Peering through the cracks...

Tonight, when making dinner, I had an intense moment of déjà vu.

Tired after my gym workout, and freshly showered, and more than a little hungry, I meandered into the kitchen, with the intent of frying up an egg and making a fruit smoothie. And before I could go about whipping up this sustenance, I was transported back to the last time I came from the gym and made such a meal.

Silently, contemplatively, I cracked an egg on the edge of the frying pan. Then I moved to the blender, and tossed in some fruit, some yogurt--before I could pour in some juice,  Mr. Melissa came up behind me and kissed my neck. 

Resentfully I shrugged him off.

"Don't you love me anymore?" he asked, as he sometimes did. Before, I would feel guilty. But not anymore. 

His words cracked my facade as easily as I had just cracked the egg now sizzling in the pan.
 
"You know what?" I said quietly, realizing, as I did, that I was Over It. Over Everything. "Just...you know what, Mr. Melissa? I know that you and _____ are having a thing. So don't try that 'don't you love me anymore' crap."

With those words, I cracked through the crust of civility, of half-truths and whole-lies and diplomatic acceptance and avoidance that has formed over my marriage in the last three years. I drilled through that crust and got to the truth, which was maybe a lot less ugly than I feared, and definitely more freeing.

I never got around to eating my egg that night.

Eventually, tiredly, I tossed it into the garbage, too wrung-out to even feel the slightest bit of hunger anymore. I hadn't planned to confront Mr. Melissa that night, but pretending and keeping quiet have never been strong points of mine, and it was twisting me up inside. But what was also keeping me up at night was a truth I hadn't expected to uncover: in accepting that my marriage would eventually end, I realized that I will be free to return home. And the thought of that elated me--it still does--beyond belief. That truth--or at least the possibility of it--left me weeping with joy more than a few times. In a few years, I am going to have the chance to move home, to Indiana or at least the Midwest.

It's sad to know that my marriage has failed. It's sad to know that this marriage--begun hastily, but with hope and love--is for the next one or three or five years being kept alive on the life support of kindness and friendship and history and cooperation and acceptance. But I've been around the block enough times to know that the fact that I am not more sad, or at all jealous or enraged or vengeful, indicates a lot about my own feelings, and the role that I have played in steering our marriage to this place.

All of this is sad. And the old born-again Christian me would be appalled by my blase attitude toward the institution of marriage, and the 29-year-old desperate not to be an old maid me would be appalled that I am eventually walking away from what I once couldn't wait to have. It's twelve kinds of fucked-up. This world that I built up--I cracked open almost impulsively last month.

But through the cracks shine some rays of hope.


 

As per usual, I had a ton of things that I wanted to blog about over the last month. Christmas, of course, and our attempts here at Casa de Cricket to celebrate. My favorite songs-books-memories of 2014. My goals for 2015. Quite a few more, too. And there's a lot I'd like to be blogging about, right now. But tonight, as I sip some tea and listen to my beloved "dirge music", I just want to take a moment and imagine a few things that maybe aren't as beyond my grasp as I once thought them to be.

• Icy cold winters, in which the denim of my always-too-tight jeans is inadequate protection against the frigid air. Worrying about the icy streets. Nights spent watching the streetlights reflecting against a cloudy sky as a winter storm approaches. February days spent wondering if the winter will ever end.
• The magic of the first warm day of the year, with the breeze still just a little too cool, but no matter, because the sun is shining and it's totally worth taking a stroll to see the first bits of green peeping into the land
•  The vivacity of spring when it really bursts forth in an intense, eyeball-ache-inducing variety of greens.
•  Hazy summer dusks, shrouded in an almost mystical golden light
•  The cloying humidity of a late-August night as a thunderstorm approaches, and the atmosphere becomes electrified, and a few fireflies silently glow, utterly indifferent to the potential havoc
•  The relief of autumn, and the reminder of balance in nature. The gathering of days, the piles of leaves, the ability to actually wear sweaters during sweater weather.
• A land filled with fields and forests and farmhouses and bungalows and miles upon miles of tract housing, and yes, a fair amount of urban blight
•   A place in which people don't assume it's totally fine and normal to bring their gosh-darned dogs to every restaurant, department store, and public building in the state.
• Living so much closer to my most favorite people in the world.

Nothing has changed in my life, externally, and nothing will change for a good long time yet. And there's the possibility that it won't ever change.

But internally, everything is shifting. And the most important change comes from within.

Weekend Awesomeness, Recapped

Somehow...and I'm not entirely sure how this happened...the end of the year has sneaked up upon me. Summer, which seems to go on as eternally as hellfire here in the desert, has officially fucked the fuck off for another few months. The days can still get warm, but not uncomfortable, and the nights and mornings have been downright cool.

If I were completely honest, I'd say that this has been the most lovely October and autumn out here in the desert since I moved here six years ago.

___________________________________________________________________________________

The last few days have been a whirlwind, filled with an abundance of happy circumstances and things, all of which have given me extraordinary pleasure:

• We actually had a wee bit of WEATHER this weekend, with grumpy, deep lavender-grey clouds fighting with the sun in the desert sky. I love the extra-stormy feel of those contrasting natural elements, don't you?
• An absolutely kick-ass concert on Saturday night--along with my superhero girls, NavaJo and MILF, I attended the Def Leppard concert at the casino. It was a high-energy, fun, sold-out event, and one of the best nights of my life.
  
• Daylight savings time! I CANNOT, SIMPLY CANNOT be the only person that loves "falling back," can I? I mean, we gain a whole hour's sleep, AND it gets dark earlier! I love the dark, and the winter months, and oh, how I miss how it would be pitch-black by 5 PM, back in Southern Indiana. Sigh. 
• My Erin Condren planner has shipped! I intend to stalk the tracking number on this every day until this bundle of life-planning awesomeness is in my hands and I can have this physical representation of all the planned awesomeness of the year ahead. 
• Lots of other wonderful things: seeing the Christmas decor come up in Michaels and Target; purchasing a lovely haul of cosmetics from Ulta and Sephora; greasy hangover food and a Hair of the Dog (which does, surprisingly, do the trick), and just lazing around in bed on a Saturday morning with YouTube...all of these, just damned lovely ways to make life grand.

-

Into the Looking Glass

"The people around you are mirrors, I think...You see yourself reflected in their eyes. If the mirror is true, and smooth, you see your true self. That's how you learn who you are. And you might be a different person to different people, but it's all feedback that you need, in order to know yourself. But if the mirror is broken, or cracked, or warped...the reflection is not true. And you start to believe you are this...bad reflection."


I read this today during lunch, in the staff break room, as I was curled up in one of the pleather armchairs, dutifully noshing on a hardboiled egg. (Don't think me virtuous, the egg was the follow-up to two slices of doughy pepperoni pizza that may have been older than the chicken from which my egg had come.) And when I read those words in Caitlin Moran's How to Be a Woman, I had to put the book down--and my egg, too--and really take those words in. Massaging them into my own words, my own understanding...

It's their perception of you that's warped and cracked or skewed, and they are projecting it back out on to you. And the insecure, or easily duped, or simply emotionally spent person will see that, and will accept that reflection. 

This is a somewhat sobering thing to ponder on a weekday afternoon. This is the type of realization that it's best you come to when you're a little tipsy on a cool night, gazing out into the inky sky. So I had to dog-ear the page and make a mental note to myself to go back and ponder it later. After all, it never hurts to ponder the people in your life, ponder the role they play, ponder the way you feel and think about yourself when you're around them.

There's another type of mirror that Caitlin Moran doesn't talk about, at least not yet. There are some people that, unwittingly or not, hold up a mirror and project a reflection of what we could be (I was thinking of good potential, but I reckon BAD could be there as well.) When we spend time with those people, we feel stimulated, inspired, energized, shot through with hope and ideas. I'm lucky to have encountered quite a few people like that over the years. I find I need that mirror, need to be reminded of the amazing things I COULD do and be and experience, given the right drive and company and motivation.

Do we need the dark, cracked mirror in our lives?

This Day and Me: A Love Story

The day and I got off together on the best of terms, the best of intentions. We were ready for each other. We knew what each expected of the other. We met each other, prepared for each others' needs and hopes. Me? I wanted productivity and maybe a few high points of "Wow, I rocked in that particular situation." The day? it would just be happy if I didn't part ways with it in tears and recriminations and thoughts of "I should have done this better."

Did we meet eachothers' needs and expectations? More or less, we did. I had a phone interview with a panel of folks charged with seeing if I'm a good fit for a leadership program. I had tried to prepare for it (with, it turns out, no particular success; this institute feels more secretive than the Bilderberg Group) but really, the only way to be prepared was physically: having my application notes in front of me, filling up my cup of water, putting out a do-not-disturb sign, donning my tiara.

Yes, of course you read that correctly. My tiara. I wore it. To a phone interview. Why the fuck not? The only people that saw me were the colleagues and bosses that are well-attuned to my quirks.

(Damn, how did my face end up looking so long and crooked?)

Fortunately, secretive leadership institute interview was at the beginning of the day, so I got that out of the way first thing. Did I do well? I think it's hard to say. My colleague Dr. Bob, with his annoyingly sharp hearing, heard pieces of it, and said I did well, but then, who wants a red-headed feminist librarian having a nervous breakdown on your watch? If I were Bob, I would have told Emily Wilding Davison she did a great job right after she flung herself underneath the horses. 

Anyway, the rest of the day was fairly unremarkable. I didn't fuck up, I didn't piss people off, I made people laugh, I followed orders. But there were upheavals throughout the day, which I quietly (and sometimes, not so quietly) witnessed,  and by the end of it. the thought of going to the gym or doing anything even remotely good for me sounded pretty fucking repugnant.

So? The day and I, we met each other's basic expectations, but it took a lot out of both of us. Which is why, at the end of this day,  I ended up at home, haranguing my housemates, drinking shitty white wine, wearing a tiara, and putting together a fake-shopping cart on Sephora. No one is in tears, or threatening to hang themselves from the rafters, or dying of alcohol poisoning (yet.) So this day and I, we will subside into a peaceful, wearied detente, and hope to arise again, refreshed, tomorrow.

The Week Ahead

Have you ever had one of those Sundays that was just so gosh-darned perfect, you want to call in sick to work on Monday, just so you can extend the joy? (I don't actually advocate that. The guilt and shame alone would totally cripple your enjoyment.)

Well, anyway, my Sunday was so pleasant, I actually have become excited about the week ahead! Here are some of the highlights and goals:

• Going to the gym a minimum of three times
• Trying to film my very first book review
• Working a piano concert
• Carrying on with my Christmas shopping
• Watching cheesy Halloweeny films on October 31 and knocking back some wine with one of my lady friends
• Attending my SECOND Def Leppard concert and maybe banging my head, just a little
• Smiling a lot, and owning my smile as one of the best features of my face
• Enjoying the decently-cool (for us) autumn nights here in the shadow of the mountain. The leaves ain't turning, no one is wearing any sweaters or jeans (at least not without sweating their nuts off) but the heat, hallelujah, is at least gone in the night-time.

 What are you looking forward to this week?

An Apple a Day...

Ten years ago (actually, plus a couple of months) I started grad school to train to become a librarian.

It didn't take very long at all for me to question my life choices, though. My very first day of classes, my very first class, I became immediately convinced that I was hopelessly out of my depth. I sat in that computer class, completely petrified and bewildered, as all around me my fellow students breezed through the instructor's directions.

Doooooooom.

The reason for my befuddlement, I now know, was a combination of two things: me being the most insecure creature that ever crawled the hills of Southern Indiana, and having to learn on an Apple computer.

People still use Macintosh computers? I thought desperately as a kind fellow student muttered directions at me like a techie version of Hermione Granger. I haven't seen one of these since the third grade. AND OH MY GOD WHY CAN I NOT RIGHT-CLICK???? Dimly I was aware that my brand-new shiny boyfriend, as well as some of my other recent acquaintances, used "Mac" computers, but that must just be something weird that those quirky geeks and academics do, right?

Fortunately, I finally managed to learn my way around Apple products, and even became a fringe member of "The Cult of Mac." Early the next year, I got an iPod, one of the first generation minis. Years later, I got another. And then an iPad, and then an iPhone.

Yet, I always held off from that final leap; always held off getting an iMac or a MacBook Pro. I settled for shitty Toshiba laptops, that were not worth the pittance that I paid for them. And then, recently, when my latest Toshiba lost a fight with one of my cats, I figured, what the hell. My time, it has come. 

And a week later, the stork delivered my very first MacBook pro (also a magic mouse, so I could right-click.) And a day later, my new phone came, too, thereby insuring that my phone and computer will always talk to each other and will always be in touch with my creditors.

Yet it takes more than just new digs to be inspired to write, to create, to share. I'm still me, with the same hang-ups and reluctance to live out loud, to document the details. But nonetheless, here's this little detail for the world: this is my first post on my pretty new computer, and I hope it's the first of many more.

The Melmeister on this Monday morning...

I'm fairly certain there are some laws against such a pleasant Monday, and against being so open to having such a pleasant Monday, too. But I guess the grumps and haters will just have to press charges, because goddamn, this was a pretty damned decent day.

The fact of the matter is, I recently changed up my beauty routine, and now I shower and dry my hair at night. This means I can sleep in like I always do the next morning, while still having fairly put-together hair. (The alternative is me hopping out of the shower at 7:15 in the morning and putting my wet hair up into a bun or ponytail or clip. And I just don't have the facial structure to look attractive with that.) And because my hair is already styled in the morning, I feel ready and willing to put on some make-up, too. And when I head out the door feeling prettified and put-together, well, I just feel good. Or at least better. 

Plus, I used a new (to me) beauty product this morning: L'Oreal Magic Lumi Primer. While I'm an enthusiastic shopper for beauty products and cosmetics, I'm also rather skeptical. So color me illuminated when I realized this morning that this primer actually does seem to brighten my face!

So, anyway, going forward into this Monday, I had a decent attitude. I tried very hard to maintain an attitude of "be kinder than necessary." I smiled a lot. I called a patron who had lost his wife the previous week. I quietly pitied the homeless guy who borrowed our scissors to cut his hair (and I used hand sanitizer, too.) I chuckled at a practical joke my colleagues played on our accounting guy, blocking his entire doorway with boxes. I urged people to eat my pie (actually pie, no crude euphemisms here.) I got shit done. I spent an hour at the gym. I'm exhausted, in the good way. And I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

I lived this day right.

Week in Review

Well, the black dog is still lurking, but he (of course it's a he) isn't any worse than he was at this time last week. Is it better? Hard to say. What I do know is this: I was able to move through the week taking comfort in the fact that I did things to take care of myself.

 In fact, I managed to hit most of my goals over this past week: I went to the gym three times, I abstained from drinking from Monday until Saturday evening (and one of those nights, it was very difficult to remain sober; do you have any idea how hard it is to be the only sober person in the house?), I took my vitamins and meds every night, used my various lotions and potions and beauty supplies. I did do lunges, but didn't do core. I didn't write in my journal, but I did do some blogging. I drank a lot of water and I read two books and I didn't cry at unexpected times, or any time, really.

Here's what I've observed with my self-care

Drinking: When I don't drink, I don't go snacking on crappy food. When I don't drink, I'm not as sluggish. When I go several days without drinking, it takes less for me to get tipsy when I do drink again (more cost- and calorie-effective). All of these things are good incentives for me to keep up with this curtailing of the drinky-poos.

"Me" Time: Anyone who knows me knows that I need a hell of a lot of down-time, unscheduled times where I can just putter and do my thing, whether it be reading or straightening up my never-ending clutter or folding laundry or accomplishing world peace. Going to the gym after work really bites into this time. I'm going to need to work on thinking of gym as me time, or I'm gonna end up resenting it so much I never go.

And here's the goals for the coming week:

• Go to the gym a minimum of three times
• No drinking Monday-Friday
• Continue taking vitamins and medicine
• Do core and lunge exercises
• Continue using various lotions and potions

plus some new goals...

• When I step on the scale tomorrow, and when my trainer measures me, I promise NO MATTER WHAT not to berate myself but simply do better in the week ahead.
• Eat breakfast every day
• Read three books
• Keep blogging on...

Magic in the Mundane, Issue 1

Today feels like one of those days that are absolutely blah. Filled with mundane nonsense and obligations, and all around just feeling like another day in a workweek that just doesn't seem to end. So, time to dig deep into the day and recall some of the hidden gems...

• Closing the front door this morning, I saw a great big black spider decoration hanging at eye-level. Apparently, one of our housemates decided to help contribute to the seasonal fun.
• I did all my arm-and-shoulder circuit training at the gym today without my trainer, for the first time! Although it doesn't feel like I worked as hard...I was barely sweaty. Still, I silently cheered myself through each of the machines, and rightly so. 
• It's Opposite Day here at Casa de Cricket--everyone but me was tipsy tonight. Weirdest damned thing I've seen in a while.
• One of the tipsy housemates decided that tonight was the perfect night to demonstrate how he's mastered the percussion for the Def Leppard song Hysteria. Gotta admit, I enjoyed sitting back in the chair and listening to Win jam out to this beloved song.
• Mr. Melissa keeps the parakeets' birdseed on the dining room table. Several times, I've caught my marmalade cat Indiana tearing into the bag and eating the seed.

Now, it's off to bed with me, and here's hoping tomorrow is a little less on the blah side. And if it's still blah, here's hoping I can still find some sparkling moments of loveliness.

Daily Dispatches: Monday, 9/29

Today, I...

1. Am so very grateful for Admiral Bill McRaven's UT Commencement speech. Terrifically inspiring as well as delightfully practical: "If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed...

2. Am ridiculously proud of the fact that yes, I did make my bed this morning. 

3. Am on page 130 of Charity and Sylvia: A Same Sex Marriage in Early America. Slow reading. Leave it to an academic to make lesbian sex kinda dull.

4. Am pondering how much I can donate to Team Harpy. Seriously, why must people try to silence women when we start calling people out on harassing behaviors?

5. Am embracing the knowledge that I did everything I possibly could to beat the black dog today. 

6. Am smiling as I remember the roadrunner that was hanging out by my car late this afternoon. That's something I'll always love about the desert. Seriously, people, roadrunners.

It's a Magical Place

Mine is not a life filled with a lot of externally-inspired magic. Certainly, there is magic in the books and words and ideas that surround me in my job, and there is magic in the laughter that I try to find in my daily life, and there is magic in the beauty that I manage to find if I look hard enough. But let’s face it—I’m a white-collar working woman living in a working class city of Southern California, in a decently-sized but modestly-furnished house filled with people and cats and a very, very pronounced slob of a husband. I’m not exactly living in beautiful surroundings, worthy of being repined a jillion times on Pinterest.

But this weekend, I am able to pretend that mine is a life filled with those kind of surroundings. This weekend, I am in Point Reyes Station, in Northern California, in a house straight out of my dreams. 

We descended on the Blackthorne on Thursday afternoon, a group of ten of us--Mr. Melissa and his mother and myself, along with seven friends. We rented this dream of a house, nestled up in the wooded hills of Point Reyes, north of San Francisco, and in this four-level structure, which is something of a treehouse, we can gaze out into the trees and hills and listen to the gulls and jays screech and cry.

It's a deceptively big house, with doors and stairs and decks and balconies leading all over the place. There are 6 bedrooms, and I had first dibs, and at first I thought I'd go for the fascinatingly octagonal room, glassed in on seven sides. I was enchanted by its view, its exotic furnishings, its appealing Romantic remoteness.

Of course this room was lovely--but a little too sunny, a little too warm. A little too far away from the nearest bathroom. A little too difficult to reach after one has indulged in a few glasses of local wine. A little too much precarious tottering about on the precarious staircase:

So, ultimately, practicality outweighed Romantic notions, and I took a more sensible, comfortable, and appealing room:

This house's charms, they seem to have no end. I'm almost loathe to go wine-tasting and exploring, because it seems a shame to not stick around the house as much as possible, enjoying the nooks and crannies. I've claimed my throne in one of the corners of the living room, settling deep into an enormous and enormously comfortable armchair that groans each time I shift in position:

And here, I sit quietly. I read from time to time, or work on my budget, or blog, or simply just gaze and think and ponder. At night, the fire crackles in the fireplace. All the new age stuff I've ever put on my iPhone plays over the speakers.Some of us play cards, others paint with the supplies I brought along, my mother-in-law does Angel Card readings, and we all talk and share our stories and engage in armchair politics and philosophies. Russia may terrorize Ukraine, ISIS may continue to be the bane of the President's existence, Missouri may be rioting, but here in our corner of Northern California, we have retreated for one long, magical weekend. 

The weekend passes. The line of "dead soldiers", as I have learned to call empty wine bottles, grows.

I sleep on the couch in the middle of the day, lulled by the breeze that borders on chilly--so strange to think that what would be Christmas weather in Florida is just another summer day here. I wake up in the late afternoon, and more than one person remarks that I look "pretty...well-rested."

I take a soft throw and retire to the deck and watch the late-afternoon sun sink behind the trees. 

I read and drink my wine and call my sisters and hear them tell how much they miss me, and I try not to wonder if I would be any happier if I left behind the desert forever--not to return east of the Mississippi, but to move to this magical place.

But maybe--in fact, I have to hope that it's likely--that this time and place are so magical because they are so rare.

Nothing That Hasn't Been Said Before

"Well I guess I could have stayed ashore, I didn't have to go
They say sometimes to find yourself, you've got to let go..."

For the most part, I’m not one to follow the shenanigans and lives of celebrities. There are lots of reasons for this, but what it boils down to is this: I’m too damned busy to think very much about these people, and these people would certainly be a lot better off if more of the public just left them alone and let their private lives be.

But it’s not as though I live under a rock. I like stories about celebrities being decent, or funny, or courageous humans, and I’m vaguely aware of the various goings-on that the media reports. And I’m certainly aware of Robin Williams and his recent suicide. Mr. Melissa awoke me from a nap yesterday to tell me this. I dimly recall mumbling, “Well, maybe this will contribute to the dialogue on depression and mental health.” And then I went back to sleep.

And of course, there has been plenty of discussion in the news and social media outlets about depression and suicide and mental health issues. There’s the usual banal statement of “Suicide is so selfish”, of course…more and more I am of the opinion that the selfish thing is to expect a suicidal person stick around and suffer so that the “survivors” feel less sad. But there’s a lot of discussion beyond that, too.

The thing is…I’ve yet to read an article in which depressed people really illustrate what depression is like. I know, because, duh, I struggle with depression, and I nod along with the descriptions of isolation and suffocation and loneliness and the analogies of battles and black holes and prisons. I’ve resorted to some of those analogies, myself. But somehow—while these words describe the state of depression, they don’t quite describe the feeling.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that the words to describe the feeling of deep depression do not exist in any human language. Mr. Williams, may you be in a place where someone understands that language—or better yet, may you be in a place where no one understands it, because it no longer exists.

And the water's cold around me now, so far below
And I hear a voice inside me now, "Just try to let go..."

-The Greencards, "Ocean Floor"

Stories Seen But Not Heard

A couple of months back, my cousin sent me an email containing an amazing treasure trove—dozens of scanned pictures of our family, dating back several decades. For me—a woman living thousands of miles from her people and her past, who didn’t care about blood and family and family history until in many cases, it was too late, these images are a priceless thing. Their very existence bestows upon me a weird sense of legitimacy—reassurance that I don’t exist in a vacuum, that I came from somewhere. I knew this, of course—knew that my people came from Indiana, that they settled in the suburbs of Cincinnatti in the 1950s, that my family was tempestuous but ultimately loyal and loving. But I didn’t know this, not really, until I began looking through the images of my mother and my aunt and their parents—my grandparents, my Mawga and Boppa, now in their nineties and more than a little deaf—and my cousin and my mother’s various husbands. In those faded images, there are not just a thousand words, but a thousand stories. A thousand stories, most of them insignificant and forgotten, for the tellers of these stories are, for the most part, lost to us. They are elsewhere, dead, passed away, transitioned. We who are left behind can only look at these pictures, and wonder, and imagine.

One of the pictures, in particular, I find disquieting. It has elements—objects—that I recognize: Christmas ornaments that managed to make their way into my childhood, a half-drunk bottle of Coca-Cola, an orange-and-navy afghan made by Grandma Stella. I never knew my great-grandma, but golly, I knew her afghan. My mother is in that picture, curled up on the floor, looking over her shoulder somewhat distractedly. A long cigarette—the faithful, steady, unwavering murderer—dangles from her fingers. I can almost hear the soft, metallic clink of her lighter—a silvery, metal thing, something substantial that I suspect was of pretty decent quality. I never remember seeing my mother with a cheap lighter.

The past in those pictures is wholly unreachable, yet painfully close. So many things to wonder. So few things to know for certain. 

Breakfast Burritos are Love

Last weekend, as the thunderheads piled up in the western sky and the temperature went up and up and up, and so did the humidity, I escaped the desert for a little bit. Mr. Melissa and I headed down to San Diego to spend the weekend. It's strange--I don't spend a lot of my life contemplating San Diego on a map, so it's easy to forget that this laid-back city  is only 22 miles from the Mexico-US border. (((boggles))) It's a really delightful place, and it's Ground Zero for the folks that I'm slowly coming to know as my West Coast Family.

In a one bedroom apartment, across the street from the Pacific Ocean, there lives a woman whose heart and spirit really shouldn't fit in that tiny-ass little space. That's my mother-in-law, Connie-Mom, as I call her. I'm told that we're blessed with a pretty fucking unusual relationship--we seem to adore eachother quite a bit. She thinks I'm good for her son (wow) and I think she's just the kindest and most accepting person I've ever met. She's a cat-loving liberal who loves to read. She doesn't bat an eyelash at my extensive and creative use of the fuck-word. Needless to say, we get along famously.

It probably doesn't hurt that she's a mental health counselor.

Last December, after my mother passed away, Connie-Mom came to stay for an evening. While Mr. Melissa was out celebrating his birthday with all of his closest friends, Connie-Mom and I stayed at home and sat on the couch and drank wine and looked at the Christmas tree, and she listened as I tried as best I could to process my grief and sorrow and regret and anger and confusion. Never once did she judge me. She only listened and offered perspective and loved me.

So spending a lazy weekend in San Diego, with the rain falling gently outside, with my Connie-Mom fussing over me inside, wasn't exactly the greatest hardship of my life. Even in that little apartment. We were both pleasantly pleased, I think--I try hard to be a low-maintenance houseguest, and we just spent our days playing with the cats and reading and talking and listening to music.

On Sunday morning, as I lay in bed, reading, Connie-Mom bustled into the bedroom. "Do you want any breakfast?"

"No, I'm fine," I assured her.

"I don't mind running out to the Little Mexican Taco Shop (TM) and getting you a breakfast burrito."

"You are so good to me! But I'm okay." I returned to my book. But twenty minutes later, Connie-Mom was back in the bedroom...

"I don't usually have the chance to dote on my daughters! I want to take care of you!"

As I processed her words, I thought about the women that I've worked with--my quiet envy as they spoke of their daughters, and all the ways these women have loved, and taken care of, and sacrificed for them. The way they'd get so excited when their daughters came to town, so they could mother them, take care of them, cook for them, make sure they were set-up.

"Okay," I said, a smile growing on my face as all these remembrances passed through my head. "I'll take you up on that breakfast burrito."

The One Where Kenny Doesn't Die

Freak accidents. They happen, and people die. It sucks balls, but it happens. Accidents happen, people die. What makes the accidents freakish? I never stopped to wonder this until--well, let's just say I had me one of those. It's something accidental, yet out of the ordinary--not the kind of accident I've ever imagined happening. I imagine car crashes, or slipping in the bathtub, or falling down the stairs.

I don't imagine bits of ceiling falling down and cracking my head open while I'm minding my own business, at work.

Allow me to clarify: my head was not cracked open. I'm as alive and healthy now as I was at 4:14 PM yesterday afternoon, which was right before a big metal vent randomly fell from the ceiling 5 feet from where I sat. It was heavy, and because it was pretty high up, it gathered a fair amount of force when it fell, gouging a line into the wall as it fell onto a bookcase where, but a miracle or, likely just the randomness of life, no one was standing.

Me and my colleagues, we often stand there.

This is what fell.

This is what it fell from, this gappy slot at the top of the picture.

It was loud and startling, but it wasn't unnerving until after I began to think about it that I began to realize how bad it could have been. Yes, it missed me, but is that the same as not being in danger? I was five feet away from a freak accident and a sobering story for friends to tell at parties.

From there, it only got worse--right before I went home, my ankle turned and I nearly did a face-plant in front of the Check-Out desk. By the time I drove home, I was feeling like Kenny--still alive, but glancing uneasily at anything even remotely dodgy or precarious, like the gardener's truck in front of me that had rakes and hoes in the bed, unsecured and poking out every which way. 

Today, I'm still alive--but still a little solemn, thinking about all the ways that our lives can change, even end, because of freak accidents. The things we never see coming.

I bet Kenny would agree.

Manic Monday: The Week Ahead

Little City, Big Events

The other night, when I was driving home from work, I drove past Sunnylands, like I always do. Usually, it's pretty dark and discreet, as befitting this formidable estate and playground to presidents. But that evening, I noticed blazing, garish floodlights and spotlights sending up the most intrusive light pollution I've seen since moving out here.

Guess there's a big event tonight, I mused. And then it occurred to me--um, no, no big event, at least not that night. It was, no doubt, the advanced security measures that they take when preparing for visits from heads of state.

Yeah. What? You mean I didn't mention that? So the President of the United States is visiting my city this weekend, having some private, informal talks with the King of Jordan.

It's the second time that President Obama has visited Sunnylands in the past 12 months, and I gotta say, I'm pretty damned proud. So much money and planning and attention has gone into turning Sunnylands into the "Camp David of the West", that it would be such a shame if world leaders and diplomats didn't take it seriously. I mean, anyone can tout a space as being anything, but unless you get the buy-in from the target audience, your space ain't nothing.

Fortunately, Sunnylands is definitely Something. Let's have three cheers for the Annenberg Family!

Whatever your political leanings or affiliations are, whatever you feel about the person who fills the office, you gotta admit--it's pretty damned awesome when the POTUS comes to your city to make world-changing decisions.

Gratitude Attitude: Inspired by (Iron and) Wine

My "angerball" and negative disposition continues into Week 2, so I'm not going to spend any time at all dwelling on all the things that did or didn't happen this week, but rather recap some of the pleasantness that stood out:

• Mr. Melissa has been cleaning out our garage, and miraculously came across one of my family heirlooms that had been tucked away out there during the move, and never retrieved until now. This book was published in 1935...I have no idea about its provenance, only that it's been in our family for a long-ass time. This charming little book, which now holds pride of place on my coffee table, tells the tale about the kittens Suzz, Buzz, Fuzz, and Agamemnon, and is filled with "unusual photographs of real kittens...made possible only by patient, unfailing kindness on the part of the photographer at all times. "....(One can only assume that this was the prescursor to the PETA-inspired disclaimers in modern films...)

• I don't really think too much about this holiday, but it's nice when friends think of you, no matter the day. Friends (and colleagues) who think of me on Valentines Day...I love 'em. The pic on the left is a package of Marvel goodies one of my Midwestern Internet friends sent me; the pic on the right is a book that one of my colleagues left on my desk. In case you can't see the title: it's What the Librarian Did.

• The Music of Iron and Wine: Completely aside from the fact that the name of this band is impossibly romantic, the band itself has charmed me with its sleepy, melancholic music. I'm sure once I start reading the lyrics I'm gonna be as far gone as I was all those years ago when my eldest sister got me into Grey Eye Glances. 

And speaking of wine...

• Quite possibly the best wine I have ever tasted. With no small amount of trepidation, I picked this up at Fresh and Easy on clearance for $3.98. And I was utterly blown away...it's a red blend, and while it's not terribly dry, it's also not sweet at all. It's surprisingly light and mild, but full of flavor. It is, simply, my favorite wine.

And finally...

• Absurdly bright pink lip butter from Ulta. The color is all wrong for me (with lips like mine, I've never been very comfortable with wearing vivid colors), but sometimes a little bit of color is exactly what's needed to jazz up a quiet, restorative day of puttering around the house. 

As I go into this next week, I am quietly and desperately hoping that I change my disposition for the better. I always lecture people: "You can't control what people do to you, you can only control how you react..." So, time to put my money where my mouth is...and hope that I don't smear bright pink lip butter every where.

Feeling Fabulous: New Clothes

A new blouse from Ross: $8

The feeling of awesomeness and energy that comes from wearing a new article of clothing:

PRICELESS.

Seriously, I KNOW I am not the only one that feels downright fabulous and even, like, sparkly when I wear something new and pretty. Even a new bra or pair of shoes can do it for me. So I was able to waltz into work this morning with a ginormous to-do list and a fun new blouse and my make-up all done, and was able to feel like I was gonna have a kickin' day. And for the most part, I did. Lots of projects and irons in the fire, but I was able to get a good start on a lot of them. 

At one point today, I was able to make a pretty darned mature--but difficult--decision. The Cap'n pointed out to me today that we'll soon have a new reference librarian to train, and wanted to know if I wanted to do it. I struggled with this, because hells yeah, I want to. I enjoy it, and I feel like it's a way for me to develop leadership/mentoring chops. But the last time I trained librarians, the results were mixed, and anyway, I have to do the event brochure, and I'm going on vacation in three weeks. So, after a brief struggle, I pointed all of this out to her, and then decided, "Let Papa Bear train them," I told the Cap'n. "He's more laid-back than I am--it'll be better for them. And he's on the desk more than I am anyway."

Sometimes leadership means making the decisions that are best for the team as a whole, even if it's not what you yourself want.

If wearing new clothes helps me make things kinds of decisions, bring on the Ross Shopping Spree, thank you very much!