separated at birth?

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

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

911 is a joke

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!!

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:

1. 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!
   
2. Wear a helmet and follow local traffic laws, of course.
   
3. Send me a picture!!
4. Tell me how many miles you biked/walked/etc that you would have otherwise been in your car.
5. Did I mention send a picture of yourself on your spiffy bike/bus/two feet?
   
6. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

... 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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.