Brainsurfing

Don't Ask and I Won't Tell

2011-09-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

I've decided that this is where I will come, from now on, with my gripes and grumbles about my domestic/relationship situation. I don't think readers of "...Terms..." should be subjected to this any longer, so I will give them the option of coming here if they want to know the gorey details and perhaps lend a shoulder to cry on or a piece of advice.

Husband and I have been sailing on a pretty even keel the past few weeks. The last five days of vacation went pretty well; though the dynamic of "play- and rest-time for Lisa" came to a screeching halt, we managed to get along well enough. And I think he had a reasonably decent time. It's hard to tell.

Once again, though, I'm coming to understand that time by myself is not necessarily a great thing. I am home now, and spend most hours of the day alone, trying to keep myself busy. There is sort of an amorphous list of things I need to get done...sometime. But I'm concentrating most on doing whatever I damn please. If I damn please to vacuum or scrub the bathroom floor, I do that. If I feel like puttering around the yard, I do that. A couple of days ago, I went on a landscaping tear and pruned a bunch of the trees/brush in the yard, generating a six-foot high pile of scrps for my landscaping service to take away.

So it's not like I'm sitting around watching television and popping bon-bons into my mouth all day. (In fact, I hardly ever turn on the TV...and when I do, I tune to the Weather Channel or QVC just for the background noise.)

Unfortunately, left too much to my own devices and the noise in my own head, I will gnaw on things that might be better left un-chewed. For example, this morning I got to thinking about how the husband chooses to initiate conversation when he gets home from work in the evening. He limps down the hall, gives me a peck on the cheek and asks "So, what have you been doing all day?" Not in a confrontational or nasty tone. He probably isn't even thinking about what he just said, perhaps doesn't even really care about the answer. But it just...bugs the hell out of me.

DO NOT come home and ask me what I've been doing all day. I've been doing whatever the hell I felt like doing. After five years of complete emotional and physical exhaustion, running on less than empty 99% of the time, I don't want--and don't intend to--feel the least bit guilty that I haven't accomplished anything particularly earth-shaking during my waking hours on any given day. It might take months, maybe even a year, of this before I am bored/guilty/rested enough to really apply myself to any occupation, paid or otherwise. Rrrrrrgh....!

So I think I need to suggest he come up with a different ice-breaker...

Swimming

2010-11-11T08:08:00.001-08:00

I seem to have found, if not a positive spin, a place of peace mixed with determination, from which to deal with my separation from "The Dream." For now, at least.

I'm a little surprised with the place I'm in… For a time, I was so low, almost overwhelmed with the failure. But I've come to understand that this cannot be looked upon as a personal failure. And I am determined not to see it that way anymore.

Honestly, I have always believed that, whatever or whoever I was in my last life, I must have died by drowning. I've been deathly afraid of deep water ever since I can remember, and I'm pretty sure I've not had a near-drowning experience in THIS life. In this life, it's been my emotions that have threatened to send me to the bottom. And given the choice to sink or swim, as I have been so many times in my life, it seems…I swim.

That's where I am now. It may be a floundering dog-paddle rather than Olympic-caliber freestyle, but I'm swimming, by god. And I'll keep swimming. To Africa, or China, or Antarctica…or to hell, if I have to. No…not to hell. I've been in hell. I'm swimming OUT of hell.

And on to the next thing The Universe has for me.

Leaving the Dream

2010-11-02T07:34:00.001-07:00

All I know is, no later than July of next year, my term of duty at the Hot Flash Café will come to an end.

This is not going to be an easy thing for me, and I have no support network. The only person I have around at all is the husband. And, as he's partially the reason why I have to walk away from the café, it's clear he is not going to be part of the solution. And even if he wasn't intrinsically part of the problem, he has demonstrated, in the past, that he is not the one for me to lay my burdens on. I told him as much last night.

"I have done loss with you before, dear," I said. "And you made it clear that, at some point, I just had to suck it up. And I don't really want to go there this time around."

So I'm looking ahead to walking this path of "unburdenment" alone. Not looking forward to it…just seeing that this is the way it's going to be. I have to find the strength inside myself, because there's nobody to lean on. My family is far away, in more ways than just physical distance. I have no friends here in this town. Seems odd for one who has run a service business in a small town for four years to say, "I have no friends here." One of the reasons, I think, that the business has turned out to be more of a burden than a fulfillment. Lesson Learned Number One: A card-carrying introvert such as myself should not have attempted something as overtly social as running a restaurant. I was never able to overcome that handicap. Never able to "come out of my shell." Maybe because I found myself TOO alone. I don't know.

I just know that I awaken every morning with a heavy heart. And it's going to be damned difficult to make it through the next eight months if I can't find some way to put a positive spin on this.

burning out

2010-04-05T23:05:00.000-07:00

layers and layers
knotted and tangled
no digging out

focus the laser
cut through the mass
straight slices, maybe a hole

this weak light is
no laser
not even a bic

where’s the juice
lost the outlet
power cord limp

useless coil
no plugging in
and i so need a recharge

Bad Dreams

2010-02-10T23:35:00.001-08:00

It's dark and cold and rainy outside these days, and I expend a lot of physical and emotional energy at the restaurant; so on my infrequent free evenings, the instinct is to hunker down into a nice warm chair in front of the fire…and the boob tube. This time of year usually brings at least one television show that I get hooked on in re-runs. Last year, it was "Boston Legal." This season, it's "Ghost Whisperer."

For anyone who hasn't seen "Ghost Whisperer," it's the continuing saga of a young woman who can see and speak to ghosts. Every episode finds our heroine (played by Jennifer Love Hewitt) encountering a new "earthbound spirit." Over the 42-minute course of the show, she puzzles together who the ghost is, how he/she died, and ferrets out what unfinished business is keeping the spirit tethered to its earthly life. At the end of each episode, through buckets of tears and confessions and revelations, the spirit crosses over to…wherever spirits are supposed to go.

The really unfortunate part of all this is that I tend to dream in "television show." Whatever tv show I am currently hooked on makes frequent appearances at my nocturnal home theater. Which is fine, when you're hooked on something like "Frazier" or even "ER." And, these days, I'm kind of missing Bill Shatner, James Spader et al. Because at least their fictitious exploits did not give me bad dreams.

Two nights ago, I had a whopper of a "Ghost Whisperer" dream that upset me so much, I was on the verge of tears most of the morning after. I dreamed that my husband had died, and I knew this because he was standing right next to me, but I was the only one who could hear or see him. I was horrified.

Now, I am in possession of a bizarre but very effective nightmare defense: I talk myself out of bad dreams. That is, while I'm there in the dream, and things are getting frightening or upsetting, I say, "This is only a dream…" and I close my eyes and open them again, and whatever it was that scared or disturbed me is gone. The scene changes and I just…go on to something else. Talk about a control freak…I can even wrestle my dreams unto acceptable shape.

But this dream did not go away when I tried that little trick. My husband was dead, and I was insane with grief, and then, there he was, right next to me. Talking to me. And I kept asking everyone around me if they could see him, and of course, they couldn't. Because he was dead. And I had to accept that he was dead.

And just as I was getting used to the fact that he was dead and he was a ghost, but he was THERE, he decided it was time to go. It was like, he didn't come back to tell me how much he loved me, or how much he was going to miss me, or how he would wait for me, and in just a very short time we would be together again. Nope… no long, tender goodbye. Just, "Oh, gee! Look at the time! Gotta go!"

Truthfully, it felt uncannily like every time I have asked him to take a day or two off, or leave work a couple of hours early, for a birthday, anniversary, something (anything) I felt was important. It's not that he never does take the time off…but I always have to beg. Over the years, my husband has not shied away from letting me know precisely where I rank on his priority list. And let me just say…it is not first place. So in this dream, I'm begging him to stay with me, and he's just saying, "Nope. Gotta go. See ya."

It upset the hell out of me because it was so exactly what he would do. It was disturbingly in character.

And I could have gone a long time—the rest of my life, even—without that revelation…

Happy…

2009-12-13T10:27:00.001-08:00

It's not escaped my notice that I tend to head right for the keyboard when I'm stressed, unhappy or overwhelmed. Of course, my life isn't all about negotiating the minefield of small business ownership, and trying to duck pieces of crap flying off the fan blades. I just tend to sort of…bask in the good times, rather than run to the computer and bang out a blog entry. So…in an effort to inject a modicum of balance into this collection of frustration-laced essays, I feel compelled to relate some stories of the past week.

Let's start with last Saturday. Saturday was holiday D-day for me—the day that would either make or kill my entire Christmas season. It was the day my chef, the Husband and the Good and Faithful "D" ventured up the hill to a home that could well have been featured in Sunset magazine, to cater an eight-course meal for a group of six couples. Six couples who had heretofore held their Christmas gathering in the "Wine Room" of the Benson Hotel in downtown Portland. Not just a tall order…think Mount Everest.

We had never, ever done anything like this before. And, to the nail-biting frustration of Li'l Ole Control-Freak Me, the success or failure of this little endeavor was almost completely out of my hands. I'd handed the controls to the young man with the knowledge and the creds to carry it off—California Chef.

My input into the catering affair was reduced to making sure if Chef said, "I need…", whatever it was he needed materialized forthwith. I adopted an attitude of almost aggressive indifference to Chef's preparation…knowing I had no basis for useful input, I opted to step as far away from the proceedings as I could. I let Chef fill our fridges to bursting with his prep, put my head down and set myself to the task of running the rest of the business. With a vengeance.

Late Saturday afternoon, I sent the little posse up the hill with my exhortation to "Make us proud." Then I turned around and attacked the work I couldn't get done all day while Chef monopolized every appliance and surface in our tiny kitchen with his last-minute preparations. In chef's absence, it was up to me to handle dinner service for the café. Luckily, we were just busy enough to keep my mind off what might be going on up the hill.

At 8:45, I was putting the finishing touches on my scoured grill and "T", my front-of-the-house girl of the evening, was rinsing and polishing the stainless steel sinks in the kitchen. The back door opened, and the "Conquering Heroes" began dragging empty coolers and assorted dishware down the hall. "Oh, crap," I whined ungraciously to "T". "We just got finished cleaning up and now they're going to come in here and trash the kitchen….!"

"Great to see you, too!" sniped the Husband. Oops.

A few minutes later, after finally swallowing the trepidation that kept rising up in my gullet, I asked:

"So… How'd it go?"

Young Chef, who had up until this maintained his inscrutable quiet, replied with a one-sided grin,

"Well…we got a standing ovation."

Yesssss!

Beating Myself With a Different Stick

2009-08-09T21:31:00.001-07:00

This has been a hard week. It always seems to go that way. I have a space of time where things go well—it looks like we are finally turning the corner, and there's going to be some real progress and change at the café. And then it just…goes away.

Time was that, after some small victory or accomplishment, I would turn my beaming face around just in time to slam into a wall. Like, BLAM! Out of nowhere some really bizarre crappy thing would blindside me. The wheels would come off and spin away in ten different directions. And I'd be sitting there holding my splitting head together with my bare hands wondering what the f**k had happened this time.

So I suppose I've made progress—because that doesn't happen anymore. I've learned to expect the blow, so I don't get blindsided. I don't slam into the wall, I laboriously turn the wheel to swerve around it. Right into a ditch. The wheels don't come off, now; they just grind to a halt in three feet of mud.

Between training and tweaking the new chef, getting the new baker on track, fighting with the non-existent air conditioning in 105 degree weather, organizing a fashion show to be put on by the salon across the street (in my dining room), thinking about the holidays and catering menus and et cetera ad infinitum, NOW would not seem to be a good time to be away from the café for nine days.

But Scandi week waits for no (wo)man, so I am going down to Junction City to do that thing. And, in reality, it seems like exactly the perfect time for me to be getting some time away from the restaurant, because I have HAD IT with employee traumas. This past week, some of the craziness was of my own making…but other ongoing stuff, and new crap cropping up like Wack-a-moles, have put me in a "Get me the hell out of here before I do something I'll regret" frame of mind.

So the restaurant will have to take care of itself for a week, while I work my ass off doing something else. It's unfortunate that I won't be rested and refreshed when I get back. I'll be an entirely different, and with any luck—richer, kind of tired.

That will have to suffice until I can take some real days off…

By Myself Again

2008-12-19T21:09:00.001-08:00

Today, I had a vivid realization that, just like everything else in my life has turned out…living the dream is a lonely thing. Because just like everything else in my life, it is 90% inside my own head. I plan, I implement, I adjust, I press on…alone. No real input, no give and take, from anyone else. My family is not involved.. My husband is…shall we say, inconsistent in his level of commitment. My "friends" are far away, with their own lives to solve. I have…no one, really. Only me. Always me. And most of the time, I understand that this is just how life is. MY life, anyway.

But I have to wonder… Is that really how it IS? Is that how everyone's life is? Am I yearning for something that only exists in fantasy, fiction, the movies…reality TV…when I want something more? When I want a friend? When I want a community? When I long for a relationship of give and take…supporting and supported?

For awhile, I had…or thought I had…the community of the ether. But that has gone away, too. I sit down at my laptop in the evening, and no one is there. They've all moved on to the newer and better cyber neighborhoods. The ones with the games and the bells and the whistles and the videos for which I have no time and in which I have little interest.

I write here, because I need to write somewhere. But it is not the same…not nearly the same as it was for those golden few years. The community was there when I desperately needed it. Now, evidently, the Universe seems to have deemed that I no longer need it.

As with all things I have loved and lost, there are times I wish it had never existed. I wonder if I would have survived without that lifeline. Sometimes the pain of missing something makes it hard to be grateful…

Joy

2008-11-13T23:19:00.001-08:00

Today, my sister told me that the thing she is missing in her life is "Joy."

And I found myself telling her that you couldn't sit around and wait for joy to come to you. That you had to go out and look for it.

And when you find it, you have to recognize it for what it is, and just let it wash over you and refresh you. Like a shower of the purest mountain water. Cold and shocking, bright and clear.

I was surprised to realize that I DO this. After a lifetime spent climbing out of pits, wallowing in muck. I look for joy. I wrap it around me like a cashmere shawl.

Who says an old dog can't learn…?

Alone in a Crowd

2008-10-25T14:42:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up in a foul mood. I think I was coming down with a headache…or maybe I got the headache from the foul mood. Hard to tell.

I am so alone! I don’t have anybody~~to hang around with, go shopping with, invite to the house for a drink and a game of canasta… All I do is work, sleep, clean house…and blog. I have no social life at all. I haven’t had one, really, since we moved away from my family in Eugene. And dammit, I miss that!

Today, my employees were chattering away excitedly about a shopping trip they’re taking to a local mall tomorrow after they close the café. They’re all going…everybody. Except me. I was not invited. The only reason I know about it at all is that they’ve been talking about it for two weeks. Right in front of me. As if I didn’t exist.

That’s the point, though, isn’t it? To them, I DON’T exist; not as a person. I am The Owner, The Manager; the bitch who is always bossing them around. I’m older than their parents, for god’s sake; so that certainly doesn’t make me "friend" material. We have a pleasant enough relationship. They respect me, I think. They might even grudgingly admit they like me. But I am not their friend. And they are not mine.

And of course, that’s the way it should be. I would not be able to maintain the thin excuse for discipline that exists at the café if I was friends with my employees. I know how that works. I’ve seen it. When the boss is everybody’s friend, the employees use that to their best advantage, not to the business’s. No, it wouldn’t do at all…so, ultimately, it is a good thing that I maintain that managerial aloofness (as if I’ve been given a choice!)

But I have to work with these girls, rub elbows with them, day in and day out, many hours every week. I am right beside them all the time, down there in the trenches. I don’t sit in my office (I don’t HAVE an office!) and give directions from on high. They are the only co-workers I have…the only social outlet I have. So it just…hurts that I cannot be "one of the gals." When they stand right next to me and gush to each other about their plans and how much fun they’re going to have, it’s like…well, maybe not a knife, but at least a nettle, in my heart. Not fatal. But not painless…

For the past eight years, I’ve been telling myself to get a life.

And I thought I had got one…

Ten Minutes: Anniversaries

2008-10-07T15:09:00.000-07:00

Our 32nd wedding anniversary is coming up in a week and a half. I’d like to say I’m thrilled; I’d love to say I’m proud of the milestone. I even wish I could say it’s been an accomplishment to be married this long.

But the fact of the matter is, it seems our marriage has been an exercise in watching something slip away, inch by inch. I don’t even know what "something." The passion? I guess. The closeness? Certainly. The "and the two shall become one" part of our lives? Yep. All that.

There was a time when I zealously tended our marriage. (And, like all long-term relationships, it did need tending.) I tried to make sure we got away alone together often enough to remember who we were. I tried to sit down and talk. And these things worked, for awhile. Eventually, it became an exercise in arm-twisting to set them up. Come to realize he really hated all this stuff, and didn’t relish the thought of getting away or having deep conversations. Not at all. Uh-uh. These were important to ME, the female me.

Obviously I had no idea what a man really wanted out of a relationship. After thirty two years of marriage, I’ve come to this conclusion: For men, marriage is about security and sex. At least, for MY man, that’s the case. And unfortunately, since we bought the restaurant, both of those aspects of our marriage have taken it in the shorts.

So, here comes our anniversary. Sigh!

I married a man whose personality was the counter-balance of my own. I am fire, and he is ice. I am acid, and he is pepcid. For awhile, we blended well, balanced each other out, and made up two halves of the same person. As time has worn on, our opposite personalities have begun to calcify and separate from each other. My husband is placid, a peace-maker. That type of person often has an innate ability to tune out the "noise" in order to stay in contact with that inner placidity. About ten years ago, I realized that I had become the noise.

I love my husband. I wouldn’t know what to do without him. We’ve been married so long, we would have no clue how to be apart. We have along shared history of good times and bad. But that’s almost all the relationship is about at this point.
I’m not sure that’s really enough. But it is what it is.

Tell It

2008-09-13T15:39:00.000-07:00

Shortly after her life changed forever, my friend thought to email me. Me. I imagine she emailed others too… But in her grief, she thought of me. "Call me," said the email.

I’d like to say I rushed right to the phone and called. I did not. Hesitation. Dread. Fear. What has happened? What should I say? Struggle. You’re a friend…BE one. Just…call. Eventually, I did.

Her news slammed me right between the eyes. Awful news. The worst. And yet…she had thought of me. She had remembered how bad I feel when people just disappear from the blog community. And since she thought she wouldn’t be writing for awhile, might not write ever again, she wanted to let me know why.

I took her at her word. Thought she might, indeed, never write again. Or at least, not for a very long time. I was so sad for her. And sad about losing her. But I so underestimated her.

Because, in time—a surprisingly short time—she did write. Short, elegant, eloquent posts…that say nothing. Nothing compared to what is in her heart. Nothing compared to what is wrapped around her soul. Nothing compared to the depth and breadth of her shock and grief.

The need is there. The need of a voice. To speak—knowing, on some level, it’s expected; knowing, too, that what you feel is unspeakable. ... To liken unknowable pain to something someone else might know. To try to make sense of chaos. To fail, but to keep talking, because somehow, on some level, it brings a microgram of very temporary relief.

Thank you for writing, my friend. We who love you, in this place of ethereal connections, are honored by your words.

Tragedy

2008-09-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

I so can’t understand how life can be so cruel to some people. And I’m not talking about myself.

I just discovered that a friend, who has had her share of tragedy in her life, has been smacked in the face with another one. A horrible, unthinkable catastrophe.

I love this person. I have admired her life view, her spirituality, her prose and her pictures. Something tells me I might not ever hear from her or about her again, and it makes me very sad indeed. She is made of strong stuff…probably in large part due to the role of tragedy in her life. If anyone can weather this storm, she can. But you have to wonder how much one person can take before they just…crumble.

I look at all the drivel I’ve written in this journal about my family and my relationship problems and all my self-centered whining, and I know the Universe has let me off pretty easy up until now.

It is said that God never gives you more than you can handle. Then I hope I am never as strong and as wise as my dear friend, because I would be crushed under the weight of what has been laid on her shoulders.

All I can do is wonder how I can help, from so far away…

whipped

2008-07-28T01:12:00.000-07:00

the word
popped out unguarded
as we talked
about nothing
ice water in my face
a boot to the head
out of nowhere

later i confessed
that i wouldn’t know
how not to be married
been married longer
than not and yet
if you wanted to go
i would not hold you

for thirty years
i've swung a whip?
my heart is strangled
bound...shrunk
am i breathing yet?

A Little Hope...

2008-05-28T23:21:00.000-07:00

I’ve wanted to write the past few days, but have been stuck…too tired, too uninspired, too overwhelmed by the prodigious minutiae of my life. Then, I decided to do as I often do when I’m not ready to go to bed yet, and I have a few minutes on my hands. I tuned into one of my journals to read past entries.

I came here to "Brainsurfing…"—my poor, oft-forgotten little private blog. And the last entry I made was about going out on a limb for Flaky Cook. Less than two months ago. Seems like longer than that, somehow. Kind of wish it was, in view of the speed (or lack thereof) at which her debt to me is being repaid. Every paycheck brings her $50 closer to full repayment. My accountant told me the other day she’s whittled it down to $1550.00. Doesn’t seem nearly fast enough to satisfy the "Doubting Thomas" in me. Still…$250 is $250.

Anyway, reading that post made reminded me of the card Ms. Cook gave me a couple of weeks ago.

If you read "…Terms…" you know I’ve been frustrated to the point of tears with one of my little cooks and her inability to figure out exactly what kind of commitment she wants to make to her job. And that she made me feel like shit when she accused me of "punishing" her for going to school, and not giving her enough hours to live…

I related parts of this story to Flaky Cook (yes, I know…not really appropriate for me to discuss one employee’s hijinx with another employee. I’ll attempt to excuse myself by saying that most of the time I’m so tired and strung out that I misplace my sense of discretion. Not a good thing…but it is what it is.) Flaky Cook, I think, got a little p.o.’d that a fellow employee would paint me as the Wicked Witch of the West…

And so, a couple of days later, Cook comes in to work and hands me a card.

It’s a "Thank You" card.

And here, in my own little private journal, I’m going to record what it said:

Lisa & Matt—
Having been in our new place for a month now I finally figured out what I wanted to say. Considering I bought this card the first week we moved. Words don’t come very easy for someone like me at times. I thank you for all that you did. No matter the reason behind it, I’m sure there are many. Justknow you have touched our lives in such an honest, heartfelt way. You gave us an opportunity to once again experience freedom, peace and normalcy. For this I am eternally thankful. You have been more than just an employer, you have been someone I could count on, something I never have experienced in my life. You kept your word and because of that we have a life once again. Yes, you are my boss. As I have said, as far as I’m concerned I will be in that kitchen all old and wrinkled. I now also consider you someone I trust…a friend. Thank you more than you will ever know.

Needless to say, the tears welled up; and I felt—for at least a few minutes—that I…didn’t suck.

And I needed that.

Am I Crazy, or Just Stupid?

2008-04-03T11:17:00.000-07:00

I’m posting this here in my private journal, because it IS something that doesn’t need to be aired where any old body could read it… I don’t actually know if anybody reads this anymore, but I guess I’ll find out. What I need is a little bit of feedback. I did something that I’m pretty sure is stupid, and I’m pretty sure is ultimately going to cost me, not only money, but faith in human nature (neither of which I possess in any appreciable quantity…)

It has to do with where one draws the line between the professional and the personal. And whether, these days, there is really a line at all. Especially since, in MY case, my work IS my life, for all intents and purposes.

You may remember that I posted in "Terms" that Flaky Cook had a crisis a few weeks back, and was bent on heading back to Michigan with her kid in tow the next day, because she "didn’t want to sleep in the street." From 100 miles away, I prompted the Husband on how to calm her down, at least to get her to stay in town long enough for me to get a chance to talk to her.

Flaky Cook’s story in a nutshell—In October of 2006, she packed all her earthly belongings and her 12-year-old kid into a mini-van and moved from somewhere in Michigan to, of all places, a trailer park in Scappoose, Oregon. There, she met (for the first time, I think) and commenced co-habitation with someone with whom she had begun a relationship on the internet. Incidentally, Flaky Cook is a lesbian, and the "someone" was another woman, but that’s not really important. It could as easily have been, and would have been equally stupid, had it been a man she had never met.

All I know of Flaky Cook’s pre-Oregon life is that she has a kid and that she used to work for Bob Evans Restaurants back in Michigan. The work history is why I hired her. I SHOULD have realized immediately there was something unsavory about the relationship between her and her partner when it was the partner who came in and asked if we were hiring, then took the application home to Flaky Cook. Who meekly and dutifully came back the next day with it filled out.

Desperate for experienced kitchen help, I jumped on the chance to hire her. After a rocky start (she was absent due to "illness" for much of the first month of her tenure…to this day, I don’t know how much truth there is to her "kidney stone" story.) Eventually, she was indeed an asset--for a few months. Until the drama that was her personal life began to overwhelm her and she became the "Flaky Cook." In June of 2007, she chose to stop coming to work. I figured I’d never see her again

Mad as I was at her, I also felt sorry for her. Because it was obvious that she was in an abusive relationship. Her partner controlled the telephone, the money, the vehicle…even though all those things belonged to Flaky Cook. Cook would turn over her entire paycheck to the partner, who would then spend most of it on I don’t know what, and "forget" to pay the bills. Cook had sent Partner the money to put down on the trailer they lived in, but the trailer was in Partner’s name, because it was in an "over 55" park, and Cook was not over 55. Whenever Cook and her partner would fight—and, oh, did they fight—Partner would lock her out of the trailer and then call the police if Cook tried to gain access.

It was a classic abusive situation. Ugly and really, really "trailer-trashy." Even so, I hated to see someone stay in such a hideous relationship. But I have enough experience with friends/family members with semi-abusive co-dependent partners that I understand there’s nothing anyone on the outside can say or do to make the abused partner leave, or even change her situation within the relationship. Yes, I did speak my mind about her partner, anyway…during the times they were fighting and I thought Cook might be inclined to hear me. But my wise words had no effect, as I knew they wouldn’t. In a way, I was relieved when Flaky Cook quit, because I wouldn’t have to be a powerless witness anymore. Especially since there was this poor kid caught in the middle of it…

But Fate was not going to let me off the hook that easily. Four months later, in mid-October of 2007, Cook was at my front counter, hat in hand, asking for her job back. Apologizing up, down, and sideways for walking out on us. Promising that the "drama" was over and that she was prepared to be the employee we needed her to be. After a very long summer of carrying the café on my own weary back, I HAD to consider re-hiring her. The fact was, things had never run more smoothly for me than when she was in the kitchen. Was she the perfect employee? No. But she was by far the "best available athlete," and I knew I would be cutting off my nose to spitemy face if I turned her away.

Still, I sternly set forth many conditions for her re-employment. Minimum wage, limited hours, no leaving the premises during breaks, and she would have to OWN a phone on which I could contact her if I needed her. She was still living with the Abusive Partner, who held the phone hostage and made the decisions on whether or not to convey messages when I called… Flaky Cook swore that the relationship was over, and she and her kid were living in one room of Partner’s trailer until they could afford to move out. She was waiting for a settlement check from her former employer, and then they would get a vehicle and their own place.

When she got the check, Flaky Cook, who for some unknown reason does not have and will not get a bank account, turned it over to Abusive Partner to cash, pay the rent, and then give Flaky Cook the rest. Needless to say, Flaky Cook never saw a dime of that money. I don’t know what made her think she would…

Thereafter, things got really hairy (as if they weren’t bad enough already.) Flaky Cook contrived to have her tax refund prepared in such a way that there was no way Abusive Partner could get her hands on it. With it, she bought a vehicle—which gave her the mobility she needed, but she was out of money and could not scrape up the $1000 to $2000 she would need to get her own apartment.

Somehow, she ended up moving in with a school friend of her daughter’s. This was great for ME, as that duplex was right behind the restaurant. And then, wonder of wonders, the other half of the duplex became available, and Flaky Cook was all set to move in, had done everything but sign the papers… When she proceeded to have huge knock-down, drag-out fight with the lady she’d been living with. Which prompted the landlords to decide NOT to rent to Flaky Cook after all (at the last minute.) This was the drama that occurred while I was out of town.

Here, now, was Flaky Cook with nowhere to go except the motel ten miles up the road. At over $400 a week, this was going to rapidly suck up the money she had amassed to pay to get into the duplex that never happened. Out of luck, almost out of money, and feeling like she hadn’t a friend in the world, Cook was prepared to yank her kid out of school, pack what few possessions they’d managed to wrestle away from Abusive Partner into this little old pick-up truck she’d bought with her tax refund, and head back home to Michigan. And I was going to lose an employee that I had, against my better judgment, begun to lean very heavily upon.

So, here’s what I did. And what I probably shouldn’t have done.

I sat cook down and told her that she should have come to me with her problems, instead of panicking. I was not going to let her live in the street. We would somehow make it possible for her to get into an apartment, if we had to cosign or let her draw money against her paycheck, or whatever. She would need to do the legwork to find the place to rent (which are not plentiful, out here in the sticks) but we would make things happen when she found it. The end result is that I have let her "draw" almost $2000 against future paychecks…but she moved into her apartment yesterday. And I want to believe that she can keep her life "drama free" long enough to work off the money.

Why did I do this? Why did I make such an obviously risky investment? Because I could. Because I’m not some big corporation that turns blind eyes to individual employee’s issues (like Walmart suing to recover money from that poor brain-damaged woman…!) One of my philosophies of business, of my LIFE, is that I know I can’t change the world; but if I can make one person’s life easier, do something that makes a difference in one person’s life, that is success. In the end, it’s not about amassing piles of stuff or making a fortune. It’s about doing good. And if you CAN do good, and you DON’T…well, then you’re not worth the space you’re occupying on the planet.

It’s easy to write checks, take the tax deduction, and say that you’re "doing good." It’s not so easy to take the risk on people you know. Where you can see the results. When you know right away if you’ve thrown your investment of time, wisdom and money right down the toilet. But isn’t that the risk we need to take for one another? Isn’t that the real way to "pay it forward?" I don’t know…I’ve gone out on a limb like this before for people in my life, and I have ended up getting smacked in the face for my trouble. But that can’t make me afraid to step up when the next opportunity presents itself. It can’t.

Does Flaky Cook appreciate the risk I’ve taken on her? I have no idea. Will she stay around long enough for me to at least recover the two grand? Don’t know. Am I second-guessing myself on this every step of the way? You bet. Still…if I’m going to go down, I’d rather it be because I gave away too much than because I couldn’t get enough.

Does that make sense?

I Cannot Be The Match

2007-11-11T10:20:00.000-08:00

Sister "D" called me on Friday to talk about Mom’s deteriorating condition. Eventually, she got around to saying, "I suppose you should come down…" The unspoken completion of that thought being, "…if you want to see her before she dies."

I don’t know why I was brought up short by the suggestion. I hadn’t even really thought about it. We made the trip down to Eugene three weeks ago, when Mom first became so sick; and we trekked down again the following weekend, on her birthday. We visited with her when she was…as good as it appears she’s going to get, these days. So the first thing that popped out of my mouth when D communicated what amounted to the deathbed call was, "Why?" I think dear sister was a little taken aback. And then I found I couldn’t articulate my non-intention to attend in any way that sounded sane, even to me. I hung up the phone, having made no commitment I wasn’t prepared to honor.

Why, indeed?

I hardly remember getting ready for work that day, because my brain was so focused on nailing down my feelings about…everything. Mom’s approaching death. My sisters’ total involvement in her care. My developing philosophies about life and death and the journey between the two, which my sisters find difficult to swallow. My impatience with Western medicine’s inability to allow nature to take its course. My commitment to a business that has depleted my emotional and physical reserves to the point where I am consistently running on fumes. Taking all these factors into account, I balanced rushing down to my mother’s bedside against…not. And the scales tipped heavily to "not." What, after all, would be the real reason for going?

For Mom? Most of the time, she is incoherent. She’s regressed to the point where she is more often interacting with her memories than with what is actually happening around her. When she does come out of the fog, and she recognizes my sisters, all she can say, is "Get my shoes. I want to go home. Take me home." At one point, sister D told me she wasn’t sure whether her presence with Mom was more upsetting than comforting. So, why would I want to add to that potential upset? And even if Mom does come to herself enough to realize where she is and that we were all gathered around her, she wouldn’t be the least bit interested in saying goodbye. Because she still has no intention of going.

For me? Will I hate myself for the rest of my life if I don’t run down there, cling tomy mother’s hand and weep? Well, no. I’ve come to terms with her impending death. I’m sure it’s been easier for me, because I haven’t been involved in her daily care for the past eight years, as my sisters have. I’ve done the deathbed thing. I held my Dad’s hand as he passed from this life. I didn’t plan to, didn’t even think I could. But since I had been chiefly in charge of his care, I felt that I had started the journey with him, and I was by god going to finish it. And I knew that was what he wanted. So I know how my sisters feel about sticking in there with Mom. And I don't feel bad about letting them do it, without any interference from me. Considering my non-existent emotional and physical reserves, I’m convinced the right choice for me is to stay quietly on the sidelines.

Well, then. That leaves one last argument in favor of making the trip. "Support," I am told. "You go down to support your family." Okay…no. In my family, that’s the one thing you definitely DO NOT do. We have no clue how to support, uplift, or even be nice to each other faced with life and death upheaval. We proved that beyond any doubt when my dad was dying.

I will never forget the things we did to each other during and in the months following Dad’s illness. Gloves came off, claws were unsheathed, fangs were bared, and we tore into each other wildly and relentlessly. The collateral damage of that awful time was what drove me away from the "heart" of my family…one hundred-plus miles away. I needed to re-establish my own life far enough away from my sisters that we couldn’t hurt each other any more. It was a wise decision. It brought a peace among us that never would have been accomplished if I had not given up and walked away.

I know with absolute certainty that if I rushed down to Eugene today, I’d have to be on guard every minute. I’d have to watch every word I said, every move I made, lest it be interpreted as a threat or some kind of criticism of the way my sisters have handled Mom’s issues. Any attack, however unintentional, will be met with the most vicious and poisonous counter-attack. At my best, I’m hopelessly impolitic; in my current depleted condition, I am certain to be the match applied to the powder keg. And I cannot go through that again.

The best service I can do for my sisters—for all of us—is to stay away. And honestly, I don’t feel bad about it. I don’t even feel the need to explain my decision to anyone; not that they could or would understand anyway. Their disapproval of my absence will not amount to one tenth of the potential fallout of my presence. I simply know what I need to do, for many reasons that I have judged are best for me and for everyone involved.

As My World Turns...

2007-10-22T01:35:00.000-07:00

The latest on sister "C" is that she has gone home to Eugene. Part of her reasoning being that she and her husband "weren’t getting anywhere" when they weren’t speaking to each other. Silly me. I thought there wasn’t anywhere left for them to go besides divorce court. Apparently they couldn’t even make it that far.

So she packed up the clothes she had hung in my guest room closet, rounded up the toiletries she had installed in the guest bathroom, and headed south…like the goose she is, I guess. She isn’t ready, probably never will be ready, to disentangle herself from the intricate web of co-dependency, enabling behavior, and…whatever else her marriage is made of.

And I’m afraid I didn’t provide her with the sisterly emotional support she sought. If she was expecting to enfold herself in the comfort of my "family," she was sorely disappointed. Our lives are really not our own, now; we spend almost all our waking hours working, husband either at his "real" job, or at the café, and me toiling away at the restaurant. We didn’t have a life for her to surround herself with… I’m kind of sorry, but I never offered her anything I didn’t deliver. I told her from the first that what I had was an empty bedroom in a house that is currently largely unused.

I think her emotional neediness, even though I had nothing to give her, was part of what sent me over the edge. I basically had a mild physical and emotional breakdown. I "lost it" emotionally over the restaurant; and for the past month I’ve been culturing no less, I swear, than three germs at any given time. Virus, bacteria, strep, cold, flu…who knows? But I (and, for that matter, my whole crew) have been sick on and off since the end of August. I’ve soldiered on bravely, but this past week I just fell apart, physically and mentally. I’m not sure if I lost it because I was sick, or if I succumbed to sickness because I lost it. I only know that, for a couple of days there, I was wallowing in some pretty deep shit.

I wish I could say things were on the upswing. And they are, sort of. At least the antibiotics seem to have kicked the strep’s butt in short order. But I’m having a hard time sleeping, so I’m not feeling very replenished. And news has been filtering up from Eugene about my mother’s latest health issues. And it appears she is dying…

The Universe Says "No"

2007-08-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

It looks as if the Universe has decided NOT to give me a break on this one.

Sister "C" spent half of last week here; she poured Liquid Plumber down the guest bathroom drain, bought a new showerhead for the tub, and hung a bunch of clothes in the closet. She went home Sunday, but promises to return next Monday (looks like I’d better enjoy today, because it looks to be my last REAL day off for awhile…) And she has decided for and against the office space down the way from the restaurant at least four times in the past two weeks. Yes, no, yes, no…the latest word is "yes." Oh……….crap!

I suppose if I wanted to be an asshole, I could just tell her she is not welcome here, and that I’m really not so hot on the idea of having her move to the area. Or, if I wanted to be a passive-aggressive asshole, I could simply make her life miserable enough while she’s here that she would change her mind about the move. I’m pretty sure, if the situations were reversed, she would have no trouble doing that to me.

Unfortunately that’s not what I’m all about. Regardless of the grief she has caused me in the past, I know she’s having a hard time right now. She’s trying to dissolve a miserable marriage to a miserable man, and does not know how to reverse the enabling behaviors she had devised in order to live with the son-of-a-bitch for nearly twenty years. If I hear her say, "I was in a marriage" one more time, by way of explaining the bizarre tightrope she has walked all these years, I’ll have to slap her. I’m in a marriage; I don’t know what you would call the miserable, dysfunctional state she’s been living in for nearly half her life.

So, as of today, it looks like I’m going to be saddled with her. And if my prognostication skills haven’t deserted me, I predict sister "D" will follow her as soon as Mom is no longer an issue. Somebody has to stay in Lane County and look after the failing matriarch. Even though Mom is in assisted living, and has been for more than seven years, "D" and "C" have dedicated themselves to trundling up to "the home" every day to make sure she gets exercise, organize her meds, and keep close tabs on her health. All services which "the home" does not offer, or offers at a premium price. When "C" leaves the area, that full responsibility will be dumped on "D." And she has decided to shoulder it gracefully. But she will be ready to move on when that responsibility ends.

I can see it now. A flurry of activity, with "D" and husband coming up to stay for weekends at a time. We will all be one big happy family again. Until "C," the intrepid Real Estate expert, finds the perfect retirement property for them. Maybe it will even have a guest house or mother-in-law apartment for "C."

And then we’ll go back to socializing on birthdays and holidays. Maybe. With them living right in my backyard.

Oh, well. Whatever. It is to be hoped that my restaurant will keep me plenty busy and I won't really have the time to be upset about what they choose to do. Maybe I’ve had enough years of distance that I’ll be able to blow off the slights, intended or unintended.

Maybe.

Thoughts I Certainly Couldn't Post in My Public Space...

2007-08-05T16:48:00.000-07:00

Good heavens…I haven’t written anything here for months. Not since my sweet kitty died.

Anyone who has read here (and remembers) knows about my wonky relationship with my sisters. How out of whack it got after my dad passed away. How I had to move away from the only city I have really thought of as home (in my adult life) because it hurt too much to be where my family was but not be part of my family anymore.

So, what is it about me that improves with distance? My late eldest sister and I were having all sorts of relationship problems before the husband and I moved to Oregon. Once I was safely 2000 miles away, all of a sudden we became best buds. Of course, we always loved each other…the attachment was always there. But the nagging bullshit—the stupid little peeves and arguments—went away when our times together were brief and far between. The distance taught us to value each other so much more.

And it seems the same thing is happening with my other sisters. The ones I had to leave behind because they were so poisonous to me. The oldest—"D"—talks about buying a house up here in the area when her husband retires. The next oldest one—"C" (who is the one I have had the most insane troubles with)—is talking about renting an office space in the same building with my restaurant, and moving her real estate business up to Columbia County (we ARE booming here…it WOULD make sense) while she tries to dissolve her marriage. All I can say about all this is…WTF????

Now that things are going a teensy bit more smoothly at the restaurant, I’ve had some time to contemplate this. All kinds of questions are popping into my head. Why do they want to come HERE? Is it ME they miss, or would I just be a familiar reference point for someone wanting to start over somewhere new? What’s the fuckin’ attraction all of a sudden?

The whole situation bugs me on a multitude of levels. For one thing, I hate it when they say bad things about the only place I ever wanted to live. All they can say is, "I hate Eugene. I just hate it. I can’t wait to get away from here." To me—the one who left under duress, who never would have gone without a gun pointed to her head—that stuff is really hard to hear. What’s so great about Eugene? Nothing, I guess. Except that it was my home, and I had to leave against my will.

Well, now Scappoose is my home. MY home. The home I made for myself, when I had to. And while it’s kind of a kick that suddenly everyone else seems to want to be here, too…I’m not sure I want them here. Especially those particular two. The two who formed their little club that very pointedly excluded me back in the days after my dad’s death. There is a part of me that thinks how nice it would be if we could go back to the way things were before Dad passed away; the backyard barbecues, the vacation rentals at the coast, the holidays and the Christmas-tree decorating parties. In short, how nice it would be if we could go back to being a family again. But there is another part of me—that cynical, burned-by-life part—that does not believe that you can ever go back. That part of me believes they would just bring their little exclusive club up here, and continue to shut me out. And I’ll be damned if I’ll go through that again.

I just have to hope it’s all talk, and that their attention will get side-tracked in some other direction. I DO NOT need them here.

I hope the Universe gives me a break on this one…

Going Where I Shouldn't Go

2007-03-02T13:09:00.000-08:00

After my cat died, I made a resolution to whine only about the important things. When you lose something (someone) who has inhabited a part of your heart for so long, you are shocked back into understanding what is really meaningful in life.

But that resolution has lasted…what? A month? Because I just want to whine again. Maybe it’s because I have a cold and I don’t feel up to the rigorous schedule my business demands of me. Fourteen-hour days when you’re healthy and rested are challenge enough. Maybe it’s because I’m not completely okay with walking away from the event that we didn’t do last weekend. Because I have a nagging feeling that I need to do my best to keep Café de la Rue (our concession business) afloat. It may be a very necessary fall-back position if we end up failing with the café.

How unfortunate that I am not an optimist! Never have been. I’m a survivor. I’ll work my butt off, make sacrifices that others would not, sweat and bleed and cry. But unfortunately for me, I get only rare glimpses of the light at the end of the tunnel. My inborn negativity almost always obscures that light. So I have to make those few scarce moments, those few times that I feel, "Look! It’s happening! I can do this!" be enough to get me through the rest of the time.

I hate to even allow myself to entertain the thought of failure. I know that’s the first step toward giving up. I’ve given up on enough things in the last ten years—jobs, relationships, dreams—to recognize the signs. Still, I’m not sure where pessimism ends and reality begins. At what point do you KNOW you’ve exhausted all your options? When is the appropriate time to say "This just is NOT going to work," and be able to give up knowing that you gave it your best shot? I have no idea.

And I really have no business even thinking about that at this point. So I’m going back to work. Maybe I’ll come up for air with a "Good Things" list later. Just now, I’m too involved in chasing away the demons to think about good things.

Poetry Links

2007-02-25T22:36:00.000-08:00

At some point I began to wonder how much poetry I've written since I started journaling more than three years ago. I went back into the archives and dug up the verses...and I've made a list of the links... More for my own informaton/enjoyment than anyone else's. If you're of a mind, click away...

http://journals.aol.com/lisaram1955/Brainsurfing/entries/2006/11/19/the-age-old-old-age-conflict/687

http://journals.aol.com/lisaram1955/Brainsurfing/entries/2005/11/14/well-into-the-second-half.../657

http://journals.aol.com/lisaram1955/Brainsurfing/entries/2005/11/07/where-it-belongs/653?numComment=all

http://journals.aol.com/lisaram1955/Brainsurfing/entries/2005/10/22/ether/647

http://journals.aol.com/lisaram1955/Brainsurfing/entries/2005/08/18/history/610

http://journals.aol.com/lisaram1955/Brainsurfing/entries/2005/06/22/from-the-road/582

http://journals.aol.com/lisaram1955/Brainsurfing/entries/2005/05/26/untitled/560

http://journals.aol.com/lisaram1955/Brainsurfing/entries/2005/01/24/umbilicus/492

http://journals.aol.com/lisaram1955/Brainsurfing/entries/2005/01/18/seasons-change/486

http://journals.aol.com/lisaram1955/Brainsurfing/entries/2005/01/11/it-stops-here/478

http://journals.aol.com/mlraminiak/ComingtotermswithMiddleAge/entries/2006/04/05/where-im-from/756

http://betterterms.blogspot.com/2006/07/deaths-and-birthdays.html

http://betterterms.blogspot.com/2006/07/blog-03-06.html

http://betterterms.blogspot.com/2006/07/transition.html

http://betterterms.blogspot.com/2006/05/opposites-attract.html

http://betterterms.blogspot.com/2006/04/writing-night.html

http://betterterms.blogspot.com/2006/02/fdb-32719-20299.html

http://betterterms.blogspot.com/2005/12/winter-solstice_21.html

Not Feelin It...

2007-02-14T09:45:00.000-08:00

Valentine’s Day. Ugh! I couldn’t care less.

February is just turning out to be a rotten month. Valentine’s Day can’t seem to offset all the sad anniversaries this month holds. From this year onward, the 1st will be the day Spritie left us. The second has been a mournful day since 1999—the day Dad died. And the thirteenth is Joyce’s birthday, which I wish could be more a day filled with happy memories than one of lingering melancholy. I’ll have to work on that…

Husband stepped up with a bouquet of roses, and—of all things—gifts of lingerie. As if I have the energy to do more than crawl into my ratty nightclothes and pull the blankets over my head at night. …And then throw the blankets off and sweat.

Nope. I am tired, and I am frustrated, and I am sad. And, I’m beginning to believe, entirely overmatched. The tears are not too far below the surface these days. I know it’s partly hormones, partly exhaustion…but I find it annoying. And somewhat frightening. I’ve never been a big crier. I’m afraid I might just be losing it altogether. With my luck, I won’t be the kind of loopy, happy insane person. You know…the porch light’s on but nobody’s home... I’ll probably just go entirely catatonic. Sit in one place and stare straight ahead for days.

And I reiterate…ugh!

Struggling...

2007-02-11T23:18:00.000-08:00

Back to the "bitch and moan" journal.
I’m choking on one of life’s hairballs. I’m having such a hard time getting past the loss. I DO feel like I’ve been hit when I’m down; if not down, then definitely not at the top of my game. How many pets have we lost, for heaven’s sake? Let me count…if we have had sixteen cats, and have six left, that must mean we have weathered the deaths of ten feline friends. AND two dogs. Shouldn’t I be used to it by now? Shouldn’t I be able to step back and say, "Oh…this is sad. But life goes on.."
Do you ever get used to grief?
Is grief so inappropriate when it’s over a cat?
And is my crash only about the cat?
I corralled the husband a couple of hours ago and tried to use him as a sounding board. Tried to tell him that, over the past seven months, I’ve felt like I’ve taken a few steps forward only to be shoved back…sometimes only one step back, sometimes three or four. The net result has been some progress, but it ain’t been easy.
But this…I feel like a baseball that’s been knocked into deep left field. Not a step or two backward…more like five hundred feet. Somebody’s going to find me on Sheffield Avenue and take me to the clubhouse to get me autographed.
I’m afraid even the sports analogy couldn’t get my point across to the husband. Once again, he doesn’t get it. It’s not his fault. He’s just what he is…a man. A very good man, but still…not someone who can comprehend what goes on inside a woman’s head. Not even the head that’s been on the pillow next to his for the past thirty years.
So, once again, there’s no one. Only me. Only my own counsel. My own determination not to fall into the pit. My own fingernails scratching and digging at the edge of the hole. Clawing my way back up. Again. Alone. And trying to smile, and not let on that I’m not sure at all if I have it in me to drag myself up one…more…time…
But I always do.

Some Things Are Just Too Hard

2007-02-02T08:43:00.000-08:00

So I’ll come here and whine. I don’t feel like subjecting the readers of "Coming to Terms…" to my latest bit of incredibly low spirits. Besides, I wonder if they really understand—if anybody but my husband understands—what it has done to me to lose our beloved Spritie.

All this complaining I’ve been doing about how hard my life has been since last July when we took over the café. It has been hard…at least I thought it had. Until our sweet Hairy Butt began his precipitous decline. He’s been sick since before Thanksgiving. He lost half his body weight (well, yeah…he was fat) and his beautiful fur, of which he had never been particularly meticulous, began to tangle into huge, impermeable mats. It was obvious he was not well, but we just didn’t have the time to focus on that. As long as he was still getting along okay, we played around with his medication and kept half an eye on him, around the exhaustion, frustration, and fourteen and fifteen-hour days at the restaurant.

When it became obvious he was really sick, we took him out to our old vet, thirty miles from here. The one who had brought our Andrew back from the brink of the grave and gave us two more years with him. I don't know… I guess I really believed they could wave some kind of magic wand and bring Spritie back, too. Give him back some kind of quality of life. Help him to hang in there until we had the time… The time to be with him again. Which is all he ever wanted.

Unfortunately, veterinary medicine is even less of an exact science than human medicine. And there is the added complication that the patients can’t say where it hurts. The doctors can only guess and test and try stuff out till they find the thing that works. But they guessed wrong this time. The treatment only made him sicker. By the time it became obvious the diagnosis was wrong, it was too late.

Talk about hitting you when you’re down! I feel like Life said, "Oh, you think you’re having a hard time? Want to whine, do you? Well, here—here’s something really hard. NOW you can whine…"

Our poor Hairy Butt. The one who started out being our neighbors’ cat, but practically from the time he could squeeze through a crack in their fence and scoot across the road to our house, made it plain that he had chosen us. Our house. He wanted to live with us. I know he was sick…the vet said he probably had cancer. But I half-believed, still do, that he died of loneliness. All he ever wanted to do was BE WITH US. And we let him down, so late in his life that he couldn’t deal with it. So he left.

I just wish I could let go of that feeling…

...As Long As Nobody's Listening...

2006-11-29T08:55:00.000-08:00

I can’t help but think how simple it would be to rise out of this funk. Just throw me a bone, life! Maybe a busy week (day? hour????) at the café, or a marketing idea that actually produces results, or an invitation to a holiday party, or a relaxing evening at a concert…or a winning lottery ticket that would immediately negate the need for any of the previously mentioned things.

I hate it when I get into one of these losing ruts. And I may be prejudiced, but it seems to me I get into them a lot more often than the average person. Why is that? Is it because I just have a natural tendency to focus on the negative? Maybe I wouldn’t know a winning streak if it bit me in the ass… I don’t know.

The hardest thing for me, right now, is to remain positive in the face of bad things. Business really stinks…dangerously so. And I feel it is my responsibility to smile, act like nothing is wrong, and keep trying things to lift everyone’s spirits. And, oh lord…my personality is so far from Pollyanna that it’s just a joke when I am called upon to wear that costume. There aren’t enough yards of gingham in the universe to cover my pensive, introverted, and somewhat thorny nature.

This is hard. Harder than the long days, and the burnt fingers, and the physical labor it takes to make the place run. I can soldier on bravely through all that…but when I have to try to be someone I’m not, it takes a much heavier toll. The emotional exhaustion nearly kills me. And I suck at it, anyway…so the end result is that I am beating the shit out of myself for little or no gain.

I tried to send up a distress flare to the husband last night. Granted, he has a full-time job of his own that is not going too well either, and he depends upon me, I think, to insulate him from bad café news. But I told him we really needed to sit down and map out a strategy to pull our sales out of the toilet. And he fell asleep…

The Age-Old (Old Age?) Conflict

2006-11-19T19:24:00.000-08:00

stress and fatigue

insanity and midlife

conspire to rob us

of our corporeal conjuctivity

you are faithful

I know…

I think…

certainly I

am going nowhere…

but I wonder why I

dream of candlelit interludes

and you

shove your hand

in my pants

pinch me and growl…?

and I wonder why

I chide myself

when I recoil…

Comfort

2006-11-16T00:23:00.000-08:00

One afternoon last week, I found myself with my laptop set up on the prep table in the kitchen. By the miracle of the wi-fi connection I had installed at the café (it has finally decided to work!) I was scoping out election results on the internet. And suddenly, I was immersed in crafting a politically slanted journal entry, right there between the toaster and the meat slicer, about the rapture attributable to the demise of Donald Rumsfeld. It felt like the two distinct parts of my life—B.C. (Before Café) and A.D. (After life-altering Decision) had finally begun to fuse into something recognizable—an existence I could countenance, without feeling that I had given up something I loved to get…something I loved.
I knew the time would come when I would be at ease in my own skin again. When "Entrepreneur Lisa" would begin to bear a comfortable resemblance to my past personae: Writer, Wife, Animal Mom, Birder, Traveler, Gardener, Home Decorator par excellence. Because in actual fact, these are not "past personae" at all, but part of the ever-more-complicated puzzle that is me.
This, at last, is the reward for growing older...for attaining this "mid-life" with which, sometimes, I have such difficulty coming to terms: That a life which starts out as a stick-figure pencil drawing eventually takes on the beauty and intricacy of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

I’m not there yet…but I’m well on my way.

So Many Things, So Little Time...

2006-11-03T14:59:00.000-08:00

An unforeseen benefit of the exit of the little cook has been that I have two days "off" that I hadn’t planned upon. I had to cover his shift yesterday, and again tomorrow. But that left today free…well, not completely…but freer than usual. Let’s just say "untethered," since I don’t have to fill a position at the café, I just have to pop in and out during potential busy times to make sure everything is running smoothly. This morning I actually dressed in a skirt, and hung around the premises looking managerial (ownerial?) It was nice.
I had to write out paychecks and create next week’s schedule, but I left there about 1:00 this afternoon. Fully intending to do something productive with these few stolen hours. If only recover one or two of the hours of sleep I’ve lost, especially these last few days. And have I done anything? Have I even taken the prescribed nap? No, I have not. I poured myself a glass of wine, bade the stereo play me three of my pre-christmas "space music" CD’s (Winter’s Solstice II, Winterlude, and Celtic Christmas II) and have sat here doing absolutely nothing productive. Playing Solitaire. Going over old journal entries. Yawning, stretching, and staring into space. Padding down the stairs for another glass of wine.

But I can’t help but think that, since this seems to be the only thing I have the capacity to do, it must be what I need…

The Rest of the Story...

2006-11-02T22:09:00.000-08:00

I'm so tired, I'm stupid. These emotional battles beat the shit out of me worse than the busiest rush. I had to open the kitchen at the cafe today, after working open to close two days in a row...due to the sudden exit of the jerk-off little cook. And of course, I didn't sleep worth a damn last night, as always happens following these employee debacles. I remember going through this same thing every time a crew member quit or complained or confronted me about something, back in the olden days of the "Little Bakery on the Mall." Whenever my ineptitude at inter-personal relationships bites me in the ass, I spend at least a day obsessing over what I should have done, or should have said, or how much of an asshole the other person is, or I am, or whatever. About midnight last night, as I lay in bed in the dark with the steam practically pouring out my ears from the speed at which my mind was racing, I realized sleep was not going to be an immediate option. So I got out of bed, moved to the other room so I wouldn't disturb the husband, hauled out the laptop and stared at the computer screen for an hour (after shooting back a healthy dose of benadryl in an effort the slow the churning enough to actually get a minute or two of sleep at some point...) Finally passed out about 1:30 am, and had to be up again at 6:30. So, yes...I was mostly a zombie all day today.

I had to wait until 5:00 pm to see if Cook #2 was going to show up, or follow his best buddy into ignominious unemployment. Lo and behold, he strode in like the conquering hero at about 4:59 ½… I have to admit, I was not too far from throwing my arms around him and giving him a big wet kiss. But I was not entirely willing to forgive his compadre, or him by association. So the first several minutes were awkward. The manchild waited for me to say something about his pal's defection; I waited for the next shoe to drop. Neither of us wanted to be the first to sidle up to the topic. We studiously busied ourselves at avoiding that particular elephant, no...tyrannasaurus rex, crouching in the corner.

I knew the moment of truth had to come before I walked out the door, whether of its own accord or forced at gunpoint... Finally, I walked up to him and said, "Nate…I have to make next week’s schedule tonight. Am I putting you on it?" His reply: "I hope so…"

Andas I pulled my coat out of my office/closet, he sidled up to me and said, "Now that Bryce isn’t working here anymore, can I have forty hours on next week’s schedule?"

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry…

Another Hiccup...

2006-11-01T22:53:00.000-08:00

Okay...so tonight one of my cooks walked off the job. I don't really understand what the issue was; we didn't argue, he didn't seem any more disaffected than he ever is. He just...disappeared. In the middle of his shift. Whatever.

Just when I had started stealing back some of my life.

Truth be told, the kid has been a pain in my butt from the minute I walked in the door of the cafe, and has been pretty much hanging by a thread for most of that time. I can't count the number of times I have nearly fired his ass. But I have not had the luxury of being able to do that. Luckily, I am finally to the point where I am confident that I can run the kitchen myself. And I have cut this child back to about sixteen hours per week. So, if the only issue was that he was gone, I'd say good riddance.

However, there are two complications. Number one being that he and my other remaining cook are joined at the hip. Best of friends. Crash together. Etc. So it remains to be seen whether Pain-in-the-butt-cook Number Two will also be on the casualty list. It might be a bit difficult to weather the loss of both of them with no notice. But you gotta do what you gotta do.

Secondly, I was scheduled to do our last event of the year with the catering business this weekend. Like, be away from the restaurant for the entire weekend. Well, that ain't gonna happen, I guess. Mr. Husband will have to go down to Yachats, while Mom stays in town and minds the store. I was kinda looking forward to getting one last weekend on the coast before winter. But I will be happier keeping close to my "new" business during this little crisis.

Looking Good, Anyway...

2006-10-25T23:50:00.000-07:00

I wish I could post a picture of myself as I am now: Sitting on the new leather loveseat we just acquired for the café, taking advantage of the soft, inviting dinner-type lighting that we have contrived to replace the glaring overhead fluorescents that the previous owner installed. He was thinking more in terms of being able to see than of ambience…

At least the restaurant is beginning to achieve the look that I’ve wanted. I’m starting to like being there. To think of it as an extension of my home. In fact. I almost to prefer to be at the cafe, when it’s closed, quiet, and clean, rather than trying to ignore the clutter in my hairy, messy, slightly smelly house.

The menu still needs work, and the crew is an utter disaster (for which I take full responsibility…) And the husband and I aren’t even getting along as well as we used to. But we shelled out about four grand on some new tables, chairs, and "lounge" seating; and the place is starting to look really good. Now all we need is customers…

The business has been so wonky. One minute, we are empty as a saloon in a ghost town, and the next, BAM! we’re full up. And, unfortunately, those "full up" times come at completely unpredictable intervals. And inevitably when we are short of help, out of some major menu item, or just about ready to close the doors. Unfortunately, too, there are nowhere near enough of those "full up" times to pull us out of the pit the empty times have sunk us into.

Ah yes…. I am soooo liking the way the place looks these days. But I can think of many, many "cute" restaurants we’ve discovered, over the years that disappeared off the face of the earth in short order. Ambience is just not going to be enough…more’s the pity.

Here's The Thing...

2006-10-15T17:04:00.000-07:00

I’m not thinking too clearly these days. No, I really mean it. I’m so exhausted/stressed out that my thought processes are taking way longer than they should. I pick up something, like a pen, or a dog toy, look at it and go ummmmmmm….it’s taking a split second longer than normal for me to identify things and make decisions that should not take any thought at all. It’s like being a little bit drunk, all the time. And let me tell you, I have NOT been drinking much—alcohol. Caffeine, yes, by the buckets. But alcohol does nothing but enhance this slightly stupid, slightly incompetent feeling that I have all the time. And it inspires major cases of the "fukkits," in which I cannot afford to indulge at the moment. So I’m pretty much staying away from the firewater (she says as she takes another slug from the mug of spiked coffee at her elbow. Hey, today is my day off. I don’t get very many of those these days…)

I decided to reopen this journal, and put "Better Terms" on ice, because…well, I’m not quite sure. I guess I just felt like I was not going to be capable of writing the "next level" essays that I had determined to post at "Better Terms." I had to stop writing for The Blue Voice, too. I just don’t have the time to spend four hours at a sitting, researching and perfecting decent political commentary. I am bummed by this, but it can’t be helped. It’s not that I am any less concerned about the state of the nation than I ever was…I just don’t have the time or the brainpower to deal with it right now. Sigh!

A couple of days ago, in an entry on "Coming to Terms…" I wrote that I was thinking of reopening "Brainsurfing" (I called it my "bitch and moan" journal.) Not very flattering to this little collection… But the thing is, I really feel like I NEED a bitch and moan journal right now. I need a place to whine, and I need it to be open only to people who know that’s what I’m going to be doing here, and come anyway. "Coming to Terms…" was starting to read like a whinefest…and for whatever reason, that is NOT the direction I want to go there. I guess I want the journal community at large to still believe there is more to me than my woeful tales of exhaustion and frustration at the café.

The truth is, I’m finding it very difficult to deal with the challenges of running a business without some kind of community behind me, or surrounding me, or whatever it is that communities do for a person. I’ve always been kind of a maverick…always thought I did my best work on my own. But what I didn’t realize, until now, was that there has always been a support network to hold at arm’s length. Growing up, going about the business of leaving the family behind, the family was always there to go back to if the need arose…at least, mine was. At my "dream job," even though my particular store was removed enough from the center of the corporate universe to give me a sense of control unique in the company, the corporate structure was still there to back me up, or give me direction when I needed it, or share ideas, or bust my chops if I lost my focus.

And back in those days, my family was there, too, providing a place to go and interact that WASN’T work. Acceptance. Distraction. A backyard fire and a game of cards on a Saturday night.

But this time, I’m going it alone. All the way alone. My closest family and my closest friend are a hundred miles away. No stolen hours of sharing and laughing around a dining table at a moment’s notice. And there's no corporate structure standing behind me like a guardian angel, making rules for me to follow (or break), or offering ideas born of similar experience. It’s all up to me, with no one to bounce theories off of. Or share frustrations with. Or whine to. Or raise a glass to me and say, "Hey…good job."

On top of that, I’m twenty years older (twenty years…OMG!!!) than I was the last time I got even close to doing this kind of thing. And that is proving to be much more of an issue than I ever anticipated.

I’m hoping that you guys—the virtual community upon whom I have come to rely over the last three years—can help me out here. I hope it isn’t too much to ask, as I know you all have lives and stuff and issues of your own to deal with. And I don’t want to be too needy. But the fact is, I AM needy right now, difficult as it is for me to admit.

Or maybe somebody could point me in the direction of a "struggling entrepreneurs" support group…

Let's Chat

2006-10-12T00:16:00.000-07:00

Locking Up

2006-01-16T13:12:00.000-08:00

I’m going to close down "Brainsurfing" for awhile… Right now, I’m just lost, floundering…no, not floundering. Not moving at all. Paralyzed. Battle-weary. It feels like I’ve been fighting for the last ten years, and I’m just done with it. In the past decade, I’ve come to the edge of these dark waters so many times. Reeling, ready to fall… And every time, I’ve slapped myself—hard. Chosen a slightly different path, and struggled away from the murky edge. But every path has led me back here. I’m tired. I’ve run out of paths. I just want to give in to it, lie back and let it wash over me.

I find myself in a place where I’m going to need to write things that no one else should really read. I need to lance some emotional boils, and the resulting flow of pus is not something that anyone outside my own head needs to see. So, rather than ask you all not to come here and read, I’m going to remove everyone but myself from my private "readers list" for awhile. I suppose I could keep all this stuff in a paper journal, but I’ve grown kind of accustomed to pouring out my blood here. And, frankly, one of the things I’ll be mourning is the demise of the journal community, and I think everyone has heard enough about that.

I’ll continue writing for "Better Terms" as the mood strikes…though I’m not sure when or how often that will be. I’m going to try to keep only good writing there. Stuff that actually qualifies as attempts to communicate with other human beings, rather than maudlin self-analysis.

Thank you for reading.

:-]

My Little Boys

2006-01-14T23:47:00.000-08:00

Owww! Ahhhh...

2006-01-11T01:21:00.000-08:00

I already had this post almost completely done, then I hit some wrong button on my laptop and it disappeared into the ozone. You’d think I would know better than to try to compose a post directly into the "add entry" field… I was too exhausted to throw the damn machine out the window…or even to give it another shot and follow the known steps for success in journal land (copy and paste…it’s ALL about copy and paste!)

It’s now eight hours later, and I am only awake because I had to set my alarm for midnight in order to get up and take my "every six hours" medication. My offending tooth became an ex-tooth at about 2:00 Tuesday afternoon. I won’t go into great detail of my somewhat nightmarish junket into the world of "Kaiser Dental." Suffice it to say that the climax of said experience was that Dr. Dentist got halfway through performing a root canal, only to pronounce that the tooth looked "weird," and advise me to let him pull it instead. Which, faced with the possibility of going through all this and being no better off than when I started when the novocaine wore off, I was more than happy to allow. I’m rapidly becoming bald-headed of the mouth. This is the third molar I’ve had pulled during the course of my life (the first one bit the big one when I was a mere lass of nineteen…) Now, we’re starting to talk about bridge work. Ah, the joys of middle age! I’m afraid I’m now going to start paying the very dear price for a life of less-than-fastidious dental upkeep!

Oh well… At least, in the short term, I’ll be able to get some (more) sleep tonight. And maybe even eat something tomorrow. Or the next day. Life is good.

G’night…

Ugh! Owww!

2006-01-10T00:54:00.000-08:00

Could things be any more miserable? It’s the middle of the night, the wind is howling, the rain is jackhammering a boisterous tattoo on my south windows, and I may be dead by morning of a horrendous tooth infection. In all seriousness, between the raging storm outside and the one on the left side of my lower jaw, I won’t be getting a great deal of sleep tonight. Tomorrow (between the hours of 8am and 6pm) I’ll be making the call that I should have made three days ago—to Kaiser Dental. I have been reluctant, up until now, to turn my mouth over to Kaiser, but it’s amazing how unrelenting pain can chip away at one’s resolve, turning one from a chooser to a beggar in fairly short order. I wonder who I’ll have to kill to get an emergency appointment?

Now that I’ve decided to while away my painfully awake time by writing for my journal, I find I’m too tired and too stupefied to write anything worthwhile. But I’ll write anyway, because I have nothing better to do. I’m kind of hoping I’ll pass out headfirst into the keyboard…at least I’ll get some sleep that way.

Okay…seriously passing out here. I’m going to post this, close my eyes and try to catch a z or two. I’ll probably post again when the pain wakes me up to take another hit of advil…

Thoughts for the New Year

2006-01-01T20:14:00.000-08:00

Last night, for the first time in years, we went out for New Years Eve. Dressed up and everything…to the extent that Oregonians dress up for anything. I looked decent, in a drapey, bohemian Stevie Nicks sort of way...showing the slow graceful glow of age…
The name of the band—"Acoustic Minds"—attracted me. It sounded intimate. Thoughtful. Tuneful. A band, perhaps, that could be appreciated without sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears.
They were young. They were good. We sat through all three sets, strapped on our shiny befeathered party hats and tooted our cardboard horns at midnight. It was a pleasant evening. Significantly different than the last several new years, which we have rung in surrounded by family…that family around whom I always feel I need to be bobbing and weaving.
Will this deviation from our traditional keeping of the holiday portend a similar departure from the routine in the coming year? One can only hope. This morning I realized that as of December 26, 2005, I had stiffened my spine and determined to march off in exactly the same direction as I had 365 days prior. Up to my eyeballs in family estrangements, I had resolved to turn around, dust off my hands, and go off in search of a life to replace the one I wanted but couldn’t have. The one where I have been beating upon a door seven years closed.
In 2006, I want…more. More of something. Anything. I want to load up my life with so many things that, by the time the holiday season rolls around in 2006, I may or may not have room to squeeze in those people who have let me know plainly that I have not the importance in their lives that they have in mine. It only makes sense… You can only knock on a locked door for so long before you realize it’s never going to open.
At the dawn of each of the last six new years, I’ve made the same sad decision to walk away from that door. But the world has turned, changed, gone forward without me. I’m out of phase. I’m a twentieth-century seeker in a twenty-first century reality. My skills are rusty; my contacts outdated. Still, each year, I get a little further down the road before the brick wall of pure aloneness rises in front of me. Blocks the road and sends me creeping back to that same old familiar doorstep.
May this be the year that I finally break through that wall. Reach through the hole and grasp a new reality. One with warm bodies to welcome and enfold me. Or at least hold me back from turning back toward that old, locked door.

Analysis (Maybe I should go into it...)

2005-12-27T09:08:00.000-08:00

I apologize in advance to anyone outside my head who reads this. This is the journal where this kind of stuff goes…where I work through the disasters, large and small, I encounter on my life’s road.

Unfortunately, all of the debacles look large when you’re standing right next to them. As the hours, days, and words between them and me push them farther away, I can get a sense of their true perspective. This latest one—the 2005 Christmas Eve disaster—is really not very big. On a scale of one to ten it’s probably a two. Nobody died, nobody’s in the hospital, nobody lost their job or got evicted. Nobody went to jail.

Funny that I should write that, though. Just a few days before Christmas, when I was trying to analyze why my life felt so…flat, I came up with this line of reasoning: After Dad passed away, the sadness, anger, fighting and bickering seemed to go on forever. Years, in fact. Every facet of my life was tainted by it. Not to mention that, in those years following dad’s death, I couldn’t get or keep a decent job, and I was living in a part-time marriage. And two sisters lost their means of support. And my brother-in-law went to jail. Life was a disaster back then. After husband and I made the move that saved our marriage and my sanity, even those catastrophes receded into the past, and life finally felt like less of a disaster relief effort. It felt good to simply rest on a plateau of "nothing bad is happening right now."

For awhile, that was heaven. It was all I needed. But I am finding that "not unhappy" is not good enough any more. Happiness is more than not being unhappy. It is not just the absence of bad…it has to be the presence of good. I think this idea started to form awhile ago, but I didn’t know what to do with it. Kind of expected happiness to magically flow into my life from somewhere, while I sat there and just opened myself up to it. But I’m beginning to realize that’s not how things work. It’s going to require me to get up off my lazy, timid butt and go out there and find it. That’s why it’s called "the pursuit of happiness," I guess…

The Christmas Eve incident has made it all the more obvious to me that I need to get out there and make something happen. And that, wherever "there" is, it is NOT back in the direction of my mother and sisters. I can’t make happiness happen there. I have tried for six years, and all I’ve managed to do is maintain a well-worn path between my dysfunctional clan and wherever I try to go to get away from them. I’ve nearly leveled the plateau of "nothing bad" in the process, and am sliding back into that pit of disaster I struggled so hard to get out of four years ago. If nothing else spurs me to get out there and strive for some happiness, it will be that I can NOT end up in that pit again.

So I am not going to slink into my cave and feel sorry for myself. I’m not going to lick my wounds and whine (anymore.) I’m going to start moving. And I’m going to keep moving. Because something is out there for me. And even if I don’t have the slightest idea what or where it is, I know I’m not going to have any chance of stumbling across it if I don’t get up off my ass and go looking for it. Wish I had a better plan, but this will do for now.

This is my problem:

I took this quiz (What's Most Important in Your Life?) that I've seen suggested in a couple of journals. I predicted that "family" would be my result; and I was right. What do you do when the thing that is most important in your life consistently beats the crap out of you? Time to switch gears, n'est-ce pas?

Holiday Hangover

2005-12-26T13:53:00.000-08:00

I woke up Christmas morning with a dire hangover, more from over-indulging in family than spirits; though there was enough alcohol in the mix to make it that much worse. My trepidation about spending the entire Christmas weekend—Thursday night through Monday morning—ensconced with my sisters, turned out to be well-founded. It is no longer possible for us to be civil to each other for that many days in a row.

Once again, sister C went for my throat. Which I should expect by now, and should have learned to ignore. But, met with that stiff-arm once again when I tried to pretend I am still part of the family, at a season when I half believe that if we’re ever going to be close again, this would be the time… I just lost it. I spent most of Christmas Eve—which is when the sorry scraps that remain of my family celebrate and open presents—with tears streaming down my face. This is the last year, I swear, that I’m going to try to pretend that there is anything left of the family we used to be…which, come to think of it, wasn’t much to begin with.

For the last six years, since my dad passed away and our family disintegrated, I have been chanting this little mantra in the back of my head: "I need to get a life…I need to get a life…" The lingering after-effects of the loss of our gentle patriarch exploded every illusion I had about families (at least, our family) gaining strength through adversity; and rather than enforcing any notion I had ever had about loved ones supporting one another through crises, taught me just exactly how separately each of us must struggle through grief and loss. Purely out of self-preservation, I developed the judicious habit of exposing my family and myself only to small doses of one another, which seemed to be the best way to deal with our new family dynamic. Unfortunately, like most of life’s difficult lessons, they fade… I forget the battles, or I am lulled into thinking a permanent peace has been won. So from time to time I move in a little too close…stay a little too long…and find that nothing has really changed.

If I have one resolution, one prayer, one burning desire for the coming year, it is to get far enough away from my family, put enough other stuff between them and me, that they can’t hurt me anymore. That’s really my only hope.

Did I say...

2005-12-25T12:20:00.000-08:00

"...The only thing that could be worse than going would be NOT going...."

Rethinking that particular philosophy this morning.

Next year, perhaps, Christmas in Hawaii...

Sloppy Holidays...

2005-12-22T08:22:00.000-08:00

It’s just been a miserable morning, and I wish I could go back to bed. I might yet. The Oregon skies have been on a crying jag that has lasted three days, and threatens to go on into the foreseeable future. On Sunday, a horrendous wind blew the cold sun out of the Wilamette/Columbia Valleys, and we haven’t seen it since. No proof that it even still exists, at least not in its former form, since the last three days have even failed to produce full daylight. My front Christmas lights, on a light-sensing timer, go off at their scheduled time; but sometime around when it should be dawn, they go on again. And stay on until about noon, when they finally decide there is sufficient daylight to shut off. I HATE these gray, weepy days!
As the weather has turned dark and sloppy, so has my mood. I was by no means a walking testament to the spirit of Christmas to begin with, this year. But the weak sun slanting through the windows, winking off the glitter of my glut of seasonal decorations, and the fact that I had been largely occupied with setting up and arranging said decorations, kept my head above the holiday blue water. Unfortunately, I finished all my chores at the same time the weather turned ugly; and now I’m trapped in my house, peering outside through rain-sheeted windows, awash in Christmas crap that no one ever sees. And I have to ask myself, "Why the fuck am I doing this?" I mean, it’s all very pretty (if I do say so myself), but it seems to border on insanity to spend four weeks fussing over all this decorating, and then never entertain. Never share it with anyone. How nuts is that?
‘Tis the season…when my isolation and loneliness hit me square in the face. The last two years have been especially bad. I wondered why, and then it hit me: I’m not working. Yes, I HATE to work for other people; and for ten and a half months of the year, I am eternally grateful to Providence for allowing me to pull out of that rat race. But work IS a social outlet. Often, for someone like me who has never had many close friends, work was my only social outlet. And there is something about the holiday season that simply curdles if it is not shared on some level with other human beings. Just being around other people dressed in silly holiday sweaters, trying to avoid the bowls of candy and plates of cookies on everyone’s desks, pulling a name out of the hat for the "Secret Santa" exchange… helps create and continue the mood throughout the days and weeks. I even (almost) fondly look back upon those dreaded company Christmas parties, where you knew you’d have to be civil, if not downright sociable, to people you would as soon strangle any other time of the year. At least it was an excuse to drape myself in satin, velvet, and rhinestones. Last night, I sat on my bedroom floor, wearing a burgundy velvet shirt, my hair held up with a flashy crystal-studded clip, swilling cheap champagne and wrapping my few meager gifts in the same wrapping paper I have been using for the last ten years. Not exactly an evening at the Ritz…
And today, I’m looking forward (not) to packing up the car and heading southward to spend the holiday with my family. The only thing that could be worse than going would be NOT going. I had to crawl out of bed at 5:30 this ugly, rainy, disgusting morning in order to drive husband to work, so that we can get out of town as quickly as possible this evening. Even so, husband went ballistic (for him) when I suggested he might want to think about getting out of work an hour early in order to make the trip a little less frantic. Always a great way to start a day. Drag yourself out of bed at an ungodly hour to charge off into the dark glop, and have a fight with the husband while you’re at it. Is it any wonder I have been sitting typing this self-pitying, cranky rant for the last hour?

Well, it’s made ME feel a little better, anyway. And since it’s now light (or as light as it’s going to get), I suppose I had better get off my can and address myself to the task at hand. I really DO wish all of you, my friends, a peaceful holiday season…comfort for those who mourn ((((Amy)))) and love and warmth to you all. Were it not for you, I’m not sure where I would be. And thanks for listening.

Virtual Clean-up

2005-12-16T10:02:00.000-08:00

I’ve been spending time in the dusty archives of "Coming to Terms…" Going back and saving some of those old entries is bringing me, I think, to the brink of a real change in the way I conduct a blog. Which is good…because, even as I declared that "Better Terms" was going to be a new chapter, I found myself tempted to jump into the "AOL Exile" community with both feet, just to keep butts in the seats, so to speak.

But, sifting through the backlogs, I observed this: When I wrote for the community’s interest, my writing sucked. In fact, you couldn’t really call it writing…it was more like passing along chain letters. Which had its place, in my life, no question. Back in the waning days of 2003, I was so lonely and isolated; the community gave me a place to have contact with other human beings. Other people with whom I found I had something in common, which was a real find for me—the one who had felt like a square peg from the time she was old enough to know what that meant. But, while I could hold my own on any list of "25 things that drive me crazy," those entries could not really pass for writing. I think that was why I started "Brainsurfing" back in mid-2004. I thought it was because "Terms…" was taking a decidedly political path, and I wanted somewhere to showcase my softer self. I see now, I needed a place where I could put the breath of my soul, which I felt held no interest to the journal community at large.

I’ve been having a hard time deciding whether I should close both AOL journals… I’m vacillating about keeping "Brainsurfing" as the repository for my more artistic stuff…the stuff that I put here because I believed it had no mass appeal. What I’m beginning to realize is, that is exactly the stuff I want to put out there in front of the larger audience. The real writing. Put it out there, not caring who reads it, or if anybody does. I honestly don’t know if I’m brave enough to do that. My addiction to the "community" audience may be too strong. Of course, the concept of the "larger audience" is dubious… Between the dissipation of the "Journal-land" community, the holidays, and evil weather across the country, my readership has shrunk to nil. There is a marked similarity between the early posts I have been saving, and the ones I am writing now…especially around the "xxxx comments" numbers…

Still, even though I’m not proud of at least half of what is in the pages of "Coming to Terms…", I’m copying and keeping every entry, even the most mundane drivel. Because I think, as a whole, the journal tells the story about a particular time in my life. In fact, it IS a story of "Coming to Terms…" Not with middle age, as originally intended, but with the nuances of belonging to a virtual community. Which has been as bumpy and challenging a road as any I have followed in my "real" life.

It occurred to me that I should continue to maintain two journals…but reverse the roles. Have my chatty, "letters to friends" blog be the one open only to invitees, and force myself to put my best writing into the one I want everyone to read. Somehow, I don’t think any one blog can, or should, do both those things. If there’s anyone out there still reading, what do you think?

Music and Memories

2005-12-08T09:39:00.000-08:00

I am naturally a soppy, sentimental person. But, in my family, outward shows of emotion were just not done. So my soppy sentimental side sits just below the surface, like a wet sponge. As long as I don’t squeeze it too hard, the water stays in. I’m usually on guard against any event falling too heavily on that sponge. But sometimes, something completely innocent will take me off guard…and the tears will fall.
Last night, I was upstairs decorating the tree. I needed music to set the mood. With the jillions of Christmas CD’s I have, it’s difficult to choose which ones I want to hear, so sometimes I play this game: I just reach in my CD tower without looking and grab a random handful…load them into the changer and surprise myself.
Amy Grant. I thought, "Oh, good, I can sing with this one." But the first note of the first song flooded my mind with bright, clear pictures…not faded memories. Of Christmases in the early 80’s. Of the sister that I no longer have. Of the nieces that I no longer see. One minute I was singing at the top of my voice, "Love has come…" The next minute I was choking on tears.

This is what an amputation must feel like…the phantom pain in the limb long severed. I miss you, dear sister. I miss you, girls.

Anybody Interested?

2005-12-05T10:26:00.000-08:00

http://betterterms.blogspot.com/

PLEASE grace me with a word or two if you stop by. You'll find me cringing in the corner...

Okay...This is Fun...

2005-12-02T11:57:00.000-08:00

Go here: http://snowflakes.lookandfeel.com/ to make one of these ginchy virtual paper snowflakes. I got the link from Robbie...

This could be something I'll waste a whole lot of time on this season. Better than "Elf Bowling..."

From Christina...

2005-11-21T19:30:00.000-08:00

Thank you, my friend...

...it's perfect. :-]

Keeping Busy...

2005-11-20T12:29:00.000-08:00

on my vacation...

Let's see... I'm now five full weeks into my "Winter Vacation." Gas prices and our financial situation being what they are, I'vebeen staying pretty close to home most of the time. When you live in a little town that is at least fifteen miles from much of anywhere, and the price of diesel fuel (had to have that truck for the business, unfortunately) is still hovering over $2.80 a gallon, that can bring on a slightly expanded version of cabin fever. Tiny little rural suburb fever?

This can be painful for someone like me who shops for a hobby. Ever since I was an adolescent with a few dollars of my very own hard-earned babysitting money in my pocket, I've loved to just...shop. I don't always buy; I trained myself long ago to control the impulse-buying reflex, or I would have been declaring bankruptcy by the time I was thirty. But, I just love to shop. Especially this time of year, when all the twinkling lights, glittering sequins, flashing baubles and rich dark fabrics turn every store into a sparkling fairyland. I suppose I should be relieved, for the sake of my credit rating, that my Christmas shopping list has been reduced to one gift for one family member (we draw names.) So when I DO go shopping, I stroll past things like bright holiday wrapping papers and mylar ribbon, and sigh wistfully. I don't need those things anymore...and it took me a few years to realize that, so I still have about a ten years' supply of the stuff stashed in a closet upstairs. But still...I like to go to the mall and just look at these things. It's all part of the season, for me.

The last few years, husband and I have not really bothered buying gifts for each other. By the time Christmas rolls around, we have usually shot our wad on some expensive home improvement or landscaping project. In 2003, it was sod in the front yard. Last year, it was a sliding glass door in the dining room (I'm STILL loving that .) This year, it's going to be, "Merry Christmas, dear. Here's your new bathroom."

I've been up to my elbows in red and yellow paint...I've really been watching too much HGTV (Don't be afraid of COLOR!!!!) Yesterday, we did the dueling home-center thing (in Hillsboro, one of the towns "over the hill," the Home Depot and Lowe's are literally right next to each other... they actually share the same parking lot. Home improvement mecca!) We bought tile for the countertop and floor at Home Depot, walked next door and scored a mirror and fixtures at Lowe's. I had SO hoped to have this thing a fait accompli in time to show it off to my Thanksgiving weekend guests, but it was not to be. The sink I had to special order will not arrive until Wednesday. So all I'll have done is the painting and the fixtures changed out (mostly...) My guests will be peeing in a room redolent (read, slightly smelly) with fresh coats of warm red and yellow, with an unpainted white racing stripe running round the room, where the future "chair rail" will be added. There are enough red paint spatters all over the linoleum floor, countertop and vanity to make the room appear to have been the site of a small massacre...since these things are going bye-bye, I felt no need to waste the time masking them, or even being too neat with the paint. Nothing like entertaining guests in a construction zone. Oh well. They're family.

Last week, I chased off some of my house-bound blues by going a few rounds with my sewing machine. One of these days, I AM going to send that thing sailing through a plate glass window. But I managed to curse, growl, and beat it into submission enough to be able to fashion two new pillows and an ottoman re-upholstery job for the family room. At least that project will be ready to receive the oohs and ahs of the assembled company.

And here's the other big accomplishment of the season. I made bread. From scratch. For the first time in my life. I suppose this is something someone who considers herself a "baker" by trade should never admit. I've made huge batches of yeast doughs at my various jobs over the years, but I have never enjoyed the humble experience of mixing, kneading (by hand...no "dough hook on the KitchenAid" for me) proofing and baking my very own bread. It was marvelous fun. And the finished product tasted pretty damn decent, too. I'm encouraged enough by that small victory to possibly attempt rolls for the Thanksgiving table as my next project. I imagine if I try to get too fancy, I'll end up with hockey pucks... But what the hell, you only live once!

Last, but certainly most exciting from an income standpoint...I got a call from a lady who had used the services of Cafe de la Rue in the past. She wants me to do an event for her club in December. THAT should certainly help relieve the "loose ends" feelings I've been battling. And fatten the purse at the same time. So, all in all, life is good.

The Ending of Yet Another Season

2005-11-18T10:02:00.000-08:00

I'm still suffering from the shell-shock of the Journal-land explosion. But, as my head clears, I'm finding that the trauma is being edged out by monstrous waves of negative emotion. Sadness. Anger. Fear. Resentment. Not ALL directed at the powers that be at AOL, who instigated this frenzied stampede by being, well, by simply being a twenty-first century American media outlet. Surprise.

What has surprised me is that I realized I was angry with my friends for picking up and leaving. I found it didn't feel so much like they were exercising their right to protest poor service by "taking their business elsewhere," as it felt like they were running away from me. The whole exodus was so much about, "This sucks. Bye!" No organization...no getting together and brain-storming about what action we friends could take as a group. Just a lot of whining about "the community" being ruined, and first entries in new journals that talked about how it was probably just as well that they were spurred to exit AOL journal land, because they had probably outgrown it anyway. It all happened so quickly, and with such finality, that it's almost as if those who left were simply waiting for that last little shove to induce them to walk out, slam the door, and not look back.

Listen to me, the one who always skulked around the sidelines of the journal community; the one who often had disdainful words for the cliqueishness of it; the one who eschewed the community's tradition of getting out there--to hundreds of journals a day--to campaign for readership... This wallfower, who clung to her little patch of wall, decorated it, polished it up, kept it gleaming, on the off chance that it would catch someone's eye and they would stop and chat for awhile... She's standing in the middle, now, of this big, empty room, with tears running down her face.

I'm sorry. My feelings are probably totally inappropriate; selfish and mulish. But they are what they are, and I can't help it. I can't help but feel like I have completely misunderstood the reality of internet friendships; the value, or even the existence (which has become doubtful) of an internet "community." I've said it before: I made the mistake of believing that my journal friendships could fill the huge hole in my life that had been left by a string of years where all I did was watch people walk out of my life. Despite my own warnings to myself, I have let my journal and my membership in the community, such as it was, become a huge part of my life. And now, this is feeling much too much like people walking out of my life again. Do I get out the tap shoes, hat and cane? Or do I, one more time, stiffen my spine, turn on my heel, and start walking? At the moment, it just hurts too much to do anything.

The Time it Takes...

2005-11-16T11:38:00.000-08:00

A dozen years ago, the second half of November was the beginning of "Caffeine Days." Ramping up for the Christmas season in the world of the suburban shopping mall. The short workdays would be twelve hours long. Four hour catnaps sufficed for a night's sleep. Busy, busy times. Rushing around at work like a robot on "fast forward." Scouring a year's worth of dust from the company china and guest bedrooms in preparation for family celebrations. I never felt more alive...

These days, I have all the time in the world to do what I want, and much less to get done. Why is it, then, that I never feel like I'm getting anywhere? Am I moving in slow motion? How come the six-item "to do" list I glance at every morning never seems to get more than two or three lines ticked off of it before I collapse in a heap into my easy chair at night? What is it about the job description of "domestic engineer" that befuddles and escapes me to the point of turning in such dismal score sheets at the end of the day?

I don't know... But this morning I spent forty-five minutes trying to figure out how to save a snail from getting squished in my patio door...

Well into the second half...

2005-11-13T23:22:00.000-08:00

emptiness
creeps
seeps
through my skull
down my throat
to my heart
my soul
          do i have a soul
          if i knew I wouldn’t
          be afraid

undeniable chill
disturbing
dreams
my companions
falter
fall
disappear
          go…where?
          somewhere?
          why can’t i know?

doubt
fear
unbelief
lies beneath all
taints
spoils
overshadows
          what is today
          when tomorrow
          may be nothing?

Breaking Up

2005-11-09T09:50:00.000-08:00

In my younger days, I would hold on to dwindling relationships for dear life. I would bend over backwards to salvage a friendship. I would spend months, years sometimes, tap-dancing on the head of a pin, trying to make myself into something that would continue to fit into the other person’s life. The problem with that is, I never get it right. I spend so much time inside my own head that I rarely have an accurate picture of what someone else would like or need me to be. And because I am so hopeless at re-creating myself, the relationships end anyway. Leaving me more battered and wounded than if I had just let them die the natural death for which they were headed in the first place. Apparently, I am just not "friend for life" material. I am one of those people who, for whatever reason, is consistently outgrown and left behind.
When I ran out of friends to alienate…or maybe I just quit making friends because I couldn’t stand to lose any more…my family started to pull the "growing up and away" act. Again, I took up tap-dancing, trying to keep them close; and again, it was an utter failure. And this time the pain was so deep it almost killed me. I had to make a change in my own life, to keep people from being able to hurt me like that.
So I stopped tap-dancing. When people get up to leave, I let them go. I hold up my head, stick out my chin, turn on my heel and walk away. The way I look at it, they’re going to go anyway. Why tear myself to pieces trying to fight the inevitable?
Maybe this is why the idea of internet friendships appealed to me so much. I guess I thought that I could control them. Control what other people saw, so they could never get close enough to see whatever it is that eventually drives people away. Try to use my favorite tool—the written word—to present myself to the virtual world as…something better. Maybe more of what I’d like to be than what I actually am.
But my writing turns out to be as transparent as my physical presence seems to be. People see right through me. Once again, I find I am hopeless at re-creating myself. On "paper" or in person, I am simply me. That is my blessing, and my curse. I’ve been in "journal land" for a little over two years, now, and I’m already starting to see the backs of people who have outgrown and movedbeyond me. I’m learning to just stick out my virtual chin, turn on my virtual heel, and walk away.
Last week, an on-line friend did more than just fade out of my life. She turned around and spat in my face before she left. It stung. For an instant, I thought about grappling…putting up a fight. But I was able to compose myself and switch into my own "walk away" mode. Which can be simply and thoroughly done, here in the ether. There are no possibilities of chance encounters…no fears of meeting the other person at a party or at the grocery store. They’re just…gone. As if they’ve never been. Very easy. But very sad. And not, I think, very healthy.

Where It Belongs

2005-11-06T23:06:00.000-08:00

Falling Into Winter in the Columbia Valley

the sun takes its mid-autumn
bows as eye-skewering
flashes between bouts of midday
dusk projecting misty rainbows in
the northern sky on the smoke
black screen of the
squall just passed or edging
dark clouds with pink
peach and gold as it submerges
into the southern hills

the house weeps a reproachful
deluge over the sides of
choked gutters great
sodden clods of leaves stick
to the streets the grizzly
popcorn reports of
shotguns echo from
the distant marshes in
the drizzly twilit mornings

the grass reprieved from
summer’s scorch
electric green and
squishy is six inches
high and taunting in
the yard weeds stretch
tall and mock in a race to
bloom and seed before frost
lays them brown and
mushy on the parkway

juncoes sparrows thrushes
towhees scrabble soggy
seeds below the feeder
circling geese bark cranes
trumpet gulls escaped
inland from stormy
beaches squeal and
cackle claiming light poles in the
supermarket parking lot

a fire glows in the stove
the umbrella and hood are
stationed by the door
moody music stitches through
an atmosphere of rest and
comfort rebuilding and restoring
energy and zeal for
another turn of the seasons

Several journal friends have expressed their frustration with the fickle and unpredictable tastes of the blogging audience. We all seem to have those entries that we think are our very best that get no notice whatsoever…and then we dash off something quick and, we think, trivial, and we are deluged with comments. I don’t try to understand it anymore…but it frustrates me, too.
I’ve been experimenting with putting some of the more "artsy" entries that I at one time would have reserved for "Brainsurfing" into "Coming to Terms…" Thinking I would like my larger audience to get a better glimpse of my whole self…soft side and political harpy. The experiment, I must say, has met with limited success. My "from the heart" entries have been getting some attention, but not nearly the quantity nor quality of attention I had hoped.
This poem, for instance, took me two days to write (highly unusual for me…my poetry generally comes out smoothly and quickly), and I was inordinately proud of it when I polished it off and posted it on "…terms…" I think one person read it. I don’t know…you project a certain voice that people decide is "you," and they really don’t want to hear anything else from you. What I believe is the stuff I really do, they see as a weak attempt to do something different. Oh, well. Fuck ‘em. I like this poem. But maybe it does belong here—in my heart—rather than there, on my soap box…

Here's One...

2005-11-06T22:16:00.000-08:00

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life:
music and cats.
Albert Schweitzer

Back to the Cave

2005-11-04T06:44:00.000-08:00

Holidays looming, weather getting shitty... Ah! It must be November. We are drowning here in the Pacific Northwest. And the mountain is getting hammered with snow already. Two feet expected over the next two days.

For amusement, between bouts of cleaning frenzy since the begnning of my "vacation," I jumped headlong into journal land. Got deeper into it than I have in a long time. Every time I do that, I am reminded that there is a REASON I have been happy keeping a discreet distance for the duration of my tenure here...

It can get pretty snarky out there in public journal land. I keep forgetting that sometimes the "Land of Blog" is just a big water cooler…the hub around which all human venality revolves in this giant virtual office. I’ll just slip back into my cloister here, before someone bites off something important...

Updates

2005-10-25T08:58:00.000-07:00

For some reason, I feel compelled to record some important events that have recently occurred in my exciting life. First of all, "Yard-pet Update." Remember my mantis who decided to move into my front porch flower box? I was convinced she was dying, because I rarely saw her move, and when I did see her, she was usually hanging sort of askew by whatever perch she had chosen. Last Thursday, she disappeared, and all weekend, though I searched and searched for her (as well as my fifty-year-old eyes can search for a green bug among the greenery) I couldn't spot her. I finally decided she had gone to the great Bug Beyond, and her corpse was lying mouldering under the deck.

Then, yesterday I opened up the front door for my daily trip to the grbage can with the cat box scrapings (I told you I lead an exciting life) when, lo and behold, who should be standing on the front porch looking like she had just returned from a weekend at the beach...Ms. Mantis. Kind of like, "Mom, I'm HOME!" (Actually, I don't think she had really gone anywhere...she just upsticks and moved to a different flower box in front of the deck. ) Still, I was sad to think she was dead, and it brightened my day to see her...

What other monumental occurances have I to report? Oh yeah..I sat down last Wednesday morning, and typed up a L-O-N-G "To Do" list. Got a decent start on it that afternoon...then my sister arrived at my doorstep on Wednesday night, bag in had, looking for a break from retirement. We shopped for three days, and my list was forgotten...

I did, however, find time to get my nails done... in a festive "Halloween transitioning to Thanksgiving" design. So, I'm up to my ears in typos again until February...

Last but not least, I broke down and got the new laptop last Thursday. Actually, it was my old laptop that "broke down."..it seems it can no longer find its D-Drive with both hands... And I was very upset that I had gotten a brand new shiny scanner for my anniversary and was unable to install it on any computer I owned. So, here's the new baby...and I've been so busy farting around with transferring files between computers (which is interesting with no CD burner) that I STILL have not installed the new scanner. And my butt hurts from spending so much time sitting in front of computers. And that "To Do" list hasn't gotten any shorter...

Well, that's my life so far, eight days into my winter hiatus. Something tells me the list is going to be longer at the end of the four months than it is now...

Revelations (Everyone Has Them Sooner or Later...)

2005-10-23T17:37:00.000-07:00

Journal land has been a blessing and a curse to me this past week. Friday, I received my first real recognition from the journal community at large…AND my first angry email from a "friend" I had offended with what I thought was an innocent comment on her journal.

It’s starting to dawn on me that I have set the bar for my internet "relationships" at an impossible level. I have tried to use journal land to compensate for the absence of flesh and blood, real live, touchable connections in my life. I even had myself convinced that the journal community offered me the ideal place to put into practice my weak definition of "friendship;" where I could get close enough to feel connected without really getting involved in other people’s lives. Where I could offer sage advice, or serve up a whiny rant or two, without the risk of being told to my face how full of shit I am. Where I could become familiar with another person’s deepest hopes, fears, and convictions, and still be able to log off and shut down the computer when the closeness got to be too much.

What I’ve come to realize is, this is precisely what the internet is good for. These arm’s length, kind of like reading a serial novel in an old newspaper relationships. I consciously use the limitations of the medium to ration my involvement in my online friends’ lives. And they do the same thing. There’s the rub. That’s the part that alternately frustrates, wounds, and alienates me: That my "friends" would choose to treat me exactly how I treat them. Yep, I’ve finally had that "smack yourself upside the head" moment when it comes to journal friendships. Duh!

The "relationship" aspect of the journal community originally took me by complete surprise. Eventually, I found myself focusing on the relationships, because they seemed to fill the great hole rent in my life by my troubles with my family. Now, I see that journal friendships will never be able to fill that cavern. You can’t sit in your hot tub and drink wine and giggle with internet friends. You can’t stop in a gift shop and think, "Wouldn’t so-and-so just love that?" You can’t help them hang the drapes in their living room, or paint their kitchen, or plant the six flats of flowers they just couldn’t leave the local garden shop without. You can’t sit around the fire on a dark, damp winter evening and talk about the shared history of more than half a century. The everyday, physical expressions of love and intimacy that you take for granted in a real life friendship are conspicuously absent in the online environment. And it will ever be thus, I’m afraid.

At the same time, my Vivi award nomination (or rather, "Coming to Terms’ " nomination) has snapped my focus back to what is, for me, uniquely positive about the blogging phenomenon: Getting my words out into the public eye…even a very small public. Being able to put my jottings out there in an open forum without having to measure up to some other person’s idea of validity or marketability. And not only having people read what I write, but like what they read. Oh my God, if that isn’t a miracle, what is? It’s unfortunate that I’ve allowed myself to be sidetracked by the whole "journal friends" aspect, and completely lost sight of what really constitutes the remarkable magic of this medium.

So, am I going to walk away from all my journal friendships, now that I’ve seen them for what they really are? Now that I realize they will never be a substitute for what has gone out of my "real" life? Well…no. I just have to understand that journal friends are still friends, but they are different friends than those I have been used to all my life (or not, as the case may be…) The internet is a relatively new medium (at least in MY life) and we are still defining the connections it creates. The borders of which are constantly changing and growing. Put in their proper perspective, my online friendships can continue to enrich and enhance my life. I just can’t put unrealistic expectations upon them. If I can keep that in mind, I think we can all keep on enjoying each other far into the future. I’m game if you are.

Ether

2005-10-21T23:54:00.000-07:00

Anybody Interested?

2005-10-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

I've finally begun to wind down from the weekend, and it's dawning on me that I am in my off-season. Four long months of "vacation" stretch out before me, like a page just waiting to be filled with "to-do" lists. One of which I started this morning. And then got sidetracked to my journal again...sigh!

You all know I've been creeping toward going to the next level (whatever that is) with my journal friendships. I would like to step out of the ether and become more real to you, so, how about this: Last Christmas, I sent Lisa (cw2smom) a couple of hand-made ornaments, in part to try to cheer her up, because last year was her first Christmas after her Dad's death. Maybe we all need a little "cheering up" this year, for whatever reasons, political, personal, or otherwise. Anyone interested in an mlraminiak original? Or, if you'd like, an ornament exchange (you sendee me, I sendee you...)?

This is a (bad) picture of the ornaments I made for Lisa last year--

If you'd like to participate, send me an email with your address (or a P.O. Box or whatever, if you don't like to give out your address...) Don't be shy...I love making these things, and everyone I know and love has at least one. How about it?

Oh, Well...

2005-10-17T23:39:00.000-07:00

This is my LAST entry about my anniversary, I swear to God!

Ah...the anniversary. Back home, sans wife, HE was busy laying up flowers, cards, and a gift (for which I had given him a hint as big as the Titanic...right down to the model number...)

While I, taking the bull by the horns (and my life in my hands) pulled "Big Red," the 10,000 lb. concession trailer, eighty miles up the Columbia Gorge behind a pick-up truck that's fixing to go belly-up in a major way any minute. Parked and set up said trailer at the festival site (only pulled in a little crooked...) all by my lonesome. Faced the challenges and frustrations of food vending at a venue with which we were completely unfamiliar…we had never even attended it as guests, much less vendors. In short, I was WAY too preoccupied to deal with the anniversary. No card, no gift, no flowers for the husband. When we got back into town last night (in one piece, without breaking down, thank God!) I did do him the great favor of agreeing to pizza for dinner. Luckily, he's easily pleased when it comes to that sort of thing.

Today, I woke up feeling guilty about my whole "blowing off" of the anniversary. Decided I must research the perfect place to go for a nice, if belated, anniversary dinner. Sent him TWO Happy Anniversary emails. Spent an hour and a half ripping things off hangers and throwing them aside, in the quest for exactly the right outfit to wear to the aforementioned dinner. (Something that smacked of the current century, without looking too much like I’m trying to dress like someone celebrating her 29th birthday, rather than a quarter-century and then some of married life…)

Well, the best-laid plans… Dinner was…okay. Not too expensive, but the ambience really wasn’t there. I was looking for cozy and intimate, but what we found was kind of Northwest Grand Central Station… Since husband had mentioned when making the reservation, that we were celebrating our anniversary, we got a free glass of wine and a free dessert out of it. Outfit was the best I could come up with after flinging skirt after sweater after blouse out of the closet and trying on just about everything I owned.…but I’m beginning to think the new glasses are more of a fashion dungeon than a fashion statement. NONE of my old clothes match my new glasses… HIS gift to me (a new scanner that can scan slides as well as the regular scannable media) will not download onto either of my computers, so I am stuck with the gift I really wanted, but am unable to use…

All these things I dealt with pretty much in stride…though I guess the spring was getting wound tighter and tighter without my knowing it. It finally sproinged when I showed him the entry in "Coming to Terms..." that I had lovingly crafted in honor of our milestone, and the conversation went like this: "This looks like song lyrics…" "Read the WORDS, honey, the WORDS!" With a slight curl of the lip "It’s the BEACH BOYS…" "Oh, Christ…! See if I ever put out THAT kind of effort ever again…."

Oh, yes…I WILL love him forever. But, sometimes, that declaration pours out like holy water, and sometimes, like clotted cream….

Coming! This Sunday!

2005-10-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

I didn't have to check to see if an alert went out for this entry...I got two comments before I even finished polishing it up!

No, it doesn't mean that I've decided I'm forever 29. It means that Sunday will be the 29th Anniversary of my marriage to my forever love, my DH.

I'm posting this now, because we will be out in Hood River doing our last event of the season this weekend, and I don't want the occasion to go unacknowledged...

Happy Anniversary, my love! :-]

A Different Breed of "Yard Pet"

2005-10-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

Back in the old established neighborhoods of Eugene, where we used to live, I enjoyed every representative of the indiginous wildlife. Especially the squirrels. I can't understand why people try to chase them away from bird feeders. They are WAY more entertaining than birds. I mean, I enjoy the birds, but the squirrels were hilarious. And I got so that I had developed relationships with one or two of them...something that's a little harder to do with a bird. I used to call the squirrels my "yard pets."

This neighborhood we live in now is too new to have enough mature trees to support a squirrel population. I don't have any furry visitors to my yard, except a few of the neighborhood cats shopping for lunch below my bird feeders... I miss my little rodent buddies a lot.

Okay, why am I writing about squirrels, and you're looking at a picture of a bug? Well, this is the Scappoose version of a "yard pet." About a week ago, I discovered that this mantis had taken up residence in the planter box outside my living room window. I hesitate to say she's living in my planter box, because what I think she's actually doing is dying. That's what adult mantises do this time of year. In fact, I thought she was dead when I first saw her, because she was hanging sort of sideways from the screen behind the planter. When I got a broom to sweep her off onto the ground (I really didn't want the view from my front window to include this four-inch-long dead bug) she fluffed out her wings and rattled them at me. She doesn't have the strength to fly away, but she does want to be left to die in peace. Who am I to deny her that?

I'm hoping that, come next spring, I'll have a brood of tiny baby mantises being raised by the spirit of their mama in that same planter box...

Traversing The Ups and Downs

2005-10-05T23:58:00.000-07:00

This past few days, I’ve known deep satisfaction and a comforting assurance that I’m doing something right. Exactly a week ago, I was second-guessing every facet of my life—from my business acumen to my viability as a human being. All based on the way the wind blew at the event I had just finished catering. Why, why, WHY do I let it get to me like that? Why is so much of my self-image tangled up in what I DO for a living? And why do I let bad experiences weigh on me much more heavily than I let good ones lift me up?

Here’s the background: August—our biggest event of the year. Our sales increase 27% over the previous year. We blow away the $13,000 realm where we have been mired for five of our ten years of existence…blow right past 14-, 15-, and 16k into the $17,000 range. This is huge. HUGE. It keeps me pumped for about a fortnight…

A month later, at a one-day event that is typically one of our best, we do a 36% increase. Not too shabby. This, too, elates me for about three seconds…

All this comes on the heels of a year where we have shown increases of 16% to 76% in six of eight events. I should be grinning so wide that the edges of my mouth threaten to fall off the sides of my face.

But then we do the Columbia County Oktoberfest. Literally almost in my own back yard. And we are soundly rejected by the revelers. Gate increases over last year, our sales drop by 25%. Okay…you win some, you lose some. Why can’t I just GET that? Why are the negatives—the rejections—the things that have the biggest impact on me? I don’t soar to euphoric highs after my little successes. But my little defeats send me wallowing into the depths of despair and self-doubt. What is UP with that?

This past weekend, we had an event that was super-affirming. We were so well-received, SO many people came back to the counter to tell us how great our product was…even the other vendors were tipping their hats to us. Made me feel like a complete genius. This was a new event, the "First Annual…." Typically, these are not very lucrative...but I had been impressed that the organizers spotted us at another event we did earlier in the year, and went out of their way to invite us to their shindig. Kind of like, "You like me….you really like me!"

Unfortunately, I ended up going into it with a totally negative attitude, based on our sound defeat the previous weekend. From the outset, I found things to hate. Our location in the building sucked…we had to set up in front of a big, roll-up door, so that we could put our propane tank outside. So we were off to one side of the hall, away from everyone else, tucked into a corner behind a Coke machine. And it was a hellish place to set up. We were actually setting up on a loading dock…the floor sloped down from the door into the building. All our equipment is on wheels, and most of the heavy stuff, like the oven, sets up at the back of the booth. So, one of the problems of our location was trying to put our heavy equipment up at the top of the slope, and keep it from rolling down onto us. It took us two and a half hours Friday night to figure out where and how to put everything so that we could function and not be crushed in the process.

And then I did the reconnaissance mission, to see what other offerings there were going to be in the place. One whole huge room was dedicated to food vendors, and they all had what looked like really great stuff. When we trundled off to set up camp on Friday night, I was absolutely certain that there was SO much good food offered at this event, we would be lucky to do any business at all.

Saturday morning, we arrived early to put the finishing touches on the booth, and commence the baking and fussing. The thing I noticed more than anything was the preponderance of chef coats bustling around the building. Sigh! Over the years, Café de la Rue’s "uniform" has undergone some metamorphosis; this year, I decided upon white shirts, red ties, and black or blue trousers. Along with our "tuxedo" aprons, I figured this gave us an upscale, professional look. But, apparently, these days, in Upscale Food-vendor Land, the chef coat is all the rage. As if donning a chef coat somehow endows one with culinary legitimacy. (Pardon me…I am ranting. Maybe sour grapes from my inability to cough up the bucks to make the $20k Patisserie Certificate thing a reality?)

To make a long story short, the event was a great success, we did our share of business and more, and got an invitation to be one of the two food vendors at the Tillamook Farmers Market, 2006. All those chef coats couldn’t eclipse my thirty years experience in the industry. People who came to this little event looking for good food, found it…at my counter. And came back to tell me so. Can life get any better than that?

So, what am I doing at this very moment? Well….I’m projecting myself into the next two events, following so closely on the heels of my little victory. And is that positive experience last weekend causing me to look forward with confidence, assured that I DO know what I’m doing, and that I WILL be successful? What do YOU think? Is that a pig (or a pink computer) that just flew by?

Whaddya Think?

2005-09-29T12:03:00.000-07:00

I had an idea today. (I know, "Be kind to it, it’s in a strange place…) You all, who read this sappy journal, are aware that I have been moaning about feeling lonely, disconnected, and just basically like a "bad friend." And that the journal relationships don’t seem to be going where I would like them to go. Well, I’ve decided to be pro-active (I hate that word…) about something for a change. I am going to experiment with "kicking them (my journal friendships) up a notch." (I watch too much Emeril…)

Every one of you who has been invited to, reads, and comments on this journal is someone I consider special. Reading and commenting on each others’ journals, we have learned a lot about each other, enough to even consider each other friends. But the reading/commenting thing doesn’t seem to go far enough anymore. So, what am I going to do about that, you ask? I’m going to take the huge step of emailing replies to everyone who leaves a comment on "Brainsurfing." I know, I know…it’s not a new idea. There are folks out there who have been doing this all along. But I want to go beyond the, "Thanks for stopping by" thing that usually goes out. Something more like the "between friends" that I would like this journal to be. Comments and answers….dialogue.

Does that sound like something you would like to do? Or does the idea of having to maintain yet another relationship make you want to scream and run in the other direction? Give me some feedback if you think it’s an annoying idea. Or, I suppose you could just quit commenting if you don’t want to hear back from me. But that would suck, wouldn’t it? Or maybe I should stop being SO negative, and have faith that you will all think it will be great fun. Either way, let me know. :-]

The Pain of Not Touching

2005-09-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

From time to time, the gremlin that is my fouled up relationship with my family rears its ugly head and snarls at me. It accuses me of being hyper-sensitive, of holding grudges, of not knowing the meaning of "unconditional love." Of not knowing how to "forgive and forget." Maybe all those things are true…I don’t know. I have to sit quietly and just listen to what my heart is saying about all this.
There’s a little voice inside me that says, "No!" to all those accusations. That says that I no more hold a grudge against my family than I would against a hot oven after I had burned myself. I wouldn’t hate the oven; I would just know better than to touch it. I would have learned that it could hurt me. And that is what I feel about my family. Much as I would love for our relationship to go back to what it was before the trauma and upheaval of my dad’s death, I know it can never be. Because the knowledge of that red-hot pain will never go away.
Hmmm… Did I just admit to being hyper-sensitive? To not being able to forget? Perhaps. The pain in my heart, the pain of the empty space that my family used to inhabit, until I had to literally tear them out and set them away from me… That empty ache that isn’t yet as bad as the pain of keeping them in my heart had become… It’s always there, not far below the surface. I try to ignore it, but it rises up and bites at the most random of times. In six years, I’ve not been able to assuage that ache with anyone or anything. The hole is too big. Other people, other experiences fall right through, and out of my life.
Forgive? Yes, I think I can forgive, have forgiven. Forget? I’m not sure what I’m supposed to forget; the pain of the horrible things that were said and done, or the fact that my family ever was 75% of the world outside my head? Forget that sometimes the oven is too hot to touch, and reach my hand toward it with calm faith that it won’t hurt me? I think not.

Quilt Show

2005-09-27T20:45:00.000-07:00

No Such Thing As Too Many Cat Pictures...

2005-09-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

Post-Vacation Musings

2005-09-22T20:39:00.000-07:00

And so, the marathon out-of-town-guest-entertaining session came to a successful conclusion. We sent the "big brother" winging back home to the Midwest last Friday. And I spent an entire week recovering. Not that we didn’t have a good time. It’s just that it’s such a huge departure from normal, for me, merely to have to interact with people—any people—so many hours of so many days in a row. I’m accustomed to my mostly solitary existence. It’s not that I necessarily prefer to be alone…it’s just what is. Why does life always have to be at one extreme or the other…either too lonely, or too social? No happy medium, no comfortable in-between.
It was immensely taxing for me to be thrust into the role of social animal for two weeks. I wish I could have more completely relished the extended, intense "togetherness" we had. Time passes so quickly. How many years are left for us to enjoy each other? In fact, there are already too many empty places at the family table. But there were times during the visit when I just had to take myself out of it, go somewhere and be alone for a half-hour, because I was starting to burn out. It’s hard to go from having nothing more pressing to worry about than what time I might take the dog for a walk, and what route through the neighborhood we should follow; to trying to provide suitable entertainment, all day, every day, for between five and a dozen other people. There was a time I really enjoyed organizing such things. But, between the rejection I have suffered at the hands of my family, and the fact that I’m just out of practice being around so many people, the whole vacation produced a little more stress than I had anticipated.
And, now, it appears I’m going to have to get used to being alone all over again. Though I needed the break after the vacation, I find myself more lonely and at loose ends than I have allowed myself to be for a long time. I feel like I’ve been cast adrift. I spent too many hours early last week on the internet, wandering through journals, trying to "catch up." But something, has changed. The novelty has worn out with many people, even the old stand-bys. We get busy, we don’t write as much as we used to, we become disinterested in one another’s lives. (I keep forgetting that most people, unlike myself, actually have lives…)
For the most part, those long-distance relationships founded on ether have not blossomed into what could really be called friendships. They are something, yes; a whole different category of acquaintance. Two years ago, I was alone, rejected by my family, disconnected from 75% of what I knew and loved. I thought the journal community saved my sanity; but maybe it has also kept me isolated. I’ve spent those two years thinking I had all that I needed right here in this little 8-pound electronic box. So I didn’t make any effort to go out and form personal relationships. What am I saying? As if I could just snap my fingers and Poof! I would have scores of friends streaming to my doorstep! Did I not spend four years alone and in pain in Springfield before we even moved out here to the boonies? I attended classes, I went to the pool to exercise, I even worked for a living during those years. And I never made any headway into forming new relationships during that time, either. The problem is NOT my involvement with online journals… No; the journal community WAS a godsend.
The more I think about it, the more I believe the fault must lie, as it always does, with me. I am a reluctant friend. I hold back, I keep to myself, I don’t get too involved. Maybe that comes from being the type of person who lives so much of my life inside my own head…I don’t know. For some reason, I find it difficult, impossible even, to invest too much of myself in a friendship. I think, deep down, I’m afraid that if I offer everything, and am rejected, I couldn’t bear it. And I seem convinced that I WILL be rejected…
That said, I have to confess that I don’t feel as warm and fuzzy about journaling as I once did. I think the community itself has changed, grown in a certain direction, and left me, unfortunately, in the dust. Maybe I don’t do change well. Maybe, ultimately, I never connected with it completely enough to be able to go where it was headed.
So, here I am. Still writing letters to myself, essentially, as I was in the last days of September of 2003, when "Coming to Terms" took its first tentative steps into the blogosphere. It’s not so bad, really. I distinctly remember being horrified those first few months. The writing didn’t come as effortlessly as it once had. The words didn’t flow, they coughed and sputtered and spun their wheels. I was sure I had "lost it." But I learned to edit, back in those days of the 2500-word limit. And "it" came back to me, and then some. I go back from time to time and read my old entries, and I often find myself saying, "Damn! I can write!" It has been a precious gift, to rediscover that talent…to even have other people telling me I can write. If that’s all I take with me when I do finally say goodbye to journal land, it will be enough.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back...

2005-09-22T09:56:00.000-07:00

Last month at the Junction City Scandinavian Festival—our make or break event of the year—we had a $3600 increase ($3600 is more than our total sales at any other event we do…) over last year. J

We just found out our brand new (to us) truck needs a $2900 repair… L

Gratuitous Kitten Photo

2005-09-13T15:25:00.000-07:00

Good Lord, it’s been almost a month since I’ve written anything here. And a very busy month, indeed. Which is the explanation for my absence in a nutshell…

Well, here is a picture of the boys. My little baby kittens I brought home from the vet…it seems like a couple weeks ago. Fact is, they are nearing their first birthday, big hurkin’ lunks that they are. Theo is still about a third larger than Alvin…probably weighs in at about twelve or thirteen pounds at this point. I’m afraid he’ll rival Bart—our big twenty-pounder—by the time he is finished growing.

I snapped this shot after Alvin climbed into a canvas bag I had hanging on the back of one of my counter stools, and Theo obligingly jumped onto the seat, in order to keep his brother from toppling the stool over backward on himself. These two are definitely joined at the hip…wherever you spot one, his brother is never far behind. And they seem to like me. Their little worlds have been slightly rocked by all the time we have spent away from home during the last few weeks. They don’t let me too far out of their sight these days… Currently, as I sit on my bed typing away, the two of them are conked out at my side—paws twitching and noses wrinkling as they dream of some past or future mischief…

History

2005-08-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

don’t pick it up
don’t open the cover
don’t go back
          to the days of heartbreak
          of knowledge never sought
          of experience never desired

yet it is
what it is
has always been
          for every soul
          from the beginning

love, loss, the passing of days
people and years
as if no one in time
          has ever
          felt these pains
          fought these wars
          sobbed these tears

words on paper
the blood wrung
from writhing growth

to go back
to look yet again
is to suffer anew
          yet gain a tiny grain
          of understanding
          of the contest
          that is life

Dead Computers Aren't Much Fun

2005-08-06T08:30:00.000-07:00

Talk about being a technology junkie! My laptop died yesterday. Well, I'm not really sure if it's dead...I rushed it to the "Computer ER," but I'm thinking it's touch and go.

So, now I find myself---horror of horrors---tethered to the PC again. I have to sit in my stuffy, cluttered beyond belief little office (which is actually more like a big closet FULL of crap, including the computer...) if I want to indulge my journal addiction. Ack! I feel like Martha Stewart, except I don't have to wear the anklet.

Of course, I sneaked off to the Compaq website, just to get a feel for what kind of money I'd be talking about if I DO need a new notebook. I absolutely refuse to spend 2 grand on a computer...any computer. Not like I could if I wanted to...we don't have that kind of extra cash lying around. But, what's this? "Customize your own computer." Add this upgrade, take away this feature that you'll never use... I discovered I could get basically the same machine, beefed up in a few attractive ways, for little more than I paid for the original one three years ago. Hmmmm....

No, I will NOT sneak into the computer hospital with a big pillow and quietly put the old one out of its misery. I will NOT. I won't. I...where did I put that pillow?

My Family's Way

2005-08-04T22:29:00.000-07:00

A hot summer afternoon, some shade, soft-cushioned chairs ringing the patio table. A family gathered round, enjoying refuge from the sun, a glass of wine, a smile. Leah had just finished arranging the flowers that Aunt D had brought home from the market, accenting the bouquet with some little bits and pieces from among the lush flora crowding her aunt’s borders. The vase was slid around the table from aunt to uncle to aunt, duly admired and approved. From my relaxed, leaning back in my chair perspective, I spied a surreptitiously rolled leaf in the arrangement. Peering into the tiny cavern, I spotted the butt of a little green spider, hunkered down, mothering her pea-sized, silken egg sac.
A scream? No. "Ew, spider!" Uh-uh. Pluck out the occupied twig and stamp on it? Not even close.
"Oooh, look, Leah! You picked a little spider and her eggs!" Pass the vase back around the table so everyone can peek and admire. After making her second round of table, Leah decided the small stow-away should be returned to the border where she could guard her eggs in peace. Gently, she plucked the sprig out of the vase; to the mild accompaniment of "Careful…those guys CAN bite!" the little mother was softly transported by tender thirteen-year-old hands back to her bushy habitat, to finish the job nature had planned for her.

Sometimes, when you grab hold and look at it, a moment in time can reveal so very much about the people who lived it…

The Calm Before the Storm

2005-08-02T10:17:00.000-07:00

It’s been a lovely summer so far. I think I’m working really hard at having fun and making memorable moments, because the **** is going to hit the fan coming up here soon. Husband’s job, as promised, is hanging by a thread. If his company makes it very far into 2006, I’ll be totally shocked. I am looking forward to months, maybe a couple of years, of dealing with a dislocated, disoriented, unhappy spouse. He CANNOT deal with an iffy job. He wants the security of a place to go every day, pour his heart and soul into, and be rewarded with that steady paycheck every Friday. This is going to be an extremely difficult time for him. Made no less difficult by the fact that he is no longer a thirty-something blank slate with boundless energy and open to an infinite number of possibilities. He has, at my urging, decided to be "pro-active" about the imminent demise of his current position; he has been corresponding with a professional resume-polisher, to whom we are going to shell out a still unknown but I am sure substantial amount of money for the service of taking husband’s resume into the 21st century. Frankly, we have no idea what kind of opportunities are out there for a 49-year-old with a ton of experience, a sparkling employment record, and no college degree.
There is something about our combined job kharma that determines that we can’t both be gainfully and happily employed at the same time. When I am happy and prosperous, he is floundering, and vice-versa. Luckily for us, HE has been on the prosperous end of that see-saw more often than I have been, in the nearly thirty years of our couple-hood. HE worked for K-Mart for the first eight years of our marriage, while I dealt with the ups and downs of my chosen field—food service management. Then, I dragged him kicking and screaming across the country to be with my family. Once in Oregon, he floundered for the next eight years, while I somehow fell into the job of my life. The job that, in its death throes, yanked us up by the roots and took us to Portland, where it exploded in my face. But, by then, the husband had landed the position he has now, which has kept him duly frustrated, frazzled, and secure for the last eleven years. During which time I have had so many jobs I lost count years ago…none of them lasting longer than a couple of years, most lasting less than a month.
Now, after the wake-up call of the aborted job earlier this summer, I have made my peace with my part-time business. Have finally decided that it is where I am meant to be, and have thrown my heart and soul into it—something I had not entirely done for the first three seasons of its life. I should have known that as soon as I became content with what I was doing, his job would fall apart. It IS the story of our lives. Unfortunately, my business’s head is being held above water by his income. It’s certainly not going to even come close to keeping a roof over our heads while he wrestles with his own employment demons. I hate for that additional pressure to be on his head, even while he has to go through the process of mourning the demise of his current position, and the hassle and ego-beating of finding a new one. That kind of pressure would put ME in the loony bin, for sure. I know he’s much stronger than I am…but still, I wish I could be of more help than just standing by and patting him on the shoulder when things suck.
Years ago, we (I) had dreams of owning our own business. That was before I realized that my husband is NOT an entrepreneur. How I wish that he could be happy running a business instead of pushing himself to do the job-hunting thing at this season of his life. But he just can’t deal with the uncertainty of being an entrepreneur. The security of that weekly paycheck is something he HAS to have.

Lord knows what the ride is going to be like in the coming months, and I’m really not looking forward to it. But I suppose it doesn’t really do to start worrying about it before it happens. I’m going to stay in this state of half-denial until things actually DO start changing. Who knows…maybe, by some quirk of fate, the process won’t completely suck.

Sisters

2005-07-25T23:00:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time with my sister L this past weekend. Of my four sisters, she is the closest to me in age—two years and eleven days my senior. We were close, as little kids. My mother used to dress us in matching outfits. Which looked kind of ridiculous, because I was a tiny, skinny kid and L was always more of a healthy weight and size. As we grew older, I stayed tiny and skinny--all elbows, knees and angles, taking after Dad’s side of the family; while L was graced with the bosomy, rounded figure of Mom’s Eastern European heritage. (All my sisters have big boobs. I don’t know how I managed to miss that train. Maybe all my mother’s breast DNA had run out by the time she got to me…)

L and I hung out together, through grade school, high school and beyond. We shared friends and partied together. For the first half of my life, I always believed L and I were buds…that perhaps there was a different bond between us than I had with my other older sisters. She even introduced me to my husband; they were co-workers at K-Mart a jillion years ago.

Something happened to that bond, though. Our relationship dried up after I got married. I used to think it was because she herself had sort of a crush on the future hubs when she introduced him to me. That might have been part of it, but I don’t think that was the entire problem. As a kid, I had never professed any particular desire to marry and start a family, and that was all L ever wanted. I think it was some kind of betrayal to her that I got what I had never cared much about but she had always wanted. Nearly two decades would pass before L married and got the opportunity to start that family she yearned for. During those years, we drifted further and further apart. I was a living, breathing reminder to her of her ticking biological clock. I wonder, if I had had children, would it have driven an even larger wedge between us, or would she have stayed close, as the doting aunt? I tend to think it would have been the larger wedge…

It’s odd to spend time with her, now. We have absolutely nothing in common. Our personalities are vastly different. She is a social animal, who loves to have a large circle of friends and enjoys the company of other women. I am solitary and reserved, a loner, with few friends, who lives a great deal of my life inside my head. L, it seems, has little interest in or use for things that lie beneath the surface. Whereas I am so deep, sometimes I almost forget to come up for air. So there are many long silences between us when we are forced to spend time together. Not the companionable type of silence, either, where you feel like there is no need for words because you are on the same wavelength. No, these are choppy, disturbing silences that represent the fact that we really have nothing to say to each other. We don’t dislike each other…we just don’t know each other anymore. We have grown away, apart, distant. She wanted to people-watch and comment on the fashion parade going by…I wanted to talk about Karl Rove. Her declarations that "she wouldn’t let her daughter leave the house looking like that" inspired only a distracted nod of half-interest from me. And she had no idea who Karl Rove was.

I love my sister. The bonds in my family run deep, and keep us connected in spite of where each of us finds herself emotionally, economically, or spiritually at any given time. But I’m saddened by the knowledge that, if were it not for fifty years of shared history that glues us together in spite of ourselves, we probably wouldn’t be friends…

Cheers!

2005-07-19T21:43:00.000-07:00

So this is it. The big 5-0. The day I’ve been NOT looking forward to since the meter turned to 49 a year ago today.
I’m not feeling too introspective. I think I just don’t want to go there right now. But when something happens, like, that I get an "Happy Birthday" email from a friend in Illinois who I haven’t seen in five years…the "What-ever-happened-to’s" that I don’t want to think about today, reach out and pinch me, bringing a mist of tears to my eyes. Which I quickly suck up and set aside. I don’t want to be sad today. I don’t want that to set the tone for the second fifty years of my life.
My day so far has been spent alone, mostly clicking away at the computer. I just finished showering and dressing, and I’m going to make the thrilling trip to St. Helens, to do some light birthday shopping for myself. Then husband and I are going to do….something when he gets home from work. I’m leaning toward going over the hill to Beaverton for a Weight Watchers meal at Applebees, then hitting the Goodwill store, and maybe Nordstrom Rack, to look for some lightweight clothes to wear for the County Fair this weekend. That would be just exciting enough for me.
I imagine in the coming days/months, I’ll have some deeper thoughts about turning fifty. My current state of mind is still vacillating between acceptance and denial, at this point. Once it really hits me, I’m sure the weight of the reality will squeeze some kind of philosophical jello out of my head.
Since I’m sitting here all by myself, I’ll raise the glass alone. Here’s to me…! J

Pamela's Good News

2005-07-14T09:17:00.000-07:00

A Happy Dance For Pamela...

I have been gripped by Pamela's cancer journey. In some ways, I feel like I must look like one of those people who goes to the scene of an accident looking for blood...because I was not a reader of One Girl's Head Noise until she began sharing her story about her lung cancer diagnosis. But, then again, anyone whose life has been touched by cancer just naturally gravitates to others who start down that same road. You feel the frustration that anything you say or do is not going to help very much in the long run, yet, you have to stand by, if only in silent support, because you know that same support would have meant the world to you on your own journey.

The AOL journal community has rallied around Pam, and she has responded by selflessly sharing her story with us and graciously accepting the well-wishes, advice, and tears of people who are little more than perfect strangers. Though I suspect that Pam is the type of person who doesn't think of anyone as a stranger...just a friend she hasn't met yet.

Pam's challenge reduces the back pain that has laid me flat for the last week to a mosquito bite compared to what she faces each morning with grace and fortitude. And so her good news yesterday totally made my day.

I was over at Thomas' place the other day, where he was reflecting upon an inventory of his life on the occasion of his fortieth birthday. He ended with the comment, "Life could be better, but it damn sure could be worse." And, you know, I'm sure Pam believes that very same thing. Well said, cowboy!

The Perks of Being on The Injured Reserve

2005-07-13T14:07:00.000-07:00

This back injury had me fretting, crying, and chasing my tail for the first couple of days, turning anywhere and everywhere for SOME kind of relief. Hot tub, ice packs, heating pad, walk, don’t walk, keep moving or you’ll end up paralyzed, stop moving before you end up paralyzed. NOTHING worked. Advil? Hah. A handful of ‘em every four hours didn’t make a dent. Naproxen? What possible good could something you can only take 3 of in a twenty-four hour period be? (I’m not sure what happens if you take more than three in a day…but I have enough on my plate already that I wasn’t too eager to find out.) The only thing that had any affect at all on the pain? Liberal doses of ALCOHOL--in the form of many glasses of wine in front of the tv in the evening, until I was finally "relaxed" enough to fall into a coma by 2 AM.

Finally, yesterday morning, with the pain down to un-critical levels but by no means gone, I decided to try the "bed rest" theory. Basically, I sat on my ass and did NOTHING all day yesterday but watch TV, and play on the internet. I have spent enough time on line in the last 36 hours to fulfill my "guilt" quota for the next two years. The best part of this is that sitting on my butt seems to be exactly what the doctor ordered (if I was inclined to consult a doctor, I probably would have hit upon this "miracle" treatment sooner…) It’s almost 2 PM, I haven’t showered or changed out of my pajamas, I’ve been online for about four of the five hours I’ve been awake…and it’s perfectly okay! How cool is that, when a guilty pleasure becomes exactly what you NEED to be doing? I won’t say I could get used to this…I don’t want to tempt fate into visiting future bouts of tortuous back pain on me. But I will say it hasn’t been half bad to be sitting here wasting time and not have to listen to that pesky little voice that says, "Shut off that computer! You have a million other things to do…" No, I DON’T. Neener neener neener.

P-A-I-N

2005-07-08T22:14:00.000-07:00

Monday morning, I leaned over the sink in the camper to wash my hair, and got a familiar little twinge in my back. I've spent most of my adult life in jobs that are not back-friendly. Slinging fifty-pound bags of flour, or forty-pound blobs of dough, or standing for ten or twelve or fourteen hour shifts on hard concrete floors. Lately, I've been demanding that my poor, old, worn down body heave around restaurant equipment that outweighs me by twice. Anyway, back to Monday morning. Back tweak. Okay, I'll just bend at the waist and s-t-r-e-t-c-h it out a bit...OH MY GOD!!! My back is on fire!

Just last week, my sister and I were comparing aches and pains (it's a middle-aged thing....) I called my back pain "chronic;" it hurts all the time...a little bit, or moderately worse. But never anything I can't handle. I thought I KNEW about back pain. And had very little patience for people who whined about "throwing their back out." Well, I'm here to tell you...as of about 8:00 last Monday morning, I developed a whole new respect for the phrase "suffering from back pain." For suffer is the word...

Tuesday brought little relief. I hobbled around like I had a pole up my ass, and watched the husband pack up the booth so we could go home. Wednesday, I decided I just had to keep moving or I was going to turn to stone. Yesterday was a tad better...I was able to get out into the garden and do a little light work. This morning, I crawled out of bed feeling pretty darn decent. Still a little tentative, but approaching normal. I grabbed a cuppa and went outside to survey my handiwork of the previous day. The day was drizzly, and I noticed that I had left my garden gloves sitting on the edge of a planter box, where they were getting soaked. I bent over to pick them up, and the most dreadful fire shot through me from my waist to my knees. I don't know why I didn't pass out.

So I've spent the rest of today sitting on a heating pad, an ice pack, or soaking in the spa...and discovering that there is no comfortable way in which to sit, stand, or walk...there are only those that are less excruciating than others.

If this is my penance for being less than sympathetic to "chronic pain" sufferers...I get it already. I know the best way to have empathy for others is to walk a mile in their shoes...but I think I've learned my lesson. Can I go back to walking in my own shoes now? (The key concept here is walking....)

From the Road

2005-06-21T22:26:00.000-07:00

here’s to the road
that is a gift in itself
hard to accept as sufficient
but once accepted
leads to an embarrassing bounty
of blessings and beauty
my cup runneth over

Update on Thomas

2005-06-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

In case anyone is wondering how Thomas (my redneck friend in Oklahoma with the flakey wife...) is doing, I received an email from him yesterday:

"I saw you were on here and thought I would let you know. Teri brought up marraige counselling so "we' aint done yet. I guess in the slow time(not football season) God even hears cowboy prayers. "

I'm so happy for him. I hope they can make it work. For the sake of Little Carl (their 5-year-old son) if nothing else.

Blooming

2005-06-06T16:10:00.000-07:00

Why is it I don’t know when I’m being given a gift until I try to throw it away? The Giver of All Gifts sometimes has to smack me upside the head to get me to appreciate what has been lovingly crafted just for me.
The past three weeks have been an exercise in "Bloom Where You’re Planted." From time to time, I just have the undeniable compulsion to mess with where the Fates have put me, even when it’s a place where I’m mostly happy and secure. (I say "mostly," because it seems I am never entirely happy or secure…) Up until now, I haven’t been able to gracefully accept that this semi-retired situation that I’ve been in is entirely wonderful, and I should be doing little happy dances every day when I roll out of bed (whenever I feel like it…), that I have been given the opportunity to be so self-directed and not starve to death in the process. It took the degrading experience of trying to fit myself into a job for which, as usual, I was entirely unsuited, to get me to quit running around like a chicken with my head cut off, and appreciate that where I am is exactly where I am meant to be at this moment.
Faithfully mashing the nose into the grindstone for several decades tends to foster the impression that that is all there is. That if you’re not making a living, earning a paycheck, "bringing home the bacon," you’re some kind of a slacker. Stay-at-home moms have been confronted with this little cultural conundrum for decades. But I am not a stay-at-home mom. I’m just the half of the partnership that is currently taking the larger role in domestic responsibilities. In the days when both my husband and I worked full-time, we had little knowledge or appreciation for exactly how much time and energy it took to run a home. Our housekeeping ablutions had heretofore consisted of running the dishwasher when we ran out of dishes (which took a long time because a home-cooked meal was an occasional lark), doing laundry when we ran out of underwear, running the vacuum when the dust bunnies took on the proportions of the pets from whom they emanated, and scrubbing floors when you could no longer identify the nature of the flooring material. Or staying up ‘til the wee hours hyper-cleaning when company was expected. God forbid someone should drop by unannounced.

Is it my Catholic upbringing that predisposes me to feel guilty when I’m not unhappy? If it feels good, there must be something immoral or sinful about it. We were taught that life was always a struggle, a constant tug-of-war between good and evil. While there are more universal aspects of "Life" that are undoubtedly that way, I don’t think the philosophy was meant to be applied to the hand-to-mouth part of everyday living. Sometimes having the grace to accept a gift, to understand that where you are is exactly where the universe wants you to be at the moment, is more difficult than the unceasing struggle to be more, do more, and have more. That’s the little lesson I have learned in the last week. Which I will probably promptly forget as soon as my conscience starts nagging me to be "more productive…"

Friends Bearing Gifts

2005-06-03T23:01:00.000-07:00

I neglected to mention that when Jackie came up to visit last Sunday, she brought me the most wonderful present. It's in the picture above. Not the cat (that's my "daughter" Chooey)...the afghan. Knitted with her own two hands. It's incredibly soft and snuggly, and will get a great deal of use on those ookie damp, chilly days of Pacific Northwestern fall and winter. It already has several fans among my "children..."

A Change of Thought

2005-05-31T12:13:00.000-07:00

My pity party lasted the whole three-day weekend. After taking the husband to the airport Friday night, and coming back home to my cold, lonely bed, I dove head-first into the hog wallow. Saturday, the best I could do was rouse myself to take a six-mile walk with the dog. Sunday, Jackie came up to visit, and got treated to sitting watching me swill a half of a bottle of wine and mope around as if my world had come to an end. (Sorry, my friend!) Yesterday, I at least attempted to be functional…did some production for my upcoming Café de la Rue events, mowed the lawn, worked in the yard for a bit. One good thing—I couldn’t really drink on Friday or Monday, because I had to drive out to the airport. I compressed all my drinking into two days—Saturday and Sunday. I didn’t polish off four bottles of Jack Daniels or anything…just a couple of bottles of wine and the last two shots in the bottom of a bottle of gin. Still, it isn’t good to drink because you think you need to, and I am painfully mindful of that.
I woke up this morning with a much improved outlook on life. (I’m sure that didn’t have anything to do with the fact that I didn’t wake up with a "wine-head…" J ) As I strolled out to the trailer to start my production work, I began my "Today is the first day of the rest of your life" pep talk…the one I eventually dig out after circumstances have thrown me face down in the mud. It occurred to me that things had been going along just fine before this little job fiasco, and they would be fine again, now that the job was history. All I had to do was cut the last two weeks out of the picture and sew the hole closed. Pretend like it never happened. I did NOT have to let this thing leave a permanent scar, as I seemed determined to do. So, the job didn’t work out. So what? Get up, shower off the mud, and move on.
But, I thought, we really do need the money. I should be able to go out and get a job if I need to in order to help make ends meet. What good am I if I can’t contribute to the household income when we need it?
And then I thought about that for a minute. How screwed up is that thinking? If I am happy keeping house, tending my zoo, puttering in the yard, and running my own little business, why isn’t that good enough? Why does "making ends meet" have to dictate my life? What are the ends, and why are they so far apart? What is in between those ends, that is non-essential? What can I get rid of, to close the gap between the ends, so that I can connect them with the income I am happy producing? Why am I letting our financial need, a large part of which is created by our knee-jerk consumerism, force me out of my place of comfort and into a situation where I have almost always been miserable (working for someone else)?
The trick is to change your lifestyle to fit what you are happy doing, not change what you do in order to finance your lifestyle. Husband and I need to sit down and have a serious talk about what we need, what we want, what we simply consume out of habit, and how to tell the difference. Get down to the essentials, add back a few luxuries (I’m not a complete ascetic…) and go on from there. Now is as good a time as any…maybe the perfect time, to take stock and make some changes. We’ve equated happiness with "stuff" for too long. It’s time to think seriously about where we really draw our happiness from, and concentrate on making it happen without all the money-sucking trappings.

Everything Old is New

2005-05-29T23:42:00.000-07:00

I wrote this thirty years ago. I was nineteen…for a long time, I looked back at that year as the worst of my life. Some fresh crash of what I considered, back then, paralyzing failure—most likely the termination of a short relationship—wrenched this verse from my brain. Decades later, those old adolescent sorrows seemed laughable after I had fought through real ones. I would look at this poem and think how childishly maudlin and melodramatic it was.
The last few days, this poem has been nudging at the back of my brain. I knew exactly where to find it. I dug it up, looked it over…and realized that, today, it doesn’t seem so melodramatic after all…

Here We Go Again

2005-05-27T23:07:00.000-07:00

This weekend has already exceeded my expectations for shittiness. The new job, which had been going along uneventfully, took a sudden plunge downhill on Wednesday. Suddenly I found myself being called out to the sidewalk for a private chat with the "kitchen lead," because he has become convinced that I don’t have any respect for him or his experience. Honest to God, to me, this came out of nowhere. I keep running into this at job after job. I get into these predicaments where I think I am getting along fine with people…meanwhile, they have decided I am a bitch on wheels. I DO have a dry, sarcastic sense of humor. It’s crossed my mind that this is a regional thing. I never had this trouble when we lived back in the Midwest. I don’t want to say that West-Coasters are unsophisticated…but they do seem to be a tad more literal-minded than I was used to.
Anyhow, this "problem" took me totally off-guard. I can NOT deal with people not getting me, or not liking me when I have no idea what I did to offend them. I have been in a total emotional tail-spin ever since. Not sleeping, leaning rather more heavily on the wine bottle than necessary…the whole nine yards. Feeling absolutely worthless. Can’t believe that I bravely sallied forth into the world of employment to fail yet again. The end result will be that, as of this weekend, the job will be history. I wish them luck…I may even eat there once they get all their shit in one sock (or maybe not, given that one of the things that has really bothered me is their non-understanding of the concept of cross-contamination…)
The possible upside of this mess is that it has taken my mind off what I had planned to be depressed about this weekend—the family celebration in Illinois from which I am a pariah. Or did it just add to my burden? I don’t know. I’m starting to think that there is a whole lot of evidence out there that I am simply a miserable, unlovely person that can’t get along with anyone—stranger or family. Have I spent so much time alone that I am really the only person in the world that can tolerate my company? Thankfully, once again, the husband is still hanging in there. I must have apologized a hundred times in the last two days for being such a pain in the ass, for being so "high-maintenance." He clucks his tongue and tells me to quit being so hard on myself. Maybe he’s right. I don’t know. Suddenly, I don’t know much of anything anymore. This so often happens when I start thinking that I might be moving in a discernable direction. My bridge of self-confidence comes to an abrupt end, and I fall, flailing, into the void.

2005-05-25T23:33:00.000-07:00

"Happy" Weekend

2005-05-25T08:44:00.000-07:00

I don’t know what anyone else is doing this weekend, but I’m looking forward to a lonely one. There will be quite a bit of hubbub around the old homestead in the next couple of days. My sisters and brother-in-law will be staying over tonight, and I’ll take them to PDX (Portland International Airport) Thursday morning. Then another trip to PDX on Friday evening, so husband can catch his flight. All going to Illinois. All going to a party to which I was invited, but that I chose not to…dared not…attend.

My sister Joyce’s husband has FINALLY retired from UPS after twenty-nine years (he’ll be sixty in August.) His daughters, who normally would as soon spit on him as have any positive interaction with him, decided they needed to throw him a "surprise" retirement party. We received notification of said party only a short span of weeks after my poisonous email encounter with my middle niece. I’m sorry. I love my brother-in-law; and I miss him. He, more than any of my other brothers-in-law, was the closest thing I ever had to a real brother. But I just turned to ice when talk of the party started up. Perhaps if it was being given by anybody else, I might have relented. But I think not. I just can’t face my nieces, no matter who orchestrates the meeting. And I couldn’t get over the feeling, after the "black ornament" incident, that they were asking me to come because they had to, but they would really be most relieved if I declined. And so I did.

My husband chose to go to the party. I’m fine with that. He and Kenneth were very close. And I’m sure Kenneth will be happy to see Matt. I didn’t tell my nieces outright that I would not be coming because I knew they hated me… I told them I couldn’t take time away from my business. I don’t know if they suspect the truth. I don’t really care.

I am desperately trying to keep the sadness associated with all this buried as deeply inside my heart as I can manage. But, I don’t know…I’m afraid one of these next few nights, I’m going to curl up with abottle of wine, plug "Little Women" into the VCR, and bawl my head off.

A Little History

2005-05-25T08:40:00.000-07:00

I'm re-posting this entry in order to fill in a little background information for my next entry... It was originally posted to "Coming to Terms" in 2003, but I had to remove it from that public forum because of the debacle with my niece.

Little Women--October 18, 2003

With the husband out of town, I took the opportunity to engage in a little emotional indulgence. I poured myself a glass of wine, cranked up the VCR, and sat down to watch "Little Women." The 1995 version with Winona Ryder and Susan Sarandon.

I CANNOT watch this movie without bawling. In fact, I roll it out when I feel in need of a good, cleansing cry. How warped is THAT? Besides the fact that the actual story is sad, it tugs my heart in a very personal way. I invariably connect it to my memories of Joyce, my sister who died 8 years ago.

Joyce was the oldest, I the youngest, of us five girls. She was eight years older than I...a vast canyon when you're little. She was more like my mother than my sister, used to read to us all the time. Books like...Little Women.

But as we grew up, those 8 years seemed to shrink. By the time I left her behind in Illinois to move to Oregon, Joyce and I had a close, yet strained relationship. Trying to go from the big sister/little sister thing, to being real adult friends. The distance proved to enhance our relationship. I was determined to keep her close, and not let her think that we had all moved away and forgotten about her, as the rest of the sisters actually HAD. She clung to me like a lifeline. And then she got sick and died.

It looks strange to sum it up so succinctly. So much to tell...so impossible to put into words. She got deathly ill..I went home to Illinois to try to love her back to health. She died, and her family fell apart. I tried to scrape them all back together, but I failed. For reasons unknown, they buried her out here, in the same cemetery in Eugene where my father was buried four years later. So what I have left of her is her sad, lonely grave, down the hill from Dad's. I don't feel her there. Don't talk to her there. But somehow, I know she'd want someone to go there once in awhile. So I go.

And now and then, I sit down and watch "Little Women."

New Look

2005-05-18T19:47:00.000-07:00

Okay. Paying no attention to the haircut from hell, what do you think of the new specs? My little nod to midlife crisis...

Miss Ya, Sis!

2005-05-17T21:07:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago, almost to the minute, I lost my big sister. She had struggled against a debilitating onslaught of rheumatoid arthritis for over a decade, and lost her fight after a final nine-week battle waged in the ICU’s of two hospitals. A memory I have worked for a decade to fit into a place in my mind where it can no longer haunt me.
I have four older sisters. But Joyce was the big sister. The rest of us were the sheep; Joyce was the little shepherdess, almost from the moment my sister Donna was born three weeks before Joyce’s third birthday. As mom added a new sister to the group every couple years or so, Joyce took on another charge…she bathed us, she curled our hair; she made our peanut butter and jelly, and poured our milk; gathered us around her and read to us on cold winter weekend afternoons. Didn’t hesitate to read us the riot act when we invaded her teen-age privacy…but used her hard earned dime-store cashier dollars to treat us to Baskin Robbins and Burger King. She left home at 21, married and made her own home…but never went very far away. She treasured family times around her own table, bunked sisters on her couches or living room floor, served up pancake breakfasts in the mornings.
She wanted to be the glue that held the family together. And for awhile, she was. But we all went away. First one sister, then another, and another…then the parents. For awhile, it was just us…Joyce and her family, me and my husband, tethered to our birthplace. And then we, too, pulled up our roots and moved away. Left her behind. And then she got sick. Who knows how much one had to do with the other?

I miss you tonight, Joycie. I remember all these things, which I haven’t done in a really long time. And I miss you.

Thomas

2005-05-12T00:04:00.000-07:00

Last week, I wrote about my redneck friend and his marital problems. Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m a bigot. It’s not even nice for me to call Thomas a redneck. Though he would gladly and proudly cop to that label, when I apply it to someone, it is generally not meant as a compliment.

The first time Thomas made what I considered a stupid, ignorant, Bush-backing comment in my journal, I went to HIS journal to find out something about him. All I had to do was read his "About Me," especially the part about being "Caucasian with a capital "C," and I fired off a caustic email to him about where he could put himself and his redneck views.

Surprisingly enough, he emailed me back…not with a nasty comeback. It was more like he was mystified that I was so angry, and kind of sorry that he had upset me. We ended up emailing each other back and forth a couple of nights… And I realized that the guy is a human being. That sometimes, if you go deeper than the political affiliations and the regional peculiarities, you find that there is a depth and a dimension to people that lies beneath all that. I don’t know Thomas in real life…and I suppose you could say I really know very little about him. But, despite the fact that he comes off as in no way intellectual, couldn’t spell his way out of a paper bag, and constantly threatens to shoot his idiot dog (which he would never do…), he writes about his life in a way that touches and teaches me.

That said, go to this entry of "Shitkicker’s Corner," and you will understand what I am talking about…

"Things I've Done" Game

2005-05-11T22:43:00.000-07:00

I’ve seen this meme in several journals. Just for the halibut, I thought I’d play along. But I put my two cents in on some of the questions and answers…

Put an x next to the things you've done:

() smoked a cigarette
() smoked a cigar
() made out with a member of the same sex…if a woman checks this one, she’s hot. If a man does, he’s a homo…
(x) been in love
(x) been dumped…who hasn’t?
(x) stolen…beer mugs and pitchers from bars when we were kids…
(x) been fired…do I have to put an ‘x’ for every time this has happened?
() been in a fight…I’m going to assume they mean a fist fight and say no…
() snuck out of my parent's house
(x) had feelings for someone who didn't have them back
() been arrested
() made out with a stranger
() gone on a blind date
(x) lied to a friend
(x) had a crush on a teacher…my 12th grade journalism teacher…
(x) skipped school
() slept with a coworker
(x) seen someone die
() had a crush on one of your blogging friends
(x) been to Canada
() been to Mexico
(x) been on a plane
() thrown up in a bar
() purposely set a part of myself on fire..what?
() eaten Sushi… "Where I come from, they call that ‘bait’…"
() been snowboarding
(x) met someone in person from the blogosphere…Lisa!
( ) been hxc dancing at a show…I don’t even know what this is….
() been in an abusive relationship
(x) taken painkillers…but narcotics make me pukey…
(x) love someone or miss someone right now
(x) laid on your back and watched cloud shapes go by
(x) made a snow angel
() had a tea party
(x) flown a kite
(x) built a sand castle
() gone puddle jumping
(x) played dress up
(x) jumped into a pile of leaves…wheee!
(x) gone sledding
() cheated while playing a game…are "do-overs" considered cheating…?
(x) been lonely
(x) fallen asleep at work/school
() used a fake id
(x) watched the sun set
(x) felt an earthquake
(x) touched a snake
(x) slept beneath the stars…with my feet pointing down the mountain and a snowbank ten feet away…
(x) been tickled
() been robbed
(x) been misunderstood…chronically…
(x) pet a reindeer/goat
() won a contest
(x) run a red light
() been suspended from school
(x) been in a car accident
() had braces
(x) felt like an outcast
(x) eaten a whole pint of ice cream in one night …actually many afternoons while watching after school cartoons…
(x) had déjà vu…all over again!
() danced in the moonlight
(x) hated the way you look…if only I could stay away from hairdressers…
() witnessed a crime...does farting in church count?

() pole danced
(x) questioned your heart
() been obsessed with post-it notes…????????…
(x) squished barefoot through the mud…an experience no child should miss…
(x) been lost
(x) been to the opposite side of the country
(x) swam in the ocean…well, maybe half an x. I can’t swim, but I have waded…
() felt like dying
(x) cried yourself to sleep
() played cops and robbers
(x) recently colored with crayons/colored pencils/markers
() sung karaoke
(x) paid for something with only coins…have dearly wanted to pay my taxes in this manner at times…
(x) done something you told yourself you wouldn't…like yesterday when I ate half a bag of hershey "treasures"…
() made prank phone calls
(x) laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose
(x) caught a snowflake on your tongue
() danced in the rain
(x) written a letter to Santa Claus
(x) been kissed under a mistletoe
(x) watched the sun set with someone you care about…is there another way?
(x) blown bubbles
(x) made a bonfire
() crashed a party
(x) gone roller-skating
(x) had a wish come true
() humped a monkey...would anybody admit this if they HAD done it?
(x) worn pearls
() jumped off a bridge…on bad days, this has crossed my mind…
() screamed penis in class…okaaaaaaayyyy…
(x) ate dog/cat food
() told a complete stranger you loved them
(x) kissed a mirror
(x) sang in the shower
(x) have a little black dress…that I have never worn…
(x) had a dream that you married someone
(x) glued your hand to something…anybody who has done crafts has done this…
() got your tongue stuck to a flag pole
() kissed a fish
() worn the opposite sexes clothes (for a play)
() been a cheerleader…tried out for it in eighth grade, though…
(x) sat on a roof top
(x) screamed at the top of your lungs
() done a one-handed cartwheel
() talked on the phone for more than 6 hours…never—I am a phone-a-phobe…
(x) stayed up all night…and went to work the next morning…
(x) didn't take a shower for a week…when I was a kid…our house didn’t have a shower
(x) pick and ate an apple right off the tree…food of the gods…
(x) climbed a tree…what a fantastic view it was…
() had a tree house
() are too scared to watch scary movies alone…slept with the lights on for weeks after seeing Halloween on HBO…
(x) believe in ghosts…never seen one, but people I know and trust say they have…
(x) have more then 30 pairs of shoes…just call me Imelda…
() worn a really ugly outfit to school just to see what others say
() gone streaking
() played ding-dong-ditch
() played chicken [in the pool]
() been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on
() been told you're hot by a complete stranger
() broken a bone
(x) been easily amused
(x) caught a fish then ate it…fresh Wisconsin wall-eyed pike. But my dad cleaned and cooked them….
() made porn
(x) caught a butterfly
(x) laughed so hard you cried
(x) cried so hard you laughed
() mooned/flashed someone
() had someone moon/flash you….no matter how hard I begged…
() cheated on a test
() have a Britney Spears CD
(x) forgotten someone's name…not exactly an unusual phenomenon for me…
(x) slept naked
() French braided someone's hair
() gone skinny dippin in a pool
(x) been kicked out of your house…chased out the back door the first time I used the f-word in Mom’s presence…
() ridden a horse bareback
() eaten a lobster you caught yourself
() killed another human being….oooh…they saved the shocker for last!

When a Marriage is Ailing...

2005-05-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

A journal friend of mine’s marriage has suddenly gone south. Seems that his wife, out of the blue, announced she was unhappy with the relationship. He told her to make a choice (between what, and what, I’m not sure.) She chose divorce. He is beside himself.
I’m mostly only hearing one side of this story—his. But, from what I can tell, wife has simply decided she isn’t happy anymore and wants a divorce. She says he has been controlling and always has to have everything his own way. He says she has dictated everything from what kind of job he could have, to where they would live (they moved from his beloved Texas to Oklahoma on her say-so) to how and when the bills would be paid. I think wifie just doesn’t want to be married anymore. It’s cramping her style.
My friend is a card-carrying, Bush-backing, beer-swilling Texas-bred redneck. Don’t ask me how we became friends…an exercise in open-mindedness for both of us, I guess. We don’t discuss politics. And he has enough problems right now to keep me from mentioning one thing that really bothers me about his marital problems…
This is marriage #2 for both him and his wife. She has two kids from a previous relationship. And they have one son together. Very much the Generation X story of the string of broken relationships, and children with several different fathers. Yet he and his wife come from the exact demographic that preaches that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry, because that is some kind of threat to the institution of marriage. What…heterosexuals should have exclusive rights to beat the crap out of that particular institution?
Still, my heart is heavy for him. I think so many people don’t understand what marriage is anymore. Marriage has become completely disposable. The "’til death do us part" part is just so many words. The "what God has joined, let no man put asunder" exhortation has become an archaic incantation that is chanted at every wedding ceremony, but nobody understands the meaning of it anymore. You wouldn’t think it was stated in plain English.
Not that I am any expert. When husband and I tied the knot 29 years ago, it was in the back of my mind…the back of both of our minds…that if it "didn’t work out" we could always get a divorce. For some reason, I had to have that "out" to give me the courage to even attempt to make a commitment that was supposed to last forever. Favorable stars, serendipity, co-dependency, and just plain cussedness have combined to keep us together all these years. At this point, you probably couldn’t pry us apart with a crowbar. So what do I know? What have I learned? That marriage is the often unsatisfying dance between frustration that you and your partner are never completely one, and anxiety that you have lost yourself in your partner. How close is close enough, and how close is TOO close? At different times, it's the same place. Not for the faint of heart. And the complexities are compounded a thousand times when children enter the picture.
My red-neck friend is the product of a culture that deals with the challenges of marriage by not dealing with them. By sticking it out as long as the going is easy. By extricating yourself as soon as things get tough. Selfishness, pure and simple. Selfishness and the craving for instant gratification. "It’s not working for me right now, so I’m outta here!" In many people’s minds, there’s no Rx for an ailing marriage anymore. You just club it in the head, dust off your hands and walk away. Yes, I feel bad for him. But how do you change someone’s skewed understanding of the institution? I have no idea, and I’m afraid he is doomed, at least from a marriage standpoint.

Tiarella

2005-04-28T08:32:00.000-07:00

How generous are plants…

Though stunted and weak from my awful soil, this exquisite beauty bravely sends forth lovely stalks sheathed with a galaxy of little stars…

I originally posted this in "Coming to Terms" yesterday... but no alert went out, so now one saw it (except Meredith.) I thought it was too pretty not to make sure it would be shared with more of my friends, so I've moved it here. I think it's more at home here, anyway... :-]

The Goldenbirds Came Back

2005-04-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

...Or at least one has...

All through the winter and spring, my back yard suffered from the depravity of my lovely neighbor, who decided to cut down the row of trees along his back fence. Where once my feeders teemed with birds---at one time, I counted over two dozen goldfinches helping themselves to the "seed socks"---there was nary a peep. Disheartened, I didn't even bother to fill the feeders over the winter. The seed sat in its bags in the laundry room, gathering dust.

About six weeks ago, I decided I might as well at least put it outside; it wasn't doing anything but breeding those nasty little grain moths in the house. So I filled up my giant economy-sized seed sock. Kept an eye on ir for two or three weeks...there were no takers. Dejected, I just let it hang there, getting wet and moldy.

Pine siskins--a variety of tiny spotted finch--are ubiquitous here. The Peterson Field Guide even lists "bird feeders" among siskins' preferred habitats. It's a sad, inept birder who can't attract siskins to her backyard buffet. That's how devastating the loss of those trees, that habitat, was...even the siskins were shocked enough to stay away for several months. Suddenly, a fortnight ago, the siskins discovered the sock. They have been regular customers ever since. It was nice to have them back, but they were not the guests I really wanted at my table...

Yesterday, I was out in the yard when I heard it...the sweetly melodious note of the bird my mom used to call the "wild canary." I spotted him in the top of the apple tree, singing his little black-capped head off. I beat feet into the house to grab some more seed to replenish the sagging sock (not really caring too much about being the local mess hall for siskins, I had neglected to fill it after being away last weekend.) And today, I was rewarded with the appearance of the little guy above. There was only one of him, but it's a start. I'm hoping he'll go home and spread the word among his friends and family...

Damn the Stinking Alerts....

2005-04-08T16:19:00.000-07:00

Nothing like writing in a complete vacuum... Please read my last entry...or maybe the last two or three...if you get this alert. Thank you ever so much.

Today, I Don't Want to be Sad

2005-04-08T16:16:00.000-07:00

I haven’t felt like writing about anything of a deep, personal nature lately. It’s almost as if I don’t want to upset the apple cart. I’m going through what looks to me like another important period of transition, after spinning my wheels for about four years after we moved away from my family in Eugene. From May of 2001, right up until this past January, I had stretched the umbilical cord as far as it could possibly reach…which turned out to be about 120 miles. We had moved to a whole new area, became part of an entirely different demographic, and I chose, for a long time, to leave my life back at my old home. My favorite stores, the nurseries where I bought all my plants, the restaurants we frequented, our most beloved recreational areas that were just a short drive from Eugene…I couldn’t seem to find anything in the new area that ever measured up. How lame is that, when we have relocated only a short drive from the largest city in the state? And the ocean is just as close in one direcction, and the mountains, better mountains, are even closer in the other. Could it be that I so hadn’t wanted to move that, though we had moved physically, I just couldn’t drag my heart away?
Slowly, and I do mean s-l-o-w-l-y, I have been discovering places and things up here in our new home to which I can transfer my allegiance. In fact, things I actually prefer over the old stuff to which I was so attached. I LOVE my house, I love the area we live in—the views, the mountains, the country roads with no traffic. Sadly, that is about as far as I had come in almost four years. Since January, when something finally told me that I had to snap out of it and reclaim my life, I’ve become more and more content here. It helped that I made a conscious decision NOT to make trips down the freeway just because I missed the old area. If there is some family function going on that requires my attendance, I will be happy to go down and join the party. But I realized I have to refocus my everyday life to my immediate surroundings… Do the things I can do here because I am here. Not waste time and emotional energy fretting about what I can’t do here that I used to do there.
It’s taken me a long time to "settle in." Too long. But now that I’m actually doing it, it feels good and right. I don’t have that nagging longing in the back of my heart that has been my constant companion for the last?seems like forever, really. At least since my dad died six years ago. That has been replaced by a growing appreciation for the things I have and the place I am NOW.
So what has that all got to do with not wanting to write anything deeply personal? Well, old habits die hard. For so long, my writing was mostly personal psychotherapy. I would sit down and just dredge up all the garbage and splatter it all over the pages or the screen, and then try to make sense of it. Like a literary Rorschach exercise. After all those years of doing that, I find that it?s almost a conditioned response for me, when I sit down and dig deep for something to write, I fall into this melancholy, wistful hole. Well, I don?t want to go there anymore, if I don?t have to. I want to be able to write about happiness and fulfillment as well as sadness and loss.
I seem to have managed that, this time around. Good God, maybe I really am changing?

Just Thinking...

2005-03-25T11:05:00.000-08:00

Another holiday, another step towards independence. We will NOT be going to Eugene on Sunday. I just…don’t want to. The picture incident back on my sister’s birthday has been a catalyst for me. The last straw. The ah-ha moment. Call it what you will. Some kind of massive emotional cleaver crashed down and severed most of what was left of the chains that bound me to the sad remnants of my family. I knew I had to at last achieve some distance, since six years of trying to maintain closeness had not done the trick. Finally, I realized that dipping from my own lonely stream was not going to be nearly as painful as continuing to go back to the old well and finding it empty. Or padlocked.
The general theme of my life has always been one of separateness. For whatever reason…probably just because I was born that way…I have lived, and have been content to live, 75% of my life inside my own head. People have come into my life, visited for awhile, and gone away. Rarely large groups of people, but ones and twos. And I have been happy to have them, while they stay. I haven’t driven them away…at least not intentionally. Obviously there must be something that I’m doing, or not doing, that makes people lose interest and move on. Probably it’s the very fact that I DO live 75% inside my own head. But I can’t seem to help that…
Even my family walked out of my life, as one by one, they left the Midwest and emigrated to Oregon. They were the only group I chased after. The only ones I couldn’t let walk out of my life. Followed them across the country when they went away. Arms outstretched, pleading, grasping for a second chance. And I got that chance, for awhile. A happy, shining decade where I lived in the bosom of my family and felt loved and protected. I am lucky. Many people don’t even get that much from their families. But many people get more, and for some reason, I’m more apt to focus on that fact. Don’t know why I feel compelled to stick that needle in my arm…
So now I’m mostly alone. As isolated as I’ve ever been. And likely to stay that way, with no school or job or social outlets in which to cultivate new relationships. The husband, of course, is still hanging in there, and thank God for that. But, the funny thing is, while I feel odd spending so much time alone, I’m not nearly as unhappy as I would expect to be. I worry that my life is a little unfocused and a tad superfluous at the moment. I?m not accomplishing anything, or really even staying busy. And I?m mindful that my days are getting shorter, and I hate to think that I?m not living them to the fullest. But, I don?t know?I don?t hate my life. I know I need something, but I?m not desperate for it?at least, not most of the time. I almost feel as if I?m in a lull just before something really big is going to happen. Like I should take advantage of this time of peace and solitude because it?s not going to last too much longer. I?m even starting to lean toward not feeling so guilty about not doing anything. I worked my ass off for a lot of years. Maybe I deserve this time of freedom. I?m not hurting anybody. We?re not going broke?and I don?t feel guilty having the husband work while I do not. He would be lost without a job. He?s doing what he wants, and I?m doing?well, not what I want, necessarily; but maybe what I need.

The only problem facing me now is how to balance the time-taught wisdom of being happy with where you are, with enough joie de vivre to be open to and actively searching for change and adventure. I think I?m getting there, but it?s a broken road, where one regularly encounters the potholes of regret, boredom, timidity and frustration. I just have to figure out what best fills those holes, I guess.