Texas Conflagration

West Texas is ablaze right now. Several parts of West Texas are, actually. It's been pretty heavy on my heart and foremost in my mind the last few days.

One massive fire this past weekend threatened my hometown, and might still be threatening it, frankly. It burned through a nearby town, where I currently have at least one friend living, and where a few friends from my youth lived. About 70 homes and structures were destroyed. I still need to get in touch with a friend of mine to check on her family's ranch. Actually, I should ask two of my friends about their families' ranches, now that I think of it. The town that burned was evacuated, and luckily, no one died, but it's still distressing. My town and another neighboring town were on alert. Sunday afternoon, a friend posted a photo of what the blaze looked like in the wee hours of the morning, from my town, facing the burning town. Scary as shit, to see the mountains silhoutted at night in a halo of orange. It looks like the forestry service has finally managed to get some of the blaze under control. But for about two days, the local NPR station was reporting on Facebook and Twitter that the fire was 0% contained. To make matters worse, the wind gusts were massive: 50 - 60 mph. That's pretty standard for a West Texas Spring - especially in the Panhandle; more on that later - but the worst part of it was not only was it spreading the fire like, well, wildfire, it was too gusty for emergency helicopters to swoop in and douse the flames with retardant.

The same friend that posted the photo of the fire at night, posted a video this morning, edited by a local photographer who captured images in the fire's wake. It's utterly sad. There are homes smoldering - one of which looks very similar to the house some good friends grew up in; I need to contact them - charred land, flames spreading in lines and independently, and in two brief consecutive shots, dead animals. Horses. One apparently dead from inhalation, the other charred. I read in an article on the Statesman (or was it MSNBC?) that a local official talked about seeing horses on fire. I'm sure many cattle were burned, too. I really feel for those animals and for their ranchers. Horses are just magnificent creatures anyway, but I remember how the rancher kids I went to school with loved their animals. Even if the cows and sheep were reared to be slaughtered, no one wants to see their livestock suffer. They're still cared for and treasured, as creatures. In the video notes, the photographer said there were many, many animal carcasses, he actually left most of them out of his video. In one shot, there's a wild turkey running down the road, while a football field away, the hills are burning. Smoke laces throughout the hills and it's amazing to me that anyone would know which direction the fire is coming from. Presumably, you probably wouldn't. My friend who currently lives in the hardest hit town was able to return to her home yesterday. Her house was spared, thankfully. I've been thinking a lot about them. Not just because they live there, but because her husband is a minister and a volunteer fire fighter. So he's got double duty: fight the flames, comfort the afflicted.

In addition to my teenage stomping grounds burning, there is an equally large fire tearing up the Panhandle. The last I read, two towns were threatened: both towns in which I have family members. One of which is where my grandparents are buried. I haven't heard from my family up there, nor have I read any reports yet about how that fire is going. Just suffice it to say, I'm very worried. I don't want to see my family harmed or their homes - including the one my dad grew up in - destroyed.

It's not like Texas - West Texas, in particular - is unaccustomed to wildfires. I remember, when we lived in Southwest Texas, each year, it seemed, wildfires would rage south, near the border, but none ever threatened us. We kept an ear out, but they never got close to us. And it wasn't uncommon to see a grassfire burning a ways off the road as we drove from town to town. I think this year has been particularly dry, though. There are several big fires going throughout the state right now. The biggest and nastiest just happen to be in West Texas. The last I checked, there was no rain in the foreseeable forecast. At least not for the SW Texas area. Which sucks. The good news is that the winds have died down, and the big town-destroying fire is partially contained. I just read of a new one, about a mile north of my town which is also large and currently un-contained. I don't wish I were there right now, but I do wish I could hug everyone affected by the fires right now. I can't imagine their anxiety.

Sorry for the bummer post, and for the stream of consciousness style writing. (More SoC than usual, anyway.) We still need to donate to relief for the Japan earthquake, but I guess we'll add the people of West Texas to our donation list. I think we'll start here: www.arcswtx.org. It looks like you can donate to Japan relief, too. So: two birds with one stone, eh?! Sigh.

Sibling left behind

I just finished watching The Kids Are All Right. As movies go, it's okay. Not worth the Oscar nomination, but it was ... alright.

The final scene throttled me. It had nothing to do with the relationship between the mothers - which had been damaged - nor between the mothers and their daughter. It was between the younger brother and the sister going off to college. "It's going to be weird not having you around," he said. It was not entirely a throw-away line, but not a line of great heft in the grand scheme of the movie.

A pit formed in my gut and I almost started crying. Suddenly, for the first time ever, I had immense sorrow for my little brother and what he must have felt when I left for college. He was left alone with Mom and Dad for the first time in his life. When he had a shitty day and couldn't share the details with our parents, the only family member who he could turn to in the moment was no longer there. His most important peer relative wasn't there for him anymore. He must have felt lonely at the beginning. Especially since my leaving for college coincided with my family moving to another city altogether where he had to build a base of friends from scratch. Ugh. Poor kid.

I'd never really thought of how it must have felt for him because I'd never confronted it. I feel pretty strongly that people should take time in their lives to leave the confines of their family unit and develop their own interests; that it's important to one's own identity. I always looked at my personal growth experiences from, well, my point of view. It never really occurred to me how they made people other than my parents feel. Not that I necessarily would have altered direction had I sensed the loneliness that my brother probably felt - heck, he, almost more than anyone, has always been very encouraging of me pursuing my own "thing"! - but I just wish I would've had the maturity and empathy to see from his point of view, when I was 18 and leaving home. I wish I would've had them to see from his point of view as an adult.

Part of the reason I was blind to his feelings - assuming they were what I think they were - was because I have no notion of what it's like to have an older sibling. I'm the oldest. I turned to my little brother for love and support when we were growing up, but I didn't look to him for guidance, per se. That's still the case, today, for the most part. I think he probably sought that from me, because I was older. I was the buffer between him and my parents: the one that would spout "wisdom," but without the threat of punishment and with softer, or no, judgment than what my parents would've doled out. I got none of that. If I needed family guidance, I got it from Mom and Dad and if I was judged, I was judged. Because I never had that buffer, it never occurred to me that other people have it and that they might miss it. You don't know to miss what you never had.

This realization takes on more resonance for me right now, because I've had a very emotionally rocky year with my brother. There has been an (avoidable) occurrence that has put more strain on our relationship than anything ever before. We're handling it like grown-ups (I think), but it's been tremendously painful for me, and I'm pretty sure, for him, too. I don't know that the turbulence is over. In fact, in some ways, recent circumstances have made things more emotionally complicated (on my end, at least). I'm carrying a ton of unresolved pain and I worry that if I tell him exactly how agonized I am, then it'll just push him away; and then I worry that if I don't tell him how crushed I am, then he'll just drift farther away. Either scenario seems horrible to me and I effectively lose my brother, one of my top 5 favorite people on the planet.

For now, I'm keeping my mouth shut and hoping we can just work through this and all the hurt will eventually scab over and we can start anew, as it were. Imagining his grief at my leaving the house is good for me. Not out of schadenfreude or anything, but because it helps me think of ways I can relate to him, better. And hopefully heal.

photo courtesy ToobyDoo, Flickr Creative Commons

Tension Makes a Tangle

Twenty-six days since my last post. I'm improving!

Recently, Honey shared with me a link to a program that would allow us to seal in today's college tuition prices for Shortcake's future use. In other words, we could pay X amount each month for a total of Y amount, which would be honored at up to 270 universities around the U.S. - including our alma mater - in 2028, when she starts college. We figure in 18 years, the program will expand to include more than just 270; but for now, we're pleased that it includes our alma mater, MIT, Stanford and plenty of other recognizable, "good" schools. At our present income, the monthly amount we'd need to deposit for the program is not really do-able. This is something that I want to look into further and might likely be the best idea for college savings for Shortcake. But I'll be honest, I worry that discussing how to save for her will lead to a conversation I'm not sure how to have. Carrying my economic weight.

The underlying topics of this conversation, as I see it applying to me: obligation and role-modeling.

Let's begin with the obvious, obligation. I have a child now. I am no longer the center of my own universe, nor is my husband the center of his own. (Well, when we decided to marry, we combined orbits around a collective of two, so we haven't been the centers of our universes for several years.) Now, the focus of our orbit is around this little girl and any of her future siblings, and it is a vital focus. So that means every decision we make, and action we take, needs to be done for the good of the family, and more specifically, the good of her. Wanna move to Ireland? Will that be good for the unit? Good for her? Maybe. Maybe not. So, it seems like the logical response should be: Molly should get a job outside the house. It is her obligation, if she wants her child to attend college. And don't be so selfish, Molly - your husband needs someone to lighten his load. Get over yourself! What makes you so special that you don't have to get a hair cut and get a real job?

And this is where I begin to falter. I'm not sure I'm ready to re-enter the full-time workforce, yet. I'm not sure I ever want to. Let's get the selfish reasons out of the way, first: I enjoy caring for our daughter. I love it. Even when it's at its most annoying,caring for our daughter is still more rewarding than when outside work is least annoying. I enjoy being able to go to the library or go grocery shopping during the day, or take the dog for a walk in the sunlight, or go on an audition. Though mothering doesn't let me get as much done as I'd like to do on any given day, I like the weekly flexibility it offers. An economic reason I'm reluctant to return: childcare is expensive. The last job I almost took - a contract job that would've lasted a few weeks - I turned down, because the cost of childcare would've been about 2/3 my paycheck. Yes, 1/3 is better than 0/3, but it's hard to argue that I should leave our child in the care of a virtual stranger to bring home 1/3 of a paycheck working on a project that I'm actually not enthusiastic about. I've been in the workforce for about a decade or so, and my attempts to climb beyond the bottom rung have met terribly limited success. So, I'm not entirely sure I qualify for many higher-paying jobs to offset the cost of childcare, anyway. Finally, a sentimental reason: I don't want to become my mother.

My mom has worked outside the house in some form or fashion since she was a teenager. In the 34 years I've been around and have seen her work, I've rarely seen her content with her work situation. She usually resents her jobs. She enjoys being employed. Mom is one of those people who wouldn't know how to fill the time if she didn't have a job. She'd be bored and confused. But she's always ended up resenting her job.

And this is where the role-modeling conflicts with my sense of obligation.

I was lucky enough to see my dad switch career paths and find his calling. Ministry is difficult (financially, emotionally, spiritually), but it's what he's best at and what he loves, passionately. Mom never really found that path of passion. She did what she had to do to pay the bills when they were newlyweds, up through my tween years: working for the state in a mind-numbing bureaucracy. She despised it. When she decided she wanted to teach, she was thrilled to pursue it. She learned, after a few years, that students don't give a shit about learning, administrators' support of teachers is fickle and parents are either disengaged or overly protective. She hates it - or, at least, she's rarely had anything good to say about it in the last 15 years. I'm certain some of my mom's resentment isn't so much at her job as it is at the fact that she's always had to be the one whose salary is most stable, and often larger. Try raising a family of four, plus a dog, on $12k a year, the take-home my dad had when I was a teenager, and you can see how Mom was obligated to stick out a job she didn't like.

My goal has always been to provide our children - but particularly any daughters - with a mother who is happy with her career. Whose job is, if not her passion, then at minimum, a source of pride and joy. It has always made me terribly sad that my mom has never been happy in her career choices. The last thing I want my daughter to see, when she sees me, is a woman who lives with personal or professional resentment.

Of course, I realize I have to correct an earlier assertion. My mom did once have a job she was passionate about. She was a feature writer at our town's daily newspaper. Knowing her as I do, these days, I think that was the best job for her personality. It fits her organizational style, her personal curiosity and her writing style. She gave it up about a year or two before I was born. I never knew why until this last year.

She gave it up because she and Dad wanted to have a child. Dad, newly ordained, was chaplaining here and there, and subbing in pulpits, as well as in the local school system as a teacher. His income wasn't steady or sufficient. Mom's was. However, in the mid-70s, if you wanted to keep your job, as a woman, you didn't get pregnant. The only employer who wouldn't fire you if you were pregnant back then, that she knew of - and that would pay a better salary than she made - was the State of Texas. She returned to work six weeks after I was born. Six. Weeks. That's the amount of time they gave her. For those of you who've had kids, you know your body is just then starting to heal, and the baby, who still needs to eat every 2 - 3 hours, is entering the 6-week fussy phase and needs Mommy. Luckily, Dad was unemployed at the time, so he provided the childcare for a few months. Within a year, he got a full-time chaplain job at a local hospital and they had an employee nursery.

And this takes me back to work. I could be wrong, but I suspect that having me at home is an emotionally beneficial arrangement for us as a family, right now. I have had a few auditions (a couple this week, actually) for paying gigs; I'm exploring a paying gig for Shortcake and I'm not without options in terms of working from home or working on occasion. What I need to do right now is decide how committed I am to not subsuming. This would mean more self-promotion on my part, something I am loathe to do. I truly hate tooting my own horn, particularly as a means to an end. It might also mean a little more flexibility on my family's part. Currently, I try not to be out more than 1 - 2 nights a week, for rehearsal and performance. But I could (and would like to) make myself more available for improv teaching opportunities, some of which would be at night. The pay would be a pittance, but it would be pay doing what I enjoy and I'd be getting better at it for future work.

I really do appreciate all Mom has done for us. I just mourn that she decided to sacrifice her personal, professional happiness in the process. For most of human history, women have been the ones who've had to subsume their dreams for the expectations of society, or their subsume their happiness for the good of the family. Though Mom had more options than her mother, and she pursued them, she still subsumed both her dreams and happiness, ultimately. I live in an era when I have more options than my mother had. My dreams are fluid, as is my happiness, but I don't want to subsume them. I want Shortcake to see a woman who is happy with her professional choices, whatever they look like. ... I'm just living in tension about this, right now.

Reluctant Thanks ... and all the guilt.

This is what happens when I can't sleep ...

Twenty-five years ago, yesterday, the father of one of my favorite childhood friends was murdered. He was a cop, just off duty, on his way home. He spotted an accident, moments after it occurred, and he pulled over to help. The driver and passenger were out of the car, and as he approached them, asking if they were okay, one of them shot him in the chest. What he didn't know was that they were fleeing a robbery. They'd just knocked over a convenience store, if I remember correctly. They panicked when they saw a police officer approaching. The perpetrators were caught within a few hours. They were convicted and a few years later, one of them was executed. (The trigger-man, I always presumed, though I don't recall.) This memory is a big, multi-faceted one for me. One of the facets of that memory for me was that he died on Veterans' Day and he was a VietNam vet.

Yesterday, when many people had the day off, and everyone was thanking vets on Facebook and Twitter and in memorial services for their service, my thoughts turned to my friend's dad. He died serving his fellow man. Not as a soldier, not even as a cop (since he was off-duty), but as a concerned citizen. We thank his military service with Veterans' Day, but how do we thank his civil service or his citizen service?

Veterans' Day is frequently a hard one for me to wrap around. Probably largely because I carry a lot of ambivalence about the role of our military in our country. It's also probably hard for me to process Veterans' Day during wartime. And, I guess, I'm a little annoyed that we don't really publicly recognize the service of others in our society with even half as much appreciation. When is Teachers' Day, Clergy Day, EMT Day, Coal-miners' Day, Water Sanitation Provider Day? These people rarely die in the execution of their jobs, but they educate you, comfort you, keep your heart pumping, keep your house fueled and keep you from getting cholera on a daily basis. And each comes with its unique set of skills and training. Where are their honors in rhetoric and mall sales?

When I consider the training that goes into being a military service member and the discipline that it instills, I'm nothing less than impressed. When I consider the time away from family that we demand of our service members in the service of military goals, I am sympathetic. When I consider the physical conditions our service members endure during war time and other times of conflict - and I suspect my imagination is a paltry shadow of what they actually endure - I am, indeed, grateful that they are trained and willing to go through that on my behalf. (Seriously. Thank you!) And when a military service member dies in battle, or while serving, I am humbled and thankful for their sacrifice. Because of all this, my gratefulness to our veterans is genuine. Heck, even as I write it, I become more acutely aware of how grateful I am for those who served and have served in the military. Wow. Thank you, Vets!

I suppose my ambivalence, then, is about how and when to say thank you, and why. A few years ago, I was on a bus when a man in Army fatigues stepped on. A mother, with a toddler, instructed her child to say "Thank You" to him for his service. He accepted the thanks. But I couldn't help wonder: she doesn't know what this guy's career has looked like; she doesn't know if this guy has seen frontline, or even backline combat; even if he has, she doesn't know exactly how he comported himself there. While I am grateful to our military service members as a collective, I don't know how each of them behaves as an individual representing me. Though, I think it's fair to say that the vaaaaassst majority of military service members behave honorably, and within codes of conduct, how do I know a random stranger in uniform is the paragon of integrity?

My favorite childhood friend's father was a policeman who died helping people. And I trust that the vast majority of police officers in this country honor their badges and their communities. However, a dear, dear friend of mine was also raped by a cop. He did time and lost his badge, thankfully. But I'm sure there are other crooked cops out there who get away with this crap, frequently. I am terribly thankful to our police force for keeping us safe. Seriously, as much as I hate getting tickets, I am so grateful that there are people who enforce the rule of law. But do we teach our children to say thank you to police officers for their service when we just see them randomly on the street? Maybe some do, but I don't know that it's as broadly accepted a convention as thanking random military service members. And if we do, then when we thank the random cop, are we thanking one like my friend's dad, or are we thanking one like my friend's rapist? We never know a stranger's back story or past deeds. Thanking a stranger, based on his or her profession seems kind of hollow to me. (And again, my annoyance: no stranger has ever thanked my mom for being a teacher, nor my dad for being clergy, and I wouldn't be surprised if no stranger has ever randomly thanked my mother in law for being a nurse.)

I consider myself a patriot: I dutifully pay my taxes, without whining (I'm actually okay with paying for services my government provides - like roads, libraries and the military!) I vote in most elections, I even contact my representatives when an issue moves me enough. But I don't thank random strangers for their military service, just because I see evidence of their service. I feel guilty about lacking that impulse. Like I'm an ungrateful, bad citizen.

Honey served in the military for several years, and occasionally, when someone learns of this, they might thank him. The last time I remember someone thanking him was at a wedding last year. It was a table-mate; someone we didn't know and were just chit-chatting with. I later asked Honey what he thinks when strangers thank him for his service. He always graciously accepts the thanks, but he's ambivalent, too. He told me he's known plenty of people in the service who are assholes, who do the bare minimum, who you wouldn't necessarily be proud to have defending you, if you really knew them, so he kind of sees the random thanks as less meaningful. Along the same lines, a friend of mine who spent the 80s and 90s in the Air Force addressed the thanks he got on Facebook with self-deprecating humor: All I really did was drink a lot and learn to swear in foreign languages. I'm sure he did more than that, but the point I take from that is that not everyone in uniform saw combat and defended in the sense that we like to imagine. More significant to me was the rest of his response: But thanks. It means a lot. I haven't asked him, so I don't know, but I took this to mean that the thanks is meaningful because it comes from a friend. This isn't an apples to apples comparison, but random people on the street have congratulated me on having a new baby. I accept it, but their congratulations means far less to me than that of friends and family.

I should divorce my dislike of thanking random vets for their service from my desire to thank the collective. It's not fair to my friends and family who have served honorably in whatever capacity. I am a "partly cloudy patriot." I'll admit it. (Incidentally, if anyone wants to get me that book - or that other newer one Sarah Vowell wrote - you'd definitely get a huge thanks from me!) Maybe it's my tendency to be contrary, but almost any time the masses wave flags, wax sentimental and hum America the Beautiful, I kind of crinkle up my nose and think, "really?" Unless it's the Fourth of July, because, then, dammit: citizen, soldier, immigrant or fan, America is the best damn country on the planet! But I digress. Though few read this blog (largely because they don't know about it), I'll use this space to thank my friends and family who have served, using initials and pseudonyms, because you know how I am about my anonymity.

Thank you: Honey, Grandfather SM (WWII, Pacific), Honey's grandfather LM (WWII, Europe, Africa), Honey's other grandfather RF (WWII, Europe), Cousin PH, Cousin MG (OEF), Uncle TM, Uncle RAM, Uncle CR, Uncle BP, SB, SW, JM** (VietNam), AB (Afghanistan), PB, JP, RGR ... and probably lots of other friends I'm having difficulty recalling in the twilight of dawn after a mostly sleepless nights. You're all awesome and I'm relieved to have had you, specifically, guarding us.

** and thanks for coaching my tee-ball team when I was five and fathering my friends. They miss you.

How do I Shake This?

If anyone is reading this, I'm astounded. Not just because I've not posted in 6 months (holy cow, has it been that long?), but because I've fallen so far behind in my reading of others' blogs that I can't imagine anyone knows I'm still around. (Also, I feel bad for not reading your blogs.) Nevertheless, I'm blogging tonight, largely because I just want to post something. Anything.

In the last 6 months, there have been many topics that have drifted past my purview and I've thought, "Oh! I want to blog on that, this week!" And then it doesn't happen. Baby. Other work. Exhaustion. Vacation. You name it. But one item has really kind of stuck in my craw in the last 6 months and I don't know how to blog about it, much less get over it. It's hard to blog about this "it" because of personal sensitivities ... though I blog mostly anonymously, I make it a personal policy not to write anything here that I wouldn't feel comfortable addressing with the subject of my post, in person. It's hard to get over this "it" because I'm very deeply hurt. Crushed, really. And angry.

I'll just say this: the phenomenon I described in this post, about feeling left out of my broader family, is beginning to feel amplified. And it is not accidental; it is somewhat by design. And that is generally not part of my personality, to deliberately alienate someone - particularly family. Heck, sometimes I find myself being cold to someone because they irritate or upset me for whatever reason and I try very, very hard to be more congenial and kind. (I don't know how evident that is, but I do try.) And deliberate punishment is really not part of my family's behavior either, so I find the whole activity rather confusing, and galling.

This tacit tiff - it's very passive-agressive behavior - that I was a part of and didn't know I was a part of until much later, is beginning to cool. Once I learned of my offense, I immediately moved to making amends. And, to my family member's credit, he/she is moving to making amends with me, too. But it's on his/her terms, not mine. Not that it has to be on mine, but we've each offended, and it would be nice if some reconciliation was on some of my terms, too. What hurts most is that I wasn't even aware I had offended, and instead of addressing the situation with me, this family member decided to spite me. To deliberately hurt me - punish me - without giving me the benefit of knowing what I had done so I could address it, first. He/She decided to let me twist in pain wondering why I was made to suffer. It's just so little and juvenile.

And I want to get over it. I really do. Really. Truly. I do. Because I love my family - all of them. I want to have good times. I'm just not sure how, right now. I think the fact that we're making healing movements toward eachother is a good sign. I just really wish I knew how to stop hurting. I don't know that it will come in any way other than a specific apology from this person. I'm thinking I might apologize for the accidental gaffe on my part that inspired the hurtful behavior. At least that way, it's on the table. And I can have a fully clean conscience. And just hope that the other person decides to apologize for the hurt he/she caused. I think that's what I'll do. I won't count on a reciprocal apology. In my experience, if someone is going to deliberately hurt you, they probably think they've got the moral authority to do so, and apology is not a priority. But I never want to be the person who does the selfish thing. I always want to be the peacemaker; the one who does the right thing. A stubborn pride doesn't keep you warm at night. A clean conscience does.

Challenge to a true Thanks-giving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Largely, I think, because it is what I so want Christmas to be: a holiday centered on a feast, on gratitude, on family and friends and spending time with one another, undistracted by notions of material obligations. Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving an official national holiday during the Civil War because he felt it necessary that we should pause and give thanks for our many blessings even among (maybe especially among) our worst trials. That there are always things to be grateful for. This Thanksgiving is challenging me to actually focus on thanks; to live up to Mr. Lincoln's original intent.

This year I will be spending Thanksgiving in my hospital bed, with my wonderful husband by my side. I won't get to overstuff myself and then go sprawl on the couch and shoot the breeze with whatever family I'm surrounded by. I won't have my favorite pecan pie; the only dessert I anticipate is the pumpkin mousse the hospital will provide. Honey has the turkey ready and will bring it and some sides from Boston Market. We'll probably play a game on my computer and maybe a card game; watch a movie and just hang out. Sadness washed over me this afternoon around dinner time as my hospital dinner sat before me. All my family will be spending Thanksgiving surrounded by loved ones, except for me. My brother with his in-laws, my parents with aunts and uncles, my in-laws with Honey's extended family at a wedding in Texas we couldn't attend. And I haven't even left my side of the room since last Thursday. Last Thursday since I've crossed this curtain. I've had exceptionally high spirits since I arrived here 10 or 11 days ago, but they suddenly began to crumble when I pondered how different this Thanksgiving would be from all the others in my past.

I began to cheer up when Honey came by for his (near) nightly visit. Honestly, he's all I need. And it's only one Thanksgiving. Next Thanksgiving will be completely different. And what an extraordinary opportunity to really think about what I'm thankful for and offer genuine thanks for those blessings. It's better than do what I usually do, which is to give my blessings a perfunctory blip of a thought and then dive into the traditional meal!

So what am I thankful for this year? In no particular order:

• That we are going to have a baby.
• That the complications with this pregnancy have been spotted early enough to mitigate them.
• That we have a delivery plan for this baby in the face of these complications.
• That if, heaven forbid, we have to deliver this baby this week, it is viable and would most likely survive and hopefully, eventually, thrive.
• That I have wonderful doctors.
• That I have a great nursing staff.
• That I have the window side of the hospital room.
• That I have a friendly roommate.
• That we have so many generous and amazing friends who love Honey and me so much.
• That this child will probably be one of the most-loved in history when he or she arrives.
• That I have great health insurance. That I have insurance at all! (Seriously glad for this.)
• That I have, at most, another 7 weeks here. (There are other women on this floor here for far longer.)
• That I live in an area where great health care is available to me.
• That I have a dog at home who loves me.
• That Honey and I have loving families.
• That the baby, by all available standards, is healthy.
• That my health has stabilized.
• That the baby likes to have dance parties in the morning and random parkour practices during the day.
• That I'm just an elevator ride away from delivery if we have a genuine "must do now" emergency.
• That we have clothes for the baby to grow into, at home.
• That we got a dresser for free and a co-sleeper for a steal.
• That, despite my irritations with my job, I know they want to keep me on-tap, even though I don't qualify for FMLA. I feel less in the cold about that.
• That our domestic life is stable, safe and loving. It's easy to take that for granted until you hear the concerns of other women in OB-emergency worried about their partners.
• That I have had good spirits throughout this, so far.
• That I have time to nap during this third trimester when I really need it.
• That I got to have a great, refreshing rehearsal weekend retreat with my fellow performers right before the incident that landed me here.
• And mostly: That I have an incredibly loving and thoughtful husband who lives the definition of standing by your spouse "in sickness" as well as in health. He's had to do it several times in the last few years, and I just pray that I'm as good for him when it's him who needs me, as he has been for me.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

* photo courtesy earlycj5 via Flickr Creative Commons

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.

Thirty-three is the new twenty-t ... aw, who am I kidding?

In the last few days, I've been scanning photos from my senior year of high school onto our family server. I've been knee-deep in nostalgia.

My early teen years were defined by my general social ostracization. As an opinionated, then self-assured, new kid in a small town, the swift, round rejection by my peers was complete by the beginning of 8th grade. But sometime after my junior year, I began to slowly pull myself out of the rubble of my crushed spirit and explore and relish, my own identity. If ever there was a time in my life when I was at the pinnacle of my confidence and receptiveness to new experiences, it was my senior year. Specifically, from November 1993 through September 1994. They were bookends: 1. my first big solo trip that crystallized my sense of self-sufficiency (it was to DC, my then-favorite and highly-romanticized city), and 2. the first stirrings that we may not be able to afford a complete year of college, which began to chip away at that same sense. (In the end, I had to drop out at the semester due to lack of funds.)

That year seems like yesterday. Okay: mostly yesterday. Last week, we'll say. When I was 18, though, my 30s seemed so ridiculously far away. So far away, in fact, that I actually doubted I'd reach them. My inability to imagine myself over 30, and my own ego, led me to believe that like James Dean I'd rock the world with my talent and then meet an untimely death, immortalized forever by a brilliant performance and a fuckin' awesome portrait of some sort, preferably captured by Annie Lebowitz. I would be young forever.

Well, I'm not old. I still feel young. So, I must be young, right?

Not necessarily!

Friday, Honey delivered some news to me that put me back in my chronological place. "I had to visit one of my guys in the hospital, today," he told me as I prepped the salmon for dinner.

"Oh my god! What happened?"

"Heart attack."

"Is he doing okay? One of your older guys?" As if that question had to be asked. Who has a heart attack under the age of 50, anymore?

"He's doing fine. No. He's 36."

36. Let me write that again:

THIRTY-SIX.

I'll be 33, soon. Just five years younger than my father was at his first heart attack. My cholesterol always hovers around - often above - the danger zone. Not good. NOT GOOD! But I'm in decent shape, right? Not the slimmest I've ever been, but still a healthy weight for my height.

"Was he morbidly obese or something?" I implored. (Gotta find something to cling to.)

"No."

I winced. I could feel the grim reaper rest his bony fingers on my shoulder.

"But he's a smoker. And our job is really stressful. And he had a family history ... basically, of all the big indicators, his weight was the only thing that wasn't a factor."

It has been almost six months since I scaled back my work hours to part time. I did it to re-evaluate interests, focus on my chronic health concern and reduce my stress. I put "reduce my stress" at the bottom of list because, while a concern for me, it wasn't the biggest reason I wanted to scale back to part time. However, knowing what I know of my family heart health history, and hearing the story of my husband's young employee, I'm now thinking low-stress should be a key aspect to every job I seek hereafter. Maybe the reduced stress has already been stealthily saving my life.

I'm old enough now to know that my 50s aren't forever away, nor are my 60s or even 70s. My imagination does allow me to see myself older, and my adolescent ego has mellowed. I want to offer my talents and gifts to the world, but I'm happy to let them slowly trickle out. No need for a single, glorious, creative eruption. This means, of course, that I would like to live to a ripe old age and learn and give for years to come. And that means that I need to stop assuming my body will self-repair the way it did when I was 18 ... which was not, despite my grand delusions, last week.

(photo courtesy of flickr.com creative commons. asirap photostream.)

I'm a Wreck Because of a Stupid Wreck

Right now would be a good time for a cry, but I can't quite bring myself to do it. Today sucked. I wish I could say it was a bunch of big, consequential things, but really, it was a bunch of little things that all revolved around a medium-sized thing and aggravated by some other things. Things! Things! Things! ARGH!

To begin with, it was rainy all day. Rain in the winter rarely inspires happiness. I began my day with a visit to my therapist for the first time in months. It was good catching up with her, but visiting reminded me of how in limbo I feel right now and I've got elephants in my room to deal with and the biggest one I really have very little control over and the other two I'm not sure I'm managing well. Basically, it sucked having to confront the uglies.

After therapy, and a light lunch, I headed to an exurb of the city to buy cheap liquor for my husbands' employees. He's a really good boss (IMHO) and gives his employees rum for the holidays each year. I'm happy to play Santa. But it was raining, and though I'm familiar with the route to this banal bedroom community, I hydroplaned instead of turning with the curve of the highway and crashed up on the median, head-on, driving over the reflector. I really think this threw me off all fucking day.
A stupid hydroplaning wreck.

I was rattled and humiliated. As soon as my car came to a stop - which it wasn't doing AT ALL as I applied the brakes - I called Honey. Don't know why; I probably should've called 911, but I was unhurt, the car was out of harms' way of other cars and the airbag didn't even deploy. I was bracing for it to, but it didn't. Fucking wreck. I could see it coming and I tried to stop it and there was little I could do. (How much of a metaphor for my health concerns these days is this, by the way??) I'm just glad I was in the outer lane that bordered the median, otherwise I would've almost certainly hit another car.

I called 411, since I wasn't hurt, but was placed on hold and as soon as I ... wait a second, I should've called 311 in a non-emergency. Shit. I couldn't even remember that. Anyway, as soon as I was hanging up with them to call 911, a fire engine pulled up behind me. The fireguy who looked like a short Dennis Quaid walked me through getting unstuck from the median, inspecting the underside of my car for damage, and refilling oil. I felt like such a dolt. Yeah, I was going too fast in the rain and I've not checked my oil level in months. Ugh. Driving off, I felt a mild tug on the driver's side front wheel, so Honey called to tell me about a nearby garage which was a few blocks from the liquor store.

But still, my plans were thrown off. Instead of getting to the liquor store, getting the rum and returning to do some shopping for Honey and family, as well as some much-needed proofreading, I had to take my car to the shop to make sure I'd survive the ride home. As it was near a mall, I decided to walk up to the mall, in the cold winter rain that turned my umbrella inside out at one point, and do a little shopping there. But I hate shopping malls, as a rule, and particularly during Christmas. I bought a few things for Honey, and then started looking for a new bra for me, but didn't find any in my fantastic new fit-just-for-me size. And I really hate that exurb and that mall. And it blew having to be stuck here when I knew the store I wanted to visit today was no where near this bloody leech-town.

The good news is that, though my front end was indeed thrown significantly out of alignment, the repair was manageable. Less than $100, which I guess is all I can ask for. The liquor store had all the rum I needed and gave me a discount. And I still had time to make more truffles when I got home tonight to bring with me to my show. And Honey, dear, sweet Honey, cleared his schedule for the afternoon and came home early to make sure I was alright.

But this stupid wreck threw off my groove for the whole bloody day. It began to feel like everything I touched broke. Seriously: two items I handled at the mall either broke or somehow didn't work right afterward; as I left for the show tonight, I dropped a glass bottle of tea on the floor as if it were a water wiener(almost shattered, but not quite); and during warm up, I screwed up a song for the team. Yea, me! I was going to have a good show, though. I could feel it. However ... As a whole, our show went well, but I wasn't pleased with my performance. My contribution was good, objectively speaking, but it just didn't feel good to me at all. What sucked worst was that after the show, people were so happy with how well it went and I just felt like I was was this side of awful. Frankly, I fell quickly into Debbie Downer mode and knew I needed to extract myself from people before I could really be a pain in the ass and they'd seek to drown me. So I fled. Not before feeding a few other people some chocolates.

It was such a minor wreck. The kind of thing people would normally blow off after the even. But it jarred me for the entire day. And I really wish I could just cry right now and have it done with, so I can have a good day and a good show tomorrow. Blech! Maybe I'll watch that video on YouTube about the British guys and their pet lion. That makes me cry.

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.

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.

Hurri-update

To the right, there is an image from the Houston Chronicle this week. I believe that's in Orange or Seabrook or some other eastern, coastal Texas town. I think it's AWESOME! Don't you think it looks like some Double Dare physical challenge?

I've been checking in on the Chronicle pretty regularly the last few days, to gather information that my family cannot access. I've been texting them updates about where FEMA has ice and food stations, how much of the metro area has power back, etc, etc, etc. Luckily (miraculously ?), their church has some power, so Mom and Dad have been spending parts of each day there, cooling off and checking email. Mom says they've lucked out in that, since Sunday, they've had at least one warm meal a day - either spaghetti made on a hot plate at church - or lunch at the slowly re-opening restaurants. The rest of their meals are typical hurricane/blizzard fare: tunafish from the can, peanut butter, breakfast bars, etc, etc. The water is still not potable, but at least it's back on.

My brother and his fiancee have skipped most of the misery hanging out in Austin. I guess nothing says "tough aftermath" like a Shiner on the roof-top of Maggie Mae's. But I think they're returning in the next few days. Bro reported that my cousin's wife pulled a 48 hour shift at the hospital for the first part of the storm. By the time she was driving home, she was so frazzled and frustrated by all the debris between the hospital and her house, she had a freakout moment and called my cousin to drive to wherever she was a pick her up. Be nice to your medical residents, people.

Folks are for the most part behaving themselves but they're wary of looters. Houston is equipped with cops who are arrest-happy right now, so I don't know that the citizenry minds that so much as they normally would.

I only lived in Houston for about a year and a half, maybe a little more. I wouldn't call it home, but I certainly have a fond attachment to the city. I never endured any hurricanes or tropical storms. My family has endured the latter more than the former. This is the first direct hurricane hit since they've lived there that I know of. What I'm trying to wrap my head around is what the city must look like right now. At roughly 4 million residents, it's the 4th largest city in the U.S. and it sprawls for-e-ver. And it's so humid. The moisture in the air is always pretty thick - not NOLA thick, but pretty darn close. Mom said the streets looked flat deserted the Sunday after the storm. I'm trying to picture the humming city silenced, dark at night, her downtown streets littered with shards of broken glass and metal scrap, the residential streets impassable because of downed trees. I think it's the dark metropolis that boggles my mind the most. No orange glow domed over the metropolis. In a small town, a dark city isn't as frightening. Comforting, even, maybe. But a sprawling city? I find no comfort in that.

... NOLA. Yeah, those are some people I'm concerned about in Houston these days. Those poor folks: displaced and the lion's share of them are in Houston, now. While the damage in Houston isn't NEARLY as bad as it was in New Orleans, it still must be disconcerting. NPR had a piece this morning about Katrina survivors in Houston now dealing with Ike. It was mostly hopeful, but I felt such a pang of sadness when one woman said that when Ike blew water under her apartment door she got scared; and when she stepped into some flooding in her street, she got a flashback.

I just hope this mess gets cleaned up to soon. I worry for my family. Even restoring power to their neighborhoods would be immeasurably helpful at this juncture.

in vino veritas: I (don't) Like Ike!

I've written several blogposts under the influence of the claret stuff. And tonight is no different. Since this seems to be a sporadic trend with me, I've decided to start placing the caveat in the title: "in vino veritas." (Sidebar: a dear friend of mine, who is frakkin' adorable and lovable when she's drunk told me I'll be a good parent and my first child will be a boy. "In vino veritas," she told me. Sweet doll! I don't care what sex my first kid will be but I'd forgotten that phrase. I'm hijacking it now.)

"I (don't) Like Ike!" This must be a post on Dwight Eisenhower's farewell speech to the nation warning against the military-industrial complex! No. I already (kinda) did that. Though, for more on that, you should rent Why We Fight; the 2005 documentary, not the Capra series. I'm sure the latter is good, the former is really great.

Nein. I mean Ike, the hurricane that hit the shores of my homeland, today. I've been busy, pretty much all day, with performances and rehearsals, so I'd been out of touch with what's been going on on the front doorsteps of my family. I talked to my brother and parents yesterday afternoon to make sure they were prepared. (For those of you just tuning in: they live in Houston.)

After evacuating for Rita, during which the normally 4-hour drive to San Antonio became 12 hours with 2 million of their best friends on the road - all fresh with images of their drowned neighbors just a few hours down I-10 - my family discovered that sometimes sheltering in place isn't the worst idea. Granted Rita was predicted to be a Cat-4 or 5 when the evac notices went out. It was a 2 or 3 when it hit Houston. Nonetheless, this time they all decided to hunker down and ride out Ike at home. As Ike was predicted to be a weak 3 (and wound up being a strong 2) when it hit Houston, and as Houston is not built below sea level, surviving at the mercy of levees, I think they made the right choice. Granted, I suppose we'll see in coming days.

My brother had been off of work since Thursday. Mom and my bro's fiancee, both teachers, had Friday off to prep for the storm. My bro filled up a bathtub. Mom and Dad boarded up the most vulnerable windows in their house (the sunroom) and tucked the grill against the house. Apparently, they don't think the wind can smash a grill into a window. Go figure.

Now my family are all without power. They anticipate this will be the case for at least a few days. Pretty much the entire metro area - 5 million people - are without power. Mom texted to say she feels so estranged from the outside world without access to the Net or national TV. Poor things. My cousin emailed to say that her brother - she, a surrogate sister to me, and her brother a surrogate bro to mine own - who happens to live a few blocks from my own Bro, is at home with the dogs while his wife, a young doctor, is a the hospital on call. He's hunkered down with a bag of chips and two packed pistols. Which cracks my shit up as he's as blue-bleeding liberal as we are. (Of course, in Texas, people aren't afraid of guns. Even bleeding libs might pack - they just want the guns regulated and legally obtained.) The worst part of all this is that Houston is a fucking hot and humid place from about February 20 to November 19. I'm specific, because I remember canvassing for the Sierra club in February of 1995 and praying for God to just please drown me in this sky sweat he created to punish the oil-drillers with. Sheer misery. I now agree with "Dad-0f-the-early 90s" who claimed any place east of the Pecos river was too hot and humid to visit. It's true. So true. Give me 120 degrees in a desert with 2% humidity any day over 72 degrees and 72% humidity. My poor family must be sweating away pounds faster than Richard Simmons right now. Ugh.

Anyway, that's what's on my mind tonight: my brother and his fiancee and their bathtub fountain; my parents and their grill; my cousin protecting his dogs with a couple of guns while his sainted wife delivers babies in the ER and no air conditioning anywhere in the god-forsaken Galveston Bay.

... I suppose I can be grateful that they don't live in Galveston. Knowing my parents, they'd've evacuated. Knowing my brother ...? Well, I'm just grateful he lives more inland!

... just got a phone call from Bro. Apparently, he had a job function in Austin on Monday anyway. So he and my future sister-in-law are high-tailing it inland where there is family to stay with and air-conditioning to relax in.

What's Molly Dreaming Now? Edition 8

I slept harder last night than I had done in relatively recent memory. Here is the journey I took through the sandman's world:

I had dinner with Tina Fey. She and I were eating massive sandwiches and I was talking to her about my recent health issues and how I'm still trying to cope with those, physically and emotionally. The ear she lent me was completely sympathetic. Poor thing was basically my therapist over hoagies.

Then I dreamt that I was at home with Honey, but we were in an apartment from which we would be moving soon. Our apartment looked like a larger version of one of my childhood bedrooms. I ventured into our kitchen and discovered we were hosting a sorority reunion (Kappa something or other), which was particularly interesting since I was never in a sorority and Honey scorns collegiate social fraternities. I didn't mind so much except that they had brought all these fantastic cream puffs, vegetable platters and liquor and it was all off-limits to me. In my own kitchen! They weren't even going to leave any leftovers with us! Ugh. One of the sorority sisters was a girl I went to high school with, Leah. Leah looked fantastic and had a great job and a little daughter and was happy. ... I still just wanted some puff pastries.

Then I was at work. What my job was was not entirely clear, but it did involve rolled fondant and it took for-e-ver! I was chugging along and chugging along and chugging along and when I finally looked at the clock, it was 4AM. I had been at work for 19 hours! The sun was beginning to paint the black sky periwinkle. I decided it was time to go home and sleep for a few hours ... because there would still be work to do in the morning. More fondant to roll, or whatever. And the staff I was working with was still plugging along. No one was quite sure when to leave.

Normally, when I post a dream, I'm a bit befuddled by my dream and want to hear if any readers have any thoughts as to what the dream "means." This time, I have no doubt.

Tuesday night, I had dinner with my best friend from high school, who was in town on business for a few days. She mentioned that some of my quirks reminded her of Liz Lemon, Tina Fey's character on 30 Rock. She agreed with Honey's assessment of me, in an imagined alternate choice-path, living as Liz Lemon. Why the apartment and why the sorority reunion in my kitchen, I still don't know. Why the denial of food? Still unclear to me, but I LOVE food, so maybe I'm feeling deprived of something and it's manifesting itself in my dreams as happy, sweet, puffy food. But I know exactly why I dreamt the third part of my dream: I am working lots of long hours, lately.

We've got a massive project at work, which will churn on for at least another 6 weeks, for which my average day has become 10 to 10.5 hours long, frequently longer. Yesterday was about 11 and a quarter hours, about 11 and 3/4 if you include the time I left my front door to the time I returned. This has been going on since about mid-June and will continue till early October, if I'm lucky. I'm feeling very stressed out; I'm not getting paid any extra and though I've finally been given responsibilities commensurate to my experience and capabilities, as well as delegation authority, my title still languishes in the dusty entry level.

I'm a zombie. I haven't been reading half of the blogs I normally keep up with - not because I'm not interested, but because I'm exhausted. I have to make appointments to leave at a decent hour (6PM) just so I can have a life or get home to feed my dog on time. And even then, it raises the eyebrows of my superiors, like I'm a slacker. I really like what I do but I detest that I can't have dinner with my husband every night, or that if friends want to meet at 7 for drinks I can't promise I can make it.

I'm feeling really stuck. Family is vital to me. I want to have dinner (preferably before 7) each night with my husband, just like we used to, just like my family did when I was growing up. Outside interests are vital to me. If I have a rehearsal at 7:30, I don't want to have to feel like an asshole for leaving at 7, or 6:30 or 6 or 5:30! Or even if I just want to go to a play or a movie. But, it's not just my office, it's like this anywhere in my line of work. In fact, my office is probably on the better side of work/life management for my industry, so I'm not sure looking elsewhere would improve the balance. I really love my line of work, though. Even though this particular project has a terminus, the time-stress will continue. Maybe not 11 and 12 hour days - though, why should I complain when everyone in this area works those hours in every industry, because we are all hyper-acheivers - but the stress of feeling like an asshole for leaving on time or at a reasonable hour.

I'm between a rock and hard place, I think. I love what I do. I hate that it impedes my real life. I despised my last long-running office. It was an insult to my intelligence and my creativity. It accounted for 70% of the reason I went to grad school - anything to keep the synapses firing. But I was out by 5PM, sharp. This job insults neither (though I'm not a fan of our products, per se), but the dinner hour is ruined.

So sorry to be dour. So sorry I haven't checked your blogs in a long, long time. Maybe in October?

What's Molly dreaming now? Edition 7

Another strange dream last night. This one was themed a "Saved by the Bell" wedding. I dreamt that I was in Dallas for reasons I could not recall and I found myself at the wedding of Principal Belding. The wedding was actually purely a work of fiction; this was a movie set. Jessie Spano was the photographer, and Elizabeth Berkeley looked totally lived-in for someone who's only 30-something. The weird thing was, though this was a movie set, we were treating it like a real wedding. There was no lighting equipment, no cameras, aside from general wedding videography and people were mulling about the open bar waiting for the ceremony to begin.

I'm not sure why I was there. Not only was Principal Belding never my principal, or really anyone else's according to this piece, I was never in any of the casts (Miss Bliss or post-) and though I did watch it more than a rational, ambulatory, articulate person who has the fine motor skills to tie her own shoes should - which is to say at all, much less sporadically - I found the show blazingly stupid. (My brother liked it, and we both liked making fun of it.) It also became apparent that this was going to be a full out Esther Williams-style musical, since the synchronized swimmers were practicing in the massive swimming pool around which the ceremony was to be held. The place was crawling with sinfully rich, Hollywood-hot young people: mostly teens and college-aged. I felt way out of place and didn't know how I got an invitation. Zack Morris was there with some curly-haired brunette who wasn't the vapid vixen what's-her-name from the TV show. I heard "wooooo!" like a wave, come from a congregation of teen girls behind me. I looked over my right shoulder to see Slater strut past, wearing a tuxedo vest that had been cinched tightly around his waist. He, of course, looked like a moron. I rolled my eyes.

I needed to figure out what I was doing in this musical. I wore high-heeled saddle shoes which had rollerskate style abilities. I somehow discerned that I had a short solo during a poolside number. There were two lines of dancers across from each other, stretching the length of the pool. So I skated down the middle of them, doing the splits at one time - a feat I could once accomplish without wincing; these days, not so much - singing something all the way. I was curious why I was in this musical when I could not sing or dance half as well as throngs of other talent out there. Then I turned around and began to skate down the middle again and noticed that smoke was rising off my left shoe. I stopped skating. The dancers were now in the pool doing some synchronized number. And I decided I was supposed to be in the pool, too, so I dove in.

Then somehow, some time had passed and I was out of the pool, dry, still in my dress and switching out my skate-style shoes for another pair. (I did this at my hallway locker, of course.) The guests were all waiting for the ceremony to begin, again. And I felt even more out of place than ever. I was there by myself, I didn't know any of the guests. It was clear that I was too old and plain and not rich enough to talk to. Then, at the end of my dream, I spotted a friend of mine from my college theater department who I have not seen or heard from, nor really thought of, since graduation almost a decade ago. She looked as miserable as I did. Before I could go greet her, I woke up.

I never really liked that show. I found the characters too stereotypical even for lazy sitcome archetypes. Like the show "Friends," I knew these people would not be friends in real-life, particularly not during class-conscious adolescence. And the storylines were always weaker than tissue paper. I haven't thought of that show in years. I think I read a post somewhere recently in which someone referred to Mr. Belding, but as I've been scrambling to get caught up on my post-vacation blog reading, I can't recall who wrote it or what the reference was. I'm sure that was the trigger for the cast in my dream; but why a wedding?

And more importantly, this is the second high-school, "feeling like an outsider" type dream I've had in a week. Is this some new anxiety dream theme for me? I have a doctor's appointment in about 90 minutes for which I'm anxious because I'm hoping it'll shed a good deal of light on what's going on, but why high school? Why not tornadoes and aliens like my normal anxiety dreams? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Getting in my own way

Last week, I took a freelance colleague of mine out to lunch, since it was her last day on the project. She told me about a cousin she and her husband are hosting in their house. He's trying to make a new start of it in the area and they were happy to help. Except now it's been several months more than they all originally thought it would be. He's not taking temp jobs, not really actively seeking out permanent employment and is basically being a drag on a pair of newlyweds who were just trying to offer the kind of support they hoped someone would offer them if they were in a similar situation.

During our conversation, my colleague told me that her cousin, who is 30, often complains to her that he doesn't have the degrees that she does - bachelor and post-grad - so he's not as marketable as she is and that's why he's not getting jobs. She was frustrated by this because even though she is degreed, he is prior military, which counts for a lot in the marketplace. Additionally, she has been busting hump looking for work in our field since she got her graduate degree, and having mixed success. Here's what struck me though: he's imprisoned himself with his negativity.

That got me thinking about how much and how often we define ourselves by what we are not (or what we have not) as opposed to what we are. I am not educated, married, a parent, accomplished in my field, living in the "right" town, wealthy enough, religious enough, traveled, fashionable, and so on and so on. There may be plenty of people who don't do this, but the majority of us do, that's why we're always impressed with the people in the world who accomplish things; they're not stopped by their own naysaying.

The silly thing about naysaying is that it shackles us to the very negatives we supposedly resent about ourselves. I can't do this, I'm too old. I can't do that, I don't have enough experience. Nobody would let me do this because I'm not "insert reason here." Anytime we think we can't because of some "no" hanging over us, we certainly can't, because we won't. We won't even give ourselves the opportunities to try and fail or try and succeed because we're too married to the "no" of our situation. I feel like I wasted a lot of my 20s because I told myself I was too old for some things or too inexperienced for other possibilities. And it was fucking stupid. I wasn't too old. I'm probably still not, but as long as I put that speed bump in front of myself, I couldn't proceed.

There are plenty of roadblocks we cling to that are largely beyond our control. For the last two years, my body has been telling me "no" about some things. And this last weekend, it shouted "HELL NO" at me. I don't know if or when it will ever give me a resounding and final "no." I'm hoping and praying not for some "yes" from my body. But I'm feeling very beat down, crushed and angry these days. Life can still be good even if my body ever gives me a definitive no, but right now I just don't know how. But I want to learn how to climb out of this hole I've been sliding deeper and deeper into. It hurts and there's a whole world of happiness out there, if I only remember how to find it. My body's telling me "no" has been impeding my happiness. I want to learn to live with the "no" and realize that there is still a pulsing, vibrant world of "yes" beyond this ugly shadow of "no" that hovers over me.

In the meantime, I want to start dispelling all the nos I've put upon myself all my life. I am exactly as pretty as I am. I am exactly as young as I am. I am exactly as talented as I am. There are aspects of my life I can control, and I want to work to be in charge of them. There are aspects of my life that I cannot control, and I want to work to not let them be in control of my happiness. I don't want to be a prisoner to my own insecurities anymore, the way my colleague's cousin is. It's self-defeating.

My thin veil

I don't remember where I had read this, but I recall reading somewhere about the origins of Halloween that the Druids or Celts or erstwhile ancient folks who lived in sun-deprived, rain-soaked northern Atlantic isles believed that the period we now call Halloween was the time when the thin veil separating the living from the dead was lifted, and they could cavort.

This time of year always finds me anxious, irritable and fearful. And I always forget it's coming until I'm steeped in it. Such is the case again, this year. It is all due to the attacks. Labor Day through the 21st or so is time my thin veil is lifted. But this veil doesn't separate life and death so much as the comfort of reliability and abject fear and chaos.

I want nothing more than to draw nearer to my husband during this time of year. As both of our jobs demand a lot of this time of year also, it's difficult. The little time we have together is rarely "quality" time. In the last two or three years, I've managed to bear through the veil days with almost no angst. This year is different. I'm more agitated. I suspect it's all due to the fact that this is the first time sine that dread day that the 11th falls on a Tuesday. I've been re-running my memories of the days leading up to and after the attacks over again and again in my head. There is more a fear of the Groundhog Day effect this year than I have had in years past.

I find myself holding my breath more than usual, this year. I pray the veil closes, soon.

Chicken or the Egg

After having burned Sonnjea with a picture of another cat whom she thought was mine, I figured I should make amends. To the right is a picture of CootyCat, strutting his stuff on our bed. Isn't he sexy?

This week was crazy hectic. I had to help get a proposal out the door at work which kept me there till 8:30 on Tuesday and 9:30 on Wednesday. I had a rehearsal on Wednesday which I was sorely in need of and looking forward to, and I missed it. Not to mention school in all this. Thursday and Friday are a blur.

For the last few weeks - maybe even the last couple of months - I've been feeling insignificant in my own life. It's a scourge that swells and remits in my heart from time to time and in the last 10 days or so, it's been particularly hard to ignore. Several times this week I've been on the verge of tears for no reason and have had to swallow them. That's not common for me. Yesterday morning, after a good work-out walk with my fitness group, I visited my therapist. I hadn't seen her for several months - I only go if there are issues I'm having problems resolving - and I thought, "it's not good to feel insignificant in one's own life; let's go get some help." She agreed. As this really is something that has been plaguing me on some level for the last several years particularly, we're going to keep meeting regularly until I iron out.

In the meantime, I've been trying to figure out exactly why I feel so insignificant and replaceable in my own life. My parents did an excellent job in making me feel worthy, valued, safe and loved. Certainly there were episodes with peers which made me feel devalued - that's the evil of adolescence - but my safety net at home was strong enough to carry me through to adulthood unscathed and able to live past those moments. I have never felt anything other than love and admiration from Honey. So this feeling is not from my most significant and intimate relationships.

Aside from the highly probable prospect that this is just some inherent malady that I'm going to have to treat on occasion for the rest of my life (like emotional plantars fasciaitis or something) is that this feeling of insignificance is social and/or professional in nature. And that I'm 30. Apparently, women are most likely to enter therapy for the first time around age 30 because that's the age when society has the most pressure on them (marry? kids? career? etc). Shortly after getting married, trauma touched our household which left me feeling completely incapable of affecting the world around me, among other things. A few years later, I was laid off from a job that I didn't like but didn't want to be laid off from. On top of that, we live in a metro area almost entirely populated by high achievers. And everyone is very convinced of their own opinions.

It's beginning to get me down that I have peers who are much further ahead in their respective careers than I am. I know I'm not alone in just schlepping through, but still leaves me wondering what I have to offer that at age 30, after 7 years in the workforce, I'm still at entry level admin positions.

As far as the opinonatedness: I too have always been an opinionated person, but since my youth, I've made concerted efforts to be more open to other peoples' opinions or at least the experiences that have shaped them. I don't claim to be 100% open to 100% of all viewpoints - it's certainly a struggle for anyone, and probably not necessary - but since youth, I think my sympathy for others' points of view has grown. However in the last few years, I feel that when I offer a differing POV or an argument or explanation for another POV (which even I may disagree with) in discussion with others, people just knock it. And it's rare that others actually argue against the POV, it's just an instant dismissal. Seriously? There's nothing you can learn from an experience that is not yours or that does not agree with your viewpoint? So, I've learned to be more quiet in discussions where I may want to offer an alternate POV; my viewpoint is insignificant and if it does not agree with the prevailing view of the discussion, then any "devil's advocacy" I may want to introduce is insignificant as well. ... of course, my worst fear is that I behave this way to others. I'm sure I do: as much as I try to refrain from the knee-jerk dismissal, which we are all prey to that I complain about, I'm convinced I fail more often than not at restraining it. I'm so un-self-concious.

Whew. Maybe I've had a "breakthrough." Then the question remains: how do I assert my own significance to myself? I'll have to save that for later.

As for now, I vowed I'd trek to campus and cloister myself in the library until I'd written some good stuff this afternoon.

Live long and prosper!