Not what we expected Today

A few months ago, our next door neighbor, a woman in her mid to late 60s, was diagnosed with lung cancer. We told her to let us know if she needed any help. We had helped her with her weekly trash pick up when she'd had an injured foot a few months earlier. She was always quiet and kept to herself; not very social, but very nice to us. She gave us an amaryllis for Christmas. We gave her homebaked cookies. This winter, some family came up from the Southwest to care for her. She spent over a month in the hospital and came home earlier this month. Her family returned home last week.

Last Sunday I took her to the pharmacy to pick up her meds. For someone about to undergo chemo, she looked pretty good. In fact, had I not known she'd been hospitalized for a month and some change, I'd've not known anything was wrong. We chatted and enjoyed the sunshine in the car and griped about the health insurance industry in this country screwing people over. She asked if Honey and I wouldn't mind helping her with her trash and some small odd errands while she underwent chemo for the next few months. Of course, I agreed. This evening, I called over to ask if she was ready for me to pick up her trash. No response. I didn't worry much; I figured after a week of chemo she was probably napping.

Apparently I wasn't the only one who got no response from calls to her house. Within an hour of my calling her house, several police cars arrived, as well as an ambulance. After they entered the house, they sent the ambulance back. There was no need to transport someone who didn't need saving. She was gone. We were as helpful as we could be to the cops, providing what next of kin information we had. Her family will be up here soon.

I had planned on drilling into my thesis this evening, and Honey had planned on doing work work. But after that, we were so unfocused, we both decided to just watch TV. And now, despite the Benadryl I took I can't get to sleep. I think there's something about knowing the house next to use is empty tonight. Sadly empty.

We liked her. We weren't close to her by any means, so our moroseness isn't rooted in intimacy. But death is inherently disconcerting. I expected this would happen at some point; just not so soon after her return from the hospital. I'm beginning to wonder if 2007 is going to be a little like 2005: a multiple funeral year. My grandfather has been knocking on Heaven's door for about a year, but he's been yanking on Heaven's bell-pull for about 2 months now. I'm hoping he hangs on through summer when we plan on visiting, but I suspect if he makes it to 2008 at all, he'll pass early.

I do hope to go to her funeral. I want to say goodbye. To leave the departure this way, conversations with cops and the eventual condolences to her family, is so unfinished. I hope she that she didn't suffer much, that it wasn't painful that death has brought her healing and respite. My prayer is that she is at peace and that death came as a friend. Also that Honey and I can be there for her family as they grieve and manage her estate in the coming months, if and when they need us, however they need us.

No time to read?

This began as a comment on Darla D's blog, but as per usual, I kept rambling on and didn't want to inflict such a laborious comment on her blog. So, here's my response:
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i really liked this post. the arguement of "no time" is weak, but i'm going to play devil's advocate here. and this will be - as everyone else's - from my own experience and from what i observe of others.

first off: public transportation is the best gift to reading ever. i read more when i commute like that. but most people in this country drive in to work, and you can't do both at once.

secondly, reading is an active activity. it requires attention that TV or Music does not demand. for myself, i simply cannot read a book when there is background noise or human distractions like conversation or homelife going on in the background. i can read newspaper or magazine articles with those distractions going, but if it's something i HAVE to know (like for school) or i WANT to enjoy (like a novel), it's impossible. i know many people can, and i try, but it's basically impossible for me to shut out the juicy convo at the table behind me or the TV show in front of me. you really can't passively read. and for a lot of people who've knocked out 8 to 10 hours at the office, dealt with traffic in and out and nagging kids when they get home, the last thing they want to do is actively focus on anything. it's shameful and they should be flogged publicly, i know, but mental exhaustion leads them to the TV and it's just a habit. that's something i like about audiobooks. it's been a while since i've listened to one, but you get the same text, and you can listen in your car, while you do laundry or if your job is mindless enough, you can listen at work.

i also wonder if people also go in cycles. i commented to a coworker once that sometimes i'll go through phases that last months or a year where all i want to do is nothing but read, then all i'll want to do is write, other times, both ... and then there are times when i just want to play and daydream. i'm always reading magazines and newspapers, but when it comes to books, i've also noticed that when i'm wrapped up in school, i'm less eager to pick one up. when you do nothing but read for evaluation, then it becomes a chore. it's like a good friend of mine who's a TV producer. he watches TV, but not nearly as much as one "should" to stay on top of what's going on in the industry. ... i wish i could say that bringing my textbooks with me on my commute force me to read them. usually what happens with me is i have my text, plus a newspaper plus a fun book. guess which i avoid! and when i have only my text with me, depending on how much i want to avoid it, i begin to daydream or plan future vacations. there's still mental activity going on even if it's not being agitated by text.

you make a good point that one should stop after X number of pages if a book sucks. but aside from the curiosity one feels about wanting to know how it ends, despite the suckiness, i wonder if there's just also a commitment factor. do you REALLY want to be the person who didn't finish a book? there's a high school english teacher inside all of us who chastizes us when we don't spell correctly or misuse grammar or choose the wrong books to read or don't read enough or well enough or fast enough, or, or, or .... even if it doesn't change our habits, she's there. i know she is, because friends and family of mine who don't spell well are haunted by her. i like reading, i consider myself a reader, but as at least half of my friends are the kinds who devour books like blood-thirsty raptors, where i'm content to graze. particularly because i'm not a fast reader so i want the book to be worth my time. and the english teacher haunts me there and makes me feel like a dumb-ass knuckle-dragger.

but your overall point of it comes down to priorities is absolutely right. it's like that with everything in life. i once had a friend who told me her parents didn't take her to church because they thought it was too boring. then why send her to school? school for both of us was terribly boring. because - laws aside - school was the priority in the house, not church. "i don't have time" is not an arguement, just like "it's boring" isn't. so the challenge then becomes getting people not only to prioritize reading for leisure, but convincing them that reading IS leisurely. i really think the biggest obstacle is mental exhaustion. there's a reason people keep books by their beds. it's the last quiet refuge at the end of a busy day in an increasingly hectic world.

What's Molly Dreaming Now? Edition 2

Since going full throttle on trying to slay my thesis, my dream life has been waning. Friday night, though, I had a very strange and vivid dream. I'll do this like the last one and give you the details and let you guys tell me what you think.

Honey and I have apparently moved to a new house which he bought without me having seen it. I am not upset by this; it was a good purchase and the previous owners left a lot of their old furniture so that saved us money and effort. I can't tell what city we're in. It's clearly some old East Coast American city with a colonial history: Philly, Baltimore, Williamsburg, I dunno. It is a monstrous townhouse in the middle of a row of townhouses. I'm not talking a big, modern townhouse like you see in developments all over the place. I mean a monstrous townhouse amidst other other monstrosities amidst the quaint, colonial historical part of town. For some reason, the Disney company has seen fit to run a monorail tunnel through the townhouses. Not through the living areas, but there's a tunnel beneath the first floor; like we don't have basements because the tunnel is in our basements. And the tunnel for this transport system emerges outside our kitchen window. We're not an end unit, but still the tunnel spits out and turns basically between our house and the neighbors. It's odd. Odder still, people emerge from the tunnel on foot, not just on the monorail cars. (Incidentally, here's an adorable diversion.)

Okay, so I've taken Babydog on a walk and come home and then I've gone out and run some more errands. Each time I come home, I comment on how I like the paint on the walls or how the old furniture still jives with my style or whatever. When I come back from running errands. I see Honey lying on the sofa with a tiny baby on his chest. The baby's wearing a pink onesie. I don't remember the dialogue that transpired between Honey and me, but for whatever reason it became apparent that this child was our daughter. ... and I didn't remember having had a baby.

So I take the baby into my arms - she's probably a month old - and try to become familiar with her. We haven't given her a name. She has a soft nest of dark hair, an incredibly round head, very round eyes and large, jutting, Stephen Colbert-shaped ears. Essentially, she looks nothing like Honey or me. I rifle through my memory and begin having vague recollections of being pregnant, but only 5 or 6 months so, not enough to have produced a baby. But I accept it and begin to grow comfortable with the idea that I have a baby - not that I am a mother, but that I have a baby. I'm happy that it's a girl. I then remember she was born on January 15, 2008. So it's now like April, 2008 in my dream. I hold up the baby by her armpits because she's able to hold her own head at this point, or at least do that weird neck-scrunch thing. And now, she's naked. I think to myself, "well, I hate January, but I guess I'll like it, now."* She begins to cry - scream really - and her mouth opens wider than anything I've ever seen. It's freakish and hilarious. She's like a wide-mouth bass or a cartoon baby (as illustrated above) and she's letting it roar. ... and that, we decide, she got from me.

The dream dissipated shortly after that. But what was weirdest to me was that I didn't feel an instant affinity for the baby. Honey and I were tickled by her and we were fully committed to caring for her, but it was more like she was a new curiosity than our child. I was not indifferent to her, but I wasn't inspired by her.

*side note, because I know VA Gal will say something: a ton of my favorite people are January babies, so I know the month in which one is born has no bearing on one's character. I'm just not a fan of January past, say, the 7th or 8th. If I could I would jump from January 10 directly to April 1, every year.

So what does my dream mean? ... a little history: a lot of our friends and family are having babies these days. We are in the process of replacing windows in our house. Have fun!

So THAT'S where they went!

A few months ago, I added comment moderation because I was getting too many comments advertising penis enhancers, anonymous anal sex and Nintendo Wiis. As I am quite happy with the "equipment" I am already privy to and I am quite happy with the very nonymous sex that I get, and we recently already bought a Wii, I decided I could do without the magnanimous offerings of strangers who decide to pad their comments with spaces and random characters. Perhaps they will find a more receptive audience elsewhere.

But when I enabled comment moderation, the comments seemed to disappear, or would only randomly appear. This morning however, in the "new blogger" which requires I sign in with a gmail account, I discovered I had a dozen comments to sift through in my comment moderation holding pen. So I did. Some date back two months. I have added all but one - the one that was advertising anal sex with a Nintendo Wii controller that had been slathered with penis enhancing cream. Frankly, hot as that sounds, I didn't feel it necessary to include in the chorus.

It was nice reading the comments. Particularly ones that were posted near the lowest point of my recent emotional crisis. Even if you didn't know that's what was going on, or if that was not what you were commenting on, the observations really kind of retroactively sustain me if that makes any sense. ... actually, screw "sense:" this is life and life is largely a hilarious exercise in absurdity in so many ways.

All that is to say: if you've commented in the last few months and haven't seen the comments in the comment field, forgive me. It has been corrected. Huzzah! (And the villagers rejoiced!)

Joy and Beauty, still

It's been a long time since i've copied Clare's wonderful daily ritual of citing three things from the day that made me see beauty. The last few months have been one of the most stressful times of my life (top 3, I'd say) and my ruminations today over the Virginia Tech tragedy have left me feeling sorrowful and angry. So, I believe I am well past due time to reflect on the little blessings of the day that essentially sustain me.

1. Reconnecting with an old college friend on a networking site. And learning that she is flourishing in her new life, and that she has kept a fond place in her heart for me. (And I for her.)

2. Talking to Dad. Always a pleasure, but I seriously cherish that I can still call to him and vent about the world the way I did when I was growing up. Essentially, I love that that part of our relationship has not changed. I have a mentor who will let me weep and weep with me, and help me make sense of life.

3. That after a week of illness and yuckiness, Honey seems to finally be on the mend. It breaks my heart when he's sick.

4. I was given a project at work this afternoon that would probably account for 30%-50% of the final product. I managed to finish the first "draft" of this product in about an hour. The superior who handed the project to me liked my work and only had a few changes to suggest. Overall he was impressed. This makes me feel very good.

Now it's starting to affect me.

The Columbine massacre occurred 8 years ago this week. I was finishing up my senior year of college. I remember being shocked and distressed for months. Last night at dinner, I commented to Honey that Monday, as I read about the Virginia Tech tragedy unfolding, I was relatively unfazed. I lamented it, really. Violence seems to have brushed my skirts enough in the intervening 8 years and seems to be (whether it is not is another story) increasing. September 11 (the obvious), Amadou Diallo, Beltway Sniper, Katrina, the war in Iraq and the daily suicide bombs, nutcases who at least once a year seem to break into Jewish Community Centers and Synagogues and shoot people ... this is just one more.

My initial reaction was one of indifference, followed by thankfulness that it wasn't at VCU where VirginiaGal attends. Then something odd happened: last night as I finished up working on the section of my thesis to send my professor, a dread began creeping over me. Not the usual dread of hoping my work is fair enough when we meet, but a dread of actually going to campus tomorrow night to meet with him. Could I jump from his window if I had to? Would I survive the four story fall? I guess these thoughts shouldn't be surprising for anyone who knows me. I'm the person who has had a home fire emergency plan since I was in 3rd grade. And I'm also the person who, when the worst is realized for someone else, begins to worry that it will happen for me. (I think this is true because it has happened for me once, so it validated pre-existing concerns.) Clearly other campuses are thinking about this and I'm sure other students are thinking about this. So, I'm not alone. But a new fear is beginning to creep over me.

And it seems to me the dread mostly isn't the prospect of death, though that's there, it's the being trapped, being bamboozled. Being taken advantage of where you should be safe, when you're just going about your life. That's what I despised most about September 11. Those poor folks on the planes were just trying to get somewhere. The folks in the buildings were just trying to get work done. The students Monday were just trying to take tests, trying to wake up in class. ... interestingly, though, the prospect of death is more frightful to me these days than when I was in college. The older I get, the more I want to continue enjoying my marriage and have children and enjoy the new changes in my relationships with my family. At 22 or 23, I'd had a good run; I wasn't afraid of death. Now, I know there's more to be had and I want to run the course.

A renewed public conversation - ha! conversation, as if people converse about such things; let me try again ... a renewed public grumble-and-chest pound-fest about gun control is already starting to brew in the wake of this tragedy. Genuine debate about the matter and changes in gun law or gun law enforcement should ensue, but at this point, I really don't care if they do. Until we have a change of heart in this country, outlawing all the guns in the land won't make much of a difference. Sure, there'd be fewer large-scale shootings and less street violence, but the bigger issue I see is that we don't give a shit about each other. This is a land where it's every man for himself. ... and we're proud of that. And I love that this is a country that celebrates the individual, but I wonder at what cost to the community we do this. I believe we've seen the cost for years amongst the poor, but in the last few decades we've begun to see the cost amongst all. There will always be people who slip through the cracks and those people will find ways to inflict harm on large and small scales - guns are outlawed in England, but still a handful of disenfranchised jerks managed to kill 55 people with some backpacks; while I was visiting, an immigrant family lost their son to a brutal knife attack because he was a black boy with a white girl. But we can do a better job of taking care of each other than we do. We need to do a better job of it.

A few months after Columbine, Honey and I were visiting family in Fort Worth. A few days before we got there, a disturbed gunman had broken into a Baptist church during a youth worship service and killed a handful of kids before turning the gun on himself. He had always been an outcast. There was a pall over the city the weekend we were there and it was the main topic of discussion at our family's church that Sunday. We continued talking about it at lunch after church. Uncle J, who is a community children's leader, made a good point. This wasn't a wild hair for the Fort Worth Shooter; he'd been hated for years. He was 50 years of teasing waiting to explode; waiting to take it out on someone until finally he did. Uncle J then reaffirmed with his kids the importance of being kind, even if you don't like someone, because people don't deserve derision, particularly those who are already ostracized. There's no need for it. Then he commissioned them to call him out if they ever see him displaying disdain for someone. I agree with Uncle J.

The VA Tech shooter sounds like such a closed loner there may have been little that could've been done. But if we take better care of each other, maybe we can abate future incidents. Change and strengthen gun laws, yes, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In the words of the recently departed Vonnegut: "You've got to be kind to one another, goddamnit!"

Trout is cooked

R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut
(1922-2007)
Ting a ling!

Happy ... Easter?

Springtime is one of my favorite times of year out here in major metropolis East Coast America. It's truly lovely. The blooming trees and daffodils fill me with joy. Something I have noticed, however, is that for as long as we've lived here, Easter has never felt like Easter to me. That's not true, our first Easter here - 6 years ago - was beautiful: sunny, mild and glorious.

Every Easter since has seemed to follow weather pattern that is just antithetical to the point of Easter in my opinion. It basically goes like this. We have some warm days in early Spring ... or maybe we don't, but invariably, Easter Sunday is almost always overcast, wet, cold or some combination of the three. You don't feel inspired to wear sandals or pastel colors at all.

Today is of course, no different. Though it's partly sunny right now, it's also about 35 degrees outside. I believe the only reasonable response to that on an Easter Sunday is: you're bloody kidding me, right? Having spent the bulk of my childhood in the Panhandle of Texas which is prone to see it last snowstorms in mid-March and is not warm year-round like people think, I'd like to think maybe I'd be cool with this meteorological holiday abomination. But no. Because even in the Panhandle, it's generally 65 to 75 degrees on Easter Sunday, so you can still hunt eggs in short sleeves and not have to wear anything heavier than a light sweater to church. However, global climate change seems to have afflicted the native lands today as well. It's 45 degrees here, feeling 32; there it's 32 degrees feeling 22. (Note to self: never move further north than New York City.)

Why does this upset me so much? Because Easter should be mildly warm and inviting. It should be the time of the year when we feel comfortable enough to shed layers and let our bare skin soak in the first few kisses of the sun. Easter is when Jesus rose from the dead; it shouldn't feel dead and defeated outside. Rain on Easter is an unfortunate occasional occurrence. But after 7 years of rain or overcast or stupid cold as this, I'm prone to just ask Jesus to sleep in another week or so. If I were Christ, that's what I would do: hit the snooze button until it's picnic weather. "Melt the clouds of sin and sadness/ Drive the dark of night away" go some lines from "Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee." How can I feel like the clouds of sin and sadness are melted when it's bloody raining outside? Even from the pagan viewpoint of Easter or Spring festivities: seriously, do you feel fertile and like you want to celebrate renewal when people are wearing dark overcoats and the sun hides her face?

Honey thinks it's odd and amusing that I am so vehement about Easter Sunday weather. (Did I tell you there was a dusting of snow o'er everything at 7AM, yesterday? Infuriating.) His viewpoint, and I hope someday I can adopt it is that it's the weather and it's beyond your control, so why get bothered? I guess I have such fond memories of new dresses and playing barefoot outdoors on Easter Sunday after church, that it saddens me to see children here bundle up at church on Easter. Plus, I'm a very solar-powered individual, I've decided. I enjoy changing seasons and appreciate what they bring to the environment, but ultimately I LOVE the sun. And once winter is over, all I want is to bathe in the sun's light and soak up her warmth.

On the upside, Honey and I did go to church this morning. It was the first time this year. Last year was the first time ever that I hadn't worshipped on Easter and I felt empty for like a week. It's so strange, not having gone to church for all intents and purposes, in over two years that some Sundays really are more impactful than others. I love celebrating the resurrection, ultimately. Miss any other Sunday but the one that celebrates the defining event of the religion. We went to a neighborhood Lutheran church. We'd not done a Lutheran service in a while and we both forgot how much they love to do readings. It was like out the wazoo - almost Catholic.

The service was fair; as first time visitors, it felt a little alien, but we acclimated decently. The sermon was okay, but no really new inspiration on the Easter story - or at least, none that I picked up on. Maybe he needed to work on the delivery. In the 10 years Honey and I have been together, the ministers of churches we've belonged to have been excellent orators. Even my dad, whose tone tends to be more colloquial and less "speakery", is a really engaging storyteller, capable of great analogies. So our expectations are kind of artificially high. We did sing "Christ the Lord is Risen Today," which to me makes any Easter service, no matter how full of flourish or understated, complete. Two years ago, at my sister-in-law's church, we didn't sing it on Easter and it felt kind of like ... "no, I don't think he is risen today."

Of course, contributing to that sentiment was that it 48 degrees and rainy outside.

Leaving the cave hurts my eyes!

Hello, blogosphere ... assuming you haven't all given up on me!

Sorry I disappeared there. I've basically spent the last month buckling down on my thesis, which in its primary, "un-seen by the power-that-be" form, is finished stem to stern. But it looks like, with all the fixes I know I need to make and those I don't yet know, I'm not going to get it finished in time for May graduation. A month ago that would have been devastating. However, I 've done a ton of work in the last month and if I finish this thesis by the end of May and end up graduating in August, so be it. If I wasn't employed full time I could probably still get this finished in time for my thesis committee to review it and return it to me for the necessary corrections in time for final delivery for May graduation. But I am employed full time, so c'est la vie.

That's the bad news, but the good news is: my professor loves my work. Frankly I feel like my data analysis is terribly elementary. I feel like I'm painting a truly interesting subject using crude, chubby crayons and in only primary colors. But he loves it, so I must be doing something right. When he asked this week how I was holding up, I told him the truth which is that I feel like I'm losing grey matter; that when I re-read my paper, I'm not seeing content anymore, I'm seeing figures on a page which I gather are letters, but I'm really not sure. He suggested I take a break and come back to it after a bit. I'm a magnificent enough procrastinator to know that that's dangerous for me. I feel like I've created a groove for myself right now, though, so my plan is to instead of plowing ahead 8 - 12 hours each weekend day, to just knock out 2 - 4 hours a day so I don't over saturate myself. At least until I can start understanding again what I've written.

Life in the last 30 days has been an emotional roller coaster, too. When I started grad school, I remember my mom telling me that it can be hard on a marriage when the student is writing her/his dissertation or thesis. Wow. I have totally learned that this month. This has been hell on both of us. Compounded too by the fact that I've been doing a show on Friday nights. If I were married to me, I would've left my panic-attacking ass three weeks ago. Honey is a trooper though. I don't know how to reward him when this is all over. I made him a playlist of songs to get him through this, but I don't know if that's enough. Some solace though is knowing that there will be an end to this and it's within sight; as well, that others have survived the same thing. I ran into an old coworker of mine yesterday and she agreed that her thesis was one of the hardest things she'd ever done and that it definitely put a strain on her relationship with her then boyfriend, now husband.

On the good side, my show has been immensely popular and has been selling out since the second weekend. I'm with a good group of people whom I'd really like to get to know better offline. We've got one more show next weekend and then we're down till June. We'll remount for the summer and if it continues this wild popularity, we're already planning variations for a fall and holiday run! Luckily, with my thesis done and only 10% to go until it's dead and cooked, and an effective study groove established, I think the show will be more of the creative release that I need than another taxation on my brain cells.

I'll try to catch up on all y'all's blogs, soon and I'll try to post some more, soon. I have been missing cruising!