Monthly Archives: July 2008

July 31, 2008 · 8:11 pm

The Envelope of Doom

Why be afraid of little pieces of paper?

Considering the possible attacks that we as a society have developed to be delivered in an envelope, it’s not surprising.

To name a few:

  • Court summons
  • Parking ticket
  • Divorce papers
  • Credit card bill
  • Report card
  • Pink slip
  • Electricity shut-off notice
  • IRS audit notification
  • Returned submission with accompanying rejection slip

Why do we torture each other with documents?

When I’ve got one of these, or any other scary scrap of parchment, in front of me, and my fight or flight response is fully engaged, it’s hard to remember that the flattened fiber pulp can’t really do me bodily injury.

Sure, I’ve gotten a paper cut or two.  But boy did I teach that piece of paper a lesson!

My preferred methods of paper destruction:

  1. Burning– There’s nothing like the instant gratification of watching the offending words be slowly eaten by the flames.  Take that!
  2. Paper Shredder- It’s a lovely faux grass bundle that emerges.  It’s even better to go a step further and compost the shreds (assuming the paper has no other toxic content besides its message).  Something about watching a threatening communique succumb to the elements that reassures me as to Who is really in charge.
  3. Recycled Art- There is a delicious, self-righteous pleasure in seeing it demonstrated that absolutely anything a two-year-old could scrawl in thick black marker is more pleasing and sensible than the original text.

When these methods lose their oomph, I peruse my alternate list:

Elimination methods I’m sure would be awesome but am loathe to attempt:

  1. Large Dog’s Chew Toy- Bundled and twisted together, the papers would meet a fabulously agonizing end amidst sharp teeth and copious slobber. 
  2. Decomposition by Shotgun- Oooooh yeah.
  3. Human consumption- What can I say… the papers would eventually emerge, unmasked, in their true form.

Not a big fan of bureaucracy? you may ask.  Government forms give you hives?  Red tape cause your heart to palpitate painfully?

Well, yes.  And I can’t see our society ever reversing course away from our obsession with having it all down on paper.

And then hitting each other over the head with it.

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July 31, 2008 · 9:24 am

Name that motor vehicle!

My husband and I have a tradition of naming our cars.

It officially began when I first met my husband, who at the time owned a white Ford Escort (I was a carless cyclist).  Though we hardly knew each other at the time, he loaned it to me while he was away for Thanksgiving (an omen of good things to come.)  I was given only two instructions: 1. Talk sweet to her.  2. She likes to be called “Abby.”

Growing up, my parents had a more offhanded approach.  My mother, when coaxing a temperamental vehicle, would always refer to it as “Nelly Bell” with plenty of affectionate encouragement, no matter if it were our rusty old pick up or our little Mazda GLC.

To my father, any vehicle that was acting up always earned a moniker that began, “Son of a…”

But my husband and I like to acknowledge each car’s individuality.  Maybe it’s our writers’ minds seeing character everywhere: the thrill of anthropomorphization (How often does one get to work that word into a post?).  When Abby gave up the ghost we bought another Escort, this time forest green and named “Bonnie.”  She’s been a good girl, taking us up and down the West Coast and across the continent to a new life in the South.  But since our fourth baby was born, Bonnie, who seats only five, bless her heart, just hasn’t been big enough.

Therefore, to visit my husband’s relatives last Thanksgiving (now I get to come too!) we had to rent a van.  An Uplander, it was a sweet ride and I got quite attached to it.  Within hours of pulling out of the rental agency we named him “Carl” and he made a ten hour roadtrip with four kids actually enjoyable.

Now we must get a grip, stop our small car idealism and purchase a van.  In case you hadn’t noticed the pattern, we’ve been naming in alphabetical order, so our next set of wheels must be D-something.

I pondered for days and finally came up with the perfect name: “Dixie.”  Friendly.  Sweet.  Acknowledges the Southern community we are now a part of.

And best of all, until we finally find her, we can appropriately sing… “Well I wish I was in Dixie!”

(No offense, Bonnie!)

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July 30, 2008 · 10:17 am

First Anniversary

As I reflect on passing the one year blogging mark, I am humbled and grateful for the experience.

A year ago my husband’s best friend was visiting us from Wales. He showed me the blog he had just started ( Movie Waffle  — A more witty and intelligent film review site could never be found!) and the idea of having an outlet for my thoughts was irresistible.  I had to be a copycat right then and there.

At first, seeing my words “in print” online was just as excruciating as it ever had been to see them genuinely in print. I remember the first time I got an essay published in the local newspaper, I stayed up all night wondering what stupid thing I’d said that the whole town would laugh at (and not in a good way) over their morning coffee.  My heart was racing when I heard the paper hit the front door, and my eyes could hardly focus as I scanned over my article.  Other than the stupid title they had given it, there was nothing particularly ridiculous about it.  Nothing to lose a minute’s sleep over.

Nobody read any of my first blogs.  Literally.  Not a soul.  That’s the great thing about WordPress: you can see precisely how few readers you have.  You can watch that hit line drag along the bottom of the graph, trawling for discouragement.  

But after a while, maybe it’s the sheer consistency of its horizontal straightness, you start to feel comforted by the fact that you can say anything you want and no one is there to judge.  You start to loosen up, speak your mind, send your internal editor off to play on Myspace and just sit with your authentic self and her thoughts and emotions.  You keep writing, now not with a desperate longing to be read but just to craft what it is you really want to say, even if no one is there to hear it.  (Yes, a tree falling in the forest really does make a sound!)

Then, after months of cruising and commenting on blogs, you find you have commented on the blogs of some writers who actually come to check out your blog.  You find that you enjoy the companionship, that you derive just as much satisfaction from reading and commenting on their posts as you get from seeing your own blog read, something that might not have happened at the beginning when your blog was new and you were so focused on developing it.  As happens in so many aspects of life, you find that once you have let go of what you so desperately wanted, in this case a community of intelligent and entertaining folks, then it comes to you in its own time.  Perhaps it has to be earned, by hanging in there and not giving up.

Or so I like to think.  I don’t know how representative my experience is of the majority of bloggers, maybe there are those who are highly popular immediately, and contrary-wise, those who never find an audience.  But this year has been such a great learning experience for me as a writer and I am really enjoying this new phase of interacting with some wonderful bloggers.  I hope they are getting as much out of my blog as I am from theirs: this is my new goal for year two.

And my Year Two wish to myself and my fellow bloggers (forgive me on this sentimental occasion one appalling cutesification): May the words be with you!

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July 29, 2008 · 10:16 am

Starting to Sweat the Summer

Well, I made it until yesterday.

I try not to whine about the heat… try and try… for as long as I can.

Yesterday, standing over the stove feeling stickier than the muffin batter, greasier than the oil heating in the frying pan, and hotter than the pre-heating oven, I had an involuntary longing for my long-sleeved flannel shirts.  It doesn’t help that my mother-in-law, through whose faithful yardsaling I am periodically supplied with a new wardrobe, has recently sent me some seriously snuggly new plaids.  

Now, like an alcoholic in a dry county, I am pining pathetically for what I cannot have:

  • a chilly bite in the air that clears my mental vision (I often feel I cannot think in the hellish haze of summer’s heat)
  • the welcome early darkness that justifies my homebody tendencies  
  • the opportunity to snuggle with a family member without an accompanying shout of, “Bleh!  Get off me!  It’s too hot already!”
  • the ability to ride around in our no-A/C car without being able to hear the important bits in my cranium sizzle (“This is your brain in an old sunbaked Ford Escort!”)
  • a craving for stew and biscuits, hot cocoa and all those other cold weather treats
  • and most of all, the chance to put on those soft comfy flannels and denims that right now are kryptonite.  

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get out there this morning and do the yardwork before the grass melts.

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July 26, 2008 · 12:23 pm

Damning Debt

How much does debt destroy a person’s integrity?  Is credit rating the new and improved way to judge a human’s worth, or is it just a shallow measure like breast size or bicep thickness?  Should I live in fear like the guy on the commercial who finds himself in a pirate get-up earning minimum wage, or is it all just an empty threat by the cruel credit industry to get us to slave our lives away to buy them more yachts?

About 8 years ago I was living debt free.  I was also living without a car, without cable or a cell phone or indeed most amenities that mainstream society considers essential to basic survival in the modern world.

But I was happy, and I was proud that I didn’t owe a dime.

Then, for reasons I will blame on the heartache of being dumped by my then-husband of 10 years, I went a little crazy.

Next thing I knew I was back in college, racking up student loan debt I never imagined possible, holding scary new credit cards that were used to buy food and other necessities for me and the kids.

And if anything is going to keep me up at night, it is thinking about money, most specifically the phenomenally huge piles of it that I will end up shoveling into the yards of those to whom I owe.  Despite my new husband’s reassurances that there isn’t a debtor’s prison in the US, I definitely feel shackled by the red numbers that haunt me.  I am simultaneously grateful and guilt-ridden to think of him shoveling next to me, trying to fill the holes I dug before he even met me.

The worst part of it, worse even than the bag of tater tots I charged way back when that I will have paid $49.73 for once it is paid off, worse than being afraid of the friendly neighborhood mail carrier, worse than the feeling that I will hyperventilate myself blind when I write out yet another check for nothing in particular except that I HAVE TO OR ELSE, the absolutely worst part is that I feel like the lowest kind of person.

I try to imagine for an instant that I am a murderer hiding out, then wave my reality wand and *POOF*  Now you are perfectly innocent of homicide!  Don’t you feel better now?  That trick lasts about 6 and a half minutes.

I imagine that my house has burnt down and I’ve lost all my photos and writings.  Then, *ABRACADABRA* your house is actually intact!  Doesn’t life seem more rosy?  That ruse is good for 11 minutes.

I picture what a debtor’s prison was actually like, the fear and shame and suffering.  The utter darkness of the body and soul.

But none of my extreme mental ploys can really dispel this little cloud that hangs about my head, casting gloom into the future.  Nothing gets rid of the certainty that I have signed on with the Devil, or at least some of his demon minions, and the road to eliminating the spot on my eternal soul will be long, difficult, and perhaps impossible.

What have we as a society done to ourselves?  Am I the only one who confuses my essential self with the paper trail that my material existence leaves behind me like the slimiest kind of slug?  Is there a way to take responsibility for the choices I have made without drowning in discouragement? Is there a way to set the debt aside as separate from me, to isolate it in a hermetically sealed section of my life so that it does not contaminate the flavor of food or the color of the sky?

I hope that someone somewhere is enjoying their yacht, and that guilt over their criminally high interest rate is not spoiling the caviar.

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July 25, 2008 · 10:11 am

Noisy Chores

My chores each have a different pitch to their whine: that incessant complaint that each makes to get my attention and ruin any chance I have of doing something enjoyable until I’ve attended to the work at hand.

An unmade bed makes a soft noise, sounds kind of like, “I want to look priiiiiteeeee.”  Most days I just reply, “Hey, take a look, if I can’t be bothered with my own face then there’s no hope for you.”  Then the bed changes its tune.  Starts whispering, “Naaaaaap!” So I oblige.  Can’t be overly cruel to the furniture.

A full laundry basket makes a low moan almost completely below my radar, kind of a “Helloooooo” as though from a mole lost down a hole.  The mole isn’t really bothered about being lost down the hole, since it’s in its own territory, but it still would like some attention.  Clothes must like being roughed up a bit.

I can’t hear dust.  The thickness of the general household coating must result in the dust voices canceling each other out, a situation I highly recommend.

The dishes, on the other hand, have a high squeal.  I can’t even go near the kitchen without being assaulted.  It’s kind of an ear-piercing “EEEEEeeeuuuww!  EEEEeeeuuuww!”  Approaching this task requires that I steel my nerves in the same way I imagine an EMT might have to force themselves to save someone who had killed the EMT’s dog.  

If you haven’t guessed, I DESPISE the dishes.  I would rather clean the toilet… in a gas station bathroom.  I would rather clean out the fridge… in a frat house.  I would rather organize the garage of the worst pack rat in the world.  But please don’t make me do the dishes.  My goal in life is to learn to scream louder than they do and maybe scare them off.

I still feel guilty about a recent trade I made with  my 12 year old.  He was whining about having to mow the lawn, a chore which I absolutely LOVE, so I threw out the idea, jokingly of course, because who would be foolish enough to even consider such an idea, that we switch: I would do his weekly mowing if he took on another night of dishes.  He accepted without hesitation.

I must stand up for him and say that he is a very smart and wonderful kid, but he has apparently lost his mind.  I am very concerned.  We have gone through a whole week of this arrangement and he appears content with it!  I came in after mowing, glowing with the experience of sun and fresh air, and then stood proudly at the front window where my handiwork was laid out in public, to be admired by all of humanity, and I said to him, “You REALLY don’t  like mowing?”  I was giving him another chance, see.  I’m not completely heartless.

But he remained firm.  A day later when he was doing the dishes, I expected to hear the customary wailing and gnashing of teeth that I myself always emit when faced with such horror.  I came tiptoeing into the kitchen, arms shielding my head from plates that might be flying from his rage, bracing for the inevitable outcry of a tortured soul, and he turned to me and said, “Hey Mom.  You okay?”

Am I a bad person for allowing this arrangement to continue?  What am I going to do if Child Protective Services finds out how badly I’ve tricked my own offspring?  

You’ll have to excuse me… my radar is picking up a dirty diaper in the vicinity.  If you’ve never heard it, you really don’t want to know what noise THAT makes, but it is definitely NOT to be ignored.

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July 24, 2008 · 9:18 am

Numbers revisited

I finally watched “The Number 23.”  I think it demonstrates a couple of important points about superstition and the human imagination.

First, we interpret.  From religious texts to emails to light conversation over coffee, we filter everything through our necessarily limited sensory perception.  Aldous Huxley’s book “The Doors of Perception” is a great illustration of the idea that humans must screen out almost all of the infinite amount of sensory stimulation coming at us at every second and focus on just the few details that have developed a particularly important meaning for us.  Being animals, we are programmed to watch for the glimpse of a tiger out of the corner of our eye and then spring into action.  Since there aren’t many tigers around in our modern world, perhaps we sometimes subconsciously invent danger signs, like superstitions, to give our systems a chance to rush with adrenaline.

Thus, having an infinite amount of material to filter through, we can always find what we are looking for, such as the number 23.

The other point the movie brought up at its conclusion, although stylistically I did not care for the end much, was the main character’s emphasis on choice.  We can choose our interpretation as well as our reaction to the meaning we have found.  Though we are animals and must deal with all our physical/instinctual programming, as humans we also have the right and responsibility to decide for ourselves.

I cannot argue with its star-and-a-half rating, but it was definitely an entertaining flick.

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July 23, 2008 · 10:04 am

On a Hill

Sometimes I remember to look at the big picture.  

How many problems would be ameliorated or indeed solved if we could remember to shift the focus of our eyeballs, currently zoomed in on the little kid finger smudges covering the front window, and pull our perspective wider to see The Whole.

Not that we can ever precisely see The Whole.  I like to use the term “in geological time” to remind myself and the kids that there are other timetables in effect.  For example, when asked the question, “Can we go to Chuck E. Cheese later?” I am fond of replying, “Yes!” enthusiastically, then adding, “Later in geological time.”  We have had enough scientific discussions for them to realize that this might very well translate into weeks or months.  (Nobody ever said the big picture wasn’t a cruel view!)

The Whole is always fuzzy like that… weeks, months, years… when we try to see something so big as the Earth or the History of Mankind, all our precise measurements such as Tuesday the 12th of April or 321 Main Street become details too tiny to distinguish.  All you have is a slab of sedimentary rock that can be dated to within a few thousand years on a good day.  The weighty significance of the pebble in your shoe is suddenly reduced to tolerable.

When I lived by the ocean in Northern California as a teenager, I used to climb the hill and stare out across the water to let my eyes and my brain stretch.  A massive tanker ship was a mere dot.  A hulking humpback whale left only ephemeral spouted footprints to show its path.  In those moments, my overwhelming life was just another thin blade of grass swaying in the wind on that hill, whatever miniscule problem I thought was the end of the world became just a tick that could be squished between my fingers before it sucked any more blood out of my soul.  What a relief it was.

Sometimes I remember that a hilltop perspective is still helpful, even if I have to just imagine the hill.  To look closely at my everyday life and wonder why I am not in the midst of some large valuable project makes me feel very unaccomplished.  But to look at the last two years of my life and make a general list of events, I realize the following has occurred: got married, had a baby, survived five months of my husband’s layoff, found employment and moved twice (once across the continent, once across the state). And during this time I managed to have two articles published, posted several blog articles, kept the children fed in the manner to which they had grown accustomed, watched a little tv.  Grew a couple of sunflowers.  Ate a lot of ice cream.  Met some good people.

In geological time, I’ve been in overdrive.

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July 18, 2008 · 11:23 am

Spooky Numbers

In the spirit of true confessions, I would like to discuss superstition and my personal battle against it.  If nothing thus far has convinced you of my neurotic tendencies, this here post’ll do the trick.

The earliest number neuroticism I can remember is the day I found eight four leaf clovers in my front yard.  From that day to this my favorite number has been 8, and this is what inspires my current discussion: August 8th is fast approaching.  Why is this significant?  It is 8-8-08.  That will have to be the luckiest day I am ever going to have in my entire life!  (Although 8-8-88 came and went and did not seem to have impacted my reality much.  And it had an extra 8!)  Should I hock all my possessions to buy a plane ticket to Vegas?  Should I spend the rent money on lottery tickets?  Should I cross the street without looking both ways? In short, how am I going to mark this embarrassingly momentous occasion?

As with most things in life, the situation was at its worst when I was a teenager.  At this time I had a digital clock beside my bed, and I could only function when the time ended with an even number.  7:13?  Doesn’t matter if the bus will be here in two minutes.  Gotta wait until it changes to 7:14.  11:57 at night?  Gotta stare at the clock until the last number I see before I fall asleep is 11:58.

I am over my clock issues except for one thing.  Years ago this superstitious part of my brain decided that, since my father owned a Porsche 914 when I was a kid, forever after when I see 9:14 on a clock, I am supposed to remember to be grateful for everything in my life.  For a while I would be mad if I looked and saw 9:15, having missed my chance.  Or if it were 9:12 and I had to sit there and wait like an idiot for the magic number.  Then, fortunately, something clicked and I realized that any time is a good time to be grateful, numbskull!  

It was a bit weird, too, in 2004 when my first niece was born on September 14 (9-14).  Will there be a special connection between us?  Perhaps there would have if I hadn’t moved across the continent.  (Perhaps on 8-8-08 I am supposed to hock everything to buy a plane ticket to go see HER!  Ah… it is all coming together!)

I do not know how I came to be under the spell of numbers.  Maybe it is because words I can make say whatever I want them to say, just by painting a bit of color here and shaving a corner off there, but numbers, they are who they are and no amount of manipulating is going to make a false sentence true.

I also don’t know how I came to have such extreme prejudice against odd numbers.  With other things I enjoy the freaky and the weird, but a number has to be smooth and even.  I was so worried that something would be horribly wrong with my son because he was going to be born in an odd year when everything else in my life, graduation, marriage, the births of myself, my kids, my husband, my sister and her kids, everything was in an even year.  Little dude was going to, literally, be the odd man out.  But, turns out, he’s just as wonderful as the rest!  And the continued lack of catastrophe (knock on wood!) associated with odd numbers is not inspiring any more confidence in them, poor little things.

Does everyone have a secret number paranoia?  Am I genuinely an oddball, and if so, how does one convert to an evenball?  And what, for the love of all things numerically tidy, am I supposed to do in a few weeks when the calendar announces that the fateful day of 8’s has arrived?  And even worse, should I be planning something special for the minute (two separate minutes, actually!) on that day when the clock shows 9:14?

All I know for sure is, the next time you happen to see 9:14 on your digital clock, take just a moment to be grateful that you don’t live in my head!

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July 11, 2008 · 10:11 am

Self-Esteem

I finally hung on the wall of my bedroom the diploma I earned from the University of Oregon: a BA in French and Spanish.  

Sometimes we just need a little mental boost, and I regret to say that, though I prefer valiant deeds of glory, sometimes it can come from a piece of paper.

On another wall of the bedroom is the framed first page of an article I had published last year in the Lake Magazine, a little rag put out by the po-dunk newspaper my husband was working for at the time.  Part of me wants to believe that this personal connection was the only reason my piece got accepted, but then the other part of me (who I like better and better as the years go by) tells this self-defeating part, “Who cares?  Why do you have to wreck everything? Shut up!”

Accompanying the article, which is on the subject of Halloween, is a photo I took of my daughter who is wearing a Tigger costume I made several years ago for my son.  What a shot in the arm that framed page is!  An article I wrote, displaying a photo I took, of a costume I made, worn by a lovely girl who I also made!  Framed and hung by my husband, who takes much better care of my mental state than I do.

I decided I shouldn’t leave it all to him, and so to counter my current state of aimless and lethargic bottoming-out, I thought I should hang another reminder that I HAVE done SOMETHING with my life, even if all I can seem to manage lately is to fold the laundry and to make sure the kids eat a vegetable now and again.

The balance between humility and pride is such a precarious position to maintain, and I am constantly learning how to better walk that path.  For me it always comes down to, how can we strive for perfection while acknowledging that we are never going to arrive?  How can we better ourselves constantly while at the same time giving ourselves credit when we genuinely have done the best we can, even though it won’t ever be “The Best”?

I’ve decided to try surrounding myself with a few more reminders that I AM striving, that I HAVE succeeded and that there is definitely hope that I can fulfill tasks I set for myself in the future.  Maybe that’s an alternate purpose to a diploma, not just to prove to the outside world that we have achieved something, but to remind the inside world, the one in our head, that we did indeed get to where we were going.  One of the bumperstickers of life.

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