Cancer just sucks.

"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.

Traits of Strangers

DH and I were out to breakfast when someone at a table adjacent to us asked if we'd managed to score tickets to the hottest event in town.  No, I told him.  Even if we'd been interested in the event (and we're not) we wouldn't have purchased tickets.  Much too expensive.  He and DH discussed it for a few seconds, I went back to reading the paper.

After the man left, DH raised his eyebrows and asked me if I had ever randomly struck up a conversation with someone in a restaurant.  Being an extrovert, talkative, and wildly curious, (ummm....read that nosy) of course I have.  

People-watching is a sport, one I thoroughly enjoy.  When I've noticed that someone is people-watching me, I usually just allow it, ignoring whomever it is.

I was out at a coffee hangout with a small group of fiber-fanatic friends for an evening of knitting and networking (also otherwise known as gossiping) and I noticed a woman in a nearby chair watching us.  We're loud, opinionated, have a very good time together, and, I imagine,  a great deal of fun to watch.

My birthday just passed, and since I hadn't seen my friends before my big day, they had presents for me.  Lovely presents were opened, and our observer giggled right along with us as I laughed over the choices my friends had made for me.  A knitting book I'd wanted, but been too cheap to spend the money on.  A pound of coffee with a vanity label, hysterically funny.  Stitch markers from Hide & Sheep, a company whose name amuses me to no end.

When the presents were put away and the needles pulled out, she gave up pretending that she wasn't paying attention to us and asked outright what we were doing.  We invited her to pull up a chair and give the knitting a shot, and she did.  

We proudly showed off our individual projects, talked about how each of us had learned to knit, showed her things we'd made that we happened to be wearing.  As we talked, we discovered a kindred spirit.  Someone whose political leanings were in our direction, whose sense of humor mirrored our twisted own.  What began as an evening of just our little insular group grew by one, and the evening was richer for the experience.

We exchanged telephone numbers and e-mail addresses when the baristas looked like they were going to kill us if we stayed for just one more minute, inviting her to join our knitting group that meets monthly.  Oh, she said, there are more of you?  Laughingly, we explained that we're just a clique of the larger group, and that not everyone is as cool as we are.  Or so we think, legends in our own minds that we are.

I kept thinking, though, about how even the most extroverted of us don't usually walk up to a group of boisterous strangers and ask to join in.   And even the most friendly of us might not be receptive to someone "barging in" to a gathering of friends.

I'm glad she did.  I'm glad we were.  And I hope she comes to our larger monthly gathering.  Time will tell.

*snip*

Further proof, if any was really required, that I am out of my mind.

Despite not being into the religious part of the holiday (heck, the material part isn't all that interesting to me either) I do enjoy the holiday season for a number of reasons: people tend to be nicer in December, my birthday is in December, I love finding unique presents for my friends & family, I enjoy the orgy of cookie baking.

For many years, I've sent a ton of Christmas cards.  Since I came back home from Sweden, it has been a way to keep in at least vague touch with a worldwide network of friends.  Because many of those friends are not Christian, I've always been careful to find a message that is kind of neutral as far as mentioning Christmas/Hanukkah/Eid, but I want to at least let these people know that they're in my thoughts. 

As the years have gone by, the list has changed, grown, expanded, and it now encompasses more than 70 names, in 4 countries.

People, this is insane.

I worked on the cards this week, and while it isn't an ordeal, it is a lot of work.  I cheat by NOT addressing the invitations by hand; you can't read my handwriting anyway, so what's the point? Usually, I order cards in August-ish, they get here in October-ish, and I send them out over Thanksgiving weekend.  When I order cards, I have them printed with a message from DH and I, and have our return address imprinted on the envelopes.  This year, sometime around April, I stumbled across a bunch of Product (Red) Christmas cards at a Hallmark store that were 90% off.  I bought all they had, figuring it was far cheaper than what I normally did and since I was working on commission at the time, it seemed like a good idea.

Amazingly, when it came time to send out holiday greetings, I actually remembered that I'd already bought cards, and was even able to find them in our storage room.  Wonder of wonders.  I could not find my pre-printed return address labels, but that's OK, I made more.  

I use a mail-merge to print out labels for the cards, and once this was done, they sat around for a few days until I got to them.  When I started slapping labels on the envelopes, there were more than a few names that made me stop and go, "huh?!".  These are people that I used to work with years and years ago, or old high school friends that I have not actually spoken to in years, or even in one case, the children (well, adult children, but still) of old neighbors of my parents.  Come on!  This is patently silly.

DH refuses to have anything to do with the holiday card insanity; he won't even sign the ones addressed to *his* family.  It is a fight I'm not interested in having, so I just leave him out of it.  But he always asks if I've remembered to send out cards to a few old friends of his and a business contact or two.  Yes, they're still on the list.  When I was going over the list with him, there were one or two people that he raised his eyebrows over; again, people we have not actually spoken to in years.

So in my infinite wisdom, I've decided that this is the last year for more than about 20 people on that list.  People I still talk to, fine, they're staying.  Relatives; well, can't leave out so much as a single cousin or there would be hell to pay, so they're staying too.  People that I have some semblance of a relationship with, even if it is just inside the computer, they're staying.  Old co-workers from 4 jobs ago: gone.  High school friends whose parents still live in town but they never bother to call when they're around: gone.  People that I sent cards to out of a sense of obligation (i.e., I sent one to their best friend, so I should send one to them, too) also: gone.  People that I send cards to that I don't actually like: gone.  

Wow, that was liberating!  Sad, too, but incredibly freeing.  

'Cause they were, like, totally awesome and stuff.

Facebook, again.

I went to a very small school system, K-12, except for the school year I spent in Sweden.  I graduated with 135 people.  I knew their names, I knew their siblings, I knew where they lived, I knew what their parents did for a living.  Small, small place.  I don't think that there were more than 400 kids in the entire high school, so of course I knew a lot of people in the class ahead of me and the class behind me, too.  My sisters often had the younger siblings of my classmates in their classes, so I knew a lot of them, too.  

When I take a peek at the other people who note that they graduated from my alma mater and the same year I did on Facebook, I don't recognize many of them.  There are only roughly 30 of my classmates out there, and I don't know who about half of them are.  There was someone named Tito in my class?  Really?  Um, OK.  Suuuuuuure there was.

Hilariously, of the half that I *do* recognize, I didn't like about half of them back then.  I lived in a pretty upscale little place, and if you weren't rich (and we weren't) and you weren't a cheerleader (and I wasn't) and you weren't considered "pretty" (and I never thought I was)....well, to put it mildly, there were a lot of cliques, and like not mixing grains when you're drinking, or oil and water when you're cooking, there was very little crossing of the clique lines.  I had a great group of friends, many of whom I still see/talk to/e-mail on a regular basis, please don't misunderstand that.  

But there are a bunch of those people that a) I don't really care about, b) weren't nice to me then and I don't see why I should be nice to them now, and c) apparently, I don't remember them at all.  

Mean-spirited evil little bastards they were.  Cruel, nasty, elitist snots.

Saying I don't care about them is harsh, truly, and not exactly what I mean.  I hope they're happy, I hope they have nice little lives for themselves, I am glad they're still alive, but that's about the extent of it.  

When I was in high school and people would tell me that my high school years were "the best time of your life" I either wanted to stab them, repeatedly, or myself, fatally.  I used to ask adults, "You DO remember being in high school, right?  Best time of your life?  It doesn't get better than THIS?  Eurgh." {eyeroll, eyeroll, eyeroll}  And I'd be thinking, "Dude, seriously?  I think you're, like, young for Alzheimer's and stuff, but you obviously don't, like, remember, like, what fucking hell on earth high school really is."  Yep, had a potty mouth back then too, and was horribly guilty of the over-use of the word "like".  Obviously.

It does get better, by leaps and bounds.  Thank the gentle goddess.  I look back on the time I was in college with lots more fondness than high school will ever be recalled.

Searching through lists of classmates and checking out these people's friend lists has turned up a few folks that I really did like and have lost touch with.  I'd like to send them friend requests, but there's a little demon in my ear that whispers..."What if they remember YOU with vitriol like you remember the popular kids?  Do you want to know that?  Worse, what if they don't remember you AT ALL?  You were such a wallflower.  I doubt they'd even recognize your name, and you KNOW sure as 'ell that they're not going to recognize you with your short-short hair, and hello?  Did you forget that you've gained a treeeeemendous amount of weight since those days?  Oh, and sweetie?  You were no angel yourself at 15."

I say to the demon, "So what?"  and "I looked anorexic back then, I look normal now, bite me, 'you've gained a lot of weight' jackass."  When I'm filled with bravado, that is.  The rest of the time, I just look at the pictures and wonder.

Neue Fruende

~German, new friend. (may not be spelled correctly. Its been a loooong time since my last German class.)

This is the usual Tuesday post, brought to you a few days late courtesy of a hectic, crazy schedule that does not allow nearly enough time to write.

In Girl Scouts (yes, yes, yes, get over it, I was a Girl Scout) we used to sing a song that went:

Make new friends
But keep the old
One is silver
The other is gold

I've made a few new friends recently....local ones, believe it or not....who are great women that I feel thrilled to have met. Some of them share my knitting obsession hobby, one shares my love of the German language, all of them are diverse and interesting folks.

It seems, though, that this comes at the expense of losing one old friend. Which is heartbreaking. And it stops me in my tracks, too. Typing that sentence, and then re-reading it leaves me at a loss for words.

Y'all know how rarely that happens, right?

Suffice to say that I never ever name names here, and she isn't a regular reader of Well Behaved, but she'd know who she was by reading this. By 'an old friend' I mean one that I've had since before high school. Seventh or eighth grade, I'm not even sure which. One of those friends for whom a word or a phrase or even a facial expression bring back memories, evoke a particular time and place. Someone who was there with me during that part of my journey that involved such a confusing time, adolescence, who walked along the same road I did, who was someone for a long time that was the first person I talked to (outside of the fam, natch) each day, and often the last person I talked to before going to bed. Remember that point at which you spent hours on the phone each day, and your parents would ask, "You were in school together all day. What could you possibly have to talk about for 2 hours?" And you'd roll your eyes and say, "Mooooooom, you just don't get it." One of those friends. If I've known her since seventh grade, then this is someone I've been friends with for twenty years.

Whoa.

Anyway. Over the last ten years, she's drifted further and further away, until I would see her only twice a year, maybe. We'd exchange e-mails, and talk on the phone, but it wasn't the same as it had been. Which was sad, but kind of inevitable when you're living more than 500 miles apart, and your lives take pretty divergent directions. That's sometimes called growing up. But the shared experience of youth often keeps those friendships alive even when there isn't much else two friends share outside of that anymore. I always felt that she was just as concerned? Maybe that's not the right word. I always thought that she was as interested in keeping the friendship alive as I was. Because we all know that any relationship, be it friend, significant other, sibling, requires some work by both parties involved.


It has been a slow process, but over the last two years, I've realised that she just....isn't. Interested at all. I've put forth the effort, and the response I've received has been resounding silence. She has family here in Oh-hia-ia, so I know she's in town several times a year. Her Facebook page keeps me up to date with what she's doing....but even there, she was friended with my younger sister (who she didn't really like when we were kids) long before she deigned to friend me.

And I don't like that I find out from Facebook that she's in town. Here's why: my telephone number hasn't changed in about 15 years. Seriously. I've had a cell phone since 1994, and even when all the phones went digital, (remember that?) I kept the same number. I had to fight with the wireless provider, but I managed to retain that number. I've even changed carriers, and kept the same number. Ten digits. Not so much to remember. Or even if you do forget them, the rest of the high school crowd knows that my number is still the same. Call one of them. Send me an e-mail. Hell, even call DH, you've got his number, too.

I joke frequently about our electronic gadgets making idiots of us all. I don't remember phone numbers well these days. My phone has the ability to save lots of speed dial numbers, so most of the people I care about and have frequent contact with are speed dials. Wanna call my sister in California? Yeah, she is speed dial 7. What's her number? I dunno. Without my phone, I am hard-pressed to remember all of her digits. But I don't have to remember, the phone does it for me. The gadget is smart enough that if I tag a picture I've taken with the phone with someone's name, by calling up the picture on the screen I can call that person. Amazing shiz, no? I even have this friend stored as a speed dial.

She was here last week. I know that from Facebook. I even saw her on-line, b/c FB will tell you who of your friends is signed in to the website, and you can instant message them inside of FB. We had a quick 3-4 line chat. I saw on her profile that she was leaving the next day, and I said, hey, we should at least have a drink if not dinner or even just hang out at my house tonight if you're leaving. Cool, she said. I told her that my cell phone doesn't work in my underground office, and gave her the new number at the office. I told her that after 5, the cell phone works fine, and BTW, you've got that number, right? Yeah, she said. I'll call you, she said. Sorry I've been so lame the last few times I've been here, she said. I miss you. Life's busy, and I'm all lazy and stuff when I come to Oh-hia-ia, my family mises me, so it is hard to get together, but I'd really like to see you, she said.

You're shocked to discover that she didn't call, aren't you?

I wasn't surprised, but this time, unlike the other 10 times or so over the last few years, I was hurt.

We haven't had a disagreement. We don't have wildly divergent political or social views. She might even be more liberal than me, so I know the stuff I have on my profile over on Facebook about supporting same-sex-marriage, about how W's an idiot, about my radical feminist ideals, those things aren't offending her. I don't think there's really even a problem, necessarily, other than we've just.....drifted away from each other.

But it feels like a breakup. Like I've been dumped. Like I've been judged and found wanting. Like I'm not cool enough, living in flyover country, to hang anymore. (Although she lives even further in the midwest than I do!) Maybe what I mean there is that because I'm still in our hometown, and haven't moved away like 99.99999% of everyone else we went to school with, that perhaps I'm just not worldly enough. I don't know. It makes me sad. And I despise having to "justify" to someone why I'm still here in the rustbelt. She knows why I'm still here. She knows just about everything about me. And yet, she's walking away.

This time, instead of standing still, looking forlornly back, I'm walking on too. I wish it hadn't come to this, but it seems that I have no other choice.

Were I wise and sagely, I'd have some way to put a perspective on this turning point. I don't. But I do still have great friends from those old days, and a few new ones to fill that hole left by her moving on, new stories to write, new adventures to have with old friends and new.

So often, when my own words fail me, I turn to music to better express what I can not. Although I'm NOT a country music fan, I do like Jimmy Buffett, and this one sums up a little of how I feel about this simultaneous gain and loss.

Hear 'em singing Happy Birthday
Better think about the wish I made
This year gone by ain't been a piece of cake
Every day's a revolution
Pull it together and it comes undone
Just one more candle and a trip around the sun

I'm just hanging on while this old world keeps spinning
And it's good to know it's out of my control
If there's one thing that I've learned from all this living
Is that it wouldn't change a thing if I let go

No, you never see it coming
Always wind up wondering where it went
Only time will tell if it was time well spent
It's another revelation
Celebrating what I have done
With these souvenirs of my trip around the sun

~Jimmy Buffett, Trip Around the Sun, License to Chill, 2004

Mise en Place

{French, for set in place. Used in American kitchens in reference to prep work for a recipe.}

I had a party the other night. I was doing prep for the things that could be done ahead of time, and thinking about taking pictures of all my little bowls set neatly in a row, but not in the proper order at all; dessert things next to the main course next to the aps. I was too busy to stop, find the camera, take the pictures, and scribble down a few notes as to what I wanted to say about each picture.

Part of my OCD manifestation is that I like organization. I like things set in rows, counted in even numbers, neatly laid out, color-coded if possible. While that is my preferred modus operandi, often in the lead-up to a party I don't have enough time to do this, or somehow the day of the event sneaks up on me without my awareness, and I'm left scrambling around willy-nilly at the last minute. Not this time; I had a menu set several days ahead of time, lists for everything. I laid out all of the things I needed, had notes.

A full dinner for 7, table set with my favorite dishes that are normally consigned to the 'look but don't touch' files. Wineglasses, silverware that is rarely used, wine bottles chilled in the fridge. I love all this stuff. I love pulling out all the stops, making things that are complicated, or full of unusual ingredients, things that wow my guests. I love cooking for people I like, having a houseful of friends.

We laughed so much that my face hurt.

Everyone left after 1 AM, and then the next day I hosted family for a big dinner. Yet again, a weekend ending with me needing major sleep.

Going to the chapel

...and we're gonna get married, going to the chapel of love!

A friend got married this weekend. Watching several of my high school friends with their spouses, or significant others, or just standing around the bar talking at the reception made me feel both sad and content. Sad, because we are all getting older. Someone reading this who is in their 50s or so would be annoyed with me, because we're all 30-something these days, and that isn't OLD unless you're a teenager. Content, because it is nice to see folks who I thought would never, ever, ever grow up doing just that. Sort of like, "well, I don't have to worry about *you* anymore, because that's settled."

Weddings usually make me cry. I missed the church ceremony of this weekend's wedding, which I am sorry about, but not too sorry because I don't know if I could have handled it in my current mental state.

I asked so many people so many times, "How ARE you?" wanting, of course, not the social pat answer that we usually give, "I'm fine" but getting not much more than that most of the time. I haven't seen many of these people since the last big wedding, which was I think in 2002. When we, people in general, not just my group of friends, gather at social events like this, so often we strive to be positive and upbeat when talking with old friends about what's going on in our lives, even if things aren't fantastic.

I wrote a post over on MySpace that should have probably been posted here about the walk that we took down memory lane a few days before the wedding, the shared language we have of "do-you-remembers" and the common experiences of our school days. These are old friends, some of them from middle school days, almost all of them from the same high school I attended. Scattered, now, from Arizona to Oh-hia-ia, with jobs diverse as can be imagined. But yet, with the commonality that we have of our youthful days, I honestly don't need to ask how they're doing, I can tell from a look in their eyes, a certain tilt to their smiles, decoding with ease the unspoken message.

I was honest and truthful when people asked how I'm doing; actually, each time someone asked me, "How ARE you?" I responded by saying, "I'm unemployed! *laugh* But all right. How are you?"

We talked about plans and dreams, goals and aspirations, kids, (who has them, who doesn't) cars, mortgages, houses, careers. What astonishes me, over and over again is that we're ADULTS, really, we're the grown-ups. I don't think of myself as an adult. I don't think of most of them as adults either. In my mind's eye, everyone remains perpetually about 17. Seeing them in person, then, is always a shock, because hey! No on really IS 17 anymore. When did that happen? How do the years slip away from us? Why isn't there a "pause" button for life?

I bought a dress to wear just about an hour before I left for the event, a silly set of circumstances that would only happen to me. I didn't need a new dress, but tagged along with a couple of friends just for the heck of it. I tried on sundresses, things that reminded me of 50's style party dresses, (it is true, nothing ever really goes out of style) and things that didn't fit, or fit me badly. Coming out of a dressing room, I saw a stunning light blue gown made of floaty sort of material hanging at a cash register, and I asked the salesgirl if they were holding it for someone. "No," she said, "We were looking for another size at another store." So I picked it up and checked the size, and wonder of wonders, it might fit me. When I tried it on, it was perfect. Everything else I'd tried on had been about $40, but of course this one was over $90. And a color that I have nothing else that will match it, no shoes, no purse, no wrap in case it gets cold.

So I wandered to the shoe department, and found the perfect strappy sandals to go along with it. More than $100 later, I was ready to party! It looked fantastic, though. I'm vastly entertained that the shoes bear the label "Jessica Simpson."

It was a late night, and I've had a slow start to the day. But the house is clean, the sun is shining, and the day calls out to me. Tomorrow is the first official day of my unemployment, and I have it planned so that I'm not sitting at home moping. I'm toying with the idea of going to a spiritual retreat up in New York state for a few days, as I try to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with my life. Seems like a good idea to go and meditate and reflect and plan. For now, however, I'm off to enjoy the sun while it lasts.

Listening to: Mix of Swedish pop including Per Gessel, Lisa Nilsson, Marie Fredrickson.