Update

My boss is going to see if she can figure out a way to give me the days off. She said, "Don't give up hope yet!" Suddenly I feel a little less Grinchy, even though I still don't know for sure whether I'm going to be able to get out of here or not.

In the meantime, I have put in my time-off request for December 25-27, 2006.

Happy freaking holidays

I've just learned that I am not getting even one day off for Christmas this year. I'd foolishly assumed that because Christmas falls on a Sunday, we would be getting Monday off. My plan was to fly to my family on Christmas Eve (so as not to inconvenience anyone at work by taking Friday off), and return on Tuesday.

Now I find out we don't get Monday off. Instead, we get a voucher for a day off of our choice, at some other time of year.

My boss informs me that we are too understaffed to let anyone have even a single day off that week, except for herself (she's taking off the whole week) and one part-time person, who requested his time off all the way back in July. Which I should have done myself, and would have, had I had any idea that our so-called "holiday" schedule was ... well, that there wasn't one. That there will be not one single day off for Christmas. What kind of holiday is that?

Damn. It's not so much that I love flying in the dead of winter, or fighting crowds at the airport, or dealing with holiday traffic, or driving on icy snow-covered roads. I'd just as soon spend Christmas at home, and visit my family some other time, when the weather's nicer and there are fewer people travelling. But if I go at Christmas, then I get to see my three sisters too. If I go some other time, it's just my parents and brothers.

Actually, it could have been worse. At least we get the @$*#(& voucher. Last time Christmas was on a weekend, the company I was working for didn't even give us that. They just figured everyone was already getting the day off, since it was a weekend, and chalked it up to two days worth of everyone's pay that they wouldn't have to be shelling out of their own pockets. This was the same place where the red-faced hysterical owner, after I took a sick day, accused me of taking money right out of his pocket every day I was sick — shaking his wallet in my face and screaming, with a vein bulging out of his forehead .... That was an awful job.

Anyway. I'm feeling pissed at my company and annoyed with myself for not asking for the time off earlier. Sometimes I really hate being a wage slave.

Satsuma!

What better way to celebrate the best date of each year (11/22, two great numbers that go great together!) than by finding a truckload of gorgeous fragrant and indescribably sweet Satsuma tangerines has magically appeared in the rustic wooden bins of my favorite gourmet produce section? Every year I look forward to this day, and this year it's arrived earlier than ever — hooray! I loaded up two big bags full, one for home and one for the office. I put them in a big blue bowl on the cutting table (these days used exclusively for cutting brownies, pies, and other home-baked treats brought in to share), and everyone is welcome to help themselves to as many as they can stand, if they can get to them before I do. During the short but wonderful Satsuma season I have been known to eat as many as a dozen of them in a day. It's okay! They're small! They're also pretty; our grocer orders the organic ones, with the leaves still on. And they're good for you — full of delicious sweet citrus flavor and probably tons of vitamins and minerals and good karma, too.

This boost could not have come at a better time for me this year. I've been totally swamped at work, and overburdened as well with some stupid emotional stuff having to do with feeling excluded from a drinking party I didn't get invited to (that I didn't want to go to, anyway — really!). I also foolishly said yes to four small freelance jobs, having briefly forgotten how much time and energy these things take ... I thought I'd be able to finish them all last weekend but on Saturday was so exhausted I literally felt like I'd been drugged — could not keep my eyes open or form a full sentence in my mind, let alone speak it — so instead, at the boyfriend's insistence, I spent most of the afternoon sleeping. Sunday was somewhat better but I'm still feeling really wrecked. Just seeing all those happy orange Satsumas sitting around my office — one on top of the monitor, one on the shelf, one on the partition, one on top of my hard drive — I sprinkle them around like jewels — makes me feel better, at least for that one bright shining moment ....

If I could ever get ten seconds away from my desk during a time when the lab is open, I would take myself in for the blood tests my doctor ordered me to have almost two months ago. At some point, I suppose I will need to just take the time and go, and deal with the backlog of work when I get back.

Part of me is kind of afraid to find out what's wrong. I mean, I already know I'm terribly anemic. I have been for years, off and on. But what if it's something worse? I just had my first ever mamogram a couple of weeks ago and the result came back fine, so I can cross that particular terror off my list (the wife of a good friend, only a few years older than me, just got diagnosed with breast cancer and is having a mastectomy next week ... scary).

Probably, I just need to be more diligent about eating iron-rich foods. I don't know what else I can do to feel better. I already eat well and carefully, I take a whole handful of supplements every day, and since the end of July have been exercising 40 minutes or so, four or five days a week. I get plenty of rest. I don't smoke, drink (well, very rarely) or do any other thing I can think of that I know is bad for me. I'm busy and overworked, but no more than usual.

Is my work environment toxic? Could I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? Maybe it's a new allergy, or maybe there's mold in the house!

Anyway, I'm trying to figure it out and fix it. With the holiday season now officially open, I am going to need all the extra energy I can get.

Bridges

This is the bridge I ride over on my way to work every day. I was shocked in September when I turned the corner just before you get there and found the whole place bound up in yellow caution tape and blocked with orange signs declaring the bridge CLOSED. How was I supposed to get to work if the only bridge for several miles around was CLOSED?

On closer inspection I discovered that the sign should have read, "CLOSED TO CARS." If you're on a bike you can still sail on through, thanks to the nifty little pedestrian walkway someone tacked on to the south side of the bridge about a hundred years ago. Not only that, but with the bridge closed to cars, the most treacherous half-mile of my short commute becomes also mostly useless to (and therefore virtually unused by) cars, since almost nobody ever drives on that road except to cut across to the bridge.

Everyone in town is bitching about it, of course. The creek (more like a small river, especially in winter) runs the length of the valley, and there are only three bridges across it. Now that the middle one is closed, traffic to the other two has gotten even worse than usual. I hope it will help people understand that the geography of the valley is not negotiable—there is a mountain on each side of it, and a large creek down the middle, and these features will always determine to at least some extent (assuming they don't decide to pave over the creek, or divert it to sell to rich people) the routes that can be used to move around. You can't build lots of roads in a place like this.

You don't need lots of roads in a place like this. It is totally bikeable. You can get anywhere you want to go in the entire watershed in less than an hour, and most places are no more than ten or fifteen minutes apart. It's a beautiful place to ride, as well.

I know sometimes people "have to" drive. Like if you're taking a bunch of kids somewhere. Or driving an old person to the store. Or moving something heavy and hard to hold onto, like a couple of tons of crushed granite. But most people could probably get where they need to go an awful lot of the time on a bike instead of in a car, if they felt inclined to.

Anyway. I've really been enjoying being out in the world instead of trapped in a car. Yesterday morning I had to drive to work because I found my rear tire unexpectedly flat and didn't have time to change it before a 7am committee meeting, and I almost started crying right there in the driveway—not because the tire was flat, but because I'd been looking forward to the ride all while I was getting dressed and ready to go. This morning I fixed it and was rewarded by the sight of the NEW pedestrian bridge suddenly open for business several weeks ahead of schedule. It's beautiful! And it's not an attached lane on what is going to be the new bridge—it's completely separate and self-contained, and almost three times as wide as the old one. I like it very much.

In other news, I got a new red messenger bag over the weekend (an impulse buy on sale at REI) and every time I see it sitting there I think, "Whose bag is that?"

Shorn

This morning I finally gave up trying to love my
new hairdo. I stuffed it into a ponytail, jammed on my helmet, and rode back to the place to request a repair—the upshot of which is that I've now lost a full four inches all around, instead of the modest half inch trim I had asked for to begin with. In other words, I'm now smack back in the middle of that awkward stage of growing out hair in which it's long enough to constantly get in your way, but still too short to really do anything with.

At least now it's more or less all one length again, and it's still long enough to put into a ponytail, though the ponytail is so short it will stay neither inside nor outside the collar of my jacket when I'm wearing the bike helmet, so it's constantly poking the back of my neck. Grr.

On the upside, the woman at the place did the fix at no charge and was so fast and efficient that when she was done there was still time to ride over to the high school and vote yes on M, a local measure that will place a 10-year moratorium on the production of genetically engineered organisms in Sonoma county. There were other measures on the ballot too, most of which I opposed. I figure if the governator is sending out full-color glossy brochures urging me to support them, that's all I really need to know (though I did spend some time studying the voter's guide in depth, as always, just to make sure).

Moving on... Near the end of our road there's a section I call Squirrel Crossing, because every time I go by there are squirrels running back and forth across the road. Except at night, when there are rabbits. One side of the road is bounded by the creek running parallel and only about five feet off the pavement, and on the other there's a low stone barrier of a type that's very common around here, built by stacking head-sized rocks (the ground is full of them) on top of each other without mortar to make a pretty solid little wall about three feet high and eighteen inches thick. With these physical obstacles on each side it doesn't seem like it would be the easiest place to cross the road, but squirrels and rabbits have their own ways, which I don't presume to understand.

Anyway, this morning when I was riding up to Squirrel Crossing I saw something that made me laugh out loud. A baby squirrel dashed out into the road just as I approached, and was running across it as fast as she could go, when suddenly she noticed that her path was blocked by several huge puddles. You could practically see the little thought balloon above her head when she realized what she was about to run into: "Wha..?!?" And then in one dramatic split-second she made a decision. Instead of turning back or going around, she seized upon the courage of her convictions, leapt into the air and FLEW across the puddle! It took my breath away to see it. And she very nearly made it. But not quite. Her landing came up a bit short, and she splashed into a couple of inches of water on the far side beach before becoming airborne again and flying off into the creek bottom with a glittering spray of puddle water trailing off her feet like a comet.

This is one reason why I love riding the bike. I love being right up in the face of such spectacular events! And when you're right up in the face of the world the way you are on a bike, spectacular events are everywhere.

Send happy healing thoughts

So much darkness to talk about lately. The woman who sits next to me at work has been out all week for "personal reasons," and we just found out that it's because one of her old boyfriends dropped by her house to beat the hell out of her last weekend. Our boss told us what had happened, because she's coming back to work on Monday and doesn't want to have to answer any questions about why her face is all busted up. Nobody's seen her yet so we don't know how bad it's going to look, but I'm assuming the part you can see is probably the least of what you'd be dealing with after going through something like that. This office is almost all women, and all afternoon we've been talking about and around the topic of violence against women. Everyone has a story; it's shocking to realize how commonplace it still is.

I've never been beaten in my life. I did experience a couple of memorable spankings as a kid, but there was never any question of anyone trying to actually hurt me—I always felt like it was just something they did when they didn't know how else to get my attention. The last time I was spanked I was somewhere around 10 or 11, probably. I don't remember my infraction, but I do remember fighting my dad over it—writhing and kicking so much that he couldn't hold me—and realizing that my resistance was making him really angry. And then there was this moment when we both realized how angry he was, and at that moment he just instantly stopped trying to get me to submit, and left the room. I think it kind of startled us both. He wrote me a letter about it when I was in college, apologizing.

What's the best way to support someone who's been a victim of violent crime? She's a very private person and we're not close, not even what I would really call "friends." We just work together. But I want to do something. Maybe I'll put together a little gift pack of self-care things—something for a soothing bath, healing tea, arnical gel ... Or maybe she'd rather not have the extra attention. I know the boss is planning a little something. Maybe I should just sign the card along with everyone else and leave it at that, at least for now.

Several of the women in my office were talking about the punishments they'd like to inflict upon the man who did it. I struggled mightily to keep my mouth shut, and mostly succeeded. Sometimes people need to be allowed to spend some time with their anger. I get angry, too.

About this I feel angry too, of course, and also just sad and bewildered. I don't think it really helps to return violence for violence, but what are we supposed to do about people who've done terrible things? This man, I gather, had just gotten out of jail a very short time ago. Now he'll most likely go back in. Then one day he'll get out again. And then what?

In my endeavor to be seen

I went ahead and updated that sign. It doesn't have quite the impact of the original, but I think it turned out kind of nicely. I might do a whole series, if I can think of any more slogans I like. Anyone want to produce them in plastic? Have your people call my people.

Now that it's dark by six again I'm starting to worry just the tiniest little bit about getting smeared all over the pavement while riding my bike home from work. I have lights on front and back, and reflective sidewalls, and a jacket with reflective tape, and a blinking red light on the back of my helmet. Oh, and one of those reflective triangles that I hang on the back of my backpack. And a rearview mirror. And I'm looking into flags and those tubes that light up the ground under your bike, and also those little lights that screw onto your valve stems so you can be seen more easily from the side.

Wearing a helmet every time I ride (at the boyfriend's insistence) has helped me get over my aversion to looking like a complete dork. So now I don't really care if people point and laugh as I ride by, blinking and flashing and just generally dazzling passersby with my embarrassing array of visibility-enhancing gear. As long as they see me, I'm happy.

Another post about death!

So we went to the Día de los Muertos exhibit last night. It was gorgeous, as usual. And this time it contained something I found disturbing: a simple altar built around the name of a woman I used to work with. I knew she'd been hospitalized a couple of years ago with complications from a brain aneurism, but the last I'd heard she'd made a full recovery and was doing great.

Has she died since then? The wording on the altar is unclear. I made a few phone calls today and nobody else knew anything either, so I'm going to assume that she's the person who made the altar, not the person being commemorated by it. But then, why was her name in the middle? I'm no expert on Mexican folk tradition, but my impression is that this is not how these things are typically done. Maybe, because she's an artist, she felt compelled to sign her work? Hrmrmm.

As for me, I've printed the photo of Stuart that Julie posted, and pulled together a few little mementos of other friends and loved ones who've passed, and tonight I'll be lighting a little candle and spending some time celebrating their lives.

The photo at the top is from The Skull Project, which commemorates all those killed in Iraq at this time last year. It was big news, around here at least, when the 2000th American was killed there earlier this month. Where will we be by next November?

Last year at some rally I bought one of these big yellow plastic bike signs that says, "Bicycling: a quiet statement against oil wars." Everyone's so hostile, defensive and self-righteous these days that I've never had the guts to actually hang it on my bike; I don't want to get squashed by some Hummer-driving patriot who thinks I need to learn a thing or two about supporting our boys. Beyond that, I don't think people's minds are changed by being insulted or yelled at, even by a "quiet statement" on the back of someone's bike. I would like people to realize, though, when they see me riding, that I'm not just doing it because I need to lose some weight. It really is a political statement for me, and very personal. What if I made a sign that said, "One less car—more room for you! (please don't run over me)"?

Something to think about. If you've seen any positive, happy, and thought-provoking pro-bike propaganda, leave me a link in the comments! I have a huge list of bookmarks for stuff like that. Maybe I'll post those one of these days.