargain, then you know I must have meant business. And I flirted, the perfect combination of shamelessly and tastefully, and it appears to have actually gotten me somewhere, and good god when did I learn how to do that? But it seems that while going on dates was easy (which, up until now, mostly involved having a drink with men I say goodbye to and never really think about again), liking someone involves a different kind of letting go. Because to even think about making real space for somebody new you have to start to let go of the missing, and the regrets, and the what-ifs, and all the other things you've been hanging onto to try to keep a piece - however scant and hollow - of the person who's gone.

In fact, I am coming to think that "letting go" is not so much being able to shake our hands clean of the thing that we're moving on from, but rather just loosening our grip - with every new conversation, every "yes" to an invitation, every "what the hell, why not drive to the next county on a Friday night to talk to someone who intrigues me?" - so that we put ourselves more directly in the path of something new coming along out of the blue, and bumping us, and perhaps a bit more of what we'd been holding onto goes flying out the window.

Talk Nerdy to Me

2008-09-11T21:56:00.000-07:00

I appear to be a complete geek magnet.

I hate to even use that phrase, and put it that way, because tonight I went out with a sweet, gentlemanly, friendly guy for a blind date, who I had interesting conversation with for two hours, who did absolutely everything "right" (whatever that means for a blind date), and I in no way want to slam on him as a person... but yeah. Not geeky in a hot-geeky sort of way. Just geeky. He played the pipe organ. At one point in time he was talking about adopting cats, but he was concerned about being the "single guy with cats," and was wondering how many cats would it take to put him in that category? He thought four was definitely too many, but wasn't sure about three, and what did I think? What I was really thinking is that he had just officially confirmed what I knew, in the very pit of my stomach, the minute he walked in the door... I was going to have a very pleasant evening but, in no uncertain terms, I was not going to be interested.

The last two guys I went out with have been computer scientists (the first one - of "not-a-date-date" fame, who finally asked me on a real date last weekend - was much more socially inclined than this last one, though, and if he were to actually flirt with me somewhere in the middle of one of our great conversations I would probably not be upset), and I'm going out with another guy next week who will probably put the first two to shame (in a "Booger" from Revenge of the Nerds sort of way, from what I gather). Apparently I am sort of in the "what the hell? why not?" phase of returning to dating. Maybe I'm secretly dating geeks because it's so easy for me to talk to them, and therefore, honestly, a bit of a confidence booster before I actually put myself out there for real?

Don't get me wrong, I like smart people. But there are different kinds of smart. And while I get a kick out of a good conversation about, say, the future of artificial intelligence, at the end of the day I just want to fall asleep in the arms of somebody who gets me in a totally different way.

So perhaps if I took that line about "being good at math" out of my online profile, I'd change my odds?

Fish. As in, others in the sea.

2008-09-05T00:18:00.000-07:00

I went on a date on Saturday. Or, well, it wasn't a date-date, but it ended up feeling like a date... the kind of thing that's definitely not a date, unless it becomes retroactive because you wind up together, old and gray, sitting around in your rocking chairs arguing over whether that was your first date, and really, how often does that happen? Thus, a "not-a-date"-date. I had a great time, he was really a nice guy, a friend of a friend. Then, of course, I came home and lamented the fact that I had a date-like-thing, because it reminds me that I'm dating, and I hate dating. But I'm trying to get over that, so I went on a second-date-like thing tonight (or a "second-hanging-out" or "second-not-a-date-date" or whatever the kids are calling it these days), and also had a very enjoyable evening, but then walked away confused, and realizing that I think we had both been possibly interested, but then waited on the other person to act more interested, and then both walked away not knowing whether either of us was really interested.

2008-09-03T23:46:00.000-07:00

I just went to break-up therapy with my ex-boyfriend. Trippy. Challenging, to say the least, but cathartic. I mean really, who goes to therapy after they break up, just to do the breaking up better, unless they're working out a major co-parenting arrangement (well, or unless they're a therapist with a twisted curiosity to watch a professional handle an emotional un-coupling, even if it's her own)? Me, that's who. Who needed some support and safety and containment (as in, one hour, not-a-minute-longer, then say goodbye for now with someone there to tie up our loose ends and keep us accountable to not getting all mushy and misty-eyed and missing each other on the way out the door). I'm not suggesting that we're BFF now; we amicably agreed to steer clear of each other for a little while longer. And I won't pretend that I'm done being angry, but it feels better to have said some stuff and not just be beating my own head against the wall alone at the end of the day. Honestly, if we were never going to see each other again in social circles, then maybe just running for the hills would have been an easier path to take. Or if I were one of those people who could compartmentalize broken, cut-off relationships with no resolution. But for better or worse, I'm just not one of those people.

2008-08-30T00:27:00.000-07:00

Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Take the next 45 minutes of your life and go directly here to watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

I made it!

2008-08-28T00:31:00.000-07:00

I made it through my birthday! Maybe I was just so prepared to cry that I held out through it, kind of like when you see a wave coming and take the time to plant your feet, but if you get blindsided, you're more likely to find yourself pushed under, slammed around, and having to spend a week getting the sand out of your nose.

I was extra-specially glad to see the work-week end this week... for a few reasons. First, I am vacating myself from LA and road-tripping up to Berkeley with Natalie this weekend, so the promise of vacation and old friends sort of heightens the drag factor of the working world. Second, it's just been an emotionally draining week on multiple, unrelated personal fronts, and was topped off by emotionally draining clients today, who cried and yelled and argued and made excuses and had to lay on the floor because they were so anxious and generally required me to do my job, of being a therapist who helps people sort through, contain, and express unpleasant emotions, when really I had just finally settled into my summer routine of staring at a computer doing paperwork and reserving all my emotional energy for myself.

So, needless to say, a little road trip up the 5 sounds delightful!

It's my party, I can cry if I want to

2008-08-26T18:51:00.001-07:00

*** warning: another post that seems to have degenerated into musing about adulthood and other non-perky subjects and may only be relevant to women in their 30s ***

Every year I cry on my birthday, and this year probably won't be an exception.

I've been feeling a little wallow-ey, so I just came home from work and devoured another chunk of Alli's "better than sex" cake (which is a very ambitious name for a cake that won't even hold me afterwards while I fall asleep). And I decided at the last minute to take tomorrow off of work, so I'm dreaming of the possibilities. I had a little bbq on Sunday and as the evening ended, I felt astoundingly... grateful for so much about my LA life. I wish I could hold onto that feeling all of the time, but hey, I'm human.

I had coffee last night with an old friend from Berkeley, and we were musing on the general joys and tribulations of growing up, and he reminded me of a quote from his sponsor: "it's all about learning to wear the big boy pants." They don't always fit and they feel more formal than I'd like to be and sometimes they chafe... but I guess you just keep walking. You learn the world is rarely fair, and that it's definitely not going to take a smoke break for your emotions. You learn that maybe, just maybe, feeling happy all the time is not a constitutional right. You realize that sometimes (though not all the time) the best thing you can do is just let yourself be lonely and not try so hard to fight it when you don't have the energy to spare. You start to suspect that your magic wand may be permanently on backorder. But there's room in the pants to grow into, and you also learn what's worth spending your energy on, or as a friend recently put it, that you're "too old for insecurities, flightiness, and uninteresting things." You start to believe that life's really too short to worry about your upper-arm fat. And you get better, a bit, at knowing what you want and saying no to the stuff (or people) that you don't.

Lately I am learning that I am capable of being very, very pissed off (yes, I wasn't really sure about that one... I'm usually very easygoing). I am also realizing, and it is not very fun, that I may have Issues with expressing anger, or at least expressing it towards the thing that's actually making me angry, and then I get angry with myself for acting like I'm not angry, and then before I know it I find myself getting off the phone with the thing that's making me angry and then, oh, say, calling up someone 1000 miles away to scream about how angry I am. Yes, I know this helps no one. And I'm confirming that because I don't really "do" anger well, it comes out as "sad," because that's really the only emotion I'm good at expressing, well, pretty much anywhere. So tomorrow could just be the day where everything going on in there, all the gratitude and anger and getting to talk to so many people I love all over the country, and everything else, just winds up coming out through my eyeballs.

I'll keep you posted.

...be vewwy qwiet, the wabbit is sweeeeping...

2008-08-23T23:48:00.000-07:00

I'm keeping quiet for a reason these days... though I can't exactly describe it. I think I'm imploding maybe, just a bit. Or, as my lucky LA friends can attest, it's a bit more explosive, as they watch me light off like a rocket, blow off steam, then glide gently back to earth to wait another hour or so for the return trip. The word "irritable" would sum it up nicely. I'm exhausted this week (I put in 20 hours over my usual schedule, at some other jobs) and feeling like I've hit the "angry" stage and have definitely not been getting enough sleep (partially work-related, partially because I stayed up one night watching an entire disc of Six Feet Under and working on a kick-ass sewing project until 3am), and I have just generally been on overload. I have a few chances to help it work its way out a bit this upcoming week though, so for now I feel like I've taken one step back again (into all the icky feelings) but I sense the promise, if I stay here for a little while and do something productive with them, of getting to go Mother-May-I-Take two big steps forward as fall rolls in. Keeping my fingers crossed, at least.

Mental Status Report

2008-08-13T16:18:00.000-07:00

When we do intakes at my agency, we have to do a full-page "mental status" report for our clients (including taking a guess at their vocabulary and intelligence, often based on the 8 words they've spoken in the past two hours). But oh, how I wish we had a category for parental mental status.

At an intake last week, the parent reported that she used to let her daughter do gymnastics, but then she pulled her out and made her stop because gymnasts are really short, and she didn't want her daughter to be short when she grew up. So, no more gymnastics.

"Ct's Mo exhibits marked cognitive difficulty re: logic and reality testing..."

It's my party...

2008-08-11T15:28:00.000-07:00

Yeah, there's nothing really going badly this week... pretty much cruising along, mostly just bored and tired. But methinks it's time for a good cry, and I'm just curious now what will actually bring it on.

If it doesn't happen soon, I may need to induce. Taking recommendations for a good tearjerker (bear in mind that I have been known to cry during commercials when the time is right).

Relationship People

2008-08-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

It's funny how you can forget about things you once said.

I was having coffee with a friend the other day, and she reminded me that waaaaay back when Goat and I were starting to date, I was freaking out and kept worrying that maybe I just wasn't a "relationship person." I'd had nearly 30 years of being mostly single, moving around, starting over, traveling the world, doing whatever I felt like whenever I felt like it, and I was really worried that being in a relationship would feel boring, tied down, stuck... although at the same time, on some level I may have been just a teensy bit worried that maybe I was actually incapable of being content. I suppose I could say that about a lot of my 20s, and for 90% of my friends. We were having adventures, exploring, making great friends, but always looking for what was coming next. I had a string of jobs I didn't enjoy, never felt like I had roots, I was always either moving or people were moving away from me. And even though it was exhausting, we weren't ready to stop, because we weren't really happy, or settled, where we were at.

What a difference a few years makes. Somewhere along the way last year, I woke up and realized I was really... content. It was a surprisingly delicious feeling. Not that I never wanted anything to change ever again, but I felt like I was finally on some paths, in work and in life, where I wanted to just keep going in those directions, and for once I wasn't thinking about jumping ship and overhauling life and wiping the slate clean and starting over somewhere else again. Meh, maybe it's a normal part of getting a little older. Or maybe everything kind of fed off each other, and I wouldn't have even thought about settling into a relationship if I hated my job and was still feeling the need to make drastic changes that could send me fleeing. Maybe I never really let myself fall for people I dated in other places because I had one foot out the door before I even started.

Anyhow, somewhere along the way I seem to have become one of those "relationship people." Go figure. Clearly, I miss Goat for a million reasons about who he is, but I also just miss the boring little life we had going. So it's very interesting to realize that about yourself, and then find that you're single again and not sure what to do next. I could revert to "old single mode," filling my time but avoiding roots... but I think it would be at the expense of my shiny new ability to be content. I think, somehow, it will all answer itself without too much angst on my part. Or at least I hope. Or at least, with less angst than I had five years ago about all these things.

random

2008-08-04T12:45:00.000-07:00

One of the fun and interesting things about this year is that I went from calling my bosses "Dr. So-and-So" to -- at their insistence -- calling them by their first names. Including the guy who the place is named after. Well, that was hard enough to do... but you really know that you've arrived as a "colleague" when you head out on a lunchtime trip to Jamba Juice and they insist that you take the front seat while they crawl into the back.

books vs. movies

2008-07-30T17:34:00.000-07:00

My two competing interests these days seem to be my Netflix account and my LA public library card. For a while it was great to just come home and zone out to The Closer, but I finished season 3. So today we've got Freakonomics vs. season 1 of The Sopranos. I think we're tipping towards the book today... one episode of The Sopranos wasn't quite enough to suck me in, but the book's intro already has me on the edge of my seat. When I was in school, studying economics, I always said I was fascinated with it because, at heart, it's not really about money at all. It's the study of how people make decisions. And, as the authors put it, tantalizingly, it's the study "of how people get what they want." Might be right up my alley.

Plus, I think I'm ready to think again a little. Not that I haven't been thinking lately, just about different things. Since I arrived in LA, actually, I've blessedly learned a very important thing: how to be a being, doing person a bit more instead of always an asking and pondering sort of person. Really, I think I've learned how to live better in the last few years. But it's been awhile since I read anything that makes for good dinner table conversation.

The I Want to Die Post -- but it's not what you think

2008-07-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

Oy, I just threw up on my feet. That was disgusting. I have apparently contracted some type of food poisoning or GI bug that put me in bed all day mostly wanting to die. I seem to have passed that point of the cycle, but am, unfortunately, still in no shape to get vertical. OK, now that I've grossed you out....

I've been doing alright the last couple of weeks. Up and down, understandably I suppose. About half of the last month, either Goat or I have been out of town on vacation and that made it easier. I've been doing pretty well here on my side of town, in the world where I was always known for myself, but I discovered last night that it's considerably harder to go back to the west side, where I feel like I was more known as half of a couple. So, it was much to my surprise that after a few weeks of cruising along, dealing with it when I come home at night but mostly engaging myself successfully in life during the day, I went to visit some friends on the west side and suddenly felt like I had jumped back a month in time to the first week, where I felt really fragile and emotional. OK, so I was also over there helping a friend plan her wedding, and was, unbeknown to me, well on my way to being violently ill, which didn't help, but let's just say I didn't have the fun, relaxing evening I'd hoped for.

Mostly I just feel really stuck in the "to have contact or not to have contact" department. The pros of contact are that I get to connect with a person I still have a strong connection to. The cons? Well, that's easy. Staying connected to a person I have strong feelings for but can't be with, which is gonna mess with my head.

But the truth is, this "no contact" thing? Not feeling much better right now. Will it in the long run? I don't know. Basically, when I talk to him, it just feels like this was the natural place things had to end up now, given reality or timing or whatever, and I just feel sad, which I can handle. But the longer I go without talking to him, the more hurt and flat-out-rejected I feel, as if I was weighed and measured and found lacking (basically, the difference between "we broke up" and "I got dumped," which can be a distinction quite lacking in subtlety).... which is bearable when I'm engaged in life during the day, but can tend to spiral down into Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles at the end of the day, or when I'm, say, laying in bed wanting to die from food poisoning. And yes, Ruthie, I know that was a run-on sentence.

busy bee

2008-07-03T22:53:00.000-07:00

So, I have discovered this week that the problem with "keeping oneself busy," is that one is always busy.

And thus, tired.

It's actually been an OK week. Certainly full of ups and downs and a daily cry, the intensity of which has been downgraded from Red Alert ("Severe") to Yellow Alert (merely "Elevated"). Early in the week I pretty constantly felt like I was pushing down a giant knot in my stomach, but by today I've actually been able to get so lost in office chaos that I've been able to feel normal for a whole day at a stretch. The hard parts still come when somebody calls and asks how I'm doing -- so if you ask, and I say I'm fine, it just means I don't want to go there right now. I'm sort of reserving it as a topic for conversations that last more than 15 minutes, so that I actually have the chance to get through the knot that comes up, instead of having it get stuck there floating around in my stomach like I swallowed a beehive.

Because the hardest part of the day is still coming home, I've been happy to have plans the last few nights to connect with friends. But today I found myself totally, utterly exhausted (to the point of almost crying when my last client actually showed up, and then again when I ran into her mother in Target and was trying to gently, then firmly, suggest that she call me next week instead of trying to get a session out of my while I was buying shampoo).

Anyhow, I realized how much easier it was to spend time alone when I was in a relationship, because I knew that at the end of the day, I was going to connect with someone who wanted to hear all my stupid stories and trivial thoughts, and would stay on the phone while I brushed my teeth. Before we started dating, Goat asked for my phone number and I told him that I hated talking on the phone (someone, please, teach me how to flirt). Well, it turns out I was wrong, and in the last 2 1/2 years, other than weeks where one of us was really out of town (like, in the woods), I think we barely went a handful of days without saying goodnight, often talking for an hour or more. Now, to get some type of human connection, I have to make plans, go out, initiate. And I forgot how exhausting it is to be always talking about something with people because they're really not interested in the volumes of nothing that you really feel like talking about.

So how did that make you feeeeeeeel?

2008-06-29T23:36:00.001-07:00

For better or for worse, being a therapist means that you are pretty hyper-aware of your feelings. Maybe not exactly in the moment, I mean, sometimes you just know you are really uncomfortable and you can't figure out what's going on, but with a little bit of processing and perspective I can usually come up with a name for mine (managing them, of course, is a totally different thing), and can tell the difference between them.

So for now, I just continue to be amazed at how I can feel so many of them over the course of each (and every) 24-hour period.

There are the big ones, yes, the basic rhymers -- mad, sad, glad. Then there are all the other ones, trailing along like toilet paper on your shoe... Mad and self-righteous feel good for a little while (hey, that jerk), but are quickly countered with defensiveness (but, really, he's not a jerk, and I wouldn't have dated a jerk anyway). Compassion skips out onto the playground (I know this sucks for him too) but is quickly tripped and has its lunch money stolen by confusion (it's complicated to find yourself empathizing with the person who broke your heart). Then sheer loneliness and missing someone pops up in the stew (as I seem to be out of practice being alone with my thoughts), but on occasion I can season it with relief (cost of a round trip across town in a fuel-efficient gas powered vehicle: $5.23. Wondering if the person you love will ever want to reduce the distance: priceless).

I think my saving grace as I "move on" is just that I've promised to let myself feel whatever I feel, to tell the truth about it, and not to be sorry for any of it.

Home

2008-06-29T00:55:00.000-07:00

Why, for the love of all that is holy, did I want to come home from vacation? To my empty house, with the endless line of drunk Dodger fans edging toward the freeway outside my bedroom window? Oh, right, I wanted to start getting on with my life.

Well, maybe tomorrow. Tonight, the Times' Sunday crossword will have to do.

Broken Blog

2008-06-27T23:19:00.000-07:00

Bleagh, so there's really nowhere easy to start here... so I will just say that I am very very sad right now, and my heart is profoundly broken and the only way I can make it better it is to keep getting out of bed every morning and filling my days with meaningful tasks and people who love me. I'm leaving out the gory details because I don't know who reads this silly old blog anymore, which has been mostly neglected for the last year while my life was cruising along swimmingly enough that I had less need for writing to sort through complicated emotions... so if you're reading it and you're confused, send me an email or a comment if you know me well enough to want to hear more and I'll reply offline. Whether or not you know the story, I'll warn you that I may allow this blog to be taken over, for the time being, as a place to sort through and chronicle both the good and the awful parts of the process of moving on.

Right now I'm on vacation, and that's been a mixed bag. Good to see family, yes, and old friends... who give you permission to be sad and scared and hurt and angry and then remind you how many times you've leapt into something new and scary and how you've been OK every time. People who knew you before this part of your life and who will know you long after. But part of being on vacation now feels like it's just putting off the inevitable, dreadful task of just getting on with life, when you're still not happy about accepting that that's the only option. Going home and changing your routine, your habits, your vacation plans. And the stupid little stuff, like your Facebook status feed which broadcasts to the world that you are "no longer listed as 'in a relationship.'"

I reassured my brother tonight that I am, relatively speaking, doing OK. I believe I will come out the other side, for all practical purposes, fine. I'm not despondent about the future, I don't think this means that I'll die alone with 16 cats, or that I'll forever spurn the advances of well-meaning suitors for fear of getting hurt again. It's just that right now, I fall asleep feeling like I lost my best friend, and no matter how much my head can make sense of it, my heart feels like something is very, very wrong.

First Fruits!

2008-06-13T12:47:00.000-07:00

Prom Night

2008-05-05T18:48:00.000-07:00

After a few years off, we've been invited to a glut of themed parties lately! How fun. An Old School Rap Party, a SuperHero birthday (which we actually missed, sadly), and now, PROM!!

100K

2008-04-21T19:35:00.000-07:00

My "new" car (guess I've got to stop calling it that one of these days) just rolled over 100,000 miles on the way home from work! I'm not sure why I expected fireworks. It did bring back great memories of being in my old car, Pete the Jetta, when it hit 100K -- my college roommate Ruth and I were on a road trip to southern Utah in 1999, and we were at the entrance to Arches National Park when it hit 99,999... so we drove around the park entry sign for five minutes until it turned. Yeah, we were dorks. This time, I was just driving home from work. How boring. But in general this car (my civic) has just been a trusty, sturdy, dependable ride, no complaints, but lacking the adventurous character of Pete the Jetta, who used to die every time I'd slow down and turn at the same time, whose tailpipe fell off somewhere in Indiana (don't worry, I bought him a new one)... and who, by the end, I had to park facing down a hill every night so I could push start him in the morning. Funny how long I put up with him (six years?) and still had a hard time letting him go, even after he'd gotten to the point where I could no longer count on getting from A to B with any consistency. I can't even name this car... For awhile I thought he might be a Stanley, but even that didn't really stick. And this one, I haven't really let him take me anywhere. No random road trips, no cross-country moves loaded down with everything I own, nearly dragging along the highway, thinkin' there's nothing that could go wrong a little duct tape couldn't keep workin' for a few more miles.

Sigh...

Another six weeks, please...

2008-03-24T18:40:00.000-07:00

It's just about six weeks exactly from groundhog day, and winter appears to be very, very gone. It's still March and we hit 87 degrees yesterday. I actually had no idea it was really that hot, I thought for sure it was just in the 70s and I was a bigger pansy than usual as I was outside running around. Now I don't feel so crazy. Who knew the ice cream truck would be trolling the streets eight seconds after the start of spring?

Anyhoo, just thought I'd post a little update that despite the number of times I blog when I'm frustrated about work, life is good these days. Despite the whining (mine), I really like my job, really enjoy a lot of my clients, and feel like I'm settling in well. I don't earn very much money at this particular job, but I love my coworkers, I set my schedule, and I have three day weekends. And for this year, the sanity has been worth it. I have potlucks with my girlfriends on Tuesday nights, I play Ultimate, I have a social life again. I took up sewing again, I have a Netflix queue, I finally finished all three of the novels that I bought a year ago in anticipation of eventually having free time to read, and a few more. I work hard for my clients, and when I'm not at work, I graciously allow myself to think about non-dramatic, un-angsty, enjoyable topics. I go to church when I can, the singing part still makes me cry every time, but in a good way. I'm in love with a pretty amazing guy, and we have totally nerdy dates where we do the Times crossword puzzle together online before we go to bed. I have decent health insurance. I try to ride my bike a lot.

I might be whining again by tomorrow, but for today, I can't complain.

Try this at home

2008-03-17T21:23:00.000-07:00

After a rough month or so at work after the holidays, something needed to change.

Thursdays, especially... my day chock-full of one after the other 13-year-old-boy, these poor kids who come see me in my dungeon because they're failing their classes or getting kicked out of class too much, and they're too old to think it's cool to have a "special friend" at school but still too young to actually understand complicated concepts like responsibility and choices and options in, oh, say, going to class, doing their homework, and not talking back to the teacher.

So, I did what any self-respecting professional would do: I started wearing fun socks to work.

And it actually worked. Who knew? Pink, rainbow, striped, polka-dotted, knee-highs... for some reason, they make a world of difference. Most people have no idea, but I can see them from my chair when my knees are crossed, peeking out. And in a statistically completely insignificant random sampling of one person (me), I have conclusive evidence that fun socks make a long day a lot easier to bear. It worked so well I tried it on Monday this week, with equally spectacular results.

Yes, THAT Corey Haim

2008-03-10T23:09:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I played Ultimate with none other than the one, the only, Corey Haim. Remember Lucas, anyone? He lives here in LA, and is filming his "reality" TV show (I have to put that word in quotes now that I actually have friends who are writers for reality TV shows), and is, supposedly, a huge Ultimate player. So, his people called up some of our people and arranged a permit (expensive and hard to come by) with the parks dept for us to hold a weekly pick-up game at a local park. The game brought out a huge contingent of Ultimate players with the promise of a spectacle, a viewing of a former Teen Idol (TM), and a chance to be on TV.

Corey came about an hour and a half after the game started, and upon arrival, changed into an outfit his producer had brought for him, including a brand-new pair of cleats fresh from the box. Then he smoked a few cigarettes. Unfortunately, by this time, we had so many people at the game that he was having a hard time making it onto the field (when there are too many people, you have to call "last back!" when your team gets scored on and run to the end zone before everybody else in order to rotate into the game). In the end, we let him in the game a few times (hey, he did score us the permit and all) and he ended up playing about four points and then spending the rest of the afternoon hitting on some girl on the other side of the park. We proceeded to enjoy ourselves on the field his producers had rented for the afternoon...

Anyhow, it was quite entertaining. Very surreal, yes, but he was a nice enough guy -- I even feel a little bit bad sort of making fun of him here. Who knows if we'll make it to TV or get left on the cutting room floor -- in any case, I got hugged by one of the Coreys, and he even called me sweetie.

File Under: I went to grad school for THIS!??!

2008-02-27T20:03:00.000-08:00

Round about the time, oh, say, last June... when I was parading proudly across a stage to get my degree, and I was all proud of my massive achievement of conquering grad school, I wasn't spending too much time thinking about what the day-to-day life of a therapist would include. I mean, yeah, hey, I imagined it would have some rough moments, but I did not really think that it would include calling a client's home and being hung up on not once, but twice in a row, and then (because I am either really dedicated to passing along information about my clients' safety to their parents, or I am a dimwitted glutton for unsophisticated punishment) calling back again and hearing the person on the other end of the phone pick it up, belch at me, and hang it up again.

However, I am comforted by the fact that Natalie also finds herself wondering why she got a Master's degree to remind grown men they need to take showers and eat breakfast.

And just where, exactly, were you at 5:30pm on the night in question?

2008-02-15T12:20:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of the room where I get to see clients at one of my campuses... reminds me of a police interrogation room. Fabulous for helping middle school kids feel comfortable! No windows, no couches, no natural light. Just me, some colored pencils, and travel Connect Four. Don't you wish you could come see me here?

Bleagh (blog)

2008-02-12T20:09:00.000-08:00

So, my lenten discipline was to take the time to blog every day. You know, sort of a self-imposed commandment to stop, look, listen, think, process, and stop taking every waking moment for granted. Yeah, I know, we're seven days into lent, here I am popping up for the first time. Around last Friday I realized that it was a horrible thing to pick, should have just become a vegetarian again for 40 days, because it's so much easier to eat a vegetable than it is to be intentional, you know, and now I'm stuck because after a few days in, I knew I was either going to be a failure or a quitter, and neither sounded like very much fun. So with a little bit of "let up on the perfectionism for 10 seconds, please" encouragement from Goat, I decided doing something was way better than doing nothing, so here I am.

Anyhow, the only thing of note today (seeing as how I have 5 minutes to put my shoes on and be waiting on the front porch) is another shockingly, stark recognition of the power of culture. Many, if not most, of my clients have parents who were raised in another culture, and communication with them is not something I for granted anymore. One of my clients has a mother who has, several times now, in an attempt to tell me that she wants me to close her son's case, simply hung up the phone on me mid-sentence. So, because this feels so completely, ridiculously rude to me and I am conditioned to take it as a complete affront to the services I provide (good! free! therapy! as we say in the office... why don't you want your good free therapy?!!?), I was ranting and raving around the office about this woman who is a grown adult and cannot just tell me she doesn't want to come in anymore. To which my supervisor just chuckled, and asked, "she wouldn't happen to be a Russian immigrant?", and went on to relay tales from her cousin (also a Russian immigrant) about how people in certain social circles in the Old Country have learned or adapted as ways to get their point across. Not entirely or deliberately meant to be offensive... just trying to communicate.

Well, I don' t have the luxury of choosing how I want to communicate back to her, I have to go through due process of leaving another message, then mailing a letter, then waiting two weeks before I close the case... which is frustrating since I already know that's what she wants done. But what I really want to do is leave a message on her answering machine, reminding her that if her goal is to help her son grow into a successful adult (in America), he needs to learn some good old fashioned American cultural communication methods, like, say, actually telling another human being what you want.

I swear, sometimes I get frustrated with my kids, but it's usually their parents that drive me up the wall.

No, not the candy

2008-01-29T00:38:00.000-08:00

If there is one thing in the world that warms the cockles of my heart more than nerds, it may very well be nerds in love. And if there are two things, the next one would have to be nerds in love learning how to dance.

I just returned from a Ceroc dance lesson at Caltech. Not only was it a blast, but let's just say that the cockles of my heart are very, very warm.

An exercise in the other side of the tracks

2007-12-07T18:04:00.000-08:00

Nothing profound about my journey to the literal and figurative other side of the tracks since I wrote that last post and comment yesterday... just the usual surreality. I was exhausted after work Thursday night (which, blessedly, is the end of my work week), and needed a good cry to be ready to move on. Sometimes I just get so overwhelmed, not only with my clients' stories but also just the task, proving to be exhaustive, of learning how to do all the stuff that comes along with my job that I didn't learn in school (there is, apparently, a reason that most therapists I know say they don't feel like they know how to do their job until they've been doing it 10 years... I suppose teachers and doctors, etc, would concur).

Anyhow.... some days I just need a good cry to deal with the stress. So I had one last night, and then I drove over to Goat's office holiday party. The theme was Animal House, complete with togas, slippery nipples, Dance-Dance-Revolution, karaoke, fries and fried cheese sticks that waiters were passing out on fancy silver trays. We danced until well past midnight. This morning, I drove to Beverly Hills for a doctor's appointment, and then continued along a scenic route up Santa Monica Boulevard (scenic for exploring purposes) and over the Hollywood Hills, past stores where I could probably trade my paycheck for a sweater... and I kept on going to Burbank, having lunch with a friend from my program and doing a little holiday shopping. It was a lovely day.

Oh, and yes, my doctor's office is in Beverly Hills. I picked Cedars-Sinai as my medical center because:

It was in my insurance group
I don't care much whether I live in a seedy neighborhood, but dammit, if my insurance will cover it, I'm done messing around with medical groups who only take cash, who lose your referrals, who refer you to doctors in BFE who don't speak English anytime you need a specialist, and who weigh you in the waiting room.

nothing, really

2007-11-03T15:31:00.000-07:00

I am doing nothing right now.

And while there are days in the recent past when I did not like the doing of nothing, because it was strange and foreign, today is not one of those days. Today I like the nothing. Today I love the nothing. Today, I want to walk off into the sunset barefoot on the beach with nothing, hand in hand, knowing I'm going to get lucky later.

Of course, nothing feels so great right now because I know that in two hours I will pick up Becky D in Long Beach and we will gloriously, and with much verbosity, do nothing together for the next 24 hours. Because, really, too much nothing by yourself is no fun at all. But after a few years of always something, even though this nothing stuff is still pretty weird, and I don't expect it to last for long because I'll do what I usually do and fill time with something, anything -- right now, for today, I'm kinda digging the nothing.

Happy Saturday

2007-10-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

You know how sometimes a project just kind of languishes around on your "to do" list for a really long time and then one day, you just wake up and decide it's finally time??

I just organized four years worth of photos on my computer.

Blink

2007-10-26T15:59:00.001-07:00

During a recent visit to Boston, Natalie and I tried to get one good picture. Apparently, however, she's a blinker. How did I never know this before? We were pretty much 0-for-20.

Also, Hi from Vegas! We were there a few weeks ago for a wedding.

Ferdinand Ma-julie-an

2007-10-20T16:26:00.000-07:00

I was a little explorer today! Now that I've finally gotten (most of) my stuff unpacked in my new place (or at least to the point where I can find what I need in the remaining boxes), I took a little time today to explore my new "neighborhood." Technically, where I live is pretty central to everything I do, but not really close to anything. I live in a little 3-street neighborhood tucked in between Dodger Stadium and Elysian Park. So today I just headed out on my bike and did a little 11-mile loop down the hill through Chinatown, then heading northwest on Sunset Boulevard through Echo Park and Silver Lake... then getting really lost on the way home because I forgot my map. I knew what direction to keep heading, but I ended up biking up all these big hills only to discover that the streets didn't connect and I had to bike down the other side and up another one. All in all, it was a nice day for a bike ride... I put my new panniers on the side so I didn't have to carry anything... and when I got home there was a nice big bowl of ice cream waiting for me in the freezer to reward me for all those hills. Yum.

Stipendgate 2007 -- the irony continues

2007-10-20T16:19:00.000-07:00

No, they haven't decided to give me the money after all. I've pretty much given up on ever seeing any of it, and while I still think it's a horrible thing, my rage is subsiding, which is at least helping me move on with life. However, I did find out a tidbit of info from one of my advisers at Fuller, who sits on the board that was administering the stipends. She said that the loss of the stipends actually may be a product of the fact that the DMH got a huge amount of money from the state this year, but all that money came along with a whole new set of restrictions surrounding how/where they spend their money, and it seems that perhaps this program was not on the list of acceptable options.

So, in an ironic nutshell, it seems that the DMH isn't giving out the stipends because they have so much more money this year.

Is it ironic that the Department of Mental Health is driving me crazy?

2007-09-19T16:56:00.000-07:00

I'm having a rough week. I know that life is not fair, but I really don't like it very much when it's not fair to me.

There, I'll just say it, and then proceed with my whiny post, and you can choose to read or to politely navigate away, somewhere cheerier.

I've started my new job, and it's going well, but still filled with all the uncertainties and flailing that come along with a new job. But Monday morning, I checked my email, and there was another email from the agency which is administering the DMH stipends. Before I opened it, I was wondering how much longer the meeting (see post below) had been postponed for. But then I opened it, and the news was much, much worse. My joking prediction to Goat was right. There's no money, they wrote, and boom, poof, the stipend I was "awarded" is gone.

The stipend amounted to about 25% of the salary I'd be earning this year, and a large reason I felt comfortable accepting the job at this salary is because I was counting on the stipend money. I'm torn between wanting to just move on with life, chuck it up to a case of Life's Not Always Fair, practice some of that Christian forgiveness... and wanting to figure out if I can sue their pants off. Really, I'm sure I will arrive at an option somewhere in between, but mostly this week I just feel really kicked in the stomach. The agency administering the program had never indicated that the funding wasn't already secured and guaranteed from the DMH. How could they have promised us money that they knew wasn't there yet, without telling us that part? The kicker is that one stipulation of receiving the funds was that we find employment with a DMH agency within 90 days of graduation... so all of us wanting to be compliant with our end of the bargain had already accepted and started jobs before we found out there's no money. I don't know if I have any recourse against the agency who offered us the stipends, but I feel like I can't quite let it rest that all I got was an email of "sincere apology" that the money I was counting on didn't exist.

I also started apartment hunting this week, and realized for the first time how much LA really costs. I guess I've been extensively sheltered from the cost of living here; having lucked out on a huge apartment for really reasonable rent for the last two years. I went to go view a couple of studio apartments in my price range, and they were in neighborhoods that even I wouldn't live in (and up until now I thought I would live just about anywhere).

I know I'll be OK, but I just feel a whole mess of icky things this week... angry, self-righteous, weepy, indignant, cynical, hopeless. Honestly, I'm feeling a little despondent that I have a Master's degree and I'm worrying about affordable housing. Will I be able to live, and eat, and occasionally take a weekend trip? Yes. No problem. But even though I do, somehow, still think this will all work out just fine, and I will like (maybe even love?) my job (can you put a price on that?), I catch myself wondering, this week, if I made a poor decision.

This is when Anne Lamott comes in handy, right?

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent... except yourself.

2007-08-31T10:59:00.000-07:00

I just received an email from the institute that is dispersing DMH funds, stating that the stipends (which were supposed to begin being sent in June) are on hold until they have a hearing in October. I forwarded the email to Goat, with a snide comment about the inadequacy of the DMH and a prediction that I'd never see the money.

Only, I didn't send it to Goat. I accidentally hit "reply" and sent it back to the institute.

Anyone know of a good recipe for crow?

Did you miss me talking about the heat?

2007-08-30T21:54:00.000-07:00

Apparently I came back to LA, to pack up my apartment, just in time for a heat wave.

It's so hot in my bedroom that my candles are melting, without being lit.

High Sierra

2007-08-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

I bought a sweater at Mervyn's last week. A flimsy little cotton, lightweight, stretchy zip-up thing that will be perfect for work this winter (because I live somewhere where winter temperatures occasionally dip to, say, 65 degrees), with a completely-for-looks-because-it's-totally-useless flimsy cotton hood that only covers half your head.

And what brand was this little ditty? High Sierra.

Now, I know this sweater was not designed with the high Sierra in mind, but I'm not sure why a company who makes flimsy sweaters decided to call themselves High Sierra. Even Low Sierra Day Hike would have been a stretch. Maybe City Park on a Very Dry, Windless Summer Afternoon. I have been to the high Sierra, and this sweater would do you absolutely no good at 12,000 feet, except maybe for a pillow, only then your companions would scoff at you for wasting a lot of perfectly good space and weight in your pack hauling something that only has one function, and really, nobody wants that, right?

Anyhooo.... speaking of the high Sierra, I'm heading there tomorrow morning! And, in an extremely condensed version of the last week of my life which I will expand upon later, I accepted a job starting in September, so I can head off to the woods without the weight of having no idea what the future brings. I'll be stationed in Bridgeport and backpacking in Yosemite until the end of August!

penciled in

2007-08-02T13:02:00.000-07:00

Does it make me a bad person, that one (of many) reasons I'm happy this week is because after a month or so of no schedule, I have a day-timer now, and it has things written in it?

911: The Irony Continues

2007-08-02T12:48:00.000-07:00

This would be funny if it weren't so... well, I'm OK, so it is kind of funny by now.

Through absolutely positively no fault of my own (that's my disclaimer in case the insurance companies are scouring the internet for information) I was in an accident on the freeway last night. Someone in a lane traveling at 10 mph decided to change lanes abruptly into the lane where I was traveling at 50 mph, and, well, you do the math. So, armed with all my new information about the state of LA emergency services, what did I do? I didn't call 911, because I knew I'd be on hold. So I called 411 and asked to be connected with the highway patrol office. They connected me to an office that was closed. So I called 911 to reach CHP, where I was, predictably, on hold for 5 minutes before I gave up, because my car was still driveable and the other car was leaving anyway and it no longer made sense for me to be sitting on the side of the road on hold when I could go somewhere much safer and more comfortable and be on hold later.

Anyhow, today, I looked up the CHP number on their website, so that I could call them directly (instead of calling 911) and make a report. So, I called the local number of their Los Angeles office... and what do I hear?

"You have reached 911..." which was then promptly replaced by a human voice waiting to handle my emergency, now that I was sitting around in my apartment drinking iced tea and totally not having an emergency of any sort.

So, the new moral of the story, which makes me feel ever-so-slightly better, is that it's still kind of OK to have an emergency in LA, as long as it's during business hours.

Wii love boxing!

2007-07-24T19:26:00.001-07:00

A few other pics from my travels are up at the photo blog...

Update

2007-06-27T12:05:00.000-07:00

So, I turned in my keys at my internship site yesterday, after a couple long days of dotting I's and crossing T's in all my charts. Leaving that place came with too many goodbyes that I wasn't ready to say. Today I throw in some laundry, pack up, run some errands, and hop on a plane for a few weeks of much-anticipated vacation. Tonight to Boston, a few days with Natalie, then Goat flies in and we drive up to New Hampshire for a week at Squam Lake with his family. Then, hop a plane straight to Seattle and head to eastern Washington for a week at a lake with my family and a few extra days in Seattle (partially enjoying Seattle, partially avoiding July in Pasadena). The current plan is that I'll be in the Yosemite backcountry for a good chunk of August, guiding for Sierra Treks, and then when September rolls around, I'll find a job and a new place to live - not sure exactly where yet but for now the requirements are that it reduces the 30-mile commute to Goat. So, September is the new horizon I can see to, but beyond which I cannot see. And for now I'm OK with that. (I fully expect the angst to ratchet up in the fall, but in the meantime I'm planning on enjoying some vacation).

Here are some photos from graduation...

Security Guard

2007-06-21T23:07:00.000-07:00

So we have this security guard at work... at least, I think that is his job title, and he does wear a uniform that makes him look like one. And while I can't say I've ever felt unsafe at work, at least not during the daytime, it is on the outskirts of a sketchy area and right next door to an adult clinic that serves the chronically/severely mentally ill. So I would at least like the security guard to sort of look like he's ready to deal with an incident, should one arise. To start with, he's about 5'6" and maybe weighs a buck ten. But aside from that, theoretically, I don't think he should be sitting on the bench outside all afternoon with his shoes and socks off, picking between his toes. I mean, I just think it would take a while to get them back on if he needed to chase someone or something.

Done... "ish"

2007-06-15T14:26:00.000-07:00

Well, I have survived, and graduated, and celebrated, and all that jazz! I'll post pics this weekend. Graduation itself was on the long, boring side (it took an hour and 45 minutes to read all the names during the ceremony) but we survived. I only cried a couple of times (so far), not from being sad, just from the emotional upheaval of going that hard/fast/strong for so long and then being done. Actually, I'm kind of weaning myself a bit... I finish off with my clients and mountains of charts in the next two weeks, but at least there's no class or papers to deal with, so when I leave the office, my time is my own. Strangely, yesterday I was at work for 11 hours but when I was driving home, I felt like I was getting off early (don't feel sad for me or anything, I was only working for about 6-7 of those hours, the rest was wandering around the office in between appointments trying to figure out what needed to be done and hanging out with the other interns). The funny thing is, after having my parents staying here for a week, and all the busyness of graduation and guests and being with people every waking moment for the past 3 weeks, all I could think about during the day was going home, by myself, and staring at the ceiling for a few hours. Then, of course, driving home, I got this weird, unsettled, lonely feeling at knowing I was going to be all by myself with nothing to do for a few hours.

Don't worry, I got over it. But it was strange while it lasted.

Of the keeping in of the proverbial loop

2007-06-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

Just to keep you posted...

Classes are done. Three papers to go. One apartment to clean. Two parents to collect from the airport. Four grad events to go to. One party to throw. And.... (drumroll please...)

Three hundred hours. 305, to be precise, as of today. I got my hours done last Tuesday so I will, officially, legally, without-even-having-to-fudge be done and graduated as of Saturday (assuming those three papers get done), even if all the rest of my clients for the month of June get lost, or forget, or have family emergencies.

separated at birth?

2007-05-30T00:13:00.000-07:00

Match the name to the face:

a) Jason Lee from My Name is Earl
b) Goat's most recent facial hair configuration
c) the next door neighbor from Office Space

2007-05-24T22:14:00.000-07:00

Goat is about to cut his hair and shave his beard... we had some fun with the "before" shots.

911 is a joke

2007-05-21T00:19:00.000-07:00

Number of times I got a busy signal when I called 911 from the freeway the other day to report a car nearly engulfed in flames on the side of the road (no, not my car): 6

Number of minutes I sat on hold waiting for an operator after I got through: 4

Note to self, don't have an emergency in LA, unless it's not really an emergency...

Happy Bike to Work Week!!

2007-05-14T20:09:00.000-07:00

Zoinks, I am falling behind!! Bike-to-work-week is already here. Hope it's not too late for y'all to join in. For those who don't remember, refresh your memory here and here. It's time for another leave-your-car-at-home challenge, same rules apply:

Bike (or walk, or carpool, or take public transportation) to work (or school, the grocery store, on a date) one day this week. Basically, replace a car trip with some other form of exercise or CO2-reducing locomotion. If you already bike to work, find another car trip to replace... you can always bike more!
Wear a helmet and follow local traffic laws, of course.
Send me a picture!!
Tell me how many miles you biked/walked/etc that you would have otherwise been in your car.
Did I mention send a picture of yourself on your spiffy bike/bus/two feet?
I will make a donation, based on total car miles reduced, to Wild Hope, the non-profit backpacking organization I guide for that spends the off-season lobbying for wilderness protection and leading trips designed to expose politicians to the wilderness their legislation has the potential to preserve.

Your bike doesn't have to be nice. It doesn't have to be pretty. It just has to have two wheels (and at least one working brake). Although, it's helpful if the tire's not full of earwigs, like the one Bronwyn and I fixed up a couple years ago. There are LOTS of websites out there designed to make this easier... so go ahead and google "bike to work week" along with the city you live in for info about events and incentives. Or go to a bike shop. Or call me. I'll help you.

Make me proud. Oh, and send me a picture!

Civic Doody

2007-04-20T21:28:00.001-07:00

Argh. I had jury duty last week. And while, on some level, I have an appreciation for our judicial system, I really just didn't have that kind of time. I ended up having to cancel or reschedule six clients at the last minute, and was stressed about losing hours toward graduation, and really wanted to get dismissed from the jury. But before that could happen, you arrive at 8am and spend two hours getting "oriented" before they give all 50 of you an hour to drive five miles to another courthouse, the one where the actual cases are happening... and then they spend a while seating you in the courtroom and then, gosh, it's lunchtime so you have to wait around another hour and a half before jury selection actually begins.

Everybody in there wanted to get off the jury. The guy on my right was reading The Communist Manifesto and the guy on my left was sighing loudly every 10 seconds and obnoxiously proclaiming (over and over and over again) how he knows all the cops in Glendale. There was a woman on the panel who almost started crying while stating she could never convict someone because she was the mother of an adolescent (huh?), and a cinematographer who insisted (also many times) that he didn't think he could be fair because he had worked on a bunch of cop shows and movies (the best part of the day was when the judge leaned over and asked him if he knew the difference between TV and real life).

Anyhow, since it was a criminal trial, the prosecutor ended up (two hours later) kicking off everyone who had ever had a non-sunny-and-wonderful interaction with law enforcement, and for once in my life I was thankful that I was in that category. I said my brother had been arrested 15 years ago for something when he was a teenager and that I didn't think he had been treated fairly, and boom I was gone.

If it hadn't been such stressful timing (I couldn't postpone because there was no better time to reschedule for in the near future), it would have been a more enjoyable adventure. At the very least, it was entertaining to watch a room full of relatively normal, sane adults attempt to look earnest while trying to fly their freak-flags high enough to get sent home.

Mmmm chicken

2007-04-09T20:28:00.000-07:00

So I'm thinking of changing the name of this blog from "Running with Scissors" to "Wobbling Slowly with Scissors, and Stopping Occasionally to Sit Down and Take a Nap." Because that is more accurate. And "wobbling with scissors" is sort-of what I feel like as a therapist some days now, just trying to poke and prod a little bit without drawing too much blood.

Anyhow, I kept meaning to write about Lent this year but never got around to it. I gave up meat for Lent, and Goat joined me. So when Passover came along and he gave up all wheat/flour/leavened things, I joined him as well. Which meant we had a week of meat-less, wheat-less overlap. Let's just say I ate lots of fruit and cottage cheese. Originally, I was disappointed with having given up meat for lent. The truth is, it's way too easy to substitute, especially here in California. So, while I was intending to sacrifice something, to deprive myself, to give myself pause to be more conscious of suffering and mortality, instead it was more just like a pesky little detail. No chicken? OK, I'll have the rice-and-bean burrito. No hamburger? How about a veggie burger. Over the course of 40 days, there were really only a few times I even felt a pinch.

But the last week, the week without meat or wheat (have you ever thought about how much stuff has wheat/flour in it, unless you're allergic?), that has been a stretch. I've never had to be so conscious of what I put in my mouth, or so intentional about rearranging my diet. The first couple of days weren't bad, because there were two seders, which left me so full that I didn't even want to eat the rest of the day (and if the food didn't fill you up, the four cups of wine helped you forget). The second couple of days were OK, because I'd stocked up on fruit and Goat's mom had loaded me up with several months worth of unleavened bread products and chocolate-covered matzo bread. But by this weekend, it was starting to get old. Plus, we road-tripped to Arizona and spent the weekend eating out with some of Goat's friends from Boston. Road-tripping without license to snack freely!? And it kills to go out to a restaurant and know that someone else is going to do all the cooking, and you can only have a salad. Happily, Easter arrived mid-weekend and gave us back our carnivorous ways... but by now (Passover ends Tuesday night), I'd give my right arm for a bowl of cereal in the morning.

So somewhere in here, I'm trying to distill the lessons I've learned. They're not particularly profound. But I wouldn't have traded the last seven weeks. First, it's made me consider going permanently veggie, because I've had the inkling that I wanted to for a while, and this showed me that I could. Second, I suppose it reminded me more about what I hope to get from Lent, which actually ends up being a lot of what I find in Passover (see point #3). Third, I love seders. There's something about the Haggadah, and what it stands for, the focus on God's providence and faithfulness, that makes me want to cry every time. I have no idea whether it is as striking to Goat, or to other Jewish people who may have been forced to sit through the prayers and songs for 30 years, but it moves me, even before I start on the wine. Fourth, even if you know that you can never really understand how someone else experiences something like Lent or Passover, there's a lot to be said for solidarity. I know Goat's reasons for observing Lent were different from mine, and I know my reasons for observing Passover were different from his, but I think it meant a lot to both of us that the other chose to do it, voluntarily, outside of the influence of obligation.

That said, I did cook up a yummy chicken breast tonight. And about 24 hours from now I will be eating cold cereal for dinner. Mmmmm granola....!

Hot fashionistas

2007-03-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

And on a not-whiny note... here are a couple of pictures from a few weeks ago: my cohort went rollerskating in 80s outfits. At the top are my friends Jessica and Freya. Apparently I like to open my mouth in photos...

Volcano

2007-03-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

It is Friday night of my supposed "spring break." I didn't take time off from my practicum because I've been worried about getting enough client hours to graduate, but I think maybe that was a bad idea. I worked four long days this week, and in the few spaces that I did have to "relax," I was too tired, and when I did have the energy to call someone, my few Pasadena friends (all from my all-consuming program, of course) were either out of town, working, or busy with something and didn't have space for me. So I made it through the week, but don't feel any better. And finally tonight, I arrived at the point where my exhaustion gave way, and the floodgates broke, and I had my week-seven, PMSing, exhaustion-induced breakdown four weeks late. And it feels like shit. But on the plus-side, instead of just a vast, impenetrable wall of tiredness and desire to not think about anything, I am at least in a place where the breakdown is forcing me to identify what it is that is "wrong," or hard, or just to be able to put words to what is going on.

All week I had been feeling like I needed a good cry, but the trigger ended up being my last client of the week, 6pm Friday: an adolescent who is really, completely, all-consumingly angry. With me.

I have done all my homework. I KNOW that she is projecting onto me how she feels about her mother. I KNOW it's what we the "the business" like to call TRANSFERENCE. But it feels horrible. I feel like a bad therapist, like I should have known how to avoid it, like I pushed her too hard, like I should have figured out a way to be a safe adult instead of another authoritarian figure. I also have to acknowledge my own crap though, in this instance, and admit that I am really really really afraid of people being angry with me. It pushes all of my people-pleasing buttons. I totally got defensive and snapped at her in session. Then when she was gone I went into the intern room and cried (luckily, of course, there is nowhere better to be when you are having a crying moment than in an office full of therapists), because I felt like I had failed her as a therapist.

Anyhow, I know my little stress-shedding crying jag was only about 20% related to this, and 80% just related to being so. crazy. tired. right now. I slept 22 hours in the last two days and could probably sleep another 12 tonight. The strange thing is, I feel like I can actually handle the schedule better when I'm in the middle of a quarter and hardly have time to breathe, because there's enough adrenaline pumping, enough deadlines looming, and not enough time to think about how much I'm working. All of a sudden, this week, I have a few hours off and for the first time in a while I have the space to realize all I do is work and go to school. I had time off, and Goat is on his way to Boston for the weekend, and the few people I know are out of town... and I feel like all I have is this big giant... space... that reminds me that I work so much that I don't have a life. I hardly even play Ultimate anymore. I hardly bike, don't knit, don't hike, don't climb, don't run, don't go out for beers at the end of the day... the only people I know in Pasadena are in my program, which means we're all too busy and tired to actually just hang out with each other.

Which brings me to my last Thing That I'm Frustrated About, which is that somewhere in the trade-off of finding a job that I love (99% of the time, when my clients are not angry with me), it requires a lot of emotional energy, and I have not yet figured out how to guard against that, and I feel like I have lost the energy to be available to the friends I do have. To return phone calls and emails, to really listen and be present, to send birthday gifts on time (OK, so I never really sent them on time), to initiate fun activities, to be hospitable, to create spaces for community to happen. I have energy for school and Goat. Other than that, at the end of the day all I'm good for is a little anti-social boggle online, or if I'm doing well, a little online Scrabble date with Goat (I know, we're nerds. What's it to you?).

So, sigh, that's the volcano that needed to blow a little tonight and spew some lava (and snot). I know I'll feel better tomorrow. I just bought new cleats, and they have polka-dots on them, and I am going to play Ultimate in my new polka-dot cleats tomorrow.

Interesting things that other people come up with

2007-03-20T22:15:00.000-07:00

I used to like to write. I used to like to spend time crafting words, and hemming and hawing over just the right phrase, to turn a passing thought into social commentary. Somewhere in me, buried deep beneath the grad school layer, I think maybe that is still there, and if I am lucky it will live to write again. For now, even during spring break, I got nothin'.

Luckily, however, other people do! So mosy on over and read all about the current dissent in Washington, finally acknowledging the paralyzing hiccups of No Child Left Behind. (I'm assuming you're OK with me stealing the link, Bronwyn...)

whine whine whine

2007-03-12T19:38:00.000-07:00

This is a complainer post just to tell the world how tired I am today, because somehow I think that will make me feel better. I mean, there are these people doing some sort of long-term Try-Never-To-Complain-Again project, to make the world safe from whining, but I happen to think a little whining now and then, to get it out so you can move on, keeps the world turning 'round.

First, I remembered today as I was pulling up to work that construction began on our building today. That means our parking lot is full of construction vehicles, so we have to park a half-mile away at Macy's and take a shuttle. Then I had to make it through a break-less day including four hours of supervision, two hours of training, and a two-hour intake with jackhammers running 20 feet away, shaking the whole building and ensuring that everyone had to yell to be heard. Then I had to get back to my car and go tutor a 12-year-old who likes to pretend that I'm the meanest person in the world for suggesting that if he actually showed his work he might starting getting more than 34% on his math tests. Now I'm back at my apartment, where it is a balmy 85 degrees inside, and try to stay awake long enough to write two papers tonight which I really. don't. want. to. write.

It is finals week and I am already counting down the minutes until Friday. I'll re-appear then from a happier, more-well-rested place! In the meantime, here is my adorable goddaughter, who I got to hang with (along with her mother, my friend Jessica, whom I have known since we were big-banged, huge-glasses-wearing nerdy new kids in the 5th grade) for too little time in Seattle last weekend.

Three things...

2007-02-22T22:57:00.000-08:00

... that made the news closer to the top of the hour than anything having to do with anything important going on in the world:

-the judge crying at the hearing to determine the paternity of Anna Nicole's baby (which is now contested by no less than three men)

-Britney (by the way, did we mention she shaved her head?) back in rehab... again (3rd time this week...)

-rain.

Yes, RAIN. Actually, verbatim, "cold drizzle," made the news tonight above any headlines about wars, politics, education, or nuclear armament. They had cameras on the streets of downtown LA interviewing people with umbrellas and a guy in a t-shirt (it's still February, remember?) who was shocked he may have needed a jacket today.

OK, enough of that. You all know how I love television news.

The other Anna Nicole Show

2007-02-09T09:20:00.000-08:00

Was it just a really slow news day yesterday? Is that why all the stations spent a full fifteen minutes at the top of the news hour talking about the death of Anna Nicole Smith, as if she was an ex-president? Or was that just here in LA?

procrastination elation

2007-02-05T21:19:00.000-08:00

Julie does not want to write a six page paper about her family dynamics going back three generations tonight. Julie has better things to do with her time, including:

search for jobs that she cannot apply for until late 2007
make lists of things to do to stave off depression when school ends and she has to start making decisions about her own life again
discern which of the things going through her head she should bring up with The Boy, preferably in the middle of the night while he is trying to fall asleep, and which things to just keep in her pretty little head
get a jump on planning that next trip to South America (after discovering, in above-mentioned job search, a number of $5000 sign-on bonuses for Spanish-speaking therapists)
blog about procrastinating
figure out why Jack Bauer has no trouble placing cell phone calls in the aftermath of a nuclear bomb blast in LA

Off to watch 24...

Mean girlfriend

2007-02-05T18:47:00.000-08:00

I'm a mean girlfriend. I made Goat go on a rollercoaster with me at Universal Studios. He is not a fan. But I got a good picture!

irony

2007-01-28T13:57:00.000-08:00

I have been unable to do pretty much any physical activity for a while. Sure I would sneak a few points of ultimate here and there, but eventually that caused me so much pain that I resigned myself to doing nothing more than walking. I finished a round of physical therapy and on Friday was finally cleared to start biking again. Woo hoo!

Woke up this morning and was cooking breakfast when Goat looked outside and said, "hey, where's your road bike?"

Somebody stole it while it was locked up on my second floor balcony. The funny thing (well, not funny, just ironic) is that it had been unlocked for months on the balcony until a friend of mine had her $1200 road bike stolen from her third floor balcony 10 days ago, so I came home and locked mine up.

photo update

2006-12-19T22:45:00.000-08:00

I've ~~abandoned~~ let myself off the hook for the Photo-A-Day project but I'll keep throwing things up there as they come. Here are a few new ones.

Stuff

2006-12-19T18:23:00.000-08:00

Randomness abounds since I last posted. Here's a catchall to bring you up to date.

I finished finals on Dec. 8. It coincided nicely with the demise of my computer on Dec 7. Really. It's not like I wanted to turn those papers in on time or anything. Actually, I did manage to retrieve the papers and turn everything in with four hours to spare, saw clients all afternoon, worked the next morning at the holiday party for our kids (where I work) and then, as everyone drove out of the parking lot after cleaning up, I had the moment of letdown where you realize everything you've been pushing for has passed and now you don't know what to do with yourself. I went back to bed for three more hours that afternoon. When Monday arrived, it was time to deal with the computer and the Insurance Saga of trying to get a referral to a physical therapist to deal with a back injury from September (that story is long and involved and I will save it for another post).

Anyhow, it's 10 days past finals and I finally feel as if I've let go a little bit and am starting to feel relaxed. I'm heading home on Thursday for a week and Goat is flying up on Sunday, wish him luck for spending a week with my family in the great, drippy Northwest.

In other assorted, random news, I went to Goat's company holiday party at a bowling alley in Hollywood last night -- I've never been to a bowling alley with a dress code and a full bar (I bowled while drinking a Cosmopolitan and eating coconut shrimp). Also, in completely unrelated random news, in a short poll of the other interns at my site, between the 15 of us we speak at least 11 languages fluently: English, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, Romanian, Mandarin, Korean, Taiwanese, French, Italian, and some Indian language related to Hindi that I hadn't heard of. Other staff also speak Farsi and Hebrew. Only in LA.

Religion Soup

2006-12-05T22:10:00.000-08:00

I am having issues with religion these days. Not really faith so much... somehow I'm OK with doubt as a part of faith, and the idea that God's not freaking out about it nearly as much as I am (or at least as much as I was most of last year). But religion is turning into another issue entirely. I have to admit I'm usually at a loss for words in describing how all of it fits together; Goat called the other night, and I was in the middle of thinking about all of it and I was crying, and he asked what was wrong, and after I attempted to assure him it was nothing he had done, or not done, I simply replied that it was part of my religion soup.

The truth is, I do not know much about how to be a Christian here, in my life anymore. I am no longer in a community that shares a common language, and can talk until the cows come home about theological issues, and agree at the end of the day that we (think we) understand God and how he works in the world. The real truth is, so much of my life as a Christian has been about knowing how to talk about it. Yeah, I really do think that I have been part of communities that tried to live out what we intellectualized, but when that part was hard, we settled with being able to articulate and conceptualize it, and feel better, feel like we had a handle on things. But now, I can't divert to talking about it when it gets confusing and difficult. I get... stuck. So I pout. Real mature, I know. But I'm stuck. If I knew how to do it any differently I would.

But I don't want to go back to being able to articulate everything. I'm OK without all the answers. I'm stuck, but I'd like to think I'm stuck because I'm bushwhacking forward. When I got off the phone with Goat, he was concerned whether I was OK. "OK, yeah. Of course." I said. "I'm emotional, but emotional doesn't mean 'not OK'."

Anyhow, I know I'm sort of becoming the one-woman Anne Lamott fan club (maybe I should bill her for the publicity), but I found her archive on Salon.com and I pick through it when I feel stuck, mostly because I find her approach to Christianity refreshing. I liked her a lot before I came to Fuller, and bought Traveling Mercies for everyone I know, but she's like water in a dry land in the midst of systematic theology hell. Here's the one I read today, which is helping calm me down enough to write my last systematics paper. Systematics is just way too... removed. She reminds me that Jesus is about something a lot more applicable than being able to articulate a coherent view on the providence of God in the face of the problem of evil and suffering.

Stop reading me. I'm babbling. Go read Anne. Go.

Advent-urous

2006-12-04T22:13:00.000-08:00

I went to my friend Freya's church for the second time this weekend... I think I am finally at a point where I'm doing pretty well, and am able to go and hang out, and observe, and not freak out about needing to feel like I fit in somewhere right away. That makes me a lot less judgmental than I was most of last year, where I spent most of my time not talking to people because I thought that either they wouldn't like me or I wouldn't like them (which, when you don't really give people a chance, tends to make for a self-fulfilling prophecy).

Anyhow, Freya's church is really interesting... there are only about 15-20 people there any given Sunday, and they all have dinner together beforehand. Then they go over to this other room, and everybody picks out some sort of rhythm instrument, and they have this big, giant, drum-circle type worship. There are a lot of artists there, and last night one guy did this photo/painting during the service, which I happen to find so beautiful that I almost cry just looking at the thumbnail. Then they have art stuff set up in the corner, paints and chalk and oils and such, and you can wander over and do artwork during the service if you want.

This was the first Sunday of Advent, and I'm glad I went to church. It's one of the few seasons (the other being Easter) where we have any sense of tradition or ritual in the Protestant church, any sense of marking the time and seeing ourselves, collectively, as part of a larger picture. I don't really know why I love advent, in fact, most of my memories about it involve fighting over who got to light the candles. But I like being reminded to slow down and wait. Advent is about waiting. I used to like to think alot about hope and waiting. Now I'm a little busier living, instead of always thinking. According to Christian tradition, advent is about recalling the anticipation of the birth of Christ, and anticipating a day when he returns. Somebody last night said he tried to think about what Mary would feel like, waiting for the baby to be born. I said I thought she would want foot rubs every night, and somebody to bring her food to her on the couch in the living room.

Those two anticipations seem very different though. One is about reliving anticipation that achieved relief. The second anticipation is about waiting on something that seems so crazy you can hardly believe anybody really thinks it might happen. Waiting on something you want that may be a long-shot in the universe. This year, for me, both faith-wise and otherwise, advent is not so much about reliving anticipation for things that are already here. It's about waiting for things, things you wonder if your heart might break in two without, and not really being sure if they will ever come.

Sorta smart, sorta not

2006-12-04T20:27:00.000-08:00

I was tutoring tonight, and usually I work on math with my student. But tonight he didn't have math, he just had history. Not exactly my best subject, but I figured, hey, he's 11, I'm sure I can handle it. Well, his assignment was just to highlight a bunch of stuff in his textbook. So, I sat there and watched him do it - really earning my keep here. He was reading about the Mycenaeans (n.b. I just had to look them up on Wikipedia to find out who they were). Anyhow, at one point, he looks up from his reading and asks whether the whole Trojan Horse thing was real, or just a story.

I didn't know what to say. History, in all it's glorious factitudity (n.b. also not sure if that's a word), escapes me.

Of course, I covered it up by telling him to read the text and see if he could find the answer. I may not know the answer but I know how to fake it, and that's gotta be more than half the battle.

Love, Nerd-Style

2006-12-02T15:11:00.000-08:00

OK, so I know I am a former math nerd and may be the only person (other than Andrew, who sent me the link) who finds these hysterically funny.

Damn, I miss integration of functions.

Vacation all I ever wanted

2006-11-24T00:31:00.000-08:00

I've been struggling a bit with the Photo-A-Day Project. Some days I look around and realize I travel the same paths most days, and have stopped being able to find interesting things on those paths... and some days I'm too busy or tired to think about my camera until I'm laying on the couch watching Jeopardy. My brain is serious mush these days. But it's a vacation week, and the scenery has finally changed... so here are a few from the last couple of days:

First up, Mick Jagger and company...

My friend Nicole and I got free tickets at the last minute to their LA show last night -- and while I wouldn't have paid to see them, I have to admit it was a good show, fireworks and giant inflatable lips and all. Except for the parts where Keith Richards sang, though.

Next up, today was Thanksgiving and I saw my very first deep-fried turkey. I spent the day with some frisbee friends and their coworkers, eating, drinking, chopping, mixing, and searing a dead bird in 300-degree peanut oil.

Cranky McSpanky

2006-11-16T09:30:00.000-08:00

Crap. I am cranky this week. Can't seem to shake it, even after a couple of 10-hour nights of sleep. I'm tired. Tired of having papers over my head. Tired of being in my car, tired of having my life spread out over a 30-mile radius, tired of not being able to play ultimate and having to either sit and watch, or stay home alone. Tired of my room looking like someone only comes there to fling clothes around the room. Tired of my walls being bare, and tired of not having the energy or the decorating ability to do anything about it. Tired of not knowing how to change the things I'm cranky about. Tired of, at the age of 30, still occasionally wishing my mother would fly in and make sure I ate well every day. Tired of it being week 8 (perhaps I should not be surprised... maybe it's just week 7 syndrome showing up a week late). Tired of being hard on myself. Frankly, despite the fact that it is part of my job to remind people all day long that change is a long, slow process, I am secretly upset that I have not found a button to make it go fast just for me. Luckily, I have a therapist of my own who reminds me of the same thing, and having her remind me to chill out and enjoy the ride makes her worth every penny.

Anyhow, when I am cranky, I cry a lot and, to be honest, really want the rest of the world to join my pity party. Usually I can help get out of it by doing something to remember the world doesn't revolve around me, but then this morning I remembered that I had forgotten to go visit my hospice patient yesterday, which means that not only did I miss a chance to remember that whole not-the-center-of-the-world thing, but now I also feel like a big, mean, self-absorbed jerk too, for forgetting about a sweet little 95-year-old lady in a nursing home. Not really helping.

This is about the point in the quarter where I get really hard on myself, and start thinking that everyone would be better off if they didn't have to deal with me, because clearly I make everyone's lives more difficult when they have to "handle" me. So last week, when a friend pointed out this little streak I have, of thinking that I have to fix myself before anyone should have to deal with me, what was my first reaction? Crap, I thought, I'm too much of a perfectionist - I better fix that before I let anybody get anywhere near me, so I'm not too much to handle. I suppose the irony of that reaction would be much funnier to me if it weren't so true.

So, anyhow, in the spirit of trying to go easy on myself for five minutes, I'm dredging up another Anne Lamott quote. Maybe I've posted it before, but I need it again today.

"[My therapist] reminded me of something I'd told her once, about the five rules of the world.... The first rule is that you must not have anything wrong with you, or different. The second rule is that if you do have something wrong with you, you must get over it as soon as possible. The third rule is that if you can't get over it, you must pretend that you have. The fourth one is that if you can't even pretend that you have, you shouldn't show up. You should stay home because it's hard for everyone else to have you around. And the fifth rule is that if you are going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to feel ashamed. So we decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was show up for my life and not be ashamed."

I Voted

2006-11-07T16:43:00.000-08:00

So, I got off my butt, got over my excuses, and made it to the polls. Here's the play-by-play:

September, 2005: Register to Vote in LA County as a "Permanent Absentee Voter," thinking I will be more likely to vote if I can do it from the comfort of my own home.
October 2005: Receive voter registration card. Promptly file it in the "pile of things to be filed" in the corner. Receive absentee ballot for Nov election - thankfully, in English this time.
November 2005: Forget to vote. Recycle absentee ballot. Get jealous of people wearing "I voted" stickers, as they remind me I am, occasionally, lazy and irresponsible.
October 2006: Get voter's guide and absentee ballot for this year's elections, along with threatening notice that if I don't vote this time, they will stop sending me absentee ballots, as I don't seem to be using them. Put voter guide and ballot on shelf with every intention of eventually reading voter's guide and making informed decisions about Important Things That Affect Society and About Which I Have a Voice.
November 5, 2006:

7:30pm - In attempt to procrastinate from reading for class, spend 1.5 hours reading analysis and pro/con content of voter's guide and attempting to understand which choices are the lesser of evils. Try not to be swayed by ARGUMENTS WHICH FEEL THE NEED TO MAKE THEIR POINTS IN ALL. CAPITAL. LETTERS!! Find myself overcome by irritation at the idiocy of a society which wants things (like, say, education, traffic relief, and environmental protection) but is unwilling to pay taxes to fund it, opting instead to insist on issuing bonds, which essentially amounts to taxing our children for things we want to enjoy today (Buy now! Nothing down! No payments until January 2036!). Fear that one day soon we will see Arnold Schwarzenegger on late night TV, riding a donkey in a clown suit, advertising California's Going Out of Business Sale (Closing our doors! Everything must go!).
9:00pm - wish I had a martini. Start working on something easy, like the Sunday crossword.
9:30pm - notice that my absentee ballot was supposed to be in the mail two days ago.
9:31pm - curse. decide to deal with it the next day.

November 6, 2006:

8:16am - hear on NPR that absentee ballots can be dropped off at polling locations.
8:17am - hear on NPR that thousands of people do this, causing close races to be undecided for days on end while ballots are counted.
8:18am - decide not to be One of Those People. Decide to find my voting location and vote properly

November 7, 2006:

9:52am - leave for class
9:53am - use One Return Rule to go back for absentee ballot
9:54am - use first amendment of the One Return Rule to go back (yes, again) for voter registration card, which no longer appears to be in To Be Filed pile in corner.
9:56am - decide doing my civic duty is more important that being in class on time (which, really I don't seem to do often anyway, today's excuse is just better than usual) and continue searching room until I start over and find voter registration card in the To Be Filed pile, right between the title to my car and my CPR certification card.
3:00pm - pull card out after class. Discover it does not actually tell me where to go vote.
3:05pm - spend 15 minutes online attempting to ascertain the location of my polling place
3:30pm - bike to my polling place. Say hello to the ladies knitting outside the retirement home
3:33pm - spell my name, several times, to the lady behind the table. Offer to show someone, anyone, some ID to prove I am who I say I am. Wonder why no one seems to care that I am who I claim to be. Realize I didn't need my voter registration card. Explain that I want to vote today, even though I'm holding my absentee ballot, all filled out, in my hand. Get quizzical looks. Get directed across the room to another lady. Stand there holding my ballot while they yell back and forth about what to do with my absentee ballot, because apparently ripping it up, throwing it out, or writing VOID are not options. Realize I am not being helpful, and stop giving them suggestions about what to do with absentee ballot.
3:40pm - enter booth with shiny new ballot. Marvel at the wonder of technology that is the InkaVote machine. Try not to mess up. At least not on any of the important ones.
3:45pm - exit booth. Ballot in hand. Feed into SuperSecretVoteGuardingMachine, monitored by Frank. Feel powerful. Feel like I have a voice. Feel, strangely, like watching election results on television all night.
3:46pm - Proudly display my first ever "I Voted" sticker. Wish a good afternoon to the knitting ladies. Resume worrying about society.

Decisions...

2006-11-04T14:57:00.000-08:00

I recently remembered another reason I love author Ann Lamott - I found a quote of hers I had written somewhere, presumably at one of the many points in time at which I found myself making a life-changing decision:

"When you need to make a decision, and you don't know what to do, just do one thing or the other, because the worst that can happen is that you will have made a terrible mistake."

In other exciting News of My Rapidly Approaching Demise, I got a TB test this week. Well, I got half of a TB test. The half where they stick you with a needle and inject something under your skin. Then, even though I was 50 feet away from it for 8 hours, I forgot to go back across the street two days later and get the test read.... which unfortunately means the whole first part, the painful part, was all for nothing. I must be really special.

Nostalgia

2006-11-01T21:38:00.000-08:00

Last night I watched my life pass before my eyes. Well, at least seven years of it. And actually, some of those bits were really not my life, as they took place before I was around, in the strange netherworld that is Your Parents Lives Before You Were Born.

As a very belated joint birthday gift for my parents (really now, an early Christmas present, as the birthdays were last summer... aren't I a great daughter?), I had 36 reels of Super-8 home movies transferred to DVD. 1972-79. Silent movies of my parents before they had kids, going on camping vacations with their new puppy. My dad working on his Volkswagen squareback in the driveway of our old house. My grandpa on the farm in Illinois, my mom's dad, sitting around at Christmastime, while my aunt floated in and out of the scene, pregnant with the first grandchild. The life of people and things who are hazy in my own mind. My only memory of that dog is that she bit me when I was four, right before she died. My only memory of the VW is sitting on the hood, drawing in the ash that settled on it when Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980. My aunt had two more kids, my three cousins, and they've produced 9 of their own offspring in the last 4 years -- the 10th is due next May. I never met my grandfather, he died the summer before I was born.

So maybe it's just the romantic nature of Super-8 - even watching the DVD brings up memories of the rhythmic clacking of the projecter, and smell of the warm film as it passes in front of the lens - but watching the early years of our family filled me with the overwhelming understanding that I had a really wonderful childhood. Yeah, sure, so of course the only scenes in the movies are when my family was actually all together, playing in our backyard or clamming on the Oregon coast, and everybody's smiling and waving at the camera and since there's no sound, you can't hear my brother and I screaming at each other (though, circa 1978, he was caught on tape trying to run me over with a Big Wheel). But man, there's something about watching us run around in our backyard, swinging and rollerskating and learning to ride bikes, completely oblivious of the havoc that the Teen Years would wreak upon our rosy memories...

I could hardly believe that the family I was watching was my own. Not because I didn't have a good childhood (I did) and not because my family doesn't get along now (we do), but because that family is sealed off in Super-8 happy-ending land, and my family has been through so much since then. We are not without our happy endings, of sorts, but we're tempered by reality, by years of bickering with each other and accomodating each other and sticking by each other through life-threatening illness and adolescence and all that jazz. But I love revisiting that family, and finally beginning to understand how much my parents sacrificed to give my brother and I a good life, and watching everyone wave at the camera as the picture begins to flicker and the screen goes white. I can almost hear the end of the reel going thwap, thwap, thwap.