Glædelig Jul!

After a much needed 8.5 hours of sleep on Christmas Eve, I sat in my hospital bed enjoying the darkened silence of the room. I considered sleeping past 6:30, since this will be last opportunity to do so for many Christmases to come. At least another 10 or 15 years, by my conservative estimate. But I wasn’t sure I want to take advantage of that. Besides, stuck in a hospital room for weeks, I needed to have something to look forward to. Something to make me giddy. The last few weeks have been so weird - not living with my husband or dog, or even my cat!; taking everything one day at a time, grateful for each day that I'm still pregnant, particularly since I've had a few close calls, including one that canceled my baby shower (my last remaining hope for some activity or item resembling a "normal pregnancy”) and another last week that got me the closest to delivery I've been, yet. Nope. I chose to be giddy and rise early to celebrate. Even if it was just me in my bed for a few hours, before Honey came.

I listened to Christmas music on my laptop and thought of Christmases past. Until I was about 12, we'd spend Christmas Eve at my grandparents' house. All, or most, of my moms' siblings would come, so the house was throbbing with cousins. My family would go to our church's candlelight service, usually over by 6 or 6:30 and then join the festivities in progress at Grandma's. It was loud, fun and largely unstructured. We'd eat tamales, rice and beans and chow on deserts. The kitchen was a traffic circle. Around 8:30 or 9, we'd open gifts and things would wind down around 10:30 or 11, when the cousins would start to head to bed and we'd head back home. Sometimes, this ritual would be in Dallas, at one of my uncles' houses, but it was pretty much the same deal. Christmas morning was just for our immediate family, opening our own gifts and Mom would make quiche. Her annual Christmas quiche brunch. We were never a "Christmas dinner" kind of family. We were a Christmas brunch family.

I’m wondering what future Christmases will be like with the new little one. This time next year, our kid will be just shy of a year old, so we might be chasing his/her little waddling bottom out of the kitchen, while Honey bakes up dozens and dozens of delicious cookies and he and I make chocolate truffles together.

My sister-in-law lives nearby and we more often than not spend Christmas and/or Thanksgiving with her and her family.

Her kids are way older than ours: high school and entering junior high soon, so I’m not sure what kind of relationship this kid will have with them. We’ve never spent Christmas or Thanksgiving with Honey’s father, since we’ve been together, to my knowledge. We’ve done a few with his mom and a couple with my family. But nothing that really establishes tradition. I suppose we still have a few years to figure that out. I’d just really like our kid(s) to have fond memories of playing with cousins and singing carols and eating traditional foods that they have memories of watching us prepare and grow up to want to learn to make. You know: like I had! (Side note: I tasked my mother with getting my grandmother’s tamale recipe, so I can learn to make them for Christmases future. Honey has perfected her pico de gallo, so if I can just make a passable version of her tamales, maybe we can at least keep the Mexican Christmas dinner tradition going.)

This barely felt like a regular Christmas this year. Even though we got a foot of snow. (Almost none of which I could see from my hospital window, as it looks into a courtyard!) This Christmas, my every thought has been on the safety of the little creature growing inside me. This Christmas, my focus has been on staying pregnant for one more hour, one more day; knowing that each day, each week means a healthier baby. I have no emotional or mental room for anything else, frankly. Just keeping this kid safe and incubating. I have my own drama to worry about.

Normally, we’ve got the house decorated by early December, holiday music wafts throughout the house, the kitchen smells of sugar and butter as Honey is constantly baking. I’m writing our Christmas cards and mailing them out to loved ones. And we’re scrambling to get gifts for family (my least favorite part of Christmas – consumer “obligation”). This year, my hospital room has received most of the decorations (for which I am grateful), and the house, none, as Honey has taken to preparing the house for the arrival of our little winter babe. Even though I have a chunk of Christmas music on my laptop, I’ve not listened to it enough. Mostly because it’s awkward to fetch my laptop when lying from a 33 degree angle. We’d not been able to go any Christmas parties, holiday shows or movies of the season. We celebrated in our own way, though. And all things considered, this was one of the best Christmases I’ve had in a long time. Just because Honey is so fantastic and it reminds me what my priorities are. And the visits from friends I got on Christmas day just added a luster to the day that I won’t soon forget.

One thing we know for sure: next Christmas will be far different from this Christmas. We’ll be out in public again. The house will be decorated. The music will be playing and David Sedaris stories playing and the kitchen will smell of Honey’s magic. Christmas cards will go out (yes, probably with baby pictures in them). But there will be an extra energy in the house. An extra layer of happiness. And I have a feeling that once that happiness fills the house, we’ll struggle to remember what it was like without it. Kind of like how empty and slightly sad the house feels when our dog is not there. When Babydog is out for the night, I’m always sad a little, and struggle to remember what it was like without her joy filling the house. All I know is that our house wasn’t complete until she came along, even though we didn’t know it (okay I kind of knew it would be, having had dogs before). I suspect it’ll be the same with the kid. And we’re very much looking forward to discovering that unknown joy and rediscovering the joys of a celebrate season with this kid!

I hope Christmas, or your respective holidays found you happy and well this year. Have a fantastic 2010!

… and I apologize for not reading your blogs in a LOOONNG time. In addition to my general tendency to procrastinate, I’ve been limiting my laptop time in the hospital, so I’ve fallen waayy behind. I can’t promise I’ll catch up real soon, but I’ll try my darnedest!

Souvenirs from an Era

A few weeks ago I woke 15 minutes ahead of the alarm, and when I tried to go back to sleep, I couldn't. Cheap Trick's "The Flame" was suddenly, inexplicably and without warning in my brain. Well, actually it was Maroon Five's "She Will Be Loved" - which is even more inexplicable, as they just plain turn me off - which then morphed into "The Flame." Sitting upright in bed, in the dark, I had three thoughts in rapid succession:

1) Damn, NPR for running that story about the Deering Mansion in Miami being haunted. I can't shake it. As either Huey, Dewey or Louie used to say: "I don't believe in ghosts, but I sure am scared of them!" The story made my restless nights even more restless.

2) Wow. Those two songs are structurally very similar. Someone should mash them up if they haven't already. Wow! I noticed an opportunity for a mashup! Look at me! Club DJ stardom is just minutes away!

3) Aww. "The Flame!" It's one of those songs from the soundtrack of my life. A song I may have enjoyed, but because it emerged on my radar at a certain critical moment in my development, I cherish it as a landmark of sorts.

Playing the song in my head, in bed in our dark room, I recalled how I'd relish listening to it at night, coming from my clock radio in my dimmed bedroom. I had a dimmer switch in the room I had from birth to 12 which I rarely turned all the way off. I remember how comforting that song was to me, in junior high, lying in bed, my room in artificial amber gloam, the rest of the house asleep. There are a handful of songs, images and other artifacts that whenever I encounter them, inspire a certain nostalgia that would not have seemed likely when I originally encountered them. Certain pop songs from 1988 - 1989 forever haunt me in ways that other don't. And I think it has everything to do with two things: the fact that that's when my family made our first big move; and that I was at the peak of puberty. (By the way: never move your family when one - the eldest, at least - is in the throes of puberty. It's more traumatic than a move at 10 or 15. I've asked around.)

If I really thought about it, I could find those musical or cultural artifacts that were in the background when I lived in these places that later proved to be memory markers.

• "Stand" by REM will forever be the song that introduced me to REM and the song that I identify most with arrival in my small town. I'd heard of REM, but never anything from them. I was 12 and whenever the video would come on MTV, Dad would get up and get my brother and me to do the Stand dance, encouraging me to accept our new, small town. I resented the new town so much, but couldn't resist Dad's enthusiasm. It's only years later that I appreciate what Dad was trying to get us to do: embrace place and bloom where planted.
• "Mary Moon" by Deadeye Dick is always the song that brings me back to 18, in a small west Texas university starting school completely - and I mean completely - clueless, but feeling utterly liberated and probably the most confident I've ever been in my life. I think I liked it because I had a "Mary Moon" reputation at my high school, but it was mocked, not celebrated. Here was a song that not only celebrated that archetype, but made her (sexually) desirable. Same me, new leaf.
• Fresh Air with Terry Gross on NPR became my best friend when I had to drop out of college after my first semester due to lack of funds. I still listen to the show as often as possible, but I remember discovering her in Houston, when I was in depression, knew no one and the future looked uncertain. When I think back on those days, those afternoons in my bedroom, I am so grateful to her and to the local NPR station for fostering and sating curiosity.
• The Indigo Girls were always playing from my stereo or from those of my best friends during my college years.
• Margaret Atwood and Kurt Vonnegut were my book buddies the year after college, when I joined Honey at his first station, in the city to which I would never return to live in a million years, but for which I have a soft spot in my heart.

I don't know what the cultural artifacts are that I associate with my current place. I'll probably find them in retrospect. Plus, we've been here long enough - almost 10 years - that I probably have cultural artifacts associated with certain periods in my life, as opposed to places. For instance, I associate Sigur Ros, Rilo Kiley and Ben Gibbard with the period I spent completing my thesis. A friend turned me onto Sigur Ros when he heard the topic of my thesis dealt with constructed languages and gibberish. They sing mostly in Icelandic, but occasionally in a fabricated language. They're so mellow and soulful that I was able to mope and comfort myself in their music as I plowed through. A coworker turned me onto Rilo Kiley and Ben Gibbard, breaking me of my prejudice against Death Cab for Cutie, much to the relief of my husband, who likes Death Cab. I can't place my finger on what it was about those two artists that spoke to me in that manic period, but I latched onto the music he shared, and that we already had in our collection, but I was too blindly stubborn to listen to.

I'm really curious what music or cultural events or artifacts will turn out to the be the familiar landmarks in my memory for this period of my life. It seems like this year and the coming year will likely be so momentous for us that there will be something that I always associate with this period. I'm just eager and curious to find out what it is. It'll probably be evident 5 or 6 years from now. And it'll probably surprise me. I never would've guessed something like "The Flame" would've been among my take-aways from 1988!

The Ties that Bind

Given the events of this summer, in my personal life, it is perhaps not surprising, that I've been thinking a lot about my extended family. I've been thinking of that of Honey's, too, but more about mine, because, well ... they're the ones I'm more familiar with.

Earlier this week, I had trouble sleeping because all I could think about was my parents' mortality. It hit me in a couple of places. The thought of losing them saddened me as their child, but it saddened me even more as their gestating grandchild's parent. I really want our kids to know my parents. They're wonderful, mostly fun people, even if they do get on our nerves, sometimes. It would break my heart into many pieces if they died before our kid(s) were born or before the kid(s) had a chance to develop any meaningful memories of them.

Then there's the simple issue of "what happens to us after we die?" I go through phases when I believe in an afterlife spent in the company of the departed and in the bosom of the Creator (Heaven) and when I think there's nothing, just oblivion; just a dreamless sleep. (Perhaps surprisingly, because of how our society delineates things, the absence of an afterlife does not, to me, signify the absence of God.) I'm in a phase right now when I fear death: my own and that of those I love, because I'm not sure what comes after. And I actually believe in Heaven more for my family elders, maybe because their assurance appears so beautifully effortless - though, talking to them, I know it's not. And that they do, and are about as comfortable with the idea of going there as anyone can be, I think they will spend eternity in Heaven whether I do or not.

I hope there's a divine afterlife. For purely selfish reasons: not just reuniting with my loved ones, but getting to know those who've gone before me who I didn't get to know. Namely notable peacemakers and my dad's parents. There were times in my childhood when I so wish I could've known them. There were many times I felt devalued by my mom's parents, and I longed to have another set to run to, to balance that out, to get personal affirmation for just being me, and not for not being good enough. We only had one portrait of them in our house, growing up. A black and white photo. Which sucked, because I never got to see the supposedly fiery red hair that my grandfather had, that now weaves through my own muted locks. It looks dark in the photo, so I assumed it was brown for years and years. In fact, virtually every photo I've seen of them has been black and white. And often grainy. Kind of like the second-hand memories I've been given of them. Somewhere, among my parent's things, is a reel to reel recording that includes my grandmother's voice. I've not found it, yet. When we do, I'd like to have it transferred into a digital file, so I can hear her. So she can be more real to me. (Wow, I can't believe how much I just cried writing all that. I haven't cried over them in years. In over a decade, maybe.)

These are the things I don't want for our children: to have to hear second hand stories of their grandparents. To have to piece together who someone was based on rose-colored anecdotes. I could never do my parent's memory justice. Especially, Mom's. I really think she's going to be a wonderful grandmother; probably a better grandmother than she was a mother. If her interactions with my cousins' kids are any indication, she'll certainly relish it more and attack it with more enthusiasm than she did mothering.

But what is more difficult is distance. My parents live in Texas, roughly a 3 hour flight away; Honey's on the West Coast, about 6 hours away by air. I lived in the same city as my grandparents until I was 12, and then, in the same state, just an 8 hour drive down the road: two tanks of gas that are much cheaper than 2 plane tickets. We saw them several times a week, and even when we moved, we were up there a lot and they traveled the state visiting kids and grandkids several times a year. Honey, on the other hand, had 6 grandparents, thanks to divorce, all of whom lived in Texas. At any given time in his childhood, that was a 3 - 10 hour flight, and all its costs, away. So, they were slightly alien to him - "family," but not familiar - until he spent a few summers with one set, in his high school years. Going to college in Texas cemented those relationships. Honey's mom and my parents are already trying to figure out when they can come up here for the new baby. His dad has not yet expressed that interest, so I have no idea when he'll come out to meet his grandkid; as yet, we don't have any West Coast travel plans. I can't help but wonder if that'll be an indication of how the grandparent relationship will unfold: mine and his mom trying to get out here as often as they can (I already plan on capitalizing on Mom's summers off), and his dad just sticking to his habit of visiting the East Coast only occasionally. Naturally, I hope we can visit them as much as possible, as well.

I really want our kid(s) to have genuine personal relationships with all their grandparents. I assume it's natural for kids to favor one set or one grandparent over others. Luckily, I don't worry that mine or Honey's parents will be emotionally detrimental to our kid(s), like my mom's (unwittingly) were to me. But I do hope the old folks stick around long enough for the kid(s) to pull wisdom and love from them.

Outer Circle

My little brother got married this last weekend. In Milwaukee. I didn't understand how emotional the week leading up to his wedding was for me, until we returned home.

To begin with, it was great. Not as many of our family was able to make it up for the wedding as hers was - how much of that was the politics of guest-list management, I don't know - but it was wonderful seeing the ones who were there. Most of my favorites were able to make it! One of my most favorite cousins J and her husband Geoff and their little girls, M and The Firecracker - not her real name, but I only use pseudonyms anyway, and this is accurate to her personality - traveled up from Texas. Likewise J's brother, my cousin, Max and his wife Kat, and my uncle Ted and aunt Cassie all came up from Texas. Three of my mom's four siblings came, as well as just one of my cousins from her side, R, and my grandparents made the trip as well. This was a particularly big undertaking as Grandpa is 90, rapidly physically declining, and I'm doubtful that he should ever get on an airplane again. However, I was thrilled and grateful to see him. We all caught up, hung out, laughed, etc, etc, etc. Well, mostly the fun stuff was with the cousins and family on Dad's side, and my cousin R, on Mom's side. I've never fully related to Mom's side of the family. I love them, I just find conversation falls flat after a few minutes.

Heading home - or "home" - after the wedding, I felt so happy to have seen everyone, but also like I'm missing out, and like I'm not sure where home is, or what it means. The lives of people I love most are happening without me and everyone gets to share in it, but me. This was most pronounced, for me, when I considered how well my extended family knows my new sister-in-law, and she them, and how very little I know of her. Their wedding was only the 6th time I'd met her. Considering that you really don't get to see or spend quality time with the couple during the wedding mayhem, I've really only met her 5 times. And of those 5 times, 3 were brief dinner situations. We've never really talked in-depth about anything, never hung out. She's just been, for the last 3 years, either my brother's girlfriend, like so many others, or his fiancee.

When the videographer pulled Honey and me aside at the reception to say something for the couple - well, actually, we pulled him aside; he'd already packed up, thinking he'd gotten all the "importants" (of course, having to seek him out, instead of the other way around, contributed to feeling outside the gang, but, whatever) - I realized everything I wanted to say was to my brother. I really don't know my sister-in-law well enough to congratulate her with some personal tidbit. I just said something generic about her being smarter than him, which is true, but not really catered or specific to her personality or history. During her sister's toast (the matron of honor), she recounted a story about how one of my brother's jokes helped her cope with her baby daughter's Down Syndrome diagnosis, after she'd been depressed for weeks. God, I thought, her sister already has a strong fondness for him, and I'm relatively indifferent toward her. What's wrong, here? In the three years they've been together, she's gone with him to several family events throughout Texas. The Firecraker, J's daughter is 19 months old, and I'd only just met her this past weekend. My sister-in-law, whom I'll call Balance - since she balances Bro's personaltiy pretty well - had met her several times. Balance knows M pretty well, too. And as Bro and Balance live about a mile from Max and Kat, they hang out all the time, as they do frequently enough with my parents, who also live in the same metropolis. I don't know how many times Bro has met her family. I know he spent last Christmas with them and maybe a few extended weekends, as well. But they instantly love him, instantly connected with him, and her little brother and older sister seem keen on, and comfortable with him.

So, here I am: out on the East Coast, missing out my dear little cousins M and The Firecracker growing up; missing out family get-togethers over Easter or birthdays or whatever; missing out on finding out who the hell this person is that my brother just married who everyone seems to enjoy so well. In the meantime M adores my mom as if she were her own grandmother, and Max and Kat bug Bro for more cookouts, knowing they could just crash his house if they felt like it. Honey and I know we want to move west again. Texas is on the short list, as is the Pacific Northwest, and we're open to other, as yet unconsidered, places west of the Mississippi if they seem right for us. However, even if we moved back to Texas, there is, of course, no guarantee we'd see family all the time. (Not that I'd even want to.) On top of that, Bro and Balance have talked enough about moving to Milwaukee sometime in the future that even if we did move to Texas, it's highly possible that they'd move out and I'd still never get to know this woman, or worse, miss out on the lives of nieces and nephews as they grow up. (Honey is certain they're going to jump on that train within a year. I'm not as certain.) Plus, I don't want to be that spouse who demands we live near my family, as if mine is the only one that counts. My aunt - the only of my mom's siblings who doesn't live in Texas - followed that demand of her husband's and she's never been quite happy with it, feeling left behind as her family moves on.

I now really want to talk with my pre-existing sister-in-law, Honey's sister, about how the transition was for her, to me. I loved Honey's sister immediately. Sometimes, I feel like she could be my "for real" sister. Bro accepted Honey immediately - though, in honesty, as we met in Texas, they had more time to get to know eachother than Balance and I have. Honey didn't have the luxury at all of getting to know his older brother in law. His sister eloped while living overseas, so their first meeting came months after they were family. I have to imagine that was really weird and alienating for Honey. I've never heard any friends of mine talk about feeling alienated or missing out on knowing who their in-laws are. I don't know if that's because people just don't talk about it; if my friends actually know their in-laws before hand; or if it's because many of my friends are babies of their families and the dynamic of an elder sibling relationship is different. I strongly suspect that part of my sadness at not knowing Balance comes from my being the elder sibling. I'm protective, by nature, of those I love and always want to sniff out their mates. Stands to reason, then, that though I like Balance, I feel like I haven't had the chance to fully assess her for the person I've felt most protective of my whole life.

I don't know her, and the rest of my family is going on without me. I'll let go, eventually. But for now, I'm just feeling left out.

Life-changing Art and Books?

Despite the silliness of everyone on Face book listing 25 random things about themselves, I must admit, I'd rather enjoyed quick-tour catch-ups on old friends, or learning more about new friends, and people I'm generally interested in. Now a college friend of mine decided she'd start her own "better-know-a-friend" note: name one book that changed your thinking.

My problem is that I can't. I'm not unaffected by what I read, but I'm hard-pressed to find a book that, when I put it down, leaves me feeling measurably changed. There are books that have spoken to some un-articulated truths I'd carried around inside me. God is a Verb, a book about mystical Judaism, articulated what I'd been growing to feel about our relationship with the divine. In particular, the notion of "creationing" or "raising holy sparks." It's been years since I've read the book, but if I remember, essentially, divinity is mutually nurtured by God and people (or, if you want to get into my micro-understanding: all creation). God communicates holiness to us via love and creation, and whenever we act in creation and mercy, we "raise holy sparks" back into divinity. And it's like an engine from there: God powers creation and creation powers God. A poor description on my part, but the book spoke to me, despite that I was wary because of the faddishness of Kabbalah. But it didn't change my thinking per se. It voiced what I already suspected to be true. Similarly, I ate far less fast food after reading Fast Food Nation, and I eat almost none, now. My response to the book didn't change my perception or action in grandiose ways. I'd worked in fast food before; I had family who had worked in meat-packing plants. The information wasn't new to me - just distilled. My pivot wasn't huge.

I'm always fascinated and confounded by people's claims that a work of art or a book or literature changed their lives. To be able to reflect and identify a piece of music, a poem, a painting, a play or whatever as a critical hinge in one's perceptions or an inspiration for action, suggests that that piece was personally earth-shaking. This leaves me wondering if I'm missing something. If other people can identify the piece of art, or the book that changed the way they viewed the world, then am I just callow? I'm not unaffected by art and literature. I'll reflect for days on something I've seen or read that's particularly good. And that reflection, I'm sure nudges my worldview in one direction or another. But nothing identifiably earthshaking. My earthshakings don't happen - or haven't yet happened - because of print or performance.

As earthshaking epiphanies go, personal experiences are my volcanoes, where art and literature are the geysers. Moving across the state, in the midst of puberty, to a much smaller town changed my life; living there for five and a half years changed my perception of it. Having to drop out of college after one semester due to lack of funds changed my life in that I had to start all over again. I ended up going to a different university where I made friends whose understandings of life shaped my understanding. There, I also met the man I eventually married. Dropping out of college changed my life. Getting married not only changed my life, but changed my perception of life. Moving across the country changed my perception of life. September 11 changed my life and my perception of life. The medical demons I've been wrestling the last couple of years have changed my perception of life, though not yet the way I live my life. If we ever have children, I anticipate that changing both the actions of my life and my perceptions of life. In fact I welcome the change - at least the latter.

Art was important to me during these shifts. Discovering that I enjoyed acting during my teenage years kept me emotionally intact and gave me a creative outlet for my frustrations. A few years later, the Chieftains and classical music lunch-hours serenaded my depression that resulted from dropping out of school. I read poetry during those months, which is something I'd never really done before or since. I also journaled like crazy, took a modern dance class that was a breath of fresh air and discovered, appropriately, Fresh Air. I can say with certainty that, during that time, Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony, especially the 2nd movement, followed by the 3rd, expressed the uncertainty of the those days, chased by the quirkiness and optimism that ultimately drives me. I fell in love with it. But did it change my life? Did it change my thinking? Did any of those activities or discoveries measurably change my perception of life? I'm positive they did, but their effects are very, very small compared to the events that drove me to them.

There probably is a book, or a play, or a film or piece of music that would rock the foundations of my world. But until or unless I come across it, print and art will slowly shift the ground beneath my feet, but the accidents and incidents of life will continue to the be the big shapers of the landscape of my perception. Am I alone in this?

Inauguration and Expectation

I was there. ...though I didn't get a t-shirt touting the fact.

There are moments in history we collectively witness and a few people witness those moments up front. Many - if not most - of these moments are largely unanticipated, or their broader cultural effect are unanticipated: the eruption of Mount Saint Helens, JFK's assassination or Woodstock, for instance. We like to say where we were "when we heard," because it's a shared experience, but when we come across someone who was on the ground when it happened, we listen more intently. "You were at Dealey Plaza? You were at Pearl Harbor? You were at Watergate that night? What did you see? How did you react?" As a first-person witness to the most rattling tragic event in recent national history, I have discovered what a bizarre, morbid privilege it is to have "been there." Witnesses shape memory.

Because there are so few moments when we'll get to be a witness to historical moments that are planned and anticipated, it seems a crying shame not to witness them up-close, if we have the resources to. Life is too short to pass up moments of greatness (and happiness) if it's within driving distance. With that in mind, Honey and I woke at 0-dark-hundred and made our way to DC to see the swearing in of our 44th President. (Hopefully, you've figured that out by the photos above.)

It was freezing. Very freezing. At one point, I began to worry that I may actually develop frostbite. We bought little heating packs to place in our gloves - a purchase I was concerned would be a rip-off from the vendor, but ended up being the best $5 I spent that day. We made it to the Mall a little before 8AM and people slowly filtered in for the next several hours. After hearing some reports - particularly of the Purple Tunnel of Doom, crowd-averse, clausterphobic Molly's nightmare scenario - I consider us lucky. People, though, were in amazingly good spirits; laughing, singing and dancing along with Sunday's concert that was being re-played on the jumbotrons.

When Barack Obama completed his oath, the cheer that went up was extraordinary. It was official: he is our president, now. The shackles had fallen, the windows had been thrown open, the baby had been born, the muzzled voice liberated, the well had been tapped, the geode had been shattered open. The cry was a delirious, elated catharsis after both surviving the last eight years of miserable, selfish leadership and after generations of warring the behemoth of institutionalized and tacit racial injustice. It felt like people cheered for a solid 60 seconds. I cried. I cried several times that day. I'm tearing up, now. People around us danced. I couldn't help but laugh, as well. Honey whooped and hollered when I really only expected him to cheer. That was really fun! It was a fantastic moment that I fervently hope time will never take from me.

Our nephew, Dave, came with us. He's almost 16. He likes Obama, but I think it's more because he's a popular icon and because Dave lives in a mostly-liberal area. He's at an age where he's very concerned about being caught up in the latest fad and maintaining popularity. I don't know that he understands the influence of ideology and politics. I don't think he quite understands the weight of our nation having elected our first black president, either. How much of that is generational, I don't know. And maybe, that Dave is unimpressed by the fact that our country elected a black man is more a testament to how far we've come since my parents were 16, and even I was 16, than it is that we've elected him.

But I'm still shocked and awed. I did presume I would live to see the day. I'm just surprised it would come this early in my life. And I presumed he'd be a Republican. Or, as Honey presumed, that we'd see a black vice president before we saw a black president. I also presumed we'd see a woman first. I'm still waiting for that one; confident that I will see that in my lifetime, now. (I couldn't get behind Hillary. I felt it was too soon; I'm not a fan of dynasty's in a land of democracy and didn't want a Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton sandwich. Also, watching her for several years, I wanted a little more daylight between her and W. Particularly on the war, from the beginning.)

Obama's popularity is currently really, really high. Hopes for him are stratospheric. The marketing and media frenzy that's surrounded Obama can really only hurt people's expectations, though. There's only so much even the most effective president can do. He's governing 300 million people, a little less than half of whom elected him and probably a quarter of whom boldly despise him and he'll need the support, or at least patience, from each of them to begin to make a dent in the flaming pile of shit that W left him. I do not envy any president the office, but I really don't envy the administration that has to tackle the uglies we face now. I will be pleased with good enough. All I really want for our incoming president is to restore our reputation around the world and make every effort to help "the least of these" in our county. Economy, Iraq, Healthcare - those are my biggies. If he can break a few of those juggernauts' legs, I'll be happy.

2009: The Year of Good Enough

I've been trying to decide what my inaugural post for 2009 should be about and I decided that I should begin by returning to one of my goals for 2008: my personal reading challenge. When I reviewed my post from last year describing my challenge (to read 10 books in the course of the year from my own library), I saw that the bulk of that post was dedicated to being grateful for the time we have with our loved ones because we will not always have them with us. There seems to be some sad coincidence in that.

I have fallen way behind on reading people's blogs and obviously on writing this blog. So far behind that I only learned yesterday that Mommanator's husband passed suddenly in the interim. Something that struck me was that she stated she was happy to have him 10 years longer than she thought she might. Again, I'm reminded that we need to love each other fully and seek delight in our loved ones as much as possible. We lose more than the person if we don't attempt it. I know I'm not the only one to express it, but just wanted to publicly convey my most heartfelt condolences to her and her family in their time of grief. I definitely keep you and yours in my prayers right now, Mommanator. Many hugs, doll.

Some good news about this new year for me, is that something in me switched when the clock struck midnight on January 1. I've been decidedly angry and emotionally stubborn about some health concerns of mine, lately. Though I'm progressing with more investigation and possible treatment, I'd been furious that this was something I even had to deal with. I was furious at my body for betraying me. Then at the beginning of the year the emotional stubbornness and the fury just dropped. I'm still angry, I still feel betrayed, but I'm not wrapping myself in it like a self-pitying blanket anymore. I have resigned myself to the probable. I'm still not happy about it, but I'm no longer emotionally resistant. I'm actually more accepting of it. Unless something changes: it is what it is.

That shift also freed me to review other things in my life. It's a new year. New choices? Maybe. I don't do "resolutions," but I do set personal goals. Among my goals this year are:

• Write more, of course. I've got at least one piece lined up. I work best with deadlines, so maybe I should look for more deadline-driven writing opportunities. But in the meantime, I should just keep tapping at the keyboard. I wrote more in 2008 than in 2007, so let's keep up the momentum.
• Become more craftily self-sufficient. Re-teach myself to sew on the machine that I've been ignoring for years and make something wearable.
• Make the house look more grown-up. Replace craptastic college-era plastic shelving with real stuff; paint at least 2 rooms in the house this year; buy a few furniture pieces (new sofa-set for basement, maybe?).
• Put stuff on the walls. Frame photos I like and hang them. Maybe buy some art. That costs money and spending money scares me shitless, but our walls are scandalously bare.
• Exercise more. Specifically, start running again! I never felt better about my life than when I ran a marathon 6 years ago. I don't know that I want to do a full 26.2 again yet (maybe in a few years), but I can easily do a 5 or 10K. There's no reason I shouldn't. Plus, I should really buy a friggin' bike. It's stupid that I don't have one.
• See more live theater. There's so much that's good out there and I don't take enough advantage of it. I had the pleasure of seeing some Shakespeare with Darla D and her girls this past week and I really enjoyed it. Why don't I do it more? I dunno. Routine lifestyle, I suppose. Honey and I go on jags every few years. This should be one of them and it should really increase to a regular habit.
• Re-up my reading challenge of 2008. Same deal. So many books in my collection that I've not gotten around to reading or only half-read. 10 more to read and/or finish for 2009. Just finished Born to Buy (pictured above), which was actually book 9 or 10 from 2008 - that's right, I fell short; sue me. I'm moving on next to God in the Machine: What Robots Can Teach Us About Humanity and God. I think I heard that author on Speaking of Faith a few years ago. Honey began reading it, but said it didn't teach him anything new. But he's a techie-guy. I hope that it'll illuminate something for me.
• Ditch the high-fructose corn syrup (and hopefully later the partially hydrogenated oils). I've known since sophomore nutrition class (thanks, alma mater, for making that part of our core requisite curriculum) that corn syrup is no good for me, and neither are partially hydrogenated soybean or corn oil. But damn, that stuff is addictive. So far, I've gone a week without the corn syrup. I've managed to gain weight, but that's mostly because I have no sense of portion control and I've not been exercising as much. Still, it's as much about being mindful about what I put into my body as it is about weight loss. Temptations may surround me, but if I can ward off just one of them, then the battle is not yet lost.
• Spend more time with Honey. Evenings, weekends, whatever.
  
• Find a new job, or a new path. Not necessarily outside my field, but just some path that allows me time to enjoy my family and to pursue my outside interests. My recent down-shift to part-time should help.
  
• Stop thinking I have to define myself by my career or other "achievments." I'd like to say I'm bigger than that, but I'm not. I'm just a regular achiever living in the land of hyper-acheivers. When I really contemplate it, yes career and title are in there, but the lifelong goals I'm most concerned with are more personal in nature: travel, family, language-learning, re-learning piano, etc, etc. I love my work, but I need to stop measuring myself against the hyper-achieving hyper-tense, hyper-paid peers in this town. I'm me. That's good enough.

Maybe that's what I need to carry into this year. Things don't have to be perfect. They just have to be good enough. I don't have to find the most extraodinary wine bar/buffet for our dining area. I just have to find good enough. I don't have to run a marathon. A 5K will do. I don't have to lose 15 pounds; 6 will be sufficient. I don't have to read all the ancient classics I should've read in college. I'll just read one. I'll do what I can. And that will be good enough.

Christmas Past, Christmas Present, Christmas Future?

Two years ago, Honey gave me my first digital camera for Christmas, a Cannon SD800 Elph, and I've run with it. I was never much of a photographer, but thanks to the miracle of digital photography, it's rapidly becoming a hobby of mine. I'm teaching myself how to compose shots. I have a photographer friend with whom, some afternoon I'm going to go on a photo safari, and at some point, I'd like to get a consumer copy of Photoshop so I can edit my work. Thanks to my new hobby, I've begun looking at the mundane with fresher, more curious eyes. It feels good.

One of the gifts I got for Christmas this year was an all-in-one printer/scanner/photo printer. I've taken all these wonderful photos, but they still live on my laptop, or in some cases, cyberspace. It would be fantastic to finally start framing some of them and dressing the very naked walls of our house. Yesterday, I spent about an hour and a half scanning old photos from my childhood. There are hundreds more to go, but I knocked out quite a few. Including some from Christmases past. The image on the right is one such photo. It's from 1988. (I'm the amber-mopped tomboy in the orange tie-dye shirt, near the center.) Our family flew down to Mexico City to spend the holiday with our many cousins there. It was the first time I'd been on a plane since I was pre-literate, and I remember being afriad to fly. Then the downing of PanAm 103 a day or two before our departure convinced me that our deaths were imminent.

It's inevitable this time of year that my thoughts turn to past Christmases and reviewing old pictures certainly aid the nostalgia. Christmas isn't as fantastical for me as it once was, and I'm trying to figure out why. It's not the Santa thing. I never believed in Santa. If not yet the why, I can at least pin down when Christmas started losing some of its pixie dust. Junior high.

1988 was probably the last truly exciting Christmas for me. I was 12. Before we flew to Mexico City, we stopped in Dallas to spend Christmas Eve with my mom's side of the family, like we did virtually every Christmas Eve. I played with my cousins, we ate the tamale dinner Grandma fixed us, watched whatever Christmas special was on TV, played board games, unwrapped presents ... Christmassy stuff. When we got to Mexico, the party really began. At my cousin Carlos' church, we played with no-bullshit pinatas; no papier mache Sesame Street characters. These pinatas were star-shaped, with shells made of terra-cotta and filled with sugar cane and peanuts. And they were massive. And there were many. When a piece of pinata pottery fell on my brother's head, he sought my mom's arms for comfort until he realized that every other kid was getting beaned by breaking pinatas, and went back in. Pinatas are not for the permission-slip happy American weak in Mexico. For days we were surrounded by family. We ate good meals every night. There was laughter everywhere. The gifts we got were either homemade - like the crocheted clown doll my aunt made me - or typically Mexican-craft like the leather purse I got. I was introduced to new traditions like Dia de los Tres Reyes and la rosca. The former is also known as Epiphany or Three Kings Day, the traditional 12th day of Christmas when the wisemen's visit is celebrated. La Rosca is the bundt-like cake served on January 6, though we did ours early, on the first (we ate several, come to think of it); a baby charm is placed in the cake and whoever gets it has good luck. In Mexico City, I was tickled to discover that for every kiosk set up on the city square with Santa offering to listen to Christmas wishes, there were two or three kiosks of the magi offering to do the same. Christmas is when you get your little gifts, there; Epiphany is when you get your "real" gifts. It's something we kind of adopted when my family went broke. Our gifts were never huge to begin with - a cassette from a band I liked was usually the extent of it - but extending the gift-giving until Epiphany bought my family a little time time to buy on sale. 1988 was a Christmas brimming with non-stop celebration. It was the last one I can remember like that.

Within a month, we'd moved across the state; Dad had entered the ministry full-time (an overall great move for him, but a damper on Christmas from then out) and there was no doubt about it: puberty had completed its angsty takeover of my body. From a celestial high to a rocky low. There are many things I like about Dad being a minister: he's a good preacher; he's a great listener and a wonderfully sympathetic man; it's his passion; he's knowledgable about context (and thus not literalist). However, the one thing I really don't like about him being a minister is that he's tied to whatever church he's serving for Christmas Eve.

When I was 13, I was devastated to learn that we would not get to drive up to the panhandle or to Dallas to spend the evening with mom's entire family as I had every Christmas Eve of my life until that point. We had to stay put for our church's candlelight service. I love Chistmas Eve candlelight services. After all the happy songs, the readings and prayers, when the lights go down and the sanctuary is filled with scores of tiny flickering flames and we're all singing "Silent Night" and then the accompanist stops so that we're all just singing a capella ... damn, there are few things finer. But to be compelled to stay? Couldn't this church just wing it without a minister for Christmas? Come ON! Christmas EVE! WTF?

From then on, Christmas became less magical. The songs in school, the games and the family hoopla began disappearing. We had to stay put, so Dad could preside over Christmas Eve services and we lived in such a remote part of the state that no one ever came to visit us for the holiday. (Which made me mad, as we often piled into the car on Christmas morning to drive 10 hours across the state to Dallas. Only to miss half the cousins, as they'd all returned home; and to miss the tamales, as they'd all been eaten. Why couldn't they reciprocate?) Christmas 1993 was a lovely anomaly, however, because 8 or 9 of our Mexican cousins came up and partied with us in our burg. They visited for a week. We spoke so much Spanish in the house that I actually dreamt in Spanish. (Era fantastico!)

These days, we have no set family gatherings with our extended families. His sister lives nearby, so we often visit her family. But I often feel something just one-off is missing. Our nephews have no cousins with which to play, so they either disappear to play on the computer or whine for attention. We adults don't play board games; we just talk about work and life and it's just ... a visit. My family lives in Texas, and with Dad unable to travel due to ecclesiastical duties, it's incumbent upon us to visit if we're to celebrate Christmas together - which we've only done once in the 10 years Honey and I've been Christmassing together. But even there, my brother just watches football and we just ... visit. No music and merriment. Honey's parents live on the West Coast. Sometimes they come out for Christmas or we go there, but it's just ... a visit. Once we played poker with his dad and nephews, and frankly that afternoon saved Christmas for me. It was so good to play something. My brother is marrying a girl from Wisconsin. He's up there now. She wants to never spend Christmas away from her family, so I have no idea if we'll ever get to see him for the holiday again. Which sucks. The older I get, the more disconnected I feel from family fun. Even when we see family, it seems so chaotic and not as cheerful as it used to be. I really, really miss playing boardgames with aunts and uncles. I miss the tamale buffet. I miss the cheesy holiday TV shows playing in the room where the kids are (ahem, please not around the adults). I miss poorly banging out "Joy to the World" on whosever piano is available. I think it's time to start some new more mobile Christmas traditions that bind us together. But I don't quite know which or how.

Honey and I have an accidental tradition of listening to David Sedaris read his "Santaland Diaries," either as we trim the tree or on Christmas Eve. Maybe I'll learn to make tamales like Grandma and insist on that wherever we go. Or maybe insist on more boardgames or puzzles. I love boardgames at Christmas. Christmas, for me, is about three big things: glittery cultural accoutrement, the breathless anticipation leading up to Christmas morning, and cozying up to family and enjoying eachother. Each feels like they're falling shorter as I grow older. I want to learn how to get the magic back.

Everything's Coming Up Milhouse!

Last month, I said that something had to change in my job situation and I'm happy to report that the change is now in progress.

Starting soon, possibly as early as the beginning of next month, I will be scaling back my hours to work part-time. I detested going back to my boss with my tail between my legs, after having asked for a promotion during the heat of the monster project, and after he'd moved the discussion along, the week prior, about moving me up the ladder. However, I can't deny the fact that my entire attitude about my job has changed. I'm not inspired, I'm strained and a zombie lately. I do want to progress my career, but I think, for my own sanity, I might have to do it at a slower pace than I'd originally liked. Additionally, I genuinely do want to foster some side sub-careers, if you will, because I'm not a person who is laser-focused on one interest. I'm a more ADD version of Ben Franklin, not a John Nash. I always struggle with maintaining interest in any one job or place of employment when winter rolls in. I am sunk by the cold and dark. It seriously affects me. I'm a solar-powered person; 5PM darkness and overcast days are not my friends. This, of course, affects my productivity. (Apparently, I'm not the only one.)

But the main reason I've wanted to scale back is make myself more available to my family and take care of my general and specific health. As it is now, I have to make an appointment any day I want to leave work on time. Not early. On time. Have to give everyone a big heads up that I might want to go home at the time we say we're going home. Even now, in the down season. If I were a Secret Service Agent, I'd understand that my job is not a job, it's a life. But I'm not. Even when I don't have massive deadlines hanging over my head, that kind of tyranny over my time is stressful. After visiting Dad for his second open heart surgery, I've pretty much decided I need to slow the frak down. He had his first heart attack at 38. 38! Not the road I want, and the highway traffic of genetics is already going against me. I don't want to be on the chopping block. No job is worth that to me. Honey has already weathered two very stressful surgeries with me in the last year, I don't need to add more for him to worry about.

I'm hoping to work 2 1/2 to 3 days a week, when I begin this new regimen. So what am I going to do with the extra time? So many things I can do! Look for other 3/4 to full-time jobs that either a) I can work from home and aren't as driven by deadlines (currently pursuing one), b) speak to my creative side, but I can leave directly at 5PM, so I can eat dinner with my husband more regularly and pursue performing without feeling like a jerk; bonus points if the job is in my industry or c) both. I also plan on writing more; getting my personal website to look more presentable and profitable would be a plus; start working with a voice-coach and start pushing for paying voice-over jobs; avail myself to the rent-an-actor company I signed up with but have yet had time to pursue; sell the shit on eBay that I set aside last month; paint the basement; actually exercise again; go back to my thesis and figure out what I want to do with it; spend more time at the doctors' office, which is why one of my supervisors thinks I'm doing this anyway, which is about 20% true ... so many things I could do!

My only reservation about this is, of course, the current economy. I am worried about scaling back while jobs are hemorrhaging throughout every market. But Honey is supportive and isn't panicking, and since he speaks math better than I do - were I single, I'd live in a rattrap, even if I made a gazillion dollars a month, just because I'm terrified of spending a dime on anything - I take my cues from him the way I do from a flight attendant. We hit a bump. Is the flight attendant scared? No? Okay, I won't panic then. Incidentally, this is also why I'd be a bad flight attendant. Though I'm a pretty good host, I can't gauge normal from "holy shit" turbulence. Just like I can't gauge sufficient money from excess money. No money? That, I know. And right now, it looks like stepping back from my table for a while isn't going to leave us in trouble. It's going to mend more problems than it causes.

Yes We Can! Yes We Did! Yes We Will!

I've been running a mile a minute since election night, so I haven't had time yet to post since the United States made history Tuesday night. I am out of town, currently and will be returning within the hour, so I have to make this post brief, which is unfortunate, as I have so many thoughts and emotions. However, I will say this: I spent a large portion of yesterday grinning like a goofball and another portion of yesterday crying. Particularly since it seemed every song on the radio was speaking to my hope. ("Imagine" started the instant I turned on my car to drive home; cue the waterworks!) Not incidentally, Honey and I began listening to the Audacity of Hope in the car, yesterday, making me even more confident that we made the right choice and we've elected a man who chooses to build bridges.

So, instead of writing a well thought-out post expressing my joy and hope, I figure I'll just cut and paste from emails and direct you to other blogs. When I have time later this week (tomorrow night or Saturday), I'll sit down collect and go at it. Just suffice it to say: I am thrilled and proud of my country and hopeful for the man who will lead us for at least the next 4 years.

I emailed a bunch of friends and family yesterday expressing my joy and hope. Here are some (or portions thereof) of their responses - all misspellings, etc, theirs:

It is a great day! I also thought that I would be glad that anybody other than GW would be a breath of fresh air, but seeing Obama win gave me more confidence in our country and in our future than I ever could have imagined. It is a great thing that happened historically because of his race, but it is also a great thing that happened because he knows that people are going to help change this country and he can get us reved up to do so.
- from a cherished cousin in Texas

*************
My vote was based on Scarlett Johansen's endorsement of Obama. She is an avid Obama supporter and her shit don't stink. Serioulsy though, it was based on the belief that we needed a change. We needed someone (anyone) who could give us a different face to the world. As romantic as it seems to say "we don't care what the rest of the world thinks about us, we Americans!" As bold and patriotic as it sounds to say "stay the course". As proud as is sounds to say "we don't need their approval" it simply isn't the case. we live in this world, we use more of it's oil than anybody else, we owe trillions of dollars to other countries, we affect its finanical market as they affect ours. it is time for us to have a slice of humble pie and say "okay what can we do to be part of the solution?" There are some epiphanies you have that change the way you think for the rest of your life (I guess that's why it's called an epiphany). But I recall listening to NPR several years ago just after Arnold was elected as the Governor of California when I had an epiphany. I remember listening to a speech he made about "terminating high taxes" and getting the "girlymen out of the Senate". I laughed and thought very realistically that every citizen of California was an idiot for electing him. I had never been to California at the time, but all the stereotypes of how "hollywood" and "soft" they were came to fruition in my mind. Then a ton of bricks hit me and I realized "Holy Shit! that is what the rest of the world thinks of us when they hear Bush speak." Then it got even worse when I thought "Hoy Shit! that is what people think of Texans when they hear Bush speak." I went out and got a Natalie Maines tattoo that afternoon.

I will take a Jr. Senator from Illinois over the Governor of the greatest State in the Union who doesn't know his ass from a whole in the ground any day of the week.
- Bro

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Aside from the potty mouth, I am delighted that both my kids are thinkers with their heads on straight and their hearts in the right place. We do not really know what coming years hold or what President Obama can or will do to correct our course, but, like both of you, I am very hopeful - and very encouraged that this generation has made a powerful statement against apathy and cynicism.
- Dad

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I agree! I, too, cried tears of elation and felt a deep sense of empowerment both as a black woman and as an American. I am proud to be an American. ALL men are truly created equal. We have overcome. I'm glad my grandparents and parents were alive to bear witness. Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we're free at last!!!
- a friend

Lastly, PLEASE visit my friend's blog here. She's an African-American woman currently teaching English in Japan and that's interesting enough. However, her reaction to the Obama win is cathartic just to read! (And she's got an awesome graphic included.)

Happy new day, America!!

Fare thee well, flightless friend

Last Sunday morning, after a night of heavy drinking and little sleep - so worthless there was no veritas which I could type in vino-ed - I was hanging out with a friend of mine when my foggy brain realized that, in his aviator sunglasses, he looked like Steve ... Austin. No. Steve Tyler. Not it either. Steve ... city in Texas; he's a Bloom County character ... Steve Dallas! Compare, here. As he likes the work of Berkeley Breathed, I believe he took the comparison as a compliment. I meant it as a complimentary observation, at least. Then I remembered, "Holy shit. We only have one week until Opus leaves the pages of the comic section, forever." I need to take the little bird out. I need to show him some love. I need to get caught up!

That week has passed, and Opus departed today.



When Breathed announced he'd return to comics, he struck a deal that Opus would be a half-page, front page, one-week only strip. Honey and I were thrilled. Who else but Breathed deserved such an honor? Like Postsecret, it became a Sunday ritual for me. What did Opus have to offer this Sunday morning? This week, I read the preceding four strips only, but I don't feel caught up at all. I had fallen behind in the last year or so. During that time, our paper moved it from the front page of the funnies to the second, then later the third page. Bastards. Also somewhere during that time, my thesis and performing and my job became all-consuming and taking an hour on Sunday to read through the paper became a luxury I didn't afford myself as often as I should have. I needed sleep. Or a drink. Or a Tylenol PM with a benadryl chaser and post-it note reminder to spend 5 minutes with my dear, suffering husband and dog.

Bloom County is the first comic I remember following. (Not that I'm a big comic follower.) It was such a fun world for me. The first time I remember noticing it was when my dad received a copy of Loose Tails for his 40th birthday, from a friend. A wheelchair-bound man bedecked with nerdy kids and wierdo animals? Something about the wheelchair attracted me. Was this about a guy in a wheelchair? What a wonderful country we live in, where one who can't walk can be the hero! And all the little critters and kids riding on him: it's like when my brother and cousins and I used to take turns riding on the back of my cousin S's chair! Awesome!

As I dug into it, it seemed to be less about Cutter John alone, as it was all the awkward misfits who inhabited Bloom County. It was smart and dorky. Kinda like I was when I was 10. Some days I was Milo, principled and precocious, others I was Binkley, clueless and a vegetable resemblant. Incidentally, when I learned that New Orleans' newspaper was called the Times-Picayune, I had a hard time believing that they didn't swipe the name from Bloom County's rag. As a teenager, I decided I should grow up to be Lola Granola; I'm wearing overalls as I type this, ready to garden a bit this afternoon, so maybe that's the connection anymore. I learned what a vegan was from Bloom County. After the aliens swapped Steve Dallas' brain, he ditched Republicanism, got a perm, gave up smoking and eschewed ingesting any animal products. And yes, even though I've been a Democrat since I was a kiddo, I loved Steve, as well. How can you not love a character so sexistly clueless - or cluelessly sexist? He was kind of the antithesis of Cutter John: strapping and healthy, selfish and a defendant of the status quo.

I loved how Bloom County celebrated our hopes and fears, our flaws and fantasies, our accomplishments and mistakes. It's the fault of cockroaches that Bush the elder chose Dan Quayle - I laminated that one, as it was from the last strip received at the doorstep of my native home before our big move downstate; a souvenir. Don't we all need a field of dandelions to escape to to ponder the meaning of life? And of course, there was Opus to love the most. I think I like him - and identify with him - because he's always a little out of place, but wide-eyed, receptive and hopeful. He, like me, suffers from foot-in-mouth disease ("Hare Krishnas = Hairy Fishnuts"). He's both a progressive and a traditionalist. He's a romantic at heart, but also a thinker - for real, he is. And he's got a penchant for silly hats. I don't have that penchant, but I have a deep admiration for it. In recent years, I've assumed that if I ever got a tattoo, it would probably be of Opus; maybe of him looking chastened. Of course, I'm not so sure that pudgy, perplexed penguin anywhere on my body would entice my husband's amourous fingertips to continue their tradition of tracing my curves. (That's for you, VirginiaGal ... you can open your eyes, now, or clean up the puke on your chin, depending on your reaction.)

Now he's gone to live in his fantasy. Even with being so far behind in reading the latest strip as to feel estranged, I can't help but feel loss. My pudgy penguin friend won't be there anymore to greet me on Sundays. My Steve-Dallas-doppelganger pal doesn't think this is the last from Breathed. He's sure he'll pull a Michael Jordan in a couple of years and resurrect something from Bloom County to run for a few years again. I'm not as convinced. Though, I'd be thrilled if he did. Certainly, I'll have the books to keep me company (note to self: ask for entire collection for Christmas?), he'll no longer be part of my Sunday. Who'll fill that gap? Boondocks? Our paper hasn't run that strip in about 2 years. Bastards. Doonesbury? Too overtly political - excellent, but I prefer foibled accessibility. Foxtrot? Puh-leeze. Maybe Pearls Before Swine or Non Sequitir. Apparently, Berkeley Breathed is going to focus on writing childrens' books. I guess if/when Honey and I have kids, I can use those as a starter drug to lure the bairn into the church of Bloom County. Our favorite Homer Simpson quote is, "Raising kids is easy. You teach them to hate the things you hate, and what with the internet and all, they practically raise themselves." I don't hate much, but I do hope I can inculcate them to appreciate the pen of Berke Breathed.

Shifting

Change is a comin'. And I'm not just talking about the upcoming election.

I'm tired of my job. I've been there for a little less than two years and I think I burned around mid-September. I approached my boss about two months ago with the possibility of a promotion and a raise and he was receptive, provided I continue to prove myself through the crunch period of a project that culminated the first week of this month. Yesterday we continued the conversation. He thinks I should talk more in depth about raise and title change with my immediate supervisor. I am excited by the prospect, but the truth is, I'm exhausted. I need something different. I do love what I do, though frankly, I've never been excited about where I do it or the products we produce nor the clients for whom we produce them. My tolerance for any job has always been about a year, so I'm overdue. Maybe all I need is a long vacation. Not just a week, but two or three - something that is anathema to Americans and certainly the American work structure.

... and I'm enjoying performing again. Not that I ever really stopped enjoying it. I always love it. But I'm enjoying it differently these days. My degree is in acting and I never really pursued it: I'm not that disciplined or competitive to make a career of it, plus too much of anything, not matter how much I love it, turns me off, for a while at least. I don't think I want to go back to working towards a stage career, maybe not even a local TV career, but I am seeing that I can make money - if not a living - locally by performance gigs in the region. The gist of all this is that I'd like to find some way, ultimately, to create a work/life path whereby I can pursue performance more, make money at that as well, and still continue in my line of work, making money at that and start writing, in earnest, making money at that and ideally, have better control over my time, so that quality time with my family is not just a pie-in-the-sky concept. This is probably impossible, but I figure I have to at least attempt it.

So, I'm beginning to take steps and I've decided to do something each day - no matter how great or small - to nudge the path a little forward. Yesterday, I continued the conversation with my boss about advancement and management projects they're giving me. While that continues me in my current office, it still puts me in a position that allows me to bandy for something better when I look outside the office. Additionally, I started dropping crumbs of discontent, specifically about work/life and work/work balance. (Though I rarely get paid for my performance gigs, I've decided to classify them as work, because they are labor intensive and I'm starting to look for paying gigs more.) Hopefully, it won't come out of the blue later this month when I start talking to him about the possibility of job-share - a conversation I had with a semi-freelance colleague of mine who worked with us through the big nasty project this summer and fall. She wants more hours, more stability and ultimately a full-time staff job. I want fewer hours and, provided I learn how to sell myself and manage my time better (big HA on both), ultimately I imagine freelance to be something I'd like to do. At issue is this: she's been in the industry longer, has a higher title than mine - internally, the title to which I am currently aspiring and which probably most other offices would assign me or hire me on. If we successfully pitch this job-share idea, it will be hard to also successfully pitch me as worthy of the title and/or pay adjustment. Honey and I brainstormed negotiations the other day. We'll see how things go over the weeks and months.

Other things great and small I've been doing lately: submitted my resume to a company for whom I'd like to do no-brain work from home stuff (giving me more time to perform and write); started updating my LinkedIn page and getting in touch with more industry colleagues through that site whom I haven't seen in a while; begun creating a website to showcase my talents and not just have some supremely lame vanity place holder; and I'm trying to get better about updating my resume more frequently and tailoring it to certain positions. I despise touching my resume. Not sure why. I'm sure it has something to do with my reluctance for self-promotion, but I gotta get over that. It's agonizing to overcome that revulsion, by the way.

My goal is to be out of that office, doing something different by January; April at the latest. Let's see if that happens. One thing's for sure: if June, the month where the mega-project crunch traditionally gets into high gear, rolls around and I'm still there, then I've failed.

Update

Thanks to all of you who offered kind thoughts and prayers for my dad's recovery. Mommanator asked for, and it seems only fair that I deliver, an update on Dad's condition.

He had the surgery on the 13th, a Monday, and went home on the 20th, a Monday. I haven't talked to him on the phone since Wednesday, I think, but he sounds better and better every time I talk to him. He got the flowers I ordered him and sounds like he's in good spirits. I don't know how long he'll have to stay home recovering, but I trust all is well.

In general, the folks in ICU were impressed with him and his recovery. For one, they were impressed that a man of his age (62) with his general overall health problems was recovering along at such a good clip, especially for someone who had already had that surgery once before. It's my understanding that we only have 4 or 5 arteries in our heart, but after two triple-bypasses, Dad's heart must now look like it's crawling with worms! Awesome! They were also impressed that his memory was so sharp after all the meds that were being pumped into him and the mega-anesthesia from which he was recovering. One of his nurses, Chris, was stunned that Dad remembered his name. The nurses switched shifts around 7AM/PM. At 7AM, Tuesday, Dad's surgery was only 18 hours old. He should've been foggy on Chris' name by 7PM, but wasn't, nor was he foggy on the other ICU nurse's name. Honey says that's the preacher in him: having to remember the names of strangers after a few casual meetings. Probably, but that skill is also probably helpful in the recovery process - assuming being mentally astute is helpful.

I have to leave in a few minutes for a road trip. The group I perform with is travelling up the coast for a benefit show. Yea! Road trip! But spouses and significant others have to stay home. Grr. Hopefully, Honey will come with me next month when we hit the road again. Anymore, we're having to make time for each other, which seems silly as we sleep next to each other and all! Such is life. Sheesh, what's it gonna be like if we have kids?

Like a Child

Dad had his second open-heart surgery yesterday. For those keeping track at home, his first was in the mid-80s.

We went to church Sunday morning and as the senior minister was out on vacation, Dad was scheduled to preach. It wasn't one of his better or more memorable sermons - it was new, anyway - but I really enjoyed hearing him preach. I always enjoy it, but since I don't live nearby and since he's no longer the senior minister, hearing him preach is always a treat. It was good to see some folks there that I hadn't seen for a few years. People offered their prayers; one of Dad's parishoners stopped by their house yesterday afternoon specifically to pray with us. As I don't know her, I didn't know what to think of it. Her prayer though was really sweet and comforting. She referred to Dad, in her prayer, as a man with a heart as big as all outdoors; and he is one of the very few people I've ever met for whom I think that description is perfect. She also brought my mom a little scarecrow rag doll she picked up at a crafts store. Ultimately, I really appreciated her visit.

Mom had been tearing and crying a little here and there all Sunday. I had been playing the supportive daughter, there to cheer on Dad and comfort Mom. I was definitely worried, but I wasn't letting myself show it. I had actually convinced myself that I was okay, that I had my worries in check. I suppressed my own emotions so much I almost snowed myself over. Almost. Before I went to sleep Sunday night, it all came out. I cried and cried and let myself be scared and just let it out to God telling him how scared I was and how worried I was. All my doubts and fears. I'm not sure I'd talked that candidly to God in a long, long time. Years maybe. In crying and reaching out, I discovered I suppress a lot of my negative emotions. Or I have been in recent years. It felt genuinely good to weep and genuinely good to just get candid with God.

This was different from his first triple by-pass. I didn't go with him to the hospital on the day of the surgery the first time. I was eight. My brother and I stayed the night with my mom's baby brother and his wife. They were so cool when we were kids, simply because they were young. I remember my uncle gave me an Apple computer t-shirt with the colored apple logo on it. It was sized for an adult male, so it swallowed me up, but I wore as a night shirt. We didn't get to see Dad for a day or two after the surgery. When we finally went to the hospital, my mom warned us to be gentle and not too loud because he was trying to recover. I remember walking into his room and him standing up from the edge of his bed, wearing a green bathrobe, and seeing the stitches on his left shin. That's where the doctor had removed his leg veins, which were transplanted to his heart to replace (or by-pass?) the old clogged arteries. But to my eight-year-old eyes, the stitching was sinister. Had the surgeon made a Frankenstein monster out of my dad? It sure looked like it! He opened his arms wide to receive hugs from us, and I delivered, cautiously, in case he was a Frankenstein monster and tried to kill us suddenly. During the nights he was in the hospital, my brother and I slept with mom in their bed. It felt good to all sleep together when we all felt so sad and scared.


Sunday night, as I hunched on my parents' guest bed, crying and clutching a teddy bear mom had bought as a stage prop for a one-act she directed when she taught high school in West Texas, I realized I felt just as scared and vulnerable as I did when I was eight. Not only that, I wish I had the protections provided me when I was eight. When I was eight, I didn't have to wake at some ungodly hour to go with Dad to the hospital for check in and surgery prep. When I was eight, I didn't have to watch as they wheeled Dad away into surgery. When I was eight, I didn't have to wait for hours in a waiting room, anticipating each visit from the nurse. When I was eight, though I've always feared losing my parents, I think I was maybe less afraid of losing my dad than I am now. ... no, I've always been exactly as afraid of losing him as I am now.

We were very fortunate to be surrounded by friends and family yesterday. Dad's boss, the senior minister at his church, arrived at the hospital around 5:50, when we were arriving and stayed throughout the whole procedure until we got the all-clear, around 1:30 yesterday afternoon. I didn't know him well, but got to know him better; he's a nice guy and I can see why my family likes him. My uncle who lives in the Dallas area was down for a 6-month check up from his oncologist at a nearby hospital. (He's been cancer-free for years now, but still has to get the official thumbs up every 6 months.) He stopped in for a while, between appointments, to sit with us. We made waiting-room friends with a Muslim family who were awaiting news about their brother. One of his sisters - the one who wore a scarf and traditional clothes - had a chain of prayer beads that reminded me of a rosary. Though I cherish the iconoclasm of the strain of protestantism in which I was raised, sometimes I wish we had retained traditions like that from our Catholic forebears. We're 3-D beings, having something tactile to cling to doesn't have to be idolatry. But I digress. Other friends from my parents' church stopped by to check in. A little after 2, about 45 minutes to an hour after surgery, Mom and I were allowed to visit him in the ICU recovery room. Poor guy was so far whacked on anesthesia, he barely opened one eye. Mom held his hand and talked to him for a few minutes and then we both said goodbye.

Mom had to return home around 4 to meet with a repairman about some light fixes to the house. There's still a lot of Ike debris around the city: tarps on roofs, tons of tree branches gathered here and there; signs knocked off. My brother arrived in time for the 5PM visitor period. Before we went in, I warned him that a few hours earlier, Dad looked like a coma patient and he had tubes coming out of him and he was pasty white and cold. He nodded. We're grown ups. We can handle seeing our dad look like that right? HA! Immediately, we both started tearing up. By this time, Dad was more responsive. He couldn't speak with the tube in his mouth, but at least his eyes were open and he could communicate non-verbally. "Blink if you know we're here, Dad," my brother said. He blinked. "Blink twice if you're still going to vote for Obama," I requested. He blinked twice of course. My brother and I did what we always do when we're scared or sad, we cracked wise. I think Dad appreciated it because we could see him sort of turn up the corners of his mouth in an attempted grin. I figured out that he had an itch on his right arm, so my brother scratched it. "There are so many tubes coming out of you, you look like a cow being milked!" my brother told him. Immediately, I SO wanted to say, "Dad! Be careful! Soylent Green! It's made of PEOPLE!" But everyone else in the recovery room was so quiet. We were the only ones really talking aloud. Other family members just hovered over their loved ones. Thankfully, Dad wasn't the worst looking. I actually feel sorry for Dad in that hall. Not just because he's uncomfortable, but because he's having to share space with people who really do look a lot worse off than him, right now.

After our visit yesterday afternoon, my brother broke down in the hall outside ICU recovery. I held him and let him cry on my shoulder and let myself cry on his. Seeing Dad as vulnerable as that exposed all our vulnerabilities. Again, I was grateful that when I was a child, I was protected from that.

Mom visited him this morning. He's still in ICU recovery, but he's sitting up, the tube is out of his mouth, and he's talking. It takes forever for anesthesia to fully wear off, so he'd forgotten that we visited yesterday, but that's fine. The fact that he went from droopy-tongue coma to Diving Bell and the Butterfly messaging within a couple of hours yesterday to sitting up and talking this morning is really, really encouraging to me. Bro will be coming by in about 15 minutes to pick me up to hang out before we visit him at 5. Dad will probably be moved out of recovery and into a room tomorrow. That will be a good thing, as the poor man needs a window, and we won't have as restrictive visiting times. I leave tomorrow morning, so I'll probably say goodbye to him tonight as the 8 o'clock visitation ends. Which sucks. I'd much rather get to say goodbye to him in his own room, or at home, but I'll take what I can get.

I waffled a bit on whether or not to come down for this. They don't "need" me. Technically, there's nothing I can do to help the situation. And, selfishly, I'm scared. But in retrospect, I'm terribly glad I did. A triple by-pass surgery is nothing to be trifled with and a second one, even less so. I think it was heartening for him to see me in his time of need. Maybe I also needed to come down, to expose myself to my own fears and become a little girl again. That wouldn't've happened had I stayed home.

Take a deep breath

After my freakout dream last week, and the subsequent slump I fell into later in the week, I was, according to my loving spouse, intolerable. Greeaaat. Luckily, a weekend of rehearsals and dinner with friends proved a good salve, I think. I'm still stressed out about work and life and balancing the two, but I suspect I'm back to being tolerable. Until I'm delightful again, I'll take tolerable.

So, this week, I've been trying to keep my eyes open to little blessings and inspirations. Always in the spirit of Clare. Here are some that I found that have made me smile, and feel good, in no particular order.

Honey, spotted a postcard from last week's Post Secret. It said "Nutella turns me on." He looked over at me. "Did you send this in?" I didn't. But we both know I may as well have.

Hearing The Beatles' Revolution this morning on the drive in to work. I almost changed the channel. I know this song. Frakkin' Nike used it to hawk overpriced shoes. Why hear it again for the umpteenth time on a station aimed at my parents? But I listened anyway with newer ears. It gave me a charge to keep on keepin' on ("Don't you know it's gonna be alright?"). And for some reason it seemed fitting today, the 45th anniversary of my childhood hero's seminal speech, the same day that Barack Obama, heir to that dream (though, I suppose we're all heirs), accepts his nomination as the Democratic candidate for President. My God, I'm ready for this revolution. Please let it work.

Walking to grab lunch after a morning rain, today. Seeing droplets clinging to the leaves of trees and their soggy blossoms. Feeling content in the saturated colors around me, in the soppy creation.

Movie Monday

YOUNG AT HEART


I've seen this trailer at least 3 or 4 times in the last two months. I don't know if it's in my area yet (it's theatrical release is currently limited). That means it'll probably be a Netflix rental for me. But I am eager to see this. How much fun to have old people sing music beyond their generation; how challenging and life-affirming. I can't watch this trailer without crying - so I know I'll need to have a kleenex box handy when I do see it.

The video below is of a member of that group singing Coldplay's "Fix You." That song is one I like to play when I need a want to be swallowed by a warm blanket and need a catharsis. I heard this version yesterday on NPR. He's not in the theatrical documentary. This singer breathes with the aid of an oxygen machine. According to the youtube summary, this was to be a duet, but his partner died leading up to this performance. If you don't at least fight back tears, you may have no soul.

Fred Knittle singing "Fix You"


In other news, we saw I Am Legend this weekend. It's one of those movies I'm sure I'll eventually forget. Nonetheless, it filled the purpose we had for it: mindless scariness. If you have any desire to see it, note there are spoilers below.

What I liked:

• good, faithful, happy dog;
• monsters around the corner - made me scream even when I knew it was coming
• Will Smith - c'mon! he's like a high school buddy by now
• that the cure for cancer turns those few it doesn't kill into vampires
• Emma Thompson's cameo at the top of the movie
• deer hunting in Manhattan
• Manhattan being reclaimed by nature; reminded me to add that book that that guy wrote about what Earth would look like if we were to vanish today to my Amazon list. What's that book called again? Anyone?
  

What I didn't like:

• dog got infected, had to be put down (screw you, screenwriter!)
• that his family is killed in front of him
• that a soldier utters famous last words before they die: "Don't worry, colonel, I'll guard them with my life," or something to that effect. (screw you, screenwriter!)
  
• that it took a successful medical trial of a vaccine on 10,009 humans to decide they had the cure for cancer, but the successful trial of the anti-vampire vaccine on only ONE human to decide he had a cure for vampirism. Even I know that's bad science.
• the underdeveloped butterfly as metaphor theme
• the pedestrian choice of a butterfly as metaphor
• that according to the posters still up in Times Square at the time of the outbreak, Legally Blonde is still on broadway at Christmastime 2009

I'm hoping to see my girlfriend Tina Fey's newest, Baby Mama, next weekend:

I loved Mean Girls and 30 Rock is 'bout the best thing on network TV these days, so I can't wait for this!

Got any other movie-night suggestions for next week?