Say Yes To The Mess

It started with Heather at dooce.com announcing her separation from her husband. It knocked us both down, Burdy and I. Them? The people we found online all those years ago, the ones whose relationship we felt was invincible? The ones we found commonality with? The mouthy blonde and the nerdy computer guy? The husband and wife team of blogging and software engineering? The very thing we aspired to? The thing which inspired our daily mantra of: if they can make it work, so can we?

Now they are undone. And it rattled us because, ultimately, other people's announcements of tragedy come boomeranging back into your face and hit you squarely in the nose. Hard. After you've shaken off the cartoon stars circling your head, you begin to ask yourself questions, like: could that happen to us? Are we working hard enough on our relationship? What else could we be doing? Should we be worrying this much? Are we judging this event by thinking that this is some sort of call to action? Are we asking the right questions, even? Is this a matter of strength or fortitude, or just how life sometimes goes?

Can we have a conversation about divorce in this country without getting our knickers in a twist over morality and religion? I mean, let's face it: divorce can be a life-changing construct that's not all bad. And thank God we don't live in a country where we have to legally stay married to someone who beats us or verbally abuses us or worse. Thank gooodness we have the ability to undo our decisions. Because what that really means is that we have the ability, we have the legal right, to change and grow. And sometimes, to facilitate that personal growth, we have to do it apart from the person we agreed to marry. Sometimes we change and grow at a pace faster than our partner, and sometimes that difference in pace is too much for a marriage to bear.

Does that mean that sometimes people use divorce as an out for a difficult situation and skip that personal growth opportunity altogether? Yes. Does this mean every divorce is as convenient and quick as a Kardashian's? No. Does that mean that, with the right tools, some marriages might not have to end in divorce? Yes. Does that mean that everyone who makes that choice to separate from their partner should be made to feel like they're part of a "pandemic" of disease sweeping the country? Absolutely not.

And what a double edged sword that choice is, huh? What other institution do we have in this country (besides parenthood, and only sometimes) which mandates that we stay in it, miserable or not? We can leave our jobs, the places we live, and our cable providers. We can change the places we shop, what we buy, and we can sell or donate our belongings when we tire of them. Marriage? We're married to it. Forever. It doesn't quite fit the paradigm of the rest of our North American upbringing. It tests, too, the strength of our word, and the promises we make and holy moses, if we can't honor that word, then what does that say about the ritual of making promises?

I've been working on this post for almost two months. I have been reluctant to hit that Publish button because I was looking for some sort of resolution to these feelings, and nothing was coming to me. I knew back in February that I wanted to write about the topic of marriage, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to say, exactly. The whole thing started with this article I read in the NY Times about a woman whose husband announced one day that he was leaving his wife and his kids. He said he was unhappy. And his wife said: I don't buy it. What she meant was: she didn't buy that his unhappiness was permanent. And she basically told her husband: Go, leave. Go do the things you feel like you need to do. We'll be here when you get back. She was no slave to the institution of marriage. She was not so blinded by her love or in denial about her husband's odd behavior (yes, there was another woman). She didn't just sit by the phone while he diddled around. She made a conscious choice not to suffer. Suffering was an option, she said, and she chose not to suffer. I thought it incredibly brave, so enlightened of her to make this choice. She waited- close to a year, as I recall- for him to realize that the sweet young thing he was chasing was only that, and that what he really wanted was a change of pace and not a change of wife or family. And he came back. And the wife took him back.

She chose not to suffer.

I read this piece around Valentine's Day. It settled down deep inside me and filled in all the holes in my pscyhe where doubt, and issues of fidelity and long term relationships had been hanging around. It sat there for about a week and made me feel like I could overcome anything in my relationship. Suffering in your relationship was a choice, I learned. It was a choice. That's what my therapist had been telling me. And all the self help books, too.

Maybe it's because the month of February naturally lends itself to discussions about marriage and love, but this issue of marriage and separation starting showing up everywhere after that article. I checked in with one of my favorite bloggers. She's very open about her marriage and all its accompanying challenges. She's open about the complex emotional lives of her kids, too. She's about as honest as it gets. She featured a link on her blog to another blogger. So I went and read that posting. And that took me to another post by another blogger about marriage.

And it got me thinking.

What these women were writing about, alongside their marriages, was their frustration with fellow bloggers about the way they talk about their marriages. One called a good chunk of the pieces on relationships "fluff pieces". I certainly didn't want to write a fluff piece about marriage when I sat down to write this piece. But, blogging is a balancing act, and it's a tough one. There is more than just my life to consider when I write about marriage. Writing about marriage, or anything for that matter, engages you in a creative process that demands brutal honesty. And that honesty invites another facet of the creative process into your life: learning to live under a microscope. Sometimes I want a break from that scrutiny. Sometimes I want to just write a piece for the express purpose of putting it somewhere outside of my already-crammed-full head. Sometimes I don't want to write for the purpose of pulling people together and creating a discussion around my issues. Sometimes my writing is catharsis only.

You'd be justified in asking: well, then why don't you just put it in a journal if all you want is catharsis? Why do you need it to be on the Internet?

I guess I put it here because I believe in the gift of reciprocity. Sometimes I just want to read something online and be soothed, made to feel like I'm not alone. I need the Internet equivalent of a soft baby bunny in my pocket to stroke when I'm feeling alienated and upset. And I want to give someone else out there the thing I have been seeking myself. I'd like to think that, even if I do withhold the more intimate details of my life, people are still getting something out of reading this. My hope is that this blog makes someone else feel a little less neurotic, or, at least, in the good company of other high functioning neurotic types.

In practice, reciprocity is complicated. I have to weigh the pros and cons of being utterly and unapologetically honest because of the characters involved. Right now, my life is necessarily compartmentalized. Is that the best arrangement? Maybe not. But the alternative is to spend a whole lot of energy considering the feelings of others, and dealing with the fallout of offending those feelings and then reconciling them, and explaining and re-explaining my position, and frankly, I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Anyway, this whole topic of marriage and blogging and how honest we want to be about it is front and center in my life right now. It flies in the face of my "rules" about how much one should talk about their relationship on their blog. One line in one of the blogs stuck me as particularly poignant: bloggers sometimes crank out humurous posts to sidestep the uglier sides of our humanity, but the whole reason we go to blogs in the first place is to read about everyone's humanity. It's a huge disservice to bury the truth in humor. It's true. I'm guilty of writing humorous posts instead of writing about the more indelicate stuff. I say this not in defense but to offer something to the conversation: sometimes we bloggers (of eleven-readers fame) need a break from all this hyper-sensitivity to the world. And I'm very conscious of what one long stream of senstivity without obvious resolution sounds like. It sounds like whining. You could probably say it's too late for me. For God's sake, the first post ever on this blog is about not being able to find a decent pair of jeans. (Cue the wah-wah trombone).

What I heard in all those posts by all those women bloggers was a call to tell the truth. So. I'm going to try to answer that call.

And I'll also tell you why I haven't written much about the topic of marriage, why even writing about it right now feels a little premature: I don't know quite how to feel about it. And it scares the crap out of me.

All I have ever wanted is some sort of guide, someone or something to tell me I am doing this right. I want that guide now, as an adult, because I grew up without one. My parents did the best they could with what they had, but they certainly didn't have Amazon dropping off a dozen books on their doorstep (OVERNIGHT SHIPPING FREE!) about childrearing (not that my parents EVER would have had time to read books on parenting with FOUR kids to raise). And now, as an adult, I am still looking for that instruction manual everywhere I go. When people see me, they see a nose ring and my red shoes, and my pink patchwork handbag and they say, You? A bookkeeper? And I want to grab them by the lapels and hiss into their faces YES, this is my therapy. This is my instruction manual. I can't afford a full-time therapist, so instead I get paid to work out my issues on people's ledgers. This is what I do all day: I add numbers and straighten papers because I can't think of a better way to physically deliver what it is my heart so desires: to have it all add up at the end of the day, for there to be only one way for one and one to equal two. I do what I do because I need just one thing in my life to go from chaos to order. I don't dabble in advanced math. I am not interested in theories or opinions. I want cold hard facts. I want certainty. Most days I just want the edges of the paper to align and for the stapler to pierce them all perfectly. Because at least I will know that there is always a place in this world for right angles and machines that do the same thing day after day after day. After a lifetime of upset and indecision, this is comforting.

Most days I want that neat and orderly life because the disorder of the world is too much to handle. And some days, I crave that chaos with a junkie's appetite because it seems so freeing. I've not yet found that elusive middle ground. I'm more inclined to think that I am destined to play hopscotch for the rest of my life- one foot in one world for a moment, steadying myself with windmilling arms, and then a quick hop over to the other world, repeated ad infinitum. The trick, maybe, is to stand on one that one foot for long enough to actually enjoy my time in that position, to do something productive with it.

When Burdy and I announced our engagement, my brother asked us a pointed question: why, after so many years together, why now were we getting married? It was a punch to the guts because I didn’t have a ready answer. I could go on about good feelings and age and the silliness in calling a man I’ve lived with for ten years my “boyfriend”, but it was more vague than that. I don’t have a good answer. Or, at least, the answer is more out of reach than I would like it to be right now. It lives in this bowl of feelings that include things like "I can't imagine my life without him" and "I like making him laugh". Some days, I'm still not certain that is enough to base a life together on. On other days, it seems like more than enough.

I once had a friend say, regarding my indecision, something along the lines of "Well, I mean, he doesn't beat you, so that's a good start". To which I responded: REALLY? That's the best we can do as women? We start with "he's not a hitter" as the baseline for our satisfaction? When I think of how many women in this world ARE being abused, I DO count myself incredibly lucky. But, you see, this is the danger in holding your relationship up to the light of another's: it's never a fair comparison.

When the world sees your engagement ring, its face lights up. Giggles ensue. Voices go up an octave. It's a strange thing to drop your hand from a curious stranger's and admit things aren't unicorns and rainbows. It's a very long story to tell while you're waiting in line at the supermarket, or waiting for your workout routine to start that yes, you are getting married, and, yes, you love your partner very much, but that lately, it hasn't been all fireworks. It's been a long time since the fireworks, in fact.

Being engaged churns up all sorts of stuff about your past, too. When we created our wedding website, I struggled with “our story”. Ours was so, well, young when it began, and fraught with tension. It started up at one of the most tumultuous times in our lives. I was in flux between going back to Weird Hippie School, or joining the work force in our native New Jersey. And somehow, in the midst of all that, we found each other and sculpted a refuge out of our time together. Sometimes the best part of my day was sitting in his parked car and figuring out who could best imitate a parakeet's call. It's been fifteen years since those parked car days.

There is no way to describe in ten words or less the arch of a relationship. But this is what I want to tell everyone when they ask about our wedding plans. One moment you're parking in unfamiliar neighborhood to have impromptu sex in the backseat, and the next you're calling the man you love a real ass. I used to wonder at how people could call each other such horrible things. Now I sort of know. It's a slow, almost unmeasurable climb up that hill. There is no visible progression. It's just that you find yourself at some point furious that you have to ask to have the garbage taken out. And you could no more picture this day fifteen years ago than you could imagine yourself having arthritis at thirty-five when you were seventeen. And yet, here you are: hiring a caterer and picking out a dress and trying to muster up excitement about it when all you're really thinking about is how easy it was to flip your fiance the bird this morning.

There is lots of debate out there about how much work should go into a marriage before you admit to yourselves that it's just too much. Here's an interesting assessment from this writer: it's all about ratios. What's your joy to work ratio? 85 to 15 seems to be tolerable. What about those days when you just feel like it's 20-80?

Do you count the ebb day as evidence that your relationship is in the 20-80 range? Or do you count the 20-80 day as evidence that it's just an ebb kind of day, or month, or couple of months?

Burdy and I go to couples therapy regularly. We were going once a week when things were really unmanageable. Now we're down to twice a month. It all started when I started seriously considering whether or not I actually wanted to get married. My head was full of statistics about how marriage, as an institution, works better for men than women... and there was the simple fact that I just never really, truly imagined getting married. I had this idea of a wedding. But not of a marriage. So what the hell was I doing all those years? Just wating for us to get old? I don't know.

I've been thinking about the "why", especially why now? There is still a segment of our population that can't legally marry (though, in my special state, it is becoming legal. Go, Washington!). Where is the power in a ritual that not everyone can take part in? I'm still trying to figure that out. Most people would know by now. And I might come back to this blog after decades of being happily married, or years of still questioning, and either be horrified that I ever wrote this or find it all endearing and charming that I was ever this full of doubt.

Sometimes I DO just need to write about silly television shows and the antics of the morons on the bus. I do it for my own sake. Because I have a tendency to fixate, full-on obsess about the negative. And I'm also the kind of person who takes in, whole body, the suffering of those around me, real or not. I couldn't watch TV for a while after "The Wire" because a show about FICTIONAL PEOPLE so wrecked me. The national news, too, does this to me. I can only take so much. It's not enough to say it gets under my skin. It creeps like a fog inside me, filling the tiniest parts of me. I lose my long-sightedness. Suddenly the whole world exists only on my frontal cortex, and God help me if the last thing that got in there was news from Sudan, or of a father murdering his children in a custody battle. I can't let it go. Sometimes I just need to lighten it all up for my own sake. To keep myself from descending down into a question-and-answer spiral that goes nowhere. It's all part of the compartmentalization process.

You know, if you pick up a book, any book, on meditation, you'll be asked to ask yourself if suffering is just a normal part of life. So why get all bent out of shape about not feeling good for one day or one week or one month when the whole of your life has been pretty good?

There's this tendency to dismiss our suffering because it doesn't stand up to things like poverty and war and rape and murder. You think: well, you've got a roof over your head and an income and a partner that loves you, so what's your deal? Just shut the hell up already. The message that comes to me is when I put my doubts up on the scale is: your suffering is so undeserved. And that shuts down the inquiry process that is so necessary when considering a decision like marriage.

And then I go rifling through everything I own about Eastern philosophy, and to this study I heard about years ago about how the Japanese don't/didn't really have a word for depression, and that anti-depression medication was having a hard time gaining a foothold in that part of the world. Apparently, ebb and flow is an accepted part of the Japanese life. It isn't an illness the way we think of it here in North America; it's actually quite normal to feel sad and conflicted for a spell. The study claimed the Japanese see things on a continuum, and they recognize sadness as a temporary situation, like a kid having a temper tantrum. Seems like, as a culture, they sort of fold their arms across their chest and wait it out. So they also don't medicate. Pretty interesting, no?

You know the old cartoons where a conflicted character has these conversations with a devil over one shoulder and an angel on the other? Well, I have those same conversations too, only on my right shoulder sits Buddha, and on the other a dark cloud wearing Chuck Taylors. And these two are constantly going at it. Buddha's perky nipples shake as he giggles at me. He smiles so hard his eyes turn into crescent moons. He tells me to eat that second handful of cheese puffs, to have another drink, to not worry about where my next paycheck will come from, to not get so obsessed about the plight of the polar bear, because, we'll all die eventually and what's the point of worrying? You have but one life, he tells me cheerily. Use it well! And the dark cloud nervously pinches my shoulder and says See? I told you. ONE life. It's not enough. You need more time to figure this all out. And aren't those cheese puffs going to give you diarhhea later?

So this is what goes through my mind when I think about marriage. This constant tug of war, this not being able to feel anything truly because my intellect is pushing books and papers in the face of my heart and saying things like, "You should be able to overcome these feelings of doubt. This is a choice. This is a choice. We have the evidence right here."

Somewhere, in the midst of all my wandering the desert in February, I heard this on the radio. And the clouds parted, and I felt like maybe I could do this marriage thing. (Thank you, Mr. Tobolowsky).

I feel like what has been missing from my life is this piece where I see that no one dies and the world doesn't end if two people don't understand each other all the time. I'm a child of divorce. A messy, crappy divorce. And it happened during my formative years- when I was trying to establish myself as separate from my parents, when I was just trying to try on the masks of adulthood. And so what my soul learned was that differences are irreconcilable. I learned (wrongly) that the inevitable outcome for two people going through a trying period in their lives was death and destruction and unhappiness. To me, it was the only outcome. That was my experience. It's what my anxiety-riddled brain took away from the whole affair.

Some days it feels like 20-80 with my fiance. Other times I can't believe how LUCKY I am that Burdy doesn't just make popcorn every night just the way I like it, or knows just how I take my coffee, or accepts that I have a tendency to leave seven pairs of shoes in front of the doorway at once, but that he also wants to do this with me, to figure this out, for better or for worse for each of us. On those 20-80 days, I want to run away, I want to be single again. I want to join the circus and live a bohemian's life and take a million lovers because that seems easier than having to ask Burdy to take the trash out. Or having the hard conversations that couples need to have from time to time.

On the days when it's more like 80-20 , I can see the great distance between me and that wounded child. I can see how it was natural back then to presume that conflict equaled permanent separation. And I can forgive that wounded child for thinking that. I can forgive her coping mechanisms, and I can let them fall away. I can make room in my life for a new kind of truth, one that is still writing itself into existence.

Cooking With (The Other) Lauren Ziemski

Plantains have been featuring regularly in my life lately. My wedding caterer, who was born in Peru, practically swooned when I mentioned I wanted fried plantains at my wedding. I think he might be more excited to make them than I am to eat them. Well, okay that's not entirely true. I can't WAIT to eat plantains, and all the other utterly mouthwatering things he's thinking of making (think: ceviche, well, really multiple ceviches, fried herbed fish, plantains, beans and rice, hearts of palm salad, and, naturally, a whole roast pig that requires a device to house it called "La Caja China”.

And then, this, yesterday, from the Other Lauren Ziemski! That's her official name, by the way (as is mine, to her, probably). See that? She's making plantains! Go, Lauren! (Oh, and can I come over for dinner at your place sometime? I make a mean one-handed caipirinha).

It's still utterly amazing to me that the Other Lauren Ziemski is as similar to me as she is. The reason she's making those plantains? She's celebrating the funding of her construction loan to build on her property in Panama. Panama. One of my favorite places on earth. And she's making plantains. For God's sake, Universe. Quit it with the uncanny coincidences already.

Briefly, as I watched her chop up habanero, I conjured up this scene where I bought property really close to hers, and we hired the same contractor to build our houses, and the contractor, seeing two perky blondes with exquisite taste in nail polish color and the SAME NAME on their blueprints would do one of those cartoon-y high-speed double takes and his head would explode off his body a la the drummer from This Is Spinal Tap and then the camera would close in on us taking a gratuitous bite out of an oversized avocado and shrugging innocently, palms turned up, dimples glinting like diamonds. End scene.

This is why I can't concentrate at work. My head is FULL of crap like this.

Planning a wedding is surreal to me. I'll have another post on this later, so for now I'm just going to say that directing this massive, unwieldy ship of tasks is not so much daunting as it is... well, surreal. I mean, I just told a man that I'd give him half of my annual salary to make ceviche for 175 people. And he agreed! And he's going to do so much more than make ceviche! He's going to direct a team of people to roast a pig and plate it up! And all because I said so! Why does this feel so strange and out of body to me?

Years ago, I worked for a sign company where my job was to order grown men (a good chunk of them ex-military) to cut letters out of sheets of plywood and paint them according to the exacting standards of national retail chain managers. Somehow, that felt more natural to me than planning this wedding does. What that says about my tendencies towards workaholism and the inability to enjoy the creative process is probably loud and clear. I think there's a self help book around here somewhere for that …

Then again, this is a pretty HUGE life-changing event I'm planning for. I shoudn’t downplay the significance of ordering fish for 175 people. I mean, extracting the letter "T" from a block of wood and shipping it to some facilities manager in Wichita so his Intimate Apparel department is restored to its former grammatical glory is not the same thing as, you know, planning a party around the act of committing your life to another human being for the rest of your life.

There's the whole issue of what to wear, too. I'm hoping the bridal gown world will be kind to the round of booty, short of legs, and flat of chests. Last night, with teeth gritted, I made my first appointment with a bridal shop in town. I've been putting it off because my experience with women in the fashion/aesthetics industry has been, shall we say, less than pleasant. I once had an aesthetician tell me during a routine facial that I had HORRIBLE Rosacea (I am of Eastern European descent. Hot water parboils my face every time I shower, it's true. But I most definitely do NOT have Rosacea). Were it up to me, I would just send a rubber cast of my body to all the shops in town and say: Here. Fit this. Send me the bill than have to endure hours of pawing through poofy white gowns and being helped in and out of them like medieval royalty.

At least I have an excuse to buy more shoes. And plantains. I love any excuse to buy plantains.

Weekly Roundup of Absolutely Nothing

NOT THE FLU, JUST FLU-LIKE

Yup, I've got another sinus infection. Shocking, I know.

I am now quite practiced at being sick. They must be getting used to me at the doctor's office, too, because when I described my symptoms, the doc didn't even blink when I mentioned the cooing pigeon noise in my ear. Not even a raised eyebrow! Guess there's a lot of that going around this year: cooing ear pigeon syndrome.

I spent the entirety of last week on my couch. I watched so much public television, I was staring to feel like I could give a dissertation on the Amish, The nuclear disaster at Fukushima, and French cooking.

So.... what's with Overboard being on permanent repeat on the in-between channels on network TV? Did the copyrights run out on that movie? Did the station just buy it outright and fire their whole programming staff? I think I've managed to watch the entire movie in seven minute increments over the span of three days. This is the measure of how sick I was: instead of pressing a few more buttons on the remote and catching up on some of the greats in the world of cinema, I chose instead to watch Goldie Hawn scrub the same filthy log cabin about a hundred and thirty times to the accompaniment of a tuneless banjo.

A few days ago, while coughing, I found a tiny little spot of blood in my phlegm. It was just a tiny spot, no doubt from all the irritation in my throat from all that lovely post nasal drip and subsequent hacking. For a moment, I thought of changing into an ankle-length flaxen nightgown and throwing myself down on the floor dramatically and coughing some more just to make it worth the while. In the movies, it seems, everyone who ever died in the past died of coughing up blood. And they usually did it while stumbling unsteadily through a doorway and dropping whole urns of milk or wine or something that made an enormous, splashy mess when it hit the deck. Also, it provided a nice backdrop against which our heroine could collapse (eyes open, of course), a dribble of the red stuff leaking from one corner of the mouth. Extra points were awarded in my book for the number of women in linen bonnets and aprons who would first exclaim and then lurch towards our heroine before calling to another woman in a different linen bonnet who would be instructed to fetch the doctor for a bleed with the leeches or a poultice in a filthy rag or something.

I was by myself when I discovered the blood, so I calculated the time it would take to change costumes and the distance to the floor and the arthritis in my knees and decided to just toss my tissue in the trash and finish the laundry. It is entirely possible I have been watching too much Tudors.

READING: IT WILL MAKE YOU ANGRY

I have finally joined the world of the living and regular-bathers and have returned to activities that gave me no pleasure but which make it seem like I have "done something" with my day, things like shopping for shoes and paying library fines for no less than what it would have cost me to order the books online. New.

I read an article in Mother Jones (go ahead. I'll wait for the Portlandia jokes. No, really. Go ahead. I deserve them) about what it's like to work in a mega warehouse and to have to pack all those boxes full of vibrators and books and also vibrators and ship them FREE! NEXT DAY! to their recipients. Burdy and I recently signed up for an Amazon Prime account and I'm a little disturbed at how fast stuff gets to our door. (Not as disturbed as I am at having to shop under fluorescent lights and be alternately bombarded with standard retail greetings of good cheer when I arrive and ignored when I want to check out, so there ya go).

I've been thinking a bit about the issue of privacy lately as it relates to our shopping habits, and especially as it relates to the phones we carry. I'm always amused by the folks who seem to think that privacy still exists in this country. I've always thought that so long as you have even as much as a credit card, you're just a trackable data-generating machine. Of course, the privacy crusaders would probably point to me as Exhibit A for thinking that way. "There used to be a time when privacy existed! And now look! She willingly "likes" 'Cats Doing Funny Things' on Facebook for all to see and she doesn't think twice about it!" It's true: I am all that is wrong in this country, starting with the fact that I sort of only kind-of believe privacy exists. Privacy is like Santa Claus- amazing when you're naive enough to think it exists... and when you learn it's not real, but you understand you'll still get cool stuff, you're like, meh, whatever.

To me, my shopping patterns are bizarre and unpredictable. To some machine in a windowless room, they're probably as predictable as it gets. Let's see... mid-thirty something American female living in a Northwestern state with the most massage practitioners and cute rubber rain boots per capita... phone records and Google searches reveal she's been searching for the term "Chondromalacia"... health insurance data reveal that she's recently visited a physical therapist... If we plug in her age and her salary bracket, recent credit card purchases for organic groceries, cute rubber rainboots, and vitamins, and we gather every other bit of data matching that demographic, we can conclude that, since she was alive and watching Oprah while she was on the air, she will likely ALSO (impulse-)buy a book about CHANGING YOUR LIFE! when she orders that Theraband to do her PT exercises.

I bet they're just dangling that book over the box waiting for me to press "buy". See, Privacy-Defenders? I'm as transparent as packing tape. I'd like to think I'm the Snake Eyes of shopping, too, but the awful truth is, I read like a blueprint of a typical overcoming-my-childhood, addicted-t0-shoes health-nut and, since I ordered that book online about JUST LETTING GO OF YOUR PAST TO LIVE YOUR FULLEST LIFE!, I also don't give a damn.

THE ROTARY PHONES ON THE BUS GO ROUND AND ROUND

Last week's bus ride was an operatic composition. The bass notes were supplied by a large man who sat in the front of the bus in the seats that faced the center aisle. He had his eyes closed and I couldn't tell if he was snoring or talking, but the noise that came out of him was not unlike that of the monks who can hum two notes at once. This went on the entire length of the bus ride.

On top of that was the conversation of two recently post-pubescent boys who were discussing the merits of Kant, Aristotle and some other philosopher. I didn't hear the third one because I stopped listening after "Aristotle". And that's because he pronounced "Kant" "Kantz." Plural. It was the audible equivalent of sticking an apostrophe where it has no earthly right to be. I had to restrain myself from interjecting.

Anywho, these two were going at it non stop. And their voices were similar enough, and they talked rapidly enough, that they perfectly complimented Mr. Eyes Closed in his meditative chant/snore. They sounded like a set of piccolos.

On top of this was me, coughing. It was intermittent at first, but then it started to sound intentional. So, I was the accidental rhythm section to this bus-song.

Now, my right ear was all clogged up and I could barely hear out of it. I was starting to think (hallucinations: stage five of the flu) that I had been imbued with a compensating ability to hear (with my left ear) frequencies that no one else could hear. I mean, no one else on the bus seemed to be hearing or enjoying this urban opera but me.

The whole thing seemed less like music and more like noise, however, when the boys started talking about phones.

Boy 1: Have you seen those phones, those big ones, that you can, like, kinda trick people with?

Boy 2: Which ones?

Boy 1: You know. The ones that you can, like, hook up to your real phone. They're like old fashioned phones? The ones with the curly wire thingee?

Boy 2: Oh, yeah! Those things are so cool. They're like those phones from the 'Eighties! I so want one of those!

Alexander Graham Bell and the leagues of people responsible for the evolution of the "curly wire thingee" are turning in their Day-Glo Jams, cuffed blazers, and woven skinny ties right now.

Blame Canada

HIS MAJESTY, THE DENTIST!

So, recently Burdy and I started watching the mini-series "The Tudors". I know, I know, we are SO current with our TV watching. Next up on the list: re-runs of "Benson". While everyone else is going bonkers over Downton Abbey, we're finally just watching a show from like five years ago, and a Canadian produced one, no less. I just can't help it. I am somehow fundamentally wired to pick up on television trends half a decade after their premier. I'm just not the typical "consumer" (I'm retching as I type that). It's true: it's me. I'm the one keeping this economy in a recession.

I wasn't that into it at first, those smashed-flat boobs in those get-ups and all that "all hail the king" crap, but slowly, it started appealing to me. Mostly because once an episode or so, some memory WAAAAY back in my head would fire, and I would suddenly remember some factoid from high school European History and I would turn to Burdy and scream, "Oh, DUDE! That's THEEEE Ann Boleyn!" And Burdy would stare at me blankly, and I would go back to sitting smugly in my Snuggie and (sorry, there was no way NOT to make that alliteration) and start thinking that maybe I should apply to MENSA because I was a freaking GENIUS at associating fictional mini-series characters with historical figures based on their names.

Anywho, this show should properly be called "MAJESTY, CLAPPING". Because those two actions, people saying the word "majesty" and politely clapping , DOMINATE the show alongside hours and hours of curtsying. I had no IDEA that courtiers clapped that much. The king pronounces he has a bastard son? Clapping. Someone gets pushed off a horse by a long pointy thing? Clapping. Someone says something clever? Clapping. The king declares war on France? Clapping. I think the casting call must have read something like: "Wanted: extras for period piece. Must be able to endure long hours in corsets must be able to produce consistent clapping for weeks on end. Sorry." (you know... because it's Canadian.)

I also went to the dentist last week to have him fix a botched filling- a botched, painful filling I have been living with for nearly two years. (If I told you why, I'd have to include a long rant about health insurance in America, and well, we're all here to read about the tyranny of a 16th century monarch over a disempowered peasant class, now aren't we? Hey, wait a minute...) ANYWHO. After a week of watching "The Tudors", my brain has sort of imprinted with some of the language of the time. Specifically, I can't stop hearing the word "Majesty". It's a funny word, really, not one you hear much in everyday speech. Nowadays, it's reserved for things like sunsets and cruise boats and purple crayons, but back then, it was what you called royalty. Not "Your Majesty, King Bla Bla Bla". Nope. Just "Majesty". Like it was his name or something.

Anywho, my dental hygienist, after she'd prepped the tools for the filling, told me to hang tight, that "Doctor would be right in". Doctor? I asked. Not "Dr. Friedrich", my actual dentist's name? Just "Doctor", huh? And I thought to myself: in a weird way, this is all sort of fitting, really. Majesty/Doctor is going to pry my teeth apart with some sort of metal spreading device, clamp them into place with another metal device, use a long curved, pointy thing to dig the old filling out, then pack it all back in with some compound. Dentistry seems to be the last place in America where we still address the master and commander by his title alone. Which makes sense, I suppose, since it still sort of feels medieval anyway.

DING DONG, THE MONTH IS DEAD

January is finally over. Thank goodness for that. Everyone always presumes that April is the busiest time of year for a bookkeeper, but the truth is that, for a bookkeeper in Washington state, there are WAY more deadlines in January than there are in April. Those same people that are asking me if April is my busiest month are the same people that think they can hand me a rumpled manila envelope full of illegible cash receipts for an eighty cent pack of gum, some dry cleaning, and a seven hundred dollar laptop they may or may not use for business and call it good. This kind of work takes PREPARATION, people. I'm getting ready for April in December. By the time April 15th has rolled around, I've already received copies of the filed federal returns back from the CPAs, packed them away in banker's boxes, and have started making plans to mock your unpreparedness for next year.

THIRTY FIVE AND I'M STILL JENNY FROM THE BLOCK

The middle of January is usually marked by two things: I get a really bad sinus infection (check) and I turn another year older (check!). All this happens, of course, during the very busiest, most crazy-making, most stressful time of year for me. So, since my birthday usually falls on a workday, and since, right at about that time, I am usually ready to tear my hair out from stress, I take a whole day off and go to the spa and relax. The spa. It feels weird to write that. It's such a common thing up here in the Woo Woo state, but I don't know that I will ever really be comfortable admitting I like it so much. When I think back to where I came from, the blue collar, middle class neighborhood I grew up in, and I think about that little girl dreaming about her future, I can't quite fit "spa experience" into it (but that's mostly because the biggest dream I could come up with at that terribly anxious age went something like, "Please, God, don't let World War Three happen in my lifetime. Also, chocolate milk coming out of a faucet in the kitchen would be SO awesome. Amen".)

Now, the spa up here is not terribly fancy- it's not some exclusive place for celebrities only. As a matter of fact, it's run by some pretty down to earth Korean women, and it's nestled deep in the suburbs. You couldn't find a shot of wheat grass in the place if you tried. The towels are not 800 count Egyptian combed cotton and the massage practitioners and salt-scrubbers and facials-givers are more Russian boxing trainers than Swedish models. So, it's not about exclusivity at all. It's about giving your body a time-honored experience of rest, relaxation, detoxification, and renewal. The spa experience is pretty common in lots of other cultures. I've always wondered why North Americans don't get more with the program. And then I remember: Oh yeah! We hate public nudity. Also, who will buy all the mind altering pharmaceuticals designed for stress reduction if we're all walking around all steamy and relaxed? That Prozac isn't going to take itself, duh.

This year, since my birthday fell on a weekend, I didn't go to the spa. And that meant I didn't take my annual sojourn into the room heated to 145 degrees and sit for the recommended 10 minutes and meditate on the native-inspired mosaic on the wall and ask the Universe to help me have a meaningful year. In past years, I really looked forward to that ritual. But this year, I almost forgot about it. I felt like I didn't really need it. This year just felt different. Old anxieties are falling away and room is being made for other things, other things that don't give me nightmares, keep my adrenal glands pumping 23 hours a day, or keep me awake at night. I feel something akin to relief. I feel like I've been waiting for this feeling for my WHOLE life. That whole thing about "really knowing yourself" in your thirties? It's true. I'm getting much closer to becoming completely and totally unapologetic for everything. And holy crap, it's about time.

It's Not Too Late To Post Halloween Pictures, Is it?

You know your life has changed in some profound way when your friends catch you in the most awkward moments of your life and, instead of asking what they can do to help, they say, "This is going on the blog, isn't it?". Indeed, friends. It's all going on the blog.

I know it's completely awkward to be posting Christmas themed photos this late into the new year, but my resolution (yes, I only made one) is to post a little more frequently. So, here you go. I'm only a week behind.

Most of December can be summed up in pictures. I took quite a few and hope to post them before... Easter.

Highlights of my post-Christmas week include walking through the pouring rain to catch the bus and being told by an exceptionally chipper homeless man, "Keep warm, little girl!". God bless the hard of sight, for they shall compliment the soggy and wretched.

I made quite a few cookies for the clients this year. I even introduced a new one: the Linzer Tart! Yay! (And there was much rejoicing.)

These double as throwing stars. You know. For the ninjas in the ninjabread house. (Thanks to my cousin Sue for that one).

Snowballs might be my favorite.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Linzer Tart Cookies.

Wait. I changed my mind. Thumbprints are my favorite.

And here they are, all nestled in their tins. Ready for a long winter's snacking.

This is why I am the best bookkeeper. Ever.

And THIS is what I found on the floor while I was cleaning the kitchen after baking. It was underneath our kitchen stool. I wasn't quite sure what it was at first. I mean, I'd started out the night with a perfectly clean kitchen, so it must have arrived (erupted? metastasized? been rolled in by prankster mice?) fairly recently. So, I reviewed the events of the past several hours in my head. Let's see... I'd mixed up the dough in the KitchenAid, baked a few hundred cookies... and now there was this brown mushy blob on the floor. Wait. The KichenAid. There was that mysterious thump after I'd loaded in the metric ton of sugar onto the metric ton of butter and turned my back. Ah, yes. It was all making sense now. I'd put so much butter and sugar in the mixer, it had spun it right out of the bowl. And onto the floor. Where it had sat, somehow, unmolested, for a few hours, while everything baked. It was a pretty decent sized lump, too: almost a half stick of butter. It was all making sense now that the batch had not yielded its intended number of cookies.

I'm sorry for cursing you and your recipe, Betty Crocker. It wasn't your fault. It was all centripetal force's fault. And maybe my inability to judge when a bowl is too full. But mostly it was centripetal force's fault. Yeah. That guy's a real jerk.

Timing Is Everything

I'm not even sure what I want to say here, so bear with me, okay? By the end of this post, something that resembles a theme should emerge. Then again, I haven't been having any luck lately with things like "being able to form sentences" and "making sense when I talk". I would promise you it will all be worth it, but honestly, I can't even do that right now.

I know that I should write a little every day. Just a little something. Even if it's something weird I heard on the bus (alright, I could fill volumes with that and really, I think we've all heard enough from the delightful people who use public transportation, don't you?). I get a little anxious and can't sleep well when I don't write. So I know what you're thinking: then just WRITE ALREADY. This isn't difficult. You just write something down. And then hit "publish". And then you can sleep at night. I mean, REALLY, kiddo, this isn't hard.

Except it doesn't always work. In fact, it almost never works. So, it's something I need to get better at. I know it doesn't have to be fancy. It just has to be something. I know it can be done. I know bloggers who do it regularly. They just review their day and then write something. It's that simple. I used to think that was the most difficult part: being interesting every day of my life. Really, though, the most difficult part is making the time to write. I mean, if you're lacking for material, for God's sake, there's a whole INTERNET out there to be inspired by if nothing cool happened that day. Hey, LoLo! Ever heard of a little thing called GOOGLE, the magical place where you can LITERALLY type the words "SOMETHING INTERESTING" and something interesting will LITERALLY appear? Yeah, well, I'm not so good at making time to do that. That's really all this non-writing is: one big suckitude at time management.

I've been getting better at at least thinking I should blog more. For example, before drifting off to sleep the other day, I thought about the TSA guy who suggested my not wanting to go through the full body x-ray was unpatriotic in some way, and my next thought was: Oh, shoot. I TOTALLY could have written a blog post about that. Damn. That's another day down the drain. But, hey! At least I got to the step where I thought about writing it down.

I didn't even come here to write all that stuff up above.

This is what I came to write:

Often when I feel like I am the only one suffering through something, I find out I'm not. All it takes is for me to open my mouth and say "I can't even believe I am struggling with this, but here it is." And I lay it out, and it turns out that someone ALWAYS has a corollary to that struggle.

It's so difficult for me to admit when I'm feeling less than. And not just because I live in a fairly affluent city and I have a job (several in fact) and a loving partner and access to good food and clean water and because what kind of a douche bag complains when 95% of her life is so easy? But it's all relative, I keep telling myself. Just because you're not dying in a refugee camp doesn't mean that your suffering isn't valid. And the more I talk to people, the more I see that EVERYONE, men and women alike, everyone is keeping it all inside because they don't want to seem ungrateful, or nit-picky, or like Debbie Downer at the party. Our privilege (at least in North America) as some of the luckiest people on earth and/or our shame about feeling like we're less than are keeping all of our mouths sealed about what we struggle with and I don't think it's healthy. So I'm totally volunteering to be the weirdo at the party. I am, right now, officially standing on the coffee table and motioning to the DJ to turn down the music and I am saying: Hi, my name is Lauren and sometimes I struggle with having so much and still feeling unfulfilled.

I was recently invited to belong to a book club, and when I got to the first meeting, a few of the women (who I have gotten to know on a casual basis over the years) jabbed me in the ribs and asked me in that knowing way if I was "ready" for bookclub. It could get real emotional in there, they warned. COOL, I thought. FINALLY. A place where I could get my cry on. And here in the frozen-hearted Northwest no less! After we DID all get our cry on, I approached one of the women in the kitchen and whispered ,"Why did everyone think this was going to scare me away?" And she said, "Well, you don't always want to dump all your problems on your girlfriends when you see them, right?" And I just stared at her for a second and said, "WELL THEN I HAVE BEEN DOING IT ALL WRONG because all I DO is dump on my girlfriends. Isn't that what girlfriends are for!!?"

And were this blog a sitcom, this is the part where I would wink at the audience and say "Am I right, ladies?" and then clink wineglasses with a bunch of women wearing fuzzy-toed high heels and tight fitting rhinestoned t-shirts that said things like "Loves to Shop" and "Diva".

I just wanted to say to everyone out there who's holding it in for fear of looking like an idiot in front of their friends: let it go. Just do it. You have permission to come here, at least, and vomit all over the place. I will totally hold your hair back and hand you a warm towel afterwards.

I Have the Knees of An Eighty Year Old

Oh, hi.

I kind of...um... haven't blogged in a while, huh?

Yeah, about that.

I don't know how else to say this, but, um, sometimes I get into these "moods". And I go inside. Like, deep inside. Like, empty, echo-y hallways in an abandoned building deep inside. Like, wrap myself up in blankets and read four hundred books on self-help topics deep inside. Like, carry around a journal at all times because suddenly every weird guy on the bus and every crow on every telephone pole is fodder for what is surely going to become my opus and no one had better interrupt while I'm writing down the color of the sky deep inside.

This always seems to happen around this time of year. A few weeks ago, the weather went from sunny to cool in a heartbeat like it always does here in the Northwest, and just like that- like the flash of a ghost at a window- I turned inward and didn't feel like talking to anyone anymore. Not even the Internet.

And we're all familiar with that lovely, vicious cycle, aren't we? The one where this introspection takes over your whole being and you don't want to talk for fear you'll lose out on this awesome opportunity to do some quiet soul searching, but then you wind up isolating yourself a little too much and you get sad because you realize all your friends either hate you or have died in fiery car crashes, and then you realize your tendency to exaggerate is, well, exaggerated when you get like this and that no one, not one person, hates you or has died in a fiery car crash and that they're probably just busy with their lives, and the reality is that you haven't done one thing to reach out to them, and then you feel ashamed for over-dramatizing the fact that your friends are just busy with their own lives and that there are people out there with real problems, problems their shitty brain chemistry hasn't invented out of thin air, so then you don't talk to anyone for fear you'll sound like a nutcase for imagining that no one likes you anymore, which makes you isolate yourself even more. Yeah. THAT cycle.

When I feel these dark moods coming on, I usually start swallowing Vitamin D by the fistful and drinking massive amounts of coffee in hopes that sooner or later, some equilibrium will be achieved and I'll snap out of it. I hold out for the day when I will want to crawl out of my nest of scribbled-on napkins and mugs full of shriveled-up tea bags and piles of books and reading lamps and balled-up tissues and pretend like I haven't just been living like a rodent hoarder of pens and memoirs about war and death for three months.

Well. Here we are. On the other side of that heinous hill. There is obviously a level, a very real and delicate little red line in my brain, that indicates when I have all the chemicals I need to make rational decisions. And I'm pretty sure that when the level falls below that line, I start doing things like wanting to live in pajamas and never leaving the house and eating malted milk balls for breakfast. And when it's over that line, well! I can handle anything. I want to talk to people! About real things! And I want to plan my future and travel and clean my house! Rainbows appear as if to say welcome back, my child! I'm not even kidding, y'all. Check THIS shit out:



This is what I saw yesterday on the way to therapy. It's like the sky was like: I MADE YOU A DOUBLE FUCKING RAINBOW. NOW GET OVER YOURSELF.

And then! This morning I got the results back from the MRI I had on my knee last week. My knee has been bothering me for some time now... like, since I was a teenager and everyone just thought it weird and funny that it sounded like a hundred dried up twigs snapping every time I bent down.

Nothing will kick you right out of a non-posting funk like x-rays of your kneecaps flipping the rest of your body the bird, I tell ya. Apparently, my kneecaps have been "migrating" away from their groove in the rest of my knee joint and that has been causing some massive damage. Oh, and pain. Lots of pain. That twig-snapping noise I've been hearing all these years? That was the sound of my patella deteriorating. ISN'T THAT HILARIOUS?

Do you know WHY this news got me out of my non-posting funk? Because the sight of my kneecaps marching off into the sea of black x-ray film like they were pissed-off teenagers just made me laugh. It made me laugh in that defeated "there's nothing left to do but laugh" kind of way. It made me laugh because it was completely out of my control and there was nothing I could have done to stop them. My scrunched up Eustachian tubes? My poor, overworked adrenal system? That was some serious and worrying shit. This? This was and is just ridiculous. How could I have stage 4 chondromalacia at my age? Well, I was born this way, with knees that don't track over my shins. I've been slowly grinding down the surface of my patella and rubbing away my cartilage my whole life. That pain? That was bone on bone action I was feeling. There's no cure for this kind of thing. And I will probably need new knees by the time I am 60.

I'm not special. Nearly every human on earth has some form of arthritis. It comes with the territory of standing upright and, for the duration of our lives, balancing the entirety of our body weight on two little bulbs of bone the size and shape of silver dollar pancakes. I just have happened to have discovered my arthritis earlier in my life than most people do because I've been experiencing shooting pains in my knees when I work out.

So there you have it. Funk resolved. Brain chemistry out of its bad-poetry-writing dark hole and into are there bone chips floating around my kneecaps? territory. All I can think about when I am walking around town is "scrape scrape scrape scrape". There's more patella I am rubbing away. When I'm jumping up and down in Zumba class all I can think is "clap, SLAM!, clap, SLAM!" See ya later, cartilage. It's the strangest thing in the world to actively know you are aging yourself by simply living. It's even weirder to think that the act of staying in shape, presumably to prolong my life, is actually taking years off my knees, and therefore my life. Oh, Irony! You big jerk.

My doctor says I have a few options: Cortizone injections (into my joint? Are you serious, doc? Because, um, the average papercut sends me into a low blood pressure tailspin. I don't want to know what a long needle being dug into my knee is going to do to me). There's also surgery to snip away the bands of tissue that are working to pull my kneecap away from the rest of the joint and into an adjacent universe. Neither one actually solves the problem of having ground down my kneecaps into three quarters of their former selves or the pain that will cause.

I'm holding out for new knees. I really, really hope that by 2042 science has either a) found a suitable replacement for cartilage or b) my insurance company gives me a pair of kick-ass robot knees and that, when I run and leap over parked cars (which I will be doing NON-STOP, obviously), they make a junh-junh-junh-junh-junh noise so I sound like the Six Million Dollar Man. Except it will be 2042 by then, so maybe I won't be leaping over parked cars- maybe I will be leaping over the entire Amazon ('cause we'll have reduced it to four square feet by then- hurray for development!). Or maybe I'll be leaping over hovercars. Yeah. Hovercars. Because that implies that I'll also have had my biceps replaced with rocket boosters. Or maybe I'll run a marathon. Or maybe four marathons, right in a row. Hopefully I'll have replacement sinuses by then, too, because MAN, am I going to be working the lungs.



Come on, science. Hurry up. Mama needs a new pair of knees.