Decisions...

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

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.

Say Cheese

Hey, take a look over here. I've started a photo blog, where it is my intention to take at least one interesting and/or informative picture every day for at least a month. I'm trying to challenge myself to look around a little more and just generally pay attention. Goat mentioned something about the rose bush outside my apartment last week and I couldn't recall seeing a rose bush there. The next time I came home, sure enough, there it was, looking vaguely familiar about 6 inches away from the front gate. Been there all year.

Wonder what else I've missed.

Dancing Queens

Goat & I have been practicing some of our dance moves. I think we're pretty stylin' if I do say so myself. We've got it on video... check us out here (may take a minute - or three - to download... go get yourself a snack while you wait).

Fall Unflung

Despite much pleading, begging, and whining on my part, fall has still not arrived here in Southern California. Well, unless by "fall" you mean the season where the temperature stays the same but everybody gets allergies. We had one grey day and a slight drizzle, and now we're back up to 85 degrees. On the up-side, Becky D was here last weekend, taking a break from the snow in Colorado, and we got to spend a day at the beach. Blogger seems to be thwarting me from posting a picture today but Becky's got one up here (yes, I was wearing all my purchases from the day, no I did not think I looked cool like that).

Also, I'm taking suggestions for new hobbies. Something went awry with my back a month ago and while I nurse it back to health, Ultimate is out of the question (along with biking, hiking, running, or anything else that keeps me sane). The only requirements are that it cost no money, and not involve sitting, standing, picking things up, or bending over. Get your minds out of the gutter and let me know what I should do with my time.

I have the facts and I'm voting maybe

Every year I have such good intentions of voting. Really. I have this little person sitting on my shoulder, we'll call him Voting Victor, that reminds me how lucky I am to have the opportunity, because people in other places in the world walk 20 miles and wait in line for three days just to speak their mind. Me? I just have to check some boxes on an absentee ballot that already arrived, walk 20 feet to the mailbox, and tell the government my every wish. Well, except for that one about the bathtub full of chocolate pudding. I mean, I could tell them that one, but it would be a write-in I suppose, since I didn't see it on the ballot anywhere. Then again, there was that year when my absentee ballot arrived in Chinese, maybe the Pudding Prop was on that one.

Anyhow, as I said, I always psych myself up to vote, because voting is important!, and part of my civic duty, and all that... but then the voters guide arrives in the mail, and this little person on my other shoulder, we'll call her Fuhggetaboudit Fergie, starts wailing and screaming as soon as I open it up. I mean really, can't the thing have a few comics, an entertainment section, maybe a sudoku stuck in there somewhere? It's so boring I lose the will to vote before I've made it through the first rebuttal of the argument against Prop 1 about whether or not they should pass a law allowing them to rewrite an amendment to the ratified code index veto adding a $0.25 tax to Q-tips to fund field trips for inner-city vegans.

the boobies edition

I was just thinking the other day how lucky breast cancer is. I mean, it's got the most edgy-but-still-socially-appropriate appeal, as evidenced by recent campaigns. First there were Save the Ta-Tas t-shirts donating to breast cancer research (I do not recommend, however, typing in "www.tatas.com" while trying to find them online). Now there's the Feel Your Boobies campaign to promote breast self-exams.

Poor colon cancer. It's never gonna get that kind of exposure. Especially now that Katie Couric's a "real" journalist. Then again, with the rise of colon hydrotherapy as the frou-frou celebrity treatment-du-jour here in LA, maybe people will be wearing colonoscopy-themed pants soon. What will they say?

This Princess Leia wig makes it quite tempting to pick up my needles again, especially now that I have 8 hours of sitting in class with my hands free every week again...

Faith, doubt, and several other cans of worms

So, mostly this blog has been a collection of thoughts on life and God, often intertwining because God influences how I understand life, and life influences how I understand God, and for better or for worse I don't see any end to that in sight. And most of you out there read it because we used to sit around having these conversations in the middle of the night, in some other city or state or country... anyhow, more of the same ensues.

In her splendiferous memoir, Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott claims that there are only two prayers she ever prays: "Help me, Help me, Help me," and "Thank you, Thank you, Thank you." (This from a woman who recounts that she fought becoming a Christian for awhile, until she realized God wasn't going anywhere, so she said, "Alright, f*** it, you can come in.") I am, technically, at a seminary, but despite (or, because of) some of my theology classes, Lamott's take on addressing the Almighty is about all I can handle these days - on the days when I believe someone's listening.

Let's just say that somehow I am slowly learning to be OK being a person who harbors growing amounts of doubt alongside a still-deeply entrenched faith, and who realizes that it's a much better option to go learn how to go forward holding both than to sit still, waiting for one to finally win out over the other. Quite surprising for a person who has always considered consistency to be a primary virtue.

Becoming a therapist at a seminary will mess with your head. I came home one weekend, having been assigned a client suffering from PTSD, in his 5th foster placement, who had watched his mother burn and blind his sister when he was 7. I cried all weekend. The next Tuesday, I had to sit through a lecture on the finer points of the doctrine of the trinity and the difference between ontic and ontological. At that point, a much harsher form of the thought "who cares? Does this really matter?" goes through my head and probably comes out my mouth, and I want to swear off the triviality of theology forever (this from a person who had a year-long running discussion on the difference between hope and optimism, you remember). And yes, I realize there is a difference between faith and theology, but being surrounded by theology students will blur the distinction.

I know at this moment I sound like I'm on the down-side of faith. Actually, I'm not, really, although it fluctuates daily. Because on the flip side, even on the days when the whole Jesus story starts to sound a little absurd, the churches that have filled a role of "home" in my past are places where things that feel really deeply true to me are deeply valued. Where community (dysfunctional though it is) is formed around the (admittedly idealized) tenets of grace, generosity, mercy, gratitude, and justice. If following faith to its tangible ends produces these things, then must tracing these ends back to their roots lead me, necessarily, back to my faith? I want it to, although I don't know anymore. But in any case, I miss being part of a community that actively and intentionally holds onto those ideals, and I need to be part of one again, if they'll have me, doubts and all.

But even in the middle of two extremes, trying to figure out how to live with faith when doubts won't shut up these days, all of me resounds with Jon Krakauer, as he writes in the author's note to his book about the Fundamental Mormon church, Under the Banner of Heaven:

"I've come to terms with the fact that uncertainty is an inescapable corollary of life. An abundance of mystery is simply part of the bargain - which doesn't strike me as something to lament.... And if I remain in the dark about our purpose here, and the meaning of eternity, I have nevertheless arrived at an understanding of a few more modest truths: ... Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here, and why - which is to say, most of us ache to know the love of our creator. And we will no doubt feel that ache, most of us, for as long as we happen to be alive."

Grrr

I don't really like ranting about politics in a blog but today I can't resist.

President Bush, stating the oh-so-obvious, recently declared that "America is safer but we are not yet safe." Well, duh. And we're never going to be. If anything pissed me off after September 11, it was that America's response was to insinuate that we could throw enough money at "homeland security" and the "war on terror" to make ourselves supremely, completely, 100% safe. Anything short of that was viewed as failure.

Well, get over it. We will never be safe. Especially not if we never have the humility to admit that we cannot be in control of the entire world. I'm not saying we should dismantle the CIA and let people walk on planes with AK-47s, but what we're doing now is kind of like playing that wack-a-mole game at Chuck-E-Cheese... you hit one mole and another one pops up somewhere else, and they never really go away, and you throw a lot of money and energy into trying to continue life as usual when maybe life isn't usual anymore. The world is a messy, complicated, place with a lot of crazy shit going on, and have we been sheltered from the reality of that for so long that we think we can be immune? It's as if we've extended our personal obsession with immortality to the national level. It won't happen to us. It can't happen to us. And if it happens to us, we're going to sue someone and buy a lot of duct tape so it never happens again.

Kitchen Table 30

I turned 30 last weekend. I was kind of anticipating it being a more emotionally challenging birthday, and had spent most of the last year curious about when I would have my breakdown, but I love 30. I was actually so excited about 30 that in a way, I feel like I arrived a year early, because the moment I turned 29 I started referring to myself as "almost 30".

I've been noticing the 30 come out in me more this year. My knees always hurt. I listen to NPR while I'm driving. I spend more time with a smaller number of people, and more time alone. I started thinking some of the clothes at JCPenney are cute. I want a five-year plan.

I like 30 because it gives me an excuse to be a grownup. For a while, I've been feeling that transitional pull between worlds, like I'm on the fence between an old stage of life and a new one. And some people have families, or own homes, or have other outside influences speeding them along on the way to greater responsibility. But in the absence of those things, 30 has been the first tangible mental marker that helps me live into the next stage. I keep asking myself questions like, "what would a 30-year-old do in this situation?" That's how I bought my kitchen table. I was wandering around the flea market and saw one I liked and didn't want to spend the money. Now, the old me, the one who was still in her 20s, she would have been OK with eating on the couch for a year. But I was about to be in my 30s, and that's what 30-year-olds do, right? Even when they're in grad school, they buy furniture so they have something to eat on.

I like 30 because it fits with those things. I've never really been one for plans, but looking back, making a decision to come to grad school was already a step towards something approximating a long-range goal. Then I moved here, and, as noted above, my life looks really different than it did in Berkeley. It was becoming clear here that I was outgrowing my 20s, but I was still wearing them. Being "in my 30s" is like finally getting new shoes that are 2 sizes larger - they don't fit perfectly yet, and I'm still figuring out how to walk in them, but instead of busting at the seams, I feel like I've got room to grow into them.

You must read this book

Rain of Gold, by Victor Villasenor. It's a novel that tells the true story of two families who survived the revolution in Mexico 100 years ago and made new lives in the US. I just put away almost 600 pages in less than five days and (literally) cried when it ended, because it is one of those sweeping stories full of love and death and familial strength and honor and adventure that reminds you of the power of your blood ties and history (yet at the same time makes you feel like your family's about as exciting as the Cleavers).

It was an assigned book for my Narrative Therapy class, though... which in general has made me put a lot of time into thinking about my family and the stories I grew up with, and the way that those stories shape you and teach you about your role in the world. We talked about family rituals, like the way I get back in bed at noon every year on Christmas when my brother arrives with his family, so that he can come upstairs and jump on the bed, "waking me up" to begin the day (a ritual we continue even though I am nearly 30 and he is 33). And even rituals like the way the boat breaks down every year before our family vacation and how my dad gets frustrated and starts throwing things around and my mom goes in the house until he calms down, and then we get it fixed and get on the road late and there's an awkward tension in the car until my dad cracks a bad joke to indicate he's over it, and then life continues as usual. It's so bittersweet to think about your roots and your history, and to have the chance to take a long, hard look at where you've come from and how it's shaped you into who you are, for better or for worse, but to be doing it more than a thousand miles away from your family, in a new city where your roots are shallow, at the end of a decade of moving around and constantly starting over in which you've created few rituals of your own.

It makes me miss my family, but it also makes me think more about having a family of my own, because sometimes I think you need the impetus of another person to make it meaningful, this business of having rituals. It makes me grateful for the communities that have surrounded me in the places I've been, because they've been my surrogate families, and it makes me realize that as much as I want to figure out how to "be myself" in this new place, I'm never really fully myself outside of a community. And it makes me grateful that one of the functions of a family or a community is to keep rituals to mark the passage of time and the events of life.

It's interesting to apply this concept of "family rituals" to the patchwork communities of the urban metropolis... for example: the Ultimate community, I suppose, would seem quite odd to the uninitiated. We sing strange cheers to the other team after a game, we follow a code of ethics that sets a high bar for sportsmanlike conduct, we speak in a language that leaves others guessing ("That was a sweet layout D; too bad you got stalled before you got a hammer off"), and in place of holidays we have annual tournaments, which develop their own rituals (like Potlatch, where teams give gifts to their opponents and one team always plays naked).

Anyhow, this is all a bunch of rambling, but 30 hours of lectures on stories and rituals gives one lots to ponder in your spare time... what stories did your family tell? What rituals did you have? How did they help shape and define who you are and what you believe you are capable of in the world? What are the rituals in your community? Are you creating your own rituals? If your life was a story, what kind would it be? Comedy? Drama? Art-house indie with random characters, no plot, and an abrupt ending? And, if you don't like where your story is going, can you rewrite the ending?

I came home from the grocery store the other day with a giant box of frozen waffles.

I neglected to remember that "toaster oven" is on the list of things that disappeared from the apartment when Elizabeth moved back to South Carolina.

Frozen waffles, anyone?

There are some things money just can't buy...

Tent pants: $88
Mr. Rogers vest: $88
Flimsy white tank: $52
Having the time to make fun of clothes you would never buy: priceless










Then again, ringing in at a whopping $16, this outfit ain't much better.

Feelin' hot hot hot

Gah, did I mention it's hot here? It's at least 50% of any conversation. Anytime there's a pause, someone will interject a new story about what they're doing to cope. I have to sleep naked with no covers and a fan blowing at my face (probably overshare, sorry... at least it's a timely month not to have a roommate). I have actually started thinking that I shouldn't bother going to Ikea to replacing the missing furniture in my apartment until October, because I can hardly stand to be here, much less follow directions in Swedish and assemble things with little allen wrenches and crawl around looking for missing screws. For now, the AC cools a little 5x5 corner of the living room, where I have moved my chair and bed, and no more furniture will fit there anyway.

I was up until 2am reading The Kite Runner last night, unable to put it down until my eyelids insisted. I read all 400 pages in two days. I'm about to start Atonement, by Ian McEwan, which has the bonus feature of actually being an assigned book for Narrative Therapy class so I can smarmily feel like I'm doing something productive.

Anyway, I know this is a thrilling post... the real truth about life this week is that I'm just moody a lot, feeling useless after a month of having no schedule and minimal commitments... and if I try to write about anything other than the weather, it's going to come out all sad and wrong. So, I know things are going to get better as I get into the routine of practicum next week and until then.... did I mention it's hot here?? :):)

More church musings -- this time with puppets!

I went back to the little Episcopal church today. Again, no anonymity (by now, I was not looking for it)... midway through the service - after the singing of happy birthday to a 91-year-old woman in the back and before communion - the priest (same one from last wednesday) said, "No pressure, but if anyone here is new, and wants to say a few words about themselves, ahem, JULIE, they would be more than welcome." Then, jokingly, he offered a door prize to anyone who brings a man to church at the 10:15 service, because it is made up of mostly middle-aged and elderly women. Afterwards, we adjourned to coffee and birthday cake in the parish hall, which apparently has been rented out to an organization called COPA - the Conservatory of Puppetry Arts... so the place is filled with marionettes and strange monster-type puppets. The funny thing is that I didn't really even notice that it seemed odd decoration for a parish hall until I saw the movie posters for Team America.

I have this strange thing going on... in some ways it's a love/hate relationship with church, but even in the ways I feel alienated from it now, I still crave it, it still calms me down. Even when I sit in church and recite liturgies that I question, and wonder how much of my faith is cultural and how much is "real," for lack of a better word (though it begs the question, can any faith, even "real" faith, be extracted from its culture?), I would rather go than stay home. Maybe it's because even though I'm realizing that on some level, we all ultimately worship God "as we understand him," church, for me, is still the place where I know how to do that. And so I go, almost as an offering -- an admission that I want to know God, and even though I'm confused about it all right now I'm going to trust that it's not my job to figure it out so in the meantime I'll keep showing up.

Vacation, part III

OK, really, I'm home for good. Now I'm back in Pasadena again, where it's so hot in my apartment that my computer keeps shutting down because the fan can't keep up. Here's a little visual update for the far-flung Berkeley folk out there.


Is that he-man (with the sword... although Andrew could pass for he-man too, of course)? The shirt was a gift from a friend who picked it up in Iraq, I think.










Hannah the rock star.








Emily, Andrew, and the always-smiley Mr. Bill.







Only on the UC Berkeley campus do people graffiti in latin (Nietzsche, no less).

Addiction

I'm posting not so much because I have something to say, but because my Addiction and Family Treatment class just ended and it was really powerful and a bit gut-wrenching and frustrating and scary and hopeful and sweet and sad and way too close to home sometimes and I want to write something down before I move on and lose the feelings associated with having been there.

This was definitely not a book-learning class. We took field trips to residential treatment centers, and had guest speakers, and went to 12-step meetings, and heard so many personal stories over the course of the week, as well as just getting a totally different perspective on the physical (disease-model) roots of addiction... people in the class shared insanely personal stories and the professor cried at least three times. For the first few days I was a bit at arm's length from it, even though it was really fascinating, but by the end of today it felt intensely personal to think about the power of secrets, and the lack of education and support for healthy coping behaviors.

Anyhow, having walked out of the class into the light of day, and traffic, and dealing with the housing office, and my empty apartment, and people heading off to the beach, and thinking about Ultimate, and packing for vacation... I keep wondering if it ever gets any easier to go from a place of emotional intensity, straight out into a world where absolutely everything seems trivial and I want to snap at people who make jokes or don't take something seriously enough because don't they know what just happened in that room? Don't they know what people are going through? How do you process that stuff in a way that lets you return to the world outside and actually engage with life again when you leave the office? How do you learn to make the transition? I suppose everybody goes through this to some degree when they navigate between worlds, so advice is welcome.

Backwash and chuck taylors

I went to a mid-week Eucharist service tonight at a small Episcopal church up the street. I was late, of course, but I was just looking to slip into the back and have a bit of anonymous peace and quiet and liturgy to get my mind off the little hamster wheel of overwhelmedness that it jumped onto the moment I returned from vacation.

Instead, I found myself in a teeny, tiny church with a large, bald, black priest wearing a white robe over shorts and white Converse All-Stars, and four black women interspersing comments about the NBA finals game into their discussion of the reading (Matthew 4-5, two passages coincidentally about being in the midst of chaos). It was wonderful. They stopped in the middle of the chapter and introduced themselves to me, asking all sorts of questions about my program before jumping back into reading. After a bit of discussion and prayer and a time for silence and contemplation, we came to communion. I love the liturgy and tradition surrounding communion, especially in high church. I love that in the Episcopal church they consider it an opportunity to contemplate the mystery of God, because really, some days I just don't get the whole wafer-and-wine thing as a reminder that I believe there is a God and I believe he loves me ('cause some days lately even that sounds crazy).

But, lest I get too wrapped up in the seriousness of the moment, one of the ladies calls out to the rector as he up-ends the cup of wine into his mouth, "Did we leave you any? 'Cause sometimes I really want a lot of that blessing and I take a big swig," and we all disintegrate into titters and giggles and jokes about backwash in the blood of christ... and even though I'm a pasty white girl who wandered in off the street 10 minutes late with no idea who just won the NBA championship, I felt warmly welcomed.

Now that's communion.

Vacation, part II

OK, back from the rest of the week off, which included lots of laying around on the beach drinking free margaritas with Tiffany in Cabo San Lucas, and a fun, quick daytrip to Santa Barbara with Goat, which included biking and banana splits. I'm still working on being in the mood to write, but in the meantime a picture's worth something, right?

Anyhow, now I am back in class, and really enjoying the class (Addiction and Family Treatment) because it feels a lot more practical than the theory stuff we've been stuck learning so far the first year. We've been taking field trips for this class and meeting real people instead of just sitting around reading case studies and writing up treatment plans for imaginary families. But a friend of mine had a good take on that whole process in a recent email: "Glad that you are getting into the actual doing of what you have been looking to do. Doing is usually much more interesting than learning, but i guess if we just did, we would never learn of all the posible ways to do."

So I'll hang onto that for the next few weeks of sitting around feeling useless before I start practicum.

Vacation, part I

Two quick pics from the weekend in Boulder with Becky D... it was a lot of biking around, hiking (or, sloshing through snow for 5 miles to get to a frozen lake), grilling, eating waffles, and hanging out with her friends, all made possible by the generosity of Southwest Airlines who bumped me off a flight last July!
As for that bottle of wine... well... we weren't about to let it go to waste. That's what those bottle cages are for, right??

Nothing to report here other than that it is hot (was in the upper 90s over the weekend) and I am taking finals and very much looking forward to a trip to Boulder starting Thursday to visit the fabulous Becky D, and then a trip to Cabo with the fabulous Tiffany (she won a free trip for two to Mexico and is taking me as her guest... how lucky am I??), where I plan on exploring and relishing old friends and reading the paper and eating slurpees and listening to the podcast of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and maybe Car Talk if I can find it.

Finals aren't too overwhelming in and of themselves (just two take-home exams) but I think I'm just exhausted from the constant presence of having something to read or write hanging over my head since the beginning of January with only a week's respite in March. I love my program and I'm extremely grateful to be able to pursue a totally new field, and I know that I had a killer schedule this quarter with tons of free time, but I'm counting the days until graduation (369, to be exact). If I ever decide to get a PhD, will you please ask me if I know what I'm doing?? In the meantime, I'm actually psyched to start practicum on July 10, at Glen Roberts Child Study Center, a county-funded community mental health clinic in Glendale. I'll be working there about 20-25 hours a week for a year.

I'll try to come up with something more interesting to say one of these days soon....

quote board

The latest entry in my random quote list, from my friend/coworker Kim while we were skipping out of one of the main sessions at an Urban Youth Workers conference last week:

"Find someone who wants to pay me $5000 to look at porn and then we'll talk."

OK, so the context was a discussion about situational ethics and the greater good of being merciful above all else, but even in context she had us going for a while.

Synchronize me

So, I bought an iPod.

What finally pushed me to do it was that I'm taking a distance learning class this summer, and when I went to pick up the course materials I had the choice of getting a 5-inch thick, 30-lb binder full of course materials and 20 CDs, or I could get the entire course in PDF and MP3 format on two CDs that fit into my purse. So, to save a few trees, I opted for the mp3 option, which conveniently also gave me an excuse to finally buy an iPod so that I could listen to the lectures on the beach instead of sitting in front of my computer. I ended up going home and finding a great deal on one on Craigslist and drove straightaway to West Hollywood to pick it up, so within two hours of stopping by the Distance Learning office I was busy trying to figure out how to work this thing.

And then I discovered podcasts.

I can get news. Music. Spanish lessons. NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. I could even download sermons via podcast, except that I still think that church is supposed to be a community-affirming experience and I refuse to partake alone in my bedroom.

So if you need me these days, you can probably find me in the kitchen, doing dishes, mumbling Spanish vocabulary under my breath.

did I say that?

So, a while back in the blog I made some naive and idealistic comment about being grateful for people who irritate me because they give me practice being kind. Well, that is all fine and good until my neighbor moved in.

I've chatted with him a few times, because I like knowing my neighbors and all. Anyhow, he's one of those.... umm.... chatty types, where you can't just talk to him for a minute, 'cause even when you're running away late for class he's still talking at you as you go, and if you don't go, he'll talk for 20 minutes nonstop, and you have to point out that you're holding 50 pounds of groceries and carrying your mail in your mouth and this isn't the greatest time to get into a long conversation about the cable service in the area.

Anyhow, even this wouldn't be so much of a big deal, 'cause it's not hard for me to point out the part about the groceries and the mail etc... and whenever I'm not in a hurry I try to stay and chat a bit... but I have this balcony, my haven, the place I go when I leave my phone and computer in the back room and want to just sit and ignore technology and listen to buses go by for a half-hour, or read, or just generally be away from people for a little while. And it overlooks his yard. So now when he comes out (which is most of the time, because the weather's nice and he doesn't have a job), he just starts talking to me on the balcony, even though I have pointed out that I can't hear him (because of the aforementioned buses) and have mentioned that I'm in the middle of reading. And it's one thing to walk away when I have the grocery excuse but it's hard to sit on the balcony and politely inform him I'll be ignoring him 20 feet away.

biking

A big THANKS to everyone who biked/walked to work/school during bike-to-work week! Every mile counted, from Jenn's 2-mile walk, to Martin's toodling around Leipzig in Germany, to Becky D's 32-mile round-trip commute in Boulder. Cumulatively, we biked 115 miles, including 28 miles biked by three folks at Goat's office, which is getting double-matched. So altogether we're sending $175 to Wild Hope.

For the cycling geeks among you, the LA times also happened to print a huge feature today about bike commuting, in their Health section.

Ride on!

heaven on two-wheels

Hey everybody... next week (May 15-19) is National Bike-to-Work week, culminating in Bike-to-Work day on Friday, May 19!!

Why should I bike, you ask? Well, OK, so all of you know the reasons. You're commuter- and enviro-savvy. It's good for the earth, it's good for your body, it makes a political statement, you arrive at work more alert and in a better mood, it reduces our national dependencies on oil and caffeine. It's a tangible way of being the change you want to see in the world. If you're not already a fan, give yourself a chance to let biking rock your world.

So, I'm going to donate $1 for every mile that you guys bike on Friday, either commuting, or running an errand, or some other activity that you would have done in a car. It's this easy:

1. Bike to work (don't forget to wear a helmet)
   
2. Take a picture of your bad self on your studly two-wheeled wonder
   
3. Send me the picture, tell me how it went, and send me your mileage.
   

I'll send a check to Dave Willis at Wild Hope, a non-profit faith-based organization that I've guided for, which is heavily involved in advocating for the protection and expansion of wilderness, and getting people (from college students to journalists to politicians) out into wild places to, among other things, experience it in a way that helps them understand why it's worth preserving.

If you absolutely can't ride, I'll still make a donation for anyone who replaces a car trip with public transportation (ask a stranger to take a picture of you on the bus... it's a great way to make friends) or carpooling. But if you can ride, do! Check out informational resources here, or ask me, or go down to your local bike shop - they're always friendly. Feel free to include your friends/SOs/coworkers... I'll make a donation for anyone you guys recruit to bike to work if you send me a picture in all your spandex glory*.

* spandex not required

scheduled maintenance

I had my "week seven breakdown" this week, right on schedule. This one was a little bigger than previous week seven fireworks*, as it included irrational thoughts about dropping out of grad school and wondering which I need more - a therapist or a babysitter. My current "to do" list contains items such as: 1. Brush teeth. 2. Dress self - matching optional. 3. Stop losing things.

Anyhow, this one was pretty cathartic, as my despondency over feeling out of control seems, so far, to have snapped me back to a place where I'm ready to start figuring out what I do have control over. But Goat had the pleasure of walking me through it... and as I was sitting in class the next day, I had to grudgingly admit that I'm high maintenance (thanks to all of you who have known that for years and humored me). Scott Peck writes that mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs. Does kicking and screaming count?

*"week seven" is grad-school speak for the point in the quarter where you're exhausted from the work and adjusting to a totally new schedule, but you're not yet close enough to finals week to taste the end.

Joshua Tree

Grover went to Joshua Tree this weekend... did some camping, did some hiking, did some climbing. As usual, he brought me back a picture.

hippity hop

Remember the giant blue rubber bouncy balls you hopped around your yard on when you were five? I think mine was a Daffy Duck one. They're still out there... I shot an Urban Assault bike race in San Diego this weekend and the Hippity Hop was one of the challenges... they are actually much tougher than they look, as a grownup. Good leg and ab workout.