Politic

Ms. Condee has been in the middle east in the last week or so, trying to work with the Israelis and the Palestinians on a peace deal. I have this to say to the Idiot Administration about that. Too little, too late, boyos.

When President Idiot took the helm of the country after not being elected in free and fair elections in 2000, he abandoned utterly the efforts that the Clinton administration had been working on, and consequently, the progress that had been made under the democratic president regressed to the stage that we're stalled at now.

There were such high hopes at the end of the Clinton administration; remember the photo of Clinton beaming in the background as Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn? This one?

We're more than 10 years past that point, it grieves me to note. A child born on the day that photo was taken would be 14 years old now.

When W walked away from any negotiations between Israel and Palestine shortly after taking office, I personally saw it as a betrayal, a betrayal of the hopes of many who uneasily share the lands surrounding Jerusalem. A betrayal of the promise of peace that this country is supposed to stand for. And a betrayal of the memory of Rabin, killed by a sniper's bullet.

The questions about who is right and who is wrong in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict don't interest me much. Ask either side about why they both want the city of Jerusalem, and both will answer, "Because we were there first." There is no way to solve such a disagreement. We can't go back in time and discover who first began building a city there, and I don't think we're ever going to have a substantive answer anyway. The ultimate question, as far as I'm concerned, is how long do all of them, Muslims, Christians, and Jews, want to fight about it? It is beyond my ability to comprehend that anyone would WANT to live under the conditions that they do, no matter which side of the debate you sit on. The Israelis fear for their lives when they leave their homes. So do the Palestinians. Arabic Christians don't have it any easier.

Of course, there are extremists on all sides, and unfortunately not everyone does want peace. That's why these negotiations are so important; it is too bad that the Idiot administration hasn't been able to see that until now. And they even admit it! Here's a direct quote from the woman herself..."This is the most serious effort to try to end this conflict in many, many years," says Rice.

If I felt betrayed by the administration walking away from peace negotiations, can you imagine how I felt when they began banging the drums of war? The reasons that part of the Islamic world hates the west are many and varied, but our involvement or lack thereof in Israel is part of it.

At least they're doing something, no matter how late and how little. Finally.

Five Fine Questions

A few months ago, a blogging friend had the most unusual meme posted on his blog. It was an interview of sorts, and it intrigued me a great deal. The way is works is you leave a comment on the interviewee's (in this case, my) blog, and they come up with five questions which you then answer. So instead of getting tagged with a meme that you may or may not want to do, you volunteer for this one.

I volunteered. But John has a life outside of the computer, unlike me, so some time went by before he was able to get the questions to me. And in the intervening week, I've actually had a life outside of the computer; among some personal drama, I also had.....drumroll, please....a JOB INTERVIEW! Since we don't talk about work or potential work on this blog, I'd feel more comfortable if we moved on, wouldn't you? Thought so.

Here are John's five questions and and my answers.

1. You are a self-described hemorrhaging heart liberal. I am a hand-over-my-heart conservative. Why should people like us "waste time" talking to each other?

Because you can't shake hands with a clenched fist. We may never convince one another to change our personal point of view, even though we passionately hope to, but we can't fix a single problem by shouting at one another. Sane, respectful, rational, polite dialog never hurt anyone that I've ever heard of. And there's a lot to fix; we're agreed on that. Healthcare, Education, Poverty, the HIV crisis, the gaping holes in the deficit and the ozone layer...methodology and philosophy may differ, even be vehemently opposed to one another, but you have to start somewhere. A conversation is a good place to begin.

2. You have been convicted of a crime (hypothetically, of course!) and your judge passes the following sentence on you for your crime..."You can only eat one meal, watch one movie, read one book, and listen to one album for the rest of your life." What are your choices and why?

Ouch! Depriving me of musical and reading choices is like taking my oxygen away. Alright, begin at the beginning; one meal.

Pasta, with a tomato-basil-garlic sauce, and a glass of Syrah or Shiraz. I'd gain a ton from the carbs, but I could eat pasta 7 days a week and not get tired of it.

One movie; The Shawshank Redemption. Morgan Freeman's monologue at the end makes me weep every time I watch it. It is about hope.

One book; as I type this, I'm looking over the edge of my loft at my library below and the hundreds of books shelved there. Pick one? ONE? I think I could sooner choose one limb to lose. I'm sure most people pick something serious, some weighty tome, scholarly and pedantic in tone; I don't think I could. Although I'm tempted to say an unabridged dictionary, for the love of learning new words. The questions I'm struggling with here are: something I've read already and know and love, or something I haven't read and want to? Fiction or non-fiction? In English or Swedish or German? Argh! Much too difficult to answer for someone who has loved to read since her earliest memories!

Steven King's The Stand because it is very long and being a horror novel would take me a long, long, long time to read with my overactive imagination.

One album; again, very, very difficult. I have over 1200 songs stored in iTunes, and that isn't all of my music collection by a long shot. I listen to everything from opera to hip-hop, alt country to jazz standards. There isn't much music that I don't like. I think I'd choose Miles Davis's, Kind of Blue, because it was my first exposure to jazz, a memory I hold dear, and because every time I listen to it, I hear something new.

3. You spent some time in Sweden as an exchange student. What are the lingering life-lessons you carry from this experience?

Funny you should ask, I was also asked this question in that job interview.

The biggest lesson was that I can do anything. I forget that lesson from time to time, but I figured out at 16 years old that if I could learn a completely new language in 3 months then there probably wasn't much I couldn't do, if I was determined enough. Another lesson was that families, the world over, are far more similar than they are different. Our similarities have the potential to bring us closer together, to solve conflict. That's what the exchange program is about, really, is fostering peace. I learned that I could get up in front of an audience of any size and not die of terror on the spot; I've used that a lot over the years. Many people fear public speaking. I not only love it, I'm good at it. I learned to treasure time alone and solitude; some of my meditation practice takes me back to sitting on the shore of Lake Malaren in my hometown in Sweden, watching the waves, listening to and feeling the wind. The link shows a map of my Swedish hometown; look at the right side of town and a spot on the lake that says Skillingeud; that's where I went when I wanted some solitary time. I would also be freezing my rear end off most of the time, frankly! Which brings me to my last two life lessons....how to dress in layers to keep warm and that saunas are a woooonderful thing.

4. Name 5 simple things that bring joy to your day.
Every day or any day? I'm going with any day.
1. Sunshine, because we see so little of it here in Oh-hia-ia.
2. Laughing with my sisters so much that my abs hurt. The three of us need to be together for that one, but it is a joy.
3. My DH snoring loud enough to shake the roof. No, really. If he's snoring, that means that he's here, with me, and if the noise bothers me, I use earplugs. I'm lucky to have him , and even when the snoring bugs me, it reminds me that he's always there, solid, dependable, a source of strength for me that has never run out.
4. Deep breaths of crisp, cool air. I don't know if anyone who does not have asthma can appreciate this in the same way that an asthmatic can. Usually a sharp inhalation of cold air brings on an attack, so when it doesn't, that's a great thing.
5. My friends and family, without whom I would not be the imperfect person I am.

And now I've got John Denver singing "Sunshine on my shoulders" stuck in my head.

5. You enjoy cooking. My Beloved and I are coming over. What's for supper? (Spare no details. Make our mouths water.)

And what an interesting dinner that would be!

The true question here is do I start with dessert and work my way backwards or begin with the traditional first course and work my way forward? I had to look up the proper courses per Emily Post; but since I think a entree and roast course are both redundant and far too much food, I've trimmed it down to fewer courses than a formal dinner. Working (mostly) within my abilities, here we go!

1. Hors d’oeuvre~small rounds of fresh French bread, soaked with olive oil and covered with a blend of feta cheese, garlic, and spices, (oregano, salt, pepper, parsley) broiled in the oven until the bread is crispy and the feta is soft. Very messy to eat, as the olive oil runs all over everywhere, but worth the mess.

2. Soup~my host mother's soup, for which I have no English name. She calls it juha, but that's a phonetic spelling of a Croatian word that I know is just 'soup.' It is a clear broth, made from soup bones in a pressure cooker, and is simplicity itself. Seasoned only with salt and a very small amount of pepper. Tiny, tiny, tiny pasta is added for some bulk. Although I said I was working within my own abilities, I have yet to be able to re-create the exact flavor of her soup here in the States. I suspect this is due to the difference in the way cattle and chicken are raised (more organically) there.

3. Entrée~an Emeril Lagasse recipe that I've stolen and adapted over the years; beer-brined chicken. A whole chicken is submerged for 24 hours in a brine made of lots of salt, a little bit of water, and a whole lot of Guinness. Other beers or ales also work, but the Guinness just adds something unquantifiable to it. Plus some other secret seasonings. When it comes out of the brine, the cavity of the chicken gets a stick of butter and a whole head of garlic stuffed inside, and it is roasted. The most moist and flavorful thing you've ever had. Served with small new potatoes every color of the spectrum (purple ones from Prince Edward Island are pretty) and fresh green beans that have been steamed just until they're hot, still crisp.

4. Fish~Basa, a Vietnamese fish, steamed in packets made of parchment paper, seasoned with sesame oil, dill, salt, pepper, a hint of lemon juice and lemon zest. Served with crisp edamame.

5. Salad~one of my Kitchen Sink salads. Called so because everything but the kitchen sink is in it! Baby greens, all sorts of wonderful lettuces as the base. Sweet and spicy, things like arugula, endive, Boston lettuce, you get the idea. To that I add shredded carrots, diced celery, English cucumbers that have been halved, seeded, and chopped in to chunks, toasted almond slivers, dried cherries, golden raisins, small grape tomatoes. The salad is served naked, with no dressing on it to allow each diner to add the amount of dressing that they like. I make a vinegarette from scratch, using fresh squeezed lemon juice, lemon zest, fresh cilantro, sea salt, fresh ground black pepper, sesame oil and olive oil.

6. Dessert & Coffee~knowing that you are a coffee lover, I would have to serve coffee that my parents brought back from Nicaragua when they visited several years ago. I have no idea what it was called, where it was grown, or how the beans were roasted, but it was the best coffee I've ever tasted. Or a true Hawaiian Kona, not the 'Kona Blend' you find in the stores.
Dessert would have to depend on the season; in the depths of winter, a decadent chocolate delight, rich moist chocolate cake layers with dark chocolate ganache between the layers, frosted with chocolate mousse and garnished with sliced strawberries and white chocolate shavings. I think I gained ten pounds typing that sentence!! In the spring, a lighter cake, butter cake, which isn't chocolate, with raspberry filling, and a honey buttercream frosting, decorated with vines piped in a buttercream tinted green. In the summer, a chocolate angel food cake, lighter than air, with the addition of a swirl of chocolate sauce to grace each plate. Fresh strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries served on the side with whipped creme. In the fall, apple dumplings made from Honeycrisp apples, which ErinCee will tell you are the best, most wonderful fall apples. Apple dumplings, for those not in the know, are made rather simply; a pate sucre (sweet dough) is wrapped around a peeled and cored apple. Just before sealing the square of pastry around the apple, a bit of cinnamon, a tiny bit of nutmeg, and a dab of butter is placed inside. They're then baked in a glass dish containing a simple syrup (sugar and water, boiled together) to which cinnamon, nutmeg, and butter has been added. Apple dumplings are traditionally served with ice cream; I like mine without, but for those who like the al a mode version (including my DH) a homemade vanilla gelato, far richer than any ordinary ice cream. Gelato has many, many eggs in it, is a colossal pain in the ass to make, and worth every second of the effort. I'd make it with whole vanilla beans so that the tiny specks of vanilla seeds could be seen.

Anyone who left the table hungry would have to do the dishes.


If you would like to be interviewed follow the instructions below!

1. Leave me a comment saying “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with a post containing your answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Cultural Disconnect

A chance conversation with one of my uncles got me to thinking about being a part of, and yet separate from, American culture. My uncle, you see, is a big college football fan. I've written before about my dislike of football, American football, not the sport that is football to the rest of the world and we Yanks call 'soccer'. I like that sport. But the one that the NFL plays? Not so much.

It would seem if I were to judge by the standards of my uncle and his kids that I am beyond strange. And honesty compels me to admit that I am a bit strange. I grew to adulthood in the United States without ever once sitting through an entire football game, either on television or in person. I started working during my freshman year of high school and was never able to go to a high school game. Not that I cared; until I met DH, I had no idea what was going on down on the field during a game anyway. I was a sophomore in college before I actually sat through an entire game, and probably about 23 before I understood what was happening on the field.

Listening to my mother and her sisters talk about television, I thought again about how I've never really been connected to pop culture, even though I do know quite a bit about it. My parents didn't allow us to watch much TV when I was growing up, and by the time the television shows that were popular in the 90s came along, I didn't care about them anymore than I've ever cared about football. I've never watched an episode of Friends, nor of Seinfeld, nor Will And Grace or Everybody Loves Raymond. Neither has anyone else in my immediate family. My aunt was asking my mother if she'd seen the NBC sitcom Cavemen, and my mother was at some pains to explain that no, she hadn't seen it, and she was pretty unlikely to see it ever. Me neither. Anything with a laugh track...ugh.

I don't think that any of this makes me some sort of freak; most of my friends (naturally) feel the same way I do about television, although they do occasionally raise an eyebrow at the lengths and depths of my sports ignorance. Ask me if I saw 'the game' last night, and I'm likely to ask you if 'the game' was baseball, basketball, football or something else, because I'm never even sure which sports season it is. Mention a particular sports team to me, and I will probably know where geographically they're from, but I won't have any idea what sport they play.

That's not to say that I have no idea about local sports teams; I know the names and sport affiliation of most of the professional and college teams from Oh-hia-ia. It would be difficult to remain willfully ignorant about the Ohio State Buckeyes football team, for example, unless I lived under a rock or in some state of perpetual isolation.

But disconnected is a good word to explain how I feel about most TV and sports. To disconnect a phone call, you hang up. To disconnect your cable, you unplug it from the television. (Assuming, of course, that your cable isn't being disconnected because you didn't pay the bill.) A disconnect is an avbrytning in Swedish, literally 'a breaking off.'

Of course if you've been witness to any of my SN ranting over the last ten months or so, you're cracking up right about now, as you think to yourself, "She would go NUTS if I turned of her cable and she couldn't watch The CW on Thursday nights at 9 PM." And you wouldn't be wrong about that. But I feel obligated to point out that SN pulls in a regular viewership of about 4 million, a paltry sum indeed compared to the juggernaut that was Friends during its heyday.

I like being disconnected from the mainstream when it comes to things like that. I like that I'm a little out of step with the rest of the world on sports. I also like that my politics are far out of the mainstream around here, that I'm a little liberal island in the midst of raging conservatism. Even when it makes me feel like I'm constantly trying to re-acclimate myself to the culture of the country I was born in.

Changeability

A poet once said, "April is the cruelest month." I understand the sentiment, but I disagree with it. For me, it is October, always has been.

Autumn is the only time of year that I don't mind living in Oh-hia-ia. The extreme heat and humidity of the summer is gone, leaving behind a cooler and eminently more pleasant general climate. The bitter, bone-chilling winds of January are in the not-too-distant future, but not close enough to worry about. Snow rarely makes its first appearance until November or December.

The fall colors, more than rival to the famous colors in New England, are beautiful. We have the full spectrum of fall color, and it is spectacular to behold. The palest yellows, the same color as the light of a new dawn. Greens that were lush fade to mere memories of themselves. Gold, just like the fields of wheat that are being harvested. Reds, stunning in their brilliance. The 'red maples' have leaves of a nearly maroon tint, and they too fade to a lighter shade of themselves. Even the more common and less showy oranges and browns add to the display.

It happens gradually, leaves from beech or ornamental trees littering the ground in early September, before the rest begin to change. And then one morning we all wake to hints of red and orange in the trees. I live near a large metropolitan park, and driving along its twisting byways is a delight. As teenagers, we played 'road rally' on the park's drives, a stupid and dangerous (and fun) thing to do, because the hairpin turns don't allow you to see oncoming traffic. I drive slower there these days.

And yet, the weather is changing, and we have days like we've had over the last week, overcast, cloudy, rainy, and COLD. That is what makes this a cruel month; we go from flip-flops one day to needing jackets the next. Generally, I tell friends and family to complain to me about the cold after they've survived a winter in Scandinavia, because it isn't cold here. I normally don't bother with a coat until the temperature hovers in the 20-degree F (-7 C) range. But in the last week I've found myself reaching for a light jacket almost every day. Advancing age? Perish the thought.

My asthma always acts up in October, frustrating me, because most of the rest of the year it leaves me alone. The tickle in the back of my throat that signals an oncoming attack is nearly ever-present as soon as the leaves begin to fall. Each day with lower temperatures begins with an attack, deep, wracking coughs that make my eyes water, my nose run, and leave me gasping for air. Each evening, after dinner, as DH and I settle into watching television (him, usually) or reading (me), I have another small attack. It is these smaller evening attacks that end up making me more breathless, occasionally reaching for the rescue inhaler to stop them, something I'm too stubborn to do the rest of the year. But when I feel like I can't get enough air sitting in a recliner, it is time to accept that I might need the assistance that only the inhaler can provide.

As the month winds down, we go from skies of perfect autumnal blue to grey, where they stay for the rest of the year. We see brief peeks of sunshine between the stormy skies. I find myself looking at the ground rather than face that overcast sky. The days grow shorter and shorter, heading to the winter equinox. Losing the light is especially cruel. While I detest the heat and humidity of the summer, at least the days are long.

It is beautiful, though. This is a chill beauty, sometimes damp, but constantly changing. I miss the leaves when they're gone. The only upside to the falling leaves, as I see it, is that living in a condo, we are spared having to clean up the downed leaves. Instead we can simply enjoy their beauty (and bitch about the way the landscaper cleans them up). As a child, Saturdays in October were spent helping my father to round up thousands of pounds of leaves (no joke or exaggeration) so that the grass could be cut until the snow fell.


I turned the furnace on today, the biggest sign of the weather change of all. And I'm still freezing. Hand me that blanket, will ya?

In The Weave

Often, when I am looking at a knitting pattern, because I am geek enough to read knitting patterns, I will build a color chart for the pattern in my mind's eye, trying to see if other colors would work better than the original pattern. Sometimes these experiments have worked; other times, not so much.

I have a multicolored 'novelty' yarn that changes from orange to blue to brown to green, which sounds like it ought to work up in to the most awful melange you could imagine, but it works, even when you're working with more than one skein of it. As you pull the yarn from the center of the skeins, opposing colors seem to fight on the needles for control of the blanket or scarf, but once knitted together, form a more harmonious pattern than I would have ever thought possible.

I think of my writing on this blog in much the same fashion; ideas that seem to have nothing in common, but worked properly and patiently together form a coherent thought. Perhaps I'm fooling myself, and perhaps I write rambling nonsense more often than a cohesive whole. Either way, I enjoy the process.

What I'm thinking about today is dirt, honest to goodness get-into-the-ground dirt, and food production. The genesis of this post was a few completely unconnected things. A friend's blog about her two adorable daughters playing in a sandbox, at a farmer's market that also boasts a playhouse and a lake and ducks to feed. The girls got, gasp, dirty in the sandbox. (I direct you to read the whole post here.) Then a spider spotted inside the grocery store (horrors!) and my thought that we're so far disconnected from where our food is actually produced. Or most of us are, anyway.

I loathe spiders. Loathe them. The story for why is for another time and place, but even the smallest spider has me, unfortunately, reacting 'like a girl'. I often say that I'm not a fan of anything with more legs than me, but spiders in particular...ugh. I think it is something about the way they move that creeps me out.

The spider that I saw in the grocery store was no bigger than a nickel, if I'm going to be honest. I could tell you that it was huuuuuge, but truth is that it wasn't. It was very black, and called attention to itself by being on a white linoleum floor. It had attached a strand of its web to a large cart being pulled by one of the store's employees, a flatbed cart with rails on either end to prevent the boxes of produce that she was carting to the floor from falling off. The spider trailed along at the end of its strand, sometimes being drug by the motion of the cart, other times struggling gamely to clamber back up the line which connected it to the cart.

Another employee stopped the cart puller and called her attention to the spider. I moved in another direction, away from the spider, and did not see them stomp on it, but I heard it. Because goddess forbid that there should be a single insect or any dirt anywhere near the food.

Most of the grocery stores in my area are controlled by a particular chain, and within probably a ten-mile radius of my home are at least five of their enormous brightly lit stores. I worked for them in college, and have no love for the chain, but my choices are fairly limited by the near-monopoly that they have in the area.

Every time I walk inside any of them, I think about Alton Brown and his television show Good Eats. He often shoots short segments of the show inside a grocery store, which he refers to as 'the average American mega-mart.' And mega indeed is appropriate. So much food housed in a single grocery store. So many choices, a bounty of overabundance. No wonder more than half of the country's population is overweight, and our collective consciousness pairs the word obesity with the word epidemic.

But at what point did we learn as a culture that food should come from these gleaming warehouses, not only evidence of bounty but of fantastic waste as well? The gleaming rows of produce without a speck of dirt (heaven forbid) or an imperfection to be seen. How far has that food traveled to get to your mega-mart? When, exactly, did we become so disconnected from the way our food is produced?

I don't use pre-packaged foods, like Rice-a-Roni, or box dinners at all, because they contain too much high fructose corn syrup (otherwise known as HFCS) and everything that I've read the labels on lately also seems to have tHBQ, which is a petroleum derivative ffs, added to it. All of that pre-packaged convenience food only separates us further from the dirt and actual production of food.

"Sure," you say, "but Luce, honey, you're at home full-time these days and can spend as much time in the kitchen as you like to prepare a meal, not to mention time to chase down the ingredients to make such things." And I say to you with my best imitation of a Brooklyn accent, "True dat!"But what is also true is this: we should all be concerned about where our food comes from, and how much or how little connection is has to its beginnings.

I have no neat, elegant solution. No way to fix the problem, tie it up with a pretty bow and present it to you. I solve it for myself by reading labels, buying organic AND perhaps more importantly locally produced stuff when I can, and leave the immense worry of the bigger problem of how much fuel we consume and how much waste we produce getting the gleaming veggies in the grocery store to minds much smarter than mine. Perhaps yours.

Pithy Remarks

Every now and then I see a bumper sticker or two that crack me up enough to note them down and share them with you. There were two of them on an older car that cracked me up.

Don't assume I share your prejudices.

and

Empty out the prisons to make room for the Congress.


There was even one for my conservative friends; it made me laugh. This one was on a newer truck, festooned with American flags and a bunch of Republican propaganda.

Mystify a liberal; get a job, work hard and be happy.

There's Beauty In The Breakdown

Well, no, really there isn't, but the line above is from a song I like and it is too cool to not use it for this post's title.

I've been having a bit of a relapse with the depression in the past few weeks, regressing to a stage where it is hard to get out of bed, hard to breathe, hard to move. Yes, I'm still taking the meds, but it really seems like out of the blue one day they just stopped working, leaving me tail spinning.

I made an appointment to see Dr. H, my adorable family doctor, because it is he and not my therapist who prescribes them. I see a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. Anyway, I had a list of things I wanted to discuss with him; not just my anti-depressants, but my skin which is broken out like a teenager's, I wanted him to run blood work to see where my cholesterol et cetera is, and I needed a flu shot. When I was working I could get the flu shot for free from my employer, both the olde evile bank and the non-profit offered the flu shot gratis to employees. As an asthmatic, it is important for me to get a flu shot. Or so "they" say.

One thing above all else that I appreciate about my family doctor is that when you are with him, you've got his undivided attention. You may wait in his waiting room for-freaking-ever while he's with someone else, but I really feel that he LISTENS to me. He's also quick to admit when something is beyond his expertise and refer you to a specialist.

He listened to my concerns about still being on the med and how much it frustrates me that I still need them; even though I haven't been feeling that they've been very effective lately, miss just one day's dose and I'm am nearly paralyzed with misery. We discussed other options; neither of us is willing, just yet, to scrap the Wellbutrin XL that I've been on since April for another med; instead he upped the dosage again. I'm of mixed emotions about that; if it helps, then fine. But what if it stops working just like the last dosage did? That's a scary thought, isn't it? He claims that you can't develop a 'tolerance' for this med; the anecdotal stuff I've read suggests that yes, you can, but for once I'm letting HIM be the doctor and taking his advice.

He noted that if this dosage (the max recommended daily dose of this medication) does not seem to push me up over the edge to a more healthy frame of mind that he next wants to add another medication. I'm not crazy about that idea, actually I hate it, if I'm going to be fully honest. I have no desire to be on more than one medication for a mental illness. One is quite enough, thank you. He tried to ease my anxiety about that by telling me about other patients that are on shed-loads of meds, which was very sweet of him, but wasn't very helpful, frankly, when he told me that both patient examples that he gave me have had numerous hospitalizations for their mental troubles. Yikes.

Then he told me something that was helpful; apparently patients with major depressive disorder who are also OCD end up needing the max dosage of SSRIs. He paged through my chart and reminded himself of my family history; rather than giving away secrets that aren't mine to tell, let's just say that there are one or two of my family who have OCD a weee bit worse than I do.

He seems worried about my anxiety levels; I don't think that my anxiety level is high, but the therapist has also mentioned that she thinks I have a lot of anxiety and since they're the ones with the medical expertise....well, that doesn't mean that I agree with them or want to take their word for it, but for now I'm letting it stand. The therapist is vehemently opposed to anti-anxiety meds like Xanax and Klonopin; Dr. H thinks that they have their time and place. I side with the therapist on that one. Xanax especially has a pretty quick half-life and you can and do build a tolerance to it.

Dr. H says that as long as I am managing to sleep that he'll not insist on adding Xanax; I told him the only time I can sleep is when I take the sleeping pill, but he says for now that is all right.

When he upped my daily dosage of the Wellbutrin from 150 mg/day to 300 mg/day, the change and feeling "better" was nearly immediate. It took just a few days for it to kick in. So here's hoping that a daily dosage of 450 mg/day is the answer.

In other news, completely off topic, I've actually found a few jobs to apply for in the last week and have been sending out resumes like mad. Here's hoping one of them pans out.

Oh, and I've got some massive geeking out posted on MySpace about Supernatural's return to prime time last night.

Pink-o!

Even whilst bemoaning the fact that the current presidential election campaign has been the longest and most expensive in our country's history, I'm still paying attention to it and an active participant in it. Which is silly, because if I want to encourage the powers that be to cease and desist with the huge money-sucking mess, I ought to ignore it and urge you to do the same.

But I've never been able to ignore politics, from about the age of 10 on, I've been highly interested in the political machine and the governance of not just the United States, but much of the world.

I caught a snippet the other day of Glen Beck criticizing Hilliary Rodham Clinton, which made me exasperated at his ignorance. And I don't think he's an idiot, let me be clear on that. I disagree with him a lot, but mostly I think he's a smart guy. He was talking about Clinton's new plan to give every child $5,000 for college or to purchase a home. Nice idea, impractical, but hey, no less crazy than some of the other things presidential candidates have been talking about lately.

During his critique, he brought out the dreaded word "Socialist." Which usually has every red-blooded American running for the hills, screaming "Commie! Commie!!" Allow me to edumacate y'all for a second; first, socialism isn't communism. Second, Dictionary.com defines socialism as a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

Is socialism evil? Not inherently so. I think it has lofty ideals that don't end up working well in practice, because of the basic human trait of greed, but in a perfect world.....

Is it counter to capitalism? I hate to admit it, but sure, some of the ideals of socialism are directly opposed to capitalism, but again, that's a case of good ideas on paper not working well in the real world; the human factor.

It just frustrates the living hell out of me that people like Mr. Beck, in the interest of sensationalism and ratings, toss the term around as if it is something we all ought to be terrified of.

Personally? I'm more frightened of W's destruction of habeas corpus and the possibility that Mit Romney might be our next president than I am of a few socialist programs. I have not yet made up my mind who I shall vote for (and note, please, that the day in question is MORE THAN A YEAR from now) but my vote will go to a candidate who is pro-choice, first and foremost. That issue, more than any other, is a deciding factor for me. Socialist programs? Not so much a deciding factor.

Can I ever?

I pulled a book off of my library shelf today, after thinking about a passage in the book and wanting to re-read it.

Instead of just turning to the passage in question, I read about the last 100 pages, refreshing my memory of the story in general. Melanie Rawn wrote six books in the "Dragon Prince" series, and it was the last one, Skybowl, that I wanted to refresh my memory of.

In the book, Rawn kills off many characters, but it is the death of one of my least favorite characters that brings me to tears every time I re-read it. The guy is a sanctimonious, overly religious, smug bastard, who does everything in his power to topple the rightful king, and I know the author's intention was that you not like this character at all, but yet, she manages to make you regret his death, to grieve for his passing.

How the hell does she do that? I've read all six of those books at least ten times, and I still tear up at parts of each book. While re-reading it today, though, I thought of my own little story, my unfinished novel.

My little book is cute, a fun beach-y sort of read, not an evocative, sweeping tale that will make you laugh, cry, and insist that all of your friends read right now. And that makes me a little sad, honestly, because while I know that I'm a writer, I don't know if I've got that sort of sweeping tale within me.

I don't know that every writer struggles with this sort of "I can't possibly be any good" feelings, but I know that many do. LM Montgomery wrote about it in her novels, and I've read things other published authors have said about their own doubts. But I just can't help but wonder if I can ever manage to evoke a reader to tears.

And if I'll ever finish the book.

Telepathic Communication

DH and I have been together for a long, long time. We met in 1994, in the springtime, and were dating within a month or so of meeting one another. We've been together ever since. For those with poor math skills, that's 13 years. We've been married for 7 of those years. I can't imagine my life without him.

I think that when you are close with someone for such a long time, you develop the ability to communicate wordlessly. It doesn't necessarily have to be a significant other; I can do this with my sisters and a few friends as well. A shared glance, a certain tilt to the head that indicates a question, or mutual eye-rolling that you both know the meaning behind.

We were at a wedding on Saturday night, a wedding where our connection to the bridal pair is tenuous at best. Neither of us really wanted to go, but duty and obligation compelled us. A quick aside; I looked fabulous in a BCBG Max Ariza dress, purchased a few years ago. It has an asymmetrical hemline, knee-length on one side and calf-length on the other, black, with a floral silver print, and it has only one shoulder. Stunning, yes, but also probably a bit out of date. Not that I care; as I said, I looked fab. My hair is shorter than ever, as I did a favor for the hairdresser last week and he cut and colored my hair for free. It has a few red streaks now, and he warmed the blonde to a slightly darker shade, the white blonde streaks covered until summer comes again.

Regardless, we had agreed prior to leaving for the wedding that we'd leave as soon as it was acceptably polite to do so, since we wouldn't know many people there. As he does from time to time at social events, DH disappeared and I was left to my own devices, so I headed to the dance floor to participate in the near-mandatory dancing of The Electric Slide (hate the song, love to dance, can't keep up with the steps, laugh my ass off at my clumsy self each time) and a few other songs.

DH hates to dance, but will usually dance one song with me provided it is a slow number and that he likes the song. I left the dance floor after they played "YMCA" and started playing something by Rascal Flatts that I didn't recognize, in search of both my husband and a drink. I found him talking to an old friend, and he raised his eyebrow and inclined his head in the direction of the dance floor, asking if I wanted to dance without saying a word. In answer, I put the heel of my right hand on my forehead, in a "I coulda had a V-8" gesture, meaning, "Duh, did you have to ask? Of course I want to dance." He grinned in acknowledgment and led the way to the dance floor.

Later, when things were winding down and we'd seen some people who were not 90 years old leaving, I mimed walking with my index and middle fingers, asking him if he was ready to leave. He nodded, and we sought out our hosts and thanked them for a lovely evening. On the way home, we shared a laugh over the attire of some of the guests that we'd both noticed but hadn't said anything aloud about at the time.

I think it takes a long shared history to be able to communicate this way. It always entertains me when it happens, making me wish that true telepathy were possible.

Disturbed

Listen closely.


Hear it ?



Tick tock.


TICK TOCK.



TICK-TICK-TICK-TOCK!!

That's my biological clock ticking.

I had a very disturbing dream that reminded me of the ticking of the biological clock rather more forcefully than I would have liked.

I was with my parents in Florida (something that hasn't happened for more than 10 years) and they were living in a community that was a floating community. Of boats, sailing ships, houseboats, floating platforms. First off, the 'rents live in Oh-hia-ia, not far away from me. Secondly, this whole floaty community was far too hippy-dippy-artsy-fartsy for my parents to ever live in or consider living in. But it was a dream, so weirdness goes with the territory, right?

I found myself holding a baby, a baby girl, with a pink onesie and pink and white hat on, and she was the most beautiful little Latina, with dark curls and dark eyes, chubby little hands and kicking feet. She wasn't MY baby; she was a baby that my parents had adopted. From Guatemala. My parents who are more of an age and a mindset to retire than to adopt an infant.

I felt an urgent need to protect her (from what, I have no earthly idea, there was nothing scary or threatening in the dream) and to care for her, moving in to a boat a few slips down from my parent's place and taking over the full-time care of the baby. Who never seemed to have a name, incidentally, which you just add to the list of weird things about this dream.

I don't have a maternal bone in my body; never have really wanted to have a child of my own, and I'm not a patient woman. I think I'd make a terrible mother. I have a temper like a house on fire, and hello, I'm a train-wreck at this particular point in my life. I've got no business whatsoever having or trying to adopt a baby.

I woke up very disoriented, and sure that something was missing, something was wrong, until I realized that I don't have a child and it was just a dream. It took me a very long time to settle back in to sleep. I'd like to be able to blame this dream on my sleeping pills, because I tend to have excruciatingly vivid and weird dreams when I take them, but I didn't take the sleeping pill. So this is a creation of my own subconscious. That, perhaps, is what disturbs me most of all.

It's What's for Dinner

Fall is my favorite time of the year in Oh-hia-ia. We have a lovely few weeks when the days aren't blistering hot but are still warm enough to be without jacket, scarf and hat, the nights are cool and crisp, and we open the doors and windows, turning off the air conditioning and not yet needing the heat.

The harvest begins to come in, and after a summer of abundant strawberries and blueberries, which I miss when they're gone, tomatoes, peppers of every color and heat level, and beans and potatoes and huge bunches of fresh herbs are available at the farmer's market I like to visit on the weekends.

Walking around the farmer's market makes me inspired to create menus of only fresh seasonal things, which is how we should all cook all year round, but that is fairly difficult in this climate. It also makes me miss my sister in New York dreadfully, because she was the person who introduced me to the market and we used to meet there for an early morning breakfast on Sundays and do our shopping together. Going it alone is lots less fun.

Deals abound there; two weeks ago, I took $23, and came home with 4 of my canvas shopping bags full to bursting with celery, cilantro, green beans, cherry hot peppers, ginger, garlic, some late strawberries (from California, I suspect, but the stall owner was reluctant to say that they weren't local) double yolk eggs (they're HUGE), even some local cheese. Last week my mum and I went, and I got more double yolk eggs, an enormous bunch of basil and another of dill, radishes, more green beans, more berries, yellow tomatoes, 10 pounds of baking potatoes for $3, lemons, limes, onion. My fridge is full of possibilities.

My cooking is always low fat and lately I've been trying for lower carb, cutting out pasta almost entirely :( and not making rice at all either. But that does not mean that we don't eat well. Cooking doesn't have to be a miserable chore; I enjoy it very much, especially when I have so many ideas that I end up making entirely too much stuff and have lots of leftovers to play with.

I'm also having far too much fun playing with our digital camera, a small 5 megapixel that a client gave to DH for fixing their computer. So are ya ready for some food porn?

First up as an appetizer is a Caprese salad; tomatoes, fresh mozzarella cheese, salt, pepper, fresh basil and a drizzle of olive oil. I could eat this every day.

Then the green beans. I dump them out on the cutting board, cut the ends off, cut them into manageable chunks, rinse them, and then steam them for a scant few minutes with salt, pepper, slivered almonds and a weee hint of garlic. Baked potatoes as a side with the green beans. Now I know I said I was trying for lower carb and we all know that potatoes are a no-no when it comes to low carb. But, baked, without sour cream and cheese and bacon, they're not so terrible for you. I baked two of them, but we split one, and the second one is in the fridge for another day.Then the main event, tilapia grilled with basil, lemon juice, lemon zest, garlic, salt, pepper and a very small amount of olive oil. Fish sticks to the grill horribly, so I wrap it in foil packets and it steams inside them. Bonus, your house doesn't smell fishy because they cook outside. Here's how you make the packets, which were inspired by Hugh Carpenter's Fast Fish cookbook. The fish lies diagonally on a square of tinfoil that has been rubbed with olive oil to ensure that the fish doesn't end up plastered to the tinfoil. Fold up the bottom point of the square.Fold in the two sides of the square.Flip the packet over to begin to close it up.

Fold down the remaining flap to seal the packet.Four packets of fishy goodness. I make more than two fillets because tilapia fillets can be small, and they always shrink while cooking, so sometimes they're too small. DH always wants more than one, and I eat the second left over filet for lunch the next day.

I didn't remember to take a picture when they came off the grill, so you will have to just trust me that they were beautiful and yummy. We eat fish at least twice a week, once you get over being afraid of cooking it, it is a wonderful addition to your diet. Lean, and full of good things.

I got over the fear of preparing it by taking a class taught by the aforementioned Hugh Carpenter, where he taught how to select fresh fish from the grocery store, how to cook it, how to season it, and what to avoid. His cookbook, Fast Fish, is a great jumping-off point for the beginner. There are two recipes from the book that I use on a regular basis, but mostly now I use it for inspiration and guidance, not necessarily for a particular recipe.

I never buy fish that the fishmonger has listed as "previously frozen" because it isn't as good. If nothing looks good at the store that day, we're not having fish. I make usually salmon and tilapia, but I'll experiment with other things from time to time. I look for whatever is freshest and least expensive; last week my local mega-mart had Mahi-Mahi, a Hawaiian fish that is wonderful stuff, but they wanted $17.99 a pound for it. No thanks.

Tonight we're having a salad made with leftover salmon, which was grilled with dill, lemon, and olive oil, plus Italian greens made from radish leaves. Yum. The freshness of the veggies right now is so wonderful.

Contraception Day

It isn't often that I write more than one post in a day. Something has to happen or catch my attention or really piss me off for me to come back to the computer and finish another post. I start more than one a day, usually, but they sit in my queue for a few days until I get them finished.

Today, it is something that has me pissed and feeling confrontational and like I've been left in the dark. I get news feeds from NOW (National Organization for Women), the ACLU, and NARAL, so I'm surprised that this didn't hit my radar screen before the actual day. I heard it on the BBC's World Today, which my local NPR affiliate carries. I love listening to the Beeb. I love to hear the voices of the Brits...mmmm, those accents. But I digress.

I turned the radio on when leaving Pilates, and caught about 15 minutes of the programme. If you're a regular reader, maybe you've been wondering why I haven't been doing Current Events or politics lately, and the answer is that I'm depressed enough without focusing on the constant stream of bad news. Every time I tune in to NPR or CNN, I hear and see things that make me sad and angry, leave me feeling impotent and powerless in the face of a giant patriarchal Republican conspiracy. Now I know that point of view is both radical and a weee bit unfounded, part of my natural paranoia, but I can't help feeling like the bad news from Iraq combined with radical religious right hysteria and the erosion of our civil rights by things like the USA PATRIOT ACT all weigh me down, make my depression worse. Therefore, I haven't been focusing on that so much lately.

But then I'll hear something that snaps me back to a reality that I'm not happy about. Today was World Contraceptive Day, and I didn't even know it. Contraceptives are a woman's issue, solely because no one has bothered to try to invent a male version of The Pill. Don't get me started on that one.

Being raised Catholic, you know that I was taught from an early age that contraceptives of any type are wrong. It goes without saying that I never agreed with that idea, in fact it mystified me from the very first time I ever heard it. I'm not alone in that; many Catholics use every type of contraception available, because no one really wants 21 children. Who can afford that in this day and age? The Church's stance on contraception began when the Church wanted lots of new followers, and when the infant mortality rate for the entire known world was very, very high. Outdated? Yep, you could say that.

I've written before about the things that Pope John Paul II had to say about "appropriate" roles for women; the duality of motherhood and wife should be enough for them, according to his late Holiness's 1988 letter to women. I don't have much use for Benedictine XVI, his writings before he became pontiff as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger are enough to make me hunt for the nearest vomitorium.

The Beeb had 3 people on the program to talk about Contraception Day; one was a Catholic professor, a woman, who opposes any contraception. One was a scientist who has researched contraceptives extensively in developing nations, and one was a spokesperson for a Brit organization called Marie Stopes. The scientist and the Marie Stopes bloke were both well-reasoned and sane. The professor is a whole 'nother story.

The professor started her comments off by noting that she's opposed to contraception not as a Catholic, but as a woman. Contraceptions are bad for women, y'all. Who knew? I always thought that bringing a child into the world should be a reasoned, measured decision, one not undertaken lightly, one that you should make when you are emotionally, physically and financially able to care for another human being. Wow, guess I really missed the boat there. Apparently, I shouldn't use contraceptions because they're unhealthy. Riiiiight.

Turns out that the Church does support one type of contraception: Natural Family Planning. But then again, the Church doesn't allow for sexual intercourse of any type outside of the marriage bed, for the sole purpose of procreation. What does it say about your sexuality if you allow it to be controlled by people who are (theoretically) abstinent their whole lives?

But anyway. I won't let this post become a diatribe about sexuality. I won't let this post become a diatribe about sexuality. I won't let this post become a diatribe about sexuality. Sorry, back to the point.

World Contraception Day is about bringing attention to the fact that many women around the world do not have access to birth control of any sort, even when they want it. Additionally, it calls attention to the fact that by 2050, there will be two billion (that's billion with a B) more people on this planet than there are today. If we don't start paying attention to population control, we're going to out grow the planet before the end of the 21st century. Scary.

Fore o Efter

Before and After

I won't post pictures of myself, or use my real name on this blog, but I will show you pictures of the inside of my home. I crack myself up, anyway.

This is my library. With a bare cement floor, after we ripped the carpeting out. The stuff piled up in front of the fireplace is what ended up on the floor when it was all done.
To the left is my kitchen; behind this picture is our main entrance, or rather the entrance we use the most, from the garage. The curtains are down from the sliding glass door because I painted the woodwork. They're not going back, hahahahaha! I hated them, so we ordered new ones last night.That's the entrance from the garage. See the blue painter's tape everywhere? I hate to paint. Two coats of Killz, a heavy-duty primer, and two coats of the color, an ivory-ish white.

And so it begins! The blue stuff is to protect the wood flooring from moisture damage; it is only 6 mm thick. Tennis shoes and work boots rip it very easily, we discovered that the hard way.
Door to the half bath, showing the underlayment, the wood, and the transition to the bathroom, which will eventually have a little thingamabob over it so the seam doesn't show.More of the underlayment. Eventually, we got smart and only put it down as we needed it, instead of laying it out ahead of time, since it tears so easily.
And we're done! We ended up with a box and a half of the laminate flooring left over, so there is one box to return.
The light you see on the floor is from the skylight, this picture was taken in the late afternoon. I'd like to not have drapes over that sliding glass door at all, but...one, this house is very poorly insulated, and the sliding glass doors hemorrhage heat in the winter-time, and two, DH is a nut about his privacy and does not want anyone to be able to look in.
I can't get over how great it looks. So beautiful!

Here's the stats for the project:
Laminate flooring.....about $360. We used 15 boxes, at $19.99 each, plus three rolls of the underlayment, which were about $25 each.
Tools that DH insisted he needed, including two sawhorses, spacers to make sure that there's enough room for expansion in the floor, and a crowbar-esque tool that you use to make sure the planks are firmly joined together.....roughly $100
Killz, foam brushes to apply it, and painter's tape...$20
We didn't need to buy paint because we painted most of this house before moving in, and I had some left over for the woodwork, so $0 for that.
Curtains, not here yet....$50
Felt protectors for the furniture (when it goes back into the room) so that our chairs and coffee table don't scratch the hell out of the new floor....$10
Time to lay the floor...10 hours, 3 people, numerous "Dammit(s)!" and other swears, two arms pinched in between boards as they were snapped into place (ow!) and one thumb bruised to hell.

New floor, no carpeting which bothers my allergies....priceless.

Ancient Music

Well, OK, not ancient in the strictest sense. But in the world of pop music, positively ancient; from the early 90s or earlier.

I wrote a post a while back about an old mix tape that I have held on to for a long, long time. I've spent some time listening to it and trying to figure out just who the various bands are. This is a listing as best as I can discover of all of the songs on the tape.

Unfortunately, there are a few that are NOT available from iTunes or any other source I can discover. DH tells me that yes, it is possible to get music from analog tapes to mp3 format, but the gadget guru does not have the needed hardware. Yet.

Without further ado, here's the listing. This has taken forever to dig up all the links and to track down the names of the bands...and I'm not done. There are still two that I can't track down. Which in the age of everything in the whole world available on Google is as irritating as heck. The song title links to the lyrics (usually) and the band title links to the band's website, if they have one, and a fan site if they don't.

1. Hello~The Beloved
2. Come Together~Primal Scream
3. Candleland~Echo & The Bunnymen
4. All Together Now~The Beatles
5. Only Tongue Can Tell~Trash Can Sinatras
6. Scarborough Fair~Simon & Garfunkel
7. I'm Free~The Soup Dragons
8. Unknown
9. That's a lie (remix)~Too Much Joy
10. Theme from Twin Peaks(no lyrics)~Angelo Badalamenti
    
11. Laura Palmer's Theme (no lyrics)~Angelo Badalmenti
12. Right Here, Right Now~Jesus Jones
    
13. Hippychick~Soho
14. Wicked Game~Chris Isaak
15. Peek-a-Boo~Siouxsie & The Banshees
16. Give Peace A Chance~The Peace Choir
    
17. Deeper Shade of Soul~Urban Dance Squad
18. I Saw Red (Acoustic)~Warrant
19. Put It There~Paul McCartney
20. Imagine~John Lennon
21. Waterfall~The Stone Roses
22. Then~The Charlatans UK
    
23. Here Comes The Sun~The Beatles
24. Elizabeth My Dear~The Stone Roses

As I've said before, just about my favorite song of the bunch is Waterfall by the Stone Roses, but there isn't much I don't like. Track #8, the unknown one, is one that I've spent about 3 hours trying to find the name of the band and the song title. I'm pretty sure it is Britpop, but I've had no luck at all finding any information. The chorus of the song is as follows:

every beat of the heart
brings me closer to the start
takes me further away from you
brings me closer to the truth


If you know who sings this, what the title of the song is, please let me know. It is going to drive me crazy.


If I was super tech-savvy, I'd post a playlist with an MP3 player so you could hear all this ancient music, but I'm not that cool. Plus can you imagine the bandwith that would eat up?

Crazy busy

DH and I are putting a new floor into a room in our house. As a result, the house is a complete mess (furniture from that one room crammed in every available corner) and there are 1000 small things to be done before we put the floor in. Like today's appointed task: paint the woodwork. Ugh. I hate to paint. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

So since I don't have time to be witty and write a scintillating post, check out Blogger's latest toy, which is a mesmerizing look at the photos people are uploading to their blogs at any given time. A fair warning; this is highly addictive.

Click the play button in the middle of the screen near the bottom, and then also click 'show info' to see where the pictures were posted. Stunning photography, art, pictures of people's kids....an amazing mash-up. It is fascinating, a polyglot of languages and images. Enjoy.

Blogger Play

Blades of idiocy, not glory.

Once upon a time, I went rollerblading all the time. With my bad-boy trainer R, with my sisters, with friends, even all alone. I used to enjoy it, but with both sisters being far away, the skates have been forgotten in recent years.

DH and I cleaned our garage as part of that whole attic-cleaning madness, and the skates were rediscovered in a box in the garage, which is where they've been since we moved to this house at the end of 2004.

When I woke up today, I hurt too much from a combination of running and Pilate's, so I decided that since today was a rare beautiful day, I'd go out blading instead of running. Which, in hindsight, might have been mistake #1.

I pulled the skates from their box and tried them on. Yes, they still fit, and yes, I had no trouble skating around the library floor, which is currently cement. We ripped out the carpeting and are going to install laminate flooring this weekend. Anyway. No trouble getting around on them.

There are several park trails within walking distance of my home, but I decided that crossing a major road on skates for the first time in 3 years wasn't a bright idea, so instead I hopped in the car and drove to another trail that is closed to vehicular traffic and is paved.

Once the skates were on, and I got into the parking lot successfully from the car, I had no trouble navigating on them. Soon, I had a good rhythm down, with the wheels of the skates going "whirrrr, whirrr" underneath me, the sun shining through in dappled patches on the trail, and the wind in my super-short hair. Lovely. I did about a half mile without a thought.

When I would go out skating with the bad-boy trainer, years and years ago, we would always call out to people we were about to pass, so that we didn't startle them as we flew by, saying things like "Coming up on your right!" or "Passing on your left!" and I still do that, because I don't want to scare the bejebus out of anyone.

I passed a woman and her dog on the left, then careened around her to pass a pair of women on the right, calling out to each of them. As I passed the pair of women, one of them turned to look at me and brushed her arm against mine. Completely unintentionally, I assure you. She didn't reach out to me, just turned in time to see me whiz by. I was startled enough to take my attention off of the skates for one second...and I was down on the ground instantly.

I landed hard on the heel of my left hand and on my left hip, a jarring shock. I was breathless for a second while the woman apologized and agonized over causing my fall. "No worries," I told her, "I haven't been up on these for three years, and I expected to fall at least once. I'm OK." I declined their offer of assistance and managed to get to my feet without falling again. (Amazingly.)

I continued the trail, and managed about 3-1/2 miles, and enjoyed all but about the last half mile. Once back at my car, with the skates off, I realized how sore I was. I've spent most of the rest of the day trying to not put much weight on my left hip as I sit down. I'm going to have a fantastic bruise.

Another spin around the sun

I had another post written for today, nearly finished, when I returned a call I'd missed on my cel phone. Somehow, even though it was on, clipped to my right hip (as usual) and not on silent, I'd missed a call.

I discovered that a friend has gotten engaged, and as I expressed my congratulations to him, I looked at the sun outside and thought about drama. Life IS drama. Comedy and tragedy, joy and pain, laughter and tears, birth and death, weddings and funerals.

Back in my school days, I had a buddy who referred to our group of friends as 'the eternal soap opera' which, he said, was titled As The Stomach Churns. In my early working days, once out of high school, I often lamented the fact that there was so much drama in my workplaces, which included restaurants, bars, and retail stores. I often was the youngest person working wherever it was, and felt as if I was the most mature person there. Drama frustrated me, and the politics of working made me nuts.

But wherever there is humanity, there is drama. It is an inherent part of our make-up. I still have relatively little patience with it. Having been off and not working for nearly three months, I'd say that is tops on my list of things I've enjoyed about being unemployed. No work drama.

I'm about to apply for a new job, one that will thrust me most firmly back into the rising tides of politics and craziness, and I'm so excited about it. This isn't a reversal of my opinion about workplace craziness, just a change of the status quo that I'm happy about.

I understand better now than I did at 19 why we're constantly in a state of dramatic anticipation; as the years go by and we travel another lap around the sun on this little blue planet of ours, we accumulate friends and new family members, drama rises and falls like the stock market and the tides. To have no drama at all in your life is to not be living.

Universitiy Forgetfulness

I took a trip to my old University today, requesting transcripts of my time there. I need them for graduate school applications, but I also need one copy for a job I'm applying for. Fortunately, I live in the same town as my alma mater, so a quick phone call to them and I discovered that I could just stop there and pick up transcripts. Cool.

I haven't been on campus for several years, and at that I think the last time I was there, it was for a football game, with a big group of people. I'd forgotten how much of a pain in the ass parking is there. Eventually, I gave up hunting for a parking space on the street and drove into one of the parking decks, where I had to pay a fee to park my car. The price has gone up exponentially since I went to school there. And of course, the offices where I needed to go have all been moved.

Never let it be said that the school is living in the digital age. I had to fill out two paper forms, walk them down the hall, pay another fee, take the receipt and the forms to another building and wait for the transcripts to be printed. Lame; as my sister says, "Double Thumbs Down." They should be able to enter the request digitally and send proof of payment over the University networks as well. I don't mind walking over half of campus to get what I need; it was a rare beautiful day here in Oh-hia-ia, cool, crisp, sunny. The sky was that perfect autumnal blue, and leaves on campus are starting to turn. I enjoyed that part of it. It was the whole bureaucracy thing that bothered me.

When I finally got to the place where they actually print the transcripts, I asked for an unofficial copy in addition to the sealed copy that I had to pay for. I've asked for transcripts before and had them sent to law schools, but I've never bothered to look at them for myself.

Leaving the records office, I sat down at a table in the hallway to page through the approximately 8 pages of information about classes that I took. I thought about the classes listed for my first year, which I did while I was still a senior in high school. I remember all of them, but as I paged through the rest of it, there are bunches of classes that I have no recollection of whatsoever.

I can speak three languages; but my math skills are dismal, so why on earth did I sign up for an upper division mathematics election called "Finite Math?" Business majors were required to take Business Calc; which I did (twice). Then there's the management class called "Human Behavior" that I don't remember at all. In total, about half a dozen classes that I don't remember taking.

I don't think that the University has made any mistakes here, allow me to be clear on that point. I attended University for 5-1/2 years to get my undergraduate degree, and went every single semester of those 5-1/2 years because I loved college and loved the whole university experience. I took oodles of stuff that I didn't need for my degree, accumulating about 100 hours more time than I needed. I have minors in German and Psych, and almost enough hours for a minor in Accounting. So I did take these classes; I just don't remember them.

*Sigh*

Mix Tape

Back in the dark ages, before music was on computers and long before I was aware of the Internet, we made and traded mix tapes. Mix tapes were compilations of music, usually along a particular theme or just songs that you were fond of.

Over the years, from probably the age of 10 until 19, I probably made a hundred or so. I traded them with friends, shared them with school-mates, listened to them for hours at a time. These were the precursors to playlists.

I made them with a dual tape deck, or later, when CDs came along, taped from a CD. In the late 80s, though, I didn't have any CDs or a CD player. A good friend of mine, V, had several players and hundreds of CDs. She made great tapes.

Before I left for Sweden, she made me one that was full of Brit-pop and alternative music. I listened to it on the train, traveling around Sweden, on the bus back and forth on the way to school, at home, while riding my bike.

One of my favorite songs on the tape was by The Stone Roses, a song that I almost felt had been written for me. I identified strongly with the lyrics. But there were many other songs on the tape that I loved.

I liked the tape so much that when I tossed all of the rest of my analog tapes, having either replaced them with CDs or no longer caring about the music on the tapes, I kept that one. When DH and I moved house, the tape came along to our new domicile too. For at least the last 3 years, it has sat on a shelf with about 4 other tapes that survived the purge of old technology.

I'm not sure why, but just the other day a bit of the lyric from that old Stone Roses song popped into my head, and while I could remember that the song had been on the tape V gave me, I could remember neither the name of the song nor the band. I spent some time Googling the lyrics as I recalled them, but couldn't find it. I even looked for the mix tape, but didn't find it.

After a while, I remembered more of the lyric and eventually located the name of the song and the band, and I was satisfied with that, especially when iTunes provided me with the song for $0.99. (It is "Waterfall," from The Stone Roses self-titled album, should your own curiosity overwhelm you.)

Then DH and I watched a few movies last night and I changed the the DVD when one ended. While standing in front of the DVD player, I noticed the shelf of tapes, and sure enough, there was the mix tape from V.

We no longer have a tape player, except in my car, which is a 1999 and has a factory-installed tape player instead of a CD player for some reason. So when we went out today, I slipped the tape into my back pocket and popped it into the player.

The resulting stroll down memory lane made me very happy. As each song came on, I remembered long-forgotten things, including the lyrics to almost every song on the tape. While it is predominantly Brit-pop that I promise you've never heard of, there's also some Simon & Garfunkel, and a few things that were wildly popular at the time. Strangely, although V and I were both into a bit of heavy metal, there's only one song from a metal band, and it is a ballad.

I don't generally write posts of lists, even though I'm a compulsive list-maker, but as I eventually rediscover the names of the bands and the songs on the tape, I will make a list with links to the various band's websites and post it in the interest of fun and archaic music.

I haven't talked to V in more than 7 years. I'm not sure where she is these days. But listening to all that music again has prompted me to try to track her down and see how she's doing.

This Location has been Relocated.

Sounds like something President Idiot would say, doesn't it? It was on a sign of a bank branch that I saw yesterday, but it made me think of the Idiot in the White House, too. As I listened to his speech and he stumbled over several words, made several grammar errors, I marveled all over again that this man was elected leader of the free world. (Well, he was duly elected the second time around. The first time he was installed in the White House was a mockery of the democratic election process. But I digress.)

I listen to his speeches because I can't bear to look at him. At least hearing his disembodied voice is not as bad as watching him. WhiteHouse.Gov has the audio stream, and what they claim is the text of the speech here, but the text does not match the spoken word at all. I wonder what that's all about.

After watching the CNN special I saw the other day about Islam, I understand a bit better why Iraqis aren't happy that we're there. Hell, I'M not happy that we're there. I think the soldiers need to come home.

But here's a bit of a quote from the speech, with commentary from me in parenthesis:

"Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States. The consequences of failure are clear. Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. (he stumbles two or three times over the word grow, but let's do ignore that for a second.) They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. (He STILL mispronounces nuclear! Mrgh!) Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people. On September the 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America MUST succeed in Iraq.

It is the same, tired, old Republican wheeze about 'defeat them over there or we'll have to defeat them here.' Which, for the record, I don't really believe. I do not believe that we haven't had another attack on 'American soil' (Blessed Mother, how I hate that phrase) because we're fighting wars in two countries. I believe they haven't hit American interests here or abroad again because they're biding their time and trying to brew up something more terrible than September 11th was. I do most emphatically not think that we are safer today than we were on September 10, 2001. After all, what has changed?

The Terror Alert System? Please. More like a hysteria-inducing way of making it look like you're doing something. The Department of Homeland Security? Urgh. Department of the Fatherland, anyone? We needed another large governmental institution? Riiight. Why haven't they found Osama? It is like playing a worldwide game of "Where's Waldo?" The United States has the best technology in the world; why can't they find him? They record *my* telephone conversations with my family overseas and analyze them for terrorist activity. Terrorist activity coming from Sweden. As if. Sweden has been a neutral country for a long, long, long time. We talk about family and work and how much we miss one another. There's ALLL kinds of incriminating information being passed along there. But they can't find one man and his entourage of attendants in the hills in Pakistan.

And let's not talk about how many young soldiers, the average age of which is about 19, have died needlessly. W gets in to that a bit near the end of his speech, urging the people of America to support the troops; I do. I support the young men and women who are serving their country. I don't support the war. There is a very clear difference.

There's just one more thing. The final paragraph of the speech leaves me scratching my head over what the hell he means. Read it for your self, and see if it makes any better sense to you.

...yet times of testing reveal the character of a nation. And throughout our history, Americans have always defied the pessimists and seen our faith in freedom redeemed. Now America is engaged in a new struggle, that will set the course for a new century. We can, and we will prevail. We go forward with trust that the author of liberty will guide us through these trying hours. Thank you, and good night.

I'm not sure what he means at all about 'the author of liberty'. Liberty is NOT a uniquely American concept. I know that; I'm sure you do too. I'm not confident HE knows that. Is he, in some oblique way, referencing God? Or does he mean a particular writer? He's good at obfuscatory, anyway.

I'll leave the annoying grammar mistakes alone; we all know that he can't speak English well. I've resigned myself to the fact that he just sounds like a moron every time he opens his mouth. You'd think there would be an Office of Official Grammar to make sure that he manages to at least sound like English is his first language.

I only know that I don't know much.

Even though I usually don't watch any TV during the week of September 11th, while I was at the gym yesterday I saw a commercial for a documentary that CNN aired earlier this summer. I had wanted to watch it, but managed to miss all 3 parts of the documentary.

Called "God's Warriors" and reported by Christiane Amanpour, a woman whom I greatly admire, I was very disappointed when I realized I missed the original airing of it. She examined each of the world's 3 major religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Last night they aired the Islamic portion, and I watched with fascination. I thought from time to time, "This, THIS is when TV is good. Informational, educational...this is what television ought to be."

Do I claim to now understand the Islamic point of view after watching a TV show? No. Of course not. But I learned quite a bit. Enough to know that I still don't understand. One of these days, I am going to read the Koran, in an attempt to further understand this faith, which seems from the outside to be so peaceful.

She spoke to a huge range of people, from extremists to moderates, American Muslims, Iranian Mullahs, Shia, Sunni, women and men. It was fascinating. I was most interested when she was speaking to some women's rights advocates in Iran. A woman who was a judge before the Ayatollahs took over, another woman who is a photographer. I was astonished to learn that 65% of Iran's university students are women. And yet, a woman's testimony in court, and her life, are worth exactly half that of a man's.

I've always wondered why a woman would voluntarily wear a hijab; I've written about this before, and gotten such obnoxious comments that I am turning comments off for this post. I'm writing solely about my opinion, from the perspective of an American woman who believes in gender equality. If you don't agree with me, that's OK, but I'm really not interested in hearing vitriol about my opinion. At least I'm curious about this issue, unlike most Westerners, who write this off as archaic and ignorant behavior. I disagree; and I'd like to understand.

Once, in the past, when I've written about this, one commenter asked me, "Why would you care? How does it impact you? How dare you write about something you have no knowledge of?"

My answer to that is exceedingly simple. I'm curious; I always want to know 'why.' I'm a geek; researching something, reading about it, learning things has always thrilled me. Somewhere out there are the answers to nearly every question.

I doubt I'll ever understand intolerance, racism, sexism, but I do think the answers for 'why' are out there for most questions.

The main reason I wanted to watch this program was because I wanted an answer to the question, "Why do they hate us and our way of life? What has the average Yank done to offend them so horribly?" I don't have an answer yet; but I do now have some other avenues to research to understand better.

Community

So many places today will be full of mentions of the anniversary of September 11, 2001. I have no desire to rehash the events of the day. I declare a media blackout in my house during the week of the anniversary, because I can't watch those planes crash into the twin towers again. The heartbreaking loss of so many blameless lives. Are we any safer today than we were on September 10, 2001? I don't think so.

Instead, I want to talk about something that I didn't ever think much about before those tragic events. I never thought much about the idea of community growing up; my home community was simply there, nothing to consider.

I didn't go to high school football games, wasn't involved in other community activities. I remember telling my mother once, at about 15 years old, that the only thing our community ever pulled together on was trying to avoid our over-zealous police, who have been known to give speeding tickets to people driving 26 miles an hour in a 25 mile an hour zone. People flash their headlights at one another to warn of the police sitting somewhere up the road.

But when the American flag popped up everywhere on September 12, 2001, I realized that you don't have to be a supporter of your local high school football team to be part of a community. That community is more than where you live.

Watch a group of motorcycle riders sometime; when they pass one another on the road, they wave, or give that little guy head-nod that says, "hey, man" without saying a word. Likewise, boaters wave to one another, as do RV-ers. These are all communities.

Humans are very social creatures; even the most anti-social of us desparately longs to be part of something larger than ourselves, some group that we can claim membership in. We identify ourselves partly by the groups we belong to. Your religion, your nationality, your race, your occupation are all groups that you belong to, part of your identifying characteristics.

Last Tuesday I was writing about nature/nurture. This is part of it as well, the nurture part. Your personality is, I believe, in part determined by the groups that you belong to. The stories that we all tell are a part of who we are. The experiences that we share, whether with friends from school days past or a card club more recent, help to form our opinions and shape our world view.

I've said many times before that I don't like living in Northern Ohio. It isn't that I dislike the community, because I believe that small-town America is pretty much the same no matter what state you live in. What bothers me here is the weather, grey, cloudy, overcast and miserable 90% of the time, and the conservatism, and the mentality of many people who live here, who seem stuck in the 1950s, with the traditional roles so seeming entrenched in the collective psyche, the lack of arts and diversity in this area. Those things, I think, can change from community to community.

Then there are the communities that we belong to in the wired world. And I'm not just talking about the fandom world, either. Last week, I had a question about my iPod, and I posed that question to an Apple forum. I had 3 answers within hours, all basically the same (very workable) solution. I was surprised, people from 2 continents reached out to help me with a relatively minor problem. The web has changed so much for us, but the biggest thing for me has been how we're all more connected to one another through the web, and yet more isolated in our own communities.

My, I'm all over the map today, aren't I? There's just one thing more that is completely unrelated to any of the above; a new side effect I'm experiencing with my meds that is making me feel rather nuts. Remember how I was having thoughts in Swedish and unable to find the English words? That went away, but yesterday I was having trouble remembering the words in either language for some ordinary things, making me worry about what the heck that is, and why it is happening now. I hope it goes away soon.