Things About Spilled Milk

Today I am teaching high school. Today, some jackoff in the high school thought it would be funny to put a bag of rotten milk (yes, our milk comes in bags here) in another kid's locker for him to discover. I don't know how, and I don't know why, but the milk, WELL past it's prime, was discovered and aerosolized somewhere in or around the school and the smell has persisted for HOURS. The sickly-sweet-sour smell of rotten, solidified milk. Smashed into the carpet, thrown out on the sidewalk, tracked by dozens of careless feet through every classroom, rotten milk.

This is EXACTLY how bullying works. You think you're picking on one dumb kid. You think it's funny. Then you find yourself staring down the barrel of inescapable stench that YOU CAUSED. Think about this. Every practical joke you played. Every blind eye you turned on the other kids that were being unkind... guess who gets to enjoy the aftermath? We all do.

We teach our kids to be kind to others. We model this behavior. We call them right down on the carpet if we catch them not being kind. Cause if we don't, the next thing you know they're shoving rotten milk in That One Kid's locker and then when That One Kid comes back in two years and shoots everybody in his class, everybody will say, "but why?"

Milk. That's why. The rotten stench of milk. For days. Lingering. Milk on top of all the other practical jokes and mean names and unkind words and just plain heartless behavior. There's always milk behind the why. Just because the smell isn't always there doesn't mean the repercussions won't be.

Even if there's real mental illness, which there might be. Even if they have good parents, which they usually don't. Even if they're smart, or dumb or ugly, or weird... look back in the lives of all of these murderers who are taking innocent lives and you will find milk. Some people find inspiration in the milk and go on to create beautiful things. Lucky for us, only a few of them come back with their rifles. Lucky only a few just kill themselves. But it's a few too many.

Just because it's not your locker. Just because you didn't put the milk there. Just because you weren't involved... you're still smelling the milk. You can't get away from it. Your friends can't. They'll wear the stench home on their clothing.

Actions have consequences. Spilled rotten milk is worth crying over when it's used as a weapon. When it's used to communicate rejection and hate. It's not funny. It's not kind. It's deadly.

We have to see the milk for what it really is, the first symptom of a lethal condition.

Kids will always be kids. That's why we're here, to remind them, to chastise them, not to make excuses for their behavior or justify their poor choices. We're here to help them learn from the spilled milk before it becomes spilled blood.

After all, we're all in this together.

Things About the Whelm

"I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be - whelmed?" - Chastity, 10 Things I Hate About You 

it's a long road to... somewhere. 

I am some level of whelmed right now.  I am overwhelmed with the amount of mental and emotional energy that I'm supposed to be putting into a lot of things right now, but I am underwhelmed with the payoff of said things in the near future. Sure, they're investments in the bright and beautiful down-the-road, or whatnot, but being an instant gratification kind of a girl, I find myself making up for the over and the under whelming by avoiding it all and throwing tantrums. Does being caught right in the middle make me just whelmed? Or is it cabin fever? I feel bad calling it that since I get out to do more cool things than a lot of people I know, and I really can't complain. Even so, here I am, discontent as always, complaining.

All the energy goes out, nothing comes back in except some piddly paychecks and well meaning criticism. It's frustrating. I'm not even sure what to look forward to because nothing is certain, nothing is guaranteed. It's Friday. For some people, the weekend means a break. For me it means more work and instability than the other days. I've grown to distrust weekends with their shiny attractiveness and poor followthrough. They're just like every other day of the week. Disappointing. They just keep coming and going and I am stuck running in place on the slimy log of time as it rolls in the sludge, trying not to fall off into the pit of despair.

The problem I have, according to some of the self-help books I am reading, is two fold. 1) I give too many f***s about things I shouldn't (i.e. everything), and 2) I bought into the bull crap that life is supposed to be good, or pleasant, or that happiness actually matters. I'm trying hard to give less f***s. But I still can't understand why we're here if we spend the few years we have just being miserable so that we can die. And here we circle back to the meaning of life and ages-old rhetoric of "bringing glory to god" "being a good person" "making a difference" "earning a mansion in heaven along streets paved with gold and choruses of angels lining them - but no dogs because animals don't have souls" kicks in. Blagh. Meh. Poop the duck.

I want a life full of happiness like warm crusty sourdough bread with way too much butter and swirling glasses of dry red wine. I want dogs. I don't want to be a 'good' person. I want to make people laugh. I want to be a memorable person.  I want to be making moments that make the meh days manageable.

For awhile, I was on the 'no bad days' band wagon. But I've realized that that ideal is just as unrealistic as streets of gold or being a good person. There are bad days. And bad weeks and bad months and bad years. Like my brilliant baby brother says, if all days were perfect, there would be no perfect days. It's ok that some days are bad. As long as some days aren't. I am trying to focus more on the 'no wrong turns' philosophy, that tells me that even meh days are serving some purpose down the road. Even if it takes EONS of suffering to get there. Meanwhile, here I sit, in The Whelm, with my bad days and my misguided ideals and misplaced f***s, waiting for something that I haven't quite identified yet. Probably sourdough bread.

Things About St. Valentine

Before you write off Valentine’s Day as another invention of American corporations in the quest for perpetual revenue from mass produced greeting cards and several thousand tons of seasonal candy, take a moment to consider the long, if not convoluted, history behind the holiday. Long before it was chocolates and diamonds and fancy dinner dates, Saint Valentine’s Day became a celebration of enduring love.

Valentine of Rome was a Christian saint in the 5th century who was martyred in 496 AD for his faith. He was buried on February 14th, and the anniversary of his death was observed by the Catholic Church after he was canonized. According to legend, Saint Valentine wore an amethyst ring embedded with the image of cupid. He officiated at the illegal Christian weddings of Roman Soldiers, who were forbidden to marry, as the Emperor Claudius II believed that married men did not make for good soldier material. It was said soldiers would recognize him by his cupid ring and request the performance of his secret nuptials. The amethyst later became the birthstone for the month of February, and is said to bring love. St. Valentine is said to have cut hearts out of parchment and given them to the soldiers that he ministered to, beginning the tradition of heart shaped cards.

Eventually Valentine was imprisoned for his Christian ministry, and while in jail, he is said to have healed his jailer’s daughter, Julia, from blindness. A letter sent from his jail cell to the girl was signed “from your Valentine”, perhaps the first Valentine ever sent. After his death, Julia planted an almond tree with pink blossoms near his grave. The almond tree is still symbolic of undying love and friendship.

The Catholic Church removed St. Valentine’s day from the General Roman Calendar in 1969, but the holiday was well rooted in tradition across the globe by that time. Speculation has tied the holiday to the ancient Roman feast of Lupercalia, a three day celebration of fertility in mid February, but there has been no traceable connection to this observance and the later resurgence of the romantic theme appointed to February 14th by poets and lovers who were far removed from Rome’s pagan roots.

The first romantic association with the church holiday of St. Valentine’s Day wasn’t until nearly a thousand years later, when Geoffrey Chaucer, the English poet, penned the verse: For this was on seynt Volantynys day, Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make. ["For this was on St. Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate."] Later, scholars would argue that the Valentine he referred to was not Valentine of Rome, but the feast of St. Valentine of Genoa, who died nearly 100 years before Valentine of Rome, which was observed in early May, a time more likely for the mating of birds in Britain.

Whatever the reference really meant, Valentine’s Day was securely established as a celebration of love on February 14th by the beginning of the 15th century. Following Chaucer’s lead, French and English poets latched on to the theme and over the next 200 years, references to Valentine’s day, featuring birds and romantic love surfaced across Europe. The oldest surviving Valentine came from Charles, Duke of Orleans, referring to his wife as his  “very sweet Valentine” while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London in the 1400s: Je suis desja d'amour tanné, Ma tres doulce Valentinée… Even Shakespeare gave a nod to the holiday in Hamlet in the early 1600s.

Mass productions of romantic poetry, cards and love notes was well underway in England by the end of the 18th century, and in 1847, the first commercially produced Valentines were available in the United States. It wasn’t until the late 1900s that the traditional note giving escalated to chocolates and jewelry. This became a trend in the United States when the candy and diamond industries saw potential for growth. It is estimated that over 190 million Valentines were sent in the United States in 2015, not including homemade exchanges between school age children. The average amount spent on a Valentine’s day gift in the US last year was $131.

However you choose to observe (or not) the festival of love that is Valentine’s Day, the story of St. Valentine, perhaps embellished over the years, is a good excuse to let the ones we love know that we are thinking of them. It’s also a good chance to break out the scissors and glue stick and show our love with a little bit of creativity and personal attention. Maybe we don’t need diamonds and puppies to tell our Valentine’s how much they mean to us, but since the middle ages, we’ve been using poetry to get our point across. The cliche “Roses are Red” rhyme began in 1590, with Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queene, but was adapted into a nursery rhyme in 1784 from Gammar Gurton’s Garland:

The rose is red, the violet's blue,

The honey's sweet, and so are you.

Thou are my love and I am thine;

I drew thee to my Valentine:

The lot was cast and then I drew,

And Fortune said it shou'd be you

Things About A Chicken

Juniper the Chicken - Belmont Goats

I am not a chicken fan. Not, that is, unless it is breaded and deep fried, or sautéed in butter, or slathered in Alfredo sauce. So I guess what I mean is that I am not a fan of chickens that are alive. They smell weird. They’re dirty, and I have residual nightmares of the chicken coop of my childhood home from whence proliferated numerous horrors. To this day I cannot eat brown eggs. Irrational? Yes. Do I care? No. 

But today I heard a chicken story - a story about a chicken, that nearly moved me to tears. I have a couple of friends whom I admire greatly that are chicken lovers. We’re talking chickens on the dining room table that are still alive and will not, under any circumstances be eaten by any one, ever. Chickens who have sweaters knitted for them and sport names like Frida, Russell Wilson, Bilbo Schwaggins, Betty and Bacon. (Because Bacon and Eggs, get it?) Anyway, these chicken-loving friends of mine have tried very hard to humanize the dirty, feathery, beady eyed little producers of all manner of grossness but have been largely unsuccessful with me - or so I thought, until today, when I got caught up in the story of Juniper.

Juniper is a hen. A garden variety, brown and black speckledy hen. She was part of the menagerie at this place in Portland, Oregon called the Belmont Goats. On their website, Juniper the hen is described thusly:

“Birthday unknown. Joined in March of 2014. We have 14 pet goats; they have 1 pet hen.”

Leave it to Portland to have a goat farm/petting zoo/therapy center in the middle of the city. The Belmont Goats is all of that and more, boasting a herd of 14 goats and one hen. Until today.

Sometime, in the middle of last night, someone broke into the fenced area that is the Belmont Goat Field and made off with Juniper. With the hen. Because as weird as Portland is, it’s also still Portland. A call for help went out in the morning when the fowl play (ahem…) was discovered, and all of the Facebook Lands were bereft. Juniper became an instant celebrity. Even I, the un-liker of chickens, especially plain brown speckledy ones, was moved to the verge of tears.

“Folks, someone broke into the Belmont Goats field next to Wattles Boys and Girls Club on 92nd & Harold last night. All of the goats are present and accounted for and don't seem any worse for wear but Juniper is missing. Juniper is our very loved, very patient and friendly chicken. She sleeps in the barn with the goats.” the volunteers who take care of the Belmont Goats, or more appropriately, are taken care of by said bovidae specimens, spread the news far and wide, and if social media gets around anywhere in the world, it gets around Portland, and quickly.

The fence assailant/hen-napper left a donation of human excrement at the park, which I would assume some forensically trained hipster was hot on the brink of testing for DNA, but thanks to the power of the Facebook grapevine, and Lord knows how many shares later, one of the volunteers' neighbors found the chicken at a transit station more than three miles from the Goat Field.

If I felt foolish that I nearly cried when I heard that the goat-pet hen was lost, and that the worst was assumed of her fate, then it's safe to say that I was utterly embarrassed by the tears of joy that literally overtook me when someone posted a picture of Juniper on someone's lap in somebody's car, homeward bound and safe. It’s a chicken. But her bright, beady little eye stared defiantly off into whatever direction it is that a chicken looks, scoffing at the mischief maker(s) who would have been her undoing. Not this hen. Not in this town. Not a chance. Juniper just knew, strutting in that odd chickeny fashion across the lightrail platform a jillion miles from her 14 goats, she knew that one of her many friends would find her. And they did. 

"Juni on her way back home"

I am not a fan of chickens. Or goats, in particular. But I will be watching the Belmont Goats and their social media just in case that DNA comes back and the chicken snatching pooper is brought to justice. And hooray for Portland. Thanks for making me feel like there is still magic in the world. You stay weird. Welcome home, Juni.

Things About Butte

I am sitting in the second story of a building in downtown Butte, Montana, that used to house a newspaper, more than 100 years ago. The narrow plank wood floors show the carefully restored wear and use of what was probably the photo and lithograph developing area, based on the chemicals they encountered during restoration, according to the current inhabitant. A “reasonably good-looking” in his own words, and “epically talented” brewer, he’s the man behind Muddy Creek Brewery, which, according to Google ratings, is the best brewery in Butte. Whether Google raters know anything remains in question, but Muddy Creek seems to know their beers. A sample flight brings me three blondes, a thick vanilla stout and an obligatory IPA (this is, afterall, a microbrewery). Any other flight with multiple blondes would normally sound better as a sexual encounter than a beer tasting, but Muddy Creek mixes it up just right.

Being a 'professional' beer connoisseur, my methodology for sampler consumption is quite scientific, if not flawed. I always try them all and then drink the balance from least favorite to most, so I can savor and enjoy the best beer, leaving the establishment with the taste of it still on my breath. I say flawed because as we all know, after the first four or so samples, it doesn’t really matter two shits what they taste like. It’s all delicious.

In the case of Muddy Creek, it was a mid-afternoon time-killing stop wherein I didn’t plan to hang out for unending hours redefining the meaning of inebriation. But in spite of the steady stream of right-on-the-brink of too-loud classic rock (my least favorite genre), I feel right at home here. The beer is good and the tables, crafted out of old cable spools, coupled with late 1800s woodwork give me the industrial warm fuzzies. It helps that they let me bring my road weary dog in from the car so she could lie in stiff tension on the wood floor, staring at the resident stuffed black bear named Stout, just across from our table.

My plan was to stick with a modest four sample flight before moving on responsibly and checking into my budget-priced Econolodge room for the night. But the reasonably handsome master brewer insisted on throwing in a sample of his Storm the Door Vanilla Porter, and I didn’t want to be rude. That fifth sample, after all, spells the end of productivity for the day, unless you count a blatherous post about beer and the merits thereof.

But back to the beer: The Dirty Blonde was a basic, easy drinking, 5% ABV classic golden hued blonde. None of that over-hopped hipster microbrewing overkill. It was comfortable and good. The Blue Sky Blonde, which the epically talented brewer says is their most proliferously distributed beer, is a blueberry blonde. I am not one for fruity beers, and I have been out-blueberried a time or two, but this one is a winner with a 5% ABV. The berry factor is subtle enough for the manliest of rednecks to abide with. The Mandarin Tango is another 5% ABV blonde with some subtle citrusy and other almost unidentifiable flavors that were good, but bordered on a visit to Bath and Body Works. Still a smooth drinker, lots of my Budlight girlfriends would dig it. The Skinny Cow IPA was a good IPA at 6% ABV. Not one of the cleanest ones I’ve tasted, and nothing that I wanted to send a postcard to my ex-boyfriends about, but if you’re an IPA drinker, which I am when the mood takes me, it’s doable. Storm the Door was a good vanilla stout, the talented and handsome brewer wasn’t wrong, but not being a dark beer aficionado I would have to defer to one of my more surly friends for a professional verdict. It clocks in at 6.2% ABV. The fact that I didn’t hate it was good enough for me.

After my accidental flight of five, I found myself with a full pint of the Dirty Blonde. Like the talented and handsome brewer says, it’s the only place in town that you can have a dirty blonde and not leave with an STD - an especially poignant statement considering the longest operating brothel in United States history is very literally just down the street a few blocks.


While the whole town of Butte with it’s rollicking hills and crumbling brick buildings won my heart, Muddy Creek certainly clinched the deal. I want to come here and buy the whole town and make it the next Dollywood. Except cooler. Never have I seen so many extremely badass buildings lying vacant and hopelessly abandoned. I am glad Muddy Creek made a home here in the old newspaper office, and it feels just about right to sit here with AC DC and type my little heart out next to a dirty blonde and a mini dachshund.

 

Things About Change

 
I wasn't going to post in this blog anymore. I feel like it's time to shift gears and move into a new space. But I have been a little bit emotional lately and sometimes my feelings feel better when I give them words. Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s hormones. Maybe it’s that I’ve been to Mexico, Washington DC, Denver, celebrated Christmas with The Whole Family, bought a house and moved, had hip surgery and commuted over 5,000 miles in the last month and a half. Who can say exactly why I burst into tears at random intervals or the minute I hear anything by REO Speedwagon. It’s a mystery for sure.

All I know is that I feel awfully fragile, and not in a completely bad way. Just… RAW. Ready to feel all the feels and work through them. The sadness of moving away from the town where I have lived for the better part of 20 years and (mostly) raised my kids. The excitement of starting fresh, on my own, as a homeowner. The struggle of trying to decide whether to let my old Truck dog go be with Jesus or watch his frustration over a new life in a new house with limitations that I never enforced on him back in Northport, much to frustration of the baseball coaches and custodians of the school next door.

I am feeling all the tearing of the transition of my kids from children to adult, weighing out how much I can and should help them in the fight to become responsible humans. Sorting through how much is My Fault and what I have to let go for them to figure out. I am riding the waves of happiness and uncertainty that a fairly new relationship pushes toward the shores of my heart. Most moments I feel lost. Some moments I feel joy. All moments lately, I feel fear.

But what I do know is that all of these feelings, the good ones and the bad ones, are meant to bring me to the place where I belong, wherever that is. Fear and uncertainty protect me from wandering recklessly off course, bringing caution along as a guiding light of stability. Sadness and grief remind me of how very much I have been given in the happy years I have had at my old place and with my old dog. Glimpses of joy give me hope that the steps I am taking are the right ones, headed in the right direction. And stress and anxiety, well, they give me gray hair, and I guess I am about due.

For every time my heart cries out silently to the universe for help, I turn back to face the battle and the help I need is there. Not always in the form I expect in. Not always in a surprise check for thousands of dollars or an army of strong backs, although those things have happened for me, but sometimes in the showing up of a friend with a story, or in the plight of another friend who has much larger hurdles to face than I do, and a way that I can help them with the flood that is drowning them.

Amor Fati. I am in love with the fate that I am given. It is not always beautiful, but it is always mine. And while I question my decisions every. single. day. I feel overwhelmingly blessed that I have decisions to make, and they are mine entirely. There is no wrong that cannot be made right. There is no obstacle that cannot become the path, and even now while I can’t lift my arm, I can say that there is no pain without purpose, even if that purpose is a speedbump.

I will slow down. I will take only the responsibilities that are mine to bear, and no more. I will listen to MMMBop on repeat and cry wantonly if it gets me closer to peace. I will write the stories to pay the bills to make the life that I have chosen. And I will always be thankful that I can do that with a beer in one hand.

Things About The Normal Days: a useful list

I googled "how to stay focused and content," looking for a Quick List of Useful Instructions that would keep me from waking up wishing that I was ANYWHERE in the world but here. I didn't find a list. In fact, I didn't find anything useful except for a PowerPoint presentation with some Seth Godin quotes that I liked but didn't really have anything to do with what I was looking for. So I decided to make my own list, because maybe somebody else is out there looking for a Quick and Useful List of Instructions and if somebody is going to make some up, it might as well be me, right?

How To Be Content And Focused On the Normal Days:

Step 1) Drink. No, not that kind. Drink coffee. I have a few friends who claim to have been redeemed from the power of chemical stimulation and are now caffeine free, and some who have never even dabbled in the stuff. These people are usually super peppy and optimistic and clearly have no grasp on reality anyway, so I discount their caffeine naysaying with all of the vigor of a triple shot americano and no breakfast. Coffee is the stuff of life. Or it's at least the stuff of reasons to get out of bed in the morning and not yell bad words at the first biologically active thing that crosses your path. Like the dachshund. Or a spider. Or the mold growing on the inside of the cream carton. Coffee helps. It's the chemical boost to get you to the next step. I strongly recommend coffee first thing in the morning, preferably with someone that you can say bad words to about the things that are wrong with first thing in the morning and they will agree and still love you. That is the best way to have coffee.

you can get this shirt HERE

Step 2) Dress. Put on the right clothes. If, say, you wear the wrong jeans - the ones that cut right in at the fattest place you have (and all real people have one of those places), or maybe your socks don't match your trousers, or you can't find your favorite belt, or you get to work and the shoes you're wearing are just WRONG, the whole day is shot. Make sure that what you are putting on your body brings you joy, like those Japanese de-cluttering methodologies, if it doesn't make you happy, take it off and throw it on the ground and cuss. Then find something that brings you joy. Like sweatpants. Or holey jeans that feel like sweatpants.

Step 3) Talk. Share your frustration. This might sound like I am encouraging negativity or complaining, but it really does help make the day seem ok when you realize that you're not the only one who doesn't always want to be wherever it is that you are and don't want to be. It doesn't have to be an elaborate dumping session. Human beings are empathetic animals, and sometimes a quick exchange of a knowing look with a "coffee is good this morning"  grunt, speaks volumes. And you just know. We're all in this together. All the normal. All the people. All the time. And it's going to be ok. If you want to level-up this step, and combine it with the power of Step 1, deliver coffee to someone else. It's like telling them,"I know, life sucks, but here's coffee," and it makes both of you feel that much better. Trust me, it does, even if it's gross coffee.

Step 4) Listen. I have watched music visibly change the attitude and posture of people. I know for a fact what it does for me. Sometimes it's angry rock music that takes the angst out on a drum set for you. Sometimes it's Alison Krauss lulling you gently back to sanity. Sometimes it's the music of absolute silence. Peace and contentment can be found behind the wall of noise-cancelling headphones plugged into nothing. Or the interior of a car with no sound but your own weird breathing. Find the noise you need to make this day ok.

Step 5) Daydream. Some people call this meditation, not paying attention or slacking off, but for me, unplugging from the four jobs and three conversations I am in the middle of for just a few minutes is the only way to keep myself from freaking the eff out. Sometimes I drift back to that Mexican Hermit Crab on the beach, or sometimes it's the warm squishyness of All The Pillows in bed last night, or Holding His Hand. But if I can let my brain disconnect from Right This Moment, Right This Place for a few minutes, I can come back and plug in with a little more energy.

Keep Calm and Scuttle On

Step 6) Eat. Days when you are really questioning where your life took a bad turn are not the days to be eating salads. Save your salads for those peppy, optimistic days after you quit drinking caffeine and your whole world is wonderful. Eat something that makes you happy. Eat something that makes you feel good. I don't care what it is, but you have to WANT it. Crusty white bread and pasta? Sure. Medium-rare ribeye? OK, if you can afford it. Cheesy bread? Definitely. Life is too short to be miserable on top of being unhappy. Eat something you love.

Step 7) Move. Go above and beyond rolling over on the couch. Get up and move. Shuffle to the kitchen for more coffee. Stand by the window. Every step you take gives you a thousand more possibilities that you will see, touch, smell, hear, feel something that reminds you of why you are here. Something that excites you. Of course, there's also the increased risk that you will see, touch, smell, hear or feel something that repulses you and confirms your suspicion that life sucks, but it's a risk worth taking. If at all possible, get outside. Unless you're one of those people that hates fresh air and all living things and prefer cardboard and drywall and scratchy upholstery to dirt and rocks. In that case, stay inside and move around. It takes all kinds, after all.

Step 8) Sleep. Find a way to get good sleep. Not having good sleep and not eating good food are the Two Primary Reasons for Hating Life. I just made that up but it sounds really good. Everybody's sleep trigger is different. Sometimes some of us need a little help. A glass of wine, a heavy dose of muscle relaxers, a swift kick in the head... Figure yours out and cash in on it. Don't miss sleep. It's not worth it.

Step 9) Give. Try to notice one person during the course of your day that has it worse than you. Maybe it's the hobo on the street corner or the single mom with a broken down car (not me, this time), or maybe it's the One You Love that has to put up with you. Find a way to give them something. A coffee, a hug, a jump start, or maybe a big and sincere thank you. Get outside yourself for a minute.

Step 10) Love. If there isn't a single person that warms the cockles of your heart then you should seek help more professional than mine STAT. But I'm willing to bet everyone reading this has at least one person that you can see when you close your eyes and be overwhelmed with gratitude for the place they hold in your heart. The people who don't have anybody are probably on a different blog about how to build bombs and stuff. Love your people, or person. Hold the hand. Steal the kisses. Feel the love. Go after it actively. You need it. It needs you. It's easy to let the doldrums convince you that you're not worthy - at least for me it is. That's when its the most important to find the love and bask in it.

Reading through my Quick List of Useful Instructions, I should probably rename it something like "A Hedonist's Guide To Everyday Living," because it's all about what feels good. But we're so good, these days, about beating ourselves up and Making the Tough Choices and Taking the High Road that we forget about how good life can feel if we let it. Sometimes the rougher path is the right one, but sometimes the Normal Days need a little love boost.

Things About the Holidays

Current Mood

Feliz Navidad, Amigos!! Ok, so it's officially the Holiday Season, and if it weren't for my kids transforming my house into some holiday extravaganza of mismatched Christmas attire while I was in Mexico, I am not sure that we'd be getting in the spirit of the season at all. It's December 13th and not only do we have NO TREE to date, I also haven't made it to Costco to purchase the wreath for my door that has been a tradition since 2003 when Aunt Tracey brought one to my house and I felt like a Real Live Grownup. In fact, my Costco membership expired and I am not 100% sure that I will renew it, which feels like the most sacrilegious of all perpetrations, since Costco is like home to me. But I only have like 1.5 children at home at any one time these days, so all I end up with is rotten lettuce and moldy cheese. Also a Grocery Outlet just opened in Colville. But I digress.

It's true that we swapped out some holiday traditions this year for a visit to the Nation's Capitol (not to mention my foray to Baja), but we still have enough time to sneak in a few of the prerequisites. The advent calendar hangs on the wall, sadly neglected like a cast-off chore chart. 13 days behind, and nobody seems to care. I guess that's what happens when all your kids are old. We haven't made a single Christmas Cookie, and my sister and I keep playing leapfrog in scheduling, canceling and rescheduling things like tree hunting and Gingerbread Houses (OK, so she beat me to the tree, but still). This is holiday reality. Basketball games instead of gingerbread, fevers of 102º instead of tree hunting... But it's still the holidays, as evidenced by the jingle bells strapped relentlessly around the neck of the poor, deaf Old Truck Hound. 


Speaking of hounds, I took a little nostalgic detour through Grinchland this morning - we haven't had time to watch it yet, but we have the whole story on CD that stays in my disc changer in the car year round - I pretty much have it memorized. Anyway, I was thinking about how much I relate to Max the Reindeer/dog, because he really doesn't mean to take everybody's crap, but he's just loyal to his guy, and wants to make everybody happy. He tries so hard, pulling that GIANT sled of confiscated merriment, and it finally gets the best of him. I can't help but thinking that Max is in part responsible for the Grinch's turn, for the 3X growth of his cold, Grinchy heart, as the faithful little dog quietly perseveres, waiting for his master to Get It.

Well folks, I figured it out. The Grinch is Real Life. Bills and responsibility and stealing all the joy. It's overcommitment and obligation and worry. But once we hear the music for what it really is, and that none of those things matter - not the snoof or the fuzzles or tringles or trappings. Max is the people we love and the ones that love us, reminding us that we can do All Those Things, but do we really need to? Or can we just go eat Roast Beast with the rest of the Whos? Maybe Christmas perhaps, means a little bit more...

Things That You Can't Take Seriously

Life. Life is way too short to take so seriously. The other day, I posted about how old I was feeling, the aches and pains, and how certain I was that the End was near. Turns out that I was having a reaction to a medication that I was on. Once I realized what I was doing to myself, stopped taking the drug and gave it a couple days,  I found myself with plenty of energy and pain isolated to my shoulder and 1.5 hips. Feeling sheepish, it occurs to me to share with all of you the reminder that it really is often darkest just before the dawn, or at least before the realization that you have an intolerance for certain antibiotics.

Life is short and it's funny as hell. I have been forgetting that a lot lately. Forgetting to laugh at the ridiculous things. I blame part of that on the time this summer that I got in big trouble for laughing at the ridiculous things in a blog about a fire situation... which the bosses didn't think was funny. The fact that I became infamous from the post was almost as funny and ridiculous as the post itself, but a threat to my job made me kind of crabby. But there's a balance, right? And you have to know who has the cojones to make fun of life with you, and which incident commanders are all about maintaining a facade in the throes of chaos. #lessonlearned

I guess I've been so caught up in the sort-of-serious aspects of my life lately that I forget to talk about the ones that are not at all.

Like when I thought for several days that the resident bear was getting into the garbage in the front yard, but it was really Old Man Truck whom we caught red-pawed early one morning. And Old Man Truck himself, the zombie dog who will live forever. I don't think he can see or hear a thing, but his hound dog nose, even in it's current state of decomposition, seems to work well enough to steer him in the direction of the garbage, recently relocated out of reach of "the bear."

Truck. The undead, zombie truck. He's a 13-year-old hound who is quite literally falling apart at the seams.

Even in the aches and pains, there is comedy. I had the orthopedic surgeon's assistant in stitches the other day when I couldn't remember which joint I was there about, or which one I would choose if I had to focus on one, or how to explain how each one was slowly obliterated over the years....

(I never finished writing this and so now here it is, published in it's unfinished glory.)

Things That We Didn't Do: On Baja Dogs and Breezes

We came to La Ventana to kiteboard, or more accurately, He came to kiteboard. I came for the beach and the beer and the warm sunshine on my face. A little fishing village nestled into a protected cove on the Sea of Cortez, La Ventana was founded in 1940 by a disenfranchised pearl diver and his family in search of a new beginning. Most parcels of land in the La Ventana bay were co-opted by the government, subsidizing small family plots until 1996 when Mexican law changed and granted ownership to the longtime farmers and ranchers who had worked the land for generations. La Ventana became a mecca for wind sport enthusiasts in the 1990s as the daily El Nortes (northerly fronts)  make for a wind sport enthusiast’s wet dream. It was a history I could relate to - a new beginning and the dream of doing my job somewhere that wasn’t cold and dreary. Anywhere that wasn’t the snowless frigidity of post-holiday wintertime in the northwest.

We got into La Ventana just in time for dinner on Thanksgiving night, and by some miracle, one of the little restaurants squeezed us in for an all-the-trimmings turkey dinner buffet, sans reservations. Later, He would say how it was the best food we had the whole time we were there, the piles of deep fried turkey and mashed potatoes so creamy that they couldn’t have been real. Even the wine tasted better than the merlots we had back home. I would agree with Him, except for the bag of totopos that the last residents of the Casita had left behind. They were salty and perfect. I couldn’t stop eating them at midnight and for breakfast, and while we laid out in the sun on the plaster roof top in the late morning the next day.  

All I wanted was a space of seaside to sit next to and write. Or daydream. Or drink. Maybe all at once. There was seaside, all right. Miles of it, white and sandy and the perfect amount of warm. Occasional Canadian kiteboarders drifted by, and the fourth generations of the family farmers, picking up sticks off the beach and being chased by little white Baja Dogs everywhere.

Late Friday  morning, we walked three miles along a dirty highway to cash in whatever tourist panache we had for a couples massage at the only large resort in town. We paid the going rate willingly, if for no other reason than to feel like we could afford it, and then we tromped back down the highway and then the three minute trail of sand and clay from our Casita to the beach with all of His kiteboarding gear and sat expectantly in the sand, waiting for the wind to pick up. And waiting. And waiting. In between the waiting, we wandered over to Baja Joe’s where everybody goes for coffee, and then beer, and then tequila, and some killer Asada Tacos. Saturday we repeated the process, but with less waiting and more tequila, the kiters bemoaning the quiet air over their Pacifico and nachos. Frustrated windseekers found solace in the mellow beat of a reggae band at Joe’s on Saturday night, the dance floor carelessly littered with multinational escapees of all generations and some of the farmers.

There wasn’t much accounting for Sunday morning, thanks to the Peyote IPA and the number of Baja Fogs that Paula the bartender made for us the previous night, but by afternoon, the waiting game began anew, and in anxious earnest as the wind picked up just enough to rustle the palm trees in the courtyard at Baja Joe’s and tease all of the pent up athletes. Kiters with small physiques and large kites hustled out to the beach to catch the gentle breeze, but those of greater substance knew the wind wasn’t enough to carry them offshore, so the wait continued.  

I didn’t do very well at proving that I am good at working “anywhere,” since unplugging and not caring about work seemed so much more important than getting 18 new stories cranked out and all of my deadlines met ahead of time. But it was heavenly. No place to be unless we wanted to be there, and nowhere to go except where our feet would take us. Lazy afternoon siestas were punctuated with walks up and down the beach for food, catching sunrises and sunsets if we felt like it, counting the constellations we could name and making up new ones. After a few days we found the Baja Dogs on our heels like the farmer’s kids, weaving in and out of kite shops and little make-shift patio restaurants that most of the locals seemed to run as a by-the-way businesses along the beach.

Another night at Joes’ brought in a cover band that played everybody’s favorite song from all generations and genres. The dance floor was full of expatriate and unfulfilled kiteboarders dancing to “Jesse’s Girl,” locals still wearing the uniform of the restaurants next door from the shift they just finished, old run-away hippies and Baja Dogs. Pacifico bottles rolled across the paving stones and beer splashed between the toes of bare feet while the band played AC/DC and Elvis covers. That night nobody cared that the wind hadn’t come for them. That night the moonlight and the tequila and the music was enough.

He only got out on His kite once, and even then it wasn’t His kite, but a bigger one that He rented, hoping the bit of wind that picked up one afternoon would do it. It didn’t, and after fighting His way down the curving shoreline, He endured the walk of shame back up the beach, board in hand, to get back to the more readily accessible sport of beer and tacos and dreaming up ways of smuggling Baja Dogs home to the northwest. Secretly, I didn’t mind the lack of wind, mostly because I was selfish and liked Him next to me on the beach. But Him being next to me made for less work getting done and more lazy wave-gazing, watching the hermit crabs scuttle sideways across the beach and staring at the cloudless sky as if the wind might suddenly appear visibly. I wouldn’t call it a loss, for Him or for me.

Things I Am Able To Do

I would like to say that I have never given up on something because it was too hard, but that would be a reckless untruth. I, as the epitome of a comfort seeking creature, have many times walked away from a project or a dilemma because it was too frustrating or physically challenging, or because The Universe was set against me and no solution was in sight. Maybe I have even done this with people, which is a thought that makes me very sad. One of my daughters was just telling me how she can't do anything, because nothing works for her. Setting aside the gross overstatements, it's an attitude, or even an overwhelming feeling, that I have modeled for her in the moments that she has seen me quit.

While I am definitely guilty of quitting, I have also been successful at pushing through hardships to accomplish things, even when I was not entirely sure of my ability to do so. As I listened to my daughter huff and puff about the impossibility of ever accessing a website since her password was wrong (one of my GREATEST pet peeves and lessons in anger management), I was wrestling with a broken pellet stove and a Phillips screw driver that had no intention of behaving as I imagined a screwdriver should. It was a three hour contest that ultimately, after a few tears of frustration and MANY calls to the stove shop, I won.

Within the first hour I wanted to quit. By the second hour I wanted to throw the screwdriver through the window. I realized that the alternative to me overcoming the stupid thing meant waiting until after Christmas for the only repair guy in town who charges $69 an hour and $1.90 per mile to come to my house. This adds up to hundreds of dollars after you add in parts and troubleshooting and the time it would take to lecture me about my shoddy maintenance in the last four years. So by the third hour, I was determined that victory would be mine.

There I was, belly down on a floor that smelled suspiciously like a Weiner Dog hadn't used the dog door last time she needed to potty. I was frustrated, irritated, uncomfortable and WAY out of my comfort zone. But after eliminating all of the other possibilities, I found the problem, and I fixed it. I did it because the several hundred dollars I would save were worth more to me than the irritation of having no idea what I was doing. I did it because I could stop for a minute and remember why it was important for me to keep going.

Not because I am the smartest ever. Or the most clever (in fact, later I would discover that I broke a different part in fixing it and have to re-fix the damn thing). Generally speaking, I avoid hard things. But I did it. And I can do it. And I don't have to rely on somebody else all of the time. I just have to take the steps. To keep taking the steps once I identify what's important to me. And when one step doesn't get me there, I take another and another... and my whole life is full of steps that aren't getting me there. But then again, maybe they are. Unless there is really here, and I have actually arrived, and I just need to see this topsy-turvy journey as the destination.

It's not all fun. But it's all good. And while there are lots and lots of steps, there are no wrong turns. Just hard work and learning and I'll be damned if I'm not gonna try to find the joy in it, or at least the upsides. Like for instance, a newly mopped floor and a merrily burning stove. And marketable knowledge worth $69 an hour and $1.90 a mile. Because now I am a pro.

Things That Aren't Mine

I’ve never lost someone very close to me. Seems like lately, all the people I care about are losing loved ones and I hurt for them, but it’s hard to know how to be there for them.

My sister in law, whom I think is a super rad girl, recently lost her dad. I’m not bffs with my sister in law. I can’t even say we’re totally close. The most time we’ve spent together was a jam packed weekend for her wedding to my brother and some kick-a$$ dive bar karaoke in a little beach town on the Oregon coast. We’ve had a lot of late night messenger chats about boys and men and Boyz 2 Men and yoga and fashion and family and the ire of all those of those things.

But when her father died, I wasn’t sure how to be there for her. Knowing she’d be flooded with support from people who were closer to her than I, I held back from reaching until she asked me for a little help with something in all the memorial commotion, which, obviously, I jumped at the chance to do.

But in the whole scenario, like many others, close friends losing friends close to them, it is hard to know how to process and how to BE THERE without indelicate interference in an experience somewhat removed from my immediate sphere of influence. It's certainly isn't that I lack empathy, to the contrary, I find myself weeping on behalf of others, even total strangers, more often than I would care to admit. But I am also keenly sensitive that this grieving process has nothing to do with me and I get sort of terrified of being the kind of nuisance that makes every one else's ordeal about me.

It has steeled my resolve, for the inevitable times that I will face my own grief and tragedy, to remember the ways that I wanted to be able to help. And maybe I can remember to ask the people outside of my immediate grieving circle for the specific help that they can offer, and give them a chance to pay their respects in a practical way.

Things That Are The Worst

There's this self-help guru out there on the inter webs named Tim Ferris, and other than having a stellar six pack and rocking a bald head almost as well as Bruce Willis, I am not sure what he exactly does that makes him so amazing, other than writing some pretty decentish things, which is something that I aspire to (along with a stellar six pack). But whatever it is that he is famous for, he's so good he only needs a website with his first name : https://tim.blog/ - also something I should aspire to, except http://liv.blog/ has a WAY cooler vibe than his. Anyway, Ferris - Tim, that is, has this thing he talks about called fearsetting. It's like goalsetting, except the un-side of it. Like, what you DON'T want to happen. When I stumbled across Tim's fearsetting TED talk, it occurred to me that I had actually been fearsetting in my own life for several years.

The first time that I remember consciously doing it was when I was in Uganda , trying to sleep in the searing heat under a mosquito net with tarantula sized holes in it. I was having a full-fledged panic attack. I couldn't breathe enough to gasp out the sobs that my soul was working up, and it wasn't the mosquitos or the tarantulas, since I am pretty sure there aren't any tarantulas in Uganda. It was as if I had suddenly realized, laying down to sleep, that I was, at a bare minimum, two days of travel away from my four little girls, without the resources or ability to get to them if something went wrong. I was a single mom, beyond poor, halfway around the world from my kids. The fear and doubt and guilt that raced through my mind that night was crippling. I couldn't escape it, so I faced it. Starting with the Worst Thing I Could Imagine, I looked each fear in the eye and asked myself what I would do. If one of my girls was hurt -  how would I deal? I made a plan, who I could call, how I could get there. Then I faced the next fear, until I worked my way down the Worst Case Scenario List, making plans, until I had taken away all of the reasons to not go on with my trip and sleep soundly that night.

That, in an nutshell, is fearsetting. It's looking the most Terrible Thing You can Imagine in the face and asking yourself what you would do. Once you find an answer, the fear subsides. And there is always an answer.

On a daily basis we deal with anxiety about relationships and money and decisions, when the reality is that the thing that we are freaking out about is something we have probably already faced (which makes them rational fears, but fears nonetheless). When I panic about the risk of a being dumped or rejected or abandoned, I remember when I was, and I think about how I survived it, and how I would survive it better now. When I fear financial destitution, I reflect back on the moments of absolute poverty-stricken impossibility and how I got back on my feet by digging all of the quarters out of the couch cushions to buy gas to get to work. I wish I could say I was exaggerating.

I have never faced the loss of a child, or even a very close loved one, but I can imagine the disabling grief and when I am overwhelmed with the knowledge that their protection, especially as they launch into their own lives as adults, is out of my hands, I have to find peace in knowing I have the people around me to keep me together if something like that happened. And if I don't, I'd better get busy finding them.

Fears are really the things that keeps us from our goals. Fear of failure, fear of loss, fear of wasted time, energy, passion - those are my big things. I have never really had money to fear losing, and failure is such a ritual procedure for me that it doesn't scare me that much, but wasting one more day of this infinitely short life (yes, that's an oxymoron), scares the shit out of me. It's like FOMO (fear of missing out, for all you old people) on speed, because instead of missing out on like, the best Halloween party EVER, you're missing out on years of your life - or you gave them away like an idiot to some jerkface who didn't appreciate them.

So I face that fear, the fear of wasting time, and I look at all of the things that I have brought with me from the "wasted" years. Four AMAZING kids. Skillz. Mad skillz. Insight. Compassion. Empathy. Humility. A complete Battlestar Gallactica DVD set. So how wasted were those years? Look where they brought me! To a place I would never be otherwise, with people I might never have known. The fear subsides and I look forward to the next adventure. I pray that it is one that will last, but if it isn't, I know I will have gained even more.

So that's where I am at. Eating fear for breakfast along with pain and failure and stomping off all of the negative vibes. Or at least most days I am. Why we, as humans, and especially me, are so intent on finding the things to worry about when we have such good things to be doing, cookies to eat and dogs to pet and just, LIFE! But we, me especially, have to bog the good things down with the what ifs. And what if things were just fine? What if we had nothing to fear because we always have a way out? I say these things to remind myself that even the Worst Things can, and will be survived, so I might as well enjoy all of the Best Things that surround me every day.

Lost Munu