Friday, October 31, 2008

Many miniature witches, and a party


Somewhere in there is my friend's five-year-old kid, all dressed up for Halloween and singin' and dancin' her little heart out. Too cute.

Last Sunday, the day of the play, the temperature topped out at about 93 degrees. Yesterday fall finally arrived for real with the first big rain – the kind that makes the air smell like trees again, instead of like ... nothing. Dust.

It was a perfect day for another party, the going back home to India party of a semi-celebrity and sort of friend. Another friend was throwing the party, at the big yoga studio in town, and I almost didn't go because I don't know the celebrant very well and I really wanted to go home to sit in the garden in my rain coat and enjoy the storm.

I'm glad I went to the party after all. I saw more there people that I knew than I had expected, and everything was so beautiful – miles and miles of marigold garlands, flowers, fruit, vegetables, an amazing pumpkin curry, apple cake, candles, music, singing, chanting, dancing. At the end there was even a long section of chanting Hare Krishna and dancing, which I said reminded me of going for Sunday dinner at the Krishna temple when I was in college – and when you got to that part of the singing you knew you were about to eat – and the friend I was telling laughed and said, "[Another friend] just said the same thing." The other friend being a gorgeous white-haired man about my father's age whom I've had a platonic crush on for almost 15 years now.

More than just a great party though it felt really good to reconnect with some community at this time of year. It also reminded me how much I love that studio; I chatted with another friend who teaches there and decided to start going to his beginner's class, which I've never been to before. I even met someone cool who could turn out to be a new friend – exciting! That doesn't happen very often.

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Thursday, October 30, 2008

7-election?


I don't know how much more of this I'm going to be able to take. Can't a person even buy a Slurpee anymore – or a caffeine-free Diet Pepsi for that matter – without being asked to weigh in on "the big issues"?

Around here everyone seems nervous, despite an almost universal agreement that there's no frickin way anyone but Obama is going to win. Concerns about Florida-style election fraud abound, along with a general faltering of confidence in the voting system in general and even some doubt as to whether he'll actually be able to – or be allowed to – make the changes he keeps talking about even if he does take office.

Still, hope feels good. Yesterday I spied this portrait displayed high up in a tree in a neighborhood not far from mine ...



A closer look:



That was gratifying to see. My favorite thing about this election is that it seems to have motivated so many people to sit up, take notice, and get involved for a change – something that never seemed to happen, at least not to this degree, in any other election in recent memory. I'm loving all the homemade t-shirts, posters, buttons, signs and stickers.

All the same I'll be glad when it's over. One can stand only so much excitement, especially at such an already-busy time of year.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Home again


I'm back – just too busy to write. I spent a quick and wonderful weekend in Utah celebrating my dad's 70th birthday, and the moment I stepped back into my California life a gigantic wave of work and activity washed over me, which I am still surfing to the best of my ability.

It's a good thing. Although I don't like being this frantic all the time, it's very satisfying to feel necessary, to know I'm contributing, to finish a few big projects and see that my work is good.

More pictures and activity reports to come; right now it's back to work.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008

Friday fashion


And speaking of fashion: I haven't totally given up on my Friday fashion coverage, though I'm considering changing the name to "occasional Friday fashion coverage."

This girl I saw in a bookstore a couple of weeks ago when it was raining – they were setting up for a reading and she was prancing around the shop in her kitty cat slicker and umbrella, singing a song that goes like this: "Meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow, MEE-OW!"

A few hours later I saw her and her mom again in the Thai restaurant across the street, and she was still singing the same song, only this time the words had something to do with "If I had a wish that I could give to you ...."

The thing is, she was a tiny person singing, but she didn't sound like a tiny person. She just sounded like a person, singing. A beautiful, clear, round voice. It was really something kind of special. And very sweet, on such a rainy night.

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Friday frivolity


Nothing better to take your mind off unspeakable horror than a stupid "pick that bag" contest.

The all red one is the one I have now. I like the basic design and the size. But the red – sometimes it's just not what I want. So these are some other fabrics I've been playing with. The one with the dots is a different kind of bag and I'm not sure it would really work, but it could be promising – it's actually meant to be a baby bag, which in this case just means they've taken a regular messenger bag and outfitted the inside with removable padded, insulated totes for things like diapers, bottles and extra clothes. Or, in my case, for all the food and other diabetes-related crap I have to haul around with me most of the time. I don't know what the layout of it is like inside though; I'm pretty attached to the million little pockets inside my current Timbuk2 bag.

Anyway. Colors.

And tomorrow I'm leaving for a long weekend with my family. My dad is turning 70 on Sunday, and I'll also be meeting my newest little nephew for the first time. I'm glad to be getting out of here for awhile; I could use a little freshening up of my perspective and faith in humanity.

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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Next day

I just read on the local news website that "If convicted as charged, the parents will face 36-48 months in prison." That little kid's wrecked for life, and they get four years, max? They'll be getting out of prison right at the same time she turns 18, and gets kicked out of foster care and becomes ineligible for all the other programs that are available to help kids who've been abused. Great timing.

I just don't understand. Sex offenders spend years in prison and even when they get out they have to register on some list, and be hounded all their lives by watchdogs and self-made vigilantes. I'm not saying it's right to harass people who've "paid their debt to society," but some people really need to be marked in some way, to warn the rest of us. Yes, "us." As in "us and them." Not as a judgment of contempt, but just reality – I want to know when dangerous people are around, so I can steer clear of them. I feel compassion, and I do believe broken people can heal, but mainly, when they're as broken as that, I feel afraid of them. Yes. Them.

This story has hit me a lot harder than it seems like it should, and I think it's because I actually had her at my house and didn't notice anything terrible. For one thing, she's not all terrible – almost nobody is. But it scares me to think what other awful cruelty and madness could be bubbling away just under the surface of so many people around me. It challenges my belief that most people really want to be good. Or not quite that – more that the more I see of life, the more I realize that even people's best intentions are not always within their grasp to actually carry out. Not exactly an original thought.

So: this idea of forgiveness comes up again. Or, how does anyone go on living after something like this?

No answer here. Just lots of questions.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Hunger

For the last few weeks I've been feeling really hungry again. Wanting to write about it, because it's driving me crazy and making me despair of ever feeling normal again ... and then deciding not to say anything, because it's boring and embarrassing.

Then this morning a friend emailed me a news story about this little girl near Seattle whose stepmom has been starving her for at least four years. I'll warn you, the story is disturbing, so don't click the link if this kind of thing gets to you.

The reason my friend told me about it is because the stepmom is someone I know. We used to work for the same company, and a few years ago she came here on vacation and stayed with me for several days. That visit was the most time I ever spent with her, and we had a blast. Our dogs liked each other, we went to the beach, we ate great food, etc. etc. .... And then she went back home and re-devoted herself to her relationship and sort of disappeared. Which people have been known to do, when they're "in love." Or torturing their boyfriend's daughter.

I'm a little bit in shock. My own experience of feeling hungry, so hungry I want to cry, is so real and painful and infuriating, but I only feel hungry because my metabolism is messed up. Not because I'm actually starving.

There just doesn't seem to be anything you can say when something like this happens. I liked her but I never knew her very well – I knew she'd had some "issues" and she definitely had kind of a dark, sarcastic side, but never in a million years would I imagine anything like this.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Toto was crate trained


Check it out! I never noticed it before, but there it is – his own little covered wagon style crate.

I've been watching the black and white part of the Wizard of Oz most of the day today, much of it frame by frame, studying the cool old Depression-era details. Clothes, shoes, furniture, dishes, buildings, tools, the layout of the farm, the professor's gypsy wagon, Margaret Hamilton's bike and baskets – all of it interests me. For example, at the very beginning Aunt Em is out in the yard gathering something into her apron, and I can't quite tell what it is she's doing – possibly taking tiny chicks from some kind of incubator and putting them in with a big mama hen who presumably will sit on them to keep them warm ...?

Anyway. I didn't do crate training with Tater because we were never apart from each other long enough when he was small to have to worry about his training at all. Training him was truly effortless – he slept in the bed with me from his very first night, and when he woke up at night and started moving around I took him outside and he did his thing and that was it. From the time he was a tiny puppy he's never had a single accident in the house, not even when he's been accidentally locked inside for a whole day. He did have a crate, which he could go into anytime he wanted to. But he never seemed to like it much.

I keep thinking about crate training lately though because there's a possibility I may be training another puppy later this year and I'm too realistic to assume it's just automatically going to be as easy as training Tater. For one thing, this pup would not be able to be with me all the time like Tater was – and I think that's what really made all the difference.

Back to the Wizard of Oz for a moment – I really love what Auntie Em is wearing, that long dress with the long dark apron, shawl and boots. If we do end up in another Great Depression I'm maybe in luck in that regard at least, being already 100% on board with the grim and practical fashions of rural poverty. The ruby slippers are actually a pretty cool look too, now that I look at them again. I've bought red shoes over and over again over the years just because I do love them so much, but for some reason I can never bring myself to actually wear them ... they seem too bright. I do enjoy looking at them on other people, though.

And you know, those scenes where Dorothy's house is blown away – that is really scary to me now, in a way it never was when I used to watch this movie as a kid. The sequence when she runs into the yard in the storm and everybody's gone, and then the one with the house flying through the center of the tornado, falling, falling ... that could give me nightmares even now.

Sometimes, the news is good

A very small victory, but I'm still celebrating – good news for bike commuters!

In a nutshell, starting in January companies will be able to offer a tax-free $20 a month to employees who commute to work by bike, and can deduct that amount from the company's federal taxes. It seems like such a small amount of money ... and in a place like this, where most people don't work in town anyway, maybe it won't make much difference in the traffic congestion. Still, ideas like this do help us all inch toward a collective change in attitude toward the bicycle as a viable method of transportation. And that is important.

So often, when I see something about bikes in the media, the implication seems to be that people are taking to bicycle commuting only as a last resort – because gas is just too damn expensive, or because (as in a popular insurance commercial that's running lately) they're too young, poor or stupid to afford a car. Then there's the one where a man arriving at his office by bike is mocked by a co-worker, and also the one where a deer and a squirrel driving a hybrid car actually run a bicyclist off the road in a national park.

Or this equal-opportunity attacker, that subtly insults not only the bicycle but three or four other alternate forms of transportation (not to mention Europe), all in one elegant 30-second spot:



I know it's just the big money industries (autos, oil) trying to maintain the illusion that bikes are only for losers, kids and weekend warriors tearing up the trails – while successful, contributing adults do all their serious getting around in their very own personal car, and the bigger, the better.

Anyway. I'm just glad to see a small item in the news that will maybe help to de-marginalize biking – and get more people to do it!

Given the situation at my office these days, probably I will not ask for (or receive, if I do ask) that twenty a month. But then again, maybe I will.

In closing, a couple more commercials – good ones, this time. This one pretty much has it all: bikes, dogs, beer and swimming!



And this one – my favorite. "That's the way, patriot!"






P.S. I am SO getting some of these before winter. Like probably this week! Looks like a good idea, no?

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Friday, October 10, 2008

Unpopular opinion

On one of the diabetes message boards I read people have been talking about a news report of a car accident in which a diabetic man had a blood sugar low while driving and ended up crashing his car into some people, killing one person. No charges were filed – it was considered an accident.

And just now I read another post from someone on a totally different topic, complaining about how his insurance declined to cover him for a continuous glucose monitor (this is a device you wear all the time that sounds an alarm if your glucose goes below a certain level). He said that just last night he went low while driving and ended up 100 feet down an embankment, in a river.

I don't want to piss anyone off on that board, so I didn't respond to that ... But here in my own private blog I just have to say it: I just don't think people should be allowed to drive if they're susceptible to that kind of unexpected low. That includes anyone who crashes suddenly and without warning, or who can't tell when they're crashing. This is called hypoglycemia unawareness and it's not all that uncommon, especially in people who've had the disease for a long time.

My diabetes is Type 2, which for me (though not for every T2) means that I don't have life-threatening lows and hopefully never will, unless my pancreas really does crap out completely someday. So maybe it's easy for me to say that a certain kind of diabetic shouldn't be allowed to drive ... since I'm not that type of diabetic myself.

Still – it makes me so mad to see certain people on that board getting all indignant and demanding to be treated "like a normal person" when it comes to driving and other high-risk activities, when clearly we are by definition NOT normal – we're diabetic. And if someone's diabetes means they run a regular risk of passing out or going into a seizure with no warning, then I'm sorry but please get real – a person in that condition should not be allowed to drive, ever.

It does suck that not being able to drive is such a huge handicap in this place and time ... I know it isn't a small thing to take away someone's license.

I guess this feels very real and scary to me because I almost never drive myself, which means that when I'm out there getting from point A to point B it's pretty much always just me – no seatbelt, no airbag, no crumple zone, no metal safety cage. Every time I ride I try to maintain a constant awareness of what's going on around me, just in case someone should suddenly drift onto the shoulder and take me out, or broadside me, or cut me off without warning, or force me into traffic or into a ditch ... There are so many careless drivers out there. If I ended up dead because some diabetic idiot is too stubborn to admit he can't tell when he's about to have a low – I would be so pissed!

About the CGM – I do agree with those folks that this should be considered standard equipment for any diabetic who can use one, and who wants one. No question at all. That, I consider a reasonable accommodation.

Thinking about all this makes me feel very tired and sort of depressed about being diabetic. That fact is always on the edges of my attention anyway; it's not something I ever really forget. At the same time, though, I don't think of it as necessarily a very bad thing, or even something that's especially hard to deal with. I have to remember to take my one small pill each day, and I have to make sure I don't eat more than about 75 grams of carbohydrate a day, and I have to exercise one hour or more every day. Other than that, it hasn't affected my life much at all.

But reading about all these other people's experiences ... it's scary to get a look at some of the things that could happen to me over the years, even if I do everything "right" – whatever that is. Not a reason to stop trying, but maybe a good reason to take a break from those message boards for awhile. I think I remember reading somewhere that it is not strictly necessary or required to scare myself to death every single day of my life.

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Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Perfect timing

Just got an email announcement about a new class at my meditation center – one that "expands on the teachings about basic goodness" of some of the classes I took last year, and goes into depth on dealing with the "practical details of daily life in modern society."

As you might expect there is a specific situation that is making this teaching look really good to me right now. I can't change the situation so I'm trying to change my attitude and approach to it. In any case – remembering basic goodness is always useful. Basic goodness is just as real and worthy of attention as basic jerkness.

In other news: I stacked another couple of cords of mixed firewood this weekend and I think that about does it for wood this year. This stack is even more lackadaisical than the last – the wood had been lying on the ground and was full of walnut shells, dirt and lavender-lined mouse apartments, and the softer woods are starting to go softer still – so it was hard to stack, not many regular-shaped pieces. We'll burn through this stuff first though and then on to the better logs.

I also helped Mr. A load and unload a half dozen excellent farm lots of assorted redwood – all good long pieces with only one broken board so far – for a new chicken coop, among other projects. I planted cabbages, cauliflowers, leeks, garlic, chives, cilantro, irises, raspberries and strawberries (these last two from runners), and will be putting in some Walla Walla onion sets tonight. Also, we got about half our Christmas shopping done – for supplies only, as we are making most of our presents this year. Whew!

This brief and by no means exhaustive report for the benefit of those who might be tempted to think, based on what they read here, that I do nothing all day and night but moon around complaining and introspecting.

Now I really have to go – Tater's apple just rolled under the desk and he's crying for me to get it out.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Epiphany of sorts

That bit I wrote this morning about Jesus – it's been on my mind all day. As a kid I learned that I was supposed to love everyone and treat them kindly, because we're all brothers and sisters. Note the verbiage: LOVE them, not necessarily LIKE them. From that I extrapolated the idea that as long as I treated people properly and loved them in general, my specific feelings of like or dislike were a matter of personal preference and nobody's business but my own.

Probably I wasn't too far off with that; I have serious doubts as to whether it's possible to genuinely like EVERYone. But hmm. And hmm again! Wouldn't life be just so much easier if I really did?

I'll admit it. There are plenty of people in my life who rub me the wrong way, especially about halfway through the month. What I've been noticing though is that avoiding is just in general not a good practice for me to engage in a lot – it makes me even more shy and weird and anxious. But if I eschew avoidance as a way to deal with my dislike of certain people, my next tendency is to clam up and sort of stew inside my head ... also not good.

For all my life up until now I've been operating under the idea that to go out of my way to make friends with people I don't like would make me a liar and a terrible, inauthentic person. I'm not talking about terrorists and puppy-killers, but more just the sort of garden-variety fatuous self-important assholes you have to deal with at work, for example. When I'm stuck having to interact with those folks I focus on being cordial, professional and pleasant – or just on keeping quiet.

It works okay. But what if it could be better? What if I really could learn to feel genuine loving-kindness toward those people, like the Dalai Llama does? It seems like it would be a very good thing if I could.

So today I'm starting a new program of trying to learn how to actually like people more. Step one: Engage more. Pay attention to my urge to flee or take cover, and do something different.

I know this is not the first time I've had this revelation ... but it bears repeating. This could turn out to be the central lesson of my entire life: Simply learning how to stay and engage, when everything in me wants to run and hide. And in fact, now that I think of it, I guess that's a central lesson in most people's lives, in one way or another.

Maybe liking people is more of a skill than a natural talent. Something to be cultivated, nurtured, developed.

The resistance I feel to this idea tells me I'm on the right track.

Keep calm and carry on


I love this poster – not my own design, but a real inspiration of late.

So much has been changing over the last few months – things I've written about here, and a few I haven't – and on Friday another king-sized turd flew into the proverbial fan: when I got to work I found out they'd just announced they're shutting down the whole publishing arm of the company. A full third of the remaining employees will be jobless at the end of the month. That's the real reason our insurance changed – not so much because of the people they've already laid off, but because of the plans to close the press.

Supposedly this will not affect my job, but the blast of adrenaline I've been feeling is not from a surge of confidence, I can tell you. I made little mini-posters of the "keep calm" sign and handed them around on Friday when everyone was freaking out. The owner laughed and clapped me on the shoulder and said, "That's great, thanks for the kind thoughts." I was glad he took it the way I intended it; someone had told me he and the other owners were up in the business office before the announcement, crying. I wouldn't have wanted him to think I was being a smart alec at a time like that.

The main thing this means for me is that I really need to start getting ready to do something else for money and insurance. I was realizing over the weekend that having our insurance go to crap is actually kind of liberating, in a weird way – besides the money (also not great) it's been the biggest tie holding me to this job, and now it's been significantly weakened. There must be other large companies I could work for here ... maybe I could find something to do at Whole Foods. In any case, I'm thinking. But as long as I do have a job, an adequate job that is sort of fun and somewhat creative and only three miles from my house – I'm going to hold onto it as long as I can.

Still ... anxiety. Not the paralyzing kind, which so far I've been miraculously able to keep at bay – but more just the everyday, back-of-your mind kind. The fact that the whole country is supposedly on the verge of a total economic collapse is not helping. And I've been watching the vice-presidential debates and became even more horrified than before at the thought of Sarah Palin having any political power at all at a national level. As someone said the other day, McCain already has at least one foot on a banana peel in terms of his health and age, and that just ... I just can't bear to think of them winning. They just can't!

But really I think it's my lackluster social life more than anything else that is making all this seem bigger and scarier than it needs to. True, I do tend to hermitize ... especially when under stress. But I do other stuff too – I reach out, I get involved, I show up, I make contact, I follow up. And somehow I just have not been able to create the kind of community life here that I grew up believing in (though I didn't realize it at the time). In all the years I've lived here I haven't been able to find more than handful of people who really feel like we belong to each other. Incongruous and sad, but true. Maybe it's because I don't have kids – maybe that's how people find each other at this stage of life.

Anyway, I miss my family, I miss the friends I had in Utah (though almost none of them live there anymore, either). Most of the people I meet here are mostly only interested in making money, drinking wine, and congratulating themselves on their Elegant Wine Country Lifestyle. I'm socially isolated in a lot of ways, for a number of reasons (including my own preference, which I've decided to start indulging a lot less), and it's fucked up and I need to try harder to do something about it. I need to be more accepting of people, more generous with what I see as their flaws. God knows I have them too.

I've been reading Grace Paley and I keep finding my jaw hanging open at some of the things that come out of her characters' mouths. It's a stereotype I'm familiar with from Woody Allen movies, etc., but still I have to keep asking myself: Are there really people in the world who are this frank and outspoken? Personally I can hardly imagine it. How would it be to just blurt out exactly what I think in the moment, without first organizing and rehearsing my thoughts and running them through my offense-o-meter to make sure they present no more than about a 10-12% chance of making someone not like me anymore?

My point being, maybe I'm too reserved with people I don't know well ... Mr. A thinks I am. He's always encouraging me to speak my mind, to let people know me. And I do, when I feel comfortable. I guess the thing would be to learn how to be more comfortable in a wider range of situations.

How to make friends with people I'm not immediately and naturally inclined to like, is the question. Friendships not of the heart but of social and professional utility, in other words ... something I've always resisted, feeling that it would be insincere and even dishonest to spend time socializing and making nice with people I don't like, just because I think they may be "useful." I still feel that way. But maybe I just need to look harder for ways to genuinely like more people. Is that what Jesus is always talking about? Hmmmm.

Anway. Now I'm just rambling. Time to get ready for work.

P.S. I had to come back and say – yesterday I bought a few apples just because the variety had such a marvelous name, Honeycrisp, and wanted to report that they are indeed crisp, and honey-like – super sweet and tart and crisp and delicious – in fact, they are just about perfect, as apples go. Highly recommended.

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