Brown + red

Once again it's that time of year when I start thinking about what I'm going to wear all summer. Last year I tried and failed to find the perfect chunky brown Frankenstein sandals, and spent the entire season in a pair of serviceable but not 100% satisfactory Doc Martens. This year I've taken up the search again, and so far these Simple compostable "green" shoes are all I've found that comes anywhere close to what I want. But I'm not totally satisfied with the design of the upper (don't like the laces), and the soles are not tall enough. I briefly considered buying three pairs and stacking and sewing the soles myself ... but they're too expensive for that.

What I'm really trying to do is duplicate a pair of suede platform espadrilles I bought at the J. Crew outlet in Napa in about 1996. I liked them so much I bought two pairs of them, and still have one pair (why didn't I keep them both?!), which are now so close to completely worn out that I hardly dare to wear them anymore, lest they fall apart completely leaving me with no sample or pattern to show what I want.

How hard is it to make shoes? Is this something people actually do? Somebody must! But who? I'm so picky about these things, and so loyal once I find something I love – wouldn't it be great to be able to go to a shoemaker the same way you go to a tailor, and say, "Here's how they should look, here's how they should fit, here's what to make them out of, and I want two pairs in brown, two in black and two in red."

Anyway. Such lofty matters I'm occupied with these days, eh? The other thing I've been working with is color combinations for my summer uniform. This year I'm thinking I want to do brown and red. And green. And of course I have a lot of things that are black, too. But the brown and red combo is making me very happy right now. Also gray and white, but these are not colors I am good at wearing – they'll have to work their way into other places, like drawings. I bought a whole handful of various gray Tombow markers the other day and have been playing with them, making all these simple and obscure line drawings that remind me of snow, and the beach.

I also love this red camisole, which I just ordered from the linen clothing manufacturer that makes about 80% of the clothes I purchase. With a long brown rough linen or hemp wrap skirt and some clunky tall Frankenstein sandals, and some kind of wrap around the top for cool evenings – I've been obsessed with wrapped clothing lately, specifically the dhoti, having just picked up (cheap, from the remainder table) a fabulous coffee table book on Costumes, Textiles & Jewellery of India that shows several different ways of wrapping dhotis, turbans, etc., and also offers the information that in certain societies of India, cut and sewn clothing is considered unclean, and an abomination! A notion I will be interested in exploring this year – anyway, I think this red and brown thing is going to be great, if I can only find the right sandals.

There are also these, but I can't really picture myself wearing them on the bike. Plus, they cost almost five hundred bucks.

The first reward

Sleep deprivation does not agree with me, so I am really looking forward to next week, by which time I hope to have gotten the hang of going to bed early. Getting up early, I'm discovering, is really hard when you don't also know how to fall asleep early. Although that is becoming easier, as well, with every morning I wake up rumpled, muzzy, exhausted and confused.

This morning when the alarm went off I was dreaming that the Mac guy (from the Mac and PC commercials – yes, I am spending way too much time with computers these days) was standing behind me at my desk at work, looking over my shoulder as I worked feverishly on a tricky page layout. I was eating a sandwich (the same turkey and avocado sandwich I ate for breakfast the other day when a kind co-worker took pity on me) out of a brown paper lunch bag, only it wasn't a brown paper lunch bag, it was an empty plastic package of Cheetos (the crunchy kind, not the crispy). There was an apple in there, too, and a little baggie of baby carrots.

"Can I help you with something?" I asked the Mac guy, irritably. "Um, you're eating my sandwich," he said. And it was his sandwich. In the dream, I made a quick calculation, trying to figure out whether I was going to have time to get out for lunch or not – meaning, whether I was going to give him back his sandwich or not – and then snapped to a decision. "Sorry, man," I said. And stuffed the entire thing into my mouth.

Oh, what a week it's been. Über-overtime, to the point where I'm clocking out for lunch, going back to my desk to work, and clocking back in a half hour later, all so "the government" doesn't sock it to my bosses for working us too hard and denying us our breaks. Hmm. Yesterday I did have the sandwich to eat – that was nice. The day before I failed to plan ahead and by the end of the day (night) all I'd eaten all day was a handful of stale seaweed crackers and three candy canes that had been hanging on my office-mate's desk lamp since Thanksgiving. Right now the skull lollipop someone gave me for Día de los Muertos 2005 is starting to look really good ... but I will resist, I will resist and abstain, and as soon as I finish writing this I'll go home and make myself a nice piece of toast. I've been longing for it all day.

So: the reward. After the weird dream, I hauled myself out of bed, got my groove on, etc. etc. – and then, just as I was turning to leave my room I happened to glance out the north window into the back yard and BAM! There was the most beautiful view of gorgeous golden light slanting through the bare branches of the peach tree and falling on the flowers of a 12-foot-wide rosemary bush in full bloom. There was a little frost on the leaves still, so I got purpley-periwinkle colored flowers, dark green and silvery leaves, wet reddish bark on the bigger branches, all against a backdrop of redwood, fir and oak trees. Totally fabulous, and something you would just never get to see at any other time of day. That alone was worth getting up for. Worth eating nothing today but chocolate croissants left over from a meeting, and a slice of jalapeño pizza I know I'm going to regret by tomorrow. Worth realizing, a mere half hour ago, that the reason I've been feeling slightly uncomfortable in my seat all day is because I put my underwear on backwards this morning. Worth knowing that next week is going to be even more grueling.

This is a picture of a rosemary twig in blossom, in case you've never seen one. Imagine a small room full of this. It's really something to see. When the sun is out, the bees are all over it. On Monday they were – the day I was changing my bike tubes out on the patio. It was lovely. Then it rained for a few days. Now it's clear again, and cold. I love it.

So yeah. I'm pretty tired, but still planning to continue getting up at 6:44 a.m. every day until Easter, even and including tomorrow, even though Mr. A is actively campaigning for me to give myself a break and sleep in until 7:30. But I think I will remain strong on this one. The problem is not so much getting up early, but not getting enough sleep, and not planning well to make sure I have food available on deadline days. I will get my act together over the weekend, and begin next week ready to roll.

6:44

Well, I did it. It wasn't so bad. In fact, I was actually awake by 6:20 anyway, so I got to sleep in a little after all.

The first thing I did was notice the thought, "I don't have to say I'm giving up the snooze button – I could say I'm getting acquainted with the early morning." I mulled that over as I made the bed, put on my slippers and shambled into the kitchen to put on some water for tea, something I never do at home, as this is more properly the first step in my settling-in-at-the-office routine. Maybe to emphasize the idea that this is the time of year when I try to examine a pattern and practice doing something different, I decided to wipe off the top of the stove while my water was heating, and promptly seared the hell out of my left middle fingertip. That effectively ended any trouble I might have had waking up, as I plunged my entire hand into a small blue bowl of ice water.

And thus it began: my spring practice period for 2007. I've decided to call it "spring training" instead of Lent this year, first of all out of respect to Catholics who might take offense to my weird co-opting of their tradition, and second, because I think it's a more accurate description of what I'm trying to do – train myself. Stepping out of my beloved rut for a few weeks is a great way to increase my awareness of my own thoughts and actions, and hopefully become more free to act appropriately in response to what is actually happening in my life from moment to moment, instead of relying so much on auto-pilot.

This seems to be a theme for me right now. I got to my office and found my horoscope for this week had already been emailed:

Question: Which part of you is too tame, overcivilized, and super-domesticated, and what are you going to do about it? Answer, from Jason R., a Cancerian reader: "I was like a mole in a suburban backyard. I had just one little path I trod each day: to the compost pile and back. I chewed on orange rinds and leftover cabbage. I was tamed by the comfort of my familiar environment, content to have a narrow vision. But then I was eaten by a hawk, and became part of a wild, free body. Now I perch on the tops of trees and the peaks of roofs. I survey giddy-wide horizons, from the river to the mesa and far beyond. I have a wealth of choices. Where to fly? What to hunt? Who are my allies? My thoughts breathe deep, like the slow explosion of sun on the morning lake."

"But then I was eaten by a hawk." I love that! Not that I want to be eaten – but that idea of rising above the fear of change and using it as an opportunity to look at things in a new way – that, I think, is useful, and something I try to remember every year at this time. It all ties into Easter, too, and the whole message of Christianity, as far as I'm concerned – the belief that we are both finite and eternal, that we can choose to die to the life we've lived so far and be reborn with a new understanding of who we are, that this can happen every day, every moment, at any time, and that this is something to celebrate!

I like the way Christianity embodies this concept in the physical being called Jesus. It makes me nervous to write about this, because I don't want to offend certain people or make them feel bad that I believe something different than what they believe ... but with that disclaimer I'll go ahead and say that I really like the story of the resurrection! I like the Buddhist way of teaching the same idea of impermanence, that we have no fixed identity, that nothing has any inherent existence, that some things are just a mystery ... but I will admit that it's been hard for me to really understand these ideas in the language of Buddhism, sometimes (although that could be because I grew up speaking a different symbolic language). The story of an actual guy who came back from the dead makes it all seem so much more real – he's a person, I'm a person, I've seen people die, I'm not just thinking about all this, I know what it's like. And if it's possible for a dead person to come back to life, then maybe it really could be possible for me to change, too. I could stop being addicted to sugar, for example. Or start waking up earlier in the morning.

Maybe that's why so many people feel so compelled to insist on a literal interpretation of the story. They somehow feel like if he didn't really die and really come back, then the whole story falls apart. But to me it doesn't. Wasn't Jesus famous for teaching via parables, anyway? And what parable could be more compelling than one about the dead guy who got his life back? He was dead, and then he got his LIFE BACK.

Form and emptiness, emptiness and form. Funny that only by studying Buddhism is all this starting to sink in with me.

(Sigh) I dunno. I'm no theologian, and I'm okay with that. Today I am just enjoying thinking about the possibilities that may arise for me once I get into the groove of this earlier-morning thing.

P.S. Just before I woke up this morning I dreamed I was doing yoga, resting comfortably in a full forward bend (Paschimothanasana) – like this, only stretched out on the floor. It felt so good (in the dream) to stretch my back and legs, and to be able to relax and breathe in this position – something I used to be able to do, but not anymore. I decided to make that a goal, too – not to have accomplished by Easter, but just something to work toward. Maybe next year I'll be able to take a nap like this! (And yes, I'm already beginning to obsess about naps – yet another benefit of early rising – better naps!)

Hand to heart

Since I'm online anyway, researching remedies for post-operative dog swelling, I will report that I've spent the better part of the day today kneeling on the floor in front of the couch, with my hand holding warm compresses against Tater's chest, feeling his sweet little dog heart beat, beat, beat. All day long. It's been nice.

The swelling isn't bad, and the incision doesn't look infected, but his licking woke me up this morning – I had thought he wouldn't be able to reach that one – and the area was starting to look a little angry. So I applied warm cloths for a half hour at a time, every hour or two, and it really brought the swelling down AND seems to have stopped him from wanting to lick so much. I'm glad I still have one more day to keep an eye on him before I have to go back to work; I'm hoping I won't have to make him wear one of those horrible Elizabethan collars during the day. If he still feels inclined to lick tomorrow, I may try having him wear a t-shirt instead and see if that discourages him enough.

Other plans for the holiday include spending some time in the yard again (this time in the sun), washing the dishes again, and installing new front and rear tubes on my bike. They were a Valentine's day present from Mr. A, along with some fancy silk lingerie – well, lightweight silk long johns – which are my kinda lingerie. I'm excited about the tubes most of all – my front one has been going flat every couple of days or so, and the back one is okay but it has a Presta valve and I'm always worried it will go flat when I'm out and about, because I can only pump it back up again at home, where I have the Presta adaptor. So now I'll have new Schrader tubes on both wheels (plus Mr. Tuffys). Such an exciting life I lead!

In the background right now I am watching the Science of Sleep, which a friend at work recommended to me. Visually, I'm enjoying it very much. Right now the guy is dressed in a furry brown bear suit – only with a long tail – and playing drums with a pair of paintbrushes, with a band doing some unknown version of my favorite old Velvet Underground tune (the one where Mo Tucker sings "If you close the door, the night will last forever"). Now he's in his neighbor woman's apartment and it's all full of strange toy animals, bird cages, a stuffed fabric telephone and typewriter – all these are reminding me of the stuffed toys I used to make when I was a kid. There was a tiny blue fleece elephant, which I still have somewhere, a green cat made out of an old wool cable-knit sock, dolls with long dresses and funny little felt shoes with real laces ... I used to love making that stuff.

Seeing it in a movie makes me want to start sewing toys again. But what to do with them when they're done? Sure, I have a large supply of nieces and nephews ... that would be one place to send them. Or I could sell them, I suppose. Or just give them away. I've been stalking all these craft blogs lately, and am constantly surprised at how madly people seem to love even just the most basic handmade things. It seems like a very supportive community, but I've been avoiding entering it because ... hmm. I guess because ... well, hmm. Why? Because what if people are mean to me? Or don't like my stuff? Or do like it, and steal my designs?

I have set myself a goal, however, of stepping over all these "what ifs" and putting at least a few little things into a shop at Etsy, which, if you don't already know about it, is a nice place to start sharing artwork without having to deal with any kind of pressure to produce more or faster or better than you want to, or can. I will post a link here when I have something to show.

Finally, I'm still thinking about this Lent thing. Ash Wednesday is this week – this Wednesday – and the closer it gets, the more nervous I feel about getting up early. I never felt this way when I gave up chocolate, or even sugar. I knew those would be hard, but I never worried that I wouldn't be able to do it. Getting up early scares me, though. Maybe because my only real experience of waking up very early took place during the years when I was having depression and panic disorders, when I would wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning in a deep, sweating, nauseous panic and feel absolutely terrified to open my eyes ... But this is not going to be like that. For one thing, I'm not planning to get up at 4 a.m. Mr. A and I have discussed it and I think it's going to be something more like 6:22, which is still early, but very doable. Possibly 6:44. I'll unveil the actual plan as soon as I decide for sure what I'm going to do.

But for now, I have at least one more day to sleep until I wake up naturally – tomorrow, Presidents' Day. And Tuesday, too, except that on Tuesday I think I'll be going in to work early, hoping to get a jump on a deadline I'm afraid is going to bite me on the back later this week. I'm not going to think about that right now though. Right now, all I have to do is get Tater comfortable, get me comfortable, and get to sleep. So I'm going to go do that.

Patchwork puppy

Tater had surgery yesterday to remove a few of those weird little lumps that dogs get. The vet said it wasn't really necessary to do anything about them, but because of their location (right up under his armpits) they would've gotten in his way if they ever got very big, and by then it would be much more difficult, painful and dangerous to take them off. Since he had to go under anesthesia for the surgery anyway, I figured we might as well do all the other things he hates to have done – so they scaled and polished his teeth, removed a couple of little warts (one on his elbow, one on his back), shaved his feet, gave him a pedicure and cleaned his, um, glands ... the ones you know need to be cleaned when your dog starts to skootch his butt across the carpet. All this came to a grand total of just over eight hundred bucks, and worth every penny, I suppose, for the peace of mind of knowing he has a totally clean bill of health, though my heart did sink a bit when I heard the total.

He was still a little out of it when I picked him up, and he cried all the way home in the car, whether from pain or anxiety or relief I couldn't tell. As soon as we got home he went straight to my bed and tried to jump up, but couldn't quite make it all the way. I lifted him in and he collapsed into a pile of pillows with a deep sigh, so happy to be home that it almost made me cry. I stretched out next to him on the bed and he leaned back against me and fell asleep instantly.

Mr. A, as usual, took the utmost good care of both of us, opening the windows for fresh air, pulling the curtains closed to darken the room, turning on the little Christmas lights so we could still see, cooking up a special "dog hospital" dinner of cottage cheese and chicken (on the vet's recommendation), and holding a little cup of water for him to sip (he hadn't been allowed anything to drink since early that morning, but our post-op instructions said to limit his food and water until the day after surgery).

Today we are all feeling much better, though his shaved spots and stitches make him look a little scary. We spent most of the day lounging around in bed, and in the sun, and then inside on the couch. I'm having some of the worst cramps I've had in my life, so it's been nice to be able to be at home instead of hunched over my desk at work. Speaking of which, I've been totally swamped at my office for a couple of weeks, still doing all of my regular work as well as (now) my new art director stuff. There are a lot of frustrations right now but overall I'm enjoying the change.

Enjoying it, but also feeling kind of surreal and overwhelmed, and not much like doing any writing about any of it. Last week I had a major meltdown (PMS-driven, of course) in which I arrived home from work hungry and late, expecting dinner, found no dinner and the dishes undone, and imploded into a hideous rage/despair that was only calmed by stalking up and down the yard for twenty minutes, then sitting in my big blue chair for another twenty minutes, all in the dark, in the rain (after first washing the dishes, which only took about five minutes to do – certainly no task worthy of my reaction to it). Sometimes I swear my hormones can make me feel like a totally different person, one I'm glad doesn't come around very often.

Tonight I am watching a strange old black and white movie on PBS, in which Marlene Dietrich has her trousers leg ripped off (exposing one truly amazing gam, va va voom) by some sex-crazed soldiers in a seedy post-war waterfront bar – all while playing the accordion and singing. She's pretty fabulous.

Baby's back

I dreamed about a lost baby all night last night. First she was a little brown and white puppy I found on the beach. She was wearing all kinds of beautiful collars and tags around her neck, but I couldn't read any of them – didn't quite want to read them, because that would mean I'd have to give her back to her people, and I wanted to keep her. I worried that Tater would be jealous and I held her up for him to smell, so I could quickly pull her away if he tried to snap at her. Then she was a baby person, five months old. I didn't know where she came from and didn't have anything to feed her. "Try some blueberry yogurt," I said, holding the spoon to her lips. "It's full of antioxidants!" She didn't want yogurt, though, or anything else. Finally it occurred to me that at her age, probably all she really wanted to do was nurse. But who was going to nurse her? I felt desperate to figure it out, so I could keep her. I woke up crying.

As I stood under a hot shower, slowly waking up, I realized it was Anna Nicole Smith's baby I was dreaming about. I hope somebody is holding her and loving her and protecting her from all this heavyosity. I hope she grows up happy and safe and grounded and real, and that she has a wonderful life. I guess I hope that for everyone.

I used to have those dreams about finding a baby all the time in my early 20s – probably once or twice a month. Sometimes it was my own baby, sometimes I just found it somewhere, but in all cases my main concern was always how to get rid of it, by getting it to a place where it would be taken care of by anyone but me. The primary emotion of those dreams was anxiety and panic – I'm not capable of taking care of a baby! It's beautiful, but it isn't mine, and I can't do this! I don't want to do this. But I don't want anything bad to happen to the baby, either.

By my late 20s the lost baby dream had gone away and I started having a recurring dream about missing a plane, being stranded in a city far away from home and not being able to get back. That one lasted from about 1992 through ... well, early last year. Over the years, the dream changed until I had made peace with not knowing where I was or how to get back to familiar ground, and the panic of being lost was replaced by curiosity: what is this place like?

And now the baby's back. It's the first time I've had this dream in almost 20 years, and it's changed now, too – this time, I knew I could take care of the baby, and I wanted to. I wasn't sure how it was all going to work out, but the fear this time was not of keeping the baby, but of losing her.

It's always been clear to me that these baby dreams aren't really about babies – they're about my creative life and my fear of not being good enough to put my work out there and really try to DO something. So it's pretty exciting to have this particular dream right now, at a time when I'm tentatively starting to ramp up a bit and actually work again after so many years of not – I'm taking it as a sign that I really am stronger and braver now, and that I really can do this. Though I'm still in the process of getting clear on what "this" is going to be.

I've been consumed with art and design lately, drawing and doodling and making little things here and there – it feels like how you practice scales on the piano before you start to play for real. Yesterday, feeling excited and inspired, I went to the websites of a couple of art schools around here and promptly descended into a deep pit of anxiety about how I could never go to art school, never even get IN to art school, and most importantly, never pay for art school – this was the biggest obstacle in my mind, after looking at the tuition and fee schedules. My entire annual salary would barely cover a year of tuition at the main school I'd love to go to.

It was so distressing to feel so excited, and then so crushed, all within just a few minutes! I find it's still very hard for me to be with those feelings when they come up – I desperately want to get away from them by any means necessary, be it food, television, shopping, conversation, whatever. But I hung out there until I calmed down, and then took myself over to the website for the local junior college, which also has an art department, and which costs only twenty bucks per credit (instead of $1200), and which may be a good place to take a few baby steps toward learning some of the skills I'm interested in picking up.

Thinking again about Anna Nicole Smith, I'm thinking about those words, "I'm sorry," and trying to think what I would feel comfortable saying instead, when somebody dies. The only thing that comes to mind is "I'm grateful." Grateful for that person's life, grateful for all our lives, for being here together, for being able to feel, for being able to love, for remembering, for forgetting. That's what I really feel, and it's basically the opposite of feeling sorry. But I think people wouldn't know how to respond if I actually said that.

I guess the way I see it is that our being here at all is such a tiny blip in the eternity of time when we're not here, that when someone dies the main thing I feel is just a very strong sense of awe at the mystery of it all, and gratitude for having been here to know them. Sad to miss them, sometimes even devastated. But happy to have known someone I loved enough to miss.

On May 10 it will have been 25 years since my best friend from high school was killed in a car crash. That was my first experience of the death of someone I loved. Right now three people I know are dying, and the Jeeps's decline seems to be accelerating as well. Also, the trees are starting to blossom, new little lambs are frolicking in every field (complete with long, joyfully wagging tails), there's more and more daylight every day, and we're finally getting some serious rain around here, which always livens things up. I feel a little bit preoccupied with death and dying, and at the same time, happy and excited about life and living, learning, building, creating – all of it.

I like the way it feels to hold all of this in my heart, all at the same time. I feel like I'm really here.

P.S. I practiced slowing down last night by watching four chocolate chip cookies baking through the glass window in the door of the toaster oven. It took 17.5 minutes for them to turn from white to brown, and at such a slow pace, every tiny bubble of butter sizzling, every chunk of chocolate melting from matte to glossy, the first tendrils of aroma curling out through the steam vent ... every little change feels miraculous and worthy of celebration.

Do I dare to wake up early?

The above in reference to Prufrock's famous question about the peach, in acknowledgement that getting older changes things about us that we might not expect ...

I have been thinking about Lent, which begins next week, and trying to decide on something to give up. Last year I did sugar, and had a pretty good experience. Too good, maybe – it was hard, but not as hard as I thought it was going to be. This year, rather than focusing on food, I've been playing with the idea of taking a look at one of my other less favorite habits: sloth. What if, I've been asking myself, instead of planning my entire life around being able to sleep as late as possible every morning (based on what I have to do that day), I decided to bite the bullet and get up at the same time every single day for 40 days?

I'm not talking about sleep deprivation, which I don't think is healthy – all I'd have to do to get enough sleep would be to plan ahead and go to bed at an appropriate time. Instead, I would simply be regulating myself fairly strictly in an area where I've made a great point of allowing myself the maximum latitude possible. The goal is twofold: one, to challenge myself by doing something really hard – not so hard that I can't do it, but harder than I'm comfortable with – and two, to create a new habit of better self-discipline.

My usual practice is to give myself just enough time in the morning to get dressed and transport myself on time to wherever I need to be. Usually I wake up earlier than I need to, and spend the time before the alarm moving into and out of dreams, looking at the various things my mind has brought up to be played with, and stretching and snuggling with the Taterman. I've also been known to make liberal use of the snooze button – a great way to get into lucid dreaming, by the way, if you've ever been interested in it. I almost never just get up when the alarm sounds. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I did that. My dreamtime is too important to me.

But having Mr. A out of the house by 5 a.m. every weekday for these last many months has caused me to wonder what it would be like if I were the one waking up early. Could I even do it? Why would I? Why should I? After all, most mornings I don't even have to be to work until 10.

That last point is actually what's caught my imagination. If I have until 10 a.m. before I have to be anywhere, and if I could manage to get up quite a bit earlier than that, just think of how different my day would feel! I would suddenly have all this extra time in the morning to do whatever I want, and in the evenings I would probably not have my usual terrible time falling asleep because I'd be tired from having been up so early.

Just for the record, I'm not one of those people who believes getting up early is somehow naturally superior to and more virtuous than getting up late – we all have the same number of hours in the day, and early or late, as long as you're healthy and feeling good and getting everything done that you need to do, what does it matter what time you sleep? I will admit to feeling vaguely jealous of people who always wake up very early – the way they talk about the calm and quiet of the early morning, the beauty of the sunrise, etc. etc. makes me feel nostalgic for something ... I'm not sure exactly what. My experience of waking up very early is that I usually end up feeling nauseous, disoriented and slightly surreal for most of the day. And then, when it's time to go to bed again, I have trouble falling asleep.

Still, I'm curious about what it would be like if I did it every day for awhile. Would I get used to it, or would it mess up my sleep patterns even more? What would I do in those extra morning hours?

Probably the most important question is, what time would I choose to wake up every day? Remember, I'm not trying to totally destroy myself – just mix it up a little. Also, I'll be applying the same schedule on weekends as well as during the week, so it can't be too brutal. In addition, there's the matter of my strange number-phobia, which dictates that only a few times in each hour are okay to wake up at (e.g., 7:25 is acceptable, 7:30 is not). Right now I'm leaning toward something in the 6:30–7 a.m. range, and considering departing from my list of approved times. Maybe 6:41? 6:44? Or is that too wimpy? Maybe I should say 6:03 or 6:11?

What time do you usually get up in the morning? Do you use the snooze? How many times?

(An aside: I've been preparing for this new discipline by flossing my teeth every single day since I went to the dentist a few weeks ago. Flossing is another one of those things I hate to do, but which I know I should do ... So I've been being diligent, and just within the last few days have reached a place where I don't mind doing it anymore. My earlier habit was to do it only once or twice a week (terrible, I know!).)

In connection with all this Lent business, I wonder if you're aware that there are Seven Contrary Virtues that correspond to the Seven Deadly Sins? These are Humility, Kindness, Abstinence, Chastity, Patience, Liberality and Diligence, and practicing them is supposed to save you from Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed and Sloth, respectively. Who knew?

Ever since I read Thich Nhat Hanh's rewriting of the Five Wonderful Precepts about ten or eleven years ago, I've been totally on the bandwagon with this idea of phrasing credos (or whatever you want to call them) in positive terms instead of negative. He says, as an example, that if your rule is "Don't kill," it's so specific and closed-ended that it leaves all sorts of ways for people to get around it. Someone might say, "Well, it's true that I eat meat – but hey, I'm not the one who kills the animal!" Whereas if you phrase it in a positive way, "Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I vow to cultivate compassion and to learn the ways of protecting the lives of people, animals and plants," it creates a much larger and more meaningful challenge. You're not just held to obeying one strictly-defined "NO," but are free to explore all the countless ways of saying "YES!"

In a way, I suppose Lent is about saying No. I'm not now nor have I ever been Catholic, so I'm not all that familiar with the concept, though I do find it useful. In general though I like to say Yes more than No ... especially because No seems to come so naturally to me. So maybe instead of bumming myself out with the stern and intimidating "Thou shalt not sleep past 6:44 a.m." I'll create a positive version of the same challenge: "I shall rise to greet each beautiful new day at exactly 6:44 a.m.!"

Ugh. This is going to need some work. And possibly a new alarm clock as well.

Cell phone etiquette

Something kind of odd happened to me this afternoon. I was standing in line at the cafe, about to order lunch, when my cell phone rang. I took it outside to answer it (even though there was almost nobody in the cafe), and my "hello?" was answered by an irritated woman's voice demanding, "Who is this?"

"Um, you called me," I said. "Who are you trying to reach?"

"I did not call you," she replied. "What is the meaning of this? Who are you?"

Well! I was kind of stumped as to how to answer. I didn't recognize the number, and I knew I hadn't called her, not even by accident, since the keypad was locked and anyway, as everyone knows, phones only ring when somebody calls them (not when you call somebody). Also, I didn't appreciate being yelled at by someone I didn't even know.

"Who are you?" I asked again. "My phone rang, and I answered it. Maybe you got a wrong number?"

"No, I did not," she said. "Now who is this?"

So weird! I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't say anything. Then she said, "How did you get on my line? Hang up, hang up!"

"What do you mean, hang up? You're the one who made the call! You hang up." I don't know why I said that, except that I suddenly felt like I was being attacked, and I didn't want to back down. Some stranger calls me up out of the blue and starts interrogating me and ordering me around? I'll show her who's the boss of me! Me, that's who!

Only after I finally did hang up did I realize how weird it was for me to react so defensively. What do I care what a stranger says on the phone? I could have just hung up without saying anything at all. But also, how weird of her! I looked up the number in the reverse directory when I got back to my office and it's just some residence, nobody I know. Doesn't that seem kind of rude, though? To dial a wrong number (or whatever happened), and then start abusing the person who answers?

While I'm on the topic of etiquette, another thing that's been bothering me lately is that there's this certain person who works with me who is constantly walking up behind me at my desk and leaning over my shoulder to look on my computer screen and ask, "Whatchya working on?" I know it's probably only because they think my work is more interesting than theirs, and it's not like I have anything to hide, but I just have always hated it when people come in and bug me while I'm working. First, because I have to stop working in order to talk to them, and second, because it makes me feel like I'm being scrutinized and spied on, and third, because ... well, I guess just because I have a deep hatred for that kind of stupid small talk, especially with people I don't particularly like, and especially when I'm on deadline, which I almost always am.

So that's my grouse for today.