Rhubarb Pie

Getting caught up.

Ah darlin'.  If I really believed this were an epistolary blog, I would just write to you about the regular doings of my life.  I'd say, and then, I got Korean food with Anand and it was so nice to see him and the next day I got stung by a bee and I guess I'm not allergic after all even though I've thought I was my whole life.  If it were really just a letter to you, I would tell you the things that are only made interesting by knowing the person, the things that belong on Facebook (which I still don't have). 

I would say, my sister and I are on an English novel theme.  We LOVED the Mitfords, the Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate.  I just re-read Vanity Fair, which is 600 pages of pure catty gossip.  She's reading Pride and Prejudice, which I only read for the first time a couple years ago.  We'll definitely be watching the 1995 Pride and Prejudice soon, although I watch the good parts over again by myself.  When we've seen watched Pride and Prejudice and sighed our way through it, we'll watch Bride and Prejudice just for fun.  Which is a good transition, because the other book I gave her was A Suitable Boy, which is the best thing I read all summer.  Just like Vanity Fair, such a good trashy read, so full of gossip.

Besides the English novels, my summer has felt saturated with people making my life better.  Tamar put her foot down at the gym.  She decided and took me shopping that night.  No more shapeless boxy shirts and boy's track pants.  She brought me yoga pants to try on and stood back and looked and wagged her finger.  Sometimes she walked around me and nodded. Now I have cling-y workout clothes.  She prepped everyone else at the gym, so when I go in, all my ladies gather round and hm-hmmm and approve.  Ali came back and stayed with me, so I had her with me all the minutes of my weekend.  People came by to see her and we painted my door.  The next weekend was all my college friends at the beach.  That was loud and fun and I was reminded how great it can be to play games in a living room.  Oh, and Karen moved in.  I have many Karens, including a fantastic Karen who moved to town with her family.  But the one who moved in is Math and Ice Cream Karen.  She teaches math and makes ice cream.  Both useful, but I expect to try making ice cream before I go back to learning math.  (Which I should totally do while I've got her, because I want to take the PE (a big engineering exam) next spring.)    So I come home to lights and dinner some nights.

So there's lots, and even lots more I'm not getting done.  I have got to get my winter garden planted, or I will have to... horrors! buy chard.  I need to catch up with the friends that I ruthlessly refused to eat lunch with during the swim season.  So long as the pool is open, swimming is more important than friends.  Except that now the pool is closed and I miss them.  I'm not working out particularly diligently and would like to add in yoga or dance.  I'm going to take Judaism class, did I tell you?  I'm not religious; atheist, in fact.  But if I were religious, I'd be Jewish and I figure I should know more about the religion I'm not practicing.  So that will take up my last free evening of the week.  Like I said, I feel saturated, mostly in a good way.  That's what my summer was like.  I'm sorry I haven't written more, but I haven't had time to craft blog entries, with two interweaving themes that build to an unexpected moral.  That's what I aim for, and as you can see, instead I've got plain recounting, which is not as good.  But better to fill you in and get back in here.

Miss you, hon.  When are you coming to visit?

Bats!

Last night NBT and I joined a small gathering of oddballs who trudged into the woods at dusk to watch and listen to some bat biologists trapping, measuring, banding, and releasing bats.  It was part of a cool nonprofit organization's outreach efforts, probably related to raising awareness and public support and likely money for what they do, and although I can't help with the money part I will certainly do my part and start talking about them.  

I'm too rushed right now to write anything long and lush and descriptive, but I wish you could have been there to feel and see it for yourself.  It was great to walk along in the woods with friendly strangers, mosquitos humming in my ears.  It was nice to be there in the gloaming darkness, chilly, as the light faded and the stars began to pop out.  I liked that we were all sort of companionably looking up at the place where the trees met the open sky, looking for the flicker of wings going by.  I liked that it seemed like all of us were equally curious and dorky -- people were comparing notes on their homemade bat houses, and all of us seemed to be listening politely but impatiently while the executive director talked about the organization and its broad goals.  What about the bats, we were all thinking. 

And it was fun for me to watch the scientists at work with their headlamps, calmly telling us about a bat while shining their headlamps on it, showing us parts of its wing, telling us what they measure and look for.  One guy measured and weighed and banded; the other guy wrote things down. Meanwhile the bat was squawking and flapping around, pissed as hell, biting at the rubber gloved hand of the bat scientist without effect.  

I loved the whole thing.  But the truth is, the sad truth about me, is that when I do something like this, the curiousity that it awakens is about the people.  I wanted to know about the bat scientist, and about his community of other bat scientists, how he ended up doing this work, what he does every day, whether he is living his dream.  I wanted to hear about the outreach coordinator and I wondered about the older couple who walked back with us through the woods talking about the beehives at their house -- how long have they been married, and what do they do, and how did they end up here with us tonight?  There was a lawyer there who I knew and admired back when I was practicing, and a young dad with a little girl.  There was a woman managing the fundraising for one of the candidates for governor. More than I wondered about things like how to tell a juvenile bat from an adult (the calcification of the bones), I wondered about the reasons that brought these other folks out to stand in the dark beside me, and where they would go when we walked together through the rustling, fluttering trees back to the bright lights, and our cars, and our lives.  

Last weekend.

With a completely full weekend booked, Ali needed an art project.  Actually, Ali needs an art project all the time.  We choose the screen door.  I wish I'd taken a picture of it, ripped and broken and plain and functional.  This might show you some of it.

We took it down, made it beautiful and re-screened it.  Now it looks like this.

Things you miss? Like your co-blogger?

Oh darlin, I owe you many and long posts.  I haven't not-written for any good reason.  My laptop was broke for a while, and then I was slammed with a big report for work.  Then friends are here every moment and my house is full.  Ali is back, staying with me this weekend.  We had friends to see for long evenings every evening, and Pie Contest to throw and errands to run.  So of course we took on a huge gratuitous house project.  I cannot wait to show you pictures of it tomorrow.

Talk soon!  But not really!  Because my friends are here until next week!  But soon!  I miss you and the blog!

Things I Miss

I've been noticing a sort of quiet wistfulness in myself lately, and I was just starting to identify it by name when along comes Jeremy Blachman and writes something almost exactly hitting what I was noticing.  

I miss writing honestly.  I miss the sense of discovery of myself that happened on my old blog.  I miss the searching I was doing, not because I wish to be lost but because that sense of urgency felt so good, as did the sense of connection when I could find and name something, and the sense of excitement when someone would read it and respond. 

(Once, in the summer of 1995, I remember a vivid summer night when I felt this crashing awful loneliness.  I remember the stars that night and the smell of grass on the warm air and the road I walked along in Camden, Maine.  That night I longed for a boyfriend who had moved far away and had moved on, and I gave into it and just cried and cried and cried.  And I remember even in the sadness feeling this strange awe, because of how clear the feeling was.  It was awful to be so sad but there was something nice about for once not being at all confused or torn or mixed up about the source of my own feelings.  I was sad, and I knew exactly why, and in my twenties there were so many times when I felt a big blend of things and couldn't sort out all the feelings I had.)

I guess I miss my old voice.  I miss both the itch I used to have and the feeling that scratching it gave me. 

Like Jeremy, I'm not sure what happened.  I'm still me, and good heavens, I'm still searching, though it doesn't feel quite so urgent to sit down and blurt it all out here.  I can't name why that is.  My job right now is an outlet for earnest conversations and for writing.  I think I know better who I am now, and I'm helping other people figure out who they are.  I'm married now, and with marriage comes something that maybe I used to get through writing.  Maybe it is balm for the fear that I'm not loveable, and some of that fear and anxiety drove me to think and therefore to write.  Maybe it is the constant presence of a companion who's interested in a lot of the things about the world that I'm interested in, so thoughts get spoken instead of being blogged.  Maybe it is that the anxieties I have now aren't mine alone, but rather are shared and therefore entitled to more privacy.  Maybe it's that I'm busy with new things -- the job I have captivates me because it is so very hard to do it really well, and takes so much of my attention and energy, that at the end of a day I am satisfied, yes, but also spent, and I want to sit quietly with my dogs.  

I also miss walking outside daily.  I need to start doing that again, because it wakes up a part of me that I need.  

What I'm Thinking About

Life just got super busy at work, as the new school year begins and conscientious students come swarming in to plan their futures.  

I don't generally like generational stereotypes, although I read and pay attention to lots of them, since it is my job to understand and win the trust of college students.  I'm always testing what I read against my direct experience, and many of the things people say about millennials strike me as silly.  

But one thing that is true is that college students aren't very comfortable with uncertainty, with the total lack of structure and the enormous variety of choices that will face them when they graduate.  I think that's not unique to college students.  I think people aren't very comfortable with uncertainty, and our fear of uncertainty makes us grab after things that seem clear, even if we know they aren't what we want.  It takes a lot of bravery to persevere when you aren't sure what the answer is.  

I do think that maybe this generation of college students has had even less experience, good and bad, with spontaneity and serendipity and unstructured time.  So they are facing the uncertainty of adult life, with all its competing choices and indistinct possibilities, without a lot of experience and practice creating their own structure and goals in otherwise unstructured time.  

So I'm thinking a lot about what it is I've learned about uncertainty, and what the sources of answers are for students.  Not answers, actually.  That's probably not my job.  Courage -- what's the source of courage.  Basically, students have to face what they are unfamiliar with and probably rightfully afraid of, and they have to make thoughtful decisions even though they are afraid.  I'm thinking a little bit about what there is that I can teach about that.  

If You Lived Here You'd Never Be Hungry

Bon Appetit magazine likes the food in Portland, and has a lot to say about it. 

What I like is that according to Bon Appetit, who says we're the best place to eat, Portland is a "small town" and pegs our population at 64,000.  But a couple of months ago, when Forbes.com named Portland the "most livable city" it stretched our "metropolitan region" so that it included 513,000 people. 

Super busy at work with the start of school, and loving it as much as ever.  I think I'll be better at my job this year, and perhaps even Really Good.  NBT lost his job, which is as lousy as you'd expect, though not lousier.  September is exquisitely beautiful so far.