I feel like I've been talking all day--maybe because I pretty much have been. First, Orange and I had a lovely lunch in this hip joint; she had the Bliss cakes (with peaches and sour cherries) and I had a spectacular grilled cheese with apple and onion. I walked over there from my place, through the snow, and actually quite liked the walk. From there I walked to a hip coffee shop to see Lole before he takes off on a cruise ship--the QE2, no less! He's working the South Pacific leg of the QE2's last year on the high seas; he'll get off in Sydney, Australia and fly back here. He's not getting paid for it, but he doesn't have to pay, either. We hung out for a good three hours, then got on the el, together, because he lives near the place where I met Chuck for dinner.
As I mentioned here, i was a little . . . nervous is too strong, but we'll go with it, about this, but it was actually quite nice. We're sort of tip-toeing around, trying to figure out if we can be friends. At this point, i think we'd both answer that question with a tentative yes. I mean, we're not going to be spending hours hanging out all the time, or even see each other without CK more than occasionally, I think, but what the hell. He's making some big strides, continuing doing the hard work he needs to do to be where he wants to be--and, after all, I know a lot about the struggle, and I know a lot about the challenges he faces.
So we'll continue with the baby steps, most likely. The thing that I like, on my end of this, is my decision to let go of as much of the anger and resentment as I could. I suppose I could still work up a good rant, but why? What happened is in the past, and I can't change it, and neither can he. I don't feel like carrying that around with me, and it's nice to not have to do that.
Okay, I probably would write more, but I keep finding myself sitting here staring into space, so I suspect the chamomile tea is having its way with me. Besides, I have to rest up and meet the Tart for breakfast tomorrow--more good food in good company!
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Madness in the Bulk Section
Hmmm; let's see; how'm I feeling? Like crap, I think would be the correct answer. Well, I'll take some ibuprofen soon, and make some chamomile tea with honey, and get some sleep, and I'll be fine tomorrow.
In the kitchen--on top of the refrigerator, to be specific--it's two down now; I used the bulgar tonight. The recipe's quite simple--I eat it as a main course, but it would make a nice side dish, too. Onion and garlic, diced, in a little oil, until translucent, then a bunch of kale (the recipe, from Moosewood's low-fat cookbook, calls for swiss chard or something else, but I like kale, and the recipe calls for a pound, but I suspect I had about 10 ounces or so, and I bet you could even use spinach, though you'd want to cook the bulgar then add the spinach), chopped up. A couple of tablespoons of lemon juice and some salt, then cover and steam until the greens wilt. Add a cup and a half of bulgar and two and a half cups of water, and cook until the water's gone. I added some garam masala and some ginger and a teeny bit of cayenne, just to spice it up a little. You may have to experiment to get the timing right--if you add the bulgar too soon, the greens won't cook, and if you add it too late, the greens get grey. And I liked the spices in it, but salt and pepper would be fine, too. You could also add some beans to it.
The next thing to go is some barley; I had to get some yellow split peas today for that recipe (which is from the same cookbook), and I'll have both split peas and barley left over, but I like this recipe a lot and may make it more than once. It calls for potatos; this time I'm trying it with sweet potatos. I'll also use up some of the dried currants, seeing as how I bought them, oh, two years ago, precisely for this recipe. The other things I want to use are the quinoa and the corn meal, plus some random bits of nuts (both sliced and blanched-and-slivered almonds), and some dates that have dried to rocks but can probably be revived in some boiling water, but I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with those things. There's also some dried fruit--cherries, I think--and some dried tomatos, but not very much of either.
I'm enjoying cooking again: I've cooked more in my kitchen in the past two weeks than in the past year, I'd say. It's not quite that I haven't been cooking at all, as I've been cooking with Friend, at his house (which I enjoy tremendously; it's easy to cook with him, or near him), and I've made the occasional thing to take with me somewhere, and I've had my pasta with vegetables thing, but really cooking? From a recipe? So there are leftovers and containers full in the freezers? Not really. But I enjoy it, so it's really nice to get back in touch with that. And my kitchen is actually somewhat cleaner as a result, because, when I cook regularly, I tend to clean up as I go rather than pile things in the sink. The floor could use a scrubbing, and I'll probably get to that after I make the barley recipe.
Meanwhile, the next two days are going to be a festival of hanging out. Lunch with Orange tomorrow, then coffee/tea with Lole (who's about to leave for a month on a cruise ship in the South Pacific!--working, yes, but still), then dinner with Chuck. Friday is breakfast with the Tart, and, if the stars align and he's not too worn out from playing hockey tonight and tomorrow night, maybe some time with Friend. And I suppose I should play the lottery, seeing as how winning it would enable me to keep doing this without that pesky job thing.
In the kitchen--on top of the refrigerator, to be specific--it's two down now; I used the bulgar tonight. The recipe's quite simple--I eat it as a main course, but it would make a nice side dish, too. Onion and garlic, diced, in a little oil, until translucent, then a bunch of kale (the recipe, from Moosewood's low-fat cookbook, calls for swiss chard or something else, but I like kale, and the recipe calls for a pound, but I suspect I had about 10 ounces or so, and I bet you could even use spinach, though you'd want to cook the bulgar then add the spinach), chopped up. A couple of tablespoons of lemon juice and some salt, then cover and steam until the greens wilt. Add a cup and a half of bulgar and two and a half cups of water, and cook until the water's gone. I added some garam masala and some ginger and a teeny bit of cayenne, just to spice it up a little. You may have to experiment to get the timing right--if you add the bulgar too soon, the greens won't cook, and if you add it too late, the greens get grey. And I liked the spices in it, but salt and pepper would be fine, too. You could also add some beans to it.
The next thing to go is some barley; I had to get some yellow split peas today for that recipe (which is from the same cookbook), and I'll have both split peas and barley left over, but I like this recipe a lot and may make it more than once. It calls for potatos; this time I'm trying it with sweet potatos. I'll also use up some of the dried currants, seeing as how I bought them, oh, two years ago, precisely for this recipe. The other things I want to use are the quinoa and the corn meal, plus some random bits of nuts (both sliced and blanched-and-slivered almonds), and some dates that have dried to rocks but can probably be revived in some boiling water, but I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with those things. There's also some dried fruit--cherries, I think--and some dried tomatos, but not very much of either.
I'm enjoying cooking again: I've cooked more in my kitchen in the past two weeks than in the past year, I'd say. It's not quite that I haven't been cooking at all, as I've been cooking with Friend, at his house (which I enjoy tremendously; it's easy to cook with him, or near him), and I've made the occasional thing to take with me somewhere, and I've had my pasta with vegetables thing, but really cooking? From a recipe? So there are leftovers and containers full in the freezers? Not really. But I enjoy it, so it's really nice to get back in touch with that. And my kitchen is actually somewhat cleaner as a result, because, when I cook regularly, I tend to clean up as I go rather than pile things in the sink. The floor could use a scrubbing, and I'll probably get to that after I make the barley recipe.
Meanwhile, the next two days are going to be a festival of hanging out. Lunch with Orange tomorrow, then coffee/tea with Lole (who's about to leave for a month on a cruise ship in the South Pacific!--working, yes, but still), then dinner with Chuck. Friday is breakfast with the Tart, and, if the stars align and he's not too worn out from playing hockey tonight and tomorrow night, maybe some time with Friend. And I suppose I should play the lottery, seeing as how winning it would enable me to keep doing this without that pesky job thing.
Briefs
Yes, I am bummed that Edwards is out of the campaign--and I am pleased that he didn't immediately throw his support into someone's camp.
No, I do not have strep throat--the test was negative, so it's probably viral. It does hurt, though, and I didn't sleep much last night (not from that, just from general lack of tiredness).The down side is it cost me $25 to find that out, but the upsides are (a) I don't have to do the antibiotics (or pay for them), and (b) I asked the doc about the hip pain, since I was already there, and he suggested it was the sacroiliac joint, rather than the hip. Turns out you can tweak it in just the place it hurts by, say, carrying a lot of weight on one side (like, say, a 50-pound bag of flour) or sitting/standing lopsidedly. I told him my inclination was to take ibuprofen and practice yoga, but otherwise not do anything for it, and he agreed. (That's also obviously the cheapest option.)
I got to see Friend for lunch, too, which is nice. He informed me that it was a German schwartzbier, not stout, that he's brewing and that went into the gumbo.
I had intended to take my editing to a coffee shop (I've found another good one nearby), but I decided free tea and the ability to nap, plus not having to go out again, were all stronger incentives for going home. And--I got my henna powder today. Rather than scouring hither, yon, and all points in between, I ordered some online, so I can do my own henna tattoos. I'd purchased a kit a few months ago and had fun with it, but just buying the henna is much, much cheaper. I can do my own designs, so buying another kit seemed kind of pointless. (Although, I must point out, doing my own designs means I can only decorate my left arm, seeing as how I'm right-handed.)
Time to edit the manuscript . . .
No, I do not have strep throat--the test was negative, so it's probably viral. It does hurt, though, and I didn't sleep much last night (not from that, just from general lack of tiredness).The down side is it cost me $25 to find that out, but the upsides are (a) I don't have to do the antibiotics (or pay for them), and (b) I asked the doc about the hip pain, since I was already there, and he suggested it was the sacroiliac joint, rather than the hip. Turns out you can tweak it in just the place it hurts by, say, carrying a lot of weight on one side (like, say, a 50-pound bag of flour) or sitting/standing lopsidedly. I told him my inclination was to take ibuprofen and practice yoga, but otherwise not do anything for it, and he agreed. (That's also obviously the cheapest option.)
I got to see Friend for lunch, too, which is nice. He informed me that it was a German schwartzbier, not stout, that he's brewing and that went into the gumbo.
I had intended to take my editing to a coffee shop (I've found another good one nearby), but I decided free tea and the ability to nap, plus not having to go out again, were all stronger incentives for going home. And--I got my henna powder today. Rather than scouring hither, yon, and all points in between, I ordered some online, so I can do my own henna tattoos. I'd purchased a kit a few months ago and had fun with it, but just buying the henna is much, much cheaper. I can do my own designs, so buying another kit seemed kind of pointless. (Although, I must point out, doing my own designs means I can only decorate my left arm, seeing as how I'm right-handed.)
Time to edit the manuscript . . .
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Knee Deep
No, I'm not nearly done with the worst manuscript ever, but I'm slogging through it. I've managed to get through 9 of the 14 chapters for a first pass, and I did two chapters in ink to send back to the production editor (to make sure I'm not completely insane), so I'm well ahead of the game. The first five chapters are due next Thursday, but it may be possible for me to finish the whole thing by then, which would be nice, not least because there's another project coming down the pike as well.
Meanwhile, I suspect I have strep throat. Friend had a persistent sore throat, and today he finally went to have it checked out, and, sure enough, he's got it. Seeing as how I was with him when he was feeling his worst, and seeing as how i woke up with a sore throat this morning (I thought it might be just dryness until I heard his news), I'm going to get my ass to the doctor tomorrow. It does feel the way strep tends to feel--pain rather than scratchiness, and no other cold symptoms. I don't typically run a fever, either. Not really what I had in mind--usually Friend and I get together on Tuesday night, and I haven't seen him since last Tuesday night--but bacteria are wily creatures. Truth be told, I'm feeling steadily worse as I sit here, so, much as I miss Friend, I'm just as glad to not be out.
In our religion report for the day, I got a prayer rug (!!) in the mail today, from St. Matthew's church, along with a list of prophecies and blessings and a request page, which I'm supposed to mail back, along with the prayer rug, after I've knelt on it and prayed. (The prayer rug is paper, in case you're wondering.) Also? God's holy blessing power is in the enclosed anointed prayer rug of faith they are loaning me to use. (All in caps, and the phrasing is theirs.)
Among the things for which I can ask are: My Soul; A Closer Walk With Jesus; Confusion In My Home [I suspect this is actually a request to cure said confusion, rather than a prayer FOR confusion, but I'm not sure]; A Money Blessing; Pray for God to bless me with this amount of money: $_________. The whole envelope is full of typographical and grammatical wonders, I must say. I don't quite have the heart (or energy) to try to reproduce the whole thing for you, complete with random capitalizations, boldface, underlining, and combinations of the three, because they're probably harmless enough, but it's quite a sight.
It also reminds me of a conversation I had with my dad. My parents' best friends--including the neighbors, and including my mom's lifelong friend and her husband (the one who died in the fall)--are all practicing Catholics. They've all dealt with this over the years by respecting each other's beliefs and not really talking about it. My dad was raised Presbyterian, but started having doubts in his teens; he called himself an agnostic for years. He was willing to be wrong, but wasn't much of a fan of religion or deities. My sister's death pretty much ended that, and he'd call himself an atheist now. My mother was raised atheist; not surprising, given that my grandfather was an anarchist and an atheist, but not terribly common in the 1950s.
As a result of this, however, my parents didn't go to church services; why would they? When their friend died last year, though, they debated whether to go to the funeral mass, and they ended up going. When I was there, my dad commented to me on what he saw as the ludicrousness of the whole thing--the men in dresses, the incense, the pomp and circumstance and arm-waving. (I asked him if he had a cookie and some grape juice, but apparently he did not.) Having not been to any religious services in awhile, I think he'd kind of forgotten; he kind of didn't remember what it was that people took so seriously. He'd never say anything, of course, at least not to his friends. I've been around it more recently--a friend's Catholic wedding; Chuck's aunt's funeral; CK's first holy communion--but I occasionally have a similar reaction. I mean, it was cool seeing transubstantiation and all, but it still looked like a cracker to me.
And, when push comes to shove, both my dad and I don't care all that much; whatever floats your boat. I do get seriously annoyed when people try to shove a deity down my throat, or when they inform me that I cannot possibly be a moral person and an atheist, or when, like that bozo Huckabee, they want to change the laws of the land to conform with what they believe their deity's rules are.
Which reminds me of something else: I was leaving my apartment one day, and, as I locked my door, I overheard a conversation at the end of the hall between two women. One was saying that she was thinking of giving up her parking place, and she'd have to give notice, otherwise she'd lose her security deposit, but she wasn't sure whether to do that. The other one said something, and then the first one said that she was just going to have to ask god about it, see whether he thought she should keep the parking place.
And that's the part that truly blows me away. If there were a deity or deities, I have a hard time believing that s/he/they would really be a source of advice on my transportation arrangements--or would concern him/herself with the outcome of a football game, for that matter, or even the outcome of a war. Perhaps I should rub the prayer rug on my knees (I'm instructed to kneel on it or place it on both knees, presumably in the event that I am old and/or arthritic and cannot kneel). Or perhaps I should just get some sleep.
Meanwhile, I suspect I have strep throat. Friend had a persistent sore throat, and today he finally went to have it checked out, and, sure enough, he's got it. Seeing as how I was with him when he was feeling his worst, and seeing as how i woke up with a sore throat this morning (I thought it might be just dryness until I heard his news), I'm going to get my ass to the doctor tomorrow. It does feel the way strep tends to feel--pain rather than scratchiness, and no other cold symptoms. I don't typically run a fever, either. Not really what I had in mind--usually Friend and I get together on Tuesday night, and I haven't seen him since last Tuesday night--but bacteria are wily creatures. Truth be told, I'm feeling steadily worse as I sit here, so, much as I miss Friend, I'm just as glad to not be out.
In our religion report for the day, I got a prayer rug (!!) in the mail today, from St. Matthew's church, along with a list of prophecies and blessings and a request page, which I'm supposed to mail back, along with the prayer rug, after I've knelt on it and prayed. (The prayer rug is paper, in case you're wondering.) Also? God's holy blessing power is in the enclosed anointed prayer rug of faith they are loaning me to use. (All in caps, and the phrasing is theirs.)
Among the things for which I can ask are: My Soul; A Closer Walk With Jesus; Confusion In My Home [I suspect this is actually a request to cure said confusion, rather than a prayer FOR confusion, but I'm not sure]; A Money Blessing; Pray for God to bless me with this amount of money: $_________. The whole envelope is full of typographical and grammatical wonders, I must say. I don't quite have the heart (or energy) to try to reproduce the whole thing for you, complete with random capitalizations, boldface, underlining, and combinations of the three, because they're probably harmless enough, but it's quite a sight.
It also reminds me of a conversation I had with my dad. My parents' best friends--including the neighbors, and including my mom's lifelong friend and her husband (the one who died in the fall)--are all practicing Catholics. They've all dealt with this over the years by respecting each other's beliefs and not really talking about it. My dad was raised Presbyterian, but started having doubts in his teens; he called himself an agnostic for years. He was willing to be wrong, but wasn't much of a fan of religion or deities. My sister's death pretty much ended that, and he'd call himself an atheist now. My mother was raised atheist; not surprising, given that my grandfather was an anarchist and an atheist, but not terribly common in the 1950s.
As a result of this, however, my parents didn't go to church services; why would they? When their friend died last year, though, they debated whether to go to the funeral mass, and they ended up going. When I was there, my dad commented to me on what he saw as the ludicrousness of the whole thing--the men in dresses, the incense, the pomp and circumstance and arm-waving. (I asked him if he had a cookie and some grape juice, but apparently he did not.) Having not been to any religious services in awhile, I think he'd kind of forgotten; he kind of didn't remember what it was that people took so seriously. He'd never say anything, of course, at least not to his friends. I've been around it more recently--a friend's Catholic wedding; Chuck's aunt's funeral; CK's first holy communion--but I occasionally have a similar reaction. I mean, it was cool seeing transubstantiation and all, but it still looked like a cracker to me.
And, when push comes to shove, both my dad and I don't care all that much; whatever floats your boat. I do get seriously annoyed when people try to shove a deity down my throat, or when they inform me that I cannot possibly be a moral person and an atheist, or when, like that bozo Huckabee, they want to change the laws of the land to conform with what they believe their deity's rules are.
Which reminds me of something else: I was leaving my apartment one day, and, as I locked my door, I overheard a conversation at the end of the hall between two women. One was saying that she was thinking of giving up her parking place, and she'd have to give notice, otherwise she'd lose her security deposit, but she wasn't sure whether to do that. The other one said something, and then the first one said that she was just going to have to ask god about it, see whether he thought she should keep the parking place.
And that's the part that truly blows me away. If there were a deity or deities, I have a hard time believing that s/he/they would really be a source of advice on my transportation arrangements--or would concern him/herself with the outcome of a football game, for that matter, or even the outcome of a war. Perhaps I should rub the prayer rug on my knees (I'm instructed to kneel on it or place it on both knees, presumably in the event that I am old and/or arthritic and cannot kneel). Or perhaps I should just get some sleep.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Brain Pan Alley
My brain hurts.
Why? Because I am copyediting what may well be the worst book of all time. Okay, maybe it's not as bad as John Irving, or Tom Clancy, or Robert Ludlum, but I don't have to read their books. Granted, on some level I suppose I don't "have to" read this, either; and at least I'm getting paid to read it. It's truly heinous, however. I won't provide you with any details, but the extent of its suckitude is truly impressive.
On the other hand, I went to a yoga class yesterday AND I worked out today. Plus, the man-who-would-be-my-boss called me and asked me for another reference, which I happily provided. (I really don't like providing references up front, but it was an online form, so I provided one; they need two, which is fine. I gave my other old boss a copy of the job description and a heads-up, so he'll be prepared.) There's no telling what's going to happen--obviously they're still interested, but we all know how that can fall apart. I have allowed myself to think about what a good start date would be (given the editing work that came to me last week) and what I'll do with my "extra" money, i.e., the dollars over and above what I budget for living expenses. Also, if I get benefits, I'd have that $325/month I'm now paying for health insurance as well. I'm boring, though; I've already decided to throw more at the student loan and some into savings.
Tonight's dinner was red lentil stew with caramelized onions, with some brown and wild rice I made yesterday. I haven't made it before, but I did want to get rid of the lentils; it's pretty good, even though the lentils had to be two years old and maybe older. Of course I modified the recipe--more ginger, more garlic, more cayenne; lime instead of lemon, because I didn't have any lemon; and some honey, to take the bitter edge off of it--and I had one of those weights and measures issues. (Yeah, I know; I'm sure you have them all the time.) The recipe said two cups of lentils, about a pound. Okay, fine. I weigh the lentils, and it's a pound almost exactly. Great. But as I'm putting them in the broth, I'm thinking, that looks like more than two cups, and, indeed, it was--three cups, as a matter of fact. So am I going to need more liquid? Only a little, it turned out, but it reminded me again how irritated I get reading American cookbooks and their recipes in measures rather than weights.
I would like to mention in passing, apropos of nothing, that tomorrow the temperature is supposed to drop from 44 to 2 below. (If it went up that much tomorrow, instead of down, it'd be 90.) Friend and I will likely change our Tuesday night plans to take that into account.
Meanwhile, Chuck called this evening, wanting to know if I'd like to have dinner with him Thursday. I said okay, and we chatted awhile, but I'm not entirely sure what precipitated this. I suspect that he's kind of lonely--he's been working an extra job, and his girlfriend dumped him (she decided, after more than a year, that she doesn't want to date someone with kids; good luck with that, honey), and I do know him pretty well. It makes me a little nervous, I think, but we'll see how it goes. I am willing to be friends with him, up to a point, so long as he understands that that is the limit of our interaction, but I have to admit that I'm more comfortable when I'm the one doing the asking. I guess we're both kind of feeling our way here.
Every now and then I run across something I wrote to him; a bunch of stuff is saved on the computer, whether or not I actually sent it, and a few things are from several years ago rather than from two years ago. It's always wrenching to read that stuff and remember the hellish confusion that was my life. I keep the writings around, though, in part to remind myself of what it felt like then. It's one thing to tell people about it now: I have a narrative about it, and I believe I've got some understanding around various aspects of it, and it fits more or less neatly into the narrative space I assign to it (which depends, in part, on the audience, and whether he or she knew Chuck, and so on). But the things I wrote then, before I knew what would happen, well, it's useful to me, to remind me of my own feelings at the time, to remind me of what I was getting from him at the time, and to remind me that I had no idea what was going to happen.
Well, we'll see. I don't know that I want to see a lot of him, because I think he would not handle that well, but I'm willing to take a couple of baby steps and see how he deals with it.
Why? Because I am copyediting what may well be the worst book of all time. Okay, maybe it's not as bad as John Irving, or Tom Clancy, or Robert Ludlum, but I don't have to read their books. Granted, on some level I suppose I don't "have to" read this, either; and at least I'm getting paid to read it. It's truly heinous, however. I won't provide you with any details, but the extent of its suckitude is truly impressive.
On the other hand, I went to a yoga class yesterday AND I worked out today. Plus, the man-who-would-be-my-boss called me and asked me for another reference, which I happily provided. (I really don't like providing references up front, but it was an online form, so I provided one; they need two, which is fine. I gave my other old boss a copy of the job description and a heads-up, so he'll be prepared.) There's no telling what's going to happen--obviously they're still interested, but we all know how that can fall apart. I have allowed myself to think about what a good start date would be (given the editing work that came to me last week) and what I'll do with my "extra" money, i.e., the dollars over and above what I budget for living expenses. Also, if I get benefits, I'd have that $325/month I'm now paying for health insurance as well. I'm boring, though; I've already decided to throw more at the student loan and some into savings.
Tonight's dinner was red lentil stew with caramelized onions, with some brown and wild rice I made yesterday. I haven't made it before, but I did want to get rid of the lentils; it's pretty good, even though the lentils had to be two years old and maybe older. Of course I modified the recipe--more ginger, more garlic, more cayenne; lime instead of lemon, because I didn't have any lemon; and some honey, to take the bitter edge off of it--and I had one of those weights and measures issues. (Yeah, I know; I'm sure you have them all the time.) The recipe said two cups of lentils, about a pound. Okay, fine. I weigh the lentils, and it's a pound almost exactly. Great. But as I'm putting them in the broth, I'm thinking, that looks like more than two cups, and, indeed, it was--three cups, as a matter of fact. So am I going to need more liquid? Only a little, it turned out, but it reminded me again how irritated I get reading American cookbooks and their recipes in measures rather than weights.
I would like to mention in passing, apropos of nothing, that tomorrow the temperature is supposed to drop from 44 to 2 below. (If it went up that much tomorrow, instead of down, it'd be 90.) Friend and I will likely change our Tuesday night plans to take that into account.
Meanwhile, Chuck called this evening, wanting to know if I'd like to have dinner with him Thursday. I said okay, and we chatted awhile, but I'm not entirely sure what precipitated this. I suspect that he's kind of lonely--he's been working an extra job, and his girlfriend dumped him (she decided, after more than a year, that she doesn't want to date someone with kids; good luck with that, honey), and I do know him pretty well. It makes me a little nervous, I think, but we'll see how it goes. I am willing to be friends with him, up to a point, so long as he understands that that is the limit of our interaction, but I have to admit that I'm more comfortable when I'm the one doing the asking. I guess we're both kind of feeling our way here.
Every now and then I run across something I wrote to him; a bunch of stuff is saved on the computer, whether or not I actually sent it, and a few things are from several years ago rather than from two years ago. It's always wrenching to read that stuff and remember the hellish confusion that was my life. I keep the writings around, though, in part to remind myself of what it felt like then. It's one thing to tell people about it now: I have a narrative about it, and I believe I've got some understanding around various aspects of it, and it fits more or less neatly into the narrative space I assign to it (which depends, in part, on the audience, and whether he or she knew Chuck, and so on). But the things I wrote then, before I knew what would happen, well, it's useful to me, to remind me of my own feelings at the time, to remind me of what I was getting from him at the time, and to remind me that I had no idea what was going to happen.
Well, we'll see. I don't know that I want to see a lot of him, because I think he would not handle that well, but I'm willing to take a couple of baby steps and see how he deals with it.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Do you know?
Do you know how many women you know have had an abortion?
Maybe you do, maybe you don't; my guess is that you don't. I say that because I am vehemently pro choice. Not pro abortion, but pro choice. I trust women to decide whether to have a child or to have an abortion. And I still find out that someone I've known for years had an abortion.
Personally, I know at least a half dozen women who've had an abortion.
Not one did it "lightly." Not one did it because she had nothing better to do that day. Not one did it as a primary means of contraception. (For that matter, my younger nephew? The one who is brilliantly smart? My SIL was using oral contraceptives--and, it turns out, antibiotics, which is the kicker here--when he was conceived, and I know of at least one other kid who was conceived/born while his mother was using contraception.)
The point here is whether you trust women to make their own decisions about their lives, or whether you think you, or the (majority-male) government, or the (majority-male) religion, or some other entity gets to decide. If you think someone other than the owner of the womb gets to make the decision, then you believe in compulsory pregnancy. You believe that you or some other entity has the right to decide, not the person who is actually going to have to be pregnant and give birth. You believe, in other words, in compulsory pregnancy.
Maybe you do, maybe you don't; my guess is that you don't. I say that because I am vehemently pro choice. Not pro abortion, but pro choice. I trust women to decide whether to have a child or to have an abortion. And I still find out that someone I've known for years had an abortion.
Personally, I know at least a half dozen women who've had an abortion.
Not one did it "lightly." Not one did it because she had nothing better to do that day. Not one did it as a primary means of contraception. (For that matter, my younger nephew? The one who is brilliantly smart? My SIL was using oral contraceptives--and, it turns out, antibiotics, which is the kicker here--when he was conceived, and I know of at least one other kid who was conceived/born while his mother was using contraception.)
The point here is whether you trust women to make their own decisions about their lives, or whether you think you, or the (majority-male) government, or the (majority-male) religion, or some other entity gets to decide. If you think someone other than the owner of the womb gets to make the decision, then you believe in compulsory pregnancy. You believe that you or some other entity has the right to decide, not the person who is actually going to have to be pregnant and give birth. You believe, in other words, in compulsory pregnancy.
Housekeeping
I am now fully engroceried. J took me to Whole Paycheck last night (a new one, on the southern end of the Loop), and I shopped like a maniac. Even though I'm not going to run out of soap or body lotion or toothpaste this week, or next month, even, I tend to stock up a little when I get the opportunity to put my groceries in a vehicle other than an el train or a bus. I did not stock up on canned tomatos or beans, even though those things are heavy, because I have both of those things in the cupboard and they were not on sale. (If they'd been on sale, hell yeah; pile 'em in the cart.) The other thing I did yesterday--and you can tell I'm feeling all proud about this one--is figure out what dried crap I have around, and then pick a few recipes that USE that crap, rather than picking recipes that require a whole other kind of crap that I don't have. So, yeah, some recipes that use barley, and cracked wheat (might be bulgar; gotta check), and red lentils. Plus? Wine. Six bottles, so I could get the 10% discount. And did I mention that I didn't have to shlep it on public transportation? Needless to say, she and I then had to go have a very nice, very long dinner.
Basically, I've been spending money a little bit too much like I imagine a drunken sailor would spend it, but I've been justifying it (oh, I am the master of this) in a variety of ways. Yes, I did, in fact, go over my grocery budget for the month--but I bet I won't come close to the limit next month, given the stocking up I just did. Yes, I exceeded my miscellaneous budget for the month, but same thing; I took advantage of some sales (clothes), or bought things that will last several months (yoga class package), or got a few things that I need for the editing (15th ed. of the Chicago Manual of Style; refill for my calendar). Yes, my cell phone bill will be $30 higher next month . . . but this one is because I'm a bonehead. A friend called me yesterday, in the midst of a pretty unpleasant life crisis, and we spent 2.5 hours on the phone--and I don't begrudge a minute of the time (or a cent of the money, for that matter), but I was on my cell, and ended up going 50 minutes over my plan allotment, whereas it would have been no problem if I'd had her call my land line. So that's just an idiocy tax, I guess. I don't feel like I need to impose Austerity Mode, in either its Full or Partial manifestations, though if I don't get either a full-time job or a lot more freelance work by the end of February, my comfort level will decline somewhat.
The Whole Paycheck was kinda odd. It had a pretty large produce section. It was bracketed by a huge section of fruits and vegetables that had been cut up and packaged and a substantial section of bulk-type items (e.g., soy snacks, nuts) that had been packaged. The true bulk section was only so-so (they've been cutting back on that in many stores, in favor of prepackaged bulk stuff). There seemed to be a substantial meat and fish section as well, but i didn't buy either of those items so couldn't tell you for sure; I also didn't buy any dairy.
Some things were organized poorly--canned beans in three different areas of the store? WTF?--which always annoys me. Some selections seemed more meager than in their other stores in the city, but I'd have to check that. (I'd actually be fascinated to see how the product list differs among the stores, and I know that it does; there's one kind of cereal that I can get only at one of the stores.) Although many aisles were a little on the narrow side, a HUGE amount of floorspace was devoted to prepared foods of one kind or another--I bet a good 25% to 30% of the floor. I suspect that's a very high-margin item, so of course they'd do that, but it kind of bugs me, too.
Meanwhile, tonight I'm going out again. I'd thought I was going to stay home and edit--and, indeed, I've done some of that today, but the production editor wasn't lying when she said this ms. needed a "heavy" copyedit--and watch some of my new sports channels (I have Speed on right now, for 24 hours at Daytona). But then a woman who used to work for me called and said hey, do you want to get together tonight, and I, not surprisingly, said, "Yes."
So those vows to Cook Healthy and More Often, well, there's always tomorrow. I have a penciled-in schedule for the next two weeks, and, if I follow it, I'll get the current project done way, way early, plus get some exercise, both of which would be nice.
Basically, I've been spending money a little bit too much like I imagine a drunken sailor would spend it, but I've been justifying it (oh, I am the master of this) in a variety of ways. Yes, I did, in fact, go over my grocery budget for the month--but I bet I won't come close to the limit next month, given the stocking up I just did. Yes, I exceeded my miscellaneous budget for the month, but same thing; I took advantage of some sales (clothes), or bought things that will last several months (yoga class package), or got a few things that I need for the editing (15th ed. of the Chicago Manual of Style; refill for my calendar). Yes, my cell phone bill will be $30 higher next month . . . but this one is because I'm a bonehead. A friend called me yesterday, in the midst of a pretty unpleasant life crisis, and we spent 2.5 hours on the phone--and I don't begrudge a minute of the time (or a cent of the money, for that matter), but I was on my cell, and ended up going 50 minutes over my plan allotment, whereas it would have been no problem if I'd had her call my land line. So that's just an idiocy tax, I guess. I don't feel like I need to impose Austerity Mode, in either its Full or Partial manifestations, though if I don't get either a full-time job or a lot more freelance work by the end of February, my comfort level will decline somewhat.
The Whole Paycheck was kinda odd. It had a pretty large produce section. It was bracketed by a huge section of fruits and vegetables that had been cut up and packaged and a substantial section of bulk-type items (e.g., soy snacks, nuts) that had been packaged. The true bulk section was only so-so (they've been cutting back on that in many stores, in favor of prepackaged bulk stuff). There seemed to be a substantial meat and fish section as well, but i didn't buy either of those items so couldn't tell you for sure; I also didn't buy any dairy.
Some things were organized poorly--canned beans in three different areas of the store? WTF?--which always annoys me. Some selections seemed more meager than in their other stores in the city, but I'd have to check that. (I'd actually be fascinated to see how the product list differs among the stores, and I know that it does; there's one kind of cereal that I can get only at one of the stores.) Although many aisles were a little on the narrow side, a HUGE amount of floorspace was devoted to prepared foods of one kind or another--I bet a good 25% to 30% of the floor. I suspect that's a very high-margin item, so of course they'd do that, but it kind of bugs me, too.
Meanwhile, tonight I'm going out again. I'd thought I was going to stay home and edit--and, indeed, I've done some of that today, but the production editor wasn't lying when she said this ms. needed a "heavy" copyedit--and watch some of my new sports channels (I have Speed on right now, for 24 hours at Daytona). But then a woman who used to work for me called and said hey, do you want to get together tonight, and I, not surprisingly, said, "Yes."
So those vows to Cook Healthy and More Often, well, there's always tomorrow. I have a penciled-in schedule for the next two weeks, and, if I follow it, I'll get the current project done way, way early, plus get some exercise, both of which would be nice.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Bodily Manifestations
Things are happening awfully quickly around here, despite my unemployed situation.
For one thing, I got a bunch of editing work in the past week, so, really, I'm not exactly unemployed, which is good. Plus, getting this bunch of work allows me to delay making any other moves until I find out about some of the other irons in the fire.
Speaking of which, for a second thing, I emailed my old boss this morning (he's a COO of a major non-profit in New York, as well as a good friend and an ex-boss, so I use him for all kinds of advice) and told him about last week's interviews and asked him what to do about not having heard anything from anyone since last Wednesday's interview. He told me to sit tight until Monday. Later in the day, though, he emailed me to tell me he'd gotten a phone call from the HR people at the place I've been interviewing, so yay for that--I find it hard to believe they'd go through the trouble of doing that if I weren't at least in the running. And I know him--I'm sure he told the woman that I walk on water. As he said, it wasn't the same things as he would have told the person who would be my boss, but he said the "right" things (and boy howdy does he know how to work that).
I had a zen shiatsu treatment today, and that was extremely interesting. I've been working with this woman for about six months now, and I've been going in approximately every two weeks; thus, she's seen me three times since I quit the bakery, as well as a half-dozen times while I was working there. Today she was marveling at how relaxed I am--all those stuck spots (save one, and I'll return to that in a second) are just gone. More to the point, the "surface tension" engendered by the long hours and hard work at the bakery is gone, enabling us to get to other things--or, in my case, to discover that there just aren't that many other things. The meridians that were cranky as little as two weeks ago were not today (liver and gallbladder, for those of you who care; the practitioner said those both have to do with moving forward, making plans, etc., so I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise).
One of the effects of this is that it reaffirms for me that I've done the right thing in leaving the bakery. Much as I like the people, much as I enjoy the baking, the job itself was not the right thing for me, which I knew rationally; it's nice to have it confirmed by other parts of the system. Yes, there's still uncertainty about what I'm going to do now/next; that's not the point.
Another effect is that she and I have figured out that the persistent pain in my right hip is probably inflammation of some kind more than tightness. As she worked through the crunchy bits, the tenderness remained---kind of reemerged, actually. It felt like inflammation. Thus, I'm going to take ibuprofen for a few days and see if that helps. I suspect I pulled or tweaked something in the general low-back-mid-hip area, and the tightness is my body's way of protecting that area. I'll probably try some yoga, but I may avoid some of the working out (I haven't worked out since last Friday, in part because I have not been motivated or have been hanging out at Friend's house, and today because it was too damned cold). We'll see; I do want to heal it.
I find the body work to be quite interesting--it's a whole other kind of feedback system, and, given that I have not been playing handball or practicing yoga regularly, I haven't had much feedback of any kind other than the pains and creaks and stiffnesses that were part of the bakery work. Adding a professional bodyworker into the mix is useful, because she can give me more detailed feedback. She can also get into places that I have a hard time reaching. I have a particularly dense body--every bodyworker and several yoga teachers have said this about/to me--so having someone else be able to get in there is useful.
I also think that bodily density is part of what makes me think and act as though I'm bigger than I really am. I'm only about 5'4, and I now weigh around 145 pounds (and would like to get back to the 130 I weighed when i started at the bakery--or, rather, would like to get back to fitting into the clothes I wore when I started at the bakery; I don't care what the scale says). Not very big, really--but I feel like I'm, I don't know, maybe 5'10? I know I'm not (just watch me try to reach something on an upper shelf), but I really do feel that way. It's kind of strange; it's not even that I wish I were that tall. But then I stand next to someone who really IS tall--Friend is over 6' tall; Chuck is, too; and the ex-boss mentioned above is something like 6'4 or more, i.e., really goddamned tall--and I realize that I'm kinda short. I don't care, mind you, I just think it's kind of curious that there's such a disconnect between how tall I think I am and how tall I actually am. (How tall/big do you act? Am I the only one who does this?)
Finally, courtesy of Susie, here's your laugh for the day. It took me a second to get all of it (note the arm positions of the people and the painting . . .), but it cracked me up.
For one thing, I got a bunch of editing work in the past week, so, really, I'm not exactly unemployed, which is good. Plus, getting this bunch of work allows me to delay making any other moves until I find out about some of the other irons in the fire.
Speaking of which, for a second thing, I emailed my old boss this morning (he's a COO of a major non-profit in New York, as well as a good friend and an ex-boss, so I use him for all kinds of advice) and told him about last week's interviews and asked him what to do about not having heard anything from anyone since last Wednesday's interview. He told me to sit tight until Monday. Later in the day, though, he emailed me to tell me he'd gotten a phone call from the HR people at the place I've been interviewing, so yay for that--I find it hard to believe they'd go through the trouble of doing that if I weren't at least in the running. And I know him--I'm sure he told the woman that I walk on water. As he said, it wasn't the same things as he would have told the person who would be my boss, but he said the "right" things (and boy howdy does he know how to work that).
I had a zen shiatsu treatment today, and that was extremely interesting. I've been working with this woman for about six months now, and I've been going in approximately every two weeks; thus, she's seen me three times since I quit the bakery, as well as a half-dozen times while I was working there. Today she was marveling at how relaxed I am--all those stuck spots (save one, and I'll return to that in a second) are just gone. More to the point, the "surface tension" engendered by the long hours and hard work at the bakery is gone, enabling us to get to other things--or, in my case, to discover that there just aren't that many other things. The meridians that were cranky as little as two weeks ago were not today (liver and gallbladder, for those of you who care; the practitioner said those both have to do with moving forward, making plans, etc., so I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise).
One of the effects of this is that it reaffirms for me that I've done the right thing in leaving the bakery. Much as I like the people, much as I enjoy the baking, the job itself was not the right thing for me, which I knew rationally; it's nice to have it confirmed by other parts of the system. Yes, there's still uncertainty about what I'm going to do now/next; that's not the point.
Another effect is that she and I have figured out that the persistent pain in my right hip is probably inflammation of some kind more than tightness. As she worked through the crunchy bits, the tenderness remained---kind of reemerged, actually. It felt like inflammation. Thus, I'm going to take ibuprofen for a few days and see if that helps. I suspect I pulled or tweaked something in the general low-back-mid-hip area, and the tightness is my body's way of protecting that area. I'll probably try some yoga, but I may avoid some of the working out (I haven't worked out since last Friday, in part because I have not been motivated or have been hanging out at Friend's house, and today because it was too damned cold). We'll see; I do want to heal it.
I find the body work to be quite interesting--it's a whole other kind of feedback system, and, given that I have not been playing handball or practicing yoga regularly, I haven't had much feedback of any kind other than the pains and creaks and stiffnesses that were part of the bakery work. Adding a professional bodyworker into the mix is useful, because she can give me more detailed feedback. She can also get into places that I have a hard time reaching. I have a particularly dense body--every bodyworker and several yoga teachers have said this about/to me--so having someone else be able to get in there is useful.
I also think that bodily density is part of what makes me think and act as though I'm bigger than I really am. I'm only about 5'4, and I now weigh around 145 pounds (and would like to get back to the 130 I weighed when i started at the bakery--or, rather, would like to get back to fitting into the clothes I wore when I started at the bakery; I don't care what the scale says). Not very big, really--but I feel like I'm, I don't know, maybe 5'10? I know I'm not (just watch me try to reach something on an upper shelf), but I really do feel that way. It's kind of strange; it's not even that I wish I were that tall. But then I stand next to someone who really IS tall--Friend is over 6' tall; Chuck is, too; and the ex-boss mentioned above is something like 6'4 or more, i.e., really goddamned tall--and I realize that I'm kinda short. I don't care, mind you, I just think it's kind of curious that there's such a disconnect between how tall I think I am and how tall I actually am. (How tall/big do you act? Am I the only one who does this?)
Finally, courtesy of Susie, here's your laugh for the day. It took me a second to get all of it (note the arm positions of the people and the painting . . .), but it cracked me up.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Body of Work--and Gumbo
First, a food report. I spent about half the weekend hanging out at Friend's house with him and his cat, and one of his self-appointed tasks for the weekend was to rack his beer, and a second was to make a vat of gumbo. He started that batch of beer (a stout, which I typically like to taste but of which I do not want a whole glass) on New Year's Day, which I got to observe, so, relatively uneventful though racking is, I was entertained to see the next step in the process. Turns out that racking basically involves moving the beer from one large container to another, leaving behind the dead yeast sludge. It also resulted in a pitcher of cloudy and not-quite-mellowed stout.
On Sunday, we'd taken a bunch of wild turkey legs that had already been cooked and started taking the meat off the bones. This is a long, tedious process, because there are lots of natty bits in wild turkey--tendons and the like. He had done a lot of it, and I pitched in at the end, resulting in a couple of pounds of meat. So yesterday he wanted to make a batch of gumbo, using said wild turkey. He started with onions, okra, carrots, and a turnip (he also had a red and a green bell pepper, but, knowing how I can't eat them, he sauteed them separately). Once that stuff had cooked a bit, he added a can of corn, two cans of black beans, a Mason jar of tomatos his mom had canned, a small can of tomato paste, and a small can of tomato sauce, as well as the turkey and some venison ring bologna. And? Some of that pitcher of stout, as we had concluded that this would be a good addition to the mix. It all simmered a bit, then he took out a panful for me and added the peppers to the larger batch. He simmered it a while longer while the brown rice cooked, and then we had at it while watching "Nobody's Fool."
Dear readers, that gumbo rocked the house AND the house next door. There was a serving or so of mine left, and while I would normally not take leftovers, I did not hesitate for a second in this instance. I'm getting all drooly again just thinking about it. I didn't eat it today (because tonight is the drink-good-beer-and-get-free-food night; I am in fact sitting in that bar as I type this), and I likely won't tomorrow, because I'm meeting a pastry school friend for dinner, and I expect the mellowing process to do nothing but further improve its taste. Oh my, was it good.
Okay, now for a change of subject.
I have Comcast cable, and, in case you've been living in a cave, said service enables you to watch some network television whenever you want. In a fit of bored rummaging around last week, I watched the first episode of the show featuring Carson from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy wherein he helps women love their bodies. Yeah, I know; kinda strange premise there, but I was actually kind of impressed by the show. The woman in question was what many would describe as "full-figured," but, as the show pointed out, that's partly because the relentless display of models distorts our individual and collective senses of women's bodies. In the early shots of this woman, it was clear that she believed what she was saying, i.e., she believed that she was fat, dumpy, and unattractive.
Carson basically (1) said no you're not unattractive, and most people would agree with me on that; (2) took her shopping, including for well-fitting foundation garments as well as for clothing; (3) took her to the spa, where she got a haircut and so on; (4) got her to pose naked for a photographer (the shots we saw were definitely naked but not particularly revealing; and (5) had her picture displayed on the side of a building so she could ask passersby if they thought she was sexy. The episode had started that way, too, where Carson had projected a picture of her in bra and panties, though headless, without her knowledge, and asked passersby what they thought. She was shocked by this, of course, but not least because people were talking about how attractive she is. She did not believe this.
In some ways, the most revealing bit was one that did not feature her at all. Carson was showing her three videos of headless women walking down the street, and asked the woman to talk about who was the most attractive, who was heavier, etc.--and it turned out they were all the same woman (even I hadn't seen that one coming right away, and it really was striking). I think that did more than anything to convince her that a lot of it really is how one presents oneself.
Yeah, I know we could critique the whole thing with regard to the male gaze, with regard to women as objects, blah, blah, blah, but I actually really liked it. It was short--a half-hour program--and it sure was to the point, and I really did like seeing this woman come to realize that she was and could be this attractive, confident woman, and that it didn't have a whole lot to do with her size. It was kinda touching, if you want to know (either that or I'm turning into a sap). Without heading into the realm of the empowerful or the realm of the "sports corset," it was great to see someone owning who she is, and liking it. It's gotta start there, I'd say.
Which brings me to my sister-in-law.
Okay, first let's talk about her tanning addiction. She continues to utilize a tanning bed, and in the summer she lays out in the sun. As a result, her skin is downright leathery. Although she is almost exactly ten years younger than I am, and I am decidedly fair-skinned, her skin looks significantly older than mine does. There is no possible way this is healthy.
Second, she has some kind of body dysmorphic disorder, IMHO. She doesn't really eat--as my dad observed, she pushes food around on the plate more than she actually eats. She does eat some, though, as she must, because she works out obsessively. She teaches spinning classes, I think, or some kind of class, and she also has a number of private training clients (though I don't know that she does stuff with them so much as coach them), and she is way too thin. She's very muscular, though, and she doesn't wear a lot of tight clothes (classic, that), so it's difficult to see just how thin she is unless you pay attention. Basically, a significant portion of her life is dedicated to working out, though a bunch of it is under the guise of working, so I think the dysfunctionality of it is invisible. She's not going to the gym to work out, she's going to earn money! If she worked out that much without getting paid for it, bells would ring and red flags would wave.
I realize that I've just spent most of this post discussing women's bodies--as if the media doesn't do enough of that. I know I want to draw a distinction between the media version and my version, but I'm not sure on what it could rest. We don't spend nearly as much time discussing men's bodies, that's for damn sure, and men's bodies aren't subject to the male gaze all the damned time, or evaluated in light of said gaze, and here I am jumping in. So I don't know. I don't think bodies are purely instrumental, and I don't think they'd become that way, even in a post-patriarchal world. We might broaden our ideas of attractive, we might focus less on the perfect, we might pay less attention to the sex of the bodies; I don't know. Those would probably all be steps in the right direction.
I guess, as with other things, I'm looking for a balance, between the instrumental and the decorative, perhaps. We all want to decorate ourselves, and all such decoration isn't merely a display of wealth or youth or sexual availability. At the same time, endless focus on appearance, on the surface, takes time and attention away from the content.
Eh; that's not what I wanted to say, but I realize that I'm not entirely sure that I had a point, so much as stories I wanted to tell. Guess you'll have to be happy with that today--with that and the gumbo.
On Sunday, we'd taken a bunch of wild turkey legs that had already been cooked and started taking the meat off the bones. This is a long, tedious process, because there are lots of natty bits in wild turkey--tendons and the like. He had done a lot of it, and I pitched in at the end, resulting in a couple of pounds of meat. So yesterday he wanted to make a batch of gumbo, using said wild turkey. He started with onions, okra, carrots, and a turnip (he also had a red and a green bell pepper, but, knowing how I can't eat them, he sauteed them separately). Once that stuff had cooked a bit, he added a can of corn, two cans of black beans, a Mason jar of tomatos his mom had canned, a small can of tomato paste, and a small can of tomato sauce, as well as the turkey and some venison ring bologna. And? Some of that pitcher of stout, as we had concluded that this would be a good addition to the mix. It all simmered a bit, then he took out a panful for me and added the peppers to the larger batch. He simmered it a while longer while the brown rice cooked, and then we had at it while watching "Nobody's Fool."
Dear readers, that gumbo rocked the house AND the house next door. There was a serving or so of mine left, and while I would normally not take leftovers, I did not hesitate for a second in this instance. I'm getting all drooly again just thinking about it. I didn't eat it today (because tonight is the drink-good-beer-and-get-free-food night; I am in fact sitting in that bar as I type this), and I likely won't tomorrow, because I'm meeting a pastry school friend for dinner, and I expect the mellowing process to do nothing but further improve its taste. Oh my, was it good.
Okay, now for a change of subject.
I have Comcast cable, and, in case you've been living in a cave, said service enables you to watch some network television whenever you want. In a fit of bored rummaging around last week, I watched the first episode of the show featuring Carson from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy wherein he helps women love their bodies. Yeah, I know; kinda strange premise there, but I was actually kind of impressed by the show. The woman in question was what many would describe as "full-figured," but, as the show pointed out, that's partly because the relentless display of models distorts our individual and collective senses of women's bodies. In the early shots of this woman, it was clear that she believed what she was saying, i.e., she believed that she was fat, dumpy, and unattractive.
Carson basically (1) said no you're not unattractive, and most people would agree with me on that; (2) took her shopping, including for well-fitting foundation garments as well as for clothing; (3) took her to the spa, where she got a haircut and so on; (4) got her to pose naked for a photographer (the shots we saw were definitely naked but not particularly revealing; and (5) had her picture displayed on the side of a building so she could ask passersby if they thought she was sexy. The episode had started that way, too, where Carson had projected a picture of her in bra and panties, though headless, without her knowledge, and asked passersby what they thought. She was shocked by this, of course, but not least because people were talking about how attractive she is. She did not believe this.
In some ways, the most revealing bit was one that did not feature her at all. Carson was showing her three videos of headless women walking down the street, and asked the woman to talk about who was the most attractive, who was heavier, etc.--and it turned out they were all the same woman (even I hadn't seen that one coming right away, and it really was striking). I think that did more than anything to convince her that a lot of it really is how one presents oneself.
Yeah, I know we could critique the whole thing with regard to the male gaze, with regard to women as objects, blah, blah, blah, but I actually really liked it. It was short--a half-hour program--and it sure was to the point, and I really did like seeing this woman come to realize that she was and could be this attractive, confident woman, and that it didn't have a whole lot to do with her size. It was kinda touching, if you want to know (either that or I'm turning into a sap). Without heading into the realm of the empowerful or the realm of the "sports corset," it was great to see someone owning who she is, and liking it. It's gotta start there, I'd say.
Which brings me to my sister-in-law.
Okay, first let's talk about her tanning addiction. She continues to utilize a tanning bed, and in the summer she lays out in the sun. As a result, her skin is downright leathery. Although she is almost exactly ten years younger than I am, and I am decidedly fair-skinned, her skin looks significantly older than mine does. There is no possible way this is healthy.
Second, she has some kind of body dysmorphic disorder, IMHO. She doesn't really eat--as my dad observed, she pushes food around on the plate more than she actually eats. She does eat some, though, as she must, because she works out obsessively. She teaches spinning classes, I think, or some kind of class, and she also has a number of private training clients (though I don't know that she does stuff with them so much as coach them), and she is way too thin. She's very muscular, though, and she doesn't wear a lot of tight clothes (classic, that), so it's difficult to see just how thin she is unless you pay attention. Basically, a significant portion of her life is dedicated to working out, though a bunch of it is under the guise of working, so I think the dysfunctionality of it is invisible. She's not going to the gym to work out, she's going to earn money! If she worked out that much without getting paid for it, bells would ring and red flags would wave.
I realize that I've just spent most of this post discussing women's bodies--as if the media doesn't do enough of that. I know I want to draw a distinction between the media version and my version, but I'm not sure on what it could rest. We don't spend nearly as much time discussing men's bodies, that's for damn sure, and men's bodies aren't subject to the male gaze all the damned time, or evaluated in light of said gaze, and here I am jumping in. So I don't know. I don't think bodies are purely instrumental, and I don't think they'd become that way, even in a post-patriarchal world. We might broaden our ideas of attractive, we might focus less on the perfect, we might pay less attention to the sex of the bodies; I don't know. Those would probably all be steps in the right direction.
I guess, as with other things, I'm looking for a balance, between the instrumental and the decorative, perhaps. We all want to decorate ourselves, and all such decoration isn't merely a display of wealth or youth or sexual availability. At the same time, endless focus on appearance, on the surface, takes time and attention away from the content.
Eh; that's not what I wanted to say, but I realize that I'm not entirely sure that I had a point, so much as stories I wanted to tell. Guess you'll have to be happy with that today--with that and the gumbo.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
This, That, the Other
Three professors are stranded on a desert island. They have canned food, but no can opener. The physicist says he can figure out how to force the cans open without losing the contents. The chemist says she can identify chemical reactions that will get the cans open without destroying or tainting the contents. The economist says, "Assume a can opener."
When I was in graduate school, the graduate students most likely to annoy the crap out of me were the econ students. In addition to being narrow-minded (in not one but several different ways), they were unhappy, miserable people, and they seemed to think that was a fair price to pay for having our university's name on their diploma. (I knew one guy who was a true exception to these rules, and I wish I could remember his name. He had a long ponytail, and a cheerful demeanor--at one point, he won some small award, and he took the money that came with it and threw a party, which I thought was really quite nice.) The thing that always annoyed me about economists, though, from the time I was an undergraduate, is that their models of the world just didn't seem informative or interesting. The whole ceteris paribus thing seemed like a copout to me, not least because it seemed to take the most important questions and assume them away (or, in some cases, reduce them in such a way as to be overly simplistic). I understand the point of models, which is what economists (and game theorists) use to remove the messy complexities of real life, but it has often seemed to me that the better and more informative path is to explore those complexities. For example, economists and game theorists often describe people's motivations as, for example, self-interested; even people who behave in what we might describe as altruistic ways are getting pleasure of some kind from their behavior and are therefore, in this model, self-interested. Not only do I regard that as eye-rollingly stupid, I don't see how it illuminates any questions we want answered. People act from a variety of motivations, often from several at once, and reducing them all to "self-interest"--and a particularly crabbed version of that--does not shed any useful light on human behavior.
In any case, Paul Krugman is steadily forcing me to revise my disdain for economists. In addition to his twice-weekly column, he has a blog, and I find it extremely educational. (And not just because he titled it after his newest book, "The Conscience of a Liberal.") Rather than doing the kind of game theoretic work that surrounded me in grad school, he looks at various economic data and tries to make some sense of it.
From the feminism front, I've been thinking about the Germaine Greer quote (both Twisty and Echidne have posted it), to the effect that women have no idea how much men hate them. And, indeed, I think there is a great deal of truth in that, in that there are some, perhaps many, men who really do hate women. They may want to have sex with women, and they may make exceptions of various sorts for women in their own personal lives, but, in general, they really do regard women as this awful, Other creature, as beings who are fundamentally different from men (who are normal and the norm). Consider the cartoons about Hil that mithras assembled--all from one cartoonist!--and his analysis of the misogyny at the root of them. Consider the uproar in the blogopshere about Chris Matthews (I don't have a handy link for that one, because I've been doing my best to just ignore it). Consider the men who want to decide what I can do with my uterus, or the men who think that men really should be the deciders in the household.
Yeah, I know, none of you or the men with whom you associate are like that, and, like me, you probably do your best to avoid them, and you likely work in places where they cannot spew their vile hatred without getting canned. (More likely, there are a few closet misogynists around you.) Even the men closest to us are likely to display some sexism once in awhile--we do live in a patriarchal culture, after all, and we absorb tropes and behaviors and memes from it without even realizing it--but not that outright misogyny. Thus, many women AND men have no idea how much some men hate women. What this also means, though, is that men who don't hate women are particularly clueless about the extent of the hatred or the many forms it takes.
On one hand, I don't regard it as my obligation to educate the fucking world about misogyny: if you're truly "well-meaning," or a feminist, or not a hater, or whatever, then it's your obligation to learn what you can about it, without getting all defensive all the damned time and trying to declare "but I'm not like that!!" Let's face it--it's possible to learn about all kinds of injustice without actually experiencing it. I see the whole thing as a social justice issue, and if men are serious about social justice, then they need to recognize misogyny and patriarchy for the evils that they are.
On the other hand, part of the education is, or can be, experiencing it, and men simply do not experience the everyday shit to which women become accustomed. Thus, holding men responsible for experience they cannot acquire isn't useful. (Though men who (a) diminish reports of this experience or (b) turn the conversation to their own tewwible, howwible, experiences, which ARE TOO awful! need to STFU and listen, fer chrissakes, and not just in hopes of getting laid or to prove that they're not women-haters.) WAY too often, even well-meaning men dismiss stories of sexism with their own tales of woe or with supposedly funny dismissals. Let me tell you, guys, it's tiresome. And while you may not be imposing it on anyone, or you may not think you're doing it, that guy in the cubicle next to you? He wouldn't do laundry if his life depended on it. The guy on the other side talks to women's breasts. The woman across the way didn't get as big a promotion or raise, and she came in at a lower salary than the bozo who does less work than she does.
And don't even get me started on the "but men are subject to the patriarchy too!!" Yes, I know they are. And they benefit from it, mightily, even men who are not themselves women-haters. Susie Bright had an interesting post on her blog about Suze Orman, who apparently came out recently. I don't watch Orman, and I had no idea she was lesbian (and I don't care)--she annoys me, as a matter of fact, because the little of her I've seen seems pretty simplisitic--but the article was fascinating (go read the whole thing, but probably not at work).
Or, earlier: "Money and sex get confused with virtue, and virtue is a feminine trait. There is a great deal of belief among women that if they are “good”—that is to say, modest and self-deferential in their needs, be they orgasmic or financial—they’ ll be rewarded with the status of respected wife and mother."
My perspective is actually similar to Bright's and Orman's, in that I never expected a man would take care of me or support me financially (except for that very brief moment when Chuck was supposed to return the favor for me taking care of him for years, and we see how THAT turned out). I always assumed I'd be making my own way—even if I had a partner in there at some point. Even now, I get a little appalled at the number of women who apparently didn't learn anything from reading about the 1970s and earlier. All the "push presents" in the world aren't going to pay the fucking rent if he decides he wants someone younger in his bed, or, for that matter, if some tragedy happens.
I'll go further than Bright: straight women aren't supposed to care about money, at least not about earning decent money at a good job. It's unfeminine, and men feel all emasculated and shit if you make more than they do (though, guys, keep in mind that she probably makes less than the men at her level at her workplace, even if she does the same work and/or a better job at it). Much better that women get demanding about jewelry and such, not least because those trinkets are dispensed by and at the pleasure of the man. You don't even have to make more than men for them to get all anxious: many men are unnerved by women who are self-sufficient. If you don't "need" them, then you might leave them, whereas if a woman depends on a man financially, well, it's a lot harder to leave. (Here I'm wishing my friend would stop lurking and tell her story . . . you know who you are!) Yeah, I know, you guys out there are exceptions, YOU don't feel that way, or you women are partners with guys who don't feel that way, but I'm not making up this shit.
But I find self-sufficiency very freeing, and I know more than a few men who feel the way I do about it. A fair number of men seem to be relieved when they find a partner with whom they're not expected to . . . take care of things. Of course, the tradeoff is that they have to clean the bathroom, or do the laundry, or perform whatever other shitwork the situation demands, but, hey, that's life.
(And, yes, I know, shit can happen to make self-sufficiency nearly impossible, and I know that all of us depend on myriad others for all kinds of things; that's not what I mean. That's human interdependency, and it's part of life. What I mean is the assumption, on the part of women and/or men, that they'll end up in a dyad and that in that dyad he's going to make more money--that he will, in some way, "take care of" her, and that she, therefore, does not need, and should not want, to put as much energy into making a living.)
Speaking of patriarchy, enjoy the football games today, or enjoy ignoring them.
When I was in graduate school, the graduate students most likely to annoy the crap out of me were the econ students. In addition to being narrow-minded (in not one but several different ways), they were unhappy, miserable people, and they seemed to think that was a fair price to pay for having our university's name on their diploma. (I knew one guy who was a true exception to these rules, and I wish I could remember his name. He had a long ponytail, and a cheerful demeanor--at one point, he won some small award, and he took the money that came with it and threw a party, which I thought was really quite nice.) The thing that always annoyed me about economists, though, from the time I was an undergraduate, is that their models of the world just didn't seem informative or interesting. The whole ceteris paribus thing seemed like a copout to me, not least because it seemed to take the most important questions and assume them away (or, in some cases, reduce them in such a way as to be overly simplistic). I understand the point of models, which is what economists (and game theorists) use to remove the messy complexities of real life, but it has often seemed to me that the better and more informative path is to explore those complexities. For example, economists and game theorists often describe people's motivations as, for example, self-interested; even people who behave in what we might describe as altruistic ways are getting pleasure of some kind from their behavior and are therefore, in this model, self-interested. Not only do I regard that as eye-rollingly stupid, I don't see how it illuminates any questions we want answered. People act from a variety of motivations, often from several at once, and reducing them all to "self-interest"--and a particularly crabbed version of that--does not shed any useful light on human behavior.
In any case, Paul Krugman is steadily forcing me to revise my disdain for economists. In addition to his twice-weekly column, he has a blog, and I find it extremely educational. (And not just because he titled it after his newest book, "The Conscience of a Liberal.") Rather than doing the kind of game theoretic work that surrounded me in grad school, he looks at various economic data and tries to make some sense of it.
From the feminism front, I've been thinking about the Germaine Greer quote (both Twisty and Echidne have posted it), to the effect that women have no idea how much men hate them. And, indeed, I think there is a great deal of truth in that, in that there are some, perhaps many, men who really do hate women. They may want to have sex with women, and they may make exceptions of various sorts for women in their own personal lives, but, in general, they really do regard women as this awful, Other creature, as beings who are fundamentally different from men (who are normal and the norm). Consider the cartoons about Hil that mithras assembled--all from one cartoonist!--and his analysis of the misogyny at the root of them. Consider the uproar in the blogopshere about Chris Matthews (I don't have a handy link for that one, because I've been doing my best to just ignore it). Consider the men who want to decide what I can do with my uterus, or the men who think that men really should be the deciders in the household.
Yeah, I know, none of you or the men with whom you associate are like that, and, like me, you probably do your best to avoid them, and you likely work in places where they cannot spew their vile hatred without getting canned. (More likely, there are a few closet misogynists around you.) Even the men closest to us are likely to display some sexism once in awhile--we do live in a patriarchal culture, after all, and we absorb tropes and behaviors and memes from it without even realizing it--but not that outright misogyny. Thus, many women AND men have no idea how much some men hate women. What this also means, though, is that men who don't hate women are particularly clueless about the extent of the hatred or the many forms it takes.
On one hand, I don't regard it as my obligation to educate the fucking world about misogyny: if you're truly "well-meaning," or a feminist, or not a hater, or whatever, then it's your obligation to learn what you can about it, without getting all defensive all the damned time and trying to declare "but I'm not like that!!" Let's face it--it's possible to learn about all kinds of injustice without actually experiencing it. I see the whole thing as a social justice issue, and if men are serious about social justice, then they need to recognize misogyny and patriarchy for the evils that they are.
On the other hand, part of the education is, or can be, experiencing it, and men simply do not experience the everyday shit to which women become accustomed. Thus, holding men responsible for experience they cannot acquire isn't useful. (Though men who (a) diminish reports of this experience or (b) turn the conversation to their own tewwible, howwible, experiences, which ARE TOO awful! need to STFU and listen, fer chrissakes, and not just in hopes of getting laid or to prove that they're not women-haters.) WAY too often, even well-meaning men dismiss stories of sexism with their own tales of woe or with supposedly funny dismissals. Let me tell you, guys, it's tiresome. And while you may not be imposing it on anyone, or you may not think you're doing it, that guy in the cubicle next to you? He wouldn't do laundry if his life depended on it. The guy on the other side talks to women's breasts. The woman across the way didn't get as big a promotion or raise, and she came in at a lower salary than the bozo who does less work than she does.
And don't even get me started on the "but men are subject to the patriarchy too!!" Yes, I know they are. And they benefit from it, mightily, even men who are not themselves women-haters. Susie Bright had an interesting post on her blog about Suze Orman, who apparently came out recently. I don't watch Orman, and I had no idea she was lesbian (and I don't care)--she annoys me, as a matter of fact, because the little of her I've seen seems pretty simplisitic--but the article was fascinating (go read the whole thing, but probably not at work).
What Orman is saying, a tiny bit more openly, in her new book, is that she knows most women’s money lives are defined by their dependence on men, be they husbands, lovers, or fathers. She is urging women, rhetorically, to cut it off.
I know the word “virtue” sounds old-fashioned—but so is the urge to “find a man,” and “have a baby” with said man. Those goals are more pressing than ever, as feminist philosophy becomes a novelty item.
In lesbian culture, there’s no currency in being sexually virtuous. No one cares if you have slept with “X” number of women before you sleep with them—not because they’re so open-minded, but because there’s no economic basis. There’s no “finding out whose baby this is.”
Lesbian sexuality is not designed to answer any notion of virtue; it doesn’t answer a patriarch’s need. This is why Suze Orman is incredulous that straight women keep getting taken to the cleaners financially—she is oblivious to the “call of virtue,” no matter how many New Age platitudes she espouses.
Traditionally-brought up women think that if they try, try, try, to take care of everyone and deny themselves fulfillment beyond retail-trivia, that they will get their BIG REWARD. You know, the "push present."
Or, earlier: "Money and sex get confused with virtue, and virtue is a feminine trait. There is a great deal of belief among women that if they are “good”—that is to say, modest and self-deferential in their needs, be they orgasmic or financial—they’ ll be rewarded with the status of respected wife and mother."
My perspective is actually similar to Bright's and Orman's, in that I never expected a man would take care of me or support me financially (except for that very brief moment when Chuck was supposed to return the favor for me taking care of him for years, and we see how THAT turned out). I always assumed I'd be making my own way—even if I had a partner in there at some point. Even now, I get a little appalled at the number of women who apparently didn't learn anything from reading about the 1970s and earlier. All the "push presents" in the world aren't going to pay the fucking rent if he decides he wants someone younger in his bed, or, for that matter, if some tragedy happens.
I'll go further than Bright: straight women aren't supposed to care about money, at least not about earning decent money at a good job. It's unfeminine, and men feel all emasculated and shit if you make more than they do (though, guys, keep in mind that she probably makes less than the men at her level at her workplace, even if she does the same work and/or a better job at it). Much better that women get demanding about jewelry and such, not least because those trinkets are dispensed by and at the pleasure of the man. You don't even have to make more than men for them to get all anxious: many men are unnerved by women who are self-sufficient. If you don't "need" them, then you might leave them, whereas if a woman depends on a man financially, well, it's a lot harder to leave. (Here I'm wishing my friend would stop lurking and tell her story . . . you know who you are!) Yeah, I know, you guys out there are exceptions, YOU don't feel that way, or you women are partners with guys who don't feel that way, but I'm not making up this shit.
But I find self-sufficiency very freeing, and I know more than a few men who feel the way I do about it. A fair number of men seem to be relieved when they find a partner with whom they're not expected to . . . take care of things. Of course, the tradeoff is that they have to clean the bathroom, or do the laundry, or perform whatever other shitwork the situation demands, but, hey, that's life.
(And, yes, I know, shit can happen to make self-sufficiency nearly impossible, and I know that all of us depend on myriad others for all kinds of things; that's not what I mean. That's human interdependency, and it's part of life. What I mean is the assumption, on the part of women and/or men, that they'll end up in a dyad and that in that dyad he's going to make more money--that he will, in some way, "take care of" her, and that she, therefore, does not need, and should not want, to put as much energy into making a living.)
Speaking of patriarchy, enjoy the football games today, or enjoy ignoring them.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Home Work
Okay, first off, let me say that Lewis and Clark probably left for the hinterlands with less crap than I took with me today. I wanted to work out a little, then go to a yoga class, then go get some tea and do some editing, so I had gym shoes, both workout and yoga pants, sweat socks, and my laptop. Among other things. Let's just say that I am in no danger of having my Sherpa union card revoked.
I did manage to do everything on that list except the actual editing, and the "except" is because Microsoft blows. I have Office X on that computer, but there are a zillion updates to it and I wanted to install them all before I started creating toolbars and such, but could I find those downloads on their site? No. Of course not. They're too busy hyping Office 2008 and 2004, neither of which I have purchased (and both of which I will avoid as long as possible). So, no updating occurred, and, therefore, no editing occurred, either, and I still don't have an updated Office on the laptop. (Part of the reason to do all the updates is that if I (a) create macros and custom toolbars and such, and (b) THEN do the updating, I will (c) lose all of my customizations--seriously, all of the macros will disappear.) What a piece of crap.
I've been thinking about my dad a lot lately. I have always gotten along with my dad better/more easily than with my mother, in part because of my particular personality and in part because my mother can be . . . difficult. I have figured out how to get along with my mom, most of the time, and I have put a tremendous effort into that relationship, and I don't regret that in the least, but it's also nice to hang with a parent who is less difficult. It seems that, once we reached a certain age, my dad kind of figured he'd done all he could do in terms of giving advice. If my brother or I did something he regarded as particularly wrong he would certainly say something, but he regards our lives as our own. My mom, on the other hand, regularly dispenses opinions--for example, that I am Too Old to Have Long Hair, and wondering why I don't dye my hair. And my mom gets her back up, sometimes for reasons that are opaque; when my sister and I were in high school, she would occasionally just stop talking to us (or, more accurately, would only snap at us, if she spoke at all); we referred to it as being a social outcast, because we couldn't always figure out what the fuck we'd done. That sounds more lighthearted than the experience was, but, hey, it was 35 years ago; I'm just trying to illuminate her personality a little, and let's not forget that she did it just last year.
When we were kids, my parents, to all appearances, had a very traditional division of labor around the house, and, in fact, I think both of them would have described it that way. At the same time, they've always regarded each other as a partner; my mother speaks as though she defers to my father, but that's (a) pretty far from the truth and (b) not how my father would see it or think of it or want it. In any case, mom did the cooking and cleaning (with a lot of help on the latter from me and my sister) and, once bro started school, worked as a secretary, while dad earned the steady income and maintained the house and yard and garden. Mom managed all the money, and still does (I don't think I've ever gotten a check with my dad's signature on it).
A few years ago--five, maybe?--my mom had seven of her vertebrae fused. They had disintegrated so severely and caused her such pain that she could not walk or stand more than about five minutes. (It was clear for awhile that surgery was necessary, but no one would pull the trigger on it because her kidney function had already declined and there was some concern that the anesthesia and painkillers would be problematic, but finally she just went and did it--it was either that or be wheelchair-bound.) Even though the surgery was nearly miraculous in its results, she couldn't do certain kinds of housework--vacuuming, for example. So my dad did it, without so much as a comment about it. (Of course, you say; what else would you expect?) While I was visiting them, I also learned about their routine on dialysis days. My mom likes to get there at 6:00 am, when they open, so she can get in and can get out by 11:00 or a little before. My parents have the heat turned down at night, so my dad gets up at 5:30 or so, starts the coffee (which my mom has loaded into the coffeemaker the night before, I think) and turns on the heat, so when my mom gets up the house is warm and her coffee is ready. They still have their divisions, but the fundamental nature of their relationship is that of a partnership; they try to make each other's lives easier in the small ways that smooth the rough parts of the day.
Compare this to my brother, at whose home I also stayed. You may remember that my SIL had her knee replaced in September. She was in serious, serious pain for at least six weeks, but, as soon as she was able, she started back at the gym (frankly, I'd say she has a body dysmorphic disorder, but that's for another post). In December, my brother ripped his bicep. SIL was already back teaching classes and taking on personal training clients at the gym, as best she was able, while my brother was home recuperating, which mostly involved hanging around the house. While he was there, he would not so much as put his coffee cups in the dishwasher; he left them on the counter. For days (SIL didn't put them in the dishwasher just to see what would happen). Laundry? You're kidding, right? SIL and I talked about this at length, and I sympathized with her; she's in a position where she'd have to start a serious pissing match--which usually means everyone ends up with piss on their shoes--and there's no guarantee she'd get anything out of it. Bro simply refuses to lift a finger around the house. He never has--and, as a result, he has no idea how much work it actually is.
I put a little of this at my mother's feet, although she and my father are equally dismayed by bro in that regard. In general, I think that people are responsible for their own behavior once they become adults, and certainly by the time they are my brother's age (43). But my mother insisted that my brother didn't have to help with housework, because it was "women's work." Unlike me and my sister, he never cleaned the bathrooms, he never vacuumed, he never dusted or did laundry. When he lived with roommates for a few years, he took his laundry to my mom--who did it for him. On some level, he really does not know how much work is involved in keeping a house in reasonable condition, because he never did it, and, thus, he likely underestimates wildly just how much work is involved. Because of an inherent selfish streak, however, he's also unable to observe what SIL does, or empathize with it in any way. He'd probably tell you that he appreciates what she does, but he's just . . . clueless, and that's his responsibility.
And over the years, I've seen so many men like my brother out there, and not enough like my father. It's almost a willful ignorance, but it's also, I'd say, selfishness, an unwillingness to acknowledge that one's spouse is one's equal, an unwillingness to be a true partner, and it's a willful undervaluing or devaluing of the work involved in maintaining a household (and raising kids, for that matter). (For all his issues, that one was never one of Chuck's; we managed to work out the joint chores equitably.) There's also a certain amount of misogyny in there, in some cases, though not, I think, in my brother's. I've heard it said that people marry someone like the parent with whom they had the more difficult relationship, and there are definitely ways that Chuck is much more like my mother than my father (also a subject for a different post), but it's also the case, at least for me, that, consciously, I've always thought that my father possesses the qualities that I would most want in a partner. That's still true, in many ways, but thinking about that has helped me to see the qualities that my parents share, which, in turn, has improved my relationship with my mother.
Anyway. We learn about relationships by experiencing the ones around us, and there are worse models than the ones my parents provided; the older I get, the luckier I feel. It's too bad more of it didn't rub off on my brother.
I did manage to do everything on that list except the actual editing, and the "except" is because Microsoft blows. I have Office X on that computer, but there are a zillion updates to it and I wanted to install them all before I started creating toolbars and such, but could I find those downloads on their site? No. Of course not. They're too busy hyping Office 2008 and 2004, neither of which I have purchased (and both of which I will avoid as long as possible). So, no updating occurred, and, therefore, no editing occurred, either, and I still don't have an updated Office on the laptop. (Part of the reason to do all the updates is that if I (a) create macros and custom toolbars and such, and (b) THEN do the updating, I will (c) lose all of my customizations--seriously, all of the macros will disappear.) What a piece of crap.
I've been thinking about my dad a lot lately. I have always gotten along with my dad better/more easily than with my mother, in part because of my particular personality and in part because my mother can be . . . difficult. I have figured out how to get along with my mom, most of the time, and I have put a tremendous effort into that relationship, and I don't regret that in the least, but it's also nice to hang with a parent who is less difficult. It seems that, once we reached a certain age, my dad kind of figured he'd done all he could do in terms of giving advice. If my brother or I did something he regarded as particularly wrong he would certainly say something, but he regards our lives as our own. My mom, on the other hand, regularly dispenses opinions--for example, that I am Too Old to Have Long Hair, and wondering why I don't dye my hair. And my mom gets her back up, sometimes for reasons that are opaque; when my sister and I were in high school, she would occasionally just stop talking to us (or, more accurately, would only snap at us, if she spoke at all); we referred to it as being a social outcast, because we couldn't always figure out what the fuck we'd done. That sounds more lighthearted than the experience was, but, hey, it was 35 years ago; I'm just trying to illuminate her personality a little, and let's not forget that she did it just last year.
When we were kids, my parents, to all appearances, had a very traditional division of labor around the house, and, in fact, I think both of them would have described it that way. At the same time, they've always regarded each other as a partner; my mother speaks as though she defers to my father, but that's (a) pretty far from the truth and (b) not how my father would see it or think of it or want it. In any case, mom did the cooking and cleaning (with a lot of help on the latter from me and my sister) and, once bro started school, worked as a secretary, while dad earned the steady income and maintained the house and yard and garden. Mom managed all the money, and still does (I don't think I've ever gotten a check with my dad's signature on it).
A few years ago--five, maybe?--my mom had seven of her vertebrae fused. They had disintegrated so severely and caused her such pain that she could not walk or stand more than about five minutes. (It was clear for awhile that surgery was necessary, but no one would pull the trigger on it because her kidney function had already declined and there was some concern that the anesthesia and painkillers would be problematic, but finally she just went and did it--it was either that or be wheelchair-bound.) Even though the surgery was nearly miraculous in its results, she couldn't do certain kinds of housework--vacuuming, for example. So my dad did it, without so much as a comment about it. (Of course, you say; what else would you expect?) While I was visiting them, I also learned about their routine on dialysis days. My mom likes to get there at 6:00 am, when they open, so she can get in and can get out by 11:00 or a little before. My parents have the heat turned down at night, so my dad gets up at 5:30 or so, starts the coffee (which my mom has loaded into the coffeemaker the night before, I think) and turns on the heat, so when my mom gets up the house is warm and her coffee is ready. They still have their divisions, but the fundamental nature of their relationship is that of a partnership; they try to make each other's lives easier in the small ways that smooth the rough parts of the day.
Compare this to my brother, at whose home I also stayed. You may remember that my SIL had her knee replaced in September. She was in serious, serious pain for at least six weeks, but, as soon as she was able, she started back at the gym (frankly, I'd say she has a body dysmorphic disorder, but that's for another post). In December, my brother ripped his bicep. SIL was already back teaching classes and taking on personal training clients at the gym, as best she was able, while my brother was home recuperating, which mostly involved hanging around the house. While he was there, he would not so much as put his coffee cups in the dishwasher; he left them on the counter. For days (SIL didn't put them in the dishwasher just to see what would happen). Laundry? You're kidding, right? SIL and I talked about this at length, and I sympathized with her; she's in a position where she'd have to start a serious pissing match--which usually means everyone ends up with piss on their shoes--and there's no guarantee she'd get anything out of it. Bro simply refuses to lift a finger around the house. He never has--and, as a result, he has no idea how much work it actually is.
I put a little of this at my mother's feet, although she and my father are equally dismayed by bro in that regard. In general, I think that people are responsible for their own behavior once they become adults, and certainly by the time they are my brother's age (43). But my mother insisted that my brother didn't have to help with housework, because it was "women's work." Unlike me and my sister, he never cleaned the bathrooms, he never vacuumed, he never dusted or did laundry. When he lived with roommates for a few years, he took his laundry to my mom--who did it for him. On some level, he really does not know how much work is involved in keeping a house in reasonable condition, because he never did it, and, thus, he likely underestimates wildly just how much work is involved. Because of an inherent selfish streak, however, he's also unable to observe what SIL does, or empathize with it in any way. He'd probably tell you that he appreciates what she does, but he's just . . . clueless, and that's his responsibility.
And over the years, I've seen so many men like my brother out there, and not enough like my father. It's almost a willful ignorance, but it's also, I'd say, selfishness, an unwillingness to acknowledge that one's spouse is one's equal, an unwillingness to be a true partner, and it's a willful undervaluing or devaluing of the work involved in maintaining a household (and raising kids, for that matter). (For all his issues, that one was never one of Chuck's; we managed to work out the joint chores equitably.) There's also a certain amount of misogyny in there, in some cases, though not, I think, in my brother's. I've heard it said that people marry someone like the parent with whom they had the more difficult relationship, and there are definitely ways that Chuck is much more like my mother than my father (also a subject for a different post), but it's also the case, at least for me, that, consciously, I've always thought that my father possesses the qualities that I would most want in a partner. That's still true, in many ways, but thinking about that has helped me to see the qualities that my parents share, which, in turn, has improved my relationship with my mother.
Anyway. We learn about relationships by experiencing the ones around us, and there are worse models than the ones my parents provided; the older I get, the luckier I feel. It's too bad more of it didn't rub off on my brother.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
In This Corner
Not only did I work out yesterday AND the day before, today I bought a bunch of yoga classes and actually attended one. The guy who was my first teacher was subbing for someone (actually, he was subbing for another of my favorite teachers), and I had already decided to spend some of what will be a huge tax refund on some yoga classes, and lo and behold, there he was on the schedule for today. One of the things I love about his teaching is that he spent a lot of time studying Iyengar, which emphasizes proper alignment and which thus encourages the use of props such as blocks and straps and bolsters and whatever else you need to get into a proper version of the pose. He periodically teaches a workshop on the use of props.
And his sense of humor cracks me up. Because of his attitude, when I started, I felt comfortable coming to class, even though I was surrounded by people who seemed to be much better able to go deeply into asanas (poses) than I could. Even today, for example, there was a row of yoginis up front who were pretzel types. That ain't never gonna be me. Another favorite teacher has told me that I have great form (which is more important than how deeply one gets into a pose), and that's compensation. She and I have also talked about how being stiff-jointed the way I am means that I simply cannot throw myself into poses, that I must take my time, do it gradually over time, and, for some asanas, recognize that I may not get deeply into those poses in this lifetime. I find that that process deepens my concentration and focus, and also opens me up--I almost feel like I"m getting more out of it somehow.
Our bodies are amazing, though. As I mentioned briefly a couple of posts ago, with regard to calluses, we reshape and adapt ourselves in ways that me maybe didn't realize we could. Even with yoga, I'm not ruling out anything. Some things seem unlikely to me--hanumanasana, for example--but who knows. Back when I practiced regularly, I just tried to practice in that direction, with that intention, while also being accepting of where I was. (That was one of the other things about Vinnie's Saturday morning class (he doesn't teach it any more, but it was a great favorite): It collected a fair number of men, and not just the yogis but the regular guys, and it collected a fair number of men and women whose bodies weren't svelte and limber. I think his acceptance and humor and use of props was what gave people the space to try things.)
One of the things with which I'm experimenting is trying to develop more core strength. Because I've never owned a car, because I've always walked a lot, and because of the sports I've played, I've always had a certain amount of physical strength, particularly in my legs and shoulders. But it's not really "core" strength, in many ways, insofar as core strength is, literally, at one's core, in one's abdomen. Because of my relatively greater extremity strength, the lack of core strength isn't pressing for most activities of daily living, but it would improve my overall well-being, I think, if I worked on that. Rowing seems to help that, if I do it properly, and yoga both requires and reinforces it; if I go back to handball, I'll be in good shape for it.
Meanwhile, I'm getting seriously hungry. I stopped at a starbucks with my laptop on the way home from yoga--because I can! I don't know how well the laptop will actually work for copyediting/proofreading, but I just got a smallish job, so I'll use that to experiment. For now, though, it's time for some food. Mostly, I just wanted to blog from a coffee shop--because I can. Which is lame, but I can live with that.
Oh--the interview yesterday? It seemed to go well. I liked the person--she's the boss of the person who'd be my boss--and she said she was going to give a good report to my prospective boss, so who knows. I'm sure I'll have to meet with more people, but it seems like no one has said no. Yet.
And his sense of humor cracks me up. Because of his attitude, when I started, I felt comfortable coming to class, even though I was surrounded by people who seemed to be much better able to go deeply into asanas (poses) than I could. Even today, for example, there was a row of yoginis up front who were pretzel types. That ain't never gonna be me. Another favorite teacher has told me that I have great form (which is more important than how deeply one gets into a pose), and that's compensation. She and I have also talked about how being stiff-jointed the way I am means that I simply cannot throw myself into poses, that I must take my time, do it gradually over time, and, for some asanas, recognize that I may not get deeply into those poses in this lifetime. I find that that process deepens my concentration and focus, and also opens me up--I almost feel like I"m getting more out of it somehow.
Our bodies are amazing, though. As I mentioned briefly a couple of posts ago, with regard to calluses, we reshape and adapt ourselves in ways that me maybe didn't realize we could. Even with yoga, I'm not ruling out anything. Some things seem unlikely to me--hanumanasana, for example--but who knows. Back when I practiced regularly, I just tried to practice in that direction, with that intention, while also being accepting of where I was. (That was one of the other things about Vinnie's Saturday morning class (he doesn't teach it any more, but it was a great favorite): It collected a fair number of men, and not just the yogis but the regular guys, and it collected a fair number of men and women whose bodies weren't svelte and limber. I think his acceptance and humor and use of props was what gave people the space to try things.)
One of the things with which I'm experimenting is trying to develop more core strength. Because I've never owned a car, because I've always walked a lot, and because of the sports I've played, I've always had a certain amount of physical strength, particularly in my legs and shoulders. But it's not really "core" strength, in many ways, insofar as core strength is, literally, at one's core, in one's abdomen. Because of my relatively greater extremity strength, the lack of core strength isn't pressing for most activities of daily living, but it would improve my overall well-being, I think, if I worked on that. Rowing seems to help that, if I do it properly, and yoga both requires and reinforces it; if I go back to handball, I'll be in good shape for it.
Meanwhile, I'm getting seriously hungry. I stopped at a starbucks with my laptop on the way home from yoga--because I can! I don't know how well the laptop will actually work for copyediting/proofreading, but I just got a smallish job, so I'll use that to experiment. For now, though, it's time for some food. Mostly, I just wanted to blog from a coffee shop--because I can. Which is lame, but I can live with that.
Oh--the interview yesterday? It seemed to go well. I liked the person--she's the boss of the person who'd be my boss--and she said she was going to give a good report to my prospective boss, so who knows. I'm sure I'll have to meet with more people, but it seems like no one has said no. Yet.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Cross Those Fingers
Well, it did seem to go well today. I liked the guy who interviewed me--he'd be my boss--and he seemed to like me well enough. We only talked for 45 minutes or so, but he wanted me to meet with the two VPs, and one of them already called me to set up something for tomorrow (she's going out of town Thursday & Friday, and Monday's a holiday--and she didn't want to wait until she got back), which I took as a good sign. Who knows--we'll see what happens.
I did, in fact, work out today, and I'm bringing along my gear so I can do so again tomorrow on my way home in the morning. Even if I get this job, it'll be a few weeks before I'd start, so I'd just as soon spend some time kickstarting a workout routine of some kind. Meanwhile, there are beers out there with my name on them, so I'm going to go find them and drink them.
I did, in fact, work out today, and I'm bringing along my gear so I can do so again tomorrow on my way home in the morning. Even if I get this job, it'll be a few weeks before I'd start, so I'd just as soon spend some time kickstarting a workout routine of some kind. Meanwhile, there are beers out there with my name on them, so I'm going to go find them and drink them.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Lounging Animal
I'm still not used to not really having anything to do. I got back Thursday, did some errands; Friday I had the job interview; yesterday I headed to Friend's in the late morning, for breakfast and, eventually, football-watching; today I've mostly hung around. I tidied up--the kind of tidying that I rarely did when I was still working, because it just didn't irritate me enough to use up precious free time doing it--and . . . you know. Talked to a friend who's contemplating a job change. Tried to compare paper shredders online, but couldn't find one that (a) was reasonably priced and (b) everyone who had it didn't hate it because it jammed all the time. Half-heartedly looked for jobs for which I can apply, but didn't actually apply for any (because It's Sunday, and I didn't feel like it). Half-listened to the football games (the Dallas/NY game is still on).
I did enjoy yesterday's game, especially the Packers' game. Friend is a Packers fan, so he had a dog in that fight; I enjoyed it because of (a) the snowstorm and (b) the ability to listen to the game on the radio while watching it. The latter was entertaining because the broadcasters were "homers," and actually cared who won the game, but even moreso because they had to paint a picture on the radio, so the words they were speaking were WAY more informative than the jabber that you hear from TV announcers. I really cannot stand that yammering, and the availability of endless information and stats and history and such has made it even worse, so the radio coverage was preferable.
The snowstorm was also entertaining--although football is by no means my favorite sport, I will, as you know, watch just about anything that involves a puck or a ball--because they don't cancel football games on account of the weather, and a snowstorm will definitely affect play. I like that kind of random change-up. And it really brought home, once again, my reason for enjoying watching sports. Every other televised entertainment "experience" is so scripted and managed and controlled--even, or, really, especially, the "reality" shows--that there's little life left in it, but with sports? You never know who's going to win. You never know when there are going to be extra innings, or a snowstorm, or a tie, or a perfect game, or an incredible comeback (I remember watching Michael Jordan lead the Bulls to an amazing comeback against the Lakers). You have to tune out the announcers, of course, who attempt to suck all the life out of it, but the game itself can be quite entertaining. But I've mentioned that 30 or 40 times, haven't I.
My goals for this week are pretty limited--return the health insurance form (they're increasing my monthly premium by $40--or, if I go for the higher deductible, lowering it by $20, which is what I think I'll do); apply for some jobs; interview for that one job on Tuesday; sign up at the gym (thank you, Orange!); start up with an exercise routine. I'm a little torn between trying to line up more proofreading/editing clients Right Now and concentrating on trying to find a full-time job. I suppose I could try to do both, but I know they'll both be energy-intensive (and rejection-intensive), so my preference is to devote some serious effort to trying to find a full-time gig, at least for a couple of weeks, while simultaneously getting back in shape, getting back into cooking again, and doing some serious relaxing (maybe even some needlepoint, which I bought a year ago and with which I have done exactly nothing), and, if nothing looks promising by the beginning of February, start with the other stuff.
One of the things that's extremely frustrating to me (in response to Ron's comment in response to my "hey! they really like me!" post) is that my bosses and coworkers pretty universally think I rock, but I can't seem to find many organizations who are willing to take a chance on me. My last three bosses have all had great things to say about me, and I typically end up doing way more than the official position description. I don't get along with everyone, of course--no one does--and I'm sure there are positions that would be a bad fit, or things I wouldn't do well, or whatever, but I do have a certain amount of confidence in my ability to do a job--to do a lot of different jobs, for that matter. And that makes it frustrating to apply for these jobs and either not even get an interview or to not get the actual job. The jobs for which I interviewed all fall are a perfect example of that: I could have helped that organization, been a serious asset for them, but the CFO thinks an accountant is going to do a better job for her and the project person . . . I don't even know what she thought, but clearly I'm not it. There are definitely people out there who could do those jobs as well as I could, but, I wager, not many who could do them better, and that's the part that's so frustrating. Don't get me wrong--there are plenty of jobs at which I would suck, or that i would hate, or both, but I'm not applying for them.
Ah, well. I'll keep plugging away at the search. And playing the lottery. And trying not to think that the likelihood of success seems about the same for both of them.
I did enjoy yesterday's game, especially the Packers' game. Friend is a Packers fan, so he had a dog in that fight; I enjoyed it because of (a) the snowstorm and (b) the ability to listen to the game on the radio while watching it. The latter was entertaining because the broadcasters were "homers," and actually cared who won the game, but even moreso because they had to paint a picture on the radio, so the words they were speaking were WAY more informative than the jabber that you hear from TV announcers. I really cannot stand that yammering, and the availability of endless information and stats and history and such has made it even worse, so the radio coverage was preferable.
The snowstorm was also entertaining--although football is by no means my favorite sport, I will, as you know, watch just about anything that involves a puck or a ball--because they don't cancel football games on account of the weather, and a snowstorm will definitely affect play. I like that kind of random change-up. And it really brought home, once again, my reason for enjoying watching sports. Every other televised entertainment "experience" is so scripted and managed and controlled--even, or, really, especially, the "reality" shows--that there's little life left in it, but with sports? You never know who's going to win. You never know when there are going to be extra innings, or a snowstorm, or a tie, or a perfect game, or an incredible comeback (I remember watching Michael Jordan lead the Bulls to an amazing comeback against the Lakers). You have to tune out the announcers, of course, who attempt to suck all the life out of it, but the game itself can be quite entertaining. But I've mentioned that 30 or 40 times, haven't I.
My goals for this week are pretty limited--return the health insurance form (they're increasing my monthly premium by $40--or, if I go for the higher deductible, lowering it by $20, which is what I think I'll do); apply for some jobs; interview for that one job on Tuesday; sign up at the gym (thank you, Orange!); start up with an exercise routine. I'm a little torn between trying to line up more proofreading/editing clients Right Now and concentrating on trying to find a full-time job. I suppose I could try to do both, but I know they'll both be energy-intensive (and rejection-intensive), so my preference is to devote some serious effort to trying to find a full-time gig, at least for a couple of weeks, while simultaneously getting back in shape, getting back into cooking again, and doing some serious relaxing (maybe even some needlepoint, which I bought a year ago and with which I have done exactly nothing), and, if nothing looks promising by the beginning of February, start with the other stuff.
One of the things that's extremely frustrating to me (in response to Ron's comment in response to my "hey! they really like me!" post) is that my bosses and coworkers pretty universally think I rock, but I can't seem to find many organizations who are willing to take a chance on me. My last three bosses have all had great things to say about me, and I typically end up doing way more than the official position description. I don't get along with everyone, of course--no one does--and I'm sure there are positions that would be a bad fit, or things I wouldn't do well, or whatever, but I do have a certain amount of confidence in my ability to do a job--to do a lot of different jobs, for that matter. And that makes it frustrating to apply for these jobs and either not even get an interview or to not get the actual job. The jobs for which I interviewed all fall are a perfect example of that: I could have helped that organization, been a serious asset for them, but the CFO thinks an accountant is going to do a better job for her and the project person . . . I don't even know what she thought, but clearly I'm not it. There are definitely people out there who could do those jobs as well as I could, but, I wager, not many who could do them better, and that's the part that's so frustrating. Don't get me wrong--there are plenty of jobs at which I would suck, or that i would hate, or both, but I'm not applying for them.
Ah, well. I'll keep plugging away at the search. And playing the lottery. And trying not to think that the likelihood of success seems about the same for both of them.
Friday, January 11, 2008
How It Went
Thank you for all your good wishes--though I have to say that the mention of an HR person is really quite amusing, given that this organization consists, right now, of 2.5 people, two of whom interviewed me today. Two 20-something, maybe early-30-something women, who seem to have done a lot of work on this, but who will not be sufficient for taking the organization to the level of being, say, an actual organization. I have no idea whether they'll want to talk to me again--it kinda depends on whom they're interviewing, I'd say. As for my reactions, I'm not ruling it out, but I'm not overwhelmed with enthusiasm, either. It sounds like they're doing a first pass this week and next, then winnowing from there; I don't really think I'll get into the next round--surely there's someone out there with fundraising experience, for example?--but I'm also not crushed about that.
When I worked at the bakery, the first thing I did most mornings (after punching in) was to pull out the butter for the lamination of the day's croissants and start pounding it. Because I was doing 12-pound pieces of dough, that meant 3 pounds of lamination butter (i.e. 25%), pounded into a rectangle. A neighbor of Brad's is a woodworker, apparently, and last summer he carved us a butter bat: a long rolling pin with a bat handle at one end. As a result of this daily thwapping, I developed callouses, most significantly under my ring finger on my right hand. They lessened a little over the summer with Lole around to share the load, but they grew back in the fall. Now, however, they're starting to peel off; I am beginning to shed the bakery quite literally.
Sooner or later, preferably sooner, I'm going to have to do something other than sit around. But meanwhile, it's a fine way to spend some time.
When I worked at the bakery, the first thing I did most mornings (after punching in) was to pull out the butter for the lamination of the day's croissants and start pounding it. Because I was doing 12-pound pieces of dough, that meant 3 pounds of lamination butter (i.e. 25%), pounded into a rectangle. A neighbor of Brad's is a woodworker, apparently, and last summer he carved us a butter bat: a long rolling pin with a bat handle at one end. As a result of this daily thwapping, I developed callouses, most significantly under my ring finger on my right hand. They lessened a little over the summer with Lole around to share the load, but they grew back in the fall. Now, however, they're starting to peel off; I am beginning to shed the bakery quite literally.
Sooner or later, preferably sooner, I'm going to have to do something other than sit around. But meanwhile, it's a fine way to spend some time.
More Stories from the East
It's always fun when one's prejudices are confirmed as reasonable, isn't it? Take dryer sheets, for example: I hate them. I hate the smell of them, I hate finding other people's clinging to my laundry, I hate the smell they impart to clothing. They have always struck me as a product that invented a need and then met that need. So your clothes have some static; switch to all-natural fibers and that problem disappears. And did I mention that chemical perfumey smell? Feh. Thanks to Brazen Tart, I can now feel environmentally superior in my disdain.
I was all ambitious yesterday, thinkin' about how I was gonna be out of the apartment by 8 am! So I could do errands and then come home and get ready for my job interview! But this morning . . . not so much. Lounging around in my fleece bathrobe, drinking tea and buying fleece socks (and a backpack, because my 20-year-old one is finally failing for good after two repairs, and a pair of pants, all on sale) online, and listening to the radio, and not doing a lot.
Here's another story from my trip:
You may remember that my brother didn't bring my nephews to the wedding. In fact, they have never visited, period--the older one is almost 11, and the younger one is 8--so, rather than express my irritation as irritation, I said to my brother, privately, hey, when are you going to bring the kids out to visit? I'd love to have them visit. Et cetera. He replied that they have crazy schedules, that it's difficult to find any space for that, because they play sports year-round (which is true), and they're just plain too busy.
Okay, fair enough, I suppose. Except the very next day my sister-in-law was jubilant, telling me how her mom has a condo in the Florida Keys . . . and she's taking the boys down there for a long weekend in February, because they have off of school on a Monday, so she'll just take them out of school for the Thursday and Friday. I didn't say anything, especially not to my SIL, but I was seething. I didn't say any more to my brother, either--what can I say?--but I did mention it to my parents. I told them I didn't want them to get in the middle of it, but that I was pissed off, and they both agreed I had good reason for that. I don't know what, if anything, I can do about it. I certainly don't want to take it out on my nephews, and I really don't see it as my SIL's responsibility.
It mostly comes back to my brother's essential selfishness, really, which displays itself in other ways as well. Mind you, he spends a lot of time with his kids, and he regards his family as central to his life, so it's not as though he's completely self-centered; you can't coach kids' teams as much as he does and be completely self-centered. There are other aspects, too, into which I'll get in some other post, but I just wanted to complain about the visiting issue.
As for my nephews, the younger one is, in fact, as smart as I have been saying. He just turned 8 in September, and he will read anything. One of the books I got him for Christmas was a book of experiments from the Exploratorium in San Francisco, probably aimed at kids who are a couple of years older than he is . . . which didn't stop him for a second. His vocabulary is impressive, too (and that's one thing I could nudge along if I were there more). We spent significant time one evening designing a scientific experiment regarding deltas. And one morning the kids were watching some stupid cartoon, which mentioned the northern lights--so YN and I looked up spaceweather.com for pictures of said lights, and I introduced him to astronomy picture of the day, too. The older one is no slouch, but he's much less interested in reading, for example (I think he hasn't read any of the many books I've sent to him . . . which means I'll have to find something else to send), and he didn't seem at all interested in the things that interested his brother. Except guns. They are both all about the guns, and they have several, though apparently YN is less interested in actually killing anything. ON went hunting with my brother this year, but was unsuccessful, and they both got into reloading bullets with my brother.
So I'll do what I can for and with my nephews, but there are limits to my time and budget; perhaps my hope is to maintain enough contact until they get old enough to travel alone. (Yes, I know they could do that now, and many kids do, but I guarantee you that neither my brother nor my SIL would send the boys alone at their current ages.)
Okay; wish me luck for today. I'll let you know how it goes.
I was all ambitious yesterday, thinkin' about how I was gonna be out of the apartment by 8 am! So I could do errands and then come home and get ready for my job interview! But this morning . . . not so much. Lounging around in my fleece bathrobe, drinking tea and buying fleece socks (and a backpack, because my 20-year-old one is finally failing for good after two repairs, and a pair of pants, all on sale) online, and listening to the radio, and not doing a lot.
Here's another story from my trip:
You may remember that my brother didn't bring my nephews to the wedding. In fact, they have never visited, period--the older one is almost 11, and the younger one is 8--so, rather than express my irritation as irritation, I said to my brother, privately, hey, when are you going to bring the kids out to visit? I'd love to have them visit. Et cetera. He replied that they have crazy schedules, that it's difficult to find any space for that, because they play sports year-round (which is true), and they're just plain too busy.
Okay, fair enough, I suppose. Except the very next day my sister-in-law was jubilant, telling me how her mom has a condo in the Florida Keys . . . and she's taking the boys down there for a long weekend in February, because they have off of school on a Monday, so she'll just take them out of school for the Thursday and Friday. I didn't say anything, especially not to my SIL, but I was seething. I didn't say any more to my brother, either--what can I say?--but I did mention it to my parents. I told them I didn't want them to get in the middle of it, but that I was pissed off, and they both agreed I had good reason for that. I don't know what, if anything, I can do about it. I certainly don't want to take it out on my nephews, and I really don't see it as my SIL's responsibility.
It mostly comes back to my brother's essential selfishness, really, which displays itself in other ways as well. Mind you, he spends a lot of time with his kids, and he regards his family as central to his life, so it's not as though he's completely self-centered; you can't coach kids' teams as much as he does and be completely self-centered. There are other aspects, too, into which I'll get in some other post, but I just wanted to complain about the visiting issue.
As for my nephews, the younger one is, in fact, as smart as I have been saying. He just turned 8 in September, and he will read anything. One of the books I got him for Christmas was a book of experiments from the Exploratorium in San Francisco, probably aimed at kids who are a couple of years older than he is . . . which didn't stop him for a second. His vocabulary is impressive, too (and that's one thing I could nudge along if I were there more). We spent significant time one evening designing a scientific experiment regarding deltas. And one morning the kids were watching some stupid cartoon, which mentioned the northern lights--so YN and I looked up spaceweather.com for pictures of said lights, and I introduced him to astronomy picture of the day, too. The older one is no slouch, but he's much less interested in reading, for example (I think he hasn't read any of the many books I've sent to him . . . which means I'll have to find something else to send), and he didn't seem at all interested in the things that interested his brother. Except guns. They are both all about the guns, and they have several, though apparently YN is less interested in actually killing anything. ON went hunting with my brother this year, but was unsuccessful, and they both got into reloading bullets with my brother.
So I'll do what I can for and with my nephews, but there are limits to my time and budget; perhaps my hope is to maintain enough contact until they get old enough to travel alone. (Yes, I know they could do that now, and many kids do, but I guarantee you that neither my brother nor my SIL would send the boys alone at their current ages.)
Okay; wish me luck for today. I'll let you know how it goes.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Home Again
Where to begin?
I am (thank you for asking, Ron) back, and more or less in one piece.
First off, my parents' health seems to be, knock wood, pretty good, all things considered. My mom isn't thrilled about the dialysis, but she's never been a complainer and she's never been one to close her eyes to the inevitable, so she's handling it pretty well. I think the nearly immediate improvements to aspects of her health--her ankles aren't swollen any more; her congestive-heart-failure cough is gone--have helped reconcile her to it, but it also has made her more anxious for a new kidney. My dad was going back to have a checkup regarding his bladder cancer today, so I'll call tomorrow and find out about that, but he seems to be doing pretty well, too. His biggest blow, in some ways, has been the death of my mom's friend's husband a couple of months ago. My mom and her friend have been friends for, oh, 68 years?, so it was nice that my dad got along with her husband. They hunted together years ago, they played golf all over the world (which I hadn't realized), the two couples traveled together a lot over the past 20 years (the extent of which I also hadn't realized), and so on, and it really affected my dad a lot.
I had a zen shiatsu session today, and it was quite interesting. The practitioner noted that now that the "surface tension" caused by the bakery job--in the form of the ways it was wrecking me physically--is gone, there's another whole level of stuff. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the meridians that have to do with change, planning, decision-making and the like needed some work today. I am, for better or worse, getting addicted to this form of body work; basically, if I can only afford one kind, this is it--and, of course, if I don't get a job or enough work, then this goes, too.
I've also been spending some time formulating some . . . goals, I guess, or changes of approach might be more accurate. I have realized that I am not particularly in touch with myself, especially my body--my wacky eating habits of the past two years mean that I eat a lot of crap, I don't eat at regular times, I don't connect with hunger, I often don't take the time to eat in a relaxing way, and I don't eat as seasonally as I'd like to do. I know that's not a prescription for long-term (or even short-term) health and happiness, so I want to change that approach. In that spirit, I actually managed to NOT go to crunchy granola restaurant for dinner tonight, much as I wanted to do that. Instead, I cooked. Yes, folks, I made a big pot of stew-like substance (onions, ginger, cumin, coriander, sweet potatos, garbanzos, tomatos, a little peanut butter, and, for the portion I ate, some spinach; I'll use kale with some of the leftovers) and a big pot of brown and wild rice. I'll freeze three containers of the stew-without-spinach part, then just cook that up with some greens when I'm ready to eat it. This effort will also aid in the stretch-out-the-savings part of the program, and possibly in the lose-enough-weight-to-fit-into-my-clothes part of the program.
Tomorrow is the organic schools interview, and I have my raft of questions ready for them. I also have a multitude of errands, including signing up for the gym--another part of the change-my-approach program. Tonight, however, I am looking forward to sleeping naked and in my own bed.
I am (thank you for asking, Ron) back, and more or less in one piece.
First off, my parents' health seems to be, knock wood, pretty good, all things considered. My mom isn't thrilled about the dialysis, but she's never been a complainer and she's never been one to close her eyes to the inevitable, so she's handling it pretty well. I think the nearly immediate improvements to aspects of her health--her ankles aren't swollen any more; her congestive-heart-failure cough is gone--have helped reconcile her to it, but it also has made her more anxious for a new kidney. My dad was going back to have a checkup regarding his bladder cancer today, so I'll call tomorrow and find out about that, but he seems to be doing pretty well, too. His biggest blow, in some ways, has been the death of my mom's friend's husband a couple of months ago. My mom and her friend have been friends for, oh, 68 years?, so it was nice that my dad got along with her husband. They hunted together years ago, they played golf all over the world (which I hadn't realized), the two couples traveled together a lot over the past 20 years (the extent of which I also hadn't realized), and so on, and it really affected my dad a lot.
I had a zen shiatsu session today, and it was quite interesting. The practitioner noted that now that the "surface tension" caused by the bakery job--in the form of the ways it was wrecking me physically--is gone, there's another whole level of stuff. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the meridians that have to do with change, planning, decision-making and the like needed some work today. I am, for better or worse, getting addicted to this form of body work; basically, if I can only afford one kind, this is it--and, of course, if I don't get a job or enough work, then this goes, too.
I've also been spending some time formulating some . . . goals, I guess, or changes of approach might be more accurate. I have realized that I am not particularly in touch with myself, especially my body--my wacky eating habits of the past two years mean that I eat a lot of crap, I don't eat at regular times, I don't connect with hunger, I often don't take the time to eat in a relaxing way, and I don't eat as seasonally as I'd like to do. I know that's not a prescription for long-term (or even short-term) health and happiness, so I want to change that approach. In that spirit, I actually managed to NOT go to crunchy granola restaurant for dinner tonight, much as I wanted to do that. Instead, I cooked. Yes, folks, I made a big pot of stew-like substance (onions, ginger, cumin, coriander, sweet potatos, garbanzos, tomatos, a little peanut butter, and, for the portion I ate, some spinach; I'll use kale with some of the leftovers) and a big pot of brown and wild rice. I'll freeze three containers of the stew-without-spinach part, then just cook that up with some greens when I'm ready to eat it. This effort will also aid in the stretch-out-the-savings part of the program, and possibly in the lose-enough-weight-to-fit-into-my-clothes part of the program.
Tomorrow is the organic schools interview, and I have my raft of questions ready for them. I also have a multitude of errands, including signing up for the gym--another part of the change-my-approach program. Tonight, however, I am looking forward to sleeping naked and in my own bed.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Sittin' In a Railway Station
In Pittsburgh, no less. Amtrak keeps changing its schedules, and this route now involves a four-hour wait in Pittsburgh, which would be annoying under most circumstances, but the fact that I am catching a cold and there does not appear to be a coffee shop or similar estabishment for, oh, miles, does not improve the situation. However, I did manage to find a wireless connection, so there's that.
Thus, I can tell you people, minutes after I found out myself, that the place where I'd been interviewing all fall responded to my email today (I sent a short note to the HR guy asking for an update) and told me, and I quote, "We have been in consultation and reviewing our requirements for the new position. Although you have a notable background, at this time we have decided to pursue an applicant who more closely meets our needs."
Alrighty then. Good luck with that.
I also spoke today with my old boss, and he was seriously hinky about the executive director position, given the crap up with which one must deal in such a position. I'll certainly do the interview (and, who knows, would even consider taking the job if it were offered), but I'm going to let my gut weigh in on this if the time comes. The interview next Tuesday is for a job that's a lot like the position I held at the other non-profit, it sounds like: worthy work, at a slightly higher level than before, but nothing terribly exciting. But you know what? That's fine, too.
At least I should be able to make a few decisions by the end of January, though: If none of these results in an offer, then it's off to the temp agency with me.
But how was my trip?
Good, actually, despite how crappy I feel at the moment, and despite hoping I didn't pass this along to my mom before I left, and despite leaving my Netflix movies sitting at my parents' house. It was great to see my nephews, though I see trouble on the way there: my younger nephew is, in fact, extremely smart, and, on top of it, is a natural athlete. My older nephew is smart, and coachable, and a damned fine athlete himself, but I fear, for his sake, that he's going to be outdone whenever younger nephew decides to do something. And elder's ego is such that that could be an issue.
Eh; no worries right now. I have bitching about my brother to do, but I"m tired and not quite up for that just now. And I'm trying not to be completely depressed about not getting a job at the place.
Thus, I can tell you people, minutes after I found out myself, that the place where I'd been interviewing all fall responded to my email today (I sent a short note to the HR guy asking for an update) and told me, and I quote, "We have been in consultation and reviewing our requirements for the new position. Although you have a notable background, at this time we have decided to pursue an applicant who more closely meets our needs."
Alrighty then. Good luck with that.
I also spoke today with my old boss, and he was seriously hinky about the executive director position, given the crap up with which one must deal in such a position. I'll certainly do the interview (and, who knows, would even consider taking the job if it were offered), but I'm going to let my gut weigh in on this if the time comes. The interview next Tuesday is for a job that's a lot like the position I held at the other non-profit, it sounds like: worthy work, at a slightly higher level than before, but nothing terribly exciting. But you know what? That's fine, too.
At least I should be able to make a few decisions by the end of January, though: If none of these results in an offer, then it's off to the temp agency with me.
But how was my trip?
Good, actually, despite how crappy I feel at the moment, and despite hoping I didn't pass this along to my mom before I left, and despite leaving my Netflix movies sitting at my parents' house. It was great to see my nephews, though I see trouble on the way there: my younger nephew is, in fact, extremely smart, and, on top of it, is a natural athlete. My older nephew is smart, and coachable, and a damned fine athlete himself, but I fear, for his sake, that he's going to be outdone whenever younger nephew decides to do something. And elder's ego is such that that could be an issue.
Eh; no worries right now. I have bitching about my brother to do, but I"m tired and not quite up for that just now. And I'm trying not to be completely depressed about not getting a job at the place.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Quickly, Quickly
I applied to two jobs the day I left town--I'd seen the ads, and I wasn't doing much other than sitting around, so I figured WTF.
I also threw the instruction book for my at-home answering machine into my bag, because I don't normally retrieve my messages that way (what messages do I get there that can't wait? plus people can always call the cell).
And?
I have one interview on Friday (I get back Thursday morning) for the organic-food-in-the-schools-executive-director (-but-low-pay-for-that-title) position, and another one next Tuesday for the other not-for-profit job.
Go figure.
I'm going to apply for the other job I saw today--the Force is apparently with me right now, and you gotta respect the streak.
I also threw the instruction book for my at-home answering machine into my bag, because I don't normally retrieve my messages that way (what messages do I get there that can't wait? plus people can always call the cell).
And?
I have one interview on Friday (I get back Thursday morning) for the organic-food-in-the-schools-executive-director (-but-low-pay-for-that-title) position, and another one next Tuesday for the other not-for-profit job.
Go figure.
I'm going to apply for the other job I saw today--the Force is apparently with me right now, and you gotta respect the streak.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Heading Out
Just kinda hanging around today until it's time to get out of here. If I were more ambitious, I could make a trip to the post office (and that may still happen). And I did apply for a couple of jobs, plus talked to K, who has married off the other of her kids and who has had, as a consequence, a houseful of people for more than a week (plus she has made nine trips to the airport in the past few days), and with whom, as a consequence of that, I have not had much opportunity to talk. One of the jobs is kind of cool--an organization started by a chef who does a lot of organic stuff is trying to get organic gardens and food into a couple of public schools in the city. There are three schools involved in the project, and they're looking for an executive director. The salary is not a lot for that kind of title, but it could be cool, and it would still be a comma in every paycheck, so wtf. The other jobs are basic non-profit stuff, so far as I can tell, and they'd be fine, too.
I send off these applications expecting that I'll never hear a word from anyone, and, indeed, that's largely the case, but I also know that one has to keep throwing things out there. It's a delicate balance.
On one hand, one has to keep an open mind: the person who wrote the job description or requirements may not have both feet planted firmly in reality in some way, for example. I also know that my less-than-pathlike career path makes typical HR people skip right on over me (and that not all organizations have typical HR people, on the plus side). On a second hand, there are organizations or positions for which I know I am ill-suited: an organization affiliated with an organized religion, particularly one of the evangelical branches, is not likely to find my atheism congenial, no matter how well I might be able to do the job, and I suspect I'd find their religiosity off-putting, so that's just a bad fit. For another example, there are plenty of healthcare organizations looking for people to write newsletters and such (or so it seems from various want ads), but I also know that, especially given my wonderful experiences with the health insurance industry, I would not be able to write for them, no matter how well they paid. The eye-rolling and derisive snorts would not endear me, I suspect. I'm similarly deficient in most "marketing" efforts. Though I could be a great advocate for a product or cause in which I believe strongly, in general I find marketing and advertising annoying. On a third hand, though, I also know that I just have to keep trying--what other choice do I have? The place at which I've been interviewing may well come through for me, but I can't count on that. Once I get back from my sojourn east, I'll start trying to rustle up some more freelance clients, and if nothing seems to be breaking my way by the end of the month, I'll try to get some temp work lined up.
So, yeah, there is a plan, but we know up how easily plans can be fucked.
I'm also sort of wishing I lived in Iowa or New Hampshire so I could vote for John Edwards today. He's on the cusp--but he makes the mainstream media nervous, what with his talk of populist fighting back and all. And have you noticed that he has decided not to accept campaign contributions from big money? Gotta love that part. Don't get me wrong, I'd vote for whatever yellow dog the Democrats managed to nominate, but Edwards is really the only one for whom I'd vote enthusiastically.
Here's hoping that I get a ride to the train today--which could happen. Originally there was talk of meeting Friend downtown for dinner, then heading to the train (which leaves at 7:00), but Friend has been sitting home today, waiting for the furnace repair guy. Said guy showed up and rigged something so he has heat now, but there's still a part missing and repair guy may bring it today (or Saturday morning if not today). If that all happens in good time, or doesn't happen, then Friend may zip over here, have dinner with me, then take me and my wads of crap to the train, which would be very, very nice of him and would save me having to shlep on the bus. (I could take a taxi, I suppose, but that's $40 minimum, and I don't see the point, especially when the bus I could catch, with only a little difficulty, ends its route at the train station.)
I have no idea whether you'll hear from me while I'm away. If I have the time and the internet access, hey, could happen. It would be kind of entertaining to be blogging from a cafe . . . a thousand miles from where I live.
I send off these applications expecting that I'll never hear a word from anyone, and, indeed, that's largely the case, but I also know that one has to keep throwing things out there. It's a delicate balance.
On one hand, one has to keep an open mind: the person who wrote the job description or requirements may not have both feet planted firmly in reality in some way, for example. I also know that my less-than-pathlike career path makes typical HR people skip right on over me (and that not all organizations have typical HR people, on the plus side). On a second hand, there are organizations or positions for which I know I am ill-suited: an organization affiliated with an organized religion, particularly one of the evangelical branches, is not likely to find my atheism congenial, no matter how well I might be able to do the job, and I suspect I'd find their religiosity off-putting, so that's just a bad fit. For another example, there are plenty of healthcare organizations looking for people to write newsletters and such (or so it seems from various want ads), but I also know that, especially given my wonderful experiences with the health insurance industry, I would not be able to write for them, no matter how well they paid. The eye-rolling and derisive snorts would not endear me, I suspect. I'm similarly deficient in most "marketing" efforts. Though I could be a great advocate for a product or cause in which I believe strongly, in general I find marketing and advertising annoying. On a third hand, though, I also know that I just have to keep trying--what other choice do I have? The place at which I've been interviewing may well come through for me, but I can't count on that. Once I get back from my sojourn east, I'll start trying to rustle up some more freelance clients, and if nothing seems to be breaking my way by the end of the month, I'll try to get some temp work lined up.
So, yeah, there is a plan, but we know up how easily plans can be fucked.
I'm also sort of wishing I lived in Iowa or New Hampshire so I could vote for John Edwards today. He's on the cusp--but he makes the mainstream media nervous, what with his talk of populist fighting back and all. And have you noticed that he has decided not to accept campaign contributions from big money? Gotta love that part. Don't get me wrong, I'd vote for whatever yellow dog the Democrats managed to nominate, but Edwards is really the only one for whom I'd vote enthusiastically.
Here's hoping that I get a ride to the train today--which could happen. Originally there was talk of meeting Friend downtown for dinner, then heading to the train (which leaves at 7:00), but Friend has been sitting home today, waiting for the furnace repair guy. Said guy showed up and rigged something so he has heat now, but there's still a part missing and repair guy may bring it today (or Saturday morning if not today). If that all happens in good time, or doesn't happen, then Friend may zip over here, have dinner with me, then take me and my wads of crap to the train, which would be very, very nice of him and would save me having to shlep on the bus. (I could take a taxi, I suppose, but that's $40 minimum, and I don't see the point, especially when the bus I could catch, with only a little difficulty, ends its route at the train station.)
I have no idea whether you'll hear from me while I'm away. If I have the time and the internet access, hey, could happen. It would be kind of entertaining to be blogging from a cafe . . . a thousand miles from where I live.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Starting with Nothing, and Lots of It
I'm nearly ready for the great family visit extravaganza of early 2008. The trip out there will be a little more difficult, in that I'm shlepping a framed poster (small, but still) for my parents and a bunch of books for my nephews, but it looks like the weather will be relatively warm all week, which reduces the amount of clothing I need to bring. I'm bringing the laptop, but I don't know what kind of web access I'm going to have. There are a couple of coffee shops with WiFi, for example, but I will not have access to a vehicle, I doubt my ability to drive one if I did have access, and I don't know what my relatives' schedules will be. I think I'm staying with my brother through the weekend and possibly into early next week, then moving to my parents' house for at least a night, seeing as how my dad will take me to the commuter train to Philadelphia after we drop off mom at dialysis on Wednesday. (The commuter train station is about equidistant between Philadelphia's 30th Street Station and where my family lives, so it ends up being a reasonable means of transport without them having to drive all the way into the city.)
I don't have any grand plans for the visit. I might get to see my nephews play basketball, which would be cool. There's an outside chance I'll see a friend or two from grad school, but I'm not holding my breath on that. My old boss is in NYC, but getting there would involve some logistics as well, so that's also unlikely. I don't have any friends from grade school or high school, so it's pretty much just my family. Of course, most of my family lives around there, including aunts, uncles, cousins, etc., and I need to see a few of them, but mostly it'll be a lot of hanging out. I almost considered taking the yoga mat, but prolly not.
So how did y'all ring in the new year? We were completely taken in by the couch. The snow was beginning by the time Friend drove up here (he drove to work Monday, thinking, rightly, that it'd be easy to park downtown, that he'd get out early, and that it would be easier than me carrying wads of baked goods in my arms). We went to the crunchy granola place and had a little food, then made our way to his house by way of the liquor store (wine, cheese) and the produce store near his house (spinach, sage, fruit). Back at his place, we drank champagne, watched the first two LOTR movies (or, rather, he watched them and I alternated between watching them and dozing on the couch; I could not stay awake), and went to bed around 1:30. Tuesday I made some french toast for breakfast, using slices of apple cinnamon bread from a loaf I'd gotten from work months ago and thrown in his freezer; we also had some venison sausage and some mimosas. We watched his alma mater lose in the Outback bowl, then there was some more dozing on the couch on my part, while he started a batch of beer. I eventually roused myself enough to watch what he was doing and eat some olive bread and cheese, and then we made some dinner: white beans with pancetta, onions, and sage; sweet potatos with rosemary and olive oil; venison tenderloin with garlic, cayenne, and sage; and wild turkey with thyme. We had small helpings of each, and, of course, more chocolate hazelnut cake with whipped cream. We drank more wine, then watched the third LOTR movie (of course i was asleep on the couch rather than actually watching it). Today I went downtown with him and continued to the train station to get my tickets so I wouldn't have to deal with that tomorrow, then came home, took a shower, and went for a zen shiatsu treatment. Leftovers for dinner.
All in all, a fine way to ring in the new year.
I don't have any grand plans for the visit. I might get to see my nephews play basketball, which would be cool. There's an outside chance I'll see a friend or two from grad school, but I'm not holding my breath on that. My old boss is in NYC, but getting there would involve some logistics as well, so that's also unlikely. I don't have any friends from grade school or high school, so it's pretty much just my family. Of course, most of my family lives around there, including aunts, uncles, cousins, etc., and I need to see a few of them, but mostly it'll be a lot of hanging out. I almost considered taking the yoga mat, but prolly not.
So how did y'all ring in the new year? We were completely taken in by the couch. The snow was beginning by the time Friend drove up here (he drove to work Monday, thinking, rightly, that it'd be easy to park downtown, that he'd get out early, and that it would be easier than me carrying wads of baked goods in my arms). We went to the crunchy granola place and had a little food, then made our way to his house by way of the liquor store (wine, cheese) and the produce store near his house (spinach, sage, fruit). Back at his place, we drank champagne, watched the first two LOTR movies (or, rather, he watched them and I alternated between watching them and dozing on the couch; I could not stay awake), and went to bed around 1:30. Tuesday I made some french toast for breakfast, using slices of apple cinnamon bread from a loaf I'd gotten from work months ago and thrown in his freezer; we also had some venison sausage and some mimosas. We watched his alma mater lose in the Outback bowl, then there was some more dozing on the couch on my part, while he started a batch of beer. I eventually roused myself enough to watch what he was doing and eat some olive bread and cheese, and then we made some dinner: white beans with pancetta, onions, and sage; sweet potatos with rosemary and olive oil; venison tenderloin with garlic, cayenne, and sage; and wild turkey with thyme. We had small helpings of each, and, of course, more chocolate hazelnut cake with whipped cream. We drank more wine, then watched the third LOTR movie (of course i was asleep on the couch rather than actually watching it). Today I went downtown with him and continued to the train station to get my tickets so I wouldn't have to deal with that tomorrow, then came home, took a shower, and went for a zen shiatsu treatment. Leftovers for dinner.
All in all, a fine way to ring in the new year.
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