Notes from the Hen House...

My Intuitive Eating blog

2009-05-16T10:38:00.001-07:00

Check it out--it's dedicated to musings on Intuitive Eating practices.

Enjoy!

http://embodylifecoaching-caitlin.blogspot.com/

When All Else Fails....

2009-03-25T13:40:00.000-07:00

....take a Mental Health day.

Which is exactly what I find myself doing this very Wednesday.

I'm a Life Coach and a writer; I am currently getting paid to do these things, but only enough--at the moment--to consider these both "side" jobs, and I dislike that fact enormously. So I tend to fume and moan and bitch considerably and THEN make new, good steps towards The Prize, and yes, at least--at least--I am getting paid to do what I love, what really satisfies my spirit and my heart. There is that.

But, like a really, really good dessert, the amounts of either are sadly limited and remain in the realm of the somewhat rarified. For now.

So. This means that other sources of income are necessary. No, I don't sell plasma, and my ovum are way too ripe to proffer to a desperate-yet-wealthy Yuppie couple intent on shelling their own brood. I have a day job.

A soul-sucking, dull-beyond-words, paper-pushing absolutely NOT gratifying corporate day job in a Tax & Customs department at a local, currently badly-flailing company. I have been there going on year 2, which is how much they like me. So much, in fact, I've been asked if I might consider a career in Customs. It's all I can do to not roll my eyes heavenward and smirk outright. So I blink demurely a few times and widen my eyes and, drumming up as much drippy sincerity as possible, say, "Oh, I'm flattered....." and smile pleasantly, letting an abject silence befall the proceeding.

At which point the hopeful manager looks at me utterly agog (I mean, what? Really? You're eschewing a Good Job with Company X to pursue your esoteric, woo-woo hippie Life Coaching pipe dreams? Surely you jest, you shortsighted featherhead!) and says, "But that's all, right?"

And I continue smiling weakly until we part ways, not a bit closer to understanding one another's objectives/driving motivations/life's goals/core values whatsoever. Not even a smidgen.

But now, I'm finding it hard to show up even vaguely interested. Showing up vertical is, most days, a complete coup. A huge part of my weighty lack of enthusiasm stems from the fact this company is, as I mentioned, suffering mightily during this rough economic downturn. There are weekly rumors of impending "Big Announcements," about which much speculation ensues--that we're going to a mandatory 4-day workweek (score!); that everyone is being moved to headquarters and vacating the current premises; that such a big chunk of the company has been bought by the United Arab Emirates that any hopes of moving into the future "Green" are now shot completely, since the Sheiks love their oil; and who knows what else.

Stress prevails; a guard has been posted by the back elevator since (more speculation) angry, gun-toting former employees could potentially return for a little payback action, and various coworkers have been out for days with a variety of illnesses, including highly-contagious Walking Pneumonia (but who knew! She thought she just had a wee cough as she robustly spewed the infection through the recirculated office ventilation system); guts rumble mightily in neighboring stalls whenever I repair to the bathroom to take a mere pee, making even those few minutes of public respite a miserable God-awful experience.

The only glint of periodic employee happiness comes from the Mountain Man, a mobile candy vendor who comes by weekly with his sugary wares. It's like the Pied Piper, or the Second Coming of Christ, or at the very least, Robert Pattinson surrounded by hormonal 14-year-old girls at a Twilight screening. Nevermind that an office full of angry, sedentary, skeetchy middle-aged employees with stress-compromised immune systems and the very likely potential for Adult Onset Diabetes don't need to dip their hands into various over-prices baggies of repackaged candies (emotional eating, anyone?) It helps them get through their days, I get it...as do the regularly-scheduled runs for coffee, the lunch outings and the routing of birthday cards (and highly-anticipated afternoon cakes, replete with warbled "Happy Birthday" song) forcibly scrawled with platitudes of fake glee and camaraderie.

Am I bitter? Am I burned out? Yes. And yes.

Hence, the Mental Health day. When even two Al-Anon meetings in the course of 8 hours don't snap me out of it, it's time to stay home. And stay in bed.

And in indulge in a rather collegiate lunch that consisted of a pile of leftover Tater-Tots from last night's dinner, and two Tofutti Cuties, both of which deeply satisfied my monthly hormonal yen for something fatty & salty and also something sweet.

But lest you think I'm hurtling into middle-aged female curmudgeonliness, let me acknowledge today's bright spot: the logo for my Life Coaching biz was finished and forwarded to me by my talented graphics-designing friend, and soon, it will make its "official" debut on the 'net. In the meantime, I will say that it makes me smile with pride each time I see it--it evokes exactly what I need it to.

It is a sweet, charming, professional little reminder that there is actually something meaningful towards which I am working when I arise at 6:30 (okay, 6:40) each morning and ready myself to head off to a day job that offers very little other than a paycheck.

Eyes on the Prize, baby. Eyes on the Prize.

Things that go Bump.....

2008-11-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

Last night was Halloween (or the more properly Pagan-y, Celtic-y "Hallowe'en") and Kyler and I decided to do something I'd never done before, cause as we all know, there's a first time for everything.

And quite frankly, I was tired of being a Halloween Haunted House Virgin.

So we schlepped out to the Washington County fairgrounds which had been converted--for the month of October, pretty much--into a presumably nightmarish and semi-Ray Bradbury-ish/carnivalistic "haunted" amusement park-type thingy. Sorta. In other words, halls that likely held assorted livestock during the Fair's Summer run had been converted into various depraved/creepy/sordid/migraine-inducing "haunted houses" (for lack of a better term), two of which were deemed PG or PG-13 and two of which were ostensibly more of a benign G, although those also elicited much frightened shrieking and howling and wall-shaking from the gaggles of jumpy, horny, parentally-free teen couples that wandered the grounds that night.

Upon arrival, we took stock of the creepy scene and hoofed it over to the first PG-13 scare, a hall called "Caged Rage" (nevermind that it sounds like a round of WWF Smackdown!). We got in line (admittedly, I was one of the oldest people "on queue") while a door slammed open and shut at regular intervals, a chainsaw ripped through the night air, and much screaming ensued. Yeah, I was a bit nervous and wondered what the hell I'd agreed to while trying not to watch the two filling-sucking teens in front of us obliviously deep kiss.

Finally, we were up to the door, and the "host" (another Zombie-esque dude) opened the door and let us in, slamming it with a loud thud behind us.

First thought? Disorienting. I was grateful I'm not an epileptic.

A fog machine filled the space with a thick haze while a strobe light flashed mercilessly (think 90's dance club). Kyler and I stood there for a moment to orient ourselves in the midst of a bunch of swinging pig carcasses and listened to the reverberating echoes of everyone else's shrieking. He waited for me to step forward and, hands out in front of me like Helen Keller, I took a step, then simply stopped. No can do. He would be leading this little expedition (and later he said, "I figured if I didn't take the lead we'd never get anywhere." So true, so true.) Although he remained a few feet in front of me at all times, all I could see was a vague shape, and so I followed that.

And off we went, slowly.

My second thought? Annoyance. And hilarity. It struck me as not only bizarre and terribly distracting, but really rather funny, and I'm not sure why. There's nothing intrinsically hilarious about dead pigs and being menaced by Zombies (remember, the actors aren't allowed to touch you), but it all suddenly seemed so silly.

So there we were, feeling our way through a twisted meat processing plant (well, aren't they all, really?) and being harassed by the occasional yelling, jumping Zombie, some of whom followed us for a bit ("Mostly college kids earning their beer money," as Kyler'd said) most of whom gave up when neither of us betrayed any fear at all. I pretty much laughed until my ribs hurt and by the time we got to the end--the only way out was past the chainsaw-wielding back doorman--I could barely say two words. He stopped Kyler, put the "blade" against his chest and let the thing roar, then lifted it and let him out. I sighed heavily, between laughing fits. He'd perform the same intimidation tactic on me, so I just stood there quizzically, and let him menace me. In fact, he seemed a little bored and, since I wasn't quaking/screaming/covering my eyes/shuddering or otherwise trying to flee, he also seemed to sigh, lifted the blade and out I stumbled, barely able to breathe from my laughing fit.

There were times when I wanted to just stop, stare at the actors and say, "Look, it wasn't believable, you know? Can you rethink your motivation and try that again? I mean, you're DEAD."But then again, I have an MFA in theater and I understand performance, not breaking the 4th wall, playing your intention, etc. etc. So I'm sorta jaded and not a good judge of what might be truly frightening for numerous others.

I do, however, find authentic haunted houses really, truly creepy, houses with a history, with known paranormal activity, etc. I've toured them, and I've been flipped out. But this? Just gross. And annoying. And weird. Really weird.

We walked over to the next PG attraction, something called the "Hall of Human Waste" (and they meant this both figuratively and literally, since there was a disgusting diorama of overflowing toilets and piles of odorless fake shit and I commented loudly as we passed, "Wow, it's like a really successful frat party!") which was considerably more "low-key"--if being menaced by paid actors can be considered low-key--than the slaughter house had been. In fact, we found ourselves wandering past many closed doors within the darkly-lit maze that I expected to fly open at any time--and which did not. The baby-eating Zombie nutjob was quite impressive, however--the actress who had the role really did her homework. She was crazy AND dead and seemed to be enjoying snacking on her child....I thought she was fake until she howled at a gaggle of screaming teens behind us, and when I turned in awe at her acting abilities (I looked back at her and said, "Man, that was GREAT!") she kept staring at me crazily, in character, moving her head around and looking, well, utterly, otherworldy nuts. And of course, very dead.

The last two attractions were staid by comparison, one a crypt with even worse strobe lighting than before, the other a basic haunted Victorian house with a trembly door attendant who seemed to be channeling my cat's hairball-hucking reflexes, and a sweet-sounding old lady who was still as a mannequin until she lept from her dining-room chair to cackle something incomprehensible as we passed by. Kyler and I and one other midlifer who'd happened along with us sort of paused briefly, wrinkling our brows quizzically in her general direction and then filed out quietly, none of us completely comprehending the sudden verbal ejaculation. The effect was, I suppose, much like dealing with someone's crazy aunt Millie at Thanksgiving: no one quite knows when she'll blow, but when she does, it's just kind of sad and annoying and a little bit piteous.

And that was that. So we returned to Portland and ended the evening with slices of pie at a Shari's.

I'd probably explore another faux-haunted house. And, while not exactly cathartic--I didn't really emerge feeling as if I'd survived anything significant (except being in the midst of a thick soup of teenage hormones)--it was still an oddly entertaining & distracting experience. Even for a cynical & opinionated theater person like myself.

Boo.

Sorry, Wrong Number Part Deux

2008-10-08T20:29:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, I shared a "wrong text" that I'd inadvertently received on my cell phone.

This happens occasionally and I find it weird and amusing and sorta unintentionally voyeuristic, cause I know the text wasn't meant for me yet, there it is on my phone's little screen, all high-context-y communication and private and subtle and assuming that the eyes taking in all the electronic Prince and the Revolution-type shorthand is the right set of eyes, and then I feel a little guilty and a little intrigued and--depending on what was texted--a little titillated and naughty.

Take the text that came chiming in at 1:27 AM this morning, rousing--but not quite waking--me from my sleep, which read (sic): Can you just tell me why it matters babe C.R.E.A.M.

There I was at 6:45 this morning after I'd gotten out of bed, looking like a shorter, pastier version of Don King, pre-coffee, bundled in my robe, squinting through semi-crusted eyes, staring dumbly at the tiny Sanyo phone in my hand and trying to decipher exactly 9 words of backlit text and one cryptic acronym that wasn't even meant for me.

I wondered what mattered? Did they have lousy sex? Did they not? Did they fight? Did he sleep with someone else? Not share a secret? Maybe he winked at another chick? Or lost his job? Or she? Or he couldn't get it up? And what the hell was "C.R.E.A.M.?"

I momentarily worried that my not knowing made me woefully unhip, horribly prudish, ridiculously square or just plain ignorant. I Googled C.R.E.A.M. and came up with the lyrics for a song of the same name by the Wu-Tang Clan: "...a man with a dream with plans to make C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)......"

Ah. C.R.E.A.M. Now I think I get it.

Not sex, money. They were fighting over money. He's superficial, she wants more (or vice-versa). One of them is a Republican and one of them is a Democrat and perhaps theirs is a doomed, tragic sort of Romeo & Juliet-type love. Maybe one of them is a non-profit earth muffin type, helping homeless animals and starving children, and the other is hungrily climbing the corporate ladder, enjoying bonuses, perks and kickbacks. Maybe.

Yeah, that's it. An irreversible clash of ideologies. Obama vs. the MILF.

At least, that's the drama I fabricated for these two fictional characters, based off of 9 words of text and one acronym mistakenly sent to approximately one square inch of the wrong cell phone screen at 1:27 AM this morning.

Babe.

Feed me, Seymour

2008-08-11T17:19:00.000-07:00

Zucchini grows in the night. Or, to bastardize/paraphrase a John Lennon quote (may the man rest in peace), "Zucchini is what happens when you're busy doing other things."

I planted 5 seeds--one each--in those little net-wrapped peat plugs a few months back; all of them sprouted, but I selected the 3 hardiest plants to transfer to the ground. I've never grown zucchini before; pumpkins, yes. Once, as a kid, as a sort of summertime experiment. You know the story--stick a few seeds in the ground, water once in a while, long-assed vines begin to travel hither & yon, and--bam! A few big pumpkins, just in time for Halloween carving.

So that, really, was the extent of my veggie-growing experience. This year, however, my roommate expressed that he wanted to start a garden, so we did. I requested zucchini.

I was warned.

Run, is what they all said. Very fast. And far.

I scoffed. Good Lord, it's a plant, after all. How much damage can zucchini do? Besides, I adore zucchini. I eat it every summer until I truly cannot stand the thought of ingesting even ONE MORE freakin' squash. Until the next year rolls around, at which point the addictive cycle renews itself.

So. We currently have 3 enormous Audrey II-like zucchini plants securely rooted in their patch of organic soil, soaking up the full sun and every ounce of water they get. Each time I go 'round back to check them, they've produced more. Now, I make every attempt to extract the zucchini when it's still small and innocent and pluckable and artily-fartily teeny-weeny-gourmet and easy to cope with, but regrettably, I've neglected this for a few days and just this afternoon, was met with some seriously overlooked Monster Zucchinis that more or less resemble the Hindenburg.

They are not zucchinis, they are naturally-occurring dirigibles. Yes, I know. I was warned.

And I laughed at them all. They're zucchini, I said. Surely, you jest.

Ah, but no.

Clippers poised, I went in.

I wrestled the thick, viney stalks and clipped them off, all of those two-days-neglected monstrosities, and brought them in. They're draining now, rinsed, in the sink; I just sauteed a few, chopped, with a little olive oil, salt, pepper & garlic and had it for dinner. But I barely made a dent in this latest harvest.

So right now, I'm on the sofa, recovering. And, when I recover enough energy to do so, I'm gonna hunt down a recipe for zucchini bread.

Feed me, Seymour
Feed me all night long
'Cause if you feed me, Seymour
I can grow up big and strong...

So close, I can almost touch it.....

2008-08-02T19:10:00.000-07:00

Time to post. Time to let y'all know what's been going on with this chick.

Time to reveal the Semi-Big Plan I have for a second blog. To wit:

I'm very nearly--nearly--finished with my Life Coach training. Next Sunday, August 10th, is the last day. And my cohort is gonna par-tay. And drink wine and reminisce and try not to worry about Next Steps, of which--speaking for myself--there will be many. Like a business name. And an eventual business niche, though I'm not especially concerned with that at the moment (I think it'll evolve organically, depending on who I coach and what they bring to me to explore). And marketing tactics, and more articles to write and books to read and groups to attend and deadlines for this and that and an occasional conference or two, now and again. Or maybe more often than that. Depending.

And part of me feels like I'm being pulled along for one hell of a wild fantastic remarkable meaningful life-changing door-opening ride, and I'm hanging on by my fingernails, but I'm enjoying the hell out of it. In fact, my life is nothing like it was a year ago. I cannot emphasize
that enough--nothing. And I love it. Not because my life before--in Minneapolis--was so horrid, because it wasn't. It meant a lot to me to be there, to discover what I discovered about myself and my dormant-and-then-reawakened abilities. But I was just constantly aware as I was living it that it wasn't what I wanted until I died, to be blunt. I didn't want to stay there for the rest of my life, get married there, buy a house there...put down roots there. I did what I needed to do there, and then I was done. And I moved myself back here, back to Portland, and revved up my life in a whole different way, in a way I never could've been ready for previously. And now I am.

And I must be sending that Readiness Vibe out into the universe, because some good shit is bouncing back to me and the thing is, I'm noticing it. And appreciating it. And savoring it and just letting it glow on me, and in me, and around me, cause it feels so wickedly awesome. It sounds like I'm in love....and I guess I am, with what it is I'm doing. It's the coaching thang: there are very few as meaningful ways to spend my waking hours than by facilitating someone else's innate ability to find their Own Best Answers. It's just so cool to be part of that.

And that's the locus of my Semi-Big Plan: I'm gonna start a dedicated Life Coaching blog. The Hen House will continue to be a reflection of my irreverent, stream-of-consciousness day-to-day ruminations, as it has right along (like, what is UP with all these emerging X-Files? The "Montauk Monster?" Flesh-eating dudes hacking heads off on bus rides across Canada? Monkey-faced pigs? The mind boggles. But I digress.....) and that one will be about my own process as a Life Coach.

My own process. That's important to point out, because the work I do with my clients is confidential. But my own impressions of my own Life Coach journey is something I'm willing to share.....and so I will.

But first, I gotta finish. And next time I post--here, or there--I'll have "CPC" after my name.

Certified Professional (Life) Coach.

Sounds nice, don't it?

More notes from the hen house....

2008-06-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

Do you know how many chicken-themed t-shirts can be had off eBay?

A lot.

I want this one:
Problem is, the shirt itself is unisex and if you're a curvy gal like me, they kinda tend to bunch up above the hips (cut for those narrow-hipped, wide-chested dudes), or if you get them BIG, you end up looking like a low self-esteem schlub with a lot to hide beneath a billowing tent. I've had too much recovery to go that route, however.

Neither are good looks and are to be avoided as vehemently as the Republican convention, lutefisk, anything by Bananarama or people who seriously use the word "dealio."

Someday, however, I am certain I will have a chicken tee-shirt, or two or three, and I will wear them with pride and glee and heaps of self-satisfaction.

Peep.

Better late than never...

2008-06-02T19:47:00.001-07:00

...is what I always say.

Is my mantra.

Is, truly, how my generally in-many-ways late-bloomin' life has unfolded. Tonight is no exception.

I commute to and from work by bus and to pass the time (other than by staring slack-jawed out the window at the passing urban landscape since I'm tired BEFORE work begins and AFTER work ends), I usually stuff my ear buds into my ear canals and either listen to my mp3 player, or tune in the little radio it comes with and surf up and down the dial in search of an interesting news snippet or a decent song.

Recently, I've been hearing Blue Oyster Cult's (sorry, can't place the trademark umlaut over the "O") "Don't Fear the Reaper," got all into it (which only took about 30 years--it was released in 1976, to be exact--hence, the Late Bloomy-ness of it all) and just downloaded it for my continued listening pleasure.

It's all moodily existential in a collegiate emo-esque, my-parents-don't-understand-me-cause- I-am-brimming-with-ennui-and-read-Nietzsche/Plath/Sexton kind of way.

Personally, it makes me want to wear blowzy layered skirts of gauzy black fabric over torn fishnets with Doc Martens and bodices made of velveteen and wear my hair long and parted in the middle (this is sounding a bit goth, admittedly) and tattoo one of my boobs and wear too much black eyeliner and write lots of bad poetry and daydream about sex and straight razors (possibly together) and how nice it might feel to run my fingertips along the backs of the necks of all the equally tormented young dudes in my writing classes and convince everyone I know that no one--NO ONE--has ever felt love/pain/loss as deeply or purely or exquisitely as I have, ever, ever. Ever.

In the whole entire history of the world, from the very word go.

That kind of thing.

Luckily I'm well out of college, black looks terrible on me (and black eyeliner makes me look disconcertingly iron-deficient), I actually love my parents, and I don't daydream about sex and straight razors.

Well, not about straight razors, anyway.

Although, yes, I do find the backs of necks terribly sexy, I think Anne Sexton's poetry is sadly brilliant, and I do have a small tattoo, but it's not on my boob.

And I'm very content to listen to my thirty-years-too-late song on iTunes while I do the evening dishes.

And she ran to him/then they started to fly
They looked backward and said goodbye/she had become like they are
She had taken his hand/she had become like they are
Come on baby/don't fear the reaper....

All Work & No Play

2008-05-01T19:00:00.000-07:00

Apparently, he just couldn't hack it.

The goatee'd SNAG (Sensitive New Age Guy) who riskily participated in my chick-heavy Tribaret (see the earlier post) belly dance class was a no-show by week 2 of the new 6-week session. Now, typically by the second week or so the class thins by roughly half, so his lack of physical presence was not completely unusual, though being that he was the only male person in attendance his absence was not only glaringly obvious, it personally provoked some wild speculation on my part.
It could merely be, of course, that something untoward occurred in the interim, such as a pulled groin muscle or a blown Subaru gasket or, God forbid, the unintentional ingestion of some manner of animal product which commenced to wreak bloody (perhaps literally) havoc on his pristine Vegan innards. Just something that might throw a major wrench into the belly dancing aspirations of a contentedly in-touch kinda guy.
Admittedly, and in spite of my personal observation that beholding his attempt at Snake Arms invoked more of a Joe-Cocker-onstage-at-Woodstock rather than a fluid, seductive, Dance-of-the-Seven-Veils kind of sensation, I'll never truly know, and like I said, this is all, of course, just wild speculation on my part anyway.
Of course, it's also feasible that he's not actually vegan, and maybe he didn't pull a groin muscle, nor does he drive a Subaru and maybe, in fact, maybe he's actually planning to show up next week, and the week after that, and the week after that for a little Yoni-vs.-Lingam dance-off.
Just maybe.
Though I wouldn't bet my taqsim on it.

Callipygous

2008-04-21T19:54:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know, 'tis been a while since my last post, and those who know me know why so I'm not even gonna bother with long woeful excuses. Here I am; now let's get to it.
I've been taking belly dance lessons since January of this year; it was a New Year's resolution--that I'd do something I've always wanted to do that intimidated me, that I'd take a dance class again (I love dancing--tap, jazz, even ballet in college, and of course, tapping my Inner Diva for an occasional spin on a downtown dance club floor), that I'd partake in forms of exercise that felt joyous and enlivening and celebratory, not punitive and chore-like, that I'd begin--after about 4 decades of constant berating, self-consciousness, dieting, restricting, resentment, all of it, to love my wonderful, powerful, curvaceous 42-year-old-female body the way I've never allowed myself to love it previously, and my outlet for all of this would be in a dance studio that offered "Tribaret" (Tribal/Caberet) belly dancing.
I'm happy to report I'm still showing up every Sunday at 5 PM (a successful resolution, I'd say!) and loving it, even though my Life Coach training schedule doesn't allow me to attend as regularly as I'd like to these days. But at this point, I've got some terrific basics pretty firmly under my belt, so missing a week here or there is no big deal--it's easy to pick up where I've left off.
We always start out with shimmies to loosen up our bodies (after which she leads us through some amazing pretzel-like yoga stretches) and we practiced a medium shimmy that really made the collective female flesh jiggle. It's fun to do, and her directions to us were to not clench our buttocks at all, cause we were supposed to feel that flesh flapping. Really. Flapping.
Is the word she used.
And I flapped. Indeed, I have a lot to flap. But the effect isn't unseemly or sloppy at all; it's exciting and kinda sexy to behold, even though it feels like you might shake your ass right off your bones.
Unless of course you're a guy, with no hips, no body fat, and nothing at all to flap--at least as far as butts are concerned.
Now, this being the hip West Coast and a mecca for equal-opportunity self-aware gender-neutral co-existent experiences, there was, in fact, a long-hair-parted-in-the-middle Portland Hipster guy with a goatee and chi pants and a long-sleeved tie-dyed shirt (he was apparently unclear on the "expose your midriff" concept) at Sunday's class, trying mightily to tap his Inner Goddess (bless his soul) and keep up with the ladies, but it didn't seem to be working much in his favor. Apparently deeply committed (judging by the deep furrow in his brow) he'd follow along for a while, piston his knees, thrust too much or too little, attempt a few hip shimmies, then shake it all off miserably and huff loudly, toss his hair around a bit and then try all over again.
I mean, seriously: A for effort. But my observations--and there were numerous--around this teeny bit of Belly Dancing Gender Fucking (let's not get into men who actually belly dance in other parts of the world; I mean, great, good, wonderful, zowie, but right now, I'm talking about one singular Sensitive New Age West Coast Guy) were that he was painfully straight, terribly inflexible, deeply mystified, and nowhere near ready to dump his Anglo surname for a singular belly dance performance moniker such as Parvana, the butterfly.
But, you know, good for him. Good for him for trying it out. He was still vertical when class ended, which was a terribly hopeful sign. Perhaps he'll be back next week; it remains, of course, to be seen, and the rest of the class--all women--didn't seem to mind his presence one bit. In fact, I sympathized quietly on his behalf; a roomful of deeply in-touch women is not easy to be a part of (take it from one who knows). That is some serious yoni-centric energy bouncing around (literally) and it could be dangerous for a stray male.
Wisely, he stayed far away from the harem-esque dressing room.
But otherwise, he held his own.
Even though he didn't flap.

Things that make you go hmmmmmmm.......

2008-03-02T10:36:00.000-08:00

I attempted to go dancing last night. I love dancing, many kinds, although I'm referring in this instance specifically to club dancing; it brings out my inner (maybe not so inner) Diva and allows me to have my own little performance--even for just myself--over on a corner of the dance floor.

Little did I know it was 80's night at the club, and it all went to hell, quickly.

Now, I have a moderate fondness for 80's music (although it amazes me that, already, lots of the old videos and songs that informed my teen years are now referred to as "retro" or "classic" or "vintage," which makes me feel like a wizened old 20's flapper spinning prohibition yarns, or a stern, aged face in a sepia photograph, or, shit, a Model T Ford) but I can't dance to a lot of it.

Obviously, clubs have taken this into consideration, so they're not playing the actual old "vintage" radio versions of the songs themselves to which I dreamed and hummed and bopped along in the safety of my teenaged bedroom, no. They're spinning 80's chestnuts like John Cougar Mellencamp's "Jack & Diane" but remixed and set to a techno beat.

I cannot begin to emphasize enough just how wrong, in so many ways, this is.

I am aware that clubs love putting everything under the sun to a techno beat and calling it dance music (hello, Titanic.) If there's a beat, there's sure to be an ass--or two or three (goes the thinking, as there were last night a few enthusiastic straight couples working out what is probably an otherwise seriously repressed and rather vanilla eros in front of God and the DJ and a bunch of Queens, since this was, after all, a gay club) out on the dance floor.

This get-'em-out-there theory, in all its lame glory, failed last night.

I was one less ass out on the dance floor. I couldn't--wouldn't--move it to a badly misguided remix of Heart's "Barracuda." And, I mean, it's a hard song for me to like in the first place, although I don't dislike Heart at all; I'm impressed by the Wilson sisters and their kick-ass vocals. But remixed? So, so wrong.

So there I sat on the periphery of the dance floor at a table with a couple other similarly unimpressed friends listening to one uninspiring 80's remix after another. Even Dee-Lite wasn't enough to coax the Diva out, so we finally ditched the scene and, channeling my best Liza Minnelli, dropped in on the Portland Gay Men's Chorus cast party which was happening at a restaurant across the street.

If there was a positive outcome to all of this, it's that I downloaded the Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love" the next morning. Not cause--blessedly--this one had been set to a dance beat, but because we'd heard it earlier while eating sushi, and I remembered that--vintage or not--I like it.

My Funny Valentine

2008-02-14T17:42:00.001-08:00

I just had to share a few really funky virtual valentines I received today.

This one's from a friend in Seattle (a fellow Greener, actually) who recently adopted this adorable Corgi mix. I bring you "Cassie":

And then this touch of irreverence from a Minnesota buddy:

And this, from my bro':

There's a canine-ish theme here, as well as the touch o' cheekiness. All facets of me. I'm feelin' the love!

Big Leaps & Deep Ahhhhhhs

2008-02-08T12:02:00.000-08:00

The time is nigh; Life Coach training approacheth.

It starts Friday afternoon, March 14th and goes through Sunday evening, March 16th. This is the first of six courses; we take one weekend-long course once per month for six months, and they are:

Personal Mastery
Systems I
Systems II
Process I
Process II
Flow

Graduation requirements are as follows:

*Attend 100% of program hours (125 hours of coach-specific training);
*Provide 16 hours of peer coaching services (8 hours as a coach, 8 as a client);
*Pass the oral exam (passing grade greater than 75%);
*Pass the written exam (also greater than 75%);
*Attend 4 hours of after-hours in-person practice sessions

There is an additional certification process through ICF (International Coach Federation) which is optional and comes later; however, it's better--and more legitimizing--to be ICF certified, which is my plan, as is joining the Northwest Coaches Association (good for networking/shoulder-rubbing, etc.)

Each piece of this journey requires one focused step at a time, or I'd get utterly overwhelmed. But I'm totally excited, and I filled out my application today, which felt momentous. When I get my tax refund, a portion of that will go to the application fee, and the rest will be put into savings....for future payments toward my training. It's all sitting in a neat & tidy pile, waiting to be copied off and dropped in the mail. And since it's such a small program, the application is pretty simple; it's mostly just a placeholder. I've met the woman--a totally animated ball of fire--who runs the program and have spoken with her over the phone; she's great at getting people (me!) to focus, a great energizer and a great motivator. Well, she's a successful working coach, so she should be all of those things....

So that's that. More as it happens with my exciting career preparations!

As for the "Deep Aaaaahhhhhh's.....," that's how it feels when I dunk my hands into the fragrant, warm, melted, soothing paraffin wax bath I was given (or "Paraffin Spa") for Christmas by a friend's mom--one of these initially curious, semi-random gifts I'd never think of purchasing for myself yet find myself absolutely ENAMORED of and loving and totally blissed-out by and completely thankful for (how's that for a preposition-rich sentence?)

It was given to me to soothe my arthritic hands (something my poor joints developed the last few Winters I was living in Minnesota) and soothe it does, not to mention soften and generally beautify (I've always maintained a certain level of Cuticle Vanity, I admit). I can't wait to try different kinds of scented wax--lavender, peach, whatever....I've read there's even a chocolate wax on the market, somewhere. Now THAT would be something!

Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...........................

Back on Track

2008-02-06T15:05:00.000-08:00

God is home; we are in the far country. --Meister Eckhart

I have been in the far country for most of January. My impatience brought me there, and when I'd had enough of stringing myself out, I packed up and came right back home.

I was chasing after something I thought I wanted, or needed, or both, and when I finally woke up again, I realized neither was true; I had my chosen path for the next year or so: Life Coach training (and then indefinitely thereafter, practicing as a Life Coach). However, I am sometimes easily distracted, and so found myself distracted by the possibility of a job with a large, local Episcopal Cathedral. When I initially queried them, I was met with an enthusiastic "Yes, please forward your resume! I am really looking forward to speaking with you!" And speak we did, on three separate occasions and with a different panel of people each time.

So I cleared my temp schedule. I was keeping my eyes on the prize, I told myself, and couldn't be distracted by short-term nonsense. But day after day, the prize never materialized; key decision makers at the cathedral were perpetually gone, and a hiring consensus was not being reached.

I admit, I can be impatient, and I often criticize timelines that aren't my own (hell, I criticize a lot of things that aren't my own, something I continue to address in Recovery, but I digress.....) I was doing that here, but the lack of a concrete decision also provided me with a lot of time to think. The last communication I received, via email--after the third interview, when all pertinent ground had been covered and more could not be said and I allowed myself the brief fantasy that the hiring manager would turn to me, smiling, and say, "You've got it!," thus making my weekend blissfully happy--was that everyone at the Cathedral was being "prayerfully discerning." I'd been told I was the final of two candidates, that I was at the top, still on the radar; I'd been hugged by one of the hiring managers, a warm gesture I interpreted as a very positive sign; and I'd been winked at by another person on the second panel who said to me in passing, "I think we'll be seeing you again."

All roads pointed to a forthcoming offer. And while I waited--and waited-- for that offer, I regretfully turned down other work. Then developed a bad case of insomnia and an anxious stomach. And started crying a lot and generally being a pain-in-the-ass around my roommate, who did his best to talk me off the curtains. I meditated, and it didn't help. I hiked for miles. I ate chocolate. Desperate for a mood-lifter, I snuggled on the sofa and watched "Miss Congeniality" (it helped). Desperate for sleep, I stayed in bed all of last Saturday and read. This emotional investment was not good. In fact, it was becoming utterly dysfunctional.

I felt like my life was not only off-track, it was completely on hold, and I wondered if all this trauma-drama was worth it. As a former self-professed Drama Addict, I do my best to avoid drama now; I don't want it or need it to remind myself that, yes, I am alive. But apparently, I am still an expert at creating it. Buckets-full.

And then I got this gentle reminder from my future Life Coach teacher:

".....remember your path. The force is with you....."

I'd come to Portland to be a Life Coach, NOT to throw in with an indecisive non-profit. My heart is in non-profits; I believe in them, just as I believe in public schools....but ironically, my experiences at both have never, ever been positive. Still--bafflingly--I persist in my thinking.

I knew, finally, what I had to do. I wrote the hiring manager a kind, thoughtful email full of thanks and gratitude, letting her know that I, too, had been prayerfully (more like restlessly) discerning, and that I'd be withdrawing from their consideration. I ended up making my own decision, and once I hit send, it was like a huge burden lifted instantly. It felt right.

I let my temp agencies know I was free and willing. I am planning to send in my application for the Spring Life Coach program ASAP, which starts mid-March. I am sleeping better, and my stomach has calmed down. I am no longer anxious, nor am I morose. My roommate--who heard the brunt of my anxiety around all of this--was disappointed that I'd made the choice I made and wondered why, after all the spent energy and the positive feedback, I didn't continue to just stick it out, to wait.

Because I've been waiting, I said. Dormant, almost. Frozen. By choice, yes, but....I lost my focus, and it began to gnaw at me. I gave them what they wanted, and in the end, they still needed to pray....and I finally needed to move on. It was okay that he was disappointed; I'm entitled to change my mind, even if my choices seem to not make sense to those around me, even if I risk disapproval by doing so, even if I still develop those old, unnecessary feelings of letting someone else down.

Most of the other people around me, friends and family who'd also heard me question and analyze and complain and wonder, were happy that a decision--any decision--had been made.

As am I. I am, contentedly, back on track. I've learned a few things about expectations and impatience and surrender. And I am no longer, in this instance, in the far country.

Welcome home.

Sorry, Wrong Number

2008-01-30T22:05:00.000-08:00

Someone in the universe thinks I am someone who I am not.

When I got home from my belly dance class last Sunday I glanced at my cell phone, which I'd left charging on the table and saw that I'd gotten a text message.

It read:

"R U having fun with Aunt Jackie? Lv u, Miss Lou."

Now, I don't know a "Miss Lou," (which sounds like a character from Faulkner, or maybe Tennessee Williams) nor do I have an "Aunt Jackie." In fact, this person's benign, thoughtful, totally random little inquiry--all written in uber-modern Prince & the Revolution text-y shorthand--had been, sadly, lost on the absolute wrong recipient.

I stared at it. I wrinkled my brow. I felt, briefly, invaded by strangers, and then suddenly didn't. I felt a twinge of concern that the "U" in question would not be able to let Miss Lou know that things were just swell with Aunt Jackie (I wondered if it was a slumber party and pictured sheets of cookies being baked, toes being painted candy-apple red, questions about sex and icky periods and deep kissing being bandied about) because the message had been routed to an entirely other phone. I tried to picture Aunt Jackie, Miss Lou, and "U," and various characters popped into my mind's eye, including a gaggle of enormous drag queens in curlers and housecoats, ala Divine in just about any John Waters movie.

Well, it's a possibility. You know.

And then I decided I needed to take a bath and go to bed and stop cogitating on a random wrong number. A random wrong text.

So I deleted it.

The Kindness of Strangers

2008-01-29T19:06:00.000-08:00

So there I stood, waiting in the bus shelter down by the dollar store on Broadway near Lloyd Center, making idle chit-chat with a woman in a wheel chair who was waiting for a different bus than I.

Or rather, she was making idle chit-chat with me; I don't often strike up conversations with strangers first, but will (most of the time) engage them to pass the time, especially if they seem harmless and not particularly annoying.

I rarely spoke to her face-on, since her chair was turned towards traffic; I mostly saw a quarter-view of her cheek, her right ear, her wiry brown hair, her eye. She was from Tillamook, she said, speaking her words into the damp air that hung between us, and had spent the last 3 days in the Big City of Portland and was good and ready to get home to her cranky husband (her description) and her cozy wood-burning stove; I understood that woodsmoke was a smell she loved, and currently missed. I listened, nodded, and uttered a few words of polite affirmation to this complete stranger, speaking mostly to the back edge of her right ear.

And then, just as her bus approached, she turned her head around to look up at me, and I politely returned her gaze and noticed as I did so that her mostly bored, placid expression changed dramatically. Her eyebrows arced up as her jaw dropped open, giving her a look of utter surprise. She cocked her head slightly, still staring up at me, and said, with a note of awe, "You have beautiful teeth....are those yours?"

For most of my life, I have been fairly self-conscious about my teeth; while they are all uniform and pretty straight and, thankfully, very white, they are large, and I've never worn braces to correct my overbite; I realize, in sharing this description, that I probably sound as if I look like one of those Hillbilly hand puppets with the big crooked overbitten teeth, which would be not only an extreme, but an inaccurate embellishment. And, while I do like my big grin, I don't spend a lot of time actually talking about it.

But now I had a complete stranger gazing up at my chops in wonderment, and I was ridiculously, sweetly flattered. I had to laugh, bearing my teeth even more, and just before she boarded her bus I assured her that they were, indeed, all real and all my own.

And then I thanked her for the compliment and she was gone, headed back to wherever it is her cranky husband would meet her to take her back to the cool ocean mist of Tillamook and the good-smelling wood-burning stove, and I, in turn, boarded my own bus, me and my big, real, impressive teeth, and headed home.

Oldies but Goodies

2008-01-24T15:50:00.000-08:00

I have recently been on a vintage Sesame Street kick; I'm not sure why, exactly.

Kinda like when you get a "worm" stuck in your brain--a song snippet that replays itself, over and over, which you find yourself compulsively singing and humming while going about your daily business of toothbrushing, dishwashing, cooking, sitting idly on the bus, whatever, wherever.

And there it remains, like a nervous tic, stubbornly, fixedly, and you simply cannot rest until you find the full version of the song and then replay that, over and over and over, infusing your psyche and satisfying the annoying, cloying appetite of the "worm" that squiggled its way into your brain and planted the song snippet in the first place.

It's a little addictive, a little obsessive, a little repetitive; yes, yes, yes.

And this is the state I have been in over certain vintage Sesame Street animations that I can recall from my kid-hood, specifically, an orange that rolls itself out of a countertop fruit bowl and sings the "Habanera" from Bizet's "Carmen....

...and a many-armed yogi that sits in full lotus and counts to 20 accompanied by sitar music & a woman's voice, which is a total, utter and complete "Hey, kids! It's LSD!" kick-ass psychadelic mind-trip (good for the commune-reared child or, hell, just the Berkeley-reared child, like me).

And now, I can say with great relief that this particular gnawing worm has been satisfied, thanks to my roommate (who initially found the singing orange for me) and YouTube.

The Wisdom to Know the Difference...

2008-01-22T21:09:00.000-08:00

Okay.

I rarely write about pop culture on this blog; I mean, I rarely write about CELEBRITIES on this blog, more precisely.

But I think the news of Heath Ledger's untimely and way-too-young sleeping pill O.D. (and whatever else) at the tender age of 28 is just tragic. He had his whole life ahead of him....

This on the heels of coming back from an Al-Anon meeting today and hearing some extremely heartbreaking stories mingled with Experience, Strength and Hope....yet, people do go on.

Still, I really feel that we have a profound problem in this country with substance abuse and untreated depression and other mental illness. Look at poor Brit, that bi-polar addict surrounded by enablers. She'll self-destruct, too.

Sad, and so unnecessary.....

Inner Crunch

2008-01-18T20:27:00.000-08:00

I am just a wee bit crunchy, and I admit it.

One evening last week, a friend of mine and I strolled past an imports shop in Portland's old town, and I pointed to the funky--I don't know, Nepalese? Bolivian?--knit caps, the cute, whimsical kind with ear flaps that tie beneath your chin (which are typically left to dangle) with a pointy crown topped by a tassel, and I commented that perhaps I should buy one cause they were so cute.

In a crunchy sorta way.

To which he replied with just the merest hint of bemused pain, "Don't be that girl."

And I had to laugh, cause I knew exactly what he meant. I went to Evergreen with a LOT of That Girl, the blowzy, make-up free, patchouli-scented Hippie Maidens that stared, grinning and blank-eyed and probably tripping or at least terribly iron-deficient in their Indian skirts and trail boots and leggings and bulky Salvadoran-knit sweaters and long, straight hair, exuding their earthy, I-run-naked-through-the-woods-and-use-reusable-menstrual-pads sexuality, and the men they attracted--while also classified as "hippies" or, at least "hippie-ish" or "hippie-wannabes" or probably more appropriately, "nouveau hippies" 'cause, in spite of the let-me-experience-poverty metaphors many of them adopted, still hauled ass to various Rainbow Gatherings or Phish concerts in the brand-spankin'-new Honda Accords bought for them by Mumsy and Daddums, but I digress--were generally totally cute and so, I admit, I wanted to be That Girl for a while, I wanted (I thought) that whole dreamy metaphor, if only cause it was, it seemed, an idealized externalization of whatever it is I thought I valued and wanted to become.

Luckily, people grow up.

I'm not and never could be a true Hippie Maiden, in spite of my Berkeley pedigree; I can't wear all those bulky layers and the idea of washable menstrual pads totally grosses me out, no matter HOW down with Reduce, Reuse, Recycle I am. And I've gotten my borderline anemia under control.

But this is not to say that I'm not, deep down, That Girl.

Yes, I wear make-up, my favorite scent is a perfume by Carolina Herrera, I can actually walk in heels higher than an inch, I love costume jewelry, and my alter-ego is a drag queen.

But I also wear sensible shoes, I've baked my own bread, I was raised Unitarian, and when I get lazy I let my leg hair grow. Acupuncture needles have pierced my skin, numerous times. I meditate on a pillow in front of a candle in the lotus position. And I've referred to my cat as "My Familiar."

Oh, yes. I have.

Add to this, I grow alfalfa sprouts on the kitchen drainboard, in my new-ish "Sprout Master Triple Mini" sprouter I bought with an Amazon gift card I got for my birthday, along with 2 pounds of organic seeds.

I think this brings me back to my Berkeley childhood; my mother used to grow sprouts, but she used a huge Co-op Old Fashioned Peanut Butter Jar, rinsed and shaken daily until the seeds sprouted. Mine is a bit easier, and the sprouts are delicious--I stuff them into quesadillas or pile them on sandwiches, the same way you'd use lettuce.

So, okay, maybe NOT so deep down.

So, while I think I can probably refrain from buying an imported cap with ear flaps and a tassel, I'm never giving up my sprouter.

I'm on batch #3.

Peace out.

Even MORE Namaste...

2008-01-09T21:03:00.000-08:00

I blogged so enthusiastically about my first belly dance class last Sunday (I have been practicing the bun isolations while doing dishes--seriously, individually clenching first one buttock and then the other is harder than it might seem....) that Birdnerd expressed an interest in doing it, too, and will now be joining me starting this Sunday!

We've got our respective yoga pants and our spaghetti-strapped tank tops (and I've been searching out a spangly hip scarf to shake, as well), and I gave her a lesson last night after dinner in isolations and posture and relaxed knees and all that.

We also indulged in a short-lived bout of forwarding bellydance mpegs from YouTube to one another, but she prefers the more traditional form whereas I dig the Tribal/Gothic/Fusion sort...(my point being that the traditional sort reminded me of every Berkeley art fair I'd ever attended as a kid; not a bad thing, necessarily, but....)

And, when I finally get the Belly Dance DVD from Amazon that was recommended by the instructor, perhaps she and I will have an occasional mid-week practice session....

Will there be a recital in the future?

Who knows!

Fun!

A Little Namaste

2008-01-06T18:43:00.000-08:00

It has occurred to me--as a burgeoning Life Coach--that, in order to coach well, I must practice what I preach. I can't encourage my clients to grab the world by the balls, so to speak, if I'm unwilling to do so; how hypocritical would that be? I mean, "Go and try what scares/thrills/titillates you the most, while I sit back, hide out, and merely TELL you to try what scares/thrills/titillates you the most--oh, and that'll be $65 for the privilege......?"

Hm. That doesn't work for me, and I doubt it'd fly with my clients. I need to practice what I preach, and tonight, I did that.

Belly dancing falls into the want-to-try category for me, and I've wanted to take it for a long time. In college, I took jazz, modern & ballet. In high school, it was tap. I love moving my body, although I've often let my own biases stop me. This, I decided, would be another (forgive me) EMPOWERING step toward eradicating my negative body image issues.

So tonight, I had my first class. The instructor was great, tiny, beautiful, and completely supportive and encouraging to her room full of beginners. The class itself consisted of about 10 or 12 women of all ages, shapes and sizes, and we just let it all hang out. I decided that, if I was gonna do this thing, I was gonna commit fully, me and my belly--and arms, ass and tits, because there are a LOT of isolations in belly dance and each area kinda snaps. The most difficult part, I can see, is putting it all together.

Trust me: it only LOOKS easy.

And it's so, so, SO fun, I cannot begin to TELL you. The entire studio was an homage to femininity (right down to the complimentary menstrual pads and tampons tucked on a shelf in the dressing room next to the incense burner), and even though I walked in solo and didn't know a soul--something that is very, very difficult for me because I can be shy and self-conscious--I felt very comfortable as soon as I opened the door. The lighting is soft, the costumes are beautiful--I wanted to buy some better, more elaborate dance clothes. And I will.

And the music was wonderful, too. I really wanted to cut loose and work it, because it's quite rhythmic, but of course, I had to follow the instructor closely. I'm sure my arms are going to be sore as hell tomorrow morning, but it'll be a good sore.

And, wow. I've never done butt isolations before, one cheek at a time. Wild.

So there it is. I can put a check mark by that item on my list of goals for 2008, although I'm by no means finished; I bought a card of 12 classes for a ridiculously low price. Personally, my goal is to perform, and once you're at an advanced level, there are many opportunities for performance.

I followed through. I can be afraid, notice it, and go do "it" anyway, whatever "it" happens to be. I doubt fear will ever NOT be a part of new experiences for me....but it certainly doesn't have to STOP me.

So that's what I can share with my clients: that I know walking the walk can be intimidating and scary, but it's a lot more gratifying than merely talking the talk, which is just that: talk.

I can't wait for NEXT Sunday!

Namaste....

Glam Cats

2008-01-06T13:49:00.000-08:00

Check out this page, sent to me by a friend.

For the Glam-Diva-Drag-Queen-Zsa-Zsa kitty in your life, or someone else's.

Enjoy.

I {Heart} Goodwill

2008-01-05T23:12:00.000-08:00

I'm talking about the store, not the omnipresent disposition most commonly associated with Christmas.

Now, I'm sure some people shudder at the very thought of buying or possessing used (or "pre-owned," to get lofty about it) items, but I don't. Goodwill is, to me, a delicious treat of a store full of serendipity, cause I just never know what I might come across.

The best Goodwill stores in the entire universe are, I'm pretty sure, right here in Portland, and I missed them terribly when I lived in Minnesota. They had a few anemic resale shops there, but they were hard to get to (generally somewhere in the 'hood), small and, I think, not even Goodwill. Maybe Salvation Army. But there wasn't the same Resale Romance there like there is here. I think we're proud of our Goodwill stores here, and rightly so: in a nutshell, they rock.
I mean, clean public bathrooms--AND a cafe? And really decent shit? For real.

And it appeals to my need to live more simply and to search out treasure, which I love doing. I love rummaging around in other people's stuff (literally AND metaphorically, actually), especially their cast-offs. It seems voyeuristic to me, but legitimately so. Everything has a story--as a gift, an impulse buy, a souvenir, a thoughtful purchase, something. And then these same items--some of them perhaps once highly esteemed--were eventually discarded, shunted aside as useless.

And really, there's nothing better to do on a rainy day, of which we have many in Portland, which is perhaps why Goodwill does so well here. I had the pleasure of wandering around an enormous Goodwill this evening with a friend, and here are the items I came away with:

A great lighter-weight Columbia Sportswear women's anorak, practically new, in some of my favorite shades of light blue, $24.99. I've been needing one for a long time; in fact, I really could've used it for my recent New Year's Day birding trip.

Cutie ceramic cat food dish with little paw prints all around it, .99. Time to graduate the tabby from her purple plastic bowl to something a little nicer...

Box of large cat pan liners, .99 (total steal, since these are like four bucks retail; cat shit maintenance can be a costly proposition....)

3 smaller-sized nesting stainless steel mixing bowls (this size is handy for, say, whipping up eggs or making frosting or holding a bunch of grated cheese), $1.99 for all 3 (Williams-Sonoma, BITE me....)

Awesome and BIG stainless-steel insulated to-go coffee cup, obviously unused cause the lid was sorta dusty (needed for rainy commute days), .99.

Grand total: $29.95.

If the definition of neurosis is the inability to accept ambiguity, then wandering the tchatchke-stuffed aisles of Goodwill is one area of my life where I am, blessedly, NOT neurotic; ambiguity, in this circumstance, is part of the fun.

Or as the saying goes, One person's trash is another person's treasure.

I'm all into it.

Another Auld Lang Syne

2008-01-03T16:32:00.000-08:00

So:

This is the third time I've edited this particular New Year's post. I started one, got too tired, then saved it. I revised it and got all philosophical and existential and navel-gaze-y and all this shit, and then saved that; now I'm back with revision #3, having deleted most everything I'd written before, all this sentimental pap about the hopefulness of a new year and how bloodless and fresh and unblemished it all seems and how excited everyone is to let the days and weeks and months unfold until we find ourselves dragging through December and wiping our brows with exhausted relief the following January 1st that ANOTHER year has finally come and gone, and hoo-boy, isn't this NEW year gonna be SO much BETTER!

Ah, the return of Caitlin Cynicism!

Okay, okay, I'm actually really glad it's 2008 and I have some new things on my own plate to look forward to and I'm really not a Grinch at heart, I swear it. Just a bit of residual grumpiness today, for no real reason.

Chalk it up to my period, thanks. Or the fact that I went to an Al-Anon meeting today and even though--most of the time--I leave feeling refreshingly re-grounded and relevant and completely able to cope with life, I left today instead having wanted to bitch-slap pretty much everyone who spoke because they seemed annoyingly, well, neurotic and self-righteous and just so pathetically sorry for themselves, mostly young women who blathered on, one after the other, and all in that "You Oughta Know" Alanis Morrisette vein of angry you-done-me-wrong-and-I-WILL-tell-all bitched-out chickie narcissism which I simply cannot stand (as if you couldn't tell).

Whew. Now, I realize the above rant is terrible PR for recovery, and I certainly don't mean it to be. Like I said, recovery has been an enormous gift in my life for so many reasons; but on the rare occasion, a meeting simply doesn't "take." Meetings are comprised of people, and sometimes I just don't like being around people very much. That's how it goes. There's always another meeting.

Just like there's always another year, which is the whole point of this blog entry. Here is my list of resolutions--or, preferably, goals, because "resolution" sounds too restrictive and diet-y to me--that I want to carry out for 2008, and which I initially jotted in my new Day Planner, which seemed as good a spot as any for jotting such things, being a calendar and all.

Without further ado:

~Continue to practice intuitive eating, because diets simply do not work. I've had what I consider to be moderately disordered/fixated/compulsive eating and a very strained relationship to food for a lot of my life and I blame the diet mentality for most of that. And I've known so many people (me included) who've gone off and on so many diets and they're still heavy...if they worked, it'd only have to be done once. And there wouldn't be so many of them out there!

~Stop what I call "elliptical thinking"--in other words, no more "Someday, I'll....." If I want to try something, the time, I'm seeing, is RIGHT NOW, not next week/year/decade. Belly Dance lessons falls into this category, and I plan to start this Sunday. With the future potential to perform. Now that would be something. Not to mention, fun as hell.

~Never say anything negative about my physical appearance again. I've done it for a lot of my 42 years, and have let up considerably in the past few years that I've been in recovery. There's no room for that sort of self-criticism in my life anymore. Enough. I am who I am, and have been for 4 decades.

~Eat more "power foods," such as salmon, kale, blueberries, legumes, and green tea (I had sauteed kale with dinner last night, and I'm drinking my daily mug of green tea as I write this).

~Walk 10,000 steps a day for at least 4 days a week. This is easiest when it begins staying lighter longer, since I hate exercising in the early morning. And in the rain. But this IS Portland, and you can't have everything.

~Date. For fun and practice. Without being neurotic. Maybe one of those 3-minute dating things again, since I don't cotton to the online approach. Or try some live singles things that seem interesting. Something.

~And, of course, continue on my religious/spiritual path, continue with my (occasionally vexing but mostly blessedly satisfying) journey of recovery, and prepare for Life Coach training.

There it is, in a nutshell. If I add too much more, I'll short out like an over-lit Christmas tree and won't do any of it. You know the saying: The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Life is all about first steps, many of them, over and over and over. Until we die.

So let me toast you and your own list of goals for 2008 with my anti-oxidant mug of green tea.

Happy New Year.

My Big Gay Life....

2007-12-17T22:05:00.000-08:00

...or, can a Real Girl be a Drag Queen....?

I'm thinking of using that title--or some variation thereof--for some sort of autobiographical (yet funny/comedic) solo performance-type theatrical piece yet-to-be-created.

I think--no, scratch that, I know--I need to create this, because first of all, if I don't some other straight-yet-fabulous chick will, and I'll be sitting there fuming and kicking myself, wondering why I didn't strike while the iron was hot and creatively exploit my status as a Fairy Princess (of which, I might add, I am fiercely proud).

I also--most importantly--have the experience of a Life Lived Gay. Or Gay-ish. Or Gay-like.

I mean, how many 42-year-old straight women celebrate their birthdays at a gay club (having eaten sushi beforehand with primarily gay attendees--to whom my father fondly refers as "my court") in honor of World AIDS Day, get spanked by one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and win a raffle prize consisting of a Christmas Crafts Kit and an Anal Bumper ass dildo?

Together?

And who is now considering joining the Sisters in some capacity as a helper (apparently, straight women can do this)--if only to put my helpless energy around HIV/AIDS to some practical, altruistic and pro-active/productive good use??

I recently saw "The Nutcracker" and during the "Mother Ginger" scene, my mind drifted briefly but deliciously to an idea for a fantasy sequence in the piece I want to write wherein I am Mother Ginger, my face made up in heavy drag, and when I open my voluminous skirts, instead of a gaggle of merry children, out run a gaggle of Queens clad in tight leather shorts, harnesses and Doc Martins.

It would be so, so appropriate, you do not even know.

Well, certainly some of you do.

I'm sure one could go to town with a Freudian Analysis of such a scene, or of the very desire to create such a scene. That's okay. I'm used to the perplexed sidelong glances and random lifted eyebrows associated with my Haggish proclivities (from both straights & gays), and I no longer feel any compunction to explain myself. I had a friend in Minnesota say to me, "I hate to break it to you, but you're really not a gay man. You're an ally, and we need our allies."

My dreams of Honorary Queen-dom were smashed to bits; I was heartbroken and crestfallen. All this time, I'd really thought of myself as a gay man in women's clothing. In so many ways.

But then, I came back to Portland, and just last night, one of my friends said he totally disagreed with that assessment. He said, "You're not an ally. You're family. You get it."

I was flattered and touched and took it for the truly heartfelt compliment I knew it to be. This particular friend of mine would not say anything merely for the sake of filling dead air. He is not a gushy, superficially complimentary sort; that's why it was so meaningful to hear.

So I think it's time this Real Girl writes a piece about her exploits as honorary "family."

Starring, of course, ME.

Work it.

Am I Blue

2007-12-16T19:26:00.000-08:00

I finally did it.

I finally got it about the phrase, "Someday, I'll.....[insert elliptical subject here, i.e., skydive/get a tattoo/find a date/write a novel/visit Tut's tomb/quit my job, etc...]" with the help of recovery, in that "some day" is not tomorrow, or next week, or next month or next year, but right now.

Cause who knows what might happen in 24 hours. So if all the elements are right, if the planets are aligned and God is smiling on you and the opportunity for whatever you've been craving yet studiously avoiding exists, right here, right now, in front of your face, then grab it. Do it. Go for it. Don't pussy-foot.

Carpe Diem. Seize the Day. You know.

Case in point: I've always wanted to see Blue Man Group. For years and years. In fact, I'd wanted to see them in Las Vegas when I turned 40, but for numerous reasons involving my lack of recovery and the assembled mostly-resistant attendees, that didn't happen.

I told myself that patience was a virtue, and in the interim, I contented myself with a Netflix DVD, though I get the distinct feeling a Blue Man performance would be vastly improved not viewed on a 13-inch color TV.

Recently, tickets went on sale for the Blue Man Group "How to be a Megastar" tour in January '08.

And I realized that here, in front of my face, at the Rose Garden Arena in Portland, Oregon, was my right now.

Birdnerd and I will be enjoying the Blueness together, and I can't wait. Patience may be a virtue, but the time is nigh. I get to party with The Men. Finally.

Carpe Diem.

A Can o' Whoop-Ass

2007-12-14T20:56:00.001-08:00

I have been dressed-down.

Dressed down in a way that was--oddly--flattering, because it had to do with putting out.

Words, that is.

The other night, over sushi, a friend of mine who reads this blog regularly looked at me over his relatively untouched mound of Volcano Roll and said, "Why do you have a blog?"

I fidgeted with a hangnail on my thumb.

I'm a writer. I have an MFA in playwriting. My family plays joyfully, indulgently, with words (and we all suck at math, badly). I have written plays, I have written short stories, I have written impassioned, emotional over-the-top fuck-you letters to former friends (many of which were used merely as therapy and were never sent, mind you, although the temptation to stamp 'em and drop 'em in the nearest mailbox was enormous). So it makes a certain sense that I have a blog. In hindsight, perhaps a better inquiry would've been, "How come you don't update your blog regularly?"

Well, oy vey. What can I say? Laziness? Some, but not just. Perhaps an overall momentary lack of creativity....it's like the whole Facebook thing: do I rate--and is it interesting, but really?--if I don't have, you know, 500 friends in 25 different networks and constantly post every little thought, twitch, burp, fart and bowel movement? I mean, must I? And does anyone really care that much?

Can there be such a thing as too much narcissism?

Well, you know. Yeah. But that's how this 24/7 online look-at-me-cause I-matter, Madonna-as-Eva-Perone-singing-You-Must-Love-Me low self-esteem-isolated-virtual-culture of ours works.

Anyway, it was weirdly flattering, albeit a mite confrontational, because the message was: my writing, my thoughts, my take on my life or life in general is actually interesting enough to check up on fairly regularly and I actually have fans and God knows one mustn't disappoint one's fans....

Okay, forget the navel-gazing deconstruction. Actually, I think it's cause I'm still recovering from having been spanked by a drag nun on my birthday. Ha.

Little bit o' this and a little bit o' that

2007-11-16T09:57:00.000-08:00

Okay, I haven't posted anything lately, so I've decided to post a summary of what's been filling my time these last few weeks.

Without further ado:

Went 'round & 'round with the DMV over a case of, well, not "mistaken identity," exactly, 'cause MY identity was never really in question....but they'd somehow managed, in the 6 years I've been gone from Portland, to mesh the record of one "Clayton Clifford Willis the 3rd" (obviously a GUY) with my OWN, thus indicating that I was a no-show in court for some vehicular infraction or other, which totally held up the issuance of my new Driver's License and necessitated my calling Salem headquarters a few times to rattle the cage (helpful hint: NEVER, never, NEVER stand around passively if some Civic office that has fucked up YOUR information says they'll be getting hold of someone to straighten things out, who will in turn be getting hold of YOU at some vague date in the future with the ostensible outcome. You will grow old and gray and will probably die waiting for some kind of resolution. Grow instant balls, pick up that phone, and DO IT YOURSELF. It works. Take it from me) and finally getting some guy on the phone named "Mike" who stated the obvious right off the bat (something that had eluded the lowly DMV employees just a week earlier) when he blurted incredulously, "Well, it's obvious to me this is just a mistake on your record! I mean--you're a woman! I'm talking to you and even I can tell that!"

People!! Give this man a RAISE!!

So after a bit more pontification around the obviousness of it all, "Mike" worked his magic and sent me back to the DMV and I marched up to the desk and said, "I spoke to 'Mike' in Salem regarding my file and I will be getting my license today, and if you can't help me, I would like to speak to 'Shelly' (the manager to whom "Mike" directed me in the event of further mishegaas) to get this rectified once and for all."

The clerk smiled weakly, acknowledged that "Mike" was, indeed a great guy, opened my record, and--voila! The line item was mysteriously GONE!!! Seems that Clayton's Court Crap went back to CLAYTON, and I left with my temporary license, which has a lovely new photo of me in my new short pixie cut with a discernible scowl on my face. But that's to be expected.

So that's obviously taken up a lot of mental energy, but now I've gotten the damned license and no longer feel like a Woman without a Country. Or at least, a State. Phew.

What else: Last Sunday, November 11, (after house and cat-sitting for my Antarctic-bound BirdNerd buddy), I went to a Life Coaching open house at the Baraka Institute, where I'll be training in the Spring. It was called "Friends Free" and it's really practice for the current term's burgeoning life coaches. I had a great coach and I found the experience to be very energetic, intentional, focused, supportive and FUN--nothing like my experience of therapy, which mostly involved me and a box of Kleenex hunched miserably on a sofa sobbing out my life's woes while an MFCC scratched notes on a pad and nodded appreciatively as I got deeper in touch with my angst.

Now, therapy has its place, certainly, but Life Coaching is not therapy. And thank God. It serves a different, more pro-active purpose.

The woman who runs the program has the best haircut, too, and fabulous highlights. Good hair is a good sign. She rocked. I'm excited for the Spring.

I've also been learning to crochet. My roommate's mom has been teaching me, and aside from the fact the tension in the yarn is a little all over the place, I've seriously learned to wield that crochet hook pretty well! I'm up to my 5th row of stitches. Not bad, not bad.

Signed up with two staffing agencies. Was sent on an interview with a hyper, egomaniacal photographer with a stuffy British assistant who had an amazing stick up her Anglophilic little ass (when I asked her how long she'd been in the position she was now leaving, and for which they were interviewing, her mouth twisted into a tight little smile and she replied elusively and with a touch of chill, "A while." You'd think I was talking smack about the Queen or asking if bangers & mash make her fart or something else really inappropriate. I mean, really.) The studios were quite cool, though, and if I'd been right out of college, perhaps I'd've taken it, because it's sort of "altie" and "hip," but the pay was shit and the photographer (a Spaniard who made a habit of grabbing the stiff li'l Brit) was WAY high maintenance. So I thought, naw. Scratch that. Back to the drawing board.

I've been going to Al-Anon (I love this group; this one guy piped up and quoted a line from a book called From Survival to Recovery, in which it says, "hurt people hurt people." Yes. I have been hurt by hurt people. It's very simple--deceptively so--and very true), which always helps to center me when I begin feeling crazy.

I went to church here for the first time a few Sundays ago, too--St. Michael & All Angels, the Episcopal church my roommate goes to. Very hip. I liked it.

I recently had the dubious honor of being the first straight chick in my friend's hot tub which, up until the moment my naked ass took the plunge, had only had men in it. This came about because a female friend of my friend's partner--who herself would've been the first Straight Chick in the Tub--was too self-conscious to go starkers, and the tub's owners have a "naked-only" policy. I mean, dig--this IS the west coast. Clothes are basically optional here. That's how it goes.

So the Diva reigns, again. Of course. :-)

I got dragged onto FaceBook by a friend who "invited" me to be a friend, and the rest is history. What more can I say. There I am.

I bought my plane ticket home for Christmas. El Cheapo! $138 R/T! I've missed this....beats nearly $400 out of MSP every year. And I finally get to meet Olivia, the latest Williams Family Pug.

I've been doing stomach crunches on my recently-purchased, big pink fitness ball. It makes core workouts way more effective. I love it. The cats were a bit agog as I inflated the thing and beat a hasty retreat from the living room, but they've finally gotten used to it.

I've been indulging in Season I of "Ugly Betty" with a friend who has it on DVD. I'm not even watching this season's episodes until these are finished. Then I'll watch them back-to-back on DVD. No commercials makes a HUGE difference!

Getting ready for Thanksgiving, which I'm planning to spend with BirdNerd, who will no doubt be needing to recover from her 2 weeks spent birding at the bottom of the globe. I'll cook, she'll blog or chill or something. Low-key. The best kind of Turkey Day. And a week after that, my 42nd birthday! I'm planning to gorge on sushi and then dance my ass off. I can still bust a move.

As a friend of mine in Minneapolis said, "We're only in our forties, we're not DEAD."

And finally, let me end with a culinary tip: take a Delicata squash, slice into 1/4-inch rings, scoop & discard the seeds and toss with olive oil, salt & pepper, then spread on a baking sheet and bake in a hot (maybe 375) oven till tender and the skin crisps. This is a winter squash with an edible skin and an INCREDIBLE flavor. It blows mere acorn squash out of the water!

Total yum. It's my new favorite.

Why I love Portland, Part I

2007-10-31T17:02:00.000-07:00

...or perhaps, why I love the West Coast, the first in what will no doubt be a series of short & quick observations.

I went to my Al-Anon meeting yesterday and, while the room was full and most of us sat around in folding chairs or on the sofa, one guy sat on the floor for the whole hour in the Lotus position. A chick came in a bit later and promptly kicked off her shoes and hoisted her ass into the Plow, audibly popping numerous formerly-compressed vertebrae in the process.

And none of us skipped a beat, involved as we were in sharing our respective Experience, Strength & Hope. I loved it.

Recovery, West Coast style.

Ice, Ice Baby

2007-10-25T15:24:00.000-07:00

So there I stood at the counter at Macy's in Lloyd Center, a pair of "Cuddle Duds" wicking long underwear bottoms in my hand.

I must digress a brief moment to share that this quest for long underwear (long johns, base layer, whatever) has been ridiculously difficult and drawn-out, probably because, at least to a certain extent, I've made it so myself, and I didn't need to.

I have come across other long underwear in the last week or so, but simply haven't liked them; I don't care for waffle-weave, I DO appreciate wicking, I don't want black, and I obviously need them to fit.

And while I value my warmth, comfort, and ability to be "wicked" of sweat, I don't really want to have to take out a sizable loan to achieve this state of outdoorsy coziness. Decent long underwear isn't cheap; it's ridiculous.

But, so: I found what I needed, and was paying for them at the counter when the formerly youthful and very skinny, frost-haired saleswoman who rang me up noticed that my driver's license still said Minnesota, and suddenly disclosed that she was from St. Paul (the "other" twin of the Twin Cities). It was enough, it seemed, to bond us as Sisters of the Far North; she chatted me up and tried to get me to open a Macy's account (apparently, I already have one, according to all three of my incredibly impressive, filled-with-green and zero negative ratings credit reports that I checked when I got home).

However, just moments before I proffered my license, she'd been doing the Tilda-Swinton-as-Ice-Queen-in-"Narnia"-routine when I initially accidentally pulled out NOT my debit card and driver's license simultaneously, but TWO debit cards instead (just a spacey moment on my part). I slapped my forehead and gave her my proper I.D.

But the license changed everything, and she went from pinched to pleasant (though artificially so) in less than 60 seconds.

As has been my ongoing issue with Minnesota, I experienced her new-found jocularity to be painfully superficial, at best; she had previously been ready to write me off completely, to draw & quarter me for my innocent oversight. But then, deciding I was somewhat tolerable because I'd spent some time in her former neck of the woods, she immediately backed off and offered me complimentary pink (in honor of breast cancer awareness) Frango mints and bottled water, and when the transaction was finished and I gathered my things to leave, she waved me off with a chirpy "We Minnesota girls have to stick together!"

I thought, no we sure DON'T. I'm not there anymore, I'm not and never was a Minnesotan, and I didn't just leave 'cause the weather dips to -40.

"Minnesota Nice" is not a concept I created, nor is it something I fabricated; it absolutely exists, and I experienced it in numerous ways, shapes and forms for six years. I found the instant changes in warmth and receptiveness, grim-to-grinning-in-60-seconds totally confusing and difficult to deal with among the natives. And I got a little wee taste of "home" again today when this saleswoman just about had a fit because I'd initially offered the wrong combination of plastic to pay for my purchases and then did a complete 180 in front of my eyes.

I think I must've looked utterly dumbfounded by her sudden garrulousness. What could I possibly say?

I find Lutefisk utterly repulsive and a total, complete culinary joke.

Man! Frozen lakes scare me! Guess it's this irrational fear of falling through!

So, why do you "Minnesota Girls" fry your cheese curds, anyway?

I just said nothing, grabbed a few more pink mints and beat a hasty retreat.

There are two things I'm pretty sure of: if you're older than 20, you're not a "girl."

And it's not just the winter in Minnesota that can be icy.

The Novelty Aspect

2007-10-18T13:53:00.000-07:00

So, there are items--food items, specifically--I am coming across at the Fred Meyer stores here (a PNW chain the locals like to refer to as "Freddie's") that I fondly remember from past years spent in either Olympia, Washington as an undergraduate or Portland, Oregon as a post-grad.

I am referring specifically to Tim's Cascade-Style Potato Chips.

I am not on my cycle, nor am I particularly craving salt and/or fat. I was in Freddie's today, doing a little banking, and when one's bank is situated handily within a grocery store, one usually always finds something AT said store to pick up for a future meal or two (various items are suddenly "remembered" or "needed").

As I did, both "remembering" and "needing" (for no real reason other than sentimentality) the potato chips.

And since it occurred to me that I had not yet bought nor consumed the "Welcome Back to Portland" bag of Tim's Cascade, I decided it was high time.

Even though they are a good 2 bucks MORE than the leading national brand and even though it didn't occur to me to read the ingredient list, which includes MSG, a somewhat headache-inducing no-no if consumed in certain vast-ish quantities.
So I try to avoid this flavor-enhancer whenever possible, but sometimes, I simply space it, as I did today, blinded as I was by an impromptu trip down memory lane.

So I bought a bag and threw it in the cabinet and I'm not sure when I'll rip it open and consume a few chips, but there it is. My bag of Tim's.

Guess I'm back. As if I couldn't already tell.

Yum.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jig

2007-10-10T19:07:00.000-07:00

So, it has happened. The Big Move is now a thing of the past, or of past tense: I have moved. All those months (since January '07) of nervous expended energy planning, mulling, organizing, finalizing...the moment came and went, as moments do, and I survived it, all of it, all the myriad details. Although I had never done this before, I knew that many, many average citizens such as myself had rented trucks of all sizes and hauled their crap uneventfully from one end of this great continent to the other. No big deal.

I quite my job on Friday, 9/21/07, and spent the next week cleaning my apartment from top to bottom. A week later, the following Friday, I was a noodle and living in an empty (though really clean) space, which felt weird and sort of generic. The landlord was coming to do a walk-through and about 45 minutes beforehand, I'd run into the building's caretaker in the hall. He became all sentimental about my time as his (and his girlfriend's) neighbor and heaped upon me many kindnesses, which caused me to burst into tears that would last through not only Friday's walk-through (I'm sure the landlord thought I'd come completely undone, but true Midwesterner that he is, he totally kept his cool and seemed completely unfazed by my histrionics) but Saturday's pack-up. I was a veritable waterworks; I'm amazed I have any salt left in my body.

I left Minneapolis early on the afternoon of Saturday, 9/29/07, after picking up the 16-foot Penske truck at 9:00 that morning, loading it with the help of a few good friends (5, to be exact) who came not only bearing strong backs, biceps and quads, but lattes in to-go trays, a thermos of coffee, and all sorts of bakery goods to quell mid-moving hunger pangs.

I was too nervous and sad, really, to eat anything myself, although I did finally inhale a croissant once we were on the road. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Everything was loaded according to plan; B. carried out the vacuum and when I protested, saying I'd meant to do one final sucking-up of bits of detritus, she replied, "You know, at some point you just gotta say 'I'm done.'" So I decided I was done.
The cat was put in her carrier after being forcibly extracted from her spot in the dark, dank nether-reaches of my under-sink cabinet where she'd fearfully wedged herself, and after my final teary curbside goodbyes, which included kissing the neighbor's fuzzy-headed black cat and hugging my helpers, Friend, Cat and Self were off on a moving adventure that included a quick pit-stop at the corner hardware store for a padlock to keep my possessions safe in the truck.

I have to say, I profoundly hate goodbyes. They never feel like enough; there's this small, final window of shared time to say whatever you need to say for closure--for now, as it's understood, because plans are always made to write/call/visit, futons and extra rooms are offered for crashing, yet still--you can't possibly fill that tiny, final moment with all the meaningful, relevant thoughts bouncing around your head and your heart.

I want to say, take care of your cancer, I don't want you to die, or your presence has been such a comfort here, and I appreciate your friendship, or, simply, thank you for accepting me, but I can't; it's just too full a moment, too loaded and too poignant and really, actually, very hard, so I hope, in my face and my tears and the few words I do manage to squeak out, that the person I am having closure with understands fully just how I feel and how difficult the letting go is.

And I had a lot of those moments leading up to the Big Day, weeks of them, in fact, with friends, co-workers, neighbors, my entire 12-step group, even my hairdresser, culminating Friday, 10/5/07, when I put my intrepid roadtripping friend B. on a Minneapolis-bound plane after we'd shared months of planning, traversed 6 states & 1700 miles, crashed in 3 motel rooms, downed an assortment of road food (I will never eat beef jerky again), snapped digital pix of much whizzing western United States scenery, listened to a wide variety of tunes on her iPod, spent two days in downtown Portland, and downed a few steaming cups of Stumptown coffee.

That was the very final goodbye, the final, teeny, absolute last connection to a now-finished piece of my life that was at once nurturing, fun, hard, lonely, responsible, enlightening, challenging, deeply painful at times, important, relevant, full of personal revelations and good growth, and very, very, very cold.

I could not have returned to my roots had I not gone and lived there first and experienced all of that. Things happened that helped me become the person I desperately needed to become, and I have come back here better, and different, and calmer, and more adult, and more me. That's how this journey needed to unfold. I know this now.

And so I'm back here, finally, in Portland, a new roommate to my old friend D., our respective cats, the tabby & the tuxedo having finally made an uneasy peace, my room all set up with my familiar bed and duvet and the cat's hammock and my night table and basket to hold my assorted reading materials, almost exactly as it used to be, the small framed Winter lake scene oil painting my boss gave me as a going-away present hanging on the hallway wall, a reminder (minus the chill) of what I will be missing in January, and February. And March. And so on.

More significantly, I feel like I've resumed a relationship with that lost 20% of myself that I'd been missing for 6 years in the Midwest, where, as I explained to others, I was really only living 80% of my life. I couldn't be truly who I needed to be there; I was in the minority, sort of, in terms of my values, and my food choices, and my outlook on life in general, my pop cultural proclivities and my outspokenness about various things political, or gender- or animal-related, whatever.

When the VP of our group at the big corporation at which I worked heard I was returning here, his reply was, "She seems like she belongs on the West Coast." I'm not sure it was entirely a compliment, although his observation was nonetheless correct.

I've come back to my home soil--that is, the west coast, since I was raised in Berkeley--and to that formerly lost 20%, which seems to have been waiting for me here right along. I fit in effortlessly here. I'm not stared at. No one says, "That's different," when they're not sure how to disagree. I don't feel ignored, either; I just feel....typical.

And I like that, very much.

So I learned I could survive the slight, repetitive ripping of numerous goodbyes and big transitions and months of planning and driving a 16-foot truck through unfamiliar states when I hadn't driven a car for 6 years, that all of it was just something else I could undertake and follow through on successfully, and now I can move on to my life's next thing.

'Cause, as I've also learned, there's always a next thing.

Coon Bones & Kate Bush

2007-09-23T20:55:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday (the 16th), I had my neighbors over for dinner. I wanted some sort of closure with them, especially because, as a result of K.'s cancer diagnosis last Spring, we'd become closer; not necessarily intimate, although K. has shared intimate details of her cancer with me, but more involved--I cared for their cat whenever they left town to visit her doctor in Boston. I was happy to do it, because we're mostly just helpless onlookers in the face of a cancer diagnosis, and it was, at least, something.
The other something I could do was cook, and when K. hasn't just emerged from a barfy round of chemotherapy, she actually has an appetite and appreciates good food.
So I made a couple of spinach quiches and had them over, and K.'s boyfriend (the building's caretaker) somehow got himself on the topic of lucky mojos--charms or spells.
Specifically, raccoon penis bones.
Also known as a "coon bone" or a "pecker bone."

I don't know how the conversation navigated to this esoteric, somewhat voodoo-esque topic (I may've well been dining with the spirit of Marie Laveau), but he told me he'd ordered a number of them and passed them out to his friends, and he even wore his proudly on a lanyard around his neck at a friend's wedding.
For lucky heaps of marital sex, I supposed.
K. grimaced and said, "Eww, it's so disgusting. I hate touching it."
Apparently not having learned when to shut up, move on, or change the subject altogether, I thoughtfully chewed a forkful of balsamic vinegar-sprinkled baby greens and asked what a raccoon penis bone looked like.
"Well," he said, grinning broadly, "I'll show you!" and then ran down the hall and retrieved the thing for my viewing pleasure.
There, swinging at the end of a black silken cord was something that resembled a giant white fish hook. The first thing I thought was, wow. Lady raccoons get it good or get it bad, depending on your perspective.
He then put it on and we continued uneventfully with our dinner while K. and I emphatically ignored the curved baculum swinging on the lanyard around his neck.
The evening was, in spite of the interim pecker bone viewing, very pleasant, and I'm glad I had this time with them.
We ate the apple pie they'd brought, and then I sent them home with the second quiche.

On quite another topic, I curse the commercials for CSI that moodily play Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work" in the background. It wormed its way into my brain and I was finally compelled to download it.
Of course, being in the midst of transition and after a heavy week of teary goodbyes, it was probably the absolute wrong thing to do.
It's desperate, tremulous, scenes of slow-mo driving-into-the-sunset please-don't-leave-me vein-opening music.
Not that I'm planning to open a vein any time soon or anything, but I could easily conjure a painful moving day departure scene in my head, replete with soulful, long-held regretful hugs and final stumbling words of farewell and crumpled, tear-dampened Kleenexes pressed to reddened noses and rheumy eyes, which was all overwrought and dramatically self-indulgent and highly unnecessary.
Yes, time for BirdNerd's Mash-Ups. I need to happily rock this house, not bring it down.
But I still love that song.

A Good Year for Bad News, part II

2007-09-16T05:47:00.000-07:00

I watched Hedwig and the Angry Inch last night, for a couple of reasons: because it had been reintroduced into my consciousness when my friend told me he was HIV-positive and showed me his Origins of Love-inspired tattoo on the inside of his arm, and because it was time, before I pack it in a box for the long schlep back to the west.

I seemed to enjoy it a lot more this time around, and found even more humor in it, which was nice. It was good to laugh.

And the kid who plays Tommy Gnosis didn't bug me this time. In the past, I really wasn't all that keen on that actor; he seemed doughy and uninteresting and kind of not real committed to the role.

This time around, I had a whole different take and really enjoyed his performance.

And I got misty during Midnight Radio, which is my second-favorite song on the soundtrack next to Origins of Love, and the message about becoming who you need to be and being set free (even if it WAS Hedwig who ultimately frees Yitzhak, although perhaps that doesn't need to be taken literally, since there's an element of fantasy about the whole story) really hits home with me.

But I have been contemplative since having received this news about my friend's positive diagnosis; I saw him at work the following day and he looked happy, his cheeks rosy, because he'd had a good check-up and I realize that this is how his life will go forward now: ups and downs based on the status of his health.

I thought about how I have known other people with HIV or full-blown AIDS who were already positive and living with it when I met them, but I have never known anyone pre-HIV who then transitioned into the status of being positive during the course of a friendship. This is something new for me, and I'm resentful that, as I get older, bits of innocence are being stripped from me.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't resentful about so much pertaining to this, in fact--that he's so young, that it's preventable, that it's a complex combination of personal responsibility and societal oppression that leads to risky behaviors (in many groups, not just among gays), that I feel like the Dominant Culture--of which I am a part--has won, once again. And it enrages me.

Which brings me to my next thought: I had this notion that the Midwest would be insulated, so much so, in fact, that I wouldn't be exposed to what I'd been exposed to on the west coast and maybe I'd get a bit of a break. And I see now how ridiculously naive that mindset had been. It all percolates here--Cancer, HIV/AIDS, child abuse, pet abuse, homelessness, alcoholism...it's just not as in-your-face as it is out west, and it all lies, radioactively toxic, beneath the surface of a benign celebration of "Family" as the only pursuit--hetero love, 2.5 kids, picket fences and corporate jobs. In spite of this culturally-ingrained Midwestern message, I feel as though coming here brought me face-to-face with my life in a way that living out west just never had. Which is weirdly ironic. If I wore rose-colored glasses when I moved here, I certainly lost them somewhere along the way for good.

But I also think I knew innately I needed to open myself to the world in the very ways that frightened me the most, because this was the only way I knew that would push me to grow. No, I have no control over what information is shared with me. I didn't know those words were going to spill from my friend's mouth when he said he had something to tell me. I don't purposely seek out bad news, and I can't un-know what I now know, but I don't hide from it anymore, either. And in a weird, profound way, maybe that was the best gift I could give myself, picking up and moving 1700 miles outside my comfort zone.

My friend's diagnosis was not my diagnosis; it's still his life to live, but now I am connected to him and his life in a way I had not anticipated. And, although this is not about me or my ego, it kind of is; it wasn't just his life that changed.

I get a sense that cosmically, more will be revealed to me, because I think I have finally learned that there are no accidents in life.

breathe feel love give free
know in your soul
like your blood knows the way
from your heart to your brain
knows that you're whole
and you're shining like the brightest star
a transmission on the midnight radio

A Good Year for Bad News

2007-09-12T15:34:00.000-07:00

I don't think it's been a bad year, really, as far as years and accumulative experiences go. There've been trips home and new pugs and good, enlightening moments in recovery and a road trip that brought me and a friend and her dog to gaze upon the majesty that is Lake Superior, and last fall's Paul Simon concert and newly deepening friendships and a few cool purchases off of eBay and some really good meals. So overall, it's been a really good year, mostly, for which I am deeply grateful. All things considered.

It's the moments of bad news I could do without, but hearing it isn't as awful, ultimately, as being the one sharing it, because the one sharing it has to live with the bad news in a different way than I do as the mere listener.

I was on the receiving end of some of that bad news today.

A friend of mine at work--a kind, sweet, soft-spoken young man--came to my desk and asked if I had a few minutes to talk. I said yeah, and asked if this was something I might need Kleenex for, because of how quiet and serious he seemed.

He said no, but I'm not sure I believed him.

I chided him about the fact that he was a no-show at my going-away party as we walked down the hall in search of an empty conference room, even though he'd accepted the invitation and seemed enthusiastic and excited about attending. He just smiled and looked at the floor, but didn't say anything.

We found an empty room and sat across from one another. I folded my hands in front of me and asked what was up.

His voice was soft and nervous when he spoke. "Remember when I was out this summer and I told you I had Mono?"

I looked at him and nodded.

"Well...." he said carefully. "It wasn't Mono. It's...." His voice trailed, and I watched him watching my face, measuring my reaction through my expression. I felt my heart thump, because I knew what he was going to say before he said it.

"I'm Positive," he said. And I looked at him and said, No, no, because this is the first time I have been told but not the first time that I've seen this virus. It explained so much--the long absences, the huge weight loss, the sunken cheekbones and eyes, the new raspiness in his too-young voice.

I reflexively covered my face with my hands because I started crying and I could see that he was, too, that telling me was hard for him, and then I stood up and hugged him, and in that moment our somewhat casual friendship became much less casual and I knew something new and profound and awful that I didn't want to know but it was too late. And I remembered so many other men I'd seen, the blue-haired costume designer from Evergreen who died, and my mom's friend DeeDee pulling out clumps of hair, and the splotches of Kaposi's and the once-strapping, beautiful, vibrant men at church who whithered to such shocking thinness, too many to keep track of.

He knew the night it happened, and with whom. It wasn't a mystery. A one-night stand, he'd said. And we talked about his self-care and he said with as much frightened conviction as he could muster that he was going to fight it with everything he had or die trying.

And then I really, really wished I'd had a Kleenex because we'd hurtled straight into Major Kleenex Territory and I started crying all over again, a little harder, and he was put in the position of comforting me, which made me feel really ridiculous, but I pulled it together enough to thank him for trusting me enough to share such awful news with me. I told him how honored I was and how much I appreciated his vulnerability.

"Really?" He asked. And I reassured him. "Really," I said.

And we talked for an hour and he says he's taking it one day at a time and doing everything right, everything that he could possibly do, and he even got a new tattoo on the inside of his left forearm, a little split-in-two animated character from Hedwig, which I identified right away. And that surprised him.

"Well, I love Hedwig," I said, and told him about my poster and my video and my book and my CD. And then I apologized for razzing him for not coming to my party, cause I felt like a total ass, given the circumstances.

And then we tried to crack a few jokes even though a giant gray cloud of heaviness permeated the room and he told me he'd been keeping a little fan at his desk because he periodically broke into sweats, and I smiled and put my hand on his shoulder and said, "Welcome to my world."

A 41-year-old straight girl in perimenopause and a 30-something gay boy afflicted with HIV and we actually have something in common.

But I believe on some level that I have really always known that.

Beginning to End

2007-09-08T19:35:00.000-07:00

And so it begins. The ending to my Midwestern Adventure.

Last night, right after work, was the Big Going-Away Party at the home of one of the managers from work, who offered his house just for this occasion (I really didn't want some random happy hour at a downtown bar. Boring.) He likes parties (he kept thanking ME for having a party last night, when he is the one who offered to throw it!) and has a Christmas party every year (albeit for select members of whatever team he's currently managing), and he always says he thinks his house was built for entertaining, and indeed it is a good house for that very purpose, with an airy floor plan, two levels and lots of gathering spots for various groups.

And a pool table, if you're in to that sort of thing.

He shares this house with his incredibly sweet and mostly-always-grinning partner, who bought me a big bunch of Mylar balloons (in rainbow Pride colors, no less!) with a top balloon that had cheery scrawl across it that read, "Good Luck!" The bunch is now slowly leaking helium in a corner of my kitchen, since they insisted I take them home with me afterward.

There were about 20 people there, a good combination from various aspects of my life--work, church, writing, etc. The food was great, and unbeknown to me and the host, my boss's husband and son showed up at the house mid-afternoon with a ton of catered Indian food--two enormous trays of samosas (vegetarian and lamb), tabouli, hummus, and enough gigantic middle eastern flatbread to feed a small nation. The manager who hosted the party had taken the day off from work to prepare (I feel honored by this alone) and had bought a ton of wine and other beverages, which is about all he had in the fridge (everything from bottled Seagram's Peach-flavored Fuzzy Navels, which are practically liquor-less and taste like liquid Jell-O shots, to decent white & red wines, waters, soft drinks, beer, Mike's Hard Lemonade, you name it...and of course, the top shelf assortment in the liquor cabinet).

He'd laid out shrimp and cocktail sauce on ice, crusty baguettes and some good cheeses downstairs; a friend of mine brought a magnificent chocolate cake--the same one she'd baked using Scharffenberger Chocolate for my birthday in December. I contributed my famous spinach-artichoke dip.

My boss' son arrived with his keyboard a bit later (a Sophomore at UC Santa Cruz) which he set up downstairs, lending a mellow, cocktail-y verisimilitude to the gathering (I joked that he needed a brandy snifter for a tip jar on his keyboard--he was really good!); there was a group card on the sideboard for signing, and many gifts. In fact, it felt like a shower, really, and as I unwrapped gifts with everyone watching, a friend bundled the discarded curly ribbons into a corsage and made me wear it on my wrist. The gifts and cards were lovely and heart-felt; a few favorites were a small, serene framed watercolor from my boss of a lake scene in winter (she said she wanted me to "remember the colors,") and a book from my brainy, hip church friends called "A Slice of Organic Life" with chickens on the cover, all about raising chickens, planting gardens, collecting rainwater...essentially, living with consciousness and lessening that Carbon Footprint.

I love that the people I've met here are people that reflect my own values and respect them and appreciate ME. I feel really good about that.

I got a few cards I read in private, because they were wordy and sentimental and made me cry, and I was touched by how deeply and sincerely some of my friends here feel about me and how they've shared that they will miss me. And I also feel touched that so, so many of them have said I'll make a good Life Coach. It's so affirming to hear that.

It used to be hard for me to hear that people would miss me; it made me feel bad, like I was doing something wrong by leaving. I'm healthier now, and I appreciate that they can and do express that to me, that I have had some meaning in their lives and have left some sort of imprint.

When the evening ended and everyone departed in a flurry of sentiments, well-wishes, and offers of moving day assistance, I was sent packing with a ton of leftovers, and drove home with a friend of mine and her boyfriend (who were given 2 grocery bags full of leftovers themselves) while the host and his partner stood in the driveway like a sweet married couple and waved us away.

I had a hard time sleeping for all the good, loving feelings this gathering elicited, and I woke up this morning feeling overwhelmed with emotion. For sure, I will miss these people here with whom I have bonded, but I am also leaving for good reasons--there is no pain involved in this decision, no resentment, no need to flee for negative reasons (except, perhaps, the weather). It's just time to take another step on my life's journey, and I'm excited to be back near the ocean and my oldest friends and my family.

And to start the Life Coach training.

Perhaps the nicest thing is knowing that I really did build a life for myself here, and that I can come back to it and visit on occasion. I did that; and I know now that I can do that again.

Two weeks to go at work, a few more lunches, the department-wide email announcement...then a week of packing, a few more goodbyes, and that stretch of highway 94--and a new chapter to my life--before me.

Laborin'

2007-09-03T16:07:00.000-07:00

Good day for labor, it being Labor Day and all.

Hell, any sort of labor; I'm sure plenty of babies have been born on this very day.

And speaking of labor, every Monday leading up to the Big Move (since I don't work Mondays anyway), I've made it a point to pack some stuff. I usually scrawl a to-do list on a page in my little bitty pocket-sized Day Planner so I can see what my packing goals are--things like, "wrap/pack framed chicken prints in kitchen/bedroom" and "pack books" or "pack chicken tchatchkes" (yes, lots of chickens in various shapes/forms/sizes, etc.).

Today was a recycling/cleaning storage locker/packing photos & cards sort of day.

I've gotten a significant amount of stuff bubble wrapped & boxed up; in fact, thanks to the recycling room at the biggie corporation for whom I currently work, I've no doubt saved a bundle on all sizes of cardboard boxes and rolls & rolls of wrap. We regularly receive huge boxes with fixture samples, since we're in the business of building Big Box stores with a lot of "stuff" in them, all of which is prettily & helpfully presented to you (and me), the general consuming public, on various fixtures. And these samples are sent to us from their respective hopeful vendors, and all are wrapped like mad, just swathed in yards and yards of large & small bubble wrap.

As a kid, I loved popping the bubbles on the wrap between my thumb & forefinger. The big wrap is the most fun, for a louder pop; as an adult in the midst of a major move, I now see how wasteful (though thoroughly enjoyable) this popping pastime had been. But what do you know of Big Moves when you're a kid and most moves are done FOR you (basically, you're an accessory to be hauled along, like a lamp or a chair or the family dog, when all is said and done; seriously. I'm not being negative. It's just kind of matter-of-fact).

I also got my AAA Triptik made--this has got to be one of the coolest road trip accessories known to Motoring Man (and woman)! It supposedly takes them a week, but it was done in 2 business days; it's a little narrow vertical flip book, spiral-bound, broken down into 200 mile chunks with highlighted sections and cool fold-out pages for a larger frame of reference. It describes the scenery you'll see as you're motoring along--for example, as I pass through North Dakota, my route "...traverses gently rolling, semi-wooded farmland, once the land of the Sioux and Objibway tribes. Noted for water recreation, dairy and granite products."

I mean, I love this! If cat, friend and I must traverse nearly 1700 miles to get to my ultimate destination, it may as well be poetic!

So I'm feeling very good about my progress on this transition; my ducks are falling into a tidy little row and I can feel like I'm leaving as organized and prepared as I can possibly be. And this Friday is the "Bye-Bye Caitlin" party at the home of one of my managers, who offered to throw a party for me. Kind of an after-work cocktail thingie, good combo of straight/gay/single/married/co-workers/church folk/writer buddies, etc. Have a little closure here, then I'll have the "welcome back" party there. Which is, of course, one of the best and sweetest parts about going from one place to another.

On the road again
Just can't wait to get on the road again
The life I love is makin' music with my friends
And I can't wait to get on the road again.....

Not the best idea....

2007-08-12T18:49:00.000-07:00

....in the midst of transition, when one is a bit more sensitive, open and sentimental, AND trying to pack, to listen to a resonant mix that includes Judy Collins ("Who Knows Where the time Goes"), John Lennon ("Oh, My Love") James Taylor ("You Can Close Your Eyes") and Cat Stevens ("The Wind").

Amazingly, I kept it together and got some more boxes packed, even though "Beautiful Boy" makes me want to crumple into a heap of depressed inertia and weep buckets.

Not to mention any version of "The Rainbow Connection."

And have I mentioned the late Israel Kamakawiwa'ole doing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow?"

Anything with a gentle, earnest vibrato and rousing acoustic guitar and I'm a total goner.

Thank God I'm generally bubbly and happy and don't have a propensity for fondling straight razors. Oy vey.

Yep, it's been a while....

2007-08-04T19:22:00.000-07:00

...time to update ye olde blogge.

No real excuse, except perhaps indifference, a touch of pre-moving stress (a friend in Portland, Oregon, to where I will be moving at the tail end of September, said something to the effect that he thought this was probably the longest transition anyone has ever made moving from one place to another, and who knows, he may be right. I mean, I've known since January of this year that I was going to hightail it on outta the Midwest sometime during the summer or shortly thereafter. "Shortly thereafter" won out, cause I figured, why suffer through something like 8 months of winter just to ditch out on the summer? Even if it's humid? The days are bright and long and the sun is a blessing. And I love the Farmer's Market which stretches along a main street of downtown, right in front of my office, so I can buy a few things on Thursdays, like fresh green beans and bread and black plums), and a lot of time spent participating in an online Intuitive Eating (IE) support group, which I've really liked. It's how I want to encourage my future Life Coach clients--those who come to me seeking solutions/direction regarding their potentially unsatisfactory relationships to their bodies and food and the self-loathing, punitive and sometimes dangerous practice of "dieting"--to eat.

I know a lot of people--myself included, and primarily women--who have had very dysfunctional relationships to their bodies and food (most of whom have dieted unsuccessfully, only to regain their weight), and Intuitive Eating seeks to examine the root cause of unconscious eating, how food is used emotionally and as comfort, rather than as nutrition. The outcome is a healthy relationship to food, mindful eating, increased enjoyment in the process of eating, and, finally, a natural release of weight.
Not "thinness," because everyone's body is different and "thin" is an artificial construct perpetuated by crappy, bulimia-inducing pop-culture chick-mags like Cosmo and a bunch of bratty, wealthy, bored, narcissistic chickie-babes with too much time on their hands (think Paris or Nicole).
IE is an interesting process but one I deeply believe in--even when I was struggling with weird off-and-on diets all my life, I still read "Thin Within," "Diets Don't Work," "Eating Awareness Training" numerous of Geneen Roth's books, and most recently, "Intuitive Eating." All are excellent.
I do feel most women have some level of disordered eating, and I am convinced it's rooted in emotion. I had very disordered eating most of my life and only now, at 41, have really begun to let go of it, probably because I am already in recovery and this is one more "leftover" dysfunctional practice that doesn't serve me anymore.
A lovely outcome of IE is a renewed, positive relationship to one's body (and no more diets!). I no longer see mine as something imperfect and disgusting that needs reigning in or to be "controlled" or punished (the hallmark of diets). It's served me very well for my entire life and it needs love and nurturing. As Geneen Roth says, "Many people want to lose weight because they believe it will make them happy and stop their pain. So it's not so much the weight they want to lose, but the pain."
Examining that pain--the reasons we eat that have nothing to do with true body hunger--is the crux of IE.
Most people don't trust IE or its practices; I have a friend who has expressed discomfort with the idea of eating quietly, without distraction (in this case, the TV in the background); she said she didn't like to hear people chew, and I thought a lot about that in the ensuing days.

Anyway, the recent bridge collapse here in Minnesota (for a change, it wasn't something collapsing in California) served as a stark, tragic reminder that life is short and shittily random, and I'd hate for my last day's worth of meals to be some horrid, low-fat, low-carb, low-salt, low-suger, high-fiber, under-1200-calories misery. I mean, what IS that?
There is a saying that goes something like, Life is unpredictable so always eat dessert first.
I would rescind that to say, eat what makes you hum.
And, just quickly, back to the bridge: yes, we all hate paying taxes, but when they're earmarked in ways that positively support a society--good, accessible, affordable education and functional, well-stocked schools, say, and a sound, reliable infrastructure--then they're necessary.
Levees and bridges shouldn't collapse (this bridge was in need of repair but our moronic twice-elected current governor vetoed "upgrade funds" in favor of other pet projects like, oh, a new stadium...ahem)....
And human beings were not meant to diet.
And that's where I'll conclude this entry.

One Hot Mama, part deux

2007-07-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

Okay.
So, back in March (ALREADY! Holy shit, but time hurtles ever onward; but that's another post.....) I'd written about the Saga of my Hair and how I was ready for a change and how that change involved a throwback hairstyle from my childhood and from Jane Fonda's Hanoi Jane/"Klute" period (namely, The Shag) and how my former hairdresser simply wasn't getting it around the look I wanted and so I quietly fired the dude and found a new hairstylist--a woman--who gave me exactly the shaggy 'do I'd been questing for. And it got long.
Long for me is to my shoulders and down--way down--past my ears.
But then we moved swiftly from Spring into Humid Summer, and the 'do would not behave.

I have cowlicks up the kazoo--on my crown, at my forehead, at the nape of my neck. And I have a bit of wave, especially around said cowlicks.
So, no, contrary to popular belief, my hair is actually NOT dead straight (it used to be more-or-less dead straight when I was wee. I am no longer wee, and let let me tell you, your hair texture does change as you get older).
I am also not the sort to flat-iron and do a lot of conking/manipulating in order to achieve a Look. I work for a big corporation that hires a lot of 20-something chickie-babes who tend to pretty much be knock-offs of one another. Lots of them are blond (this being the Midwest) and lots of them have long, flat-ironed swingy hair.
In my opinion, they are all interchangeable.
Hair, to me, needs to be sexy, but also fun, kicky, simple, relaxed and terribly easy to style, for men as well as women (it is advisable that you NOT resemble an uptight, self-loathing brain-dead refugee from the Republican National Committee). Personally, I like finger-styling my hair. I am not opposed to running some goop through my locks to add volume, hold and shine--in fact, these are attributes I rather appreciate in a head of hair--but beyond that, I need simplicity.
Especially when it's humid beyond belief and when, after much early-morning pre-work wrangling my hairstyle lasts all of 2.5 seconds and ends up wildly fluffy and weirdly wavy and completely unmanageable after a quick swim to the bus stop.
Which it has since, oh, May.
And so, observing all the chicly-shorn, cropped pixie cuts adorning the program-working heads of many of my fellow 12-steppers, I decided to return to a shorter 'do. A little different then my usual pixie, with more verve, choppiness, texturizing and kicky personality.

As she cut it, I felt the Real Caitlin emerging again.
And, yes, this latest hairstyle has indeed been subjected to bouts of horrid, cat-flattening humidity (my cat Abby becomes about 5 feet long and flat as a bear rug when it's hot out) and has held up a heckuva lot better. No whirls and whorls, no unholy, unruly flips and flops, no throwing up my hands in the women's restroom and shoving the fluffiness behind my ears.
Oh, and I have bangs again. Cute, fun, textured eye-enhancing bangs.
I have learned that living in the nation's midsection means necessarily submitting to the wild extremes of the weather, in many ways, and my hair is no match for this region's humidity. And just like my impending return to the west coast, getting my hair cut shorter is a return to what I know, to what works, to what is familiar and comfortable and ultimately very me.
So now I'm more of a Cute Mama.
And that suits me just fine.

When in doubt, increase your options

2007-06-16T18:00:00.000-07:00

I'm terrible at making up my mind. I mean, I ultimately do, about many things and in many circumstances, but usually only after much hemming and hawing and weighing and measuring and speculating and waffling. According to the Meyers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, I am an INFJ; this stands for "Introvert/Intuitive/Feeling/Judging" and everything has a percentage.

I am 40% Judging. This not only means I tend to be opinionated (I am), it means I assess a given situation and often have a hard time coming to a decision.

This difficult aspect of my personality manifested itself this afternoon as I stood gazing into the freezer case at the grocery store. I wanted ice cream. It's been hot. And cool foods are good for hot days (see my earlier post on mayonnaise).

In fact, I headed to the store wanting a specific flavor of ice cream: Mocha Almond Fudge, to be exact. My favorite, just about, made by Dreyer's (or "Edy's" out here).

There I stood. But they did not have my flavor. They had many others, but not Mocha Almond Fudge, and I walked to the store in 90 degree heat specifically to get Mocha Almond Fudge.

Which meant, I had to decide on an approximation. And after picking up and putting down numerous half-gallons of ice cream of other brands and flavors, I finally settled on two pints of Ben & Jerry's--Coffee Heathbar Crunch and Mint Chocolate Cookie. Because a singular decision just wasn't being reached and I didn't want Buyer's Remorse, heading home with an entire half-gallon of something I'd get bored with. So I did the next best thing.

I decided I didn't need to limit my options, that I actually had choices about things in life (thank you, Al-Anon!), and instead of settling for one flavor I really liked, I'd settle for two. It felt indulgent and terrific and exactly like the right decision to have made. After all, variety is the spice of life, as they say.

I don't know who "they" is, but it works for me.

Yum.

Happy Feet

2007-06-15T16:21:00.000-07:00

My dad, at the ripe ol' age of 75, is one hip (or "hip-ish") dude.

He wanted--and received--a pair of those foamy, plastic-y, trendy "Crocs" shoes for Father's Day, and he's been wearing 'em.

It's a respectable color, nothing outrageous (tho he did say he'd agree to wearing yellow, if they'd had 'em, as he has a penchant for most things either yellow in color or lemon in flavor, but the place they were ordered from had only more conservative colors in stock), and they seem to fit him fine.

But I don't think my sister's pug, Noelle, quite knows what to make of them.

Without further ado, I bring you my father's feet (and I think this is a hilarious picture, so this post was an excuse to use it):

Bring Out the Best

2007-06-14T17:04:00.000-07:00

It's summer. Well, not quite; not officially, but soon. June 21st, to be exact.

Although, really, right around Memorial Day, and then just after the holiday itself, summer happens in earnest. It gets hot. Armpits and legs needs constant shaving (if you're a chick; hell, even if you're a guy and you're into it. This is a liberal, equal-opportunity, live-and-let-live kind of blog). The window air conditioner gets installed and my personal guilt rises about the hole in the ozone and just what sort of "carbon footprint" I'm making while the cat and I cool off.

But perhaps the most overt harbinger of the seasonal shift is gustatory. Plebeian and gustatory, but gustatory nonetheless.

I begin eating a LOT of mayonnaise.

Potato salad gets made. So does tuna salad. And in goes the mayo. And, admittedly, a bit of sour cream like the best Jewish Delis, but this blog entry is an ode to my mayonnaise-loving WASP side.

It's the kind of cool meal a body wants on a long, hot, bright day that wakes you up at 5:00 and doesn't end till around 9:30, when the sun finally decides to fade out of sight and leave the next 8 hours or so to the moon and the mosquitoes.

In fact, I made tuna salad for dinner yesterday, and had it for lunch today. I plan to have it for lunch tomorrow. I was inspired by a friend at work who had whipped up a batch for her husband and son. Just a few weeks ago, I made a batch of potato salad with redskin potatoes I'd bought at the farmer's market; they hold their shape well and don't just crumble into pasty mush when you mix 'em.

It hits the spot, when the mercury registers 90 and warnings are posted about air quality.

Sure, there are other warm-weather comfort foods that aren't mayonnaise-based. Deviled Eggs. Anything grilled. Fruit salad. Ice cream. And these are all good and delicious and very Betty-Crocker-in-the-50's, and they definitely all hold an esteemed spot in the pantheon of Classic American Cookery.

But to me, quite simply, it's just not summer 'til I get my mayonnaise.

Pack it in

2007-06-11T10:09:00.000-07:00

Man, I am just itching to get the hell outta dodge, and I am so totally okay admitting that, here and anywhere else.

Just recently, one of my managers at work--conversationally, in passing--asked if I'd chosen an actual departure date for leaving Minnesota. At that time, I hadn't, really; all I knew was that I was leaving sometime in early October, and that was about all I'd established. So I went back to my desk and flipped through the calendar that hangs on the wall there and figured out a date to be done with work (September 21st, a Friday) and to be done with Minnesota (September 29, a Saturday).

Which should land me at my destination (Portland) sometime within that first week of October, and that was always the plan.

And not only can I not wait for salt air, mountain passes, the beach and fresh seafood, I can't wait to be back in a place where I am simply not esoteric (or if I am at all, no one gives a rat's ass either way), where I am, instead, pretty much the norm, or just some variation of the norm.

Here in the Midwest, I just always have this strange, overriding sense that, no matter how much I'm liked by people, how "down" with me my friends have been, I'm still a titch quaint in my perspectives and dealings with the world. I rant about things like global warming and eating less meat and gender roles and living car-less, and I most often receive kind, tight-lipped smiles and the verbal equivalent of a "there, there" pat on my head.

Okay, well. This might be a bit extreme. I admit, I am a bit crabby today because of a head cold I developed over the weekend, and now that I'm doing the actual work of preparing to leave--I've cleaned out my closet (3 huge bags of little-worn clothes) and 3 shelves of my living room built-in (lots of crap amassed there over the last 4.5 years since I've been living in this apartment)--I have my "eyes on the prize," so to speak (my destination) and I'm getting restless to be there. The ball is rolling, and my feet are itchy.

But time does go quickly, and it will soon enough be the date of my departure. In the meantime, I busy myself with adding tasks to my growing to-do list, such as getting my cat a new carrier/pet stroller thing for her comfort during the long drive and buying an American Automobile Association (AAA) membership, very practical for triptych plotting, as well as in the event of a van breakdown somewhere en route across the continent.

Stuff like that.

I'm transitioning already, slowly, and caring less about things here and more about things there. And I'm just excited to be closer to my family and to be spending October out west (I love that month) and to be able to buy a much cheaper plane ticket home for Christmas and to start the Life Coach training (ah, a career that doesn't involve outsourcing to partners in India!). And my friends have been very accommodating--one is accompanying me on the cross-country drive, one is letting me stash my crap in her "extra" room once I get there (there's a whole history here that I won't indulge, but let me just say, she is an utter doll for agreeing to this), and one that is letting me crash with him while I regain my footing there.

So I'm excited and growing more restless by the day, and I have the vague-yet-palpable sense that I am beginning to slowly, surely, identifiably pack it in and hang it up and call it quits. The summer will unfold and soon it'll be the first hints of fall and then the end of September and there I'll be in a van, cat, plants & friend, motoring across the miles.

As Gonzo sings in the Muppet Movie,"You can just visit/but I'm going to stay/I'm going to go back there someday."

No love lost

2007-05-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

I hate the weather here.

Now, I know some of the people who peek at this blog are native Minnesotans, and they love this state with every cell in their bodies; they were born here, some of them got married here and had kids here and continue to happily, lovingly call it home. And that is okay with me. They are absolutely entitled; they can love it. And they can know that this is where we part ways, where we stop seeing eye-to-eye, that I simply do not share their fondness for this region. Perhaps I am not built for it, or I'm too wussy and soft, or I merely bitch way too much, or I am impatient or unrealistic or I give up too easily. Perhaps.

Whatever the case, I must vent. I am at the mercy of the weather here, and I hate it.

Hate it, hate it, hate it.

It's either somewhere below zero and the windows are frozen shut and it hurts to breathe or you're slogging through snow up to your kneecaps, or it's humid and your hair frizzes and your thighs rub and your chest feels clammy and the air begins buzzing with mosquitoes and then the skies open up with an amazing clap and rain dumps from the heavens at a breathtaking rate.

This is what happened this evening, just as (wouldn't you know) I left my apartment to catch the bus and get to where I needed to be by 6:30. Two blocks into it, my jeans were soaked to the knees and my Tevas were squishing water with each step. And so I said, fuck this, I'm going home. And so I turned on my squishy heel and went home and everything has been peeled off and is drying and my plans have fallen completely through and I'm pissed.

I don't have a car, which I mostly like, but sometimes, I admit, it can be very challenging. Sometimes. On days such as this, when I leave work early, rush around, clean the dishes, change and make my lunch for the next day, only to have my plans rudely aborted by the unpredictable Plains weather.

Bleh. I have never lived in rain this hard; yes, it rains on the west coast, but it tends to hang around and fill the air mistily or fall steadily, and one can (I feel) more easily cope; one doesn't come away after 2 traversed blocks soaked to the skin and looking like something the dog dragged in.

In many ways, this place has been very, very good to me, and good FOR me, perhaps more importantly. Indeed, there will be much to miss when I move, like my 12-step group, my church, my apartment, and the friends I've made.

But I can say with absolute certainty that never, not ever, not even once, not even briefly, will I miss the weather.

My Bad

2007-05-27T22:10:00.000-07:00

Okay, so.

It appears I haven't posted anything since May 6th. And this is sort of a problem for me. Not because I'm into over-functioning; in fact, I enjoy a bit of leisurely foot-dragging from time to time and do truly appreciate the relaxing merits of the whole couch potato metaphor.

I just can't go that long without saying something about something.

I was out of town for a week, soaking in the delights of the Bay Area, where I was visiting my family and attending an Al-Anon 12-step retreat called "Let Go & Get a Grip" (more on the retreat later; it was an intense experience and worth the dedication of an entire post) so I wasn't in the mindset to ruminate and come up with anything.

I suppose I could've kept a sort of running commentary on the other day-to-day events with which I occupied my time in Berkeley--pedicure (I had one in Portland last summer with a friend which was WAYYY better; this particular place has gone way downhill, but you can't really tell that just by staring at my toes), great food (same Chinese restaurant 3 times, in fact, and may I just share the observation that prawns taste totally different 'out there' then here in the Midwest), a visit to A.R.F. (Tony LaRussa's Animal Rescue Foundation in Walnut Creek--I wanted to adopt about 10 cats and dogs), shopping (I splurged on a great outfit in my eye color at one of my favorite boutiques in North Berkeley called Bryn Walker), walking my sister's pug up the street, and basically just enjoying the company of my family, whom I have come to appreciate more and more as I (and they) get older, and since I have moved 1500 miles away.

Absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

It was hard to leave (I cried--I ALWAYS cry when I leave the Bay Area, so I'm glad I decided to pay attention to that overt and repetitive emotional cue that I need to be back on the west coast, and I will be by October of this year; I'm so rooted there, to that whole west coast metaphor), but it was good to see my kitty again (who was a bit of a problem child in my absence, having been unflatteringly described as a "meth factory rat catcher" by my neighbor; I have since made amends with the offering of a home-made carrot cake with cream cheese frosting;

food cures all. Almost. And, for the record, tho a bit scratched, my neighbor is not at all ticked. It was all quite amusing, actually) and sort of get back into my day-to-day routines.

Like cooking. And walking.

And, yes, updating my blog.

No Words

2007-05-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

I got up early--too early--Saturday to participate in the Humane Society pet Walk-a-Thon. I suspect it once started out solely as "Dog Walk-a-Thon," but many people bring other sorts of pets--lizards, cats (many of whom were being pushed in pet strollers or closely cuddled in kitty versions of human baby "Snuglis"), ferrets, even a rat in a tiny plastic cage with shavings in it, strapped to a Radio Flyer wagon as part of an ad-hoc circus train coterie of creatures, all of them apparently owned by one single family.

It's always a good-natured, whacked-out event; as I've mentioned in other posts, animal lovers can be quite eccentric. I count myself among that lot, though as I get older, my eccentricities and my mad love for my fat tabby are the least of my concerns.

I attended the walk with a friend, her mom and her Border Terrier (the "Benjie" dog), and had a fine time, even though we turned around about a quarter of the way through and left. All told, we spent about 3 hours there and patted the heads, sides and hindquarters of quite a canine assortment.

Lots of pugs. That's always good.

When I came back, my neighbors were chatting with a friend, and as their front door was wide open (and they are directly across the hall from me), they saw me approach and started chatting with me. She told me she'd had her first chemo treatment Thursday.
I wasn't sure how someone undergoing chemo should or would look. She looked....normal.
She was chatty and fairly animated and didn't look too tired. She showed me what others had done for her; there was a lovely hand-made quilt on her bed, a stack of carefully-knitted prayer shawls on her chest of drawers. A cluster of mylar balloons bobbed in the air.
And she had all her hair. For now.
"I get another round next week," she said. It would be a different, more potent combination of drugs. That, she said, is what would make her hair fall out.
"All of it?" I asked.
"Yep," she said. "Even my eyelashes."
Then she showed me the wig she'd picked out for herself. Close to her natural color and shorter, sort of wavy, but obviously a wig; there's a certain unnatural sort of doll-baby sheen specific to nylon hair.

She talked a little more, the cats alternately hissing and running back and forth between the open doors.
I asked her about her thoughts on buying a home, something she had mentioned only a few months earlier, prior to her diagnosis. I admit, it was my way of getting a sense of her future.
"It's not a plan any more," she said. "I have to let that go."
I stared at her. I wasn't sure what this meant, exactly, and I didn't really want to read too hard between the lines.

I am in recovery; I go to a weekly 12-step meeting for those of us that have issues with enmeshment and codependency. At those meetings, when I am listening and present, I often find I have something meaningful to share; it's kind of a goal, sharing something in a group setting from which others might benefit.
In this situation, watching my young neighbor begin her battle with a rare cancer, I felt utterly verbally inadequate.
I smiled weakly, and then said, "I really wish there was some combination of words, something pithy I could say to make you feel better......."
"What can you say," she replied. What can anyone say, is what she meant.

This morning, she knocked on my door to borrow my heavy-duty Acme juicer.
"There's a juice combination from my cancer cookbook," she said. "Kale & Pineapple."
I brought it over and set it up.

So no, maybe there aren't any words.
There are only hand-made quilts and prayer shawls and mylar balloons bearing simple sentiments. And there is juice.
Juice is good enough.
Juice will have to do.

Always Eat Dessert

2007-04-28T21:19:00.000-07:00

I ran into my building’s caretaker on the steps a couple of days ago as I headed to the basement to retrieve the cold wash I’d just done; it’s his girlfriend—my across-the-hall neighbor—who has Leiomyosarcoma, the rare cancer that she’s just begun to battle. They went to Boston last weekend and met with an energetic and passionate doctor who spent 3 hours with them discussing options—“The difference between Midwestern Protestant and East-Coast Jewish,” as my neighbor said—and in about a week and a half, she’ll begin a course of chemotherapy.

It’s true, in an odd, guilt-producing sort of way, that someone else’s adversity (in this case, my neighbor’s discovery of her cancer) can help put one’s own life and neuroses into sharp perspective; I thought of this as I enjoyed a cookie in a meeting at work.

It's not (and I do feel it necessary to qualify this) that my neighbor's cancer is a grim-yet-convenient excuse for me to compare circumstances and how "lucky" I am to not be coping with it myself, but rather, a dire just-across-the-hall reminder of how much menial bitching I've done--and still do--about truly inconsequential things. I used to have neuroses about sweets, about eating too many of them and what they might do to me: diabetes, cellulite, rotten teeth, pimples. Sweets were “dangerous” and “powerful” and could affect my body negatively and the pleasure of indulging in them was always superseded by the weird, unhappy, nearly obsessive bout of negative self-talk that invariably ensued.

I’d left my neighbors some chunks of homemade gingerbread; I was caring for their cat while they were in Boston, and I like to cook (and bake), and I personally adore gingerbread. But I don’t need a whole pan, and I wanted to share it. The caretaker mentioned this as we spoke, in passing, how much they’d liked it. I thought it might be nice for them, after that, after the flight and the news and the anxiety, to come home to their kitty and the familiarity and comfort of a plate of home-baked sweets.

And I thought, yeah. I think I get it after 41 years of "Oh, I shouldn't eat that" neuroses.

It goes without saying that a preventative mindset is a good thing; it makes sound sense, therefore, to be conscious of where your food comes from and to make healthful choices and avoid trans-fats and eat your veggies and get plenty of fiber and don’t smoke and get plenty of sleep and pop a few vities and take your flaxseed oil and exercise regularly and drink in moderation and....yes, all of those things.

Of course, there are no guarantees.

And so, because of this, because there are no guarantees, the finest, most life-affirming, optimistic, glass-half-full thing you can do, without making excuses or offering apologies or attempting futile shows of "willpower" and absolutely without the merest smidgen of self-consciousness, is always eat dessert. Make room for it. Order it. Bake it yourself, and get drunk on the aroma. Lick the batter from the pan. Eat the cookie dough. Enjoy the hell out of it. Share it. Savor it.

Savor it.

Always. Because sweets are good. And life, I am learning, finally, is really, truly, laughably, ridiculously blink-and-you-miss-it short. And very unfair.

No guarantees. Even if you do everything right. But do everything right anyway, just in case. Cause it couldn't hurt.

And always eat dessert.

A Breed Unknown

2007-04-23T15:00:00.000-07:00

Such is how my female pound-adopted pedigree-less tabby is described on Catster where, yes, she has her own page.

I feel that this latest turn of human-feline events is good to admit.

I also feel that it is quite possible I have now officially crossed that quaveringly delicate threshold from mere mellow cat owner to rapacious Kitty Stage Parent, vicariously living my life through and for my cat like a feline-owning Mama Rose ("Mew out, Abby!")

Is it possible that, sooner rather than later, I will, with no hint of shame or irony, start wearing sweatshirts bearing puffy cat appliques in public and join cat-chat groups and go to cat shows and collect pillows with playful embroidered cats on them and all manner of folksy, cutesy wood, ceramic & wind-chime-y cat-themed tchatchkes?

In my own weak defense, canine co-habitators can be just as whacked; all you need to do is go to a gathering of pugs & their owners where you will bear witness to some of the most frightening displays of gross and humiliating (for the pug) anthropomorphism known to man and beast alike. Pugs dressed like fairies and food and brides and Darth Vader and God-Knows-What-All...it's like something out of David Lynch, or maybe Fellini, though I've never actually seen a Fellini flick so I'm only assuming.

If Abby knew how to maintain her own site, I'd place that chore squarely in her paws. But not only does she not know how, she does not care. I'm sure of this.

Within 10 minutes of setting up her profile ("Pet-Peeves: nail clipping"), I had two requests from a gaggle of random cats asking if they could be added to her page as "friends." In a matter of hours, the cat had amassed quite an enviable social network. I found myself becoming quite a bit "J," as one of my friends might say, at the ease with which she made friends. I eagerly accepted them all, of course, on her behalf. My cat dwells indoors and needs a social life. Even a virtual one. Says me. Her semi-whacked mama.

I told her this. I told her her page was generating considerable buzz in the form of 4 legs and pointy ears and whiskers. I told her she was the feline equivalent of this year's "It" girl, that this was her 15 minutes of Warholian fame and suggested she get herself a publicist, a handler and possibly a lawyer to negotiate the contracts that would surely tumble forth for all those late-night talk show appearances.

I also told her that never, under any circumstances--no matter how her career might someday falter and nose-dive--should she flash her girl-parts accidentally-on-purpose in public; I said it was a cheap & desperate ploy utilized by Britney, Paris and Lindsay to stay sadly current, but that she had been raised better than that. She was a cat with class.

She just yawned and went back to bed.

She has a point. I mean, I AM only one of the gawking, plebeian, celebrity-obsessed public with no life of my own whatsoever. So, you know, thank God for Catster.

A star is born, indeed.

Randomness

2007-04-20T18:55:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted for a while, and my blog-surfing public is getting restless.
Therefore, allow me to extract a vast array of random topics from the nether reaches of my brain and deposit them here for your schizophrenic reading pleasure.

I downloaded a Fergie song I really like--"Big Girls Don't Cry." Playing it on iTunes repeatedly, and the lyrics are bouncing around in my brain. I can relate to them:

I need some shelter of my own protection baby
To be with myself and center
Clarity, Peace, Serenity......

Those who know me, I believe, will understand.

I'm sick of 20-something women. I find them annoying and vacuous and just not very interesting. I'm surrounded by them at work. Moving on.

I have a bunion on my right foot and it's hereditary and I don't like it. Stuffing my feet into chic-yet-pointy shoes for work just exacerbates the issue; to that I say, screw this whole suffering-for-beauty thing. I don't want to have ugly feet.

My co-worker mentioned Foghat on Friday and I was like, shit, that totally dates you, but she just laughed. And then I realized I totally got her reference to them and thus dated myself, too. Sigh.

I'm taking care of the neighbor's cat this weekend while they're in Boston researching cancer treatment options. He seems a little wistful. Hopefully he'll come around. And speaking of cats, I'm weaning (well, cold turkey is more like it) my cat off of wet chow, a holdover from when she had her teeth extracted in August of 2006. Her gums have long since healed and she adores her kibble....so we're done. And she stared at me this morning expectantly but there was no more wet chow and so she gave up and put herself to bed.

I hate this, but then, she'd be a 50-pound freak monster kitty if I kept feeding her. Oy.

I was called "Ma'am" this week; it's not the first time this has happened, but this time, it sorta hit me that I just don't FEEL like a "Ma'am" and I was mildly (though privately) indignant; when did "Miss" give way to "Ma'am," which sounds far less dainty and decidedly post-menopausal? I mean, really.

The thing I think I'll miss the most when I move back out west is my apartment. It's adorable and wonderful and full of cozy character and full of my spirit. I will have to thank it and bless it when I leave. It's been a good, good space.

I know I complained copiously about the below-zero weather when we had it, but there ARE drawbacks to warmer weather, too. The windows are open and I've heard someone in the neighboring building LOUDLY hawking up a loogie. Over and over. ALL DAY LONG. Dude!
Not to mention, I've heard people hurling in the wee hours, or fighting, or blabbing on their cell phones, or sitting in their cars listening to bass-heavy dance music at 3 AM. Ah, the joys of urban living!

Well, time to send the neighbor's cat home and hop in the shower, so that's about it for my apropos-of-nothing mental download.

Oh, and strawberries are back in season. Sweet and full of anti-oxidants, although I could do without the maddening teeny seeds getting wedged into my dental work. But still.

This makes me very happy.

On Giving

2007-04-05T18:12:00.000-07:00

My neighbor knocked on my door tonight. She was passing off the key so that I could pop in over the next few days and check on her cat.

Her mom and boyfriend stood in the hallway, overnight bags waiting at their feet; the three of them were getting ready to leave for Rochester, MN. Her black cat and my striped tabby eyeballed each other warily, alternately touching noses and hissing. It was the first time I'd seen her since I'd heard, last Sunday, about the recurrence of her cancer.

Leiomyosarcoma. Super, super rare.

She laughed, ironically. "I won the fuckin' lottery as far as cancer goes," she said.

We talked a little, and I asked her questions. It was in her lungs, and in her liver. And on her shoulder.

They were headed to the Mayo Clinic to discuss treatment options. They might seek second, third, maybe fourth opinions in California, Boston, New York. I would watch her cat. That, and baking, I said, are things I could offer.

I listened to her talk, and then I broke down and cried, a little, and reached forward and hugged her for a few moments. I told her I was horribly sorry, and that it was so unfair. And I was glad I could say that; I don't mind crying. It's as honest as I can get. She said she'd been angry, too, and I told her it was justified. In these moments, I do not feel that God has a sense of humor.

She gave me the key, and I followed her into her apartment so she could show me a few things; there were flowers everywhere.

She pointed to a vase of tulips on her table; take them, she said. Put them in your apartment.

You might as well enjoy them, she said, while I'm gone.

Cosmic Shittiness

2007-04-01T18:33:00.000-07:00

I never wanted this blog to be The Blog of Pain; there are numerous such blogs all over the place--just total downer blogs full of total downer entries, one after the other, full of constant bitching and moaning and perpetual oh-woe-is-me-ness.

And I don't want this blog to be that; I want this blog, mostly, to be irreverent, a little quirky, and wildly incongruous--kind of the way my brain works.

But this time, tonight, this entry is going to be about Cosmic Shittiness. Because that's what I'm thinking about, right now, this moment.

I got a call from my neighbors asking for off-and-on cat-sitting, on no real identifiable schedule; we do this for one another, and it's convenient. Living here, in this 8-plex in South Minneapolis has sort of been like a more-functional Peyton Place or Tales of the City, with a Midwestern twist.

Anyway.

My neighbor, who owns said cat, is 28 or so; her boyfriend, also the building's caretaker, is my age, or a bit older. He knocked on my door tonight to follow up on the cat-sitting request, and to explain why it's off-and-on.

My neighbor, the 28 year old, has cancer. All over her body. Her shoulder blade and some other places, but I can't remember what he said.

She'd had it before last Spring, in her sinus, and was operated on, successfully. They took it out, she recovered, life went on. Recently, they went to Mexico, to Ixtapa, and I cat-sat then. They came back tan.

I'll cat-sit again, as often as they need.

The caretaker stood in my doorway, filling me in, explaining it all in scientific details, the options, the chemo. They'd be going to Mayo and some other places. They need to be aggressive, he said. They need to act fast. She's young. It's a rare kind of cancer, and sometimes, those are the worst. She can live with it, for a while. But as usual, no one knows for how long.

No one knows.

And I listened and then he had to get back to his cooking and I closed the door and stood over my sink of unfinished dishes and just said, over and over, to no one, to the universe, to the consistently-unfair cosmos, fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

She's smart and laughs loud and is a great, thoughtful neighbor and an all-around kind person. And I'm so angry, because it's so...unfair. But then, I don't really know what would make something like this fair. Maybe if she were 60 years older than she is now and had already done the things she told me she'd planned for herself, for this life of hers, like having children.

I have been given this news, the reason for the cat-sitting, and I don't want to have to know. But I can't "un-know" this. Too late.

Now it's a fact. My neighbor, a young woman, with cancer. Unknowable.

And I will watch her cat.

Two Cute

2007-03-30T19:47:00.000-07:00

This post is really just an excuse to share the cutest photo of these two French Bulldogs, sent to me by a co-worker who knows I adore flat-faced dogs (the pug, of course, being the family Dog of Choice since childhood, save for an occasional cur or two).

He sent a series of them, but this is the most charming. Just look at those brachiocephalic faces!

"Kola" is the one in the foreground, and "Montgomery" is the sweet/bashful looking guy peeping around behind him (who, sadly, trotted across the Rainbow Bridge some time ago and is, as his owner has said, "In a better place.")

Anyway, I just love this photo. Quite simply, I find it charming, and, as the British might say, it "gladdens" me. So I needed to preserve it--and share it--in this blog.

One Hot Mama

2007-03-19T09:23:00.000-07:00

I did it.

I fired my hairdresser. It was simple, painless, fast and necessary. And it was time. I'd been seeing him for almost 4 years, and he was okay--just okay--while my hair was still and only a pixie cut; but in the past year, I began to want more; I needed some things to change, and for that, I suffered needlessly. Still, I was unwilling to let the relationship end, although it was merely a business agreement. I am not always good at such things, even when they prove without question to be detrimental; I hang in there. I make excuses for the other person. I tell myself patience is my finest virtue, when really, I am being passive. It is a character defect I am working on. Trust me.

My former hairdresser has seemed fairly checked out for the past year. I mean, pleasant and all (albeit spacey), but I was really, really consistently hating what he was doing to my head. I used pictures. I explained. He highlighted & cut. And I'd pay (plenty), leave, slink home, stand in front of the mirror, and think, well, it's still growing out and besides, there's always the next time. And the next time was invariably the same.

It all changed when I recently met someone with fine, straight hair just like my own, with the exact shaggy haircut I've been desiring. I asked for the name of her hairdresser and she happily obliged, saying "She'll make you feel like a Hot Mama!" Conveniently, she was located downtown, near where I work. I made an appointment (which in and of itself felt like a profound betrayal of my old hairdresser, but I quashed those feelings). I went. I explained. She wrinkled her brow, lifting clumps of my hair and saying, "There's a lot I need to correct." OUCH. But correct, she did. Expertly. Perfectly.

It is true; one's ego is often entirely wrapped up in one's hair. I know what I want; I know what I like. I do not have a hard time articulating things, not always. I have fine, unruly, cowlicky hair that needs a certain amount of coddling to look decent. She got that. She said, "I'm old enough to remember when shags were in the first time."

My former hairdresser was a mere sprout, somewhere in his 20's. He didn't truly know from the glory days of the Jane Fonda shag.

So all is now good. I've been liberated. And I've learned an important lesson: if you don't get what you want the first time from a hairdresser, chances are you won't get what you want the next time, or the next. Move on. Lots of people cut hair.

Rules for life. Rules for shags. Rules for my ongoing recovery.

And, yes, it's true. I finally feel, for all practical purposes, like one Hot Mama. :-)

Let the Sunshine In.....

2007-03-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

Thank God.

Things are thawing in the Nation's Refrigerator. It's beginning to look a lot like....Spring.

The time changed (3 weeks early) this past Sunday morning, and we went from cold and dark to bright, warmer and sunny, pretty much overnight.

I'm not complaining. The seasons here literally butt up one against the other, with little to no transition time; it's just so sudden, it takes some getting used to. I'm still wearing Winter turtlenecks and drab earth tones. I suddenly have the urge to replace everything in my wardrobe with breezy florals and pastels.

Things are melt-y and slushy outside, and the last big snowstorm will soon be but a memory.

This just makes me want to return to the land of citrus trees, shaking ground, salt air and endless coastline that much more (yes, I'm talking about California).

Until that actually occurs, however, I can at least keep eyeballing this photo:

There's a word for it

2007-03-05T15:25:00.000-08:00

"Navel-gazing" is a term I use for the perennially self-involved. You know, the type of person who goes through endless years of psychotherapy ("analysis," if you're from New York), encounter-grouping, and basically all manner of self-realization, usually peaking in this area around midlife, at which point the evaluation of one's navel becomes even more exquisitely profound, thanks to perhaps a failed relationship or two, the specter of death, the first few gray hairs, kids (if any) growing up and leaving home, and the (imminent) loss of one's parents.

I'm a little (okay, a LOT) that way. I grew up in Berkeley. Berkeleyans, in general, are all at least a little that way. We wrote the book on navel-gazing. We're really good at it. It's a West Coast thing. We use terms like, "You're not hearing me," and "I'm not okay with that," and "How are you around that?" When we're distressed, we tell one another that they're "pushing our buttons." We are encouraged to "get in touch with our anger." We even ask our Inner Children to come out and play from time to time.

Anyway. My friend in Portland, with whom I have discussed at length the concept of navel-gazing, and with whom I have copiously navel-gazed, came across this word and sent it to me:

Omphaloskepsis. Greek derivation. Definition: Contemplation of one's navel.

I wonder if this makes me an "Omphaloskepsist."

Blog on, Blog off

2007-03-03T14:33:00.000-08:00

No, I haven't blogged for a while. I believe part of the reason why is the nearly back-to-back snow storms we've been having in these parts, leaving me feeling draggy, terribly unwitty, and badly in need of a stretch of hibernation.

We had a major storm last Saturday/Sunday, followed by another this past Thursday into Friday; bands of bad weather that came roaring in, only to dump copiously, leave a mess and flee--somewhat like a recent former friendship.

Ah, but I digress, however briefly. You get the drift, no pun intended.

Today, I made my way on foot to the grocery store, as I do many Saturday mornings. All was white and treacherous, and I do mean treacherous. After living here for 5 years, I no longer take the most quotidian functions for granted, such as stepping off the curb and crossing the street. After the city has plowed, great heaps of dirty snow are pushed into 4 or 5 foot mounds along the curb, and there they sit. Now, one does not merely step ever-so-daintily over these mounds, no; one must prepare to scale them, ascending, hitting the man-made summit, then descending, praying all the while that one does NOT slip on one's ass. The best one can hope for in such circumstances is that another has gone before, leaving deep foot impressions in the snow, thus creating a sort of helpful stair-step effect.

On the up side, we're getting closer to Easter (more chocolate!) and Passover (more macaroons!), both of which I love for the aforementioned foods. As a reward for my I-may-as-well-be-trucking-up-Everest-'cause-they-won't-find-my-
corpse-till-Spring-thaw outing today, I treated myself to one of those funky Manischewitz cans of Almond-flavored macaroons, the tiny, chewy ones that usually become part of a "Hello, Jewish Neighbors!" endcap display at this time of year.

So all is not utterly horrific. Just cold and white. But The macaroons are a reminder that Spring can't be too far off. And for that, I am profoundly grateful.

Though I can't say I'm thrilled at the prospect of slogging through slush. Ah, Portland! Rain never looked so good!

And baby makes three....or four....or five.....

2007-02-19T17:48:00.000-08:00

Okay, enough starfucking. Let's get real for a moment.

I work in a very fertile office; perhaps I should amend that to read, a very fertile MIDWESTERN office. And I work with a bunch of designers, and designers, generally speaking, tend to be female (yes, there will be future posts on hysteria, hormones and thongs, all of which are painfully rampant in my place of employment, but not right now). Typically.

Now, I've been in this job for four years. And in that four years, we've had engagements, weddings and knockings-up. Lots of 'em. Surnames are changing faster than Britney's hair (or lack thereof). So what happens in an office when any of the aforementioned Life Events occurs? Showers are tossed and envelopes are passed, because I have nothing better to do with my laughably paltry salary than to go in with about 40 other people on a high-tech stroller that does everything but parallel park itself and brew espresso.

Yeah, I don't think so.

Now, I like having fun. I'm nice. I have the patience of Job (most of the time). I participate in quite a few office functions. But moreso and to the point, I am single. I have a cat. I have friends. But I do not have a husband, and who knows if one will be presenting himself to me in the foreseeable future. And I don't plan on having kids. But I AM adopting more pets. Someday.

So there won't be showers for me (unless I start throwing myself New Pet Showers, which wouldn't be a half-bad idea, but I'd have to get the pets first). No envelopes circulating with other people's cash stuffed into them for my giddy benefit. No pastel-sprinkled cupcakes to wreak havoc with the glycemic index of 40 sedentary cube-dwellers. No sitting around a conference room participating in tragically insipid shower-themed games, but in that, I feel I'm being truly merciful. Frankly, I should be thanked.

There is, in fact--surprise!--another baby shower this week, or early next week, but I declined it; I've decided enough is enough and put a personal kabash on all manner of Office Shower Involvement. A girl's gotta have some boundaries.

And as it so happens....I've discovered I'm not the only one.

8 ball in the corner pocket & 70's schlock

2007-02-18T13:56:00.000-08:00

Was greeted this morning on my Earthlink homepage with the entertainment headline "Britney shaves head, gets tattoo," or something like that.

Of course, I took a closer look and, caffeine kicking in & curiosity piqued, I jumped over to the ever-reliable PerezHilton. Indeed, the girl has seriously gone around the bend and now resembles a startled, slightly-fuzzy billiard ball. Yeah, screams for help and all that. When you're a 20-something bazillionaire who didn't have a "normal" (and what IS that, anyway?) childhood and was thrust head-first into scrutinized pop-stardom adulthood, I think it makes you a little screwy.

I've never been a fan of her music; I did see a drag queen at a local club perform to "I'm a Slave 4 U" and I actually kinda dug that whole slick, sleek pop-ish, sexy and really quite hot (yes, yes, I REALLY want to be a drag queen, most people know this about me....) metaphor, but other than that, not really a fan of her flavor of over-produced musical bubblegum.

She's been acting out for a while, but this is pathetic. It's a nervous breakdown made public; it's also too bad she spawned kids at such a young age when it's obvious she's so NOT emotionally developed herself. She's sort of going through all the bizarre acting-out teenaged stages she missed by being in the biz and, as the theory goes, you must go through all stages in life--at some point--to grow up. For some people, they just come later....

Apparently depression and alcoholism run in her family, so I hope her ass lands in recovery (or there's an intervention on her behalf); if she's serious about it, it'll be here in MN at Hazelden, NOT some swanky "recovery" center in the Bahamas. Please.

Speaking of over-produced musical bubblegum, I Net Flix'd "Phantom of the Paradise" and I highly recommend it. It came out in '74, is horribly dated and terribly over-the-top, but it's GREAT! It's a tongue-in-cheek rock musical/fable with one of the (seriously) best scores ever, written by the bizarre but extraordinarily talented Paul Williams, who is the WEIRDEST little shag-haired, strawberry-blond aviator-glasses-wearing chipmunk-cheeked squeaky munchkin-like dude in the world of entertainment. But he penned such Carpenters faves as "We've Only Just Begun" and "Rainy Days and Mondays," and he wrote all the songs for the Muppet Movie, my fave being "The Rainbow Connection" (ah, Kermie!). And he's done many others. Lots of talent in a strange package.

Anyway, this flick is a kick, with touches of "Phantom of the Opera," "Faust" and "The Picture of Dorian Gray," not to mention overtones of pulpy, kinky 70's porn. I'm SO ordering the soundtrack. Oh, and I'm pilfering my brother's original poster to frame & hang right next to "Hedwig!"

Nip/Tuck

2007-02-16T18:28:00.000-08:00

I am suddenly fascinated by bad plastic surgery. Sort of. And perhaps only fleetingly.

But there. I said it. I confessed. I know, I know. Your eyebrows have risen substantially, your lips are pursed and you've unconsciously cocked your head to the side. You're thinking, "God, really? Plastic surgery? You mean, cause you want it? Rhinoplasty? Sacks of saline in the chestal area? A butt lift?"

No. Not for me. Not ever. Not electively. I think it's creepy and gross and invasive and rampant and bizarre. And I really hadn't thought much about it until I was perusing another guilty pleasure last night, the Queeny gossip website PerezHilton.com, who occasionally posts links to other websites (I guess as a favor). There was one about plastic surgery, and it made me curious, but I'd surfed away from his site before clicking it, so I typed "Celebrity Plastic Surgery" into Google and found a "Bad Plastic Surgery" site. The site wasn't bad (well, it wasn't great, either), but the surgeries were.

And there I stayed, agog and idiotly fascinated for....a while. Now, what I don't get is why Christina Aguilera ever thought her perfectly decent and naturally-proportion Real Boobs were insufficient. Why do women buy into that? I guess it's all part of the biz, but that tiny, skinny chick pumped 'em right up. Why did Jennifer Aniston want a nose job? I like uniqueness in people. WASP-y button noses aren't all they're cranked up to be; I have one, courtesy of my dad, and it runs and gets clogged and needs the hairs plucked out of it like everyone else's. In the end, it's still just a nose.

And the lips! The lips were most fascinating of all! There is a tragic Drag Queen (is there any other kind, really?) called "Bree" although, actually, I think she might be transgendered, who has gone collagen-mad, and the outcome is horrid. She looks like she had a major allergic reaction to a plate of shrimp scampi. They're huge. They look like those fake wax lips I used to buy as a kid around Halloween. And then there's Meg Ryan, who's looking....not so cute anymore (why do white chicks with thin lips think fat lips will improve their looks? Fat lips are just fat lips. Are they hoping some adventurous lover will chew on their mouths while they're meshing? Is that the deal?). When lips are so fat they can't even close, I think it's kind of a problem. Clay Aiken? Really not a looker to begin with (I'm personally not a fan of redhaired men), and now he's even scarier with collagen lips and bonded teeth. NOT an improvement. Eww.

And what can be said about poor, misguided Mickey Rourke? So many face lifts, his ears are practically meeting at the nape of his neck. Gads. And then there's the increasingly evil-looking Katie Couric who has obviously moved on well past the "America's Little Sister" moniker; her forehead and browline are all botoxed-out, and she looks mad. In fact, she looks like she has permanent "Smelling Shit" face. Or really bad cramps.

Of course, there's that famous Manhattanite who has had so many surgeries, she's a strange, cat-like, implanted, pulled, pinched, puffy & tucked alien-looking thing at this point. And, much like an accident along the highway that compels you to stare and rubberneck, I couldn't look away.

Some of the others, we're already all too familiar with: Liz, Liza, Michael, Janet....

And then, of course, there's Courtney Love. And really, what more can be said? Except maybe, oy vey.

Body Rocks

2007-02-12T10:50:00.000-08:00

So, I've been having pain and stiffness in 3 of my fingers (pinky on the left hand, middle & ring fingers on the right), located in the last knuckle joint closest to the fingertip, and it's worse upon waking, but tends to diminish as the morning wears on and my fingers get stretched a bit.

In researching this, I have concluded it is arthritis, which I've only noticed this year (and which is exacerbated by the cold weather here). This is the major reason I've begun to overhaul my diet and revisit vegetarian/veganism, actually. Besides, I'm an A- blood type and, according to the blood type diet, I'm a "natural vegetarian," so it could even be that what little meat I've allowed myelf to consume has had a negative effect on my body.

Anyway.

I was talking to my mother yesterday and she theorized, in addition to cold & diet, that perhaps I was "somaticizing" the pain in my fingers, the definition of which is: "To convert into physical symptoms," such as grief, anxiety, anger, etc.

So I said, "You mean, like, I want to choke He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named? Or bitch-slap the daylights out of him?"

And she said, "Well, you know...." in that way that means, Oh, hell YES, you do.

Now, I admit, I HAVE had daydreams of drafting & delivering the most profound and eloquent You're-an-Asshole monologue to this former friend of mine, and on a purely rational level, I know it would be highly detrimental to all aspects of my well-being to resume dealing with someone so damaged and toxic. On an emotional level, however, well, let's just say that daydream has not yet completely fizzled out. Hence, the Somatic Theory.

So, as tempting as that whole bitch-slapping scenario may be, I think it probably makes more sense to just go find a good Acupuncturist instead.

This is me, not relating

2007-02-12T08:05:00.000-08:00

Okay, so, I semi-watched the Grammys last night, and I say "semi" because I was simultaneously engaged in a phone call with a friend of mine in Portland for whom the Grammys were not yet on.

She was anxious to see the Police and their much-hyped "reunion" performance, which was a fairly blink-and-you-miss-it affair. They were good, but it was a totally self-indulgent (well, when is it not?) version of "Roxanne," with the newly-shorn and middle-age-buff Sting bending the lyrics to please himself and the whole thing coming off like a much-improved garage-band jam session for the nostalgic. I was partial to last year's opener, the holographic Gorillaz and Madonna, which, together, was just totally far-out and futuristic and, well, way cool.

Later, they had some badly thought-out "tribute" to the Eagles with the prim Carrie Underwood, the bland, syrupy-sweet I'm-as-exciting-as-Velveeta country singin' American Idol winner from a few seasons ago doing embarassing covers of "Desperado" and "Life in the Fast Lane" (so, really? She's been "up and down this highway/haven't seen a Goddamn thing?" Can she even say "Goddamn?") and I simply had to mute it after a few moments to preserve the sanctity of the original versions. No, no, no. God, no. What tripped-out Grammy producer thought THAT one up?? She attempted to really "get down" to the lyrics by squeezing her frosty-shadowed eyes shut and tossing her teased blond locks and stomping her little stilettos once or twice onstage as only a pretty blond virgin can (I'm sorry, but she wouldn't be quite this dull if she got laid), but it didn't help. It was laughable.

"Faster, faster, the lights are turning red." Uh, yeah. Don't think so.

However, Shakira was shakin' all over for God and the Universe, and it was a total trip. It's like, she kind of warms up then gets going, and then all bodily hell breaks loose and I felt myself developing major whiplash from watching her. She's, like, quadrupally jointed or something. But then, if my abs looked that good, I might bare & shake them every chance I got, too.

There was a quick audience shot of Imogen Heap looking like a stoned Mother Nature, with a wild-assed hairdo. But I kinda liked that she was all weird looking.

And I was relieved to hear that Smokey Robinson still had decent pipes, though he's getting that surgically-enhanced look of permanent surprise around the eyes somewhat. Ah, well.

There was also this call-and-vote deal for three identical and not very exciting young Beyonce wannabes who sat in the front row, clutching hands and looking about as perky and hopeful as three Little Sisters during Rush Week. The idea was to phone in your vote and the "winner" would get the honor of a nationally televised Grammy Moment (in this case, a duet) with none other than Justin Timberlake. And this is where I know I'm 41 and not relating, cause I was like, who are they, why do I care, and why does everyone think Justin is all that? I know people do. I have friends that do. And I even like one or two of his earlier frothy pop tunes. But I'm just not wetting my panties over the man. No.

I was glad the Dixie Chicks got recognition. If you haven't seen "Shut Up and Sing," you need to. Period.

Anyway, I'd had enough and got into bed with the NY Times Arts & Leisure section, and there was a blurb about PBS' new "Bram Stoker's Dracula," which I'd considered watching instead of the Grammys. And I shoulda. But then I wouldn't've had the colorful phone coversation with my friend in Portland. Or this blog entry today.

Well, maybe next time.

To Veg or not to Veg

2007-02-09T17:12:00.000-08:00

That is the question that I am currently mulling.

Something has hit me again in recent days, or weeks, about the prospect of returning to a vegetarian diet. I was a vegetarian for, I don't know, maybe a decade (I even inspired a few other people to adopt the diet, one of whom now considers me a sort of "traitor to the cause" because of my 180 after I got him to stop eating meat), and I did it for ethical reasons, primarily; I love animals, I grew up with a fairly motley assortment (the requisite dogs n' cats, a couple of goldfish, hamsters, pastel candy-colored budgies, even a salamander from our own backyard that escaped its "pen" and which I eventually found, dried up in a dust bunny in a corner of the living room; I also later learned their skin has a sort of poison in it, much like toads, but luckily I never actually touched it), and I was always rescuing them, like stray dogs and hurt Mockingbirds, all of it. So it stood to reason that consuming them was antithesis to this big-hearted Florence Nightengale-of-Animals thing I had going.

Not to mention, I was also pretty militant about not eating meat and proudly wore my PETA t-shirt everywhere.

That changed when I tried to give blood after 9/11 and watched the iron-poor blood droplet fall from my pricked fingertip and drift, weakly and lazily down to the bottom of a glass of water, while my friend's rich blood plummeted like an anchor. My blood was declined, so while my friend continued with her donation, I promptly left the bloodbank and crossed the street to the burger joint to chow down, a gesture which effectively positioned me in the world as a carnivore from that point on.

I still wore the PETA t-shirt, but only to sleep in.

Lately, though, it's been the growing awareness not just of global warming and the terrible, horrible impact cows have on the environment (read about it sometime, go on), and the fact we're a big, fat, sick nation with heart trouble and colon cancer and joint diseases and raging hormonal imbalances and gout, but the fact that, at 41, I've recently noticed a soreness in a couple of knuckles on my hands (ah, God, this "aging" thing!), which I'm assuming is the onset of arthritis, exacerbated by the cold, cold weather.

Now, the American Way is to say, "Aw, give me a shot o' cortisone or some pills or a smear of Ben-Gay," etc. in an effort to control the symptoms, but that's lazy. That's uninformed and really, terribly unenlightened. My first thought was, oh, shit. My DIET.

Even now, I don't eat that much meat, but I crave it and when I want it, I have it. Which is, I don't know, once every couple of weeks, I suppose, and probably in conjunction with the ebb and flow of my cycle.

I was sharing this renewed mindset with a Buddhist friend of mine today, a years-long vegetarian who listed the reasons to not eat meat:

"Ahimsa," which means non-violence;
Health;
Spirituality;
Environment.

Who can argue with that? I just think I'm "there" again, for whatever inspecific or specific reasons. I love cooking, and I'm no longer completely unconscious about food and what it does to your body (no, I haven't had a bowl of Cap'n Crunch for at least 20 years), I generally make much better choices now (although last Friday was a riot of Tater-Tots, gloppy pasteurized cheese dip, kosher hot dogs and hard cider at a happy hour with a friend of mine, for which I paid dearly the next morning), and I'm generally conscious of keeping my iron levels respectable. And I guess I do feel that part of "paying rent" on the planet means being conscious of my own impact on it.

There is a saying that goes, "Live simply, that others may simply live," and when I think about how ridiculously indulgent and overly-rich (in all ways) and self-centered and indifferent the Western Mindset generally is (and our meat-centric diet is part of that), I kind of shudder. I think it'll be a process for me, though, because having grown up in proximity to the Pacific Ocean, I do love seafood, and certain habits are ridiculously hard to break.

And I have a honkin' frozen turkey breast in the freezer. Sigh.

But the thinking, the renewed consciousness, is a beginning, again, and a great one. For me. And I'm excited about it, as if I'm slowly reawakening after a long, long snooze.

As they say in the program, One Day at a Time. Oh, and Live and Let Live. Which, I think, even applies to animals.

Ahimsa.

Gettin' jiggy wit it

2007-02-04T16:28:00.000-08:00

So, there's this Sunday NY Times essay about "designer" dogs--some new cross-breeds, like "Puggles" (Pug/Beagle mix) and "Boggles" (Pug/Boston) and some other non-pug mixes, etc.

It really brought to light how over-bred pugs (pure pugs) in particular have become; so much so, in fact, that the poor, loaf-like dears can't even SCREW without human intervention, and it's really quite a bizarrely fascinating, amusing, involved and ultimately pathetic scenario.

They start by bringing the bitch into heat, whether it's her time or not (that, right there, is weird), and then they trot the stud over, who takes one whiff of the hot mama and, eyes buggin' and tongue lollin', attempts to mount her, and this is where the fun really begins. Since they've been bred to be totally blocky with stubby legs, they really can't, uh..."connect," as it were, so as the stud nears, um, "completion," he is helpfully finished off and the contents (paltry, from what I understand) are then collected in a baggie.

Seems to me we've hit a collective new low as a species when we have to jerk off a pug.

The rest, well, it's something along the lines of inserting the collected contents into the bitch and then, well, digitally stimulating her (I guess she has to get SOMETHING out of the experience), and then it's finally over (I'm not sure how the denoument is actually DETERMINED, if she has the pug version of The Big 'O' or if it's timed or what) and everyone--pugs and owners--all settle down into a happy, post-non-coital afterglow and smoke cigarettes. It wouldn't surprise me if the owners actually asked the pugs if it was good for them, and frankly, I'm not sure the pugs would know any different. Which is pretty sad.

It's too weird. As anyone who knows me knows, I adore the breed....but can I really support artificial pug f*cking?

Suck it Up

2007-02-03T06:56:00.000-08:00

So here's the deal in these parts, as of today, Saturday, 2/3/07, and extending through some time on Monday:

It's butt-assed cold.

Now, being an expatriated Californian, "cold" used to mean something entirely different. It meant, oh, 50 degrees, a bit cloudy, and maybe a few gusts of wind to blow a little pollen around so my sinuses would get allergically clogged. And I thought that was the depths of sheer misery.

Oh, how wrong I was. So very, very wrong.

Feeling a need for "change," (perhaps this is more a personality flaw, as I am seeing it now--or at least this weekend--rather than a healthy exploration of boundaries and a need for growth and psychic expansion and coming into myself and all that shit), I willingly--and, if I remember correctly, completely CONSCIOUSLY, because there were no drugs involved, no downing of copious amounts of alcohol, no gun-to-the-temple type of coercion around this decision, nothing of the sort--picked up and left the "temperate" Pacific Northwest where I had previously been living (ah, that word is right up there with "tropical" in my mind!) for the FREEZING Midwest.

My mother is a permanently, happily, fixedly expatriated Chicagoan, living in California (since her teens), and when she got wind of my plan to escape to the nation's midsection, she was, frankly, agog.

"You've never felt a winter like THAT," she assured me. "I remember the wind from Lake Michigan. It was bitterly cold. You've never really experienced weather like that before."

Now, I am known for stubbornness and, since she is a parent, I, of course, thought she was merely raining on my parade and decided she was merely embellishing things in a last-ditch attempt to keep me from moving so far away, so naturally I ignored her warning and split. I mean, millions of people live here and stay here and work here and gobble hot dish here. Even other expatriated Californians. How bad could it be?

"Okay," she'd say, one eyebrow arched skeptically, her voice rising markedly on the second syllable to denote my utter foolishness, "but I think you'll be sorry."

Of course, on THIS end of things, most of the natives I encounter--when I begin to bitch and moan about the weather--fold their arms and turn away from me ever so slightly, cheeks tinged pink with the flush of some flavor of Scandinavian heritage and, eyes squinting suspiciously at this sputtering, fuming West Coast Creature-Like Thing in front them, ask, "How long have you been here?" When I reply, "Five years," they throw up their arms and smirk and say, "Oh, well. WEEELLLL. YOU haven't experienced a 'REAL' winter at ALL. This is nothing."

Nothing? I'd say the mercury plummeting to below zero is not "nothing." It's past "nothing," as a matter of fact, slipping right down there into the negative digits.

So I've discovered it's best to simply shut up about it, because there is no mercy here among the natives when it comes to winter weather.

I somewhat recently heard the phrase, "Suck it up, candy-ass," (however NOT directed at me) and that's pretty much the inference when I begin to groan. So I am doing the only thing I can, faced with three days of howlingly freezing winter weather: I am attempting to put a positive spin on things. I'm making pancakes. I'm drinking a strong, dark mug of Peet's (probably the West Coast's finest, dark coffee); I'm sitting in my flannel robe; I'm going to read, watch my netflix DVD, and tap around on the laptop. And I'm telling myself this whole thing, the sound of the wind occasionally throwing a burst of ice against my window, the plummeted mercury, the flannel-wearing, is "cozy."

And I am trying--trying very hard--to suck it up.

Got that right

2007-01-30T15:08:00.000-08:00

So, according to the weatherman on the 5 o'clock news, we're heading into 60-70 STRAIGHT hours of below-zero weather, the coldest stretch in 3 years. Biggie blast of arctic air comin' our way.

Oh, joy.

He then cheerfully added that, although the winters here were "trending milder" (they are??) the "upside," such as it may be, is that this bitter stretch would surely help thin the population here. In other words, wimpy Californians like me would finally throw up our hands and leave the natives to their ice.

Yes. Oh, yes, indeed.

Equine Sadness; Weirdness, parts I & II

2007-01-29T15:19:00.000-08:00

Equine Sadness: I just heard they had to put Barbaro down, the sleek, too-young racehorse who broke his right leg at the start of a race about 8 months ago (the footage of the break is horrible, actually). There was hope at first....but things went from bad to worse, and it was ultimately the most merciful thing.

He gave his life for human pleasure, and of course, I have enormous, enormous issues with that, but I won't climb on a soap box here. Let's just say I'm not a fan of horse racing (or greyhound racing, for that matter, but let's move on).

Weirdness, part I: I'm watching the 5 o'clock news, which is where I heard the news about Barbaro. Being a local broadcast, they're live from the Winter Carnival in St. Paul, where the newscaster was about to repair to the "hotdish tent." I honestly don't know how many "varieties" of hotdish exist--they're all similar, with cream soup and sour cream and some sort of frozen veggies and some sort of starch, either tater-tots or noodles, and ground meat.

And that's basically it.

Weirdness, part II: Some guy--owner of a sports bar in WI--"accidentally" hurtled himself 17 stories out of a Hyatt in downtown Minneapolis (he's fine, amazingly). Said it was an accident. Just not really comprehending how one "accidentally" overshoots one's own hotel room door and keeps going to the end of the hall with enough velocity to break through a glass window, but I have my theory....

Let me just say, they like their hotdish a LOT here. And their liquor.

Now, I'm not a teetotaler by any means, but honestly. What else is there to do during the long, gray winter?

Hazelden, anyone?

Yes, I did....

2007-01-29T10:37:00.000-08:00

...just update the Hen House template, so if you're suddenly a wee bit discombobulated, I apologize. But a revived blog screams for a revived "look" (hell, any life change screams for a revived look, which I'm sort of learning....)

I like this one. And it has all my "blues" in it, which, being a Fire Element, I rather dig (they keep me cool).

That's a reference to 5 Element Acupuncture, for those who may not understand my West Coast patois.....

Speaking of the West Coast, I keep hearing how nice the weather is in California, all mild and probably a bit globally warmed.

But still, sure beats this 4 degree wind chill we're having in these parts. Sigh.

Twice Frozen

2007-01-28T11:04:00.000-08:00

So, I'm an Episcopalian. I love the tradition--and I love High Church. It's very rich, just full of spectacle and pomp. Going to church on Sundays is like partaking in a very rich dessert; you feel really satisfied afterward, and know you've had something GOOD.

Anyway, one of today's themes (well, it's an ongoing theme, and really should be, in all faiths) was acceptance of anyone different. At one point, during announcements, our Dean said, "I want you to turn to the person next to you, right now, and say, 'I love you and accept you exactly the way you are,'" which I thought was very cool and somewhat like a theater exercise.

Now, Episcopalians are referred to as "God's Frozen People" or "God's Frozen Chosen" for a reason; like the Royal Family, they're a generally stoic (some might say "shut down" or "repressed") bunch, preferring to nurse their feelings over a plate of ham and a good, stiff G & T, rather then, you know, actually FEEL them.

Additionally, these are Minnesotans; also not exactly known for being demonstrative. So it was kind of a Frozen Double Whammy. You could feel the discomfort, the twinge of self-conscious fear ("I mean, what if I really DON'T 'love' the person next to me? What if he smells, or votes 'wrong' or likes butt sex or has something green stuck in his teeth?!") sweep across the congregation.

I turned to the guy in the pew next to me, just some random guy, and waited--and waited--to catch his eye. He pretended he hadn't heard or was suddenly deaf (which he was not, I assure you), or quadraplegic, or something, because (like many others) he kept staring straight ahead with a strange little grin on his face, looking neither right nor left. Just straight ahead, grinningly.

I thought, dude, I was SO ready to love you and accept you unconditionally, and this is how you repay me? This is how you TREAT me?? So I gave up and turned all the way around to the guy--some older gentleman--in the pew BEHIND me, and uttered the words, which he then said to me. It was very kind, and a nice exercise, and I think it pleased both of us to participate.

I left the frozen church and made my way back out into the equally frozen city (-25 when I called the weather this morning), feeling good and really calm and soothed (I like my Sunday Dose o' God), and I appreciated that the Dean at least TRIES to get people to think about other people.

So if you're reading this, may I just say, I love you and accept you exactly the way you are.

Even with that green thing stuck in your teeth.

Queens & Balls

2007-01-27T16:54:00.000-08:00

So, it was another freezing Minnesota winter day (in fact, I'm hearing the howling wind right now as I type this, and even the cat, in spite of a thickened winter coat, is stretched languorously in front of the radiator); the weather number is programmed into my phone, and when I dialed it this morning, the cheerless electronic voice let me know in no uncertain terms that the air temperature was a balmy 14 degrees but the windchill was something like -6.

Perfect day to go see a flick, which is what I did. I met my friend and her mom and we saw Helen Mirren in "The Queen," and I highly recommend it. She utterly disappears into the role; and although the character is staid (to say the least--perhaps that is a ridiculous understatement) and steeped in monarchical tradition (boy, do those Royals like their martinis), she actually manages to humanize the Queen and display a range of complex emotions (and thank God, because the Royal Wardrobe is dull beyond belief--all woolen earth tones and muted plaids and tweeds and sensible heels, although I do like those nubby British Isles knits on men and, may I just add, the hunting scenes looked like sweeping L.L. Bean photo shoots).

Hence the recently-awarded Golden Globe and the Academy Award nomination (which I believe she will get).

There is some beautiful parallel symbolism with a gorgeous and very noble Buck (given that the story is set during the week of Lady Di's death, it was an effective device), and I can't say more without giving it away. You'll have to see it, and I hope you do. 5 stars. Two thumbs up. All of it.

Oh, and the stumpy Royal Corgis. What a HOOT! All four of them and their little waggling butts, and as the credits roll, well, let's just say one of the Corgis lets fly in the Royal Gardens at Balmoral, and I'm so happy they left that in!

In an entirely different vein, I received a voicemail from a friend of mine in Oregon who wanted to share a sighting with me: vehicular testicles. Apparently, male insecurity has hit a new low. It's no longer enough to roar around in a jacked-up pickup. You have to prove to God and the Universe that you have something significant (or insignificant, but at least something) between your legs (whenever I think of insecure, over-compensatory males, I always recall that scene in "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" wherein the imported Asian wife is leaving her beefy Aussie hubby and, waggling her pinky in his direction, says to him, "Me no like you anyway; you got little ding-a-ling!").

But "Bumper Balls?" I really have to wonder who thought these up, and why anyone would want them--no doubt the same knuckle-draggers that have those pissing "Calvin" stickers on their back windows, watch the WWF ('cause it's so "manly," all those long-haired dudes tackling each other in their stretchy gold lamé singlets) and vote for you-know-who.

My Oregon friend wondered into my V/M if these unfortunate accessories had yet found their way onto the bumpers of insecure Midwestern male motorists, and my MN friend (with whom I'd just seen the flick) assured me they had.

What would the female equivalent be? Driving around with big, round mud flaps that look like gigantic boobs? Or possibly ovaries?

Well, as they say in these parts, that's different.

Toys & flattery

2007-01-25T16:41:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's because I'm a youngest child (we're supposedly more secure, since, I think the theory at least partially goes, our parents "practiced" with the earlier kids and ostensibly got it at least semi-right by the time the last one popped into the world) or maybe it's simply this narcissistic streak I admittedly have, but I've had a few people ask me already when I was going to post something NEW on my blog.

I think it's flattering to be asked, in a Sally Field-esque "Oh, you like me! You really LIKE me!" kind of way.

On the other hand, it may not have much to do with me at all (always a shocking, disarming thought, of course); it may be more of a reflection on the proclivities of the reader, that little touch of voyeurism, like when I used to babysit and came across things I had to work really hard to find, like, say, all manner of "Marital Enhancements," (yes, people in Berkeley really put it out there; okay, well, maybe not OUT there, but "it" was usually stashed somewhere that could fairly easily be unearthed by a nosy teenager looking to find, you know, WHATEVER. Ahem.) the discovery of which, I thought, might enable me to scratch below the surface a bit more and understand the very people into whose lives I had been invited to be the Temporary Nurturing Parental Surrogate to their kids for a few hours.

There had to've been more, after all, than boxes of mac n' cheese and chocolate milk and stacks of diapers and "Goodnight, Moon" and a chipper, "We'll be home by 11:30 or so."

And, yeah, there certainly was.....but 25 years later, I'm not really sure how finding such things helped illuminate their lives for me very much, other than by my ultimately realizing that, well, these happy, smiling, here's-the-number-where-we'll-be Berkeley parents liked a li'l sugar in their coffee now and again. I mean, they had offspring, for God's sake. You don't get preggers by just sitting there and holding hands.

So, all that being said, perhaps my musings will be a bit more illuminating and possibly more titillating than a basket of ribbed & flavored condoms or a random Japanese sex toy or an assortment of really tacky porn vids found stuffed in the back of a closet.

But then again, maybe not.

Dude, like, NO

2007-01-22T11:43:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I admit, I had wanted to see "Lady in the Water" when it first came out. I really dug 6th sense, and kinda dug "The Village," and hadn't seen that other one with Mel Gibson, but basically, I consider myself a fan of M. Night. Never got around to SEEING it in the theater, so got it thru Netflix.

May I just say, if there's a God in heaven, M. Night will NEVER be allowed to make another completely loopy, stoned, brainless mess such as this as long as he is allowed the privilege of a film career.

This was the most freaked-out, spacey, Marin county/California encounter-group-semi-kinked-soft-porn-underdeveloped muddle I think I've ever witnessed. Everyone speaks in a whisper, r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y, as if all they do for days on end is lie around puffing one giant bong-o-rama (or they're all missing a major chunk of frontal lobe). I mean, peace out, dude.

And the lead chick ("Opie's" daughter, actually) is beyond ethereal. She sort of stares, and whispers, and lies around either naked, or wet, or wrapped in a terry towel or a guy's dress shirt and has a penchant for taking showers with her clothes on while being stared at by all the neighbors who somehow miraculously all fit into one little apartment bathroom, and is supposedly wise but basically just seems stoned off her ass or severely iron-deficient. In fact, everyone does, and for a giganto apartment complex, the residents sure don't seem to ask many questions of anything that goes on, cause they're all weird, too, and weirdness is okay and most of them seemed to be, like, blocked writers posessing bitter, existential streaks (what's up with THAT??) who sit around and stare into space and utter meaningless, futuristic crap and wonder if "man" is supposed to be happy (I think M. Night has been in way too much gestalt therapy or EST or weekends at Eselen or something).

Now, if you were the caretaker of an apartment building and some nubile, naked, soaking-wet young chick at least half your age suddenly appeared before you, would you be all like, "The fact you're totally starkers is doing nothing for me whatsoever, so let me just help you find your way back to wherever it is you came from, 'cause I'm so down with you saving all of humankind from destruction" or would you be all, "Thank you, JESUS!" and start gettin' jiggy wit it?

Grass-covered werewolves slinking around? No biggie. Naked chick camping out in the shower who calls herself a "Narf" from another world, here on a mission of, I don't know, world peace or something? Right on. Big-assed eagle gonna pick her ass up and carry her off to spread The Word, now that her job is ostensibly done? Awesome. But can she get to her spot before a "Scrunt" (the grassy werewolf thing, and what's up with THAT halfway-indecent made-up mythological word?) scratches her up and ruins her day? Well, who knows.

And M. Night sticks himself in this flick WAY too much. When he first meets this Narf chick, he gets all instantly weirded out cause she's, like, "hot" and I tried to see that, her supposed "luminous otherworldly beauty" which I guess we're supposed to "get" by her staring and smiling slightly but it really mostly just looked like a come-on from a long-haired vegan hippess grooving to the beats at a Phish concert, and Paul Giamatti (so wasted here) asks how the writer (M. Night) is feeling and right away, he cops to feeling "weird" and then P.G. asks if it's like being on pins and needles or something and he says yes, right off the bat. Now, NO ONE is ever this forthcoming, ever, to one another, this instantly casual and candid and self-realized (and the Self-Realization quotient was through the ROOF in this thing, as if all the men dropped a few tabs or smoked some really good sh*t or do regular Shiatsu).

Then there was a scene toward the end where P.G. has a "pivotal" moment of Self-Realization and sits there wailing (well, doing what he could with a lame script) and rocking the fading, now inexplicably blond Narf chick (Scrunt attack) while surrounded by neighbors, and after I got through laughing so hard I nearly careened off the couch, I was like, END already!!!!

And the snarling, grass-covered werewolf/Scrunt (what IS it with him and crappy, grass-covered monsters?) was, well, crappy. Dude, a mad pug is scarier to behold!!!

Just a lame, sleepy, unraveling, laughable, boring, self-conscious script with majorly vacant acting across the board.

I sincerely hope M. Night makes something better next time. He's allowed one utter failure, and this was it.

Dude, no.

Yet another random thought

2007-01-22T10:50:00.000-08:00

I love sushi. If I could have only one sort of food for the rest of my life, that is what it would be.

Random, overdue thought

2007-01-22T10:27:00.000-08:00

I'm fascinated by drag queens. I always wanted to be one, except I'd have to be a Real Girl, and that doesn't seem as much fun somehow. Seems like cheating.

All that 'tude.

Three-snaps-in-a-'Z'-formation and all that.

It's not that I can't be bitchy, but...you know.

Love it.

About those long o's

2007-01-22T10:04:00.000-08:00

Speaking of midwestern-isms, there are some pronounced differences in words which I've noticed since being here.

I never said "pop" before moving here. It was always "soda" in California.

"Hotdish?" We ate casseroles.

"That's different" means, Dude, you are WEIRD. (Or, actually, "THAT is weird," or "I don't get it," or something like that.)

"I suppose" means I can't really wrap my brain around that right now.

But I've been here 5 years and it's happened. My o's sometimes come out all long and Norwegian and even I'm surprised. What if I start wearing plaid? Or brightly-colored sweaters with puffy appliques all over them? Or develop a taste for Lutefisk? Or Lefse?

Hey, I'm not getting my bitch on about the midwest. It's been good to me here. It's what I needed at a time I really needed it. I'm just sayin'.

And she's off.....again.....

2007-01-22T09:33:00.000-08:00

Okay, so, I'd originally started this blog in 2005 with one initial post and I like to believe I had high hopes of, you know, regularly blogging, but apparently, my committment was fleeting and so I let it majorly slide for various reasons (I sort of thought of it for a long time as Virtual Navel-Gazing and, like, who truly CARES about the totally random goings-on in my brain???) but the fact that I am finally getting around to resurrecting it indicates I no longer worry about such potentially narcissistic trivialities.... Actually, I mostly talked myself out of it because I used to have a friend who was very critical of the process of writing, writers (I am one), blogs, blogging, etc. and it seemed easier to avoid his criticism rather than expend energy deflecting it and defending my motives....whatever. (Thankfully, I am so not in that let-me-hide-my-light-under-a-bushel-to-placate-your-insecurities phase anymore....)

We have since gone our separate ways and, yeah, it was bitter, and, yeah, it sucked, but it wasn't entirely unexpected....But, boy....may I just say, you don't know how...absolutely serene, absolutely functional...you can feel until a giganto chunk of perpetually critical negativity is finally no longer a factor in your life! Some very positive changes have begun to manifest themselves, such as a palpably improved outlook on, well, just about everything. I even had a friend at work say to me a few weeks ago, quite out of the blue, "You just seem really happy!" and, I mean, THANK GOD, because I really wasn't for a very long time.

So the blog is just one thing I'm breathing new life into.

As for the title, I actually really like chickens. I collect them, and that itself has been a sort of unofficial evolution. I think I had a few poultry-oriented items at one point and people noticed them and started giving me more and more and before I knew it, they multiplied exponentially and now I have a full-fledged collection on my hands: aprons, plates, figurines, potholders, wind-up toys that lay eggs, stuffed animals, books, even a mobile. All chickens, alla time.

I promise it'll be pretty random. That's how my brain works. Linear thinking--nay, rational thinking--can be a drag for me, since I'm, as my mother might phrase it, "a creative type," and as impressions pop into my brain, so I write. I used to verbally share my random impressions, but I soon learned that that wasn't a terribly, uh...appreciated approach. I grew up in California, currently expatriated to Minnesota and once cheerfully blabbed to a hairdresser here that my impression of the midwest was that it seemed full of fat blond women stuffed into plaid, after which I received the worst haircut of my life. So much for sharing my tactless enlightenment; I have since learned to keep the yap shut, even though I admit I have never gotten used to the accent.....

Anyway, there it is, my initial post, a second time around. I could go on, but I'll save it for subsequent posts...more trivialities to come, cause I've got a lotta time to make up!

Buh-bye.