Rhubarb Pie

What I'm Up To

You're going to be sorry you asked, you know.  Because this post is filed under the category "Year of the Definitive Cure."  I'll try not to be graphic.  But right now I'm prepping for the colonoscopy I'm getting tomorrow.  The fact that it is taking place on April Fool's Day has not escaped me, nor has the fact that the first instruction on my preparation sheet for what to do on the day of the procedure is "Do not cement your dentures in today."  I am trying not to be resentful that I will be spending tomorrow sedated with a.... well, you get the idea, and if you don't get the idea then I will not be the person to spoil it for you.  I am trying to be grateful for the fact that the 70 or so ounces of disgusting liquid I am pounding back, 10 ounces at a time, in 10 minute increments, which will shortly send me rushing to the bathroom, is not as disgusting as it was three years ago, the last time I did this.  Sedation technology has gotten better, although they won't be giving me the good stuff tomorrow, for administrative and staffing reasons that are tedious and disappointing.  The person who is certified to administer the better sedation doesn't work on Wednesdays, and this is the day I have to come in.   

I have been thinking and planning a bit more about how I am going to bring about The Definitive Cure, but first we've got to take a look, and see what's going on.  I have a new doctor, who partly thinks I am a crackpot but seems to be humoring me and my aggressive approach by giving me lots of information.  She seems willing to experiment a bit.  I am a pretty mild patient.  "You're not *that* sick," she says.  Those words don't make sense to me.  I don't feel "sick" at all.  And I don't want to be a person who "manages" a disease. I want to be a person who used to have this thing and then got cured.  That's me.  I suppose because I'm "not that sick" there's not much of an incentive to do too much to treat me -- I respond well to basic medicine, and my symptoms disappear.  I think I'm supposed to feel lucky about that, and I suppose I do, in a way.  Flirting with mysterious health problems is really sobering, and makes me appreciate how little I worry about my body.  On the other hand, being not that sick isn't the goal here.  We can do better.  I'll keep you posted, and will try not to make the details too icky. 

Rock and roll ruined everything.

I don't entirely get the part about Winnetka. I grew up near Winnetka and I don't remember that Winnetka boys had mad game.

A good nothing.

Hi darlin'.  Sorry I haven't written in a while.  I haven't written because nothing has happened.  Instead, my recent serene and placid mood has lasted.  I am coasting along, doing my normal things, only happier, and nothing has risen to the importance of telling you.  There have been spring verities, like flowers, more baby chicks and allergies.  But, you know.  Eh.  I've enjoyed them fine, but surely you have read other posts about those things.

I still haven't explained this mellow euphoria.  Is it the contrast to my pre-competition intensity?  Now that that's over, just being normal feels relaxed and happy?  Is it because I'm no longer scared I won't have kids?  Waiting for a partner made that feel so tenuous.  I haven't done anything productive and specific about getting pregnant, but I have a rough date in mind and maybe that is enough to explain this contented feeling.  Work has been interesting.  The days are beautiful.  I had thought that when I lived at home with my flower beds I would work on them lots; that has turned out to be true and nice. 

My current dilemma is whether I want a dog.  I have a theory that you can tell what you want to do by whom you ask for advice.  You know what your friends are going to tell you, so you ask the person who will tell you what you want to hear.  So, what do you think?  Do I need a dog?

Also, the blossoms on my cherry tree look neat under the streetlight.
I tried to get a picture of it in focus, but cherry trees are nocturnal and this one was just waking up.  It kept stretching and waving, so my picture came out blurry.  Sorry about that.

Year of Planned Reading: Update

So the Year of Shakespeare got off to a good start but paused abruptly when we moved.  I blame the lack of a good sitting chair in my little reading space in the new house for lack of continued progress on that front.  Yes, it's a transparent and ridiculous excuse, but I'm going to stick with it for a while.  Year of Planned Reading has been a little better, though not without bumps.  I've been doing some unplanned reading -- after a couple of hard books I picked up some paperback detective novels my dad dropped off and tearing through those was a treat.  Then I got a Kindle, and went on an experimental spree of downloading all the free Kindle books I could find, plus buying ones in the Kindle store that struck my fancy.  And there are all these "12 Secrets To Landing Your Dream Job" type books that I feel compelled to read and evaluate for work.  (Most, you will not be surprised to learn, are bad.  But some are very good.)  So I've been reading a lot, though not in the disciplined way that I set out to do at the beginning of this year: according to a pre-determined list, for 3 hours on weekends, 2 hours on Wednesday nights, plus the usual bedtime reading. 

I'm hoping hoping hoping that now that we are pretty much moved in and we have sold our old house, I can turn my attention back to the Reading Plan.  Yesterday I came home from work with 10 books from the college library -- the three interlibrary loan books I'd gone in to get, plus 7 others that jumped out at me from the shelves and begged me to take them home.  I have reading time planned tonight, and my Sunday is blissfully open.  

Preliminary remarks on the Kindle: I love it.  It's better than a book because it contains many books at once, it's light, it contains the means of getting other books immediately.  Those things are reassuring and cool.  Having it with me means I have access to all books at once.  It is disarmingly, chillingly, efficient at purchasing new books.  Reading on it is slightly easier than reading a "real" book, because you can hold it with one hand and turn the pages with a click of your thumb, which sometimes you can't do with a larger real book.  But is it really better than a book?  Well, this pile of 10 books I brought home and plan to review this weekend are real books.  That means I can look over their dust jackets and covers, flip through the index, skim easily, jump to relevant chapters, and do that "inspectional reading" that Mr. Adler taught me is very important.  Some of the 10 books I brought home probably won't merit more than that level of reading.  If there's a way with the Kindle to quickly scan a book and assess the whole and its component parts, then jump around and skim sections, I haven't figured it out quite yet.  I will probably reserve the Kindle for reading fiction and shorter articles, and continue to use the library for nonfiction books, the better for skimming, skipping, and jumping around. 

What am I reading? Hmm. I just finished the first two Twilight books, on my Kindle, on which I also read a horrible (but free) romance novel.  Am partway through The Omnivore's Dilemma on the Kindle, and am already accepting that before I'm done I'm going to shop and eat differently. Just read a florid and overwritten book for book group, called Holy Fools, which you should not waste any time on.  Next month's book group selection is The Grapes of Wrath, which I have loaded onto my Kindle but haven't yet started to re-read -- I last read it in high school, so remember only a few scenes.  On my bedside table I have The Feeling of What Happensand After Virtue-- real books from the library, not Kindles.  In the bag I brought home from the library yesterday are 10 more books, the heavy old-fashioned kind.  My intent tonight and over the weekend is to skim and inspect these books pretty closely, to figure out which of them deserve to be closely read.  (If you have thoughts, and can save me the trouble on any of these, please email me to let me know.)  As usual, my curiosity about people and why we act the way we do is pretty transparent: 

 Tragedy and Hope

How Breakthroughs Happen

The Black Swan

A Great Idea At the Time

The Pleasure Center

The Tending Instinct

Nowtopia

Judgment in Managerial Decision Making

Against Happiness

The Watercooler Effect

Nudge

She probably spells it different.

Now, see, this is a common misconception of me. People think I am so nice and so friendly and that I just love everybody. I can see how people think that. They mistake being agreeable for being genuinely nice. I am agreeable. That's true. I don't notice details much, so things don't bug me. I'm a satisficer, and lots of stuff is good enough. Then, I like really human behavior. So I have a high tolerance for people behaving badly, when it shows our human flaws. People getting defensive and losing their self-awareness, people throwing fits, people rallying to help. That is all so human and I like seeing our nature revealed. So I don't mind some unpleasant behaviors. Then, the rest of the time, I keep my mouth shut. I mostly don't badmouth people, because I think it is poor form. I say nothing and go do something funner with other people. The result is that people think I'm so sweet.

I'm not though. I like people that I choose, whom I encounter in some way I understand. I like you if I met you at the gym, or through Ultimate, or if we know each other from the blog. I like people who say interesting things in meetings and I'll sidle up to them afterwards. I reserve judgment about strangers or most people I meet at parties. I have learned to completely discount Chris vouching for someone. He really IS genuinely nice. He loves everyone, including some fucking annoying people. Chris's telling me I'll like someone is no indicator. Being told I'll like someone triggers a little suspicion and reserve in me. It makes my eyes narrow just a little, although I smile and am genial during the introduction, reinforcing the misimpression that I just love people.

A surefire way to make sure I don't like someone is to tell me that she is your newer, cuter, closer Megan! A twinkly kindred spirit! Yeah. I don't like her. I don't like her one bit. I don't think you should be listening to her blurted confessions. Whatever. She has no sense of boundaries, that girl. She doesn't understand who your real Megan is at all. I hope she gets lost on tour. I hope she marries a hot Columbian and never goes near you again.

There's Another One!

I have a lot to tell you, but right now I have to tell you that I met another Megan.  She's great! I met her at the YMCA, which is just three blocks away from our new house.  It's a little bit more expensive than other gyms in the area, but there's a pool and racquetball courts and basketball and a lot of kids and families running around, and it's in the 'hood, so I've been thinking about ponying up the cash and joining.  And then today, after I closed on the other house and I deposited the largest check I've ever seen made out to me and did two hours of financially responsible administrivia, I stopped by the YMCA to get us a family membership.  And Megan helped me out.

This hasn't happened to me in a while, but it was one of those times where between the lines of filling out forms you manage to figure out that someone is a kindred spirit.  While I stood at the counter probably two dozen people came in and swiped their cards and asked for locker keys or towels or racquetball racquets or to use the phone, so Megan kept having to go back and fill in my zip code on the computer or finish her sentence explaining to me how the automatic draft system worked.  I used that time to admire the various indicators of her coolness.  Yes, there was a pierced nose and yes, cool shoes and a very interesting skirt.  Yes, a twinkle in her eye, and yes, the signs of a tattoo.  None of those were the reasons I liked her.  She liked the name Scheherazade, but I get that a lot and it doesn't automatically warm me up to people.  But then she blurted out, "I love this place but I'm about to go on tour and then after that I think I'm going to go to Columbia."  She paused for a minute and said, "I'm not sure why I said that, but I guess I just wanted to tell you."  I'm very glad you did, I said.  I asked if she was going to come to Sacramento on her tour and she said yes, and I said, well, there's somebody I'd like you to meet. 

P.S. She once played a concert with Kevin Bacon.  An older man returning a racquetball racquet stopped at the counter when she was telling me that.  "Kevin Bacon? Really?" he asked.  And I knew I would like being a member of the YMCA.

Is It Melting There, Too?

March is full of mindgames and disappointment, but this weekend we had two days above 50 in a row.  That melts the snow, sure, but it does other things that put you in a good mood. In the woods you can smell the trees -- the groves where there are sunny patches have a smell, earthy green, that I think is the smell of bark and maybe even rising sap.  You don't smell it in the shady places.  That's true other places, too.  In the backyard or walking across campus you can smell dirt again.  Sure, it's not like smelling flowers, but warming up earth smells alright.  You realize you missed it over the winter.  Your feet squish in the muddy spots.  The colors are brown and blue-white.  The remaining snow, and yes, there's a lot of it, is grainy and slushy.  The sun is thin, but it still feels good.

The lengthening days, likely.

I've been reading in the sunshine on my couch on my porch all day.  I have nearly melted into a puddle of warm floaty euphoria.  The world is right in all details.  A large daring jumping spider with shiny green teeth came by.  My grapefruit was very sweet.  I drank my coffee from my new mug.  A friend I rarely talk to called, so there was lots of news to catch up on.  My cat at my feet was ridiculously cute.

Despite being mildly sick, I've been living in a state of mild joy for a few weeks now.  I'm not sure how I invited it, but I like it very much.  I am trying to pay attention, so that I soak up as much of it as I can while it stays.

Easier Said Than Done

One of the things I try to help students with is letting go of being perfect, not being paralyzed by imperfect choices in an uncertain world.  Maybe it is disappointing compared to our elaborate imagination, but so much of the important progress of life is about showing up, about trying hard, about reaching out, about letting people help you.  In the role of career advisor I feel warm and helpful and wise.  I get the chance to practice being the kind of person I aspire to be, and all this practice is tricking me into thinking I'm getting somewhere.

And then my grandmother died.

And there are lots of things that come up with this.  Sadness is the least of it -- not the least because it's lightest, but the blessing of sadness is that it is straightforward and expected and uncomplicated.  It's no fun to be sad, sure, but it is what I'm supposed to feel.  I also feel relieved, and that feeling comes loaded down with lots of self-loathing and shame.  I am guilty.  I have not been generous with my time or my attention.  I am cold and aloof.  I do not remember birthdays or bring casseroles or take care of cats, or do much of the kind of tending and practical caretaking that families do for one another.  Worse -- I don't *want* to do that, even knowing how much it matters, how indistinguishable from love it is.  I am afraid of what will happen to my extended family, that we will drift into separate orbits, and that it is a failing of mine that I am unwilling or unable to do the work that would keep us together. I am full of wistfulness and tortured self-examination at all of these failings, my inability to love the right people in the right way, or to express it right, at the right time.  I am full of regret at all the ways I could have been a better granddaughter.  I hated to see my grandmother's deterioration, so I avoided visiting her.  I am mad at myself for being self-absorbed enough to make my grandmother's death, even, all about me me me and what kind of person I am, so I am tormented by all of these feelings and then when I start thinking about them I get angry and disgusted and it starts anew.

The good news, I think, is that the experience of a memorial service offers some kind of respite, and some kind of healing.  I am tending to the tedious and mundane errands of arranging for food. The family is coordinating chores and readings via email, and mixed in with the administrivia we are sharing some other thoughts, too.  We're all tender in the same way -- I know that without any one saying it outright.  We remember the same things, and that is such a comfort and such a tie.  We're connected even without casseroles and cat-sitting.  We will stand up and sit down in a familiar church together, take turns walking up to the lectern and reading words out loud, and after that we will eat and tell stories and laugh and drink vodka and cry and gossip with neighbors and acquaintances and old friends.  Doing that will help, I think.  Just showing up.  It's not complicated, but it's not simple, either.  

Nice.

Sherry, it has been an extraordinary couple of weeks.  All these things keep arriving, after delays so long I'd given up.  I came home last night to an email from a local play director.  I'd seen a play of his maybe five years ago.  It was incredible, with six athletic and talented actors simultaneously acting the story, forming the set (like, four of them would assemble into the train the other two were riding) and singing the soundtrack.  An amazing feat, very well performed.  I instantly swore that I'd see everything he directed and their troupe promptly disbanded.  Two years ago I saw a mention of him in the paper, so I stalked him to the ground, and wrote an email asking to please be on a announcement list for any future plays.  Last night he wrote back, about a current performance.  We're going on Thursday.

That's the most striking example, but for a couple weeks now, things keep turning up.  Most of them minor, but pleasant surprise after pleasant surprise.  I found the sweatshirt my friend's baby had put into my sock drawer (sweet kid, putting away his clothes.  We looked for twenty minutes.)  I finally used the right search terms to find the picture frame I've long wanted.  It is here and it fits.  I need a bed for my other bedroom, and Anand showed up with an air mattress, for the time being.  I was just starting to wonder if the singlet would arrive on time when my teammate emailed.  She'd called the place and was having all of our singlets sent to her office.  She'd bring it the next day.  I was just getting tired of cinnamon-y raisin oatmeal when Ezra pointed me to savory grain breakfasts (which are awesome.  Salt and peppered oats with a fried egg.  Perfect.).  I've been contemplating hosting a games night, until I got the invitation to Dave's. 

These aren't, like, earthshaking and I don't mean to be too pollyanna-ish about normal events processing as they should.  But really, it has just been one small pleasant suprise (and big wonderful emotions, like seeing my people at the meet) after another for a stretch now.  I like it.  'Cept for being sick, I'm pretty happy these days.  And oh! the lengthening days!

Anyway, since this is a time when long-hoped-for things arrive, I'm escalating.  Karen and Dubin, I've been hoping you'll move here with your families forEVER.  I figure we'll hear soon.  Constitutional Convention, I've been pining for you.  New front yard, no grass, native plants for bees, I've yearned for you all these years.  Pull-ups, your time is now.  Kitchen floor, grey and yellow checkerboard, are you working your way towards me?  I know you are.  Sherry, hon.  Don't you miss sunshine?  Rates are low.  You could come visit.  I have an air mattress now.