Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History

Moved

2010-02-04T01:56:00.000-05:00

Hey, y'all, I just wanted you to know that I have set up a new blog on WordPress, although I don't have the privacy stuff worked out yet. Here's the URL:

http://lucyswellbehaved.wordpress.com

It isn't locked down yet, so feel free to browse away. Getting used to the new dashboard interface will take a minute, so bear with me. I am still writing.

Moving

2010-01-31T21:06:00.002-05:00

To wordpress. Some of you who have asked to be white-listed have wordpress blogs yourselves, so that shouldn't be an issue. If you don't have a wordpress account, please know you're not going to be left behind. I just need some more time to figure it all out. I have your e-mail addresses, so please don't panic. And if you haven't sent me an e-mail, but still want to read, please do so asap.

lucyarinATgmailDOTcom

Down to the wire

2010-01-28T19:28:00.001-05:00

And have I done the tiniest ittyiest bittiest bit of research about moving to another bloghosting site? No, I have not.

Have I attempted to play with the privacy settings here on Blogger? Yeah, a few months ago. I wasn't satisfied with the results and see no reason to ratchet up my stress level in trying to figure it out all over again.

What then, kiddies? I just don't know. What I'd like to do is have my own domain and just have some little login/password thingy to see the posts - not an individualized thing, more like everyone who's whitelisted would have the same password - but then people who use a feeder to read, that wouldn't work, would it? Nope, I don't think so. So perhaps the answer is the abbreviated feed that I see Yarn Harlot and Suburban Bliss and Smitten Kitchen are using with some kind of security-blanket (i.e. relatively un-secure-ish) passcode to see the full post. Or...something. Gah.

Too bad I have no fucking clue how to accomplish any of that.

I married a techie, a geek extraordinary, but he doesn't blog and isn't into html. Fix the computer thingamabob with the whizzy-gizzy? Yes. Design a webpage? No. So I'm on my own for that, and I can do some minor html. On the scale of a whole website? Um: no. Yes, yes, there's software, or you can hire someone, but srsly, c'mon. I'm going to pay someone for what I am sure would be sparkley pretty shiny lovely website so that I can write brain droppings? I can't see the smarts in that, especially since I think it would be expensive. All of this with no research, of course. Impressive, yes? (insert massive eye roll here)

I'd like to tell you that I'm working behind the scenes to come up with something, but not so far. I'd love to tell you about the project that has been occupying most of my waking hours and a few of my sleeping ones (dreams about being in jail, in Sweden - dream entirely in Swedish - with the same deadlines/issues hanging over my head...wtf?) for the past couple of weeks, but that's work territory. Let's just say that my OCD manifestations of hyper-organized, planned, color-coded, alphabetized within-an-inch-of-its-life have been soothed by this giant project, and that after work, short of figuring out some dinner, minor keeping the kitchen cleaned up and sleeping, I haven't been doing anything but that project for weeks now. So the blog's housekeeping issues have been back-burnered and I don't know when they won't be on the back burner, but I still plan to lock it down (somehow) by Feb 1.

DH is in Cal-ee-forn-eye-aye, and I can't say squat about that either, his reason for being there, that is. I can tell you that I am rather inordinately pleased about having the house to myself for a few days and feeling mildly/moderately guilty about being glad he's away.

Perhaps I'll have some time this weekend to get it all sorted. Don't worry, those of you who sent me an e-mail or are Google "followers" will be kept informed whatever I end up doing.

What's going on in your world?

Provacative

2010-01-26T20:08:00.000-05:00

And not in a titillating sense, either.

I'm intentionally coy about where I live in Ohio because I'm a paranoid freak. So I don't write about local events without obfuscating the details, or being so general that what I'm talking about could be anywhere in America. Mostly.

Last week, an 80 year old woman was murdered here. Sadly, homicide isn't limited to the youthful people on this planet. It is something that knows no real boundaries, color, ethnicity, age, sexuality, gender. Far too many people are murdered every day in the United States. What makes this one unique? Ahh, that opens a Pandora's Box, and requires me to give enough detail for my location to be given away. But I'm feeling particularly strong about this, and hell, going private in a week, so why not.

The location of the murder is part of what makes the crime rather heinous, even for someone who possesses no spiritual beliefs. She was shot in the parking lot of her church. Why does that make it worse? As an atheist, I don't think the fact that it was at church is supposed to matter to me. But it does. That bothers me, because would it be any less terrible if she was shot in the parking lot of a grocery store, or her own driveway? No, of course not. Hell no. But it seems "worse" somehow, that it was her church's parking lot, right after mass.

I grew up in a world of devout Catholics, where lots of bubbas (the word means 'old lady' or 'granny,' and is an affectionate term rather than derogatory. Eastern European in origin, but I've only ever heard it used here) go to church every day. Devout Catholics attend Mass daily. Mostly it is the elderly or kids in Catholic school who hold fast to that, but there are wide swaths of the Catholic population who do attend mass more often than just on Sundays. It never really made a lot of sense to me, but even when I was a kid a lot of the religious instructors I had answered my "Why?" questions with "Because it is." or my favorite, "Because God is." (hulp!)

This lady was one of those bubbas, attending nearly every mass her church offered, all year long. In that congregation, a pillar. Or as much as women are allowed to be pillars in the Catholic church. (Nope, can't shake that venom over the role of women in Catholicism, even for a second. Sorry.) Most likely, before mass, she had all of $12 in her purse. After the collection plate was passed, she probably had less than 5.

You know someone like this, I promise. She's elderly, widowed, kids who are adults now moved away years ago in search of jobs. Her house is spotless, but hasn't changed in 30 years. She's involved in every society and group the church has; altar guild, bible study, and the like. The church is her entire life, all of her socializing stems from it and is related to it. She bemoans the state of "kids today" but is also the first to reach out to hold a baby.

Police suspect that robbery was the cause; she was killed for the contents of her purse.

I joke a lot about my hometown having 2 degrees of separation, rather than the urban legend of 6. And it plays out all the time. This is a small place and everyone seems to know everyone else. For all that, though, I didn't know this woman personally. One of my co-workers did, and he summed up the mood over this act particularly aptly yesterday, saying that he wasn't so sure he wanted to be part of the human race if these are the things we're collectively capable of.

Sad, wise, and true words.

2010-01-24T11:09:00.003-05:00

Wow. Who knew that writing about babies would bring so many to the conversation? Thanks for the validation, y'all. I mean, I know my path is right for me, but I get so much negative feedback in the world outside the computer about being childless that I forget sometimes that there are plenty others who feel as I do.

Last night, I went out to dinner with my in-laws to celebrate DH's birthday. I was thinking about the baby stuff again, because no sooner was our party seated than another large table right next to us was also seated with 3 kids all under the age of two. Baby-baby, a 1 year old, and the oldest wasn't, I think, older than about 18 months. DH and I commenced with the eye-rolling immediately; dinner with his family has its own set of...um.... interesting fallout, and 3 screaming kids don't add good things to that already awkward ambiance. I ordered a second drink.

But my worries were for naught, all of the parents looked after their charges and it was early enough in the evening that no one was falling asleep at the table or having a meltdown because they were hungry. Plus everyone at our table mostly behaved, so that was a good thing too.

................

What I set out to write about today, though, was a bitching about the weather post. It is January, it is Ohio, it is cold, grey, overcast, and raining. Not news. Also? Bo-ring. I'd rather have the snow, honestly. When it snows, the world is enveloped in white silence, a hush that quiets the traffic and blankets the world with a pretty new coat. Everything looks clean, white-washed. When the snow melts, and it is too warm to snow, we get this super-ugly dingy greyness to everything. No surprise, I don't like it much. I'm thinking of my parents in Florida with envy in my heart; "winter" there means that it might get around 4o at night. Although they did have that long cold snap this year, so perhaps there are places where it is worse to be than grey Ohio at the moment.

......................

Like, um, Haiti?

How incredibly useless it feels to just donate some money to the cause. I've done that, given to both the Red Cross and MSF, but I'd like to do more. Sadly, I don't speak French or Creole, and would therefore be useless as a translator; I have no disaster recovery skills, no search and rescue skills, no medical training, nothing to offer to the relief effort other than money, so that's what I've done.

The Yarn Harlot has been keeping track of her readers who have donated to MSF by way of having them send her an e-mail with their donation amount, and I'm astonished to read today that the amount is over 1 million now. Right before the earthquake, it was around 500 or 600K, so that's pretty impressive in a week's time.

How sadly arrogant, then, to be whining about the weather and the cold when I have a roof over my head, enough food to eat, and your basic 1st world complaints? Clean water? Turn on the tap at any sink in the house and I've got that. Sanitation? I pay a monthly bill for that, and when the toilet flushes or the washing machine drains, I don't have to think about cleaning up waste water. Food? The mega-mart two miles from my house has more food on its shelves than many will see in their entire lives.

You hear that? It's the world's smallest violin playing "my heart cries for you, pampered princess".

................................

Someone asked recently if I'll be talking about what I do for a living when I take Well-Behaved private next month. I don't know. I'm so afraid to do that; right now for fear that my employer wouldn't like my writings about work (see: Armstrong, Heather: dooced) when this is public. If it goes private, though, theoretically the employer would never see it. The thing is that once something is out on teh intertubes, it is no longer private at all. If you don't want the world to know, what the hell are you doing writing an online journal any way? Along the same line, will I stop writing as Lucy and use my real name? Hm. There's a lot left to decide.

.........

Right now, though, I've been informed that BBC America is showing a Top Gear marathon this afternoon, so I'm going to drink hot cocoa, sit in front of the telly, knit, and get the laundry done. Such an exciting life.

To spawn or not to spawn

2010-01-19T20:08:00.002-05:00

Has never really been a question for me. I've never wanted children. Even as a little girl, when you might hear a child say that they want to be a mommy, I never did.

My mother remembers with outright glee a telephone call I made to her when I was about 14, whilst babysitting a colicky 18 month old; I couldn't get the kid to stop crying, and it had made me near-hysterical. "No teenage pregnancy for me, Mom," I shouted over the screeching. "I can't handle this!!"

(Nevermind that I was positively sure that sex basically equaled death, in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, or that my religion taught that sex outside of marriage equaled HELL...)

Not that I waited, but that's not the point here. I decided - definitively - sometime in my late teens that motherhood wasn't for me, and I wasn't interested. DH and I have been together for a loooong time, and there were a few family members (on the Catholic side of the fam, ffs) who pressured us to have kids even before we were married. I met him when I was 19; I could say then, with absolute certainty: "I'm too young to be a mother."

But as I've gotten older, more and more people - some outright strangers - apparently think it is OK to question my judgement and badger the living hell out of me about having a child. Let me say this:

Does.

Not.

Want.

Now before you tell me, "methinks the lady doth protest too much," please keep in mind that my frustration with this boils over and spills out once a year or once every few years, and today? Is that day.

The anger comes from one place; how the bloody living hell is it anyone else's business if I have a child or not? Simply, and truthfully, it isn't. But when you meet someone new, and they ask if you're married (DH and I do not wear wedding rings, so it isn't obvious from the get-go) the very next question is if you have children. When you answer in the negative, it isn't uncommon for the questioner to ask, "Why not?!?" as if it is positively shocking that you don't, because somehow it is your sacred duty to pop out a kid or two if you've bothered to get married.

Um: No.

Having a child is a major, life-altering decision, one that in my ever-so-humble, ought not be entered into lightly. In fact, I think people ought to think long and hard about ALL of the impacts a child will have on their lives. Financial, emotional, physical....those 3 are the merest tip of the iceberg. But getting pregnant is very easy, and I think it is rare that people think much about it; you grow up, go to school, go to college, get married, have children. Period; that's just how it is done.

I belong to a few Childfree or childless by choice groups (aka and hereafter CFBC) and something that those groups point out often is that most people don't really consider the fact that there IS a choice there; married does not need to equal with children.

BTW, this isn't about abortion or my usual reproductive rights spiel; or at least, not exactly. "Reproductive rights" to me means - in part - that a woman has the right to choose for herself if she will get pregnant or not, no matter what her religion or social norms expect.

I'm no longer a member of the Catholic Church, so what the Popes say no longer means much to me other than the fact that their writings usually piss me the hell off. But when I was Catholic, something Pope John Paul II wrote made me sad; by choosing to work outside the home and not have children, the Church thinks that I am "denying" my "essential femininity". Hogwash. To read this outrageous bullshit for yourself, click here and start reading at Chapter VI, part 17.

So society thinks I'm weird for not having kids. Christianity (and, I'm sure, all of the other major world religions also push for procreation; who will carry the Word and the Truth if there are not new Believers being created constantly?) thinks I ought to be having kids. What I think, apparently, is completely immaterial. No matter that I'd be the one going through pregnancy - which, btw, scares the living hell out of me - or that I'd be the one going through labor - also, quite terrifying, tyvm - and no matter at all that the primary caregiver of the new baby would be, again, me. Nope. What you want, little lady, is far less important than what the Church and society expect from you.

I like my independence. I like having time to myself. I like sleep. Kiss all of that good-bye the minute a baby enters the picture.

What's gotten in to me that has me so all-fired angry? A recent episode of Dr. Phil, where he questions a CFBC couple about the fact that they may come to regret not having kids, and that they ought to re-visit the issue every year to make sure that they're still "on the same page," as if the childfree don't know their own minds, and must second-guess themselves at every opportunity.

Allow me to repeat myself -

Um: no.

Isn't it a good thing that I already know - before ever being preggo for even a second - that motherhood is not the path for me? Isn't it a good thing that I'm quite cognizant of the fact that motherhood is something I'd be terrible at, and thus should not attempt? I'm OK with that fact; it doesn't pain me in the least to admit that I'm not motherhood material. In fact, I think that it is a fantastic thing that I'm cognizant of that fact before I even think of contemplating parenthood.

Once you have a child, you are then responsible for that child for the rest of your life. Let me say that again. For the rest of your life. To the end of your born days. It isn't like buying a home, or even getting married; once that child is born, there is NO going back. You can't decide to just up not be a parent one day.

Should anyone be entering into that lightly? I think not.

Oh, Lucy, you're thinking. You say nothing of the joys and the love and the wonderful things that children bring to your life. The pain of labor is fleeting; the joy lasts much longer. Perhaps. I don't deny that babies are adorable and smooshable and kissable, and that kids can be an absolute delight. On the contrary; toddlers, in particular, fascinate me. You can SEE them learning every day, watch their language development, see the little wheels turning as they pick up a new word or skill. That's great. But I can experience all of that without being a mother myself, and that's A-OK with me!

Thanks!

2010-01-16T21:18:00.004-05:00

To those of you that have e-mailed me to let me know you'd like to continue following my exploits. I've been really touched by the compliments too. It means quite a lot to me. I hope this isn't too weird internet-stalker-y, or just plain odd...but I'll probably keep those e-mails for days when I'm rough around the edges, because they really gave me warm fuzzies. And a few new blogs for my blogroll, too.

I've spent a lot of time contemplating exactly how I'm going to manage to do this; and until I spend a bunch of time playing around with a few other blog hosting sites I won't know for sure, but I think I might end up moving to another interface like Typepad or Wordpress or quite possibly my own domain. I dunno.

Regardless, the offer still stands. As of Feb 1, 2010, Well Behaved will be private. If you would like to continue to read it, please share your e-mail address with me by sending a message to lucyarinATgmailDOTcom so that you can be white-listed. Thanks.

Pondering changes

2010-01-14T18:49:00.001-05:00

I've never kept it a secret that I have a blog. I've never shouted it from the rooftops, either. Thus far, this has worked for me.

But things are a-changing, and unfortunately, I'm a-changing too.

If you read this blog regularly, and would like to continue to do so, please send an e-mail to lucyarinATgmailDOTcom and let me know. Why? Because as of February 1, Well Behaved will be private. I do not intend to stop writing, and I do not intend to delete the blog, but it can no longer be public. I know that there are readers out there who I know personally, and a great many more that I've never met face-to-face. Whether you know me or not is not the criteria for being given access, though. Interest in what I write about is the key. I'll be happy to grant access to just about anyone who is willing to delurk just enough to tell me that they're here.

It saddens me to take this step, because I'd like to believe that some random person out there might read or have read about my struggles with depression and sought help after recognizing themselves in one of my posts.

I'd like to believe that by being open and honest with the world about my mental illness that I've helped to destigmatize it a little.

I'd like to believe that my political rantings inspired someone to get involved with the ongoing and difficult struggle for women's reproductive rights and the right to equal pay.

I'd like to believe that someone was inspired by my writings about exercise and weight loss, inspired enough to get out there and take better care of themselves.

I'd like to believe that by writing about Sweden, I've piqued someone's interest in the world beyond their backyard.

I'd also like to believe in leprechauns, unicorns, dragons, fairies, dryads, psychic powers, happily-ever-after, and that everyone I meet is genuine and honest.

Lest you think that some personal tragedy has befallen me, or that my blog has somehow gotten me "in trouble," allow me to reassure you on that point. Not at all. There are two forces at work here, and they're both vaguely work-related, so I'm not going into extreme detail. My work forces me to be a public person, someone who is recognizable as a representative of the organization. As I meet more and more people, and the things I get involved in become ever more expansive, I'm faced with the growing realization that I don't really want everyone I meet to be able to read about some of the soul-searing stuff I've written here. The second reason is that to date, there's no "official" policy about social networking and web 2.0 applications, but that day is coming. Do I like it? Not really. But I do like being employed, and I love what I do. That makes the way forward absolutely crystal clear.

Well, well, well

2010-01-13T18:49:00.000-05:00

Color me stunned. The plea I made a few days ago to global cosmetics company Eucerin wasn't just a lament here at Well Behaved, I also sent them an e-mail through their 'contact us' button on their website. And lookee here, they wrote back to me. This popped up in my lucyarinATgmailDOTcom inbox. I've been having technical difficulties of the Blackberry variety with the lucy addy, and so have been trying to remember to log in and check it. 'Course, I don't remember to do that daily. Copied and pasted, here's their response. Please excuse the Swedish in the headers, I'll translate if it seems needed.

ifrån	consumerrelations@bdfusa.com
till	lucyarin
datum	11 januari 2010 11.00
ämne (subject)	000643344A Eucerin product

11 jan (2 dagar sedan)

(2 days ago)

Hello Lucy,

Thank you for your E-mail regarding a Eucerin Lip product. We're sorry to disappoint you, but this product is currently not sold in the U.S. by Beiersdorf.

While Beiersdorf markets a wide assortment of products throughout the world, the products can vary country to country based on consumer preferences and brand development within each country's market.

Our products, both in the U.S. and other countries, are only sold through retail, wholesale and internet retail channels. We do not sell our products directly to consumers at this time.

We are aware of U.S. internet retailers which sell some of the German Beiersdorf products: www.smallflower.com, www.eurobeautymart.com and www.germandeli.com. You may want to check these sites.

For more information about Eucerin, please visit our website www.EucerinUS.com.

Please call us at 1-800-227-4703 if you have any other questions or comments. Our phone lines are open Monday to Friday, 9:30 am to 4:30 pm EST.

We appreciate your taking the time to express your interest in this product. Your feedback helps us identify those products most desired by our consumers. Thank you again for your E-mail and your interest in Beiersdorf's products.

Cordially,

Sam
Consumer Relations
Beiersdorf Inc.

I am really surprised that I got a response. My plea to them wasn't particularly eloquent, just mentioned I'd purchased it in Sweden and want WANT WANT! Of course, none of their 3 suggestions actually sells the stuff, but I did find a Belgian company that sells it at the "right" price. They're even willing to ship to the US; as long as you place a minimum order of 130 € . That's "only" about $200. ($188.62, to be precise.) GAH!

So you're wondering, of course, why I don't just harass the fam or good friends in Sweden to hunt me up some? Mostly due to the hassle factor involved. I know, I wouldn't hesitate to ask one of my Yankee or Canadian friends to pick something up for me; and as I pointed out the other day, Swedes have no option BUT Apoteket for prescriptions and some OTC stuff, so it isn't like asking someone to run to Apoteket is going out of their way. But then it needs to be shipped and...and...I'm running out of justifications, aren't I? Hmmm. Du, Maman...kan du gör mej en tjänst? (Oh, Swedish Mama...can you do me a favor?)

THE City

2010-01-11T21:06:00.000-05:00

To eclipse all other cities. U2 has a great song about the city on their All That You Can't Leave Behind album that I like to listen to on the train from the airport to my sister's place.

But you've got an unquenchable thirst for New York

New York, New York
New York, New York

In the stillness of the evening
When the sun has had its day
I heard your voice a-whispering
Come away now

New, New York
New, New York

Granted, I haven't seen all of the cities that the world has to offer, but NYC is THE city if you ask me, one of those places that I feel like I've come "home" when I get there. It is magical. Really, simply, magic.

I was in New York over the New Year holiday, with my two sisters for a few days. We had a great time. Mere words really aren't adequate for what I felt when the two of them called me and told me that they'd purchased a plane ticket for me for my birthday - stunned, and shocked, those both fit in there somewhere. Happy, excited.

The trip started out with me leaving my home at 3 AM. Yes, 3 AM. {shudder} That's an hour I don't really want to see, no matter if it is when I'm getting up or when I'm going to sleep. I didn't get more than about 5 miles from my house when my Blackberry rang with an automated call from the airline informing me that my flight had been cancelled and that they'd automatically booked me on another flight later in the day. The arrangements they made on my behalf were not satisfactory, and that's not just me being bitchy. The original plan was a direct flight from Pittsburgh, PA, to JFK airport in New York. Straight, uneventful, something I've done many times. The new arrangements had me flying from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati, Ohio, and from Cincinnati to New York, landing in NYC at 4PM instead of the 8AM originally planned. A near 300 mile westward detour to go to the east coast. alksdfjl;akfhakjlhg. WHAT? Who thought that was a good idea, really?

At 3 AM, there aren't too many customer service agents available at the world's largest airline. The first one I got when I called to protest this ridiculous re-arrangement was not helpful, or nice. I ended up telling her I'd have to call back when I was less upset, because she kept telling me that there was NOTHING that could be done, my only option, the ONLY option available was to do this 300 mile, 8 hour detour. C'mon. You're the largest airline in the world. That can't be the only option. (You'll note I'm not using the name of the airline here, but I suppose you could figure it out.)

I had stopped my car to talk to them on the telephone. I decided that the smart thing to do was to go to the airport and argue my point with someone face to face rather than on a phone while I was driving. So I did. The ticket agents were far nicer than the phone people, and they solved my problem in a matter of seconds, getting me on a direct flight that arrived in the city only a few hours later than originally scheduled. Deeeeeep breath....

The funny thing about my observation that the city is magic is that the realization of that usually comes back to me when I am in a subway station. Not the most beautiful places in the world, New York subway stations. Interesting places, yes. Beautiful, no. Not usually. But many of them have been around for a long, long time. Some of them have white tiled walls. White tile; laid by hand once upon a time. The original tunnels were dug by hand. Someone, somewhere, planned the routes and conceived the idea for this system, which has grown beyond that concept's wildest dreams. Someone now, today, right this minute is managing the routes the trains take; there are many routes that use the same rails as another route, and do you hear about subway trains crashing in New York City? No, you do not. Because it doesn't happen. Someone else plans the routes the buses take, plans for re-routing the trains when there is construction or a bottleneck. Sure, all of that is math, and some big, BIG brains. But it is also magic.

I've never heard the noise that the trains make anywhere else in the world. I've been on trains; Amtrack here in the states and SJ all over Sweden, even once in France. I've been in subway systems; Washington DC, Stockholm, London, Paris, Budapest, even in Pittsburgh, PA. None of them sound like the MTA. (Metro Transit Authority, the "real" name of the system. Don't believe me? Their website is www.mta.info.) That ka-thunk, ka-thunk sound that the trains make when you're riding in one, the screeeeeeching slowdown and halt at the station or mid-line to let an express train thunder by, the muffled and mostly incomprehensible announcements at each station that end with "Stand clear of the closing doors!", the peculiar smell underground, the relief from the wind in the winter and refreshing cool in the summer when you step on to an air-conditioned train...magic.

What did we do, where did we go? I think for once I'll be circumspect and keep my private life, well, private. I treasured spending the time with my sisters. "Sad" doesn't really describe the feeling when I have to leave them behind. I'm jealous, a very ugly jealous, of the time that the two of them spend together, and again, I'm not getting into detail here, but they get to spend more time with each other than I ever get to spend with each of them, and I'm super-jealous of that. When I say goodbye to them, I don't know when I'll see either of them again. And that? Sucks. *sniff*

Pity party for one, please.

OK, since I don't like to end posts on a downward note, I will end with a yarn story. I dragged my non-knitter sisters to Purl, one of the knitting world's super-star-stores. Not for the size - I think my dining room is bigger than that store - but for the amazing things they make from the yarns they sell (the blog is The Purl Bee). I'm working on an April Showers Scarf for myself and genuinely love the pattern (although not all of the stitching...knitting 4 stitches together every 7 rows is a MASSIVE hassle) and had decided that I wanted to make the same scarf for my sisters, with their choice of yarn color. So on the coldest day of the year (to date - it was January 2) we trudged more than a mile out of our way so that my sisters could sit outside on a bench in front of the super-crowded and VERY tiny store while I hunted down the yarns for their scarves. (This one and this one in a lime green for one sister and in an electric blue for the other sister if you're curious.) Near-pneumonia was avoided, however, by immediately hieing ourselves to the closest Indian restaurant in the vicinity for emergency infusions of curry!

Lots

2010-01-08T18:00:00.000-05:00

I spent a long weekend in New York City over the New Year holiday, and there is lots I'd like to write about from that trip, but the posts are still growing from germination of an idea to text. Today, for my first ever-so-auspicious post of 2010, I'd like to rant and rave for a minute about a global cosmetics company.

Not surprisingly, this story has a twist of Sweden in it.

Sweden has social medicine. They figured out the whole health care mess a generation ago, and while their system isn't perfect, it is a damn sight better than the one we're used to. Even if it seems a little odd to a die-hard Yankee capitalist.

So let's set out a little scenario. Imagine a 24 year old Swedish bloke, let's call him Magnus. (Yep, that really is a common male name. I love it. Were I ever going to have kids {NOT} I'd fight DH long and hard for that name for a boy!) Anyhow, Magnus is playing football with some friends on a sunny Saturday afternoon in the park, and he takes a hard fall and hears an ominous crack when he lands hard on his elbow. His friends bundle him into a car and thence to an emergency room, where he's fixed up with a cast, good as new in 6-8 weeks, and he walks out of the hospital with a prescription for painkillers.

Thus far, it isn't all that different than what we'd do here in the US, right? Except for the fact that it didn't matter if Magnus is independently wealthy, or if Magnus had the money for the ER or not, because he's got health insurance provided by virtue of being a citizen of Sweden.

Ah, sorry. Getting a little sidetracked.

So to get his painkillers, Magnus needs to visit a pharmacy - or chemist if you're a Brit - and to do that, he has one and only one option: the state-run pharmacy Apoteket. Every tiny hamlet has its own Apoteket, even if it is only a kiosk inside a grocery store.

At 17, I stayed the bloody hell out of Apoteket, sure that someone would demand to see my health insurance card and that I'd be "in trouble" for going someplace a non-citizen shouldn't go. Hey, it made sense to me at 17. I didn't want to get sent home for any reason, so I stayed away.

Of course at 35, I have no such compunction, and I've learned well that either by looking like you know what you're doing or playing dumb, you can get away with a lot.

I was in several of the Apoteket stores this year; the trouble started in a town on Sweden's southeast coast, Ystad. Spring allergies were in full swing, and I think we (part of the team) wandered in there in search of nasal spray or something like it. At the till, I spied several kinds of lip balm and picked up two of them; one made by ACO (Never heard of it? Don't worry, me neither.) and one made by Eucerin.

I tossed them both in my bag, and I think I used the Eucerin once before leaving Sweden.

I should have purchased 20 or 50 or 300 of them, however many it would take to last me until I can go back to Sweden, because this is bar none the best lip balm I've ever used. It has NO flavor. None. Not even a whiff. I truly despise cherry or mint or vanilla or wtfever flavors are added to lip balm. Ditto camphor, which seems to be in every single "healing" lip balm. Just no. Leave that stuff out.

This stuff works fantastically. It doesn't bother my skin. (I've had issues lately with peeling lips from every freaking lipstick I put on, ugh.)

Since I didn't figure out until a month or so after I came home that this stuff was the bee's knees, I didn't start looking for it right away. When I did go a-hunting, imagine my great shock to discover that Eucerin doesn't sell Lip Active in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, Ireland, or anyplace else that I could possibly get it from. I can't even find the stuff online with just Google.

I tried Amazon. No dice. I tried going to Apokteket's website, and just like the Bliw soap I wanted, I can't find a single Swedish vendor who is willing to sell to the US. They're polite, of course, but they explain that due to the US's complete pain in the arse border control, they can't guarantee shipments, ended up refunding a bunch of prior customers' money, and thus they quit doing it when it became no longer cost effective.

eBay! eBay would have it, right?? They'd have to. There has to be someone, somewhere in the eBay universe that would have a mad desire to sell cosmetics available only in Europe to the rest of the world, right? Indeed, there is. In Sweden, I paid about 25:- SEK, about $3.50 for my tube of Lip Active. On eBay, I can pick up a tube of Lip Active from a seller in Thailand who is willing to part with it for merely $11.39 plus shipping, plus insurance.

Now I understand that a global cosmetics company has a lot more things to think about - like protesters and animal testing, or, um, profits - than what mix of products they offer to which countries, frustrating as that understanding is. They don't care much what I want, one individual consumer me. But dammit, I want more of that stuff before I run out of what I have. I've got at least 3 if not 4 months more of winter here in Ohia, and even when every lipstick I touch ISN'T making my lips peel, they still get chapped a lot in the winter.

I also understand that paying $11.39 plus shipping, plus insurance, is one hell of a lot cheaper than a plane ticket. I do. I just don't want to part with $11.39 for something that I 'know' costs $3.50.

So, Eucerin....what do you say?? Please?? Start selling Lip Active in the US?

Closer creeping

2009-12-28T18:36:00.000-05:00

December 23....can't remember giving anyone anything.

December 24 (which, incidentally, is my birthday) I gave solid lotions to my relatives on my mom's side of the family. Gave a BIG hug to one of my favorite cousins, who I had not seen in more than a year.

December 25 gave presents to my MIL and FIL. As much as I would like to rant about various things that happened on 12/25, I'm giving you all the gift of not ranting. (Or at least not much. Not today.)

December 26 gave one unlucky soul a copy of The Catholic's Guide to Marriage at a Yankee Swap; much amusement was shared.

December 27 I met up with an old, old friend and bought her a coffee...but more valuable was the time we spent together.

December 28...as noted above, I am gifting teh interweb publics by not ranting and raving about people being more than an hour late to a dinner which they had set the time for and then not apologizing for being late and complaining that the food was not at an optimum temperature ....breathe.....breathe....

I am also finally giving my niece & nephew their Christmas presents, an event much delayed due to further idiocy that I won't be telling y'all stories about any time soon.....

Stay tuned for more entertainment and holiday cheer!

On not quite getting there...horseshoes & hand grenades.

2009-12-22T04:25:00.000-05:00

A-yup. I didn't quite succeed with NaBloPoMo this time around. Dropped the ball 'round about December 17th (6-ish days ago) and didn't pick it back up.

Let's see if I can stretch my memory back that far for the mitzvahs as they happened.

Dec 17; had a hair appointment - gave my hairdresser and my friend who does my nails solid lotions.

Dec 18th; ummm....took the day off. Went shopping. Gave various and sundry merchants money. Does that count? Not exactly. This was a special shopping expedition, not someplace I usually go, but it was a planned one.

Dec 19th; cleaned my house, did laundry. Oooo, here's one; baked cookies for Joe the magic massotherapist, my hairdresser & manicurist friend.

Dec 20th; baked cookies with my niece & nephew. This counts because I know that what I'm giving them by doing this every year is fond memories and good times. (Plus the occasional bellyache...I let them eat as much cookie dough as they want to!)

Dec 21; staff holiday party. Gave the big boss a bottle of Cherry Heering, a delightful and Danish liqueur.

Dec 22; holiday party for a professional networking group I belong to. Something I am not looking forward to, quite honestly. While the group as a whole is not enjoyable, there are members of the group I like quite well, and I'll end up buying a round of drinks.

So indeed, I've managed to mostly keep up the spirit of the mitzvah even whilst not managing to write about it daily. I do like this idea quite a lot, that one ought to give something to someone every day.

The true test

2009-12-16T19:09:00.003-05:00

I don't know which wise sage said it; but it is true nonetheless. "A person who is nice to you, but is not nice to the waiter, is not a nice person."

I'm skirting a boundary that I don't like to cross here, carefully. And while I'm writing about someone I know now, it applies to any past or future acquaintances, folks who make civilized life possible for the rest of us, as Mike Rowe says so cutely.

I got stopped in the hallway the other day, and the person who stopped me asked where I'd gotten the 'lip balm' I gave to someone I encounter every workday. "Which one?" I asked, confused. "The red and white one, or the one that I made?"

"You made that?" my stopper asked me. "Really?"

"Not the red & white one," I said, "but the one with the label that won't stay put, those I made. The red & white ones are on my desk; the ones I made are in the car. Which one do you want?"

They were asking me about either a lip balm I'd been given by a visiting sales rep or the solid lotion I make; to the uninformed, as I've said, the solid lotion looks like lip balm.

This isn't someone I work with, this is someone who works at "menial" tasks in the building where I work. Last year, I made sure that everyone who works on that crew got the same holiday presents as some of my junior staff members. Just because they aren't technically part of my co-workers, that doesn't mean that I should ignore them.

So today I handed over both the stuff the sales rep gave me (that I really didn't want in the first place, and thus, to me, does not qualify as a mitzvah) and some of my own solid lotion to a few folks who didn't expect to get it, and I did it happily, joyfully.

Spreading some fun and usefulness qualifies, yes? Yes. Indeed.

And one for me

2009-12-15T19:41:00.003-05:00

So today's mitzvah isn't one I've given; it is one I've got.

I have some geeky friends (and you know who you are!) and we all enjoy a few BBC programs. DH was exposed to Top Gear last winter, and was as entertained as I've ever seen him by the episode where they try driving across an African desert...

But sadly, our cable system doesn't offer BBC America on its basic tier. I know everyone bitches about their cable system, and I'm not really all that different. Expensive, pain in the rear, "necessity". It could be worse, I know. The cable system at my parent's summertime Ohio res is abysmal, and I'm glad it isn't the cable system I deal with.

As an aside; when the bloody hell (to use a proper Brit expression) are the cable companies going to get a clue and offer ala carte cable? Why on earth can you not simply select the channels you want, leave the rest? I'd never have any of the shopping channels, I'd ax a ton of stuff that I never watch; why have 455 channels when you only watch a fraction of them? National Geographic, Discovery, TLC, the Food channel, all of the music channels (naturally), History, History International, BBC, what I consider "the good stuff". What you consider "the good stuff" could be a polar opposite, but wouldn't it be nice just to pick what you would watch?

Anyway, after listening to me kvetch about having to either Netflix or beg someone who does have BBC to be able to watch Top Gear, (among other fun stuff, like, oh, DR. WHO) DH paid a visit to the cable offices and changed our subscriptions. We now have BBC, along with a whole host of other new HD channels. Too cool.

Now, if I could just figure out how to work that remote....

Knit Knight & new friends

2009-12-14T23:55:00.000-05:00

Small mitzvah for 12/14/09:

passed out solid lotion to everyone @ my knitting group. Usually that group is around a dozen; not this time, there were more people there than I've ever seen before.

Unexpected, for the people who don't know me; welcome from those who do.

Take the weather with you.

2009-12-13T18:54:00.003-05:00

I'm all out of cute ideas, happy giving to strangers, finding serendipitous little things along the way. Today was a miserable day, in fact, it was a miserable weekend, complete with an irate "discussion" over the washing machine. Great.

The thing that I hate about Ohio when the temperature is cold is the grey, overcast skies, and the accompanying icy rain, which we had in spades. If it is going to be cold, it might as well snow, right? Freezing rain is the most miserable weather condition on earth, I'm convinced.

So after all that gnälling and grousing, where's today's mitzvah?

Much earlier this year, I got the idea in my head to make Limoncello. This Italian liqueur is intensely lemony, and until recently, it wasn't easy to find commercially made. If you were to raid the freezers of Italian bubbas along the Amalfi coast of Italy, though, you'd find lots of it.

I found recipes for it all over the interwebs, and took the best of all of them to make my own. Problem #1 was that most recipes call for 190 proof grain alcohol, which is not legal in Ohio. But it is legal in other states, and I knew that I'd find it somewhere. I found Everclear in Florida, and broke several federal laws by sending it home to Ohio. (Ooops.)

Limoncello takes a very long time to make. Months. It takes lots of lemons, and lots of liquor. Two bottles of Everclear. Two bottles of vodka. 40 lemons. A simple syrup made of sugar and water.

I zested the lemons back in July, and the lemon zest sat in the Everclear until just a few weeks ago. It looked like heavy, dark urine when I pulled it out of the dark, cool closet where it was hanging out since July. I was worried, because that certainly wasn't what it looked like in all the pictures I'd seen online. The pictures (Wiki has one) look like a neon yellow, something that wouldn't have been out of place on any 80s fashion plate.

So it was with a little bit of trepidation that I started straining out the lemon peels from the Everclear/vodka/lemon zest mixture. Once that was done, I added the cooled simple syrup, and as I stirred that in, the color changed from an unappetizing pee yellow to something that looks like there's a neon light inside of it. Pretty freaking cool.

For about the past 2 weeks, the limoncello has been sitting on my kitchen countertop, waiting for bottling. Inspiration hasn't struck yet for a bottling solution, although not for lack of looking.

I'm trying hard to give holiday gifts that are only hand or homemade this year, continuing a trend I started last year. The only exception to that 'rule' is the toys we have for my niece & nephew. I expect it will be a few years before they understand my intention there; but I'm teaching them. We make cookies together every year during the holiday season, and the memories I'm making with them are more precious than anything I will ever buy them.

Limoncello. Making my friends and family pleasantly intoxicated; that's a mitzvah, right?

On dealing with holiday stress gracefully.

2009-12-12T19:19:00.003-05:00

Oh, have no doubt, my pretties. All of the hassle of the holiday is officially here. The traffic. The lack of parking spaces. The grumbling, grumpy shoppers in my way. I even witnessed a shouting match today, mother vs daughter, mom in a wheelchair. Nice.

So that makes my two small mitzvahs -both car/traffic related - seem inconsequential, but I hope they were helpful. A harried-looking lady in a van was cruising the parking lot at Target, looking for a parking space. I waved at her - party to make her smile and partly so she'd see me heading to my car. She cottoned on quickly, hurried to where my car was, and waved her thanks.

The other one was letting someone in front of me at a busy intersection. Little things, small details in a busy day, but perhaps easing someone else's stress.

Love it / am irritated by it.

2009-12-11T19:27:00.001-05:00

Every year for about the last 8 or so, I've made a solid lotion that I usually give to people in conjunction with the lavender bath salts. I have to explain what it is to them, because I usually give it to people in tubes that look like lip balm tubes, but are much larger. The manufacturer calls them deodorant tubes, which made no sense to me. Think of a tube of Chapstick. Now imagine said tube of Chapstick with a diameter of 1-1/2 inches (3-1/2 cm) instead of the usual 1/4 inch (1-1/2 cm). Imagine it being about 3-1/2 or 4 inches tall (7-10 cm). So it looks like lip balm, but clearly isn't lip balm, and the idea of a solid moisturizer is odd to most people. Consequently, I get a lot of reactions that sound like this: "Cool! What is it?"

A sidebar here to note that moisturizer in a solid form is freaking brilliant, because unless you left in a hot car in the summer, it will never spill. Ever. Lots less messy to apply, IMO, as well. Unfortunately, it wasn't my original idea, so I'm not sitting on a million dollar next-big-thing enterprise. I have no plans to sell my solid lotion, no desire to deal with the legalities of trying to sell such a product. And I need to note that I bought the tubes someplace else for a less expensive price this year and they are the exact same size as lip balm tubes.

Anyway, most years I buy a kit for the solid lotion, add some stuff of my own (that-there's the technical term, 'stuff') pour the liquid into tubes, allow it to cool - room temperature solid, but melts on contact with your skin - put the caps on it, and away we go. When I couldn't find the kit on the website that I usually get it from, I sent the owner of the company an e-mail to see what was going on. She told me she isn't making the kits right now, but doing it on your own is dead easy, and she sent me the links to recipes. (Here and here.) Fair 'nuff. It isn't rocket science; a wax (such as beeswax) combined with a butter (avocado, mango, shea, cocoa) and oils (olive, apricot kernel, almond, walnut, soy), plus any fragrance and or colorant. She told me I could use any butter, any oils, so the fact that I didn't have mango butter or cocoa butter called for in those two recipes wasn't an issue. No artificial fragrances for me, thanks. I use lavender essential oil, for the aromatherapy benefits as well as liking the scent. Absolutely no colorant. I do put some colorant in the bath salts, but not ever in the lotion.

I have no idea which of those two recipes the kit contained, but I think it was probably the Easy Lotion Bar. I've added shea butter to the kit and the lavender, and that's worked well. Until this year, I've never measured the shea, just added it and tested a tiny bit until I felt it was 'right'. This year, I used the Extra-Rich recipe, using my super-duper kitchen scale to weigh the wax and butter. I measured the oils, added the lavender and when I tested it, it was far too hard and not the silky-yet-slightly-grainy texture I associate with "my" lotion. Hmmm. I'd put some of it into the tubes by then, and was irked that I needed to melt those back down and tinker. Using the smaller tubes seemed like a good idea, but they're difficult to fill. My hands shake quite a lot these days, a nice side-effect of my Wellbutrin. Some days it is bad, some days it is worse, and some days it doesn't happen at all. Filling those little tubes with an eyedropper and shaking hands meant I got that stuff all over the outside of the tubes, making them look like used candles, all over the countertop, and on my scale. Well, not exactly all over the countertop; I had a heavy cutting board out because the beeswax came in one ginormous block and I needed seriously 3 oz of the stuff. So there are dibs and dabs of solid lotion on the (fortunately plastic) cutting board. I think it'll come off in hot water and with a scrubbie.

The shea butter I bought several years ago on eBay. It came in an 'unrefined' state, which meant that there were little twigs and other things in the butter, requiring me to melt it down, and strain it through a cheesecloth. I wanted it that way, refining takes away some of the natural properties of the butter. I had it stored in the freezer in a Tupperware container, and each year I'd pull it out, let it hang out on the countertop a day or so, add it to the kit. Bam! Over, done.

In order to make the extra rich lotion bar recipe seem more like what I've been making all these years, I ended up tripling the amount of butter from 2 oz to 6. That was the very last of the shea butter. Like a complete fool, I had added the lavender before removing a small amount of the mixture for my 10 year-old nephew, who would rather not smell like flowers, thankyouverymuch. Last year or maybe 2 years ago, I made some with sandalwood essential oil specifically for him after spending some time researching less girly scents and an essential oil that wouldn't hurt his skin. He has eczema, and skin that is more sensitive than mine. The shea butter has absolutely amazing properties - like being absorbed easily in to the skin, and it helps with the itching of the eczema - so the solid lotion can be used on his skin with no worries.

I've given a lot of the solid lotion away already this year, and that's today's mitzvah. That and making the special batch for my nephew; something I really love to do, but it has seemed like work instead of fun this year. I'm doing it anyway because I'm mostly boycotting the over-commercialized gift grab that Christmas has become and am doing my best to give NO gifts that are purchased. Hand-and-homemade, all the way.

In a token recognition of the season, I leave you with these wise words:

Fear less, hope more.
Whine less, breathe more.
Talk less, say more.
Hate less, love more.
And all good things are yours. ~Swedish proverb

Grad Gift

2009-12-10T18:25:00.000-05:00

Today's mitzvah is a book that I know I've written about before, but I am feeling too lazy to hunt for the links. Hardball for Women, by Pat Heim, Ph.D. I don't remember the circumstances surrounding the first time I read this book. It was a few years ago, in my 20's. I still worked for Ye Olde Evile Bank, and hmmmm. Searching. I think maybe I was looking to get a promotion and wondering why the powers that be there never thought of me as a leader, so I started reading all these business books. Or maybe it had something to do with the class I took in college where the textbook was The Time Bind by Arlie Russell Hochschild. Aaah, skit samma as we say in Swedish. It doesn't matter when or why I picked it up. What matters is that this book quite literally changed my life.

So over-dramatic, I know. But it is Truth. This book changed the way I thought about:

*work

*interacting with men at work

*group projects at work

*working with other women.

Quite literally, it changed how I approached any job. It taught me how the boys think, something that had been a mystery up to that point. Not as in boys to date (I was, after all, not married at that time) but as in the boys you work with who spend 20 minutes talking about "last night's game," and you, as the casual eavesdropper, aren't even sure what sport they're talking about or why anyone would care.

After I read the book myself, I bought a case of the books from a very bemused Bookseller at Barnes & Noble. I handed that book out to almost every female friend who was a member of the workforce. I've recommended it to probably hundreds of people over the years.

Graduating from college is exhilarating, but also terrifying. You're going to have to get a job, J-O-B, real-world stuff. No matter what your degree might be, you're going to find a job (eventually, heh) and you're going to have to work with actual, real human beings, even if it is a minimum wage here-till-I-find-something-real job.

Someone close to me is about to get her degree, and I gave her a copy of the book as a grad present today. An excellent grad gift, if I do say so myself.

Yarnie Goodness/Goofiness

2009-12-09T18:01:00.001-05:00

I went to lunch with a friend; our waitress was someone I've known for a long time, ex-roommate of one of my sisters. My friend and I were happily discussing yarn and looking at color cards, fondling the new yarn that had just been delivered. The waitress, a yarn fanatic herself, eagerly jumped in to the conversation. I had no idea that she knew how to knit; this urge to pick up sticks might have developed after my sister moved away.

So we told her all about Ravelry. I've scribbled about Rav so much that I don't think I need to write much more here. We told her allllll about Ravelry, and I could see the gleam of yarn fanaticism in her eyes. The math that Rav does for you; the organizational stuff for needles, yarn, and books you own; the way you can find a pattern and look at how everyone else interpreted colors or changes to the design. In other words, we completely geeked out about Ravelry.

We told her about some other websites like knittinghelp.com, and she wrote a bunch of things down on her notepad. Love that, love finding someone who shares a passion. I thought she was really cool when my sister lived with her; hypothesis confirmed!

So today's mitzvah is all about spreading the yarn love, and it is also a joint mitzvah, because if I hadn't gone out to lunch with my friend, I probably wouldn't have ever talked knitting with the waitress. Happy knitters!

Searching...

2009-12-08T13:41:00.001-05:00

Recently, my local paper ran an article about gift books (aka coffee table books) for the car enthusiast. One caught my attention that my dad might like.

Of course, I threw the paper away without writing down trivial little details like the name of the author or the book's title. Genius!!

I went to the paper's website and ran searches on "car" "book" "Corvette" and every combination of those words, getting increasingly frustrated at results that weren't what I was looking for. So I called the newspaper's administrative offices, and some patient soul searched through the paper of the day in question. Eventually, she found it, to my delight. The Corvette Factories.

A few days later, I got a very similar call (but I am not going to tell you the who, the what or the why, because I was @ work. Deal.). The person on my call apologized for "wasting" my time profusely, until I told her the story above with the local paper. "Ah!" she said, "one good turn deserves another!" And so it does. So it does.

Sharing da cookies

2009-12-07T18:44:00.000-05:00

I made cookies over the weekend for a cookie exchange I'd been invited to. You were supposed to bring 8 dozen; either all 8 of one kind, or 4 dozen each of 2 kinds.

I can't count. So I ended up with more than 4 dozen of each cookie. Instead of taking them and messing up the number of dozens at the exchange - it should all balance out in the end - I left the extras at home.

But that means that there are about 10 dozen cookies in my house! Too, too many! So my mitzvah today is both giving and self-serving; I distributed the surplus to my office-mates. No excess of cookies in my house, and happy co-workers on a sugar buzz. Win!

Like a good neighbor...

2009-12-06T20:19:00.002-05:00

...and now you'll have that jingle running through your head. Sorry.

DH and I do a lot of things for our neighbors. DH is the mechanical mind of the neighborhood, and thus he gets called upon to fix all sorts of things. Lately, it is our neighbor's garage door opener. She needs to replace it, but doesn't want to. So he keeps fixing it, without complaint, without exasperation. He's nice that way.

We also share our interweb signal with two neighbors, free of charge. That was his idea; personally, I think there ought to be a small charge - we pay for it, after all - but his logic, which I agree with, is that if they paid for it, he'd be called upon to fix connections endlessly. This way, if it doesn't work, he can just tell them that they either deal with it themselves or find another way to get online. But that does save them some money, and is something we're happy to do.

One of the things we like about the neighborhood is that it is quiet. Our street is private, and we like the privacy. For all that we're called upon to fix, help, advise, we don't see our neighbors very often. The houses are laid out in such a manner that if we're sitting on our porch, we can't see the neighbor's porch. Intelligent design. OTOH, this means that often we don't see them for weeks at a time, which can be worrisome. So we check on them. That is today's mitzvah - caring for those around us.

Who knew?

2009-12-05T18:54:00.003-05:00

That the mitzvah challenge would be so much fun? Today's happened in seconds, but provided me with a lot of amusement.

I was baking cookies ('tis the season, after all) and I ran out of powdered sugar. Also known as icing sugar. Trying to substitute granulated sugar for powdered sugar in icing recipes results in crunchy icing - never a desirable result. So I needed powdered sugar, but I didn't want to do a grocery store expedition; usually, trips to the grocery store are to a store across town from me, and I'm doing major grocery shopping. It takes a few hours - worse when I'm messing about with coupons.

One grocery chain holds a pretty tight monopoly in this region. Stores that aren't SuperAnnyoing MegaMart tend to be small, and lacking a lot of the hoity-toity fussy ingredients I'm usually looking for. As much as I dislike patronizing the super annoying mega mart, trips to the smaller stores usually result in frustration. But there is one of those smaller stores really close to my house, and I know that they're going to have powdered sugar, so off I went.

Another reason I don't usually go to the smaller stores is that I end up spending too much time hiking up and down the aisles searching for something. I know the layout of the mega mart. Happily, though, I found a bunch of things that mega-mart doesn't carry and ended up spending about $50 rather than the $2.69 I'd expected.

While searching for a soup flavor I know the mega-mart never has, I heard a man and a little girl in the next aisle over having a conversation about why they were in the grocery store. The child sounded like she was perhaps 2. She was having a great time. Daddy, on the other hand, was frustrated. He had been sent to fetch egg noodles. He couldn't find egg noodles. He wasn't sure where to even look for egg noodles. Did he say all that? Not exactly, but you could tell.

I happened to be standing in front of a display of all kinds of pasta. I found egg noodles - by this time they were in the same aisle as me - and I handed them over to him with a smile. He thanked me, laughing, and asked if he just looked that lost. No, I told him, I'd heard him, but he did look like a deer in headlights! We had a shared chuckle over his daughter's comment --"Daddy, that's it? That's all we needed?" -- he thanked me again for saving him the hassle of hunting through the entire store, and we went our separate ways.

Fun, funny, and helpful to someone. Mitzvah? Check!

Brighter

2009-12-04T20:07:00.000-05:00

My mitzvah of the day is a present to a co-worker who is moving on, a going-away present. I floundered and procrastinated on this, unable to make up my mind what to get until I'd managed to fritter away so much time that all of a sudden, her last day was speeding up to me, and I didn't have a present for her.

Odd, isn't it, that we'd consider it 'bad form' to NOT give a going-away present. Hmmm. Must remember to look in to this.

So the day is staring me in the face, and all the things I'd been pondering - oh, a nice pen would be fun, but is she as much of a nice pen junkie as me? Maybe matching pen and business card case? Yeah, cool, but where am I going to get one of those 'round here? I'm out of time for shipping. Something for her kitchen? I don't think she likes to cook/bake. Something for her house? Framed print, perhaps? I have no idea what the decor there is like - is she into colonial, contemporary? No clue. Knit something, cute scarf, fun dishcloth? Um, again, out of time.

I put the question to the girls on Rav. They gave me some good suggestions, and a few that made me giggle. One of the giggle-worthy which is that I teach Madame Leaving Colleague how to knit...yeah, but NO TIME. Plus although she's had nice things to say about things I've made that she's seen, I don't get the vibe that she's keen on the knitting.

I found myself in a gift shop the night before with 20 minutes to FIND SOMETHING. You know the type; fun stuff, cute stationery, some fun decor items, very overpriced, girly stuff. In the end, I decided on a business card holder that reflects a little of her personal style; I know she's a big Beatles fan, and she's very girly....the card holder has a peace sign laid out in sparklies. I also added some jewelry from Anna Banana's, wrote a nice bit of prose on the card, and put it all in a gift bag. (The gift drawer has a few Anna Banana pieces, very cute. Note to self, need to replenish soon.)

I took her to lunch and gave her the gift, and she was surprised, and delighted. I love being able to give someone the squee-worthy gift.

I get it, NaBloPoMo, I do. Mitzvah-ing gives you a great feeling. Thanks for that.

Ack! Day 3 and....uh, I got nothin.

2009-12-03T22:33:00.000-05:00

Well, that's not entirely true. I have 2, but I can't tell you, interweb, much about either one of them. I don't write on teh intertubes about what I do for a living. Yes, I tell work stories sometimes, but those have always been and will continue to be stories about places where I do not work any more. (See the tag old jobs if you're interested)

The first mitzvah of the day is a real present that I'm giving to someone, a nice and elegant prezzie, albeit not wrapped. That's OK, the recipient isn't going to care, and it isn't a holiday gift, it is a thank-you. Ooooh, pretty, shiny new prezzie!

The second prize is fulfilling a wish/fantasy for a friend. When I called and told her what I was going to do for her, she screeched loudly enough that DH, 3 rooms away, heard her. I know that when she hung up the phone she was doing the Snoopy Dance, and I'm so happy that I was able to make it happen.

And that's it for the day. Scant on the details, but *shrug* there's not anything else about either of these things that I feel comfortable with sharing online.

Mitzvah, x2.

2009-12-02T19:22:00.000-05:00

I'm counting this as a mitzvah, because, well, you'll see.

I've always been mildly interested in genealogy, and can rattle off the nationalities of my great-grandparents with ease. Beyond knowing that small fact, though, I've never put much research in to it. I did have an interesting conversation with my sole surviving grandparent - my paternal grandmother - a few years ago about her parents, but never really delved in to the tracing history part.

My most recent trip to Sweden, though, sparked some interest. Everywhere my team went, and I do mean everywhere, our hosts/tour guides/drivers/escorts asked us if anyone on the team had any Scandinavian ancestry. I know by the time we left, even the team members who don't speak Swedish knew exactly what I was saying when I was rattling off my pedigree.

And why, really, haven't I done the research? I can read the records in Swedish, and quite a lot of it is available on teh intertubes, it really ought not be so difficult for me to see where in Sweden and Denmark my great-greats grew up. I don't know why I've never been interested before; but I am now, and that's where this story really starts.

I got suckered in to Ancestry.com by those silly, sappy commercials they're spamming the airwaves with right now. When I had entered the information that I knew, it pulled up the actual pages in the register from Ellis Island that show my Danish great-grandfather and Swedish great-grandmother entering the country. They didn't come at the same time, but I think I've figured out how they met thanks to Ancestry.com. An early 1900s census report shows them boarding at the same house. That website turned up all of that information from me entering just minimal details. It is fascinating, and kind of exciting.

But, if you want real paper, and you want to see some facts that are not sitting in scanned pages on the web, the real work of genealogy research is done by paging through musty old ledgers of birth and death records. Fortunately (or...not so fortunately, considering I don't love Ohio) I still live in the same town where all of my grandparents were born, and where all of my great-grandparents died. So looking this information up doesn't involve anything more onerous than dealing with the county courthouse and vital records divisions.

When I worked for Ye Olde Evile Bank, doing estate work, I did a lot of running to fetch death certificates in more than one Ohio county. Now I know I'm getting older, and I know that the nuts-and-bolts details of what I did every day at the bank are no longer sitting in my memory, but I don't remember it being this much of a hassle. Ever.

On Monday this week, I went to the Vital Statistics office. It is currently located in a big building that housed a hospital, once upon a time. It still smells like a hospital. My Grandpa H died there; unpleasant memories assault me every time I go in there. I got through the rabbit-warren of county offices that now call the decommissioned hospital home, and found them with ease. I filled out the form, stepped up to the window...and saw the signs that they don't take personal checks as payment for death certificates. Nor do they take credit cards. Debit cards are likewise verboten. And Uncle State of Ohio has raised the fees; birth and death certificates now cost $23. Highway robbery!!

Cash. Period. That is the only form of payment they accept from walk-ins. I KNOW Ye Olde Evile didn't give me cash. The Estates & Trusts department didn't handle cash. We didn't have petty cash, we didn't accept cash deposits. So how did I pay for those death certs? (Which used to cost $7, BTW.) I don't remember how I did it; maybe I put it on my expense reports?

Anyway, I was massively irked. I came to this place that I don't like, excited about getting some new info (I was hoping for the names of my great-grandparent's parents on their death certificates, y'know, the Swedish and Danish ones) and I had to leave with nothing, because I didn't have $46 in cash on me. Grr.

I try really hard, really I do, to not be frustrated with clerks in retail stores or government offices, even when I'm at my boiling point, because it is never the "fault" of the person in front of you that you can't do what you want to; it is policy, and my own ignorance for not making myself aware of said policy that caused my irritation. I never want to be the customer that they talk about at the dinner table, or the customer that drove them to drink.

That said, I was pissed at the Vital Statistics office. And confused; the way the woman told me that they don't take checks or credit cards didn't make logical sense to me. She said, "We don't take checks or credit cards at the window." And I couldn't figure out what she meant. They only accepted cash? Really? Did I miss something and the world of ubiquitous debit cards vanished? Later, I understood what she meant; you can use a check or a credit card if you request your death certificates via mail or via their automatic telephone requisition. Duuuh. But standing there, in front of her, at that moment, I was mad and confused. I wasn't nasty; but it was clear that I was annoyed. I huffed all the way back to the car.

Today, I went back, sheepishly, with cash in hand and a request for just one death certificate; I only really want the one of my Swedish great-grandmother, especially at $23 bucks a pop. I had called their voice mail system, and the message says that they open their archives to the public - by appointment - and you can look at the records without giving them a cent. I'd like to have a look at all of them, the death certificates of my grandparents, my great aunts and uncles, even possibly the birth certificates of that generation who were born here in town. There's all sorts of tiny bits of info in that official paperwork, clues, like names and possibly birthplace names.

I know the woman at the vital statistics counter remembered me. I'm embarrassed that I was so irritated with her the other day. She took my $23, got me a copy of my great-grandmother's death certificate (with the names of my great-great-grandparents listed, woot!) and was really nice. Nicer than she needed to be. When she brought me the paper, she apologized for taking so long, because she couldn't get the first few copies to be clear, and she wanted to make sure it was legible for my research. Wow. Now I really feel like a heel.

So to make up for my idiocy the other day, I thanked her profusely. She asked a bunch of questions about my search, and I enthusiastically shared what I've found and what I'm still looking for. I told her some family story that made her laugh, and she thanked me for sharing. That's my mitzvah of the day. Making the vital statistics lady's day a little brighter, and maybe being the customer that she tells a happy story about at the dinner table, instead of the "OMG, you're never going to believe this idiot that I had today" story.

December - dedicated to the memory of C.

2009-12-01T11:42:00.003-05:00

C was my hairdresser for more than ten years, and if you're a regular reader here, then you know he passed away this year and the loss still stabs at me at unexpected times. All the traditional cliches - he was larger than life, he was one of a kind, blah, blah - don't help me much in describing him to you. He was certainly one of a kind! And he was far more to me than just some dude who cut my hair. He was part of my family.

He joked each year as the holiday season rolled around that he was nice to people only in December; the rest of the year he felt free to be a bastard, but he made an effort to be nice during December. (It was a joke, people, "bastard" was never a word I'd use to describe him.) He'd trot out that line when he didn't charge me for trimming my hair, or when offering a beer (yep, there was beer in his salon's fridge - most of the year, but always in December!) or offering to share the "confectionery crack" his mother sent up every Christmas, her own home-made divinity. (Indeed, confectionery crack was an accurate description.) I always brought cookies, which sometimes stayed at the salon and sometimes went home with him. His wife sent me a very sweet thank-you card in January of this year for the cookies of last year; I don't know if I kept it, but it said something along the lines of We didn't have much to be cheerful about this year, (as he was very ill over the holidays, although his death happened in March or April) but your cookies were a bright spot and we really enjoyed them.

I've written before (extensively) about why an Atheist bakes Christmas cookies, and there's no need to re-hash that here. (again!) But I will say that the cookies I bring to various people in holiday-decorated tins certainly fit into the definition of a Mitzvah.

Scrapping the religious part (620 rules were handed down from on high, and humanity should follow these rules. All good deeds come from these commandments.) leaves me with a very secular definition of the word; an act of human kindness.

The challenge from NaBloPoMo is to be "giving" for a month, and to write about those acts of giving. As I choose to define it, this can mean anything from actually giving someone a wrapped present to giving someone the gift of a smile on a difficult day, to doing something unexpected for someone - making a second pot of coffee on a cold day in my office (and there are many) might fall in to this definition too.

So for the first one, even though the task is not 100% complete yet, I'm going to write about a project/social experiment I joined on Ravelry.

Rav is more than a site with patterns and descriptions of yarn and nutcase knitters & spinners. There is a community there; I've tried explaining the site as "facebook for knitters" but from the blank looks I get when I use that description, it ain't gettin' through. Ravelry is part organizational tool, part social networking site, part online community like any fandom, part advertising opportunity, and part forum. I spend a lot of my online time on Ravelry. I belong to 19 groups (which function just like the FB groups, although the boards of those groups are much more active than any board of any FB group I've ever seen). They're pretty diverse groups, among them are; an Agnostic/Atheist group, a group of people who don't have and are not planning to have children, an NPR fangroup, a fangroup for the BBC TV show Top Gear, a Swedish group, a Supernatural group, a group that discusses yarnie culture in the wider world (oh, we're SUCH geeks), a group of naughty girls, and finally, a group called P.S., I knit. PSIK is a group of people who wanted grown-up pen pals, to exchange real snail-mail letters. This is incredible fun, much better than the mail I usually get; junk mail and bills!

The board for PSIK had a little announcement right before Halloween that the moderators were interested in setting up a Christmas Swap. Swaps are a big part of the Ravelry culture. Hilariously, one of the mottoes or guiding principals of Ravelry is "Be excellent to each other," which any child of the 80s will tell you is a line from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Swaps tie in to that 'be excellent' idea because they're essentially gifts, although there isn't always a monetary value involved. Most swaps on Rav involve yarn; I have something you want, you have something I want, they're of roughly equal value, and so with the help of FedEx, we trade. Swaps can be 'de-stashing,' which help a knitter to decrease her surplus stockpile of yarn; they can be Random Acts of Kindness, they can be around a theme of color or television show or day of the week or type of fiber. Anything, really. A day when you receive a swap package is like a little joyous ray of sunshine.

The PSIK swap had some rules; almost every swap does have at least guidelines. But since PSIK is all about the letter writing, they set out some rules related specifically to that. You must include a letter in the box you send. Something handmade. Something holiday-related. Stationery. An item from your country/geographical region. Something yarn-related. Any other goodies you'd like to add in. Not to exceed a dollar value of $25 (pre-shipping). Everyone who signed up answered a short questionnaire about allergies and likes/dislikes, so you did have a little bit of a clue to start for your person. (Do I need to explain that no one in this group has actually met in real life? I think it goes without saying, but it might have been a wee bit unclear until now.)

Of course, this wasn't the simplest task. I can not claim to have followed the value rule, but I went over, and IMNSHO, that's far more desirable than under. I biffed it with the handmade item. I knitted a scarf from a skein of handspun I got from a fiber club. I don't remember how much the monthly dues are for the fiber club...25? 35? Something like that. The first month, the spinner shipped everything late, and she felt bad about it, so she gave everyone an extra skein of handspun. (Believe me, that more than makes up for the tardy package!) That means that I got 2 skeins for the price of one, and cheaper than her retail off-the-rack rate, but the price on the skein wrapper says $26. I'm over at that point without even casting on a stitch. So I decided that the dollar value of the yarn was exempt from the dollar amount limit of the package. It was, after all, just sitting in my stash. Admittedly, sitting in my stash does not equal free, but....yeah, well, I justified it in my own mind. :p

For the 'from your region' item, I choose something from a local company that makes pewter and brass decorative items; they run the gamut from coasters for drinks to serving trays to light switch covers. I choose a bookmark in an art-deco pattern that I'd really like to keep. (>_<)

I found a Christmas-y mug at the grocery store for a dollar, and some lemon-flavored hard candies from the same grocery store run will add little sunny spots in the package. My swap partner's questionnaire mentioned liking lemon-flavored stuff.

Then there's the scarf from the fiber club yarn, and some stitch markers from Hide & Sheep for the yarn-related and hand-made items. (They make the cutest little stitch markers, and they come packaged in these adorable little tins. Plus, the company name is Hide & Sheep. How can you not love that??)

I found the stationery at Pier One on clearance, and so now all that remains is to write the letter, wrap the scarf, bookmark, stitch markers, coffee mug and writing paper, box the whole shebang, and mail it off to my swap partner. Oh, plus I plan to add in some vanilla sandalwood hand-made soap that is sitting in my "gift drawer". {The gift drawer is a small drawer full of little but tasteful things that can be whipped out at a moment's notice and wrapped for a forgotten birthday present. Right now the gift drawer has a lot of hand made soap, but there's also a few delicate silvery book marks, some jewelry I got on Etsy, something my handbag designer friend sent me along with a piece I commissioned from her (a little extra that I've chosen not to keep for myself), and a Swiss Army knife bought as a gift for a guy friend a few years ago that has dropped off the face of the planet. (The friend, not the knife.)}

So that's Mitzvah #1. It's taken me a few weeks to gather all the bits and bobs and knit the scarf, and the deadline to get the box sent away is December 10; I want to have it in the mail by Saturday of this week and am excited to hear what my swap partner has to say about what I've chosen. It isn't a one-to-one exchange, it is a round-robin style, so the person I am sending a gift to is not the same person I will receive a gift from. But the point of the swap is not to get presents; it is about the thrill of the hunt and the fun of knowing you're making someone's day.

This was my first swap, but it won't be my last. I've enjoyed trying to find things that fit into each category. I wanted, desperately, to send Buckeyes as a symbol of Ohio, but alas! My partner is allergic to nuts. So that knocked both buckeyes and most chocolate that is processed in a factory right out of the water. Go ahead, you find chocolate that doesn't have a little disclaimer on the wrapper that says something like "processed on machinery that also processes nuts". Good luck with that one!

I've spent a little bit of time post-stalking my partner, reading her forum posts and checking out her projects and 'about me' on Rav to get a sense of the person. I got a message from the person who has me as a partner asking for my address, and thus far, I haven't looked her up (other than her 'about me' page, which is very limited on the deets) because I want to be surprised by her letter and package; I don't want to know anything about her until I get the box.

The mailbox for our house is down the street a bit from the house, and is a pain to get to, but I'll be checking it daily until that box gets here! I'm also waiting for a letter from my pen-pal person (a totally separate person) and that makes the trek to the mailbox a bit more fun.

The CCC and Oven Debacle

2009-11-25T01:15:00.001-05:00

Who does not love chocolate chip cookies? I know a handful of people who don't like chocolate (can you even imagine?) but all of them still eat chocolate chip cookies.

My mother allowed my sisters and I to putter about in the kitchen from a very early age. We made dinner, we baked, we helped her with canning. I don't know when the first time I made cookies all by my lonesome self would have been - 8? 12? somewhere in between? - but by the time I was a teenager, I was an old hand at baking. Chocolate chips were always a favorite.

For a long time, I used the recipe on the back of the bag of Nestle Toll House cc's. I wasn't always satisfied with the results, but they were OK. Sometimes they were too flat, sometimes they were too hard; but back then, things like exact measurements and careful processes....well, they weren't high on my priority list, y'know? I made CCCs in Sweden for my host family. I took a Pyrex glass measuring cup and Nestle's with me on the plane, smuggled in my luggage. I'm sure that container of chips looked odd on the X-rays, but no one tried to stop me! The results of the CCCs in Sweden were a crapshoot. Sometimes they were better than others. Using a liquid measuring cup for a solid, like flour....eh. Not the wisest. And once I ran out of cc's, I used big bars of chocolate from the grocery store, chopping them into big chunks. Usually milk chocolate, which I really don't like much. My host family enjoyed them, and once I learned how to read Swedish, I could distinguish milk from dark chocolate.

After I came back to the States, I continued to use the Nestle recipe.

Food Network made its appearance on our local cable system somewhere in the late 90s. And then I discovered Alton Brown. Oh, AB! My geek heart goes pitter-patter when you explain how and why things work. Complete with diagrams. AB's recipes for CCC's show you how to make puffy CCCs. How to make chewy CCCs. How to make thin CCCs. My favorite of the three is the chewy variety, the recipe can be found here. I've happily used that recipe for many years now.

But.

Earlier this year, my oven broke. One of the electric coils gave up the ghost, and we were forced to admit that purchasing a replacement coil would be foolish when the entire unit - oven and stovetop - were vintage 1978, plus I've never liked the stove, and hey, we found a brand new one for $100.

I haven't used the new one much. But I got the urge for some CCCs, and baked a batch of AB's best. Except: they were flat. Flatter than a pancake flat. Still chewy, but flat flat flat. Well! I couldn't have that, now, could I? No. So I began doing a little research and I decided (in my infinite wisdom) that using my stand mixer and allowing it to run for a little longer than normal had incorporated too much air into the batter. I can make CCCs without a stand mixer, so I did. Super-carefully measuring, and I got a new box of baking soda, thinking (incorrectly) that maybe my baking soda was old and not giving its appropriate ooomph to the cookies. I also bought a new thermometer for the oven, from a restaurant supply place, to make sure the oven was at the right temperature. (It cost all of $2.52.) I have a nifty new scale (which was NOT $2.52!), and I measured AND weighed everything with the scale, noting down the metric equivalents so that I can make CCCs the next time I'm in Sweden. But. The second batch? Was as flat as the first. Still tasty, but UGLY. Well, that meant war, now, didn't it?

In all the time I've made AB's cookies, I've never altered the recipe a whit. Followed it to the letter, with the exception of adding more chips than it calls for - I always do that when making chocolate chippers - or using chunks instead of chips. Sometimes pecans or macadamia nuts, too. I decided the time had come for me to step back from the master, and wing it.

So the next batch was again made without the mixer, and careful measuring. But I added a half cup more of flour. The secret to the chewy cookies is using bread flour rather than AP flour. Something about gluten and chemical reactions and AB does a much better job of explaining it than I do; hop over to foodtv.com to watch him do so. But why I needed to suddenly use 2-3/4 cups of flour rather than the recipe indicated 2-1/4....I have no idea. None. Nothing except my oven changed. Remember, please, that I have a brand new thermometer in there to make sure the oven is at the right temp. Is it the size? The new oven is bigger. Is it the single rack instead of the 2 I'm used to? I just don't know.

Batch # whatever was finally the result I was looking for. I was back to "my" chocolate chip cookies. Just in time, too, as the holiday baking season is about to begin. I couldn't give flat CCCs in the tins of cookies that I give to so many people as gifts!

The new oven is kind of obnoxiously annoying. It came with one oven rack. One!! My old oven had 3. I removed one of the racks from the old oven, finding 3 too many most of the time. I kept it next to the refrigerator, handy but not exposed. When we got rid of the old oven, the rack was forgotten, so it wasn't hauled away with the rest of the scrap that the old oven had become. Of course, that leftover rack does not fit into the new oven. In fact, NO oven rack on the planet seems to fit that new oven. As noted above, we got the new oven for a steal. $100. From a "closeout" type store, so of course it was either discontinued by the manufacturer, or it had some minor cosmetic damage. At the time, I thought nothing of it. My mistake. Because while the brand name on the new range/oven is one recognized easily all over the US, it apparently is a one-of-a-kind. It is a Sunbeam. I know, right? You recognize this name, yeah? You probably have a small appliance (mixer, food processor, toaster, toaster oven) that has their name on it. Sunbeam divested themselves of their major appliance division in early 2009, which is how my $100 oven ended up in a closeout store sometime in March. Their website has an ever-so-NOT-helpful memo suggesting that you contact a company called AP Wagner for replacement parts.

There is a local appliance parts shop that has been around since probably the 20s, and so I took the oven rack out of the oven, wrenched my back (seriously, still hurting from that) when I pulled the oven out from the wall for the model number on the rear of the oven. The model number is an odd one, not following the pattern of other Sunbeam model numbers. Hm. When I walked in to the appliance repair place, I had both rack and model number in hand and I had every confidence in the world that they'd have what I needed. That store is a blast from the past type of place. No shiny showroom, no uniformed/name-tagged employees, stacked to the rafters with all sorts of junk, refurbished appliances of every stripe all over the place. There's a front counter, and you tell the person behind the counter what you want. They wander away into a maze of shelving units, disappear for a while, and return carrying your item. Invoices are written by hand. An adding machine calculates the sales tax on your item, and and old-fashioned cash register that makes a loud audible ringing noise when the till is opened is where your money goes.

The person behind the counter did a double-take when I carried my rack in. "What is THAT?" he asked me. Bad sign, if the appliance repair man / parts person does not recognize it right off. I told him it was an oven rack, and he punched the model number in to the computer - for inventory only, and the sole concession to the modern age in that place - and you know what he got back? Bupkis. He told me my model number wasn't a Sunbeam model number, and that the rack in my hand was the largest he had ever seen for a home oven. He didn't think he could even find something that was close, when I told him I didn't care who made the bloody thing, I just wanted it to fit the oven. {GROAN}. Strike out!

I called the 800 number for AP Wagner, and went through the same rigmarole. The model number printed on the sticker on the back of the oven isn't a Sunbeam model number, they say. Oh, FFS. The person on the other end of the phone tried inputting partial numbers, did her best, but you know what she got back from her computer, don't you? Bupkis. She did suggest to me that I call back when I was standing in front of the oven, and that possibly there's a serial number or some other thing that she would be able to track down. Have I done that yet? No, I keep forgetting, thinking about it only when I'm at work or it is 3:30 AM. Not. Helpful.

I called Sunbeam directly, and they were even less of a help, in fact they were curt, trying to blow me off by pawning me off on AP Wagner within 15 seconds of me telling them the problem. I explained that I'd already spent a half hour on the phone with AP Wagner, and then they suggested my local appliance parts place, after asking for my zip code. Been there, I said. They couldn't identify the model number either. Then they gave me a phone number for an appliance parts store in the state capitol. Not. Helpful. The state capitol is a 3-4 hour drive from home, not exactly around the way. I got snippy in return, and then they were apologetic, but firm. They couldn't help me.

Help me, interweb!! How, oh how in the world, am I going to bake 20 dozen cookies with ONE measly oven rack??? On my way home from work each day, I drive past a decorative ironworks business, and I'm frustrated enough, and desperate enough, to stop there and ask if they could make me one. The thought of the price tag for that being triple what I paid for the oven is the only thing that is stopping me from doing just that.

...and we're back

2009-11-17T11:11:00.003-05:00

Blogger, oh, Blogger. You irritate me so. I'd love to be able to take this off of Blogger and use my own domain, but my html skillz are not good enough for that.

I'd been toying with the idea of doing what I have heard called a "flock" a friends lock for a while; I don't know who y'all are out there, reading my missives, rants, recipes...of course, most of y'all don't know who I am, either. I kind of liked that arrangement. If I wanted invisibility, I'd keep a paper journal, after all. I have many faults. Self-centered, diva, control freak...I know them all. Narcissism figures in there pretty large. Someone who really thinks that the world gives a damn about what they think and feel, that's the type of person who keeps a public blog.

Who reads a random blog? Anyone, really. Someone Googles Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's quote that contains the title of this blog, stumbles across something I've written, reads it, likes it, comes back. Or you're one of the people who I have trusted in real life enough to share the url. Or you like that randomocity of that "next blog" button at the top of the screen. Who are you? You are everyone, anyone.

I am a 34 year old married woman who works full time at a job she loves, knits, has a beautiful circle of amazing friends, a family she adores. I'm your sister, your friend, the woman behind you in the check-out line at the grocery store, the woman next door, the person on the mat next to you in your yoga class. Everyone and no one.

I've fretted over some random person figuring out exactly who I am and "outing" me. Why? Really, I don't know. Nothing I've written here is against the law; having an anonymous blog isn't a crime. I was worried when I first started writing that my employers at the time wouldn't really appreciate my point of view on certain subjects. They wrote me a paycheck; I kept quiet in public about my opinions. Being a faceless, nameless person on the web allowed me to say some things that I really wanted to, but couldn't, in the world. Then there was my fascination with an actor and a TV show; forum posts live forever, and some of the things I wrote on fan forums are not things I'd want my grandmother to read, let alone someone I worked with. Having "Lucy" connected to me; well, it'd be a little embarrassing, really. Add to all of that the fact that I have written extensively about my journey with mental illness...and "a little embarrassing" speeds past "a little" and straight to "mortifying".

A nebulous future potential employer may choose not to hire me based on my mental illness if they read what I've written here; sure, that's completely illegal, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't happen. Mental illness is still so poorly understood that many people think mental illness = dangerous. Most people who have a mental illness are normal, functioning members of society. They are your neighbors, your sister, your friends, the woman behind you in the grocery line. Look around. At one time a few years ago, it was estimated that one out of every 5 Americans were taking Prozac. That's 20% of the population. Out of 10 of your friends, two of them. We don't talk about it. We don't advertise it. I'm NOT ashamed, but much like the military's Don't Ask/Don't Tell, I feel no need to shout from the rooftops that I have a mental illness.

We are everyone. We are no one. We are out there. We shouldn't need to be silent.

I did the flock partially while trying to change the Blogger template, but also because I was worried that someone in particular had "found" me. I unlocked it for the same reason I started writing about my mental illness; I sought help because of another blogger. Maybe one of you will do the same; recognize yourself in a post and decide to stop suffering in silence. If one person does that, then my potential embarrassment is a small price to pay.

I am anyone. I am everyone. I am no one. I am your sister. Your daughter. Your friend. Your neighbor. Who are you?

Hostiles

2009-11-06T02:23:00.002-05:00

I've been thinking about laws and common sense lately.

(Yes, hello, it has been a while, how've you been?)

When I was studying American history many years ago and first learned about Prohibition, I remember clearly thinking "Well, that was a dumb idea. You can't legislate morality. What were they thinking?" Of course, having not lived through that time, I can't know what they were thinking but the fact remains that it didn't work. Prohibition made the various mafias richer, and forced the whole thing underground, but it didn't eliminate alcohol from American society. If that was, in fact, the goal, to get rid of any and all alcohol in the United States, it didn't work. It was, rather, a failure on an epic scale.

Of course, the argument could be made that we can, and do legislate morality; it is against the law to beat someone up, to kill someone, to take things that aren't yours, et cetera. In a utopia that we'd all love to be a part of, people would simply not do those things, and we wouldn't need laws and the judicial system and lawyers and government. Ha. As if.

But I'm thinking more about the provision of the sexual harassment laws that prohibit creating a hostile work environment. Here's a definition from EmployeeIssues.com:

...In the legal sense, a hostile work environment is caused by unwelcome conduct in the workplace, in the form of discriminatory harassment toward one or more employees.

The harassing workplace bully might be an employee, such as a bad boss or coworker, or even a non-employee, such as a client or independent contractor. But the workplace bully is doesn't matter as much in the legal sense, as does the fact that he or she is creating an intimidating, offensive, abusive or hostile work environment through discriminatory workplace harassment.

There are no Federal "hostile work environment laws" or "hostile workplace laws" named as such. Creating a hostile workplace is prohibited under certain Federal discrimination laws (listed below). Subsequently, to be illegal under one of the laws in the eyes of the courts, a hostile work environment typically must be caused by discriminatory workplace harassment based on race, color, religion, national origin, disability, age or sex. Additionally, the harassment typically must be severe, recurring and pervasive. Lastly, the victim or witnesses typically must reasonably believe that tolerating the hostile work environment is a condition of continued employment. In other words, the victim or witnesses typically must reasonably believe that they have no choice, but to endure a hostile workplace in order to keep their jobs.

Listed below are the specific Federal discrimination laws under which it's prohibited to create a hostile work environment through discriminatory harassment; but, other discrimination laws might come into play. Also, the state in which you work might have enacted equivalent laws with even better protections.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

Whether a victim or witness, you may report a hostile work environment by filing an appropriate discrimination charge directly with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or a state equivalent or with either though an attorney. To file a lawsuit under one of the laws listed above, you must first file a charge with the EEOC or a state equivalent. A statute of limitations applies.

So wading through all that waffle, there's this: it is illegal to be a bully, but it is illegal only under the right circumstances. You can't file a hostile work environment complaint or lawsuit for the cattiness, nastiness and backbiting that goes on in every workplace all over the world. You can't stop people from being idiots.

It is now more than a year after my stint with the horrible sales job ended, so I feel all right with sharing the following facts: that place was the most hostile, toxic, and miserable place I have ever worked. Ever.

Beyond just being obnoxious and bullying, though, that office was hostile for other reasons. Primarily that the people I worked with there were bigots. They never met a racial or ethnic group that they liked; I heard slurs of the worst kind about every ethnicity, every race, every religion (except their own brand of Christianity...walk the path much?). They also didn't like gays, bisexuals, transgendered people. Nor anyone who didn't toe the line of very conservative side of the Republican party. I eventually realized that unless the person standing in front of them looked just like what they saw in the mirror, then that person was OK. Otherwise? Not so much.

I was offended nearly every time someone opened their mouth in that office. The racial epithets, the slanders against gays, the insinuations that Jews are misers and Muslims are all violent and hell-bent on destroying the western world, the smug certainty that anyone didn't share their beliefs was both an idiot and bound for hell....yeah, it got to me. With a gay cousin, a good friend and neighbor who is African-American (and incidentally the most beautiful woman I have ever met) and my BFF being half Jewish, it was really all that I could do not to sucker-punch them. Daily.

I complained to my boss. He, appallingly, told me that I should expect such behavior and comments; he excused it by saying that racism, intolerance and class divisions are just a part of our region of the country, that the divisions created in the steel mills (which have been closed for 30 years now!!!!!!!!) will always exist, and I should not only expect it, but tolerate and ignore it. !@&$$%^#$$!@#@!#$% Oops. Sorry, that was my unprintable response to him.

My final straw came after a sales meeting where I was one of 6 people at the table, and a racial slur was uttered. I gasped at the horribleness of it, but everyone else at the table? Laughed. And added their own off-color remarks. That, right there, THAT was IT for me. I lodged a formal complaint with my boss, and his response, in a nutshell, was, "Pick your battles, kiddo." And so I did. I chose not to fight that one. I had an interview that same afternoon, and although I had to wait a few agonizing weeks, I was able to quit, and get the hell out of that toxicity.

The reason this is all stirred up and fresh in my mind is that I got a visit from a former co-worker yesterday. Not one of the offenders, per se, but he never spoke up against it, either, and that for me spells a-g-r-e-e-m-e-n-t. Or it spells c-o-m-p-l-i-c-t-y. If you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

There were one or two people there who I liked reasonably well. There was no one there that I trusted. So this visit from a former co-worked seemed fishy, and a lot like a fishing expedition. I like to talk to much, and I have to watch myself around those I don't trust, because you never know where something you said might be taken wildly out of context and repeated. It was a nice chat, the person seemed sincere, and was very pointed in noting that they've removed themselves as far as possible from the toxicity, including moving offices to another city.

What did they want? I have no idea. I was polite, although hesitant. The person will be back; they've got some business near my offices, and I expect to see them again soon, and frequently. I'll have to remind myself that although I feel no outright hostility to this person, they are not my friend. I'm not sure what I will do if they show up with a few more co-workers in tow next time. The world isn't evenly divided into "friendlies" and "hostiles".

Untitled

2009-09-14T00:02:00.000-04:00

"Summer is over and gone, over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying." The cricket's song.

~Charlotte's Web, EB White

In elementary school, one of my teachers read Charlotte's Web to us, page by page, doing all the voices and acting out the scenes. I had read the book on my own, but really enjoyed her reading it to us. The passage above is from one of my favorite parts of the book, although it always makes me sad to read those lines.

I was thinking about the crickets and their song over the weekend, when I was out on the lake in my parent's boat. My favorite spot on that boat is the lounge chair/couch at the stern, right above the engines. Quite literally on top of the engines. Which are loud. As you can imagine, this does little to help my already poor hearing, but I enjoy watching the wake behind the boat, and the jet-skiers who play in the waves the boat makes. This particular boat ride was probably the last of the season, always a bittersweet thing.

It was a chilly ride, even though it was a sunny and reasonably warm day. Soon, it will be too cold (and impossible, but I'll get to that in a minute) to cruise around the lake. The leaves around the lake are starting to change, just small hints of red and orange on sporadic trees. There isn't much undeveloped land on the lake, and we drove past some of the showpiece houses on the northern end. Everyone is getting ready for the closure of the season - the state drains about 20% of the water out of the reservoir in October - and it is always sad to see people pulling out their boats, securing the docks and boat lifts so that they survive the harsh wind and ice of the winter.

The lake is a man-made reservoir, and like many in Ohio, has a muddy bottom. So the water isn't the crystal clear blue of the Gulf of Mexico, or even the bluish green of the big lake, Erie. More brown-ish, although in the right light in the summer, it appears to be a deep, navy blue. Once the wind picks up, and you get a passel of boats on the lake, it gets rather stirred up, and can look as muddy as the Ganges sometimes.

Uncle State of Ohio lowers the level of the water in the fall because the ice in the winter would destroy the dam at the lake's northern edge, between the expansion of the water when it freezes and the enormous pressure brought to bear on the dam from a lake full of ice. Understanding the reason behind the lower level of water doesn't make it any nicer to see; if you ask me, the lake looks forlorn when landside docks don't reach the water, and the muddy bottom is exposed to the cold light of day.

I grew up around boats and water, am comfortable on the water even though one of my greatest fears is dying by drowning. Fatalistic? Yeah, maybe. Hey, I've never claimed that I'm reliably sane. But there isn't much that is more soothing to me than floating along on a body of water, be it on a powerboat or sailing, or even on a pool float.

Watching the wake a powerboat makes has always fascinated me. In the Gulf down in Florida, if you're in the right spot and going the right speed, dolphins will come and play in the wake, leaping out of the water to plunge back into the slipstream the wake makes, seemingly so close that you could reach over the stern and pet them. You never know when or where they will pop up, so it is always a thrill when they do. I half expect to see them here up nawth, too, even though I know full well that there's nothing even close to the size of a dolphin in any of the fresh water lakes where I play in the summer time.

I remember an animated film from my childhood about unicorns that did a neat trick of changing the waves and the spray from the ocean rolling in on a beach into galloping unicorns. (The Last Unicorn, for those who care.) The Swedes use an expression that translates literally as "white horses" when describing rough seas, and I have enough imagination and am enough of a six year old in my head -still- to be able to see those vita hästar in the powerboat's wake.

The light changes as the summer dies; the diamonds dancing on the water are something you don't see in the wintertime, even on the sunniest of days. I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for that; the changes in the proximity of the earth to the sun from summer to winter; the change of the amount of daylight, something scientific, but I don't know (or care) what that reason is; to me, it signifies the death of the summer, and I can hear the words "summer is over" in the crickets' songs. (Active imagination or actively insane, one or the other!)

Fall is my favorite time of the year here, so bittersweet indeed is the change of the seasons to me. As much as I love the crisp, cool days the fall brings, the occasional whiff of (illegally) burning leaves, cold apple cider, pumpkin cookies, the gingerbread I begin craving as soon as the temperature drops, and the beautiful color show that nature puts on for us in September and October, there is something inherently sad in summer leaving us. I understand the Greeks and the Romans for coming up with mythology that explained the winter as a season of Demeter mourning Persephone. The shorter days ARE sad. Beautiful, colorful, crisp and near-perfect, but sad nonetheless.

Hearts and Minds

2009-08-13T22:17:00.003-04:00

I love Christiane Amanpour. I remember seeing her on CNN when I was in my early teens. I was one of those geeks in middle school who would actually read the Time and Newsweek magazines in the school library, and I remember reading an interview someone did with her about her apartment, which at the time was in Paris. How glamorous, 13 year-old me thought. Her elegant accent fascinated me, and she was always in the midst of whatever conflict was going on, wherever in the world that might be.

Even as a young teenager, though, I was a princess, and I thought that the conditions reporting in war-torn countries was a bit miserable for my tastes. Running water? No. That means 1. no showers and 2. no flush toilets. Hmm. I don't think so. Spotty telephone service; in those days, long before mobile phones were common; no contact with my friends and family, except for rare, rushed, and expensive phone calls. Yeah, I dunno if I'd like that so much.

So I admired her, and I envied her a good bit (an apartment in the Île de la Cité?? Sign me up!) but I didn't want to be her.

About a year ago, CNN advertised a documentary that she did, and I wanted to watch it, but didn't remember to either set the DVR or to watch it when it was on. Fascinating stuff. But TV isn't super-important to me, and unless J-man happens to be in it, yeah, I'm not making a supreme effort to make sure I'm watching.

I happened to catch a bit of it tonight, on the HD version of CNN that my cable company carries on its digital tier.

It is funny to me that we talk so much about bias in the media, and yet, Amanpour's opinion is crystal clear; she disapproves of programs she profiles in Gaza and The West Bank that are teaching children to be militants. She likes a few children's programs that are run with American money, Yankee teachers, and western ideals.

Yes, I happen to agree with her. However, does it serve purpose, then, to change anyone's ideas? I don't know. She's profiling the Islamic world, in particular, young people in Gaza, Kabul, and in other places in the Muslin world. I wonder how someone whose families were killed during the most recent bombings in the West Bank would feel about her reporting. Neutral? Balanced? Not so much, I don't think.

Fascinating, absolutely. Mystifying, too, I don't understand the points of view because I've not lived under a constant state of war and bombings. Something I'll need to watch again to absorb more fully.

Summertime laziness, I presume.

2009-08-07T02:14:00.000-04:00

Since I've come out of the dark ages and use an RSS feed reader to follow the various blogs I like, I've found it easier to include more and more and more blogs and newsfeeds. The reader tracks two of Sweden's biggest newspapers for me, the Svenska Dagbladet (The Swedish Daily Blade) and Sydsvenskan (The Southern Swede). Both big newspapers, both on the newsy beat 24/7. So every time I open the feed reader, the count is over 100. 50 or 60 or more of the new, unread items are from the newspapers. And I can't deal. I end up clicking the "mark all as read" button rather than slogging my way through the headlines.

I read Swedish OK. I speak it far better than I write it, but I'd judge myself at about a 4th or 5th grade reading level, whereas my writing looks like a 2nd grader. I'm overly proud, even smug sometimes about my ability to speak it, I haven't had to say, "I don't understand" in a very long time. Conversation is noooo problem. The only way I've managed to retain the Swedish all these years (and the 18th anniversary of the day I left for Sweden was this week, damn, when did that happen?) is because I've worked hard at it. Often. The rise of teh interwebs really helped that, because even back in those dark, early days of the technology, all of the major media jumped right on board and I could look at the newspapers. Sometimes it made me sad to even see Swedish written, because I missed it a lot. And the Swedish newspapers, even the reputable ones, tend toward the tabloid end of things, much like the British press. Three inch tall screaming headlines, sensationalism at its finest. Sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying, always attention-getting.

Anyway. I'm off track. Again.

When I'm speaking Swedish, I understand it with no problem. When I'm reading it, sometimes I have to read it out loud, sounding it out, reading the same sentence 3-4 times before I get a grasp on it. For an avid reader, it is frustrating, to say the least. But this dis-inclination to read the headlines is an odd thing. I changed the language setting on both Facebook and GMail to Swedish, and I'm dealing fine with that. Of course, you're seeing the same thing all the time on both of those, your in-box for e-mail and the list of who has commented on what for Facebook. Whereas the headlines change frequently, so I'd actually have to work at that. Mmm-hmm, I'm calling that. Summer laziness.

Proof, if anyone needed it, that I have a twisted sense of humor.

2009-08-03T01:07:00.001-04:00

Saw this on a forum I frequent; the context in which it was posted is irrelevant here.

Suffice to say, it made me absolutely howl with laughter.

Twisted? Moi? Surely, you jest.

NaBloPoMo

2009-07-31T01:14:00.000-04:00

I've written this post twice now. Blogger must have liked the taste of the last incarnation, because Blogger ate it.

Anyway, I MADE IT! NaBloPoMo, over! I wish, to stay with the theme for the last day, that writing was part of my daily routine, but it isn't unless I'm doing this.

The clip below is meant to be funny, but still manage to convey how I feel about having managed NaBloPoMo for the second time. I really wanted only 30 seconds, but I couldn't find that on YouTube, so you will have to make do with this.

"Real" ID (because, apparently, every ID you already own is a figment of your imagination, i.e. not real.)

2009-07-30T01:05:00.000-04:00

I've avoided a whole lot of Current Events postings for about the last year, treading carefully when and how I write about the news and my favorite news programs. My reasons are my own, but since I've written about the Real ID program before, I feel I'm justified in revisiting the issue. Granted, that post was a year and change ago, but the proposal didn't die just because the administration changed.

According to the story I heard the other day, in the end, many states passed laws and resolutions specifically refusing to implement the changes that Real ID was supposed to bring. Good on ya', mate, I think the rights of the individual states are very important and at times supersede the rights of the federal government. But I digress.

Since so many states refused point-blank to make the changes to their drivers' licences, and Uncle Sam never funded the mandate, Real ID is sort of DOA. But wait! There's more! There are people (read: lobbyists) that want Real ID completely funded, left as is, and forced down the throat of every state. Then there is a group of legislators who have gotten together and come up with another version, called Pass ID.

Now, since we all fall for the marketing gimmick of New! Improved! Shiny! New! Better! it would appear that all the legislators are doing is re-packaging Real ID, giving it another name, et volia, new legislation! Allow me to use a phrase from my teen years in response: NOT!

One of the many things about Real ID that got my dander up was that this was supposed to make your state driver's license proof of citizenship, among other things. (Like making driver's licenses immune to faking and tampering, to which I say what-ever!) We already have identification that is proof of citizenship. It is called a passport. You are required to present rock-solid proof of citizenship to get a passport, and worldwide, passports are the standard for proof of citizenship.

Why didn't Congress just require everyone to get a passport and be done with it?

Well, firstly, because that's too expensive, for one. After September 11, the gub'mint raised the fees for passports, and although it was never "cheap" to get a passport, it is costly. Besides the processing fees, you have to go and have a picture taken, fill in a bunch of paperwork, blah, blah, bureaucratic process, blah, blah. It is time consuming, too. If you live in a big city, you can go and get a passport in person, but if you're a country mouse, you have to mail the stuff away, and wait patiently for it to come back to you. Want a delivery confirmation, or to have it shipped more expediently than the US Postal Service? That'll be an additional fee, thankyouverymuch.

So passports for everyone isn't the answer. But Real ID isn't the answer either. Thankfully, figuring out what the answer actually IS - well, that ain't my problem.

Politics as...unfortunately, usual.

2009-07-29T03:12:00.000-04:00

I have been fascinated with politics since I was about 10 years old. True story. I've always been frustrated by voter apathy in America; not to be all rah-rah flag-wavey, but that right to vote for citizens of the United States was a hard-fought battle. Rights for women to vote, also a long uphill battle. So when people complain to me about "the gub'mint," my first question is always always:

"Did you vote in the last election?"

And usually, the answer is no.

But that's not what I really set out to write about. There's a relatively new president, and congress is marginally controlled by the Democrats, something that makes me very happy, liberal lefty that I am.

So why is it that almost nothing has changed? I was listening to the news on the way home, and there was a story about Sonya Sotomayor's dodging of questions of substance during her confirmation hearing. The reporter even pointed out that Sotomayor used the exact same language as Republican Supreme Court nominees (and eventual justices) John Paul Roberts and Sam Alito used during their confirmation hearings to dodge questions about abortion and other hot-button issues of the day. Really? That's just exasperating.

I understand Sotomayor's reluctance to answer. Hell, I understand Roberts and Alito's reluctance. There's a whole nation divided right down the middle and the resulting tumult in Congress...well, it'd ensure that nothing at all got done during this session of congress.

I'm exasparated at the same old, same old partisan bickering, and the fact that the tone is unchanged.

I think it might be time to remind our elected officials serve at the pleasure of the electorate; does anyone remember the words that go something like this:

A government by, of and for the people

???

Unintended consequences.

2009-07-28T01:23:00.001-04:00

I attended a mandatory session on password security the other day. (Yes, for work, but we don't talk about that here, remember?)

Long story short, I left that session completely paranoid about my one-size-fits-all password that I have been using, oh, EVERYWHERE, for about the last, um, TEN YEARS. Duuuh. Wait, let me say that again. DUUUUUHHHH

The session leader gave us all copies of this article, which suggests some cute ways to make up memorable and un-guessable passwords. Dutifully, I set about doing just that.

Except that my first couple of mnemonics weren't so mnemonic. And I promptly forgot which numbers I'd used. Because, of course, you don't ever ever write passwords down, because then they can be stolen.

I ended up needing to request a password reset from Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo Mail, Amazon & eBay. I think that I have it all straightened 'round now. I think.

But I forgot that the password to G-Mail is also used by my Blackberry to sync both my calendar and e-mail. The calendar sync app asked straight out for the new password when it tried to sync (something it does behind-the-scenes most of the time) and wasn't able to, it popped right up on the screen and said, hey, dumbass, I can't get into your calendar.

I'm still trying to figure out the mess with the Blackberry. Argh.

Counting down

2009-07-27T06:56:00.000-04:00

NaBloPoMo has just 5 more days to run. Yay! I'm almost there.

I spent the vast majority of the past weekend in bed, dozing off and on. I slept even more poorly than usual last week, and I felt like I needed the rest. Sunday, then, I woke up at 3 AM with a headache that lasted until about 7 PM.

So how is it that I'm so tired on a Monday morning?

Tuneful

2009-07-26T01:15:00.000-04:00

Music is such an important part of my life. I'll listen to almost anything, from punk to world beats, hip-hop to classical, and everything in between.

I will happily see almost any act live. Live music ends up being a near-religious experience, or as close as I think an atheist can come.

I had the chance to see a world-renouned pianist play Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue, an opportunity I happily took advantage of.

The thing for me about seeing live music is the pure joy musicians take in their work. This young pianist was clearly passionate, and thrilled to be doing what he is. I love watching that.

Add a lovely summer evening to the mix, and it is bliss. Bliss, I say.

Burn The Day

2009-07-25T12:01:00.000-04:00

That's from a Dave Matthews Band song, and I'm misquoting it there. The line is actually "DON'T burn the day away".

I'm not heeding his advice. I'm tired, haven't slept well all week and ya know what? The house can be cleaned tomorrow. So say I!

If you will excuse me, I'm off to take a nap.

Oh coffee, my coffee

2009-07-24T02:08:00.001-04:00

I miss Swedish coffee. I miss Swedish coffee a whole lot.

I brought home two "bricks" of Zoegas (brand name) Skåneroast (roast "flavor") and I shipped a couple of bricks of Gevalia (another brand). I say bricks because that is what the 500 gram packages look like; bricks.

I kept one of the Zoegas, gave one to my mother, and I am still waiting patiently for a package to arrive that I mailed from Ängleholm on May 19th. Sigh.

I used the last of my brick of Zoegas this week. Not to worry, though, I have found an online supplier; two, in fact.

One is an importer that operates out of Fort Bragg, NC, and it appears that all they do is import Zoegas. Their website is clunky, but it appears that they have every single roast that Zoegas makes, from the very light roast to the darkest and oiliest roasted beans available. Whole bean, or in the brick format. Unfortunately, when I tried to order the whole beans, their website took the order form and turned it into a bunch of gibberish, opened Microsoft Word as an e-mail editor (GAH!) and did nothing else. I've sent a normal, regular e-mail to them asking what was up, but I'm guessing that they're going to tell me "no dice" for the whole bean.

The other online supplier intrigues me more, as it is based in Sweden, and appears to be a mom-and-pop enterprise dedicated to bringing Swedish expatriates a taste of home. A translated name of their website would be "The Homesickness Boutique". That makes me laugh right there. Their website is less clunky, although still not like the smoothly navigable e-commerce sites that I think we all expect these days. It forces you to look at page after page of groceries, all under the heading of "food", (no further categorization) but on the upside, they have a few other things that were in my lost box, like the orange marmalade.

They carry Digestiv crackers/cookies, too. Digestivs are kind of like graham crackers, but they have a more mild taste than graham crackers. They're good with cool whip on them, but they're also really good with a mild cheese, lending themselves to both sweet and savory alternatives. I brought only one package of them home with me in May (transporting them is a pain, they're VERY fragile) and of course, they're gone. Want. More.

Then there are the books. They have a wide assortment of trashy novels, both books that are by Swedish authors written in Swedish, and books that are by American and Brit authors that have been translated into Swedish.

I spent a merry hour or so cruising around The Homesickness Boutique, adding everything that caught my eye at will to my shopping cart. The grand total for this? SEK 1,044, not including any possible duties, tarrifs, or customs fees. Just $135, for 4 paperback books, a jar of marmalade, two packages of crackers, and one brick of coffee. Ouch. I did not click the "order now" button after seeing the total. Oh, but I want to.

The proprietors of Butik Hemlängtan are also willing to search out anything else you'd like from the grocery store or the chemists' in Sweden. I'm fighting the urge to e-mail them and ask them to ship me the Bliw Björk & Äng soap, whole bean coffee, and to ask them to run to Apotek, the state-run pharmacies/chemists' to fetch some lip balm that I fell in love with. The soap and the lip balm, as best as I can determine from extensive research (read: wasting huge chunks of time surfing teh interweb) can't be purchased in America.

Well, that's not exactly true. The soap, at least, is a no-go. So far, every online store that I've come across that sells Bliw in the US does not have my prefered scent. And all the Swedish websites that do sell it, well, they won't ship it to the US.

The lip balm, however, is of a skin-care brand carried widely here in the US, Eucerin. Unfortunately, the lip balm isn't part of the US line of products Eucerin sells. Bugger! I even called Eucerin's customer relations; first they told me that there is no such thing as Eucerin Lip Balm in the US. I asked the clerk to look at the web site I was looking at;

www.eucerinus.com/skincarecenters/body.html

and whaddya know, they did have it once upon a time, but that's an "old product line and shouldn't be on the web at all".

eBay has the lip balm (but not the soap) at the completely outrageous price of $11.39 for a 4 gram tube. $11.39! For lip balm! WHAT? From a seller located in Thailand. I knew the dollar is rather weak right now, but I wouldn't think the exchange rate was so out of whack that it would turn from 23 SEK ($2.50) to $11.39. Yeesh.

So if we added the lip balm, the soap, and the whole bean coffee to the novels, marmalade and cookies/crackers, we're looking at about $150 worth of stuff from Sweden. Worth it? Le sigh. I think so, but money talks, and I'm not spending that money on those things at this time. Oh, coffee. I miss you.

Mooooooooom! Are we there yet???

2009-07-23T02:24:00.001-04:00

Sit down and pipe down you little whippersnappers, or I will stop this car right now!!!

No, we're not there yet. NaBloPoMo still has a few days let to run, like 8. And just like last time, it is going to be a slog through to the bitter end.

/topic shift

I was reading a new blog I've picked up recently, Crazy Aunt Purl, and she has a nice post about her little garden.

Sadly, I didn't get much of a garden planted this year. No tomatoes. No cucumbers came up, although I did plant them. The lettuce has been left alone by the bunnies and the deer, amazingly, but it is just hanging out, I haven't bothered to harvest it. I planted a few beets, because I'm informed that if you pluck them young, they're sweet and delicious, but I think I missed the "young" harvest.

My herbs. Oh, sigh, my herbs. I have more oregano than I could ever use in one lifetime, but the thyme is struggling, the cilantro never came up, the parsley has some issue with aphids or disease, and the mint is taking over, while the landscapers hurt my small, precious lavender patch by heartlessly tossing a shovel-full of dark, heavy mulch on top of my wee little sprigs. By the time I managed to dig it out, irreparable damage had been done, although I am sure it will come up in fine form next year.

Bill Alexander, author of "The $64 Tomato", noted serenely that gardeners have eternal hope; if it didn't work so well this year, there's always next yet.

Yes, I hope so.

Just a few years later...

2009-07-22T04:49:00.000-04:00

Today is my 9th wedding anniversary. I'm happy about that, of course, but I'm thinking about the folks who danced at my wedding that aren't around any more, and that makes me sad.

I started the day of my wedding with my hairdresser washing my hair in the kitchen sink in my parent's house. He did my hair, and my sisters' hair. He even trimmed my Dad's hair, a spur-of-the-moment request that he granted graciously. We laughed as he unrolled his little leather case that he carried his scissors around in; there had been no plans to cut anyone's hair, but he told us that he never went anyplace without them, as impromptu haircuts happen all the time when you're a hairdresser. He died earlier this year, and there was no funeral. There is a memorial a little later in the summer that I am both looking forward to and dreading.

Listing the rest of the folks that have passed on since that day is entirely too depressing a task for a day to be celebrated. So I shall resist.

I can scarce believe that 9 years have gone by; almost as if they've slipped away when I wasn't looking. Happily slipped away, don't misunderstand. Just that the passage of time does indeed speed up as the years go by.

Here's to DH, for standing by and everything else he does for me, in the Swedish tradition: Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

Yes. This.

2009-07-21T02:48:00.000-04:00

Exactly.

It is my humble opinion that these two teenagers are not the exception to the rule, rather there are more of them out there than we know about. I found this story particularly inspirational.

Does this happen to you?

2009-07-20T08:09:00.003-04:00

There is a shit-storm of drama brewing up on one of the forum boards I participate in daily. Snark, the usual order of the day, intended to be funny, can sometimes cut into tears.

I'm not involved, just a lurking bystander, reading the posts as they show up at lightening speed.

And even though I am not involved in this particular brouhaha, it makes my stomach hurt and upsets me to see the drama, and people who are usually making each other laugh hurting one another and being nasty.

Thank all that is holy that I am not a moderator for this group; mods will eventually step in and tell everyone to stop being blockheads, and possibly bar someone from posting for a while, dependant on how bad/nasty the bickering gets. I would swear that modding is a full-time job in of itself.

Unless someone drags me into the mess, I plan to stay the hell away, but it makes my heart ache to watch "friends" tear each other apart, even in the virtual world.

Alright, still.

2009-07-19T08:00:00.000-04:00

Title of Lily Allen's album. Every time I see her in the gossip rags, I think of that.

Because it reminds me of telling stories to friends when we were teenagers, and angst and drama. It sounded a little like this:

Person A: But then, she apologized for calling me a skank, and turned around and kissed three guys.

Person B: She did apologize, though.

Person A: Alright, still. She's the skank.

Yeah, those were some deep, intellectual conversations there, eh?

Aw, hell.

2009-07-18T07:58:00.003-04:00

I'm up too early on a Saturday morning, and while I wait for laundry to be done, I grabbed the computer, intending to surf a bit on teh internets.

And then I remembered I'm doing NaBloPoMo.

Heck, now instead of looking at patterns on Rav, I have to do some work. Meh.

Book Reports (all trashy summer reading)

2009-07-17T03:00:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure if I should be amused or disgusted that Teenaged Vampire Romance is a genre of novels, like SciFi or Mystery.

Thanks to the juggernaut of Twilight, a whole horde of writers have glomed on to the phenomenon, resulting in both bright lights and dreck. Mostly dreck; I read this type of stuff as escapism, and then I feel semi-guilty that I'm not reading things like Desmond Tutu's memoir, or The Year of Magical Thinking.

It was mostly due to reading a bunch of crappy novels that I started writing my own back in the dark ages. It languishes, unfinished, and may stay there for the rest of my life. But I was writing because I couldn't find anything I actually wanted to read.

I digress.

The novels I've blown through in the last few months are mostly of that aforementioned Teen-aged Vampire Romance Novel genre. First is Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy series; I read the first book sitting in Barnes and Noble that horrible winter where I should have been out on the road doing sales. I didn't know that she'd written two more until very recently. I bought them both, and breezed through both of them in a few hours. The fourth book is due out soon, and I will read it as well.

My opinion of most of these books is somewhat akin to my opinion about the Twilight series; the stories are compelling, enough to hold my attention, but we're certainly not talking about writing of a quality of Hemingway or Goethe. I hasten to add - before any of these authors' fans flame me - that the intent of the TAVRNs is of course, not world-changing, world-class writing. They're intended as a good time, an escapist read, and they accomplish that well.

The next series I stumbled across is The House of Night, by mother-daughter team PC and Kristen Cast. I have to admit, shallowly, that it was the shiny black-on-black designs on the covers of these books that made me pull them off the shelf. They drew me in from the first page of the first book, and the end of the second book made me sob, that bit of the writing was so powerful. It is impossible to tell where the mother-daughter team trades off, because it is seamless.

By the time I got to the end of the 4th book, though, exactly like my fatigue with Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series, I wanted the endless drama of the multiple lovers of the main character to either sort itself out, neaten itself up, or go the hell away.

In Hamilton's series, the main character, Anita Blake, goes from a prudish vampire-hater to promiscuous vampire protector in about 6 books. Her promiscuity is explained away as 'needful' (she's sort of a vamp herself - heh, pun intended - and "feeds" off of orgasm, sort of) and I understand that characters change and grow throughout a series, but this is 1. too extreme and 2. honestly, the multiple orgies get boring.

Anyway.

In the Casts' books, Zoey goes from one dopey football player high school boyfriend to being in a situation by the end of the 4th book where the high school boyfriend is still around, there's a vampire boyfriend who had been a fellow House of Night student (but graduated, sort of), there's the teacher that she slept with (!!!!) who was later murdered, there's an evil spirit who wants her and she's not sure if she can stay away from him, plus another student who she spends all of 4 paragraphs talking to before he dies in her arms and she thinks they might be soul mates. (Him dying and coming back to life just complicate that whole thing further.) Let's see....that's 5? No, wait, 4, because the murdered teacher doesn't come back to life. Yeah. I'm mostly over that. The classic literary device, the love triangle, is fine, but this is a love....pentagram?

I've also decided while reading all of these that I absolutely despise the literary device of foreshadowing. I think for horror writers, it is supposed to add to the doom that you feel building up while you read, but it just irritates the hell out of me. Maybe because my beloved DH loves to play "I Know Something You Don't Know" and that also annoys me. (You must imagine the game title in a sing-songy 5 year-old voice for it to work properly!)

So - verdict, then, for these two TAVRNs? Get 'em from the library. If you like them well enough, then buy them. But the $13 - $20 on the trade paperback editions? Nah, not worth it until you know that you want them in your collection.

The Triumph of the Proletariat

2009-07-16T01:18:00.000-04:00

(or something)

Politics have endlessly fascinated me since the 1984 presidential elections, when I was <> 10.

My mother was a freelance reporter for our little tiny town weekly, and as part of that, she covered the local government councils, a village and a township. I went, whenever I could talk her into it, and had lots of questions on the way home. Even at 10-11-12, I thought that the township trustees were petty, back-biting, bickering brats, and the village council members were hoity-toity.

But the political process has continued to fascinate me, and the fact that we as citizens can contribute to that process with not just our money and our votes, but with our voices....well, at 34, I still think it is pretty freaking amazing.

A few weeks ago, I posted about Ohio's budget crisis, and the plan that our Democratic Governor, Ted Strickland, proposed to lawmakers, which would result in our state-run libraries operating next fiscal year with 50% of the budget of the previous fiscal year. I urged one and all to visit SaveOhioLibraries.com, where further information is available about how you can tell your Ohio elected official just what you thought of the plan to cut the libraries to such a devastating low.

I am proud, and humbled, by the number of people from Ohio (and beyond, too, impressively) who wrote to their local state reps, and to Gov Strickland, telling them was an abysmal idea the funding cuts were. Strickland spoke out vehemently against this public outcry, claiming he wasn't going to budge an inch on his proposed budget.

The folks elected to the Ohio State House and Ohio State Senate, however, recognized political suicide when they saw it.

In the end, the state cut 84 million dollars from the budget of Ohio's 251 library systems; painful, yes, but not as devastating as Strickland's proposed 227 million dollars. The state-wide protests, held in front of libraries and in Columbus on the steps of the capital, not only made noise, they got attention. National news coverage. I heard, although I have no source for this, that the telephone systems at the state house were so overwhelmed with the number of citizens calling to protest that they crashed a few times during this period.

So yea, I'm feeling pretty damn triumphant, and proud. A little of my faith in our system of government has been restored; they listened. It worked just like it ought to. Our elected officials work for us after all!

Power to the people, y'all!

Or....not.

2009-07-15T07:58:00.003-04:00

After about two solid weeks of the lower dose of anti-depressants, I'm ready to declare the experiment a failure. I'm overwhelmed, super-tired, and not particularly cheerful.

But this isn't supposed to be easy, and getting ON the meds was tough, too. They take about 6 weeks to work their way into your system, although I don't understand the whys of that, since you take them every damn day. So the "I'll show you" side of my personality wants to stick with it partly in the belief that it will get better and partly to prove to myself that I can. Lowering the dose is never going to be easier than in the summer; trying this in the depths of winter would be catastrophic. I can picture that resulting in getting back to the point where losing my car keys is major meltdown time.

If I give up on it now, therefore, I won't try again until next summer.

I keep saying that I'm OK with the fact that I might need the meds for the rest of my life, but maybe I'm not OK with that. Because I don't think it is all right to need the maximum daily dosage for the rest of my life, really. What would happen to me if I was living in the times before these drugs were so readily available? Would I have been one of those people that friends and family would natter to pull myself up by my own bootstraps? Or would I have been one of the millions that suffered in silence, quietly choosing a handful of sleeping pills over the stigma of admitting that I had a mental illness? Thank goodness for the modern age, and for the meds.

Stepping down the dose is at the suggestion of my doctor, although we did not discuss the ramifications of it. He told me to step it down by 150 mg, which means that I take one 300 mg pill a day instead of one 300 mg and one 150 mg daily. I didn't expect it to be difficult. I didn't expect it to be such a roller-coaster. If nothing worthwhile is easy, though, I don't know why I thought this would be simple.

I should, in the interest of science, give it the same 6 weeks I gave the meds to start working. Give my body that time to adjust to alteration (again) of my brain's chemistry. But I'm sticking with the adage of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," and going back to the 450 mg dosage. The negative effects of lowering the amount that I take each day is not worth it to me right now.

One of my personality traits that I really don't like is that I'm indecisive. It is good to be able to look at a problem from many sides, to be able to see all the benefits of a particular decision, but not good to waffle between two or three options. I'm not fence-sitting on this one, and I'm going to try to stop fence-sitting in the rest of my life, too. June 1, 2010 seems like a good date to me to try again.

And on the downside...

2009-07-14T08:48:00.002-04:00

I'm second-guessing myself with the decision to step down the meds. I had a moment yesterday where I felt completely overwhelmed. This was a moment where someone who does not have a mental illness would take a deeeep breath and think, wow, dude, I've got a lot to do. Let's make a list.

I, on the other hand, took a deep breath and thought, OMGWTFBBQ, what the hell am I going to do? I'm going to fail, and everyone will see and laugh and say they knew I couldn't manage and and and and OMG, Luce this has to STOP NAO! You stop it right now! {gave myself a little shake-till-your-teeth-rattle} Pull yourself together. You can do this. One. Step. At. A. Time. Logically, step by step. Make a list. Cross things off of it. Communicate that you're overwhelmed. Prioritize.

And I was back to being mostly all right. The fact that I can stop that train right in its tracks is something I am pretty fucking proud of, if you'll pardon the foul language. A few years ago when that train left the station, I might have walked out to play in traffic.

Things that the meds help that I'm missing: sleeping. I was up much past my self-appointed bed time of roughly 10 PM. Not that I'm not tired. I am. I'm not sleepy. I gave up around 1 AM, took an ambien, and slept until the alarm went off at 6. Early to bed tonight, no ifs, ands, or buts!

Down the steps

2009-07-13T06:19:00.003-04:00

Not long after I wrote in a post about the Doc telling me to step-down my meds, I finally remembered to do it, and have been for about a week now.

It seems to be going OK.

I'm reminded of the book Is It Me Or Is It My Meds by David Karp when I tell you that one of the few effects I've noticed from taking less of my Wellbutrin is that I'm more apt to say something nasty or biting to someone. Not funny-sarcastic-snarky. Downright obnoxiously rude. My gut instinct is to just - bam - snit back at someone, instead of answering them nicely. DH, unfortunately, seems to bear the brunt of this.

So then the question seems to be: am I really and truly a total bitch, and the meds kept that in check? And I'm quite afraid that the answer is yes. And I don't like that answer very much. Which means I don't like me very much. Which starts the whole vicious downward-spiraling tornado of the mental imbalance that is depression, since the disease insists to you that you're worthless.

I'm not worthless. I won't listen to that particular demon. I can fight against that, and I can do it with less of the medication. It is time, ffs, to begin the path to cut down the dose. I freely admit that I may need the meds for the rest of my life. I'm OK with that. But I don't think that I need the maximum dose every day for the rest of my life. Nearly 2 years of the maximum dosage is enough time to turn it around, and my life is much better than it was 2 years ago. (At this time 2 years ago, for those of you just tuning in, I was unemployed and deeply unhappy.) So I'm comfortable with the decision to step it down, and I'll work on that snark response reaction. This time, "down" will not be equal to "out".

Hate being hot

2009-07-12T11:24:00.003-04:00

The weather is finally summertime here in Ohio, and while I spend time in the winter bitching about the abysmal cold weather, I don't care for the heat, either.

I don't like to sweat. And I don't like to stink. But they go hand in hand as soon as the weather warms up.

I woke up last night soaked to the skin with sweat. Why, you ask, did that happen in my air conditioned house? Because the upstairs gets warm, and we run fans to cool it off. The fans annoy my DH, and he turns them off because he doesn't like the noise.

Ask me if I was happy when I woke up in the middle of the night, sweating. Go on. Ask.

Routine Disruption

2009-07-11T11:26:00.002-04:00

Once upon a time, I was very very involved in a television show. You remember this, right?

Somewhere during the fourth season, which ended in May, I stopped watching. Not for lack of interest; for lack of sleep and time, I simply set the DVR and recorded the episodes. Then I was getting ready to go to Sweden, then I went to Sweden, then I came home, and OMG, we're at the middle of July and I have 9 episodes of Supernatural to catch up on.

That is, I need to park my butt in front of the television for 9 hours. Nuh-uh, ain't happenin. Not while the sun is shining, the days are long, and the garden needs tending.

While I still love the show, and still like Jensen Ackles a whole lot, I've managed to stay away from most of fandom for more than a year. It is a little like high school; I've kept in touch with the fandom friends, but I don't feel the need to visit the boards and spend time obsessing over it all.

This is a good thing.

The Wisdom Routine

2009-07-10T17:17:00.002-04:00

Does it gall you or amuse you that things your elders told you as a child are true or proven "proverbs"? A bit of both for me.

My grandfather used to say two things that stick with me.

"What you can't carry in your head, you carry in your feet."

Meaning whatever you don't remember to bring, you're going to go back and get it.

"My Daddy didn't have any dumb kids."

Said when we were trying to fool him.

The best/worst one, however, is one of my Dad's, that is biting me in the rear end right now as I slog through NaBloPoMo.

"Everyone has 24 hours in a day. What you choose to do with them is up to you."

GAH!

Just sick

2009-07-09T17:18:00.000-04:00

I brought a cold home from Florida and feel like crap.

Listening to an interview with Nancy Pelosi made me feel worse.

I'm so disillusioned! It seems that even with the Senate and the White House being held by Dems, still, STILL, nothing gets done.

Business as usual -i.e. ROUTINE - in Washington. Bleh.

Full Moon Fever

2009-07-08T01:51:00.001-04:00

As DH and I left the Pittsburgh airport on Monday night, exhausted and cranky, we were both looking for was to make the other laugh, cheer each other up a bit at 1:30 AM. I commented, "It's a nice night. Look at the moon."

He agreed. It was a pleasant night, the temperature was nice, low humidity, and the moon was pretty. The fact that we don't usually hang out to appreciate the moon in the wee small hours of the morning didn't make it more alluring, though.

When I worked as a teller for Ye Olde Evile Bank, I discovered that there is truth to the old axiom about strange things happening around a full moon. Weird telephone calls, strange customers, computers behaving badly, all due to a full moon.

Yesterday, the telephone calls I received at work went from "that's odd" to "really?" to "wow, weird" to "dude, seriously" to "WTF, people?!" in no time flat.

It is a trend I notice every time the moon is full in my little corner of the world. A routine, honestly, that I could do without, thanks.

Full of fail.

2009-07-07T01:55:00.000-04:00

That's the short short version of How My Trip To Florida Was.

Not a complete disaster, but I wouldn't call it a rousing success, either.

The whole flying routine, fine. Got through that on the way to Florida with no problem. Uneventful flights are good.

My parents bought a house in Florida, a foreclosure house. Sad for someone else, but a boon for them. The downside is that it has been empty for a year, is filthy dirty, has overgrown landscaping, and a myriad of problems that come with a house that has been empty for a while.

This was a working vacation for all of us; solve the problems with the house that could be solved in a few short days, celebrate my grandmother's 90th birthday, and then back to the grind.

Ha.

Ha. Ha.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Riiiight.

The universe had other plans.

The running around necessacary for the party was accomplished with no problems. Minor issues at the 'new' house, solved easily. Landscapers contracted, the gross kitchen scrubbed within an inch of its life, and the 90th birthday was lovely.

We got my grandmother a digital photo frame, which we loaded with family pictures from her wedding day up until last week. Don't tell me about being "too old" for technology; my 90 year old grandmother LOVES the digital frame, and can operate it with no problem.

My parents have a house they've been renting in Florida. We stayed there, as the new house has no furniture. The new house does, however, have electricity, running water, and air conditioning, a fact that will be relevant to the story later. The rental house is a furnished 3 bedroom affair, a nice place. They were unsure, when they initially retired, if they'd like the whole Florida vibe, so they rented in the begining.

We came back from Grandma's birthday party to find 4 inches of water through the entire rental house. Everywhere. We sloshed through the house, in complete disbelief. We were gone for 8 hours; a pipe in the laundry room burst, and we have no idea when that happened, but it leaked long enough for the entire house to fill with water.

Everything was drenched. Everything. My suitcase was on the floor, and every piece of clothing I brought with me was soaked. I brought a backpack with a knitting project, two novels, my iPod and various other things; it was sitting on the floor next to my suitcase. DH had piled his clothing on the bed before we left, and his bag was sitting on a chair. His things remained dry. The parents had both wet and dry things. Two garbage cans full of wet and dry things.

Casualties: my iPod, which is gutting; my passport (not so gutting, I hated the pic and am glad for an excuse to get a new one); and one of the two novels. The book is a bummer because it was a Swedish translation of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, hardback, that I bought in Malmö. Nearly impossible to replace on this side of the pond. It is really wet. Maybe a loss. Maybe not. I'm hoping not, but time will tell.

Not destroyed, but damaged: very expensive yarn; a blank book; clothes.

We carried furniture and clothes and stuff out of the house until midnight that night. Trucked several loads of stuff to the new house in the parent's Florida car, a 4-door sedan. That was fun. Got eaten alive by mosquitos. They don't grow mozzies big in Florida; they grow them MEAN. I have at least 15 bites, all of them very itchy.

We collapsed on to matteresses on the floor at the new house around 1:30 AM. The next day, my dad and DH did landscaping while my mother and I scrubbed inside some more. Our flight home to Ohio was due to leave Florida at about 7PM last night, and we were looking forward to getting out of the oppressive heat, home to our own bed.

Ha. Again.

Our flight didn't leave until almost 10 PM. We pulled in to our driveway at home at 2:30 AM.

Ow.

I'm 4!

2009-07-06T00:05:00.003-04:00

Happy Blogversary to me!

I managed to write all of 9 posts in 2005, mostly about politics and women's rights. 2006 I got to all of 95 posts, and 249 in 2007. That averages out to about 141 posts a year. For a while in 2007, I was writing nearly every day. It was part of my near-daily routine. Of course, I was unemployed for 4 months in 2007, so I did have a bit more time to devote to it.

Thinking about that summer reminds me that it was two years ago that I went to Lilydale. I'd really like to do that again. I had such a sense of peace there. I went by myself, stayed in a hotel with no air conditioning (I was lucky that it was very cool for the week or so I stayed there) with a community bathroom down the hall, and I was happy as a clam. I just spent about 20 minutes searching my blog archive and my on line calendar to see if I can figure out exactly when I was in Lilydale, but all I can come up with is that I wrote a blog post from there on July 10. I think I stayed for 3-5 days, but I don't remember. I recently cleaned up the storage area in my house, and I pitched the program guide from Lilydale for the summer of 2007, which I could have consulted for definite dates...but no, I have that organize-tidy-clean gene.

Perhaps I think about Lilydale on my blogversary because it completely slipped by without me noticing that year. Too wrapped up in the myth, fantasy, curiosity (and lunacy) of Spirtiualism, as well as the fact that I'd lost my job just days prior.

This year, instead of the cool hills of western New York state, as you read this, I'll be in sweltering hot Florida. My beloved paternal grandmother turns 90 on July 4, and today is our last day in Florida. Since my parents retired and spend half of the year in Florida, flying there and home is pretty routine. I don't take any liquids (no need for shampoo, etc because it is all at the parent's house) and therefore don't check any luggage. Direct flights are nice when we can get them, but more often than not we have to change planes in Atlanta, my least favorite airport in the world. Ugh.

I guess there is always next year for Lilydale; I'd like to make that part of my yearly routine, because it is such a peaceful place. I was able to do nothing at all or keep busy with seminars if I wanted to. My atheism and skepticism of their faith was readily accepted; they're well used to skeptics and non-believers. Perhaps in future years, that's how I'll celebrate this anniversary; the blog gets another year older, and I get to spend a few days on my own.

Happy Blogversary to Well Behaved Women!

A terrible, terrible new addiction.

2009-07-05T03:59:00.000-04:00

One of my groups on Ravelry is good for a laugh, all the time. Sure, there's lots of posts in the forums like "ZOMG, my life is a mess!" but there's a lot that makes me giggle too.

It is entirely their fault that I've started reading Texts From Last Night. I use an RSS reader, so I don't see the "good night" "bad night" commentaries, which I find highly annoying. The premise is that they publish texts that people send one another when they probably....shouldn't.

Which reminds me about something totally unrelated.

I first heard the term "drunk dial" just a few years ago. This is when you get drunk and call an ex-lover on your mobile phone, and perhaps end up in bed with them, despite the fact that you know they're bad news and you really, really shouldn't. Or you just end up making an ass of yourself. Either way, not a good thing.

Texts from last night are examples of "drunk texting". That confuses me a little, because typing text messages is a pain in the butt and difficult when you're sober. I have a QWERTY keyboard on my mobile phone, and I still struggle with typing texts; when you just have a numbered keypad, how the heck do you do this when you're intoxicated?

TFLN are sometimes unintentionally hilarious, sometime sad, and sometimes terrifying. Examples?

--Well, you'll be happy to know Aaron Carter hit on me.

--I met a girl last night who charged by the inch. She'd be too expensive for me, but I thought you'd get a deal.

--brb, k???!? plz don't leave i want 2 talk bout r rltnshp

--is your mom at the bar?

Gems, all of them.

I want each and every one of you (all 4!) who read this to note that I am refraining from losing my shit over the grammar and spelling or lack thereof on those texts. I will not. I will not. I will not...

Libraries are important places

2009-07-04T02:26:00.000-04:00

The Governor of the Great State of Ohio has a proposed budget on the table in Columbus.

I like to think of myself as an idealist, and that people who seek and hold public office actually have a desire to serve the public.

Oh, how cute and sheltered, eh?

Ted Strickland was elected as governor on a platform of education, and a whole lot of other things that I like lots. He's pro-choice, which was enough to get my vote.

His proposed budget cuts the funding for libraries in Ohio an additional 30%. This is AFTER the libraries have already had a 20% budget cut. So Ohio libraries, which have always been tax-funded, would operate the next fiscal year at 50% of the budget from last fiscal year.

This is quite the 180 degree turnaround from his election promises. Sad.

I've never made a secret of the fact that I don't like living in Ohio. I'd flee in an instant if I could. I have a bad case of Anywhere But Here, and I think I'd trade living in a shoebox for living in Ohio. (Most days, anyway.) One of the ONLY things I have ever been proud of about the Buckeye State is that we have some of the nation's best libraries.

Free. It does not cost you one red cent to get a library card, anywhere in the state.

Filled with books and DVDs and videos and CDs and books on tape. Want to read a new bestseller? The public library in your small podunk Ohio town will have it. Need a manual for your 2003 Honda Civic? The public library has that too. Textbooks, cookbooks, self-help, biographies, non-fiction books about anything you can imagine. If they don't have it, they can get it for you from an inter-library loan.

Seventy percent of Ohio's libraries are entirely funded by the fund the good ole gov wants to cut. The other thirty percent have local levies or other sources of income in addition to the state funding.

The planned cuts will mean mass closures of branches throughout Ohio's 251 branch system. In the two counties that I live and work in, every branch except the two "mains" will be closed. That means the public library in your small podunk Ohio town won't be there. All bookmobile services, which provide books to shut-ins and places where there are no branches, will disappear. Ohio's libraries have Internet-capable computers, assistance with writing resumes and business plans, and the majority of the genealogy research for the state.

This spending plan is a disaster, and devastating, too.

I know librarians in both counties. But my passion about this cause is NOT because my two friends would likely lose their jobs. (Sorry, guys. Not that I don't love you. I do. I would hate for you to be unemployed.) It is because the library has played such a vital role in my life.

I can afford to buy most of the books I want to purchase. I have high speed internet at home. I know how to write a resume. But there are people in this state who can't or don't. Libraries help to close the digital divide. Libraries serve the entire population, not elitist snobs, and not just those at the bottom of the food chain either. They're equalizers.

If you're reading this in Ohio, please go to Save Ohio Libraries and do what you can to show our elected ~~morons~~ officials that cutting library funding is unacceptable. Use your right to speak up, today especially.

Oh, it's ON.

2009-07-03T01:53:00.001-04:00

I've been hinting that I was going to write about this for a while, but rather than make it to actual text, it has been floating about in my head for quite some time.

Being "on" is related to being a guest. Related to good manners, and showing the nicer side of yourself. (Yeah, it's hard.)

While I was in Sweden with the Rotary GSE, I was "on" whenever I was awake.

For me, this meant being gracious and polite, being enthusiastic even when I felt like shit, and having an open mind to trying everything that was offered.

Being on is a little like acting. You're smiling, being cheerful, and listening intently even when you're pissed, unhappy, and bored.

I love Sweden. I love its people, its culture, its food, its language, its cities and its countryside. There isn't much I don't love about Sweden. But even someone as Swedish-crazy as I am can get to the end of their rope.

The Swedish diet is quite full of herring. Fried herring. Pickled herring. Sour pickled herring (bleh!). Herring sliced up and mixed with other stuff and baked into a casserole. Then there's the boiled potatoes, smoked salmon, low-brow caviar, lingonberry jam, and Swedish meatballs. I like all of those things, with the exception of the sour stuff. I really like Swedish meatballs and boiled potatoes with lingonberry jam. (Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, sweetcheeks.) I got really tired of the herring during this trip. Thankfully, no one served the team sour pickled herring. But the rest of it, pickled and fried and casserole-style, man-oh-man did I get tired of it.

When we would arrive at wherever we were going to have lunch, and the menu was herring again, you couldn't roll your eyes or show exasperation. You had to be polite and cheerful, non-snarky and appreciative. That's what I mean by saying that I was "on" all the time. Being a gracious guest isn't a huge burden to bear, but it can certainly get old after a while. (Like 5 weeks.)

All of this makes me sound like an entitled, ungrateful, and overprivledged brat. I am exceedingly grateful for the chance to visit Sweden on someone else's dime, and to have learned everything that I did, to have met everyone that I did. Really and truly. Being in Sweden makes me happy. Speaking Swedish makes me happy.

Not having my own space or my own stuff for five weeks isn't with the happy-making.

I got into a tiff with one of the other team members during the third week we were there; it is a long backstory, but relates to exactly what I'm talking about.

He is one of those people that thrives on having someone to pick on, to belittle, as compensation for what I don't know, but I'm assuming he does it to compensate for a tiny male appendage. He teased me about shirts that I wore, which had the logo of my employer embroidered on them. Small and tasteful, business attire (shells to wear under suit jackets. fine-gauge sweaters.) that I wore on a near-daily basis. I own eight of these embroidered shirts, which run the gamut of colors and are, as I said, tasteful. He started a pool to guess which color and style shirt I'd wear the next day.

I put up with this for a while, silently, or chuckling along with everyone else. I've had experience with his type before. Letting them know that they're getting to you is like pouring gasoline on a fire, so I kept my mouth shut even though it annoyed me. It wasn't enough to get worked up over, and it kept him from being obnoxious to the Swedes. No worries, I'm a big girl and can handle being teased.

I put up with it even when I didn't think it was funny anymore. I kept quiet when he actually drew a complicated matrix in his notebook, showing the mathematical probability of which shirt I would wear which day. I'm enough of a grown-up to admit that the geek in me was vastly entertained that he was that much of a geek too, despite the uber-urbane airs he put on.

I put up with it when he invited one of the Rotarians that we all really liked to join the pool, even when it made me feel like an ass. It made me feel small and provincial and stupid.

The point at which I no longer put up with it even came AFTER he announced the winner of one of his ridiculous pools at A FORMAL ROTARY GATHERING WITH 30 PEOPLE IN ATTENDANCE. Talk about feeling like an asshole. He explained (in English, with no translator) what the pool was about to the assembled guests, all of whom were Swedish, i.e., non-native speakers of English. Then he announced the winner. A polite round of applause followed. None of the Swedes really understood what it was all about, other than it was making fun of Lucy, ha-ha-ha, isn't Arnie Asshole funny.

I said nothing at the party. I said nothing for another two days, at which time he invited two more Rotarians, who were our guides/drivers for that day to join the pool while we were having coffee at a cafe. That was my breaking point. I'm not sure why that particular bit was the breaking point. I didn't say anything to him previously because I knew it would simply get worse, but that right there? That was IT.

As he went to hand the notebook to the Swedes for them to note their guesses, the notebook came to me on the way to them. I took it, handed it back to him, and said, "Could you please find some ONE or some THING else to pick on? Because I'm over it." My tone was nasty, but at my normal volume. My facial expression was pissed. My intent was not unclear.

{In my defense, I didn't punch him in the face, tear his stupid notebook to shreds, dump my hot cup of coffee over his smug head, or do what I wanted to most, which was kick him where it would have hurt. Bad. Real bad. I resisted those urges.}

Our hostesses for the day were shocked. Stunned silence greeted this outburst. Then he said, sounding like an innocent little boy who doesn't know any better, "Really?"

"Yes, really," I snarked back. "Enough."

The Swedes tend to be stoic. Public disagreements are rare. Shouting at someone in public is absolutely a faux pas. I didn't shout at him, but the moment was very, very awkward. Moments later, we all cleared the table, put our dishes where they belonged, and walked out.

I walked with one of the hosts, starting a conversation about something trivial. She was a typical Swede and being polite as they usually are, she didn't ask for details about what had just happened. The rest of the team followed clustered in a group behind me, whispering to one another.

Fucking fantastic. Oh, and oops.

My team leader pulled me aside a little later and didn't tell me off, but she did say that it was unfortunate that I'd chosen to bitch him out in front of our hosts. I agree; it was. Presenting a united (and happy with one another) front to the Swedes as a team was important. We specifically sidestepped political questions because we didn't agree about the president, or anything else in American government, for that matter, and we didn't want to seem fracturous.

It is quite possible that we could be the only Americans that some of the people we met would ever see. For example? If you've only ever met one Puerto Rican, and she/he was rude and nasty, you just might form the opinion that every Puerto Rican was a nasty brat. Likewise, if the entire group fought the whole time we were there, Swedes that we met could get the impression that all Americans behave this way all the time. As ambassadors of our country, we needed to act the part. I wasn't "on" in that moment, not at all.

I have yet to apologize to him for biting his head off. I have no intentions of doing so, either. He never did ask me for an explanation of my behavior, but if he had, he'd've gotten chapter and verse on what an asshole I thought/think he is/was. Nothing else was said about it for the entire journey, although one other teammate did ask later that same day if I'd thought of perhaps pulling him aside and asking him to stop before verbally attacking him. No, I didn't. Because I knew what would happen, he'd keep it up AND make it worse.

What's that? What does this have to do with routine? Meh. Not much. I wasn't following the Nice Girl Routine there.....

But there are some people who just bring that out in me. Thankfully, I no longer have to deal with him frequently. But if I did? And he was still a pain in the ass? Oh, it'd be ON then, my friend!

The travel routine

2009-07-02T08:47:00.003-04:00

For a few days I'm going to try the theme.

I love to travel. Wait, let me be a little more clear. I love being in another geographical location, someplace that isn't home. The actual travel itself, getting to the airport, going through security, lugging my bags, sprinting across a terminal for a gate change, not so much. Although I don't mind flying in the least. I've never been a fearful flyer. I have several irrational fears myself (drowning, heights, dogs, spiders) which would make you think that I'd have empathy for those who are afraid to fly. I don't, because I don't understand it.

As Saint Augustine (Nov 13, 354 - Aug 28, 430) famously said, "The world is a book, and those that do not travel read only one page." So it baffles me that someone would choose not to travel because they're afraid to get on an airplane. Sure, sure, you run the risk of dying every time you get on an airplane. You run the risk of dying every time you cross a street, too.

I've traveled a lot over the years. When I was a child, there were yearly trips to Florida to visit my paternal grandparents and to Michigan for summer vacation. We went to Niagara Falls often, New York City once or twice, Washington DC a time or two. We almost always drove. And because there were 5 of us, quite often my dad put a luggage carrier on top of the car. So I had a bag for inside the car and one for the luggage rack. Dad (reasonably so) would not open the car carrier once we were underway, so you had to have whatever you wanted to play with or read in the bag that went in the car. Mom always had a bag with snacks and a small cooler with drinks too, because we weren't stopping for such trivialities once under way. Florida was a 24 hour drive and Michigan was 10.

As I've gotten older, I'm much more likely to fly than to drive, especially to places like Florida. But since 2001, flying has gotten to be a much bigger pain in the ass. The stepped-up security I understand, although I don't think it makes us much safer. The liquid restrictions I don't understand, and I don't think those make us safer either. Hassle factor: 10,000.

Shoes off. Belt removed. Pockets emptied. Zip-top bag of liquids out of the suitcase. Cellular phone and camera through the x-ray machine. Computer out of the bag. Boarding pass in hand. Walk through the metal detector. Gather all of your paraphernalia up, stuff you feet back into your shoes, and get the hell out of the way so the lines keep moving.

I quit checking luggage a long time ago, unless it is truly necessary, because the airlines routinely lose my luggage; as if I have an indelible mark on the bags that say "lose me"! Unless I am forced to, I just can't bring myself to turn the bags over to them. Of course, that forces me to be creative in my choices for what to pack and to slim down the number of shoes I want to take.

I have a habit for that, too. I choose what I want to take, thin it down once, stuff it all in the suitcase, and if it fits and zips shut, fine. If not, I pare down further. I'm a big believer in taking things that can be utilized several times - a black t-shirt, for instance, with jeans for casual, or under a suit for more businesslike - and I'm also a believer in "if I don't have it/forget it/or can't fit it in the suitcase, I can buy it there."

Packing takes me minutes. It takes DH hours. He didn't travel much as a kid, and I can't help but wonder if that's part of the reason. He's as much of a list maker as I am, but for some reason, he gets bogged down during the process, while I'm focused and determined.

We'll be doing the travel routine for the Fourth of July holiday; my grandmother is turning 90, and there's a party in Florida to mark the occasion. While I'm looking forward to the trip, being in South Florida in July ain't my idea of paradise. The weather just now in Oh-hia-ia is unseasonably cool, and to my mind, pleasant. I am not excited about 90 degrees (30+C) and 1000% humidity. Bleh.

She must be crazy.

2009-07-01T03:42:00.001-04:00

That will be what you're forced to conclude. If you're not reading this on an RSS feeder, have a look over to the right, and you'll see that I did indeed decide to participate in this month's NaBloPoMo, with the July theme of "routine".

The rules state that you don't need to use the theme, it is just a suggestion. If I remember right, last time around I ignored it unless I was bereft of something to say. Since that seldom happens, I doubt I'd need to rely on the theme, but I think I'm going to try to give it a shot.

Routine, to me, means same old, same old. Get up. Get a shower. Get dressed. Go to work. Work 8-10 hours. Go home. Find some dinner. Go to sleep. Get up the next morning and do it again. Weekends are a slight alteration; get up. Find something to wear. Run errands. Do laundry. Clean the house. Go to the grocery store.

But for all that, routine is safe. Routine is stability.

When I had that awful sales job, there was no stability, no particular routine each day. I didn't get up much before 9, didn't schedule appointments before 11 unless I had to, and usually only left the house a few hours before DH was due home so it looked like I was doing something productive. When I would leave the house, I would go either to a Panera Bread or a book store, and I'd either surf the web or read a book that I couldn't afford to buy, because commissioned sales sucks.

Did I write about that at the time? No, I don't think I did. Not extensively. Partly because it was terrifying and upsetting to me that I wasn't doing so well at the job. I have never attempted anything else in my life that I was so spectacularly bad at doing! I'm smart, a quick study, and I expect of myself to be able to learn how to do something quickly, and get better at it as time goes on. Sales didn't work that way for me. It made me feel like even more of a failure to talk about it, which really helped the depression. (Sarcasm, people, sarcasm.)

It is only with more than a year's perspective on that time that I am now able to see that I was in worse shape than I thought I was, and that's saying something.

Thankfully, once my meds got to be, ahem, routine, and at the proper dosage, that evened out, and when I was able to flip the sales job the bird, things improved more. Earlier this year, I promised my doc that I would begin to scale back the dosage of my Wellbutrin XL. I have not yet done so. I have had several days where I've forgotten to take them - entirely unintentionally, I hasten to assure you - and I feel like I've been hit by a semi. I'm also much more irritated by small things, stupid shit will leave me tailspinning. So going off of the meds isn't the answer yet. Stepping down the dose isn't a bad idea, though; I just have yet to remember to do that when I take my daily prescriptions each day. I look at them in my hand and think, "allergy pill, yep, birth control pill, yep, Wellbutrin 1, yep, Wellbutrin 2, yep, 1-2-3-4, good, that's all of them." That is so much a part of my daily routine. It is only after I have actually swallowed the pills that I remember, damn, I wanted to try taking 300 mg instead of 450 to see what happens. Ooops.

Being an obsessive-compulsive (my manifestations, that is) means that patterns, routine, and order appeal to me. Color-coded, alphabetical, lined up straight, square edges, mapped, diagrammed, charted things are good. Disorderly, messy, unorganized and sloppy makes me twitchy. Add the fact that I'm a Capricorn (Caps tend to be organized) to my OCD, and you have a recipe for a routine fanatic.

Mulling

2009-06-29T03:29:00.000-04:00

I get a monthly e-mail from the wonderful folks over at NaBloPoMo, they of the National Blog Posting Month. The monthly e-mail is the announcement of the theme for the next month, and a how-to reminder for listing yourself on the Blogroll if you decide to participate.

I want to, nearly every month, but it is less attractive to me for having done it once already. It can be a grind. This month's theme is "routine" and yes, of course, every time I read their monthly e-mail I can think of many posts that would fit the theme. (Unwritten, in-my-head posts.) The problem with doing the project last time around was that I chose to do it in a November, a time of the year that is hectic for me. The upside is that it forces you to write EVERY DAY, or to make contingency plans to have stuff post automatically if you're going to be AFK for a few days. If you're having Blogger post them automatically, then you've put in the screen time ahead of time.

Summer can be a little less hectic in my world, but this year I think it is asking for trouble to play along, because teh workload? I haz it.

So I'll be mulling that over for a few days.

Poor, poor baby. Let me organize a pity party for you.

2009-06-22T01:48:00.001-04:00

A few years ago, anonymous sex-blogger Girl With A One Track Mind, Abby Lee, was outed by British newspaper The Sunday Times. Backlash from the blogosphere was swift, virulent, vicious, and according to a recent article in the same paper by the same writer, Anna Mikhailova, career ruining.

Mikhailova ruined Abby Lee's film career - she worked in production, not as an actress - and now has the utter brass cajones to whine about Abby's readers ruining her "reputation" and by virtue of that reputation-ruining, her career as a bottom-feeding journalist is just not thriving. Awww. Honey. I'm so sorry.

I have a vested interest in this not just for reasons of anonymity; I believe that Abby would not have been vilified for her sexual escapades had she been male, so there's the feminist angle as well as the fact that I myself write under a pseudonym. My reasons for doing that are my own. Abby's were as well.

When does "the public interest" or "the right to know" trump privacy? When there is something illegal going on, certainly. But if I'm writing about my own private Idaho over here, and you read it and like it, why does it matter if I'm the woman in the office next to you or if I live three time zones away?

Of course, the automatic comeback to my argument is that if I wanted to remain anonymous, I wouldn't be writing on teh interweb, I'd have a journal that I kept under lock and key. Guess what. I do. Writing is part of who I am, not just something I do for fun. Publishing my struggles with depression has been both about my own recovery and about the hope that someone, somewhere, reads what I've written and decides to seek help for their own issues. De-stigmatizing mental illness is a goal of my blog.

Writing here about politics, the abortion debate, my silly little inconsequential life, is something that I enjoy doing. I believe that I have the right to do that under a pen name. And so I do not feel sorry for Anna Mikhailova. The line for the pity party forms to the left, please. Right there, that sign that says "Exit"!!

Green, Green, Green

2009-06-17T01:55:00.000-04:00

No, I am not done writing about Sweden. Not by a long shot! I still want to write about The White Buses, being "on" the whole time I was there, some stories about stupid things I did (like...um...accidentally putting train tickets into a mail slot, thus losing them for all time) and some cultural observations. Today, though, I'm taking a short post to note a few random things.

When I left for Sweden on April 19, spring had hardly begun in Ohio. It was a chilly and overcast day, but not so cold that I actually needed my winter coat. DH and I left to head towards the airport long before I actually needed to be there, because there's a mall near that airport that we don't get to as often as we'd like. I had tossed the coat on the back seat of the car, and was on the fence about taking it with me. (I did, and I'm really glad I did, but that's an upcoming story.)

I got back to Ohio on May 22, and it was warm. Spring had come and was rapidly rushing headlong into summer. Within days of my return, I cranked the air conditioning in the house, turning the temperature to about 72 (22C), because it was 80+ (26C) and I hate the heat.

Driving along a busy road near my house yesterday, I noticed how absolutely green everything is. Trees that were winter-bare when I left are in full leaf. A small yellow rosebush by the side of the road, carefully tended, has beautiful full flowers.

I didn't get to plant much of a garden this year. I was in Sweden during planting season, and I planted nothing before I left because I knew, sure as the sun rises, that DH would not water a single thing, and it would have all been in vain. I had tomato plants last year, and cucumbers and lettuce and mint and basil and cilantro and flowers and all sorts of things. This year, I have lettuce, cucumbers, beets (an experiment) and my herbs, a few flowers, and nothing else. No tomatoes. I am sad about that.

I glanced outside of my kitchen window yesterday and was surprised to see the flowers I had started from seed have sprouted and are looking like they might turn into something other than tiny green shoots.

As I drove to work the other day, I thought about the folks who start work super-early, bakers and the like, and as we approach the summer solstice, the days are long and if you drive to work at 5:30 in the morning, your drive is much lighter than it was in April.

Summer is so short here. It disappears in the blink of an eye. While it lasts, I savor the green.

New Friends and Old

2009-06-11T01:28:00.000-04:00

I took nearly 500 pictures in five weeks in Sweden. Not quite 500, but awful close.

There was a team of Swedes here in Oh-hia-ia before my team went to Sweden, and we were fortunate enough to meet them before we left, and to see them several times while we were in Sweden. The Swedish team leader teased our team that we'd never be able to take as many pictures as they did. Five team members, five weeks, and they took a combined total of over 6,000 pictures. I did some quick math, and that adds up to somewhere between 35 and 40 pictures, per person, per day for the entire trip. That's some serious shutter-bugging.

For a basis of comparison, my 460 pictures works out to 13 pictures a day.

I don't know how many we as a whole team took - because my team hasn't compared notes yet - but one of our team members took all of maybe 5 pictures over 5 weeks, so there's no way we'd even come close to a combined total of 6000.

I don't consider myself a good photographer, and my digital camera is old. I have a really good 'real' film camera, but I didn't take it to Sweden because it is too heavy, too big, too much to carry around, and getting the pictures developed (it uses Kodak Advantix film, not just regular 35mm film) is bloody expensive. Even though I knew it would take better shots, I left it at home.

I was able to share my pictures online with the other team members as we travelled, updating nearly weekly with pictures I'd taken and using FTP to share them. There are several pictures I took that I love. But another team member has studied photography, and she brought a digital SLR camera. I've been nagging her to share her pictures, and she finally did get them shared with everyone yesterday.

As I looked through the pictures, there's a great one of my team leader with a Swedish friend of hers, someone she's known since 1987, and looking at it, I had an "awwww" moment. He's one of the new friends that I made and wish lived closer so I could see him often, although he's an old friend for my team leader.

Among the pictures I shared with my team were several of my Swedish Mama and Papa, people the team didn't get to meet. (That whole they-live-350-miles-away-from-Skåne thing was really a barrier!) I was bummed when I went to visit Mama & Papa that I didn't get to see any of my "old" Swedish friends; it was a holiday weekend when I was there, and almost everyone had skedaddled out of town for the holiday. My best Swedish friend: in Stockhom, roughly 90 miles away. My Swedish 'sisters': one went to Skåne when I went to Västmanland, the other was moving that weekend. Many of my host parents' friends from back then: retired, and either living somewhere else in Sweden, or snowbirds, and not 'home' in Sweden from various southern European places.

I didn't really have close friends in my class at school in Sweden, although I liked many of them. Since the inception of the EU, many of my former classmates now live and work in Germany, Austria, France, and England, so not much chance of seeing many of them. I ran around with mostly older kids, who had already graduated, and these days have families with young children. Perhaps it was silly, but I didn't want to intrude on what is a big family holiday and instead asked Mama to pass on my greetings to them. I also, selfishly, treasured being able to spend time with just Mama & Papa, something I've never been able to do before when I've been back in Sverige.

Some of this ties back into the hemlängtan I was talking about the other day. I've always said that visiting Sweden is more about the people than the place, even though I like the place a whole hellava lot. I miss both, but given the choice to go to Sweden, or to see the people, one or the other, I'd take the people over the place any day.

I hope that some of my new friends come to visit here in Ohio. I made the offer to everyone I met (well, everyone I met that I liked, of course!) The focus of both Rotary Youth Exchange (RYE) and Group Study Exchange (GSE), is to further understanding, build networks, and to focus on how we're more alike than we are different. People who have been with either RYE or GSE learn new perspectives, and hopefully, work to make the world a more peaceful place. Yeah, yeah, lofty and naive ideals, I know. But I'm hopeful that that the new friends I made will remain part of my life. Even if all I can do for a while is look at the pictures.

At the core - MY body, MY decision.

2009-06-10T03:01:00.001-04:00

I have been saddened and sickened this week by the stories in the news about the murder of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in Kansas City. Saddened that this man was murdered and sickened by his killer claiming the closure of Tiller's clinic is a victory for the anti-choice movement.

Proponents of the anti-choice movement have been very quick to distance themselves from Tiller's accused murderer, saying that he was not a volunteer, not a friend, not a supporter of Operation Rescue, one of the largest and most well-known anti-choice groups in America. In fact, OR's director, Tim Newman, has been quoted extensively in the press as saying, “This idiot did more to damage the pro-life movement than you can imagine” in addition to, “Good God, do not close this abortion clinic for this reason,” he said. “Every kook in the world will get some notion.” The nasty, cynical side of me wants to say that he's posturing for the media, but since I turn off the news whenever his name or face shows up, I don't honestly know.

Whenever September 11 rolls around, I declare a media blackout in my life, because I can't handle watching the towers fall again. This week, I've been turning off the news because me yelling at the TV or radio does nothing but raise my blood pressure, and won't change the way that these people think.

I find it very interesting that the name Operation Rescue is being wrangled over in court, and the two battling it out for the rights to the name? Are men. Of course. Fellas, when YOU can be raped and get pregnant from it, when YOU can be sexually assaulted by a family member and get pregnant from that, when YOU can actually get pregnant, I'll be much more willing to let you have a seat at the table. Until then, as far as I am concerned, it remains a woman's own personal decision, and not the hobby-horse of over-privileged men.

Hemlängtan

2009-06-09T02:44:00.001-04:00

Swedish -- of course -- for 'homesickness'

How is it possible to be homesick for someplace that isn't your home? I don't know. The way I feel about Sweden is NOT the same way that someone would feel about a favorite vacation spot...like on a bad day, you wish you were there instead of wherever "here" happens to be. No, this is more than that. Sweden isn't my home, and really, I can't honestly say it was my home when I was an exchange student, either. Home then, just as now....Ohio, USA.

I got an e-mail last weekend from a Swede, showing a picture of his new sailboat and his faithful canine companion, a pug, in a harbor near Jonstorp, Skåne. As the picture opened on my browser, it showed the harbor in the background first, and then the boat and puppy appeared. The first house that came clear, a yellow 2-story with what must be a stellar view of the water, hit me like a shot to the gut.

Swedish houses out in the country, summer cottages, usually, or old farmsteads, tend to be one of two colors, red or yellow. A very distinctive red, and a particular shade of yellow. When I was 17, someone in Sweden told me a story of why, exactly, those two shades of those two colors were used, but I don't remember the details. It probably had something to do with class status, once upon a time, nobility vs. non-nobility, but these days, even though Sweden still has both royalty and nobility, they're pretty egalitarian.

That yellow two-story house in the picture my friend sent to me says "SWEDEN!" at the top of its lungs. I can imagine how the place is furnished. Light blonde wood. White walls. Light-colored window coverings. No attached garage. Sparse furniture. The windows have latches that require downward pressure to close. The kitchen is large, but the appliances are small. Everything is orderly. Bookshelves line the walls in every available space, and the books are mingled with small curiosities from all over the world. There's an orange or blue Dala Häst on a shelf, along with a few small pieces of crystal from Orrefors. Every wall has artwork. Family pictures from the recent past are small. Pictures from the early days of photography, or paintings of ancestors are large. Light is abundant, each room has big windows. There is no air conditioning, because until the very recent past, it has not been necessary. (Sweden has felt the realities of global warming.) Rooms that have been redone (at least the bathroom, if not the entire house) have radiant heat in the floors, and you never place a foot on an ice cold floor on chilly mornings. Places near the water, be it the ocean or one of the many inland lakes, have a breeze that cools the house when the windows are open.

I suppose that it is only natural to be thinking a lot more about Sweden than usual, having only recently returned from there. In the normal course of life, I did/do think about Sweden nearly daily, so it isn't that this line of thought is unheard of. I often wish I lived there. I often wish I could spend more time there. I often wish that I could see my host family more frequently, and I don't care which side of the pond that happens. (I've been trying to convince them for years that we should meet up in Florida in the winter, with no success. Of course, they've been trying to get me to Croatia, where they have a second home, for nearly two decades, with no success there, either.)

I wish I could say that I remember what I felt like when I came home from Sweden in 1992, but I can't quantify that other than by saying I was miserable, and an incredible brat to everyone in my life, I do remember that. I had wanted to stay so badly, and Mama wanted me to stay too. She in fact encouraged me to stay after my visa expired, enraging my mother a little. Ooops. At 17, I didn't know how hurtful me saying I didn't want to come back to America was for her. That was never my intention. On the other hand, I know that I could have done much more to attempt to stay, including the very easy step of having a conversation with the immigration authorities, but I never did.

I hate to say this, because it feels fiercely disloyal to the region where I lived as an exchange student, but I thought that Skåne was incredibly beautiful, even prettier in parts than Västmanland is. They're radically different, and so I treasure them each in their own way, but were someone to offer me a choice of job & apartment in Stockholm or Malmö, I'd have a hell of a time picking one over the other. (n.b., we ain't talking about reality here, folks.)

Hemlängtan means literally 'to long for home'. An accurate descriptor of how I feel about Sweden. It is with wistful longing that I look to the north and east, wondering when I will get to go back.

Just when you think it can't get any sillier

2009-06-05T04:43:00.001-04:00

I mentioned the Eurovision Song Contest briefly in a recent post. I realized when I wrote it that if you've never heard of Eurovision, you'd be baffled by my passing reference to it.

There is an exhaustive Wikipedia entry about it here, but in its simplest terms, think American Idol meets the Grammy Awards. European countries that are members one of the Europe-wide broadcast networks send entrants to compete at a contest, which is broadcast live throughout Europe over 3 nights. Most countries hold a contest to determine who will represent them, and have very specific rules about who can and can't enter.

In Sweden, they hold a contest called Melodifestivalen, quite literally, the Melody Festival. I remember almost nothing about Melodifestival, so I looked it up, on the ever-reliable Wiki. Turns out it wouldn't matter if I remembered how it worked, since they changed it in 2002. I have no recollection of who won while I lived there in 1992, but it appears that the final of the whole Eurovision was in Sweden that year, as 1991's winner was Swedish pop artist Carola. Hmm. No memory of that, either. Clearly, this made a big impression on me.

Or - y'know - not.

Melodifestival is a big damn deal in Sweden, as is Eurovision. I'm not sure why, although perhaps the facts that the contest begins in Sweden in February, when sun is in short supply, the nights are long, and the weather is crappy probably have a whole lot to do with it.

This year's contest for all of Europe was held while I was visiting Sweden. I watched the first of two semi-finals live with my Familjen Svensson, and the second I ignored. The final was on a Saturday night. Mr. & Mrs. Svensson took me with them to a stand-up comedy show that night, and so we only saw the end of it.

Watching the first semi-final had me in hysterics. Poor Daughter Svensson. She's 15, and this all matters a great deal to her. Her mother and I laughed our way through it, especially after the first act, Gipsy.cz.

If I'm supposed to take that seriously, sorry. Not so much. The superman costume was just too much. Once back home, though, I've been reading about the artists involved in Eurovision, and it turns out the Gipsy.cz has been influential in opening a dialog with the Romany people in the Czech Republic, and are highly respected there. Huh. In'trusting.

Although much of this contest is sung in English, the songwriters are mostly not native English speakers. So there are hilarious song lyrics that rhyme or work into the rhythm of the song, but make absolutely no sense. Or, even better, there is a blend of English and whatever the native language happens to be, just like "Aven Romale" above.

This year's winner, Alexander Rybak of Norway, is absolutely adorable, although it wasn't my favorite song of the contest by a long shot. The opening riff on the violin is unmistakable, though, and very catchy.

I liked several others much better, among them Turkey with the very silly Dum Tek Tek, Portugal's Todas As Ruas Do Amor, Iceland's Is It True?, Romania's The Balkan Girls, which was just as silly as Turkey's entry, and my favorite, Armenia's Nor Par (Jan-Jan), sung brilliantly by sister act Inga & Anush. I like listening to them sing, and shocker, they are actually classically trained musicians. Plus, check out the costumes.

Jan-Jan doesn't have any more intelligent lyrics than the rest of the bunch, but even better, it has a dance. I wish I had instructions in English, but there's only Armenian.

How can you not like a song that has its own dance? Nor Par (Jan-Jan), by the way, translates to New Dance (My Dear).

As if that wasn't bad enough, hustling through the Copenhagen airport to catch my flight home, I stopped in an electronics store and bought the Eurovision CD, with every song in the contest on 2 discs. To the tune of 221:-SEK, or roughly $30. Who was I saying was silly? The Europeans for getting all wound up in the contest, or me, for spending $30 on a CD full of trashy pop with no real redeeming qualities. Tough call, that.

get, acquire, take, recieve

2009-06-04T02:51:00.000-04:00

All translations for the Swedish verb "att få". As in to receive a present, be gifted with something, or in the context of illness, to catch something.

I was having a conversation with one of my hosts in Sweden about Sweden and Swedish. (wow, that sounds a weeee confusing. Are ya with me?) We'll call him Per. It was all I could do not to roll around laughing on the floor at this comment of his:

I think you like Sweden.

Hmmm, I wonder what made him think so! The rest of the conversation was also amusing, but more for semantics of grammar than 'funny'. I have to take it in Swedish, then in English for it to make sense.

Per: Du få flytta hit. (You should move here)

Lucy, (through giggles): Gärna! Det finns några problemar med det; jag har ingen jobb, kan inte lasa eller skriva så bra på Svenska.... Willingly! There's only a few problems with that; I don't have a job here, I can't read or write so well in Swedish....

Per: Nejmen entligen. Du skulle trivs har, och vi behover ju folk som ville vara har, och ville jobba. (No, really. You'd do well here, and we need people who want to be here, and want to work.)

Translation is NOT an exact science, and translating directly to English from Swedish can result in errors like this:

"Since five years, I have been working for ABB,"

instead of

"For the last five years, I've worked for ABB."

Yes, I really read that in a Swedish person's English translation of their own bio. Urgh. Doesn't anyone proofread ANYTHING, anywhere in the world? Good to know that the crappy grammar of the common era isn't limited to English. /rant.

So what he said, du få flytta hit, can be translated a few ways.

There, it means 'should', but that's not what he said. By saying it that way, his intention is that Sweden should make it easy for me to move there, that someone should take care of all the logistics and paperwork for me, and hand me a residence permit. The mythical "they" should just handle it.

That'd be nice.

Perhaps the correct comeback would have been "and when do I start working for you?"!

The "Yes, I do TOO speak your language" game.

2009-06-02T03:04:00.000-04:00

Oooooh, one of my favorite games to play.

For a reason that is unknown to me, many Swedes that I met in Skåne simply didn't believe that I speak Swedish until they actually heard me talk. I don't know if there's been a rash of Yankees there that couldn't or wouldn't learn the language, or if they've been told so by their educational system. We filled out a massive amount of paperwork prior to leaving. In the space provided for "languages other than English spoken" I wrote Svenska. I wrote several e-mails in Swedish to various people who contacted me before we got there. Even after all of that, if I had a dollar for every time I heard the following sentence, I could retire.

Men Gud, du pratar otroligt bra Svenska.

But, God, you speak unbelievably good Swedish.

I heard it so often that I got tired of hearing it, and had to contain my urge to roll my eyes. I wanted to say, 'yeah, srsly, it wasn't that hard' or blow them off somehow, but that would be both obnoxiously rude and incorrect. Learning Swedish WAS hard, took me a long time, and has been a struggle to maintain. But I got tired of being complimented for something that comes kind of naturally to me, like being complimented on riding a bike well. It just got ridiculous. I realize that this is petty and a very inconsiderate attitude.....and that doesn't change it a bit.

Because I got fairly tired of explaining how and why and when I learned Swedish, and how I've managed to keep it up over the past 17 years, sometimes I just didn't bother to inform someone new that I did, in fact, understand everything they were saying.

We visited a very special secondary school, a high school that is a boarding school for students who want to major in agricultural studies in college. We were given a warm welcome by the school director, and then spent time with the two sub-school directors, one who dealt with animal husbandry and the other who handled the crops. The school is huge. As we were touring campus, we were ferried around by 4 horse-drawn carriages, each driven by a student. Each time we stopped, two additional students would hop off the carriages, and keep the horses still while we were shown around.

The two students riding along with me had no idea I spoke Swedish. I have a hearing problem, and mostly I wasn't listening to their conversation because it was windy and I couldn't hear them. However, when I heard the words, "han är snygg" (he's cute) I listened a little harder.

Turns out they were talking about one of my colleagues, another Yankee team member.

It is possible that we are the only Americans some of these people will ever meet, and I hate for them to have the impression that we're all rude, obnoxious, loud boors. (See my previous post for further info regarding my opinions on that.) But I also enjoy tweaking the occasional nose!

As I looked around, a question occured to me. I saw a parking lot, a small one, and I wondered if students were allowed to have cars at school once they had their drivers' license. So I asked. In Swedish.

Both girls blushed a lovely rosy red, having been caught like a kid with their hands in the cookie jar. They answered, in the negative. They are not allowed to have cars at school, even after they get the license. But most students wait to get the license until after graduation anyway, because getting a license in Sweden is difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. (That's a story for another time.) They're far away from Mom's (or Dad's) car, and don't have the time.

After they answered my question, they started whispering to one another. The wind had died down a little and I could hear them if I strained. The conversation they had after they found out I speak Swedish....well, let's just say it makes me laugh thinking about it.

"Ooh, that's embarrassing," said the blonde one.

"I feel a little dumb," said the brunette. "Did she tell you she spoke Swedish before we got in the carriage?"

"No," said the blonde. "I wouldn't have talked about that cute guy if she had, or maybe I would have asked if he has a girlfriend. Is she Swedish, or is she one of them?"

"I don't know," the brunette said, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. "She doesn't sound American. Do you want to ask?"

"Absolutely not!" The blonde replied. "We already look like idiots, let's keep quiet."

I didn't interrupt them, but I was having a hard time contining my giggles, and reining in the few motherly urges I have. No, he does not have a girlfriend, but he's also much too old for you, young lady!!

I've pulled that trick, explaining only after the fact that I speak Swedish (and even once or twice English) to someone, and it never gets old. Never, never, never.

An ugly - and sadly familiar - demon rears its head

2009-06-02T00:13:00.005-04:00

I've had trouble sleeping for years. Long years, as in perhaps more than ten.

I hate to say it thusly, but 'tis true; this started happening when DH and I had been dating for a while. A year. Maybe slightly more or less. Was he the source of stress? What-ever! No, of course not.

The problem started with me falling asleep at his house, waking up, and driving home around 1:30 or 2:00 AM. Then I'd have problems falling back asleep. Then I'd get up the next day and start all over again.

This went on for years, quite literally, until we got married. Once we lived in the same space, I didn't have to wake up and drive anywhere in the middle of the night, but my body couldn't get used to that. Additionally, our first apartment was above ground, and my bedroom at my parent's house was in the cellar. The dark, cool, silent cellar. Every single outside noise woke me; cars, wind, the birds, rain, the early morning light....

After we'd been married for a year or so, the stress level at Ye Olde Evile Bank ratcheted up by 1000%, and I had trouble sleeping because of the worries and woes of work. Fights, ahem, "discussions" were had about DH's alarm at that time, too; he sets it for almost 2 hours before he gets up. Oh, yes, he plans to be out of bed at 4 AM and off to work, but that seldom if ever happens, and his alarm wakes me during those last few precious hours of sleep. He, however, falls back asleep, and then leaps out of bed at 6:30, rushes around frantically, and makes it to work at 7. Not that the alarm thing still irritates me all these years later. Nope. Not at all. Have I mentioned that he sleeps like the dead? I'm more jealous of that than annoyed over the alarm thing, honestly. Wish I could too.

It was then that I started investigating alternatives to OTC sleeping pills, which I leaned on back then when I'd slept badly for a few nights in a row. I've listed so many times the things I've tried for sleep: melatonin. Lavender. Chamomile. Valerian Root. None of it worked well.

I changed jobs, and then we moved out of that horrible apartment. The stress at the new job was different, and at first I thrived on it. But later, around the end of 2005, it got so much worse. The death of my old non-profit job was a slow and painful thing, like watching someone die of cancer that wastes away a vibrant person and leaves a nearly skeletal shell.

By that time, I'd tried both Lunesta and Ambien, and discovered the wonders of prescription sleep aids. Ambien has always been my favorite. It is like turning off a light; BAM, you're out, blissful unawareness for at least a few hours.

As the deterioration of my beloved non-profit escalated, and I got progressively more depressed, sleep was such a wonderful refuge. When I could sleep, that is. Mostly, I got an hour or two, and then I'd be awake worrying about things outside of my control.

A quick aside here; the meds seem to help with the worrying. I worry less about a lot of things, and I know that's the medication, not me mellowing with age.

When I was unemployed, when my world finally imploded, I slept a little better because I could sleep whenever I wanted. I'd sleep until 10 or 11 AM, and then I'd go work out, come home, spend some time surfing the J-man forums, look half-heartedly for work, made dinner for DH, and wait for him to go to sleep so I could go back to the forums.

In 2007, my Auntie H got really sick, and I was on night duty at the hospice. That further messed up my internal clock. After she passed away, I started working that horrible sales job, and we all know what a really shitty year June of 2007 through June of 2008 was for me. The winter of 2008 was easily the hardest of my life, bar none, and I relied on Ambien for getting more than 2 hours of sleep.

My work now is different again from anything else I've previously done, and I love it. Wholeheartedly, but my entire life is not wrapped up in it, as it was at the old non-profit. This job is super-stressful in short bursts, and in between, is not so horrible for stress. But years of bad sleep habits are hard to break.

Spending more than a month in Europe isn't helpful either. That 6 hour time difference...hooo boy, does it mess with MY head. I dunno if it bothers everyone else the same way, but I've been home for more than a week now, and at 3 PM in Ohio, its 9 PM in Sweden, and I think it is bedtime. I didn't get to bed in Sweden even one night of the entire trip before 10 PM, but I'd be ready to end the day before that most of the time. So at dinner-time here, I'm dragging. But at midnight, its time to get up!

I slept better there than I do at home. I'm unsure of exactly why, but there are a few solid reasons. One, I had the window open in my room, wherever I was staying, almost every night. Cool nights and cool rooms make for wonderful sleep conditions. Two, we had 16-18 hour 'work' days. You slept when and where you could, and I'd sleep pretty solidly 5 hours at a time. Home, its rare I get more than 3 hours at a time. Three, the stress I was under in Sweden is a vastly different thing that here in the states. What I did there was often emotionally exhausting, and I think I'll write about that more soon. But you were essentially "on," being cheerful and friendly and agreeable whenever you were awake. That does take its toll on you, but it isn't the same as worrying about work.

I'm tired. So, so tired. But not sleepy. After midnight, with a spring thunderstorm raging outside, and I'm chillin'. Relaxed, in my jammies, at home. I am not, however, asleep. As the Brits say: BUGGER!

The reputation proceeds us.

2009-06-01T02:25:00.002-04:00

A glimpse into my traveling journal.

Copenhagen International Airport. 22 May. Waiting for the international flight from Denmark to Atlanta to board. Homeward bound.

The stereotype of "the Ugly American" is alive and well, for good reason. I'd like to think that I'm not one of those people, but I probably am from time to time, just like the rest of the population.

The United States has a restriction on carrying liquids on to a flight, no more than 3 ounce bottles, and only what can fit into a quart size zipper bag. Fine. I abide by the rules, even though they're a) stupid and b) don't do anything to keep us safe on flights. C4, the world's most explosive device, can look like a solid bar of grey soap, but you can bring solid soap on board no problem. You can't clear security at any airport with a big bottle of water. But you can buy a bottle after you clear security, or fill your own bottle from a tap or water fountain, noooo problem. You can also buy larger sized bottles of shampoo or hand lotion or liquid soap or soda or whatever at the shops inside the airport after clearing security. Yep, this makes excellent sense. Why the rest of the world jumped on board this boat of insanity, I have no idea. But they did. Even flying within Europe, you can't take more than the prescribed amount of liquids for a flight within the US. Gah.

I drink a whole lot of water. Lots. Every day. I like water. I'd rather have water than almost anything else (except coffee) most of the time. Airplane rides always make me parched. Instead of buying a bottle of water in those BPA-plastic-fossil-fuel wasting containers, I have a Nalgene that I fill up, usually from a water fountain.

Copenhagen airport has you pass through security, and then a second checkpoint at the gate, where only ticketed passengers for that particular flight can sit in a waiting area. Once you're there, you're there. No running elsewhere to buy a book. Fortunately, there was a restroom at the gate, although it was sans water fountain. So I went to stand in line for the bathroom, knowing that tap water would be available. Not my preference (especially from a bathroom sink, although public restrooms in Scandinavia in general are really clean) but not going to kill me, either.

Of course, there was a long queue for the ladies room.

There was a group of Red Hat Ladies traveling home to Pittsburgh. There was a group of college kids from some school in (I think) Idaho. They were all Chatty Cathys. One of the Red Hat Ladies decided that since there was no queue for the men's room, she was going to use it. She told the rest of the people on line so, loudly.

I'm not opposed to using a men's restroom (or a handicapped stall) when there is no line for those facilities and there is a line for the ladies'. I am opposed to you declaring it for all and sundry, at the top of your lungs. Say it with me: TAAACKY!

Directly in front of me in line was one of the college students, and she was full of complaints. The food on her European trip hadn't been to her liking. It was colder in Denmark than wherever she had been last. It was raining. Europe is full of pay toilets, which had both surprised and annoyed her through her travels. She was thrilled that the airport restroom didn't require a payment. Her group had been in Europe to study European religion, both before and after the Protestant Reformation. She hadn't been impressed with Europe's cathedrals, or the various local guides they'd had in said cathedrals. (I should note here that she had been in Europe for all of two weeks. Um? Not enough time. And she wasn't impressed with Notre Dame or the cathedral in Vienna? WTF?) She told me all of this with no prompting and no questions from me, other than a raised eyebrow and occasional "mmm-hmm".

She also was very annoyed that the airline required everyone to be at the gate an hour before departure. That was the biggest complaint; sitting still in one place for an hour. They're not even boarding, ffs, why do we need to be here? Whine, whine, whine. I can't keep my mouth shut (who knew!) and I felt the need to explain to her that we need to be there before the plane takes off because 200 people are going to board, and that takes time - you ain't the only person on the flight, sister - and if you get there and board the plane at the scheduled departure time, along with 200 of your closest friends, the flight? Will be late. Ohhh.

The line moves forward, slowly, even with everyone using either restroom. College Girl goes into the men's. When she comes out, the water in the sink was still running. I glanced at it as I walked by, and thought that it was an automatic tap, one of the ones with a heat sensor or motion detector. So I didn't turn it off, because I thought it would turn itself off. When I came out of the stall, though, it was still running. Grrrr. Waste of water, environmentally irresponsible, rude....pick any one of those, and you have enough to really irritate me.

When I returned to my team in the waiting room, College Girl was a few seats away, and I heard her telling her friends (again, loudly) that she never turns off the taps in public restrooms because she's just washed her hands and the sinks in public restrooms are sooooo dirty, you know? Someone else will turn it off. Whatever. And like, I don't want, like, to get germs on my clean hands and stuff.

Much eye-rolling from me ensues. She wasn't paying attention to me, and I didn't want to get into an argument, so that's a good thing that she wasn't watching. Her thoughtlessness and very self-centered outlook were annoying. It also embarrasses me when people that I share citizenship with act like that: loud, full of complaints, bratty, self-centered, and a closed mind. Yeah, things are different in Europe. It isn't America. The Europeans operate a little differently than the Yanks. That does not mean that you should be passing judgement on the way of life in another country. And things like that are the reason that Americans have such a bad international reputation.

I do realize that some of my irritation was misplaced. A convenient target and outlet for other feelings I can't do much about. When I'm leaving Sweden (OK, technically Denmark this time, but just across the bridge from Malmö, Sweden) I'm always tired, a little bummed because I never know when I am coming back to Scandinavia, and dreading the trans-Atlantic trek home, as it is long, boring, and usually crowded.

Thankfully, College Girl and her compatriots were way in the back of the plane, and I didn't have to listen to their inane chatter over a 9 hour flight. The Red Hat Ladies sat by us, though, and man! As we were boarding, they were rude and impatient with everyone in front of them in line stowing their luggage in the overhead compartments. Simmer down, sweetie, it takes all of 30 seconds to shove a carry-on up there, and no one is taking "your" space for their bag. I promise.

Hm. I think it is time for me to either get some sleep, or lock myself in a room alone away from other people for a while.

here endeth the entry. A note after getting home, though:

The college kids all applauded and cheered when we got on the ground in Atlanta and the pilot or the lead flight attendant said "Welcome to the United States" which I thought, again, unnecessary, tacky, & loud. But I realize my interpretation of that behavior -- which is that they were cheering because Europe was just so different than home, so awful -- is unreasonable. They were just glad to be home.

As am I (mostly) to be perfectly frank. I just wish I was able to visit Sweden more often, preferably on an annual basis. For more than the two weeks of vaca I'm allotted. That'd be nice.

Obligatory Complaint

2009-05-29T02:42:00.001-04:00

I had a list.

I usually do, but this one was different because the opportunity to purchase the things on the list had a limited window.

Five weeks.

With very little shopping time to myself, I think it is important to note.

Because my time was limited, the list was long, and I stayed mostly with families who lived far from the centres of the cities I visited, I knew it was important to tell my hosts what I wanted to buy while I was in Sweden. Without me telling them, how would they know? Generous hosts, all, but mind readers they are not.

My first day in Sweden, I explained to host #1, A, that I wanted the following before I left Sweden, and that I thought mailing these things home was the best way to go.

1. Harry Potter, books 2-7, in Swedish. I already own the first one in Swedish, and reading books like HP are helpful in retaining my language skills. Nothing too challenging, I'm not reading Proust, ffs.

2. Metric measuring cups. I bought a set when I was 17, because even then I liked to bake cookies and make dinner. But I bought cheap plastic measuring cups, and they've been through the dishwasher about eleventy billion times. They're getting brittle. So I wanted a metal set. Natch, all of my Swedish cookbooks are in metric measurements, so of course I need metric measuring cups.

3. Swedish pop music. Yep, bubblegum Brittney-esque pop, by artists like Kent, Carola, Lisa Nilsson, stuff that is repetitive and frivolous. For the same reason as the HP books; listening keeps my language skills active.

4. Solstorm, by Åsa Larsson. [Sunstorm] This has been translated into English, and I read it in translation a few years ago. Good book; I've been trying to get my grubby hands on the original Swedish since I saw the book on the library shelves.

5. Geisha, chocolates made by Finnish candy-maker Fazer, for my sister.

6. Digestiv (brand name) crackers. Mmmmmm.

7. Stig Larsson's "Männen Som Hatar Kvinnor," [Men Who Hate Women] which was published in the US as "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo". No relation to Åsa.

8. Billinge cheese. A long shot, but a hopeful one.

9. Swedish coffee. Lots and lots and lots of it. The Swedes drink far stronger coffee than we do, roast the beans to a darker hue. Gooooooood stuff.

10. Orange marmalade. Yes, I know it can be purchased in the United States. I don't care, I wanted a specific brand.

11. Dalahästar. I have one of these traditional symbols of Sweden of course, but I wanted a few to give as gifts.

My host A told me that she'd need to stop at a grocery store on our way "home" that first day, and I mentioned a few of those things. "Ah, you should be able to find everything there," she assured me.

I doubted that; in my experience, Swedish grocery stores were small, especially in the smaller towns like where she lives.

I had a bit of a shock when she parked the car in the parking lot of an enormous department store. Bigger than a Super Wal-Mart, this place, an ICA Maxi Stormarknad made me feel like the country cousin in the big city. It had everything. Shoes. Clothes. Books, magazines, small appliances, groceries, just about anything you can buy at a Super Wally's or SuperTarget.

I picked up the Harry Potter books, measuring cups, the Digestiv crackers, and some coffee there. I found the music later that week while in the big city. I mailed everything except the fragile crackers home to the US the first Saturday I was in Sweden.

I looked for the rest of my wish list throughout the rest of the time, and found most of it, too. I bought Swedish organic honey in addition to the marmelade, more coffee, (hey! I have to stock up when and while I can!) Solstorm and even found Geisha and mailed it to my sister in New York. I never did pick up the Stig Larsson book, but someone else did, and agreed to trade Stig for Åsa when I finish reading it.

The weeks flew by. I stayed with a divorced lady in her 60s, a family with older kids (20s-ish), I stayed in an apartment that I shared with another team member, a retired couple who were both on marriage #2, and then the most fun, a "familjen Svensson", typically Swedish family.

Where we would be talking about the average American family in the media or in conversations, the Swedes talk about "The Svensson Family". 2.5 kids, house in the suburbs, both parents with full time jobs. My Familjen Svensson were a hoot. It is important for me to note here that I really liked all of my hosts, and they were all very pleasant to live with. All were very welcoming, extremely generous, helpful with my inability to navigate anywhere on my own, and tolerant of my foibles when I speak Swedish. When I say they were the most fun, I mean Familjen Svensson had the sense of humor that most matched my own, and the parents were about my age. Agh. I'm botching that explaination.

Anyway.

In their guest bathroom, they had some wonderful soap, bliw Björk & Äng. Bliw is the brand name, and it took me more than a week to figure out WTF 'bliw' meant. Not that brand names need to mean anything (Xerox, anyone?) but 'bli' is one of the many "to be" verbs, and so I thought it had to mean something. Yeah. It does. Print b-l-i-w on a piece of paper, and then turn it over and hold it up to the light. (small letter b, alltså) b-l-i-w backwards is W-I-L-D. Duuuuuh. "björk" is birch, and "äng" is meadow, or heather, depending on your translation source. It smells wonderful.

So I bought some of that, too, and decided that I was carrying it home rather than shipping it. I bought a 300 ml pump soap dispenser - 300 ml = about 1-1/4 cups - plus a refill for the dispenser. Both made it home just fine, in a suitcase that I ended up checking. Tripple-wrapped in plastic. Just in case, y'know.

As soon as I had a chance when I got home, I Googled BLIW. Here's a shocker: a scented soap that I love, and can use on my sensitive skin.....is available only in the Nordic countries: Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, & Greenland. Grrr.

I did not find Billinge cheese, either. Rather, I did find it, but weeks before we were due to come home and it would have gone bad before I got back to the States. So I opted instead to wait, and that was folly indeed, because I never saw it again.

I didn't buy nearly enough coffee, either. (Cosmic question: is there such a thing as 'too much' coffee?!?)

When does that next flight back to Scandinavia leave?

Processing...

2009-05-26T13:42:00.004-04:00

You know how the computer gets too much information or tries to open too many objects and it tells you "PROCESSING" along with the gif of the hourglass? That's how I'm feeling; I'm attempting to process everything I've seen and experienced over the past five weeks. I have no idea where to start to begin telling the story of this journey.

Fortunately, I kept a journal, and was zealous about writing in it nearly daily. So if I wanted to, I could detail each day for you. I think I'll resist that urge, though, and keep it to broad impressions and a few specific stories.

I've been to Sweden four times; as an exchange student in 1991/1992, visits to my host family in 1999 and 2003, and this 5 week visit. When I was an exchange student, I didn't want to return to America. It felt like a sentence passed by a stern judge; as punishment for being born in the United States, you must return there. I have a very hard time being objective about Sweden, and I would still like to live there, very much. So many things they do make sense and work so well; and yet, for the first time ever while visiting, I could see the cracks on the surface of a not-perfect society.

Every other time I've been to Sweden, I've been supremely reluctant to leave. This time, as our departure date approached, I had mixed emotions. I wanted to come home. I missed my husband. I got tired of living out of a suitcase. I was tired of having my daily schedule set by someone else, and tired of being dependant on someone else to drive. (The team was not permitted to drive in Sweden.) I also wanted to stay, as usual. Nothing new there; what was new was that I thought long and hard about just what, exactly, I would do for a living in Sweden. The short answer to that is: I don't know. My Swedish Mama would love it if I lived there, and I have an existing network of contacts, too. That certainly doesn't guarantee employment, however.

Quickly, the big changes that I noticed....

1. There is more English in the Swedish language.

When I made this observation, Mama said, "Yeah, and in 30 years, the Swedish language will disappear." I don't agree with that assessment, but she's partly right. They don't even realize that they're sprinkling everyday conversation with English words...prime example? I sat in the terminal at Hven Traffiken, a ferry that runs between Landskrona, Sweden, and the island of Hven. I was early that day, and waited for the rest of the team inside because it was chilly. I deliberately eavesdrop when I'm in Sweden; my excuse is that I'm improving my language skills, and even if a conversation is deeply private, the chances of me ever meeting (or hell, even seeing) these people again is nil. Anyway. I was eavesdropping on the conversation between the clerk at the ticket window, and a woman inquiring about the schedule of the ferry and ticket pricing. As the clerk detailed the information the woman answered by saying, "Ja. Ja. Javisst. Yes. Yes. Ja. Ja." You don't need to speak Swedish to spot the impostors in that phrase. Responding to a yes-no question by saying "yes-yes" in English isn't uncommon, or even noticed by native speakers.

When I was an exchange student, it was cool for kids to use bits and pieces of English, but that was something that they did intentionally, for attention. This is not the same thing, but I guess if you're not observing the phenomenon, it would seem like nothing new. Whenever I pointed out the increase in the use of English, though, my hosts would say that it was hardly surprising, considering the increase of use of computers, the rise of the Internet, and the rising cooperation between Sweden and Denmark, since the Öresund Bridge opened in the early 2000s.

2. The popular game of "Blame the Immigrants" is sadly on the rise.

Sweden accepts refugees from many war-torn regions of the globe, and because the Swedish population is mostly the same ethnicity, foreigners stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. Being "different" is not desirable. Sweden is a welfare state; refugees get an enormous amount of help from the government in the form of: providing someplace to live, Swedish as a second language classes for free, money for food, utilities, schooling for their children, and free medical care. Who wouldn't want to come to Sweden from places like Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia? But then after opening those doors, the Swedes get vastly annoyed by refugees then bringing their entire extended family into the country, and the fact that many refugees don't work and form expatriate societies. Shocker, right? Shell-shocked people from warring countries band together in a foreign country. Huh. Whoda thunk it? This game of blaming immigrants for rising crime and flagging property rates irritates the living hell out of me. All of your society's ills can not be placed at the feet of a small number of foreigners. If that is indeed the problem, then to me, it seems that there's quite a simple solution: quit allowing people to immigrate. Wow. That was tough. As an American citizen, I can't just decide that I want to move to Sweden. I need to a) have a job waiting, b) marry a Swede, or c) have a lot of money. Believe me, during the Bush administration, I thought often about applying for political asylum, but that really isn't even possible. If however, I'm fleeing war or political persecution, getting a residence permit in Sweden isn't as hard. Change those laws, and you solve the problem, right? I know, it is hardly that simple.

3. Somewhere, in the last 5 years since I've been there, Sweden completely revamped their postal system, and local post offices are a thing of the past.

IMNSHO, this is BRILLIANT. The postal system operates sorting facilities, and still employs letter carriers. But if you want stamps, or to mail a package, they've outsourced that to grocery stores, convenience stores, and lottery outlets. It is still official Swedish Post; but they slashed operating costs by billions.

I sent postcards home, lots of them. After we'd been there for a few days, I started looking for a post office, because I needed stamps. The logo is easy to recognize; a blue horn on a yellow field. I looked EVERYWHERE. Finally, out of frustration, I asked one of our drivers if she could help me find a post office. She looked at me like I had three heads, and then burst out laughing. "When were you here last?" she asked, still giggling.

"Five years ago," I said, mystified.

"Oh, yeah, then you wouldn't know," she told me. "We lost all the post offices a few years ago. It was huge news. You didn't hear about it? Your family in Kungsör didn't tell you?"

"Um, no...we usually talk family news, births, deaths, weddings..." I trailed off, feeling dumb.

But that's the truth. I seldom -if ever- discuss the news in the US or in Sweden when I call them. So the closure of several thousand post offices was not on my radar. Once I was clued in, the official retailers were easy to spot...same logo, just smaller, and instead of "Sveriges Post" (Sweden's Mail) the signs said "Post erbjudande" (Postal retailer).

4. The murder rate, and crime in general, is on the rise.

One of our official visits was to a regional police headquarters, and we met both the regional chief of police and the information officer, i.e., press secretary. I asked them point-blank what they attribute the rising murder rate to, and they both told me murders are on the decline. There's just more media attention when someone is murdered. Riiiiiiiight. There's a bridge in Brooklyn for sale, too. I don't think they were lying to me; I think they're lying to themselves. Statistics can be spun any way the wind blows. I don't know what the deciding factor in that increase is, but I am very sorry to see it.

5. In the same vein of things that I'm sorry to see, huge retail outlets on the outskirts of towns are also on the rise.

Think Super-Wal-Mart. These huge "varuhusar" are something new for me in Sweden; my small Swedish hometown had a town center, and a shopping street closed to vehicle traffic. Most if not all Swedish cities had the same layout. Sadly, the big retailers are doing the same thing they've done here in the states: they're killing the mom-and-pop shops, killing the traditional butchers and cheese shops, along with small and unique stores in very small retail space.

Finally....

6. The Eurovision Song Contest is still a completely ridiculous circus of insane pageantry and silly music.

And I loved every minute of it.

Over the coming weeks, you'll hear lots more about all of this, I'm sure. For now, though, I'm processing.

The Return of the Horns

2009-04-16T09:46:00.004-04:00

The Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus)

According to a website run by the National Park Service, their time for breeding runs from February until July. I saw my first Great Horned Owl right here in Ohio, when I was about 12 or 13. Maybe a little younger, the memories get fuzzy with the mists of time. It was at my parent's old house, which is across the street from a forest preserve.

The call of the Great Horned is a very particular ho-ho-hoo hoo hoo, which actually sounds like "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for yoooou?" Once heard, and identified, you would never mistake this giant for any other owl. As kids, my sisters and I would search the trees whenever we heard the call to spot the owl. The call is as loud as it is unmistakable.

I haven't heard it in years.

Last night, lying in my warm bed, just about my favorite place in the world, as I tried (unsuccessfully) to fall asleep around 8 PM, I heard the call plain as day. I was determined to try to get to sleep without any artificial aid, you see. No OTC sleeping pills. No chamomile, no melatonin, no valerian, no prescription! I was adamant.

Hearing the owl, I smiled, and turned over on my back, listening again to see if he or she was close. (n.b., I actually have no idea if it is the males or females or both that make the distinct call.) I heard it several more times before giving up on falling asleep on my own and dragging out a book after dosing myself with chamomile tea and melatonin tabs.

I have such good memories of looking for that owl with my parents and sisters, the excitement we felt when we spotted them during the day (a rarity) and the straining to see the owl in the falling darkness. Their silent flight, graceful as it is deadly, is a beautiful thing to watch.

I know they never left; I probably should say the return of my awareness of the Horns...but it is an unmistakable sign of spring to me to hear them ask, "Who cooks for you? Whooo cooks for yooooouuu?"

Cancer just sucks.

2009-04-10T08:05:00.004-04:00

"Take time with a wounded hand, 'cause it likes to heal"

sang Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots in 1992. STP were known for their metal-leaning hard rock. I wouldn't have called myself a fan, necessarily, but I didn't turn the radio off when their stuff came on, either.

That line, 'take time....to heal' is something that's on my mind.

I wrote a while back about my hairdresser, and his struggles with cancer. A battle that he was losing, slowly. The beast won the battle just a few days ago, and the wound of his passing is still very raw.

He and I had been playing a merry-go-round game of 'cancel the appointment' for a few months. He cancelled on me because he wasn't up to cutting hair. I cancelled on him when I had a miserable head cold, and knowing his immune system was weakened, I didn't want to expose him to the germs. He cancelled on me again a week or so later. We'd been having a game of phone tag, where I left him a message, he'd leave me one, and we hadn't talked for about 2 or 3 weeks when I heard of his death.

The last message he left me (which I hope I will always be able to remember) went something like this: "Lucy, its C. I'm sorry about not getting to you, but I'm just not having a very good time. We'll get you in before you leave. I'll talk to you soon." I didn't call him back, worrying that if I did, he'd feel pressured to....hell, I don't know. I wish I had called him, because I didn't really have a chance to say goodbye. Not that I would have known I was talking to him for the last time. He wasn't keen on a big emotional scene, anyway.

I didn't find out about his death until 3 or 4 days after it happened, and I was not surprised that he had passed, but saddened that I hadn't heard sooner. As I had known would happen, the job of telling both of my sisters (they of the opposite coasts) and my mother of his death fell to me. I did not make it through even one of those phone calls without breaking down and crying. The hardest was my NYC sister. She had not heard either, and it broke my heart to be the one to break the news to her.

You might be reading this and wondering why so much sturm und drang over the death of a hairdresser; but he was so much more than that to me. Friend, artist, teacher, fellow liberal, collector of off-color jokes, a real character.

After that last phone message he left me, I called someone else I know that cuts hair and asked her if she could trim my hair for me. I had been putting off doing that, knowing if he called me on a day that he felt up to it, and I was to show up with my hair pre-trimmed, his feelings would have been very hurt. I put it off by trimming it myself around my face, to keep it out of my eyes, even though cutting your own hair is generally not a good idea unless you know what you're doing. I don't. But I figured me hacking at it would be less hurtful to him than actually seeing someone else.

Two days after I heard of his death, I had the appointment with the someone new. DH told me that he was surprised that I had someone else do my hair so quickly after his death, but I'd had the appointment for more than a week, and I'm leaving in 9 days, so I went.

No one has cut or colored my hair besides C in 15 years. No joke.

I spent the entire appointment with the new hairdresser blinking back tears. Every thing she did, everything she touched, brought back memories of conversations I'd had with C, every discussion about cut and color and dyes and products reminded me of something else he'd done. I always liked the way that C washed my hair. Don't ask, I can't describe why what he did was different than any other hairdresser, it just was. He moved through 4 salons in those 15 years, and never varied at all the way he set up his station, laid out his scissors, washed hair, put the color in. My hairstyle and color changed drastically, and clothing styles altered too, techniques for coloring and cutting hair went on a roller-coater ride from grunge to highly styled in that time, but the methodical way he worked through each client was consistent.

He had a gentle voice for someone as tall as he was, and a very slight tinge of his native Arkansas could be heard every now and then in his speech.

I was looking for something upbeat to put as my Facebook status that also was meaningful, something that my friends would know I was still thinking about him, and I found something by Thomas Campbell that seemed to fit, and I will leave you with it. (n.b., I have no idea who the bloody 'ell Thomas Campbell is, but I like the sentiment.)

To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.

He touched the hearts of many. I will miss him something dreadful.

Never Enough Time. Ever.

2009-04-02T12:14:00.002-04:00

Counting down the days to Sweden, and I have not enough time to get everything done, done, and done. If I was the worrying type....sigh. We all know I am. Between the amount of things to get done and the amount of worrying I apparently "need" to do, I have a devil of a time falling asleep. I also have been dealing with a lot more heartburn than I really need to.

One of my many, many faults is that I'm a procrastinator. Yes, I freely admit it. It is a very, very bad habit, and I have learned over the years that if I get things done ahead of time instead of everything last-minute, huh, I don't feel like a nervous wreck. How 'bout that?

Since I've known for a few months that I'm going to go, I'm ahead of my usual curve, and really, I don't have all that much left to do for the trip itself. Everything else in my life, though, I'm not so sanguine about.

I know what I'm packing. Get this - which should give you a big chuckle - I am really and truly attempting to cram absolutely everything that I need for the 5 weeks of the journey into bags that I intend to carry on the plane. Every time I fly international, my luggage gets lost. Every time. So I have a nicely matched set of a small rolling suitcase and tote, and that's what I'm taking. I'm not taking enough of any liquids to need to check them. I have Lush to thank for solving the shampoo/conditioner problem; they make a SOLID SHAMPOO that is wonderful. They also make a solid conditioner, and I'm not as crazy about that, but it at least eliminates me trying to either check through big bottles (and hope against hope that they don't explode all over my clothes) or to locate small bottles of stuff that fit into the stupid TSA restrictions.

I plan to take 1 week's worth of clothes. I will have access to laundry facilities, and I plan to take advantage of them. I have a bunch of stuff that can be balled up and crammed in a suitcase and still come out looking like a million bucks. The only fly in the ointment for me is shoes. I love shoes, and trying to figure out 2-3 pairs to take and no more....is torture.

A good friend suggested making a list of absolutely everything that needs done in my life, and as they get completed, checking them off, and leaving the list displayed where I can see the progress. Things currently not done:

Write a newsletter article

Clean the closet room

Write a press release for a non-profit board I sit on

Compose voice-mail "away" message

Compose e-mail "away" message

Add international calling to my mobile telephone plan so I can use the Crack Berry in Sweden

Mail my sister's birthday present to California

Write some ads

Pretty short. In the midst of this is Easter, which I have hosted at my house for my husband's family every year for about the past 5. My darling beloved begged off to his mother on my behalf. I love that man! If I were hosting, you could add about 17 more things to the list, all involved with trying to make the house spic-n-span and cooking Easter dinner. Instead, I have 2 things I need to make, and more than a week before they need to be made. That's working well for me.

Except for the fact that my oven is still broken.

(Which is a story for another day. A calmer day. A day without screaming insanity surrounding me in a 360-degree manner.)

Counting down

2009-03-24T04:37:00.002-04:00

I'm leaving the country very soon. To go where, you ask? Sweden! I shout.

I haven't written about this to date even though I've known about it since January 4th because I was having a hard time trying to figure out how to explain what I'm doing. Without talking specifically about my job and where I'm going and why.

I'm not sure that I've figured that out; muddling through as usual.

I have partly my job to thank for this; and partly the fact that I was an exchange student in high school. Part of my work takes me to community groups to speak about our product. My overall field could - -partially - - be explained by one word: Marketing.

There is one large specific civic organization that I particularly enjoy speaking to, because it gives me a chance to mention my exchange year, and how much it changed my life.

Someone in the audience always, without fail, asks where I went, and if I can still speak the language. I almost always smart off to them på Svenska as a response, after telling them it was Sweden.

Early in January, I spoke for this group. About an hour after returning to my office, I got a telephone call from one of the members, asking if I wanted a spot on a team going to Sweden in April/May. Ha, twist my arm, buddy. Nooooo. *eye roll*

After jumping through a few hoops, and some crazy machinations, I got permission from my employer to do this, to be gone for about 5 weeks. I still can't believe they said it was OK, that all the relevant details just kind of fell into place. And there were a lot of them. Insurance, for one. My employer provides INCREDIBLE health insurance, but my leave of absence is 5 weeks long, most of it unpaid. If they're not paying me, then I don't have the insurance benefits. Hurdle #1. Hurdle #2 was the whole money issue; unpaid for 5 weeks? Eeek. Got around both of those with some time, effort & planning.

Hurdle #3 was just work in general. How to be gone for so long without causing harm to my employer? I'm still not sure that's going to work perfectly, but s'OK. The work will still be waiting when I return.

Times like this, I'm glad that I have OCD. I make lists, obsessively. The current to-do list tacked to a magnetic board in my office is 5 pages long. Probably 2-1/2 pages of the list have a check mark, meaning they're done, next to each item. Every time I think of something else that needs done, I write it down, no matter where I am or what I'm doing. It gets added to the master list at the earliest opportunity. Hopefully, nothing slips through the cracks that way.

So what the heck am I doing in Sweden for 5 weeks? Um. Lots? How to explain without all the gory details?

The trip is a vocational exchange. That means that I will visit businesses similar to the one that I work for here in the US. We will visit schools, civic and community organizations, government offices, hospitals, almost any place of business or work that you can think of. The idea is to see how someone in another country does your job, what challenges they face, how they work around it, what government regulations they have, how they solve problems.

There are many reasons that this is so exciting, but the primary one, for me, is this:

At 16, when I was an exchange student, I thought Sweden was perfect. Their public schools are in fantastic shape. Ditto their roads, their cradle-to-grave health care system, their government, their public transportation system, hell, their EVERYTHING. From the perspective of an unemployed high school student, that is.

What I have come to realize with the passage of time is this; I was NOT a taxpayer, I was NOT a voter, I was NOT a gainfully employed member of society. I didn't pay bills, or have any responsibilities, and I was 3,000 miles away from my very strict parents. In my mid-30's, I recognize now that the strict rules of my parents' house did me more good than harm, but at 16, I wanted to be able to do whatever I pleased. I was a grown-up, after all, of course. (Somewhere in Florida my mother is rolling her eyes!! {Hi Mom!})

So it will be extraordinarily interesting to see things from an adult perspective, and to learn things that I didn't last time around. How it all works, and does it all work, if you're out there trying to make a living?

I'm also going to get the chance to visit some Swedish traditional craftspeople, among them weavers of traditional patterns. I'm so excited about that. Has nothing to do with what I do for a living, but it is still something that fascinates me.

Finally, I hope to have a chance to see the family that I lived with as a teenager; I am still in close touch with them, and they know I'm coming. Where I am spending the vocational exchange, though, is about 350 miles south of where I lived as an exchange student, so I won't just be able to pop in to see them whenever I have a minute. The Swedish spoken in my destination spot is different from what I'm used to, as well; the best example I can come up with is that it would be like dropping an upper-crust Bostonian in the midst of Cajun country; yes, they're speaking the same language, but no, they don't understand one another so well. My inner language geek is ecstatic, the opportunity to study the differences between regional dialects! The part of me that doesn't like being able to understand the answer when I ask where the bathroom is, on the other hand, abjectly terrified.

During the time that I am away, I sincerely doubt that I will have any time at all to update Well Behaved. Posts usually take me about an hour to write, and I am given to understand that almost every moment of every day is taken up with something. We've been told to expect 16-18 hour days, and to sleep whenever and wherever we can, because it will be a mighty precious commodity! I am not taking my laptop, and therefore internet access will probably be restricted to checking e-mail on my Blackberry. Mobile blogging is a PITA, so I doubt I'll be doing any of that.

Departure is on April 19th. Between now and then, I have two major events to cover at work, and countless details to take care of for the trip. I've already decided what to pack (ha, OCD @ work again, I have a list!) but there are all kinds of things I need to actually gather together and put in suitcases. I may not be able to write much between now and then. We come back on May 22, when I'm sure I'll have so many stories to tell that I think it is safe to assume that regular posting will resume then.

In the meantime, Söt om dej, och vi sees/hörs snart!

Take care of yourself, and we'll meet again soon.

Pet the yarn

2009-03-10T12:02:00.003-04:00

Although I'm not done (by a long shot) with the shawl/stole I'm knitting for myself, I've already got the next project planned.

Actually, truth be told, I've got the next twelve or sixteen projects planned, but for the sake of my sanity, I'm attempting to do ONE AT A TIME. It is a little hard for me, but I desperately need the lesson in patience anyway.

The next in line is called April Showers scarf, and it is a knitted lace pattern that looks well within the scope of my ability. I found the silk yarn the pattern calls for on Ravelry, from someone who was willing to let it go for $8, rather than the $26 price tag at Purl Soho. Sweet!!! The lace weight yarn the pattern calls for is likewise a ridiculous price, and so instead I bought a lovely lace weight from Knit Picks, a very reasonably priced online yarn store.

I got it yesterday, and it is as soft as a baby's skin. Feels like what I imagine touching a cloud would feel like, if we could indeed do that.

Everyone I've run into since the moment I got it into my hands has been asked to "pet the yarn. C'mon. You know you want to!"

It was only after I said that a few times did I realize it sounds vaguely obscene.

Down and out-ish

2009-03-09T02:18:00.000-04:00

Facebook status today:

Lucy looked in the mirror this morning and saw a woman who looked like she'd been sick for a week. Wonder why.

That would be - er - because I was sick for a week. Ugh. No one I know likes being sick, so I'm not going to state the obvious, that I hate being sick. Of course I do; so does everyone else. I don't often catch whatever bug is running about; chalk that up to my innate health, or the fact that I eat right and take decent care of myself, or the fact that I take a daily dose of Oregano Oil (sold under the brand name Oreganol). It doesn't really matter why I don't often catch cold (although I do wish I could figure out exactly what the direct cause is!). What matters is that I don't often get sick, and I often feel inordinately smug about my ability to resist the bug du jour.

So then it is a karmatic crunch when I do get sick; as if Mother Nature wants to remind me that I ought not be so smug and smarmy.

DH came down with something a few Saturdays ago, after a tame night out with a few of my friends. He spent a weekend in bed, sleeping, awake for a grand total of about 6 hours out of 48. I'm not good with the sympathy when someone else is sick; not that I lack empathy, but I lack the ability to DO anything about you being sick, so please don't whine incessantly to me about how miserable you feel, especially after turning down my offers of a blanket, water, chicken soup, analgesics, cold medicine, tissues, or any of the other things that I CAN do to help you.

Mostly, then, I let him sleep, although doing my utmost to be sympathetic and supportive whilst he was awake. (Add that, please, to the list of reasons that motherhood is NOT for me.)

Monday morning, he and I both went off to work, did what we needed to do, met up at home, and went to bed at a reasonable hour, all per usual.

Tuesday morning, I woke with sinus pressure under my right eye, and a worldview made grumpier by the fact that I felt like someone had run me over with a Mac truck. I went to work, did my best to keep to myself and stay productive. I made it through about half a day, and went home ostensibly to sleep, although I ended up watching WALL-E on my computer in bed instead. Wednesday, I worked a full day, but felt even crappier; everyone at work was irritated with me for coming in at all, as they didn't want me to share my germs. All-righty then; Thursday and Friday I stayed home.

Late Thursday night, I woke with blurred and shaky vision, which scared the bejeebus out of me; it looked as if everything was both wobbly and out of focus, and mattered not if I had glasses on or didn't. Friday, then, blurred vision abated for the moment, I took myself off to the doctor's, and armed myself with an antibiotic prescription.

It wasn't until late Sunday that I felt like myself again; I knew I was finally going to kick the cold when I woke up around 10.30 PM hungry. I wasn't hungry at all while sick, in fact, in addition to the pain of the sinus pressure, achy joints, and general miserable-ness, I was nauseous for most of the time I was ill, and food? Ugh, thanks, but no. But as a thunderstorm raged outside, I ate two bowls of an organic granola cereal I had purchased (with two coupons, thankyouverymuch) and all but licked the bowl clean. It was goooood. (I could go for more right now, in fact.)

It doesn't help matters much that I chose a poor time to be off sick; things are too busy at work for me to be away, and I'm leaving the country soon for an extended period of time (umm...I haven't told you about that yet, interweb, sorry) so I have lots to do, little time to do it in, and don't have my usual energy to get it done.

I need both a nap, and a clone. Anyone want to get to work on that for me?