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Autumn — Chapter 9

Read Autumn — Chapter 8

Despite the fact that Dan and I had spent almost two years in couples counseling, the combination of marrying young and living with family had taken its toll on our marriage. As is often the case, there was also a strain between my desire to start a family and Dan’s desire to wait. As his final year at the university wound down, we decided our marriage was over.

We had moved from the apartment to a tiny little house with a small yard, a minuscule garden, and a park nearby for the dogs to run and play. Dan moved out of this little house and back into his parent’s, but would visit with Autumn every so often. He had been offered a job in California, and I think he knew that after he left, he might not see her again.

I remained in Corvallis with Autumn after Dan moved away. Over the next year, I dated a few different men, and eventually met another man named Bjorn. Without intending to quite so soon, our relationship became much more serious than we intended when I discovered I was pregnant. While I was concerned about an impending pregnancy with a man I had only known a few short months, I was also delighted. I had wanted a baby with Dan, but he had not wanted to start a family while he was still in college. Bjorn had two years left before graduation, but when I informed him I was pregnant, he was as excited as I was.

How does one explain circumstances about which one is certain to be judged by a segment of the population? I wasn’t as circumspect as I could have been. I certainly could have made choices that to some would have seemed wiser. Yet I have no regrets; once the seed of my child was planted, I would not have changed a thing that could have arrived at a different result. I knew three months into the pregnancy that I would have ended the relationship with Bjorn sooner rather than later – we were completely incompatible in many ways. But after my baby was born, and even before when she was a minuscule mass of cells clinging to the inside of my body, there was no way I could imagine my life without her.

The months I was pregnant were emotional, both up and down. In retrospect, I realized I was mourning the loss of my marriage and the friendship I had carried for over seven years, while I was simultaneously intoxicated with the joy of expecting a new baby. It was a paradoxical place.

Prior to my pregnancy and after Autumn had decided she was no longer interested in going for runs with me, I would take Molly running or roller-blading, then take both dogs to the park near my house to run and play. When the weather was warm, I would take Autumn swimming. She was extremely healthy. After having spent several years swimming in the summers, she no longer displayed any signs of hip dysplasia. She was quite active, and though not as lithe as Molly, she was definitely athletic and capable. After I became pregnant, I stayed active, walking both dogs, roller-blading and running with Molly for as long as the pregnancy would allow, and riding horses well into my sixth month. The dogs enjoyed the exercise. As the year wore down from fall to winter, we all settled in, expectant and waiting for the enormous change due in spring.

Both of the dogs were big shedders. In spite of the fact that I vacuumed at least every three days, there were always puffles of fur in the corners, under the furniture, and in my bedding. I would joke that I could collect this fur and make a pillow out of it, there was so much.

Bjorn and I had moved into an apartment together. The little house I lived in first with Dan, then by myself was simply too small for our family. As the time grew nearer for our baby to arrive, I began nesting in earnest, cleaning and vacuuming. As my due date loomed, I became nearly frantic with the desire to move about, wishing I could run or ride my bike as I had before the pregnancy.

I awakened the first morning of May and wanted to get out of the house, in spite of the fact that I had expanded beyond any notion of comfort. I had heard that walking could help bring on labor so I was headed out. I grabbed my purse, keys, and the dogs and jumped into the car, Bjorn trailing. The local kennel club was sponsoring a pet day fair. At the fair, hawkers sold kerchiefs, dog toys, leashes, and other assorted canine goods. We wandered for a couple of hours, until my hips could no longer tolerate my weight and the heat. It was a warm day for early spring.

We spent the rest of the day out and about, doing our best to encourage baby’s arrival. It must have worked, because shortly before midnight, my contractions began and increased. At 12:24 p.m. on May 2, 1999, Milla Elina was born.

The two of us had arranged with my best friend Debbie and her husband Robert to take care of our dogs while I was in the hospital having the baby. They were parents to a kitty named Misty and completely understood the relationship I had with my dogs – as far as we all were concerned, the dogs were surrogate children and could not be left to fend for themselves for two or three days.

In spite of the love I felt for Autumn and Molly, I was unprepared for the tsunami level of emotion I felt toward my infant daughter. It was all consuming. I suppose this connection is nature’s way of ensuring the survival of the species. I was in such love, such infatuation, such complete adoration for my child, I could not understand why everyone wasn’t having babies. I walked around for weeks staring at everyone thinking, “You were someone’s baby! Someone loved you like this!” Only later as the hormones wore off did I understand intellectually that some people never feel like I did, but I could never understand it in my heart. I loved my child with my whole body, mind, and spirit.

When I came home from the hospital after giving birth to Milla, Autumn kept trying to get up in my lap, to get near me, but I was afraid she would hurt the baby. I had sworn before giving birth that I would not become one of those people whose dogs disappeared into the background, forgotten and forlorn, but during the first few days home, I did just that. Once we were used to having the baby around and had settled into a routine, I shifted back and Autumn became part of my attention circle again, but I’m sure the first couple of weeks were very hard for her. I imagine in some ways this is how it is for older children when a new baby is born, especially when they are very close together in age. There were fifteen months between my sister and me, and when Milla was fifteen months old, I could not fathom bringing home another infant. She was still very much a baby. People do it, but it must be hard.

Bjorn and I decided that Milla would sleep with us. We bought a pillow with a curve in it and placed her between us on the queen bed. Those first nights were difficult, mainly because little Milla kept getting dog hair in her nose, making it hard for her to breathe. In spite of all my cleaning, there were still dog hairs in the bed, and they would stick to Milla’s little nostrils, causing her to sneeze and cry. I had thought we could manage allowing the dogs to sleep on the floor next to the bed, but that first night they kept trying to get on the bed and get near me. Bjorn would yell and shove them hard onto the floor.

It pains me now to know that I did not do more to stop him. I felt so exhausted and physically worn out. It breaks my heart that I let him treat both of my dogs that way and especially Autumn. I can only imagine what it must have been like for her. She had lived with me her entire life, nearly six years, and this man who had arrived less than a year previously yelled at her and often hit her and at first I stood by and let it happen, too spent to do anything about it. And here was this new baby, taking all my attention, and causing her more grief. It’s not something I can really reconcile in my mind; I wish I had done more for her, prepared better, done something different, but I did not. Thinking of it still gives me a hard spot in the pit of my stomach.

After the first night, I decided to thoroughly clean and vacuum the bedroom. There was so much dog hair, even though I vacuumed nearly daily. It was in the crevices along the wall, behind the bed, in the covers, under the sheets. I took the bed apart completely, unmoored it from its frame, and vacuumed everything from the mattresses, to the carpets, to the window sills. I washed the sheets and bedding, and dusted all the floorboards.

Once the bed was rebuilt, remade, and the room completely hair free, I put up two baby gates in the hall between the bedroom door and the rest of the house. The dogs hovered around the outside gate, wanting in, whining and moaning. I have a photograph from that time, of the two dogs lying out there with pained expressions on their faces, wishing and hoping that they could come back to bed with me.

Keeping the dogs out of the bed made sleeping much easier for the humans, and much more difficult for the dogs. Autumn had never been ostracized before. It was terrible for her. She began to act seriously depressed. I was so involved with the baby, I did not have the energy to give to her, and her heart was broken. She kept trying to get close to me and I kept pushing her away because I did not want her to hurt Milla.

I would sit on the couch trying to nurse (something that was not going well) and Autumn would attempt to jump up next to me. I would halfheartedly tell her to get down, then Bjorn would yell at her. I eventually succumbed and allowed Autumn to lie next to me on the couch while Milla suckled. She curled into a little ball and snuggled as close as she could get. What kind of person had I turned into that I let this happen? My only pathetic excuse was new parenthood and all the that goes with it.

We did eventually get into the groove of parenting. Milla grew and after only a couple of months, the dogs were allowed back in the bedroom and back in our bed. It made for crowded sleeping, but everyone was more content.

Read Autumn — Chapter 10

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Why Hire a Bankruptcy Attorney

Filing bankruptcy can be one of the most difficult choices a person makes. Often you have been struggling to meet your financial obligations. Something happens and the house of cards comes tumbling down, leaving you faced with a proposition that seems like failure. It is difficult and frustrating. You go to see an attorney and realize that even though you have no money to pay your bills, the attorney wants over a thousand dollars or more to represent you.

You discover there may be an alternative. You could pay someone much less to prepare your petition for you. You think Why not? Your case isn’t complicated, at least you don’t think it is. You pay a few hundred dollars and file your case. You may be okay. More likely, after things go very wrong you will realize that you should have hired an attorney.

Bankruptcy is more complicated than it appears on the surface. People who have seen or attended a bankruptcy hearing testify that the meetings are often over quickly. What is not apparent from the meeting is that most of the complicated work is done before the meeting takes place. The hearing should go smoothly if everything was done right ahead of time.

Having sat through countless hearings while representing debtors in the bankruptcy cases, I can assure you that bankruptcy is often more complicated than it looks, especially since the changes that took place in the bankruptcy laws in 2005.

Bankruptcy is more than what bills you owe. People often do not realize that all of their belongings are assets that may or may not be exempt. Other intangible things such as claims, insurance policies, and retirement accounts could also be assets. You may fail to disclose an item that could have been protected, only to lose it because of the lack of disclosure. The actions taken in the years and months leading up to bankruptcy can have consequences, and can cause unintended ramifications for friends and family members.

Every consumer bankruptcy case is assigned to a trustee. That person is responsible for ensuring the interests of your creditors are protected. When you hire a bankruptcy attorney, this person is there to represent you. Your attorney can help you to determine which debts you can discharge or pay off. Your attorney will help you protect assets that are not exempt, and will help you to do so legally.  Your attorney will make sure you list every asset and that every asset that can be is protected. Your attorney will help you ensure that bankruptcy is what it is intended to be:  a fresh start.

When you pay an attorney, you are paying that person to ensure you file everything you are supposed to file, turn over all the paperwork you are required to turn over, help you maximize your assets and minimize your losses, and to represent you against your creditors. In short, you are paying for the best fresh start you can muster.

What can a petition preparer do? Legally, all a petition preparer can do is fill in the blanks on your bankruptcy documents. If you choose to pay someone hundreds of dollars for this service you are, in effect, paying hundreds of dollars for data entry service.

If a petition preparer does more than enter information into your petition, that person is breaking the law. Both federal bankruptcy laws and state rules governing the practice of law forbid anyone except a licensed attorney from giving you advice.

Why? To protect you, the consumer. If an attorney messes up your case, there are protections in place to help you. Attorneys in Oregon,Washington, and many other states are required to carry malpractice insurance. They can also be sanctioned by their bars for failure to adhere to a basic code of conduct. There are no systems in place to help you if a document preparer messes up your petition or gives you erroneous advice. You may be able to file a complaint claiming they practiced law without a license, and while the person may face fines or sanctions, you will not get anything to cover your losses.

Hiring an attorney to represent you during your bankruptcy can be expensive. After suffering through financial difficulties and falling behind on your financial obligations, handing over a large sum of money to an attorney can seem like a real hardship. But bankruptcy is not an area to shortchange yourself.  Filing bankruptcy is your opportunity to make a fresh start. Make it the best start it can be by hiring a good attorney to represent, protect, and advise you. Think of it as your first investment in a new financial future.

I am a bankruptcy attorney. I help consumers file for chapter 7 and chapter 13 bankruptcy in Oregon and SW Washington.

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I’m a Funnel Web

I don’t text and drive because if I died, the tenuous little family I have would splinter apart and lose not just me, but one another. There is nothing here holding us together except me. Here is how my funeral would be: my small number of friends (who aren’t friends with each other so who knows how some of them would even find out), my parents, and my sister’s family. There would be no looming aunts or uncles or cousins who would pull my daughters aside and tell them to hold on to each other because they are all the other has anymore. The consequence of being an immoral and wanton woman who has not had a traditional family for herself (not because it isn’t what I wanted, but because I made choices in partners that were not the best for me), is that I have two children from two fathers — GASP! Say it isn’t so! Yes, I’m afraid it is. One of their fathers lives three states away with his new wife. The other lives here in Portland alone in a basement studio apartment. The older would ship off to Arizona; the younger would remain. They would not see one another. I highly doubt my family would make much effort to see them more than once a year, if that. The phone calls to them would dwindle. Over the years they would lose touch with my family (but my family doesn’t know me anyway, so I don’t know that they would be losing much there). Really, the only way the younger would even know her mother would be through the older and the older would be far away, living her teenage life, probably nursing her grief, but it would fade and soon they would have their own singular lives. There was a mother, but there isn’t any more.

I am tenuous. If I were a web, I’d be the small one in the corner, or even in a funnel. I would not be one of those magnificent orbs connected to 30 flowers and grasses in the meadow. I have thought of this over and over and over. I really first thought of it a few years ago when the son of a woman I know died. There were hundreds of people at his funeral. I’m not exaggerating. I realized then that I would never have hundreds of people at my funeral. I am not gregarious or extroverted. I get an evening off from my children and I go to the library or the bookstore and bury myself in someone else’s fake life or study something scientific that has caught my fancy. I don’t actually feel grief at being the sort of person whose funeral would not be heavily attended, but I can’t bear the thought of my daughters losing one another because I am not here and for this, I won’t text and drive. I also drive the speed limit, to the consternation of those on the road around me. I’m not ridiculous in avoiding pitfalls, but the car seems to me the most likely catalyst for my demise at this point in my life. I’m not going to increase its odds, that’s all.

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Autumn — Chapter 7

Read Autumn — Chapter 6

In November 1994 my parents called me and asked for my help getting a dog for my brother Derek.  For years he had pined for a Rottweiler.  Every chance he got, he would go to breeders or shelters to look at Rottweilers and swore he would get one of his own someday.

Derek’s birthday is November 7.  For his 15th birthday our parents decided they would buy Derek his own dog as a combination birthday and Christmas gift.  This was before the internet had taken hold for such purchases, and even after it became more ubiquitous, my parents never really used it anyway.

To make their purchase, my parents relied primarily on the classified ads in the newspaper.  There was a pet section in the classifieds.  It was usually two or three columns long.  Breeders would advertise puppies for sale.  Over several weeks, my parents contacted several breeders, and through this process, they ultimately chose a puppy who would be ready to go home right at Christmastime.  The breeder was located in Portland, an hour north of my parent’s house.  They asked if Dan and I would drive up and get the dog and bring him home the day after Christmas.  Of course we agreed.

The night we drove to get the puppy was rainy and dark.  Visibility was difficult.  We were following the directions the breeder had given my mom, and as is often the case when one gets information third-hand, the directions were not easy to follow. Combined with the terrible weather, we had difficulty locating the house where the breeder lived.  Finally we called my mom who gave us the number for the breeder.  We contacted him and he directed us to his house, two blocks from the street we had been circling for twenty minutes.

The breeder’s house was a simple 1950s ranch, with low eaves and small windows. The home was cheery and clean however, and festively decorated for the holidays.  The puppies were kept in their own bedroom, but were running loose when we arrived.

As soon as we stepped in out of the rain, we were mauled by a wriggling black mass of six puppies.  They wiggled and writhed and jumped all over our feet.  Dan and I squatted to pet them.  One puppy in particular was desperate for our attention.  His fur was shiny, thick, and black.  He had orange eyebrows, and an orange throat and belly.  His tail had been docked, and he wagged his stump as he clambered over his siblings and into my lap so he could lick my face.  I held him against me, smelling his sweet puppy breath.  The breeder stood off to one side smiling.

“That’s your dog,” he stated, matter-of-factly, hands on his hips.  The man was slightly balding with a comb-over, his short-sleeved, oxford shirt tucked into his trousers.  “it is like he knew you were coming to get him tonight or something.”  He grinned at us as he said this.

The dog did indeed seem particularly excited by our visit. The others were playful, but within minutes of our arrival, they dispersed to cause mischief elsewhere in the house.  Our puppy, or rather, Derek’s puppy, hung close, trying to lick our faces and sniff our shoes.  We always thought Autumn’s paws were large, but she turned out to be a mid-sized model.  In comparison, this puppy’s paws were enormous.  There would be no mistake that this dog would be massive.

The breeder spent several minutes showing us his papers and introducing us to his mother and father, both of whom were on site.  He came from a long line of German dogs.  His grandparents were all still in Germany.  We could see from the papers that he did not have any inbreeding, which I thought was unusual for a purebred.  Many of the thoroughbred horses I knew had at least some crossing with cousins.  Years after this I adopted a greyhound who had several cousins who showed up in the lines of both her parents.

The puppy’s bloodlines mattered little to me; I knew he would be neutered eventually.  But I also knew Derek cared, and actually so did my parents.  His breeding was a primary factor in my parent’s choice of this dog over other Rottweilers they looked at.

A half an hour later we were back on the road, the lumbering fur ball asleep on my lap.  Our visit had worn him out.  Before we left, the breeder had spent a few more minutes describing his diet and medical history.  He had noted all this information on a sheet he attached to his registration papers.

For this trip, we opted to leave Autumn at my parent’s house.  We did not want her to overwhelm the puppy on the long drive home.  We called my parents to let them know we were on our way.  The plan was that our dad would take Derek into town shortly before our arrival, then return a short time later to the best gift he had ever received.

As is often the case, because we were not searching for our destination, the ride home seemed shorter than the drive up.  As we wound up my parent’s mile-long driveway, the puppy sat up and yawned, then stretched.  He was so cute.

We could hear Autumn barking as we exited our car.  I knew this bark — it said I know your car and you’re my mom and I want you!

Holding the puppy close to my chest, we dodged raindrops and raced into the house.  Shedding water left and right, we burst through the door, pulling our wet coats from our heads, plopping the puppy to the floor.  Autumn shut up long enough to give the puppy a sniff before she dashed over to me, shoving her nose into my crotch and wriggling and woofing in delight at my return.

Dogs.  No matter where we have been or for how long, they are always so happy to see us.  This must be one of the top reasons people love having them around.  Where else do we get such complete adoration on all levels, simply for being ourselves?

The puppy was sniffing around, looking like he wanted to pee.  I recognized the circling and sniffing.  It could also have been that this was a new place, with lots of new smells, but rather than take a chance, I scooped him up and headed back out onto the porch to see if he would go.  Autumn followed.  She lowered her head and ducked into the rain, squatted, peed, and jumped back under cover.  The puppy watched her, and then followed to squat and pee in the same spot.

One advantage to a mile-long driveway is that those at the top of the driveway can see visitors coming several minutes before they arrive, should they choose to look.  In this manner we saw the headlights to my dad’s truck and were able to settle in the house with the lights low in order not to give anything away. The plan was to just let the puppy roam, and see how long it took Derek to notice him.

We hovered in the living room.  Autumn lay at my feet.  The puppy had lain on the floor near a window and was snuffling in the carpet.

The back door slammed, and my brother called out, “Hello?”

“We are in here,” I said.  Autumn stood, barked once, and went to greet Derek before returning to my side.

Derek walked into the living room, my dad close behind.  He stood there for a minute, then his eyes grew large.

“Oh,” was all he said, before he walked over and kneeled by the puppy, pulling him up into his lap.  The puppy licked at his chin.  Derek, always averse to spit or other bodily fluids, leaned his head back to avoid the tongue washing. My parents smiled like schoolchildren who had successfully pulled a prank.

Only a few times in my life since he has grown have I seen my brother cry, but he had tears in his eyes as he sat and held his gargantuan puppy.

Derek named his dog Kaine after another Kaine in his ancestry.  Within months he weighed over 100 pounds. Like his forebears, he loved herding cattle and rambling around our parent’s farm.  Like Ferdinand the bull, Kaine would lumber down into their fields, then lie down and watch the world, his nose twitching, occasionally chomping at a fly as it buzzed overhead.

He was extremely smart, and learned quickly.  One of the rules in my parent’s house was that dogs were not allowed on the furniture. Autumn was occasionally allowed to get up on the couch, and periodically attempted to thwart my parent’s rule.

One afternoon while we were visiting, Derek was in his bedroom. I sat in the living room with the dogs, and Autumn jumped up next to me on the couch.  Kaine immediately ran into Derek’s room and woofed.

“What do you want?” Derek asked him.  Kaine woofed again, then turned and bustled out of the room before returning to woof yet again.  It seemed to Derek that Kaine wanted him to follow.  He stood and Kaine turned to walk out of the room, looking back to ensure Derek was behind him.  Kaine entered the living room, trotted over to Autumn, turned to Derek and woofed.  Autumn was on the couch, and this was against the rules!  Derek and I laughed and laughed.  I asked Autumn to get off the couch and lie on the floor.  This seemed to satisfy Kaine.  He circled and lay down in the corner, sighing. All was well with the world again.

Derek was fifteen years old when Kaine came to live with him.  Within a few years, Derek moved in and out of my parent’s house several times. He was never able to move anywhere that allowed a dog of Kaine’s size, or there would be silly breed restrictions that forbade tenants keeping Rottweilers.  For this reason, he lived his life at my parent’s house.

In addition, the summer of his seventeenth year, Derek began a decade-long struggle with drug addiction, a horrible, life-siphoning disease.  When he was using, he didn’t care about anyone or anything, and could be cruel.  Kaine sensed this and avoided him during those times.  When Derek was clean, Kaine was his loyal follower.

The result of this was that ultimately, Kaine adopted my mom as his person.  Although he had been purchased as Derek’s, a piece of paper is meaningless to a dog.  He decided who was his person, and although Derek was near the top, along with me and my dad, my mom was his choice.  She was the person he would follow from room to room, if only for even a few moments.  At some point, Kaine decided that this meant my dad could not hug my mother.  He would bark furiously and shove his head between the two of them.  They would laugh and separate, but unfortunately, this seemed only to reinforce the behavior.

Kaine also never seemed to understand that he was bigger than a miniature pony.  Derek held him in his lap when he was a puppy, and when he grew up, he still wanted to sit on one of us.  If we sat down where he could reach us, he would come over and climb in our lap, whether or not he was invited.

Kaine’s biggest shortcoming was his tongue. It was a constant battle to keep him from licking our faces, our hands, our legs if we were wearing skirts or shorts.  His licking drove Derek to distraction.  He absolutely hated spit of any kind, and would shout “Stop licking!” at Kaine when his tongue dared slip past his lips onto Derek’s skin, which happened all the time.  Kaine was almost pathologically incapable of stopping, in spite of Derek’s ire.  After a scolding, Kaine would turn his head to the floor, but his eyes would stay on Derek, as if to say, “Ooh, I’m so sorry, but I can’t help it.  Now can I lick you again?”

At about age 8, Kaine began to show signs he was unwell.  He would be struck still by debilitating fatigue and weakness in his back and legs, lying in a lethargy for hours.  Frightened by this behavior, my mom took him to Dr. Fletcher for tests.  It turned out that Kaine had Addison’s disease, a serious health complication whereby a dog does not produce enough cortisol.  Interestingly enough, it was the exact opposite condition of Cushing’s, the disease I believe Autumn suffered, although she never tested positive for it.

Addison’s is treatable through periodic cortisone tablets.  Kaine was prescribed cortisone to take when he began displaying Addison’s symptoms.  However, as with any steroid, the cortisone could cause side-effects, including long-term problems, so the drug had to be given sparingly.  Near the end of his life, Kaine was taking his medication daily. Without it, he would quickly relapse into dreadful lethargy and pain.  He would whimper if made to move, and he would not eat.

In February 2005, Kaine gave up eating and lay in a corner.  Nothing could coax him to take food or to move.  For two weeks, he worsened, showing interest in nothing, least of all the will to live.  My mom did not want to believe that he was dying.  I know her heart was broken; she loved Kaine like her own child.

Finally though, on President’s Day, my mom called me and asked if I would contact Dr. Fletcher and ask him to come to the house.  I spoke to him and he arranged to meet me there that evening.

The night was cold and clear, diaphanous clouds floated high in the sky.  I could see an exact half moon through the gauzy altocumulus formations.  Kaine lay on a blanket in a darkened room in the basement of the house my parents were building.  His sides heaved, and he did not look up as we entered.  My mom was so upset, she could barely speak.  Dr. Fletcher spoke quietly to Kaine, feeling his glands, running his hands along his prostrate form.

“He’s done,” he informed us.  “It’s time for him to go.”

My mom just stood there, tears on her cheeks. She could not bear to lose her friend.  She asked me to stay with him.  Dr. Fletcher opened his small toolbox and pulled out a syringe, filling it with a clear, pink liquid.  Kaine’s breathing was irregular and ragged.

“Talk to him,” he whispered to me. “Tell him it’s okay.  Tell him you love him and that he can leave now.” Dr. Fletcher administered the shot.

I leaned over Kaine and held his large, head in my hand, kissing his face and whispering to him as Dr. Fletcher had instructed.  Milla sat next to me, kneeling.

“It’s okay, boy,” I said. “We love you.  We will miss you.”

Gradually, over the next several minutes, Kaine’s breathing evened out and slowed.  It was not obvious when he stopped.  His breaths became slower and shallower until they could not be detected.  Every few moments, Dr. Fletcher would check his forearm for a pulse.  Eventually, he said, “He’s gone.”  My mother turned wordlessly and headed upstairs.

Read Autumn — Chapter 8

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Autumn — Chapter 6

Read Autumn — Chapter 5 here.

The fall after we returned to the west coast, I attended the University of Oregon in Eugene. Four days a week, I drove south 45 miles to campus. Autumn would lie in the passenger’s seat, her forearm over the console and across my elbow. There were some lectures where it simply was not possible to take her with me, and for those Autumn would wait for me in the car. For the smaller classes, Autumn would attend, lying under the desk at my feet. She was so well-behaved, many people were not even aware she was there.

As was often the case if the weather was dry and the grassy fields were not too muddy, as I walked along with Autumn on her leash, I would find sticks for Autumn to fetch. I would toss the stick, Autumn would chase it and bring it back to me, and so it went.

One afternoon while doing this, I tossed the stick and was waiting for Autumn to return to me when I noticed another student taking off his belt and wrapping it around his dog’s neck. The dog had no collar or leash. Autumn ran back to me with her stick and as she did so, an officer walked up to me to give me a ticket.

“You are going to give me a ticket for letting my dog chase a stick, when she is wearing a collar and leash, is properly licensed, and comes when called, yet that guy over there doesn’t even have a collar on his dog and you aren’t going to give one to him?” I asked incredulously. “You must be kidding!”

He wasn’t. He handed me the ticket and walked off. I must have looked an easy target, or at least a responsible one who would probably show up in court and pay the damn thing. I did go to the court date and did pay the ticket, but I let the judge know exactly what happened and he reduced the fine. Going to court for such an infraction required that one license their dog. Giving me a ticket ensured the officer had won half the battle, and Mr. Belt Collar likely wouldn’t have shown up. I was easy revenue, at least for that first infraction. I never threw the stick for Autumn anywhere near campus again unless I made sure there weren’t any officers lurking about with nothing better to do than extort money from a reliable income source.

About a month after her first birthday, Autumn took the AKC Canine Good Citizen Test. I did not know anything about the test before I signed up for it. Somehow, I had heard about a dog carnival at a park in our town. The carnival was to have booths selling dog paraphernalia, dog games, agility, and other dog-related activities. In those days, I always sought out anything dog. Autumn loved playing games and I thought she would really like agility because she was light and built well for it, plus she was extremely well behaved.

The day of the carnival was cloudy, and although rain seemed likely, it did not seem imminent. The two of us headed over to the park in my green Mazda. Autumn wore an orange scarf around her neck and sat in the front seat, as she always did when there was only one of us in the car with her. I had purchased a harness that I clipped to the seatbelt so if we got into an accident, she would not go flying through the windshield. As we drove up, she looked around at all the dogs, ears attentive, her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth.

Autumn stayed close to my heel as we walked through the various booths and activities. I bought her a new yellow scarf with pink polka dots on it. After meandering about for a half an hour or so, the two of us headed over to the agility course.

Agility is one of the few dog competitions in the United States where the breed of the dog does not matter. It is comprised of a series of obstacles such as tunnels, fences for jumping, teeter-totters, and other events requiring agility in the dog.

As we worked the course, Autumn wore what I considered her doggy happy face. With her mouth slightly open, her tongue out, and eyes bright, she looked like she was smiling. She would look at me, then walk up a ramp to a bridge five feet off the ground. She would look at me, then walk across the bridge. She would look at me then enter a tunnel. Throughout the activities, I would point to something and Autumn would follow. She loved this!

After the agility, we wandered around the carnival some more, when we came upon a table and fenced area. A sign at the table indicated that this was the place for dogs to try and pass the American Kennel Club Canine Good Citizen test. Oh, what was this? It sounded fun.

I asked one of the ladies sitting at the table what it was. She told me that the Canine Good Citizen test is designed to reward dogs who have good manners at home and in the community.  The Canine Good Citizen test is comprised of ten “tests” that the dog and handler must complete in order to receive certification that the dog is a good citizen. In order to receive a certificate, Autumn would have to complete all ten tests. Would I like to try?

Well, of course! I paid the small entry fee for Autumn and we waited our turn. We looked over the requirements as we stood off to the side until our names were called.

The first test required the dog to allow a friendly stranger to approach it and speak to the handler in a natural, everyday situation. The second test required the dog to allow a friendly stranger to touch it while it is out with its handler. The third test required the dog to welcome being groomed and examined. It also required the dog to permit someone, such as a veterinarian, groomer or friend of the owner, to do so.

The fourth test would demonstrate that the handler was in control of the dog. The dog’s position during this test could leave no doubt that the dog was attentive to the handler and responding to the handler’s movements and changes of direction.

The fifth test showed that the dog would move about politely in pedestrian traffic and remain under control in public places. The sixth test demonstrated that the dog had training, would respond to the handler’s commands to sit and down, and would remain in the place commanded by the handler. Test seven required the dog to come when called by the handler.

The eighth test showed that the dog would behave politely around other dogs. Test nine demonstrated that the dog was at all times confident when faced with common distracting situations such as joggers or something being rolled by on a dolly.

The final test required the dog to be left with a trusted person, and that it would maintain training and good manners when it was left. The owner would then leave the dog’s sight for three minutes, and the dog was supposed to remain calm and behave.

After quickly skimming through the list of requirements, I was confident that Autumn could complete all of them. This would be fun!

After waiting for several minutes, it was our turn to begin. The evaluator explained the rules of the test, which included the rule that the dog could not relieve itself during the exam. Funny rule, I thought.

We began the exercises. Each time, Autumn passed. The only test I thought we might have trouble with was number ten, the final exercise. I was not sure whether Autumn would remain quiet after I asked her to lie down and then went to hide behind a tree for three minutes. During the test, I peeked around the tree to see what she was doing. Autumn was lying still, her head alert, looking toward where I had walked. She did not get up, and she did not make a peep. After three minutes had expired, the evaluator came and got me from behind the tree.

“Your dog passed,” he said. “Congratulations.” He smiled as he handed Autumn’s leash to me, leading me over to retrieve our certificate.

“Thank you,” I answered him.

“You know, your dog, she is completely devoted to you,” the evaluator said, looking down at Autumn as he spoke.

“Really?” I asked. I always thought Autumn loved me too, but it was pleasing to hear it from someone else. “How can you tell?”

“Watch her,” he answered. “Every other step she takes she is looking at you to see where you are, what you want her to do. You can always tell a well-trained dog and one that completely loves its owner when it keeps checking in with its owner like that.”

I beamed. I knew Autumn was my best friend, my dog child. I loved her as much as she loved me, and it showed.

Years later when the internet was much more ubiquitous than it was at the time Autumn took the CGC test, I looked it up and discovered that some dogs train for years to pass the test and never pass, and that it is a real honor and achievement to receive the Canine Good Citizen certificate. My little dog had passed it on her first try.

Not only was Autumn good at the tests required by the Canine Good Citizen test, she had managed to learn a lot of tricks.  I have read arguments by people that humans should not force dogs to perform tricks, that it undermines their dogness or something.

Yet such assertions ignore certain aspects of canine character, namely that some dogs like Autumn truly seem to enjoy performing these feats of skill.  There was no force involved.  Most of the tricks she learned because we were goofing around and she figured out that certain actions resulted in a reaction from me, which she sought. Many times Autumn would come to me and perform a trick when there was no food around.  Usually she just wanted my attention, and it worked: she got it.

Autumn performed all the usual manner of dog tricks, such as shaking or giving five.  She would shake with her right paw and give five with her left.  She also sat up on command, balancing on her haunches, her paws curled on her chest.  Sitting up was one activity she absolutely came up with on her own.  I never held her and taught her sit up, she just started doing it when she wanted something.

Autumn’s best activity by far was playing dead.  I would pull out my finger pistol, aim it at her, fire, and cry, “Bang!”  Autumn would slump over on her side like a dead dog.  Sometimes she would lift her head and look at me with one eye.  I’d cock the gun and shoot again.  Her head would fall with a thump and she would lie there until I told her to get up.

Mornings before I left for school, I would spend a couple of hours studying at my desk.  Most of the time, Autumn would come and lie at my feet, dozing until I packed up and left for school. As was her habit her entire life, if I left my desk for even a moment to use the bathroom or to get a glass of water, she would follow me, no matter how brief the interruption.  I would stand and head into the bathroom or kitchen.  Autumn would pull herself to her feet, follow me into whatever room, and lie down beside me sighing heavily, her tags clanking on the floor.  A minute later when I headed back to my desk she would rise again and follow, lying again at my feet. This is how she behaved most of the time.

Other times, she woke up ready to play, and she would make every effort engage my attention.  Usually this meant digging through her basket to locate the toy of her choice, then dropping it in my lap or on my feet.  I would kick the toy or toss it, trying to focus on my work, but this only encouraged her to try harder. She would bring the toy back and drop it again and again until I either ignored her or stopped working to play for real.

If I ignored her, she would then increase her efforts, bringing in the big gun: the rope. Autumn’s rope consisted of two thick cotton ropes, one red, one white, woven around one another and through a hard piece of red rubber. First, she would bring the rope to me as she had with the other objects, dropping it in my lap or at my feet. When this failed to elicit a response, she would pounce on the rope and shake it vigorously, whacking me in the shins with the piece of rubber.

“Ow!” I would holler. “Stop whacking me with the damn rope!”

Autumn would stop and pant, eyes bright and tail swinging. If she was feeling especially fresh, she would lower her front end, holding the rope and shaking it, growling.

“I’m going to pummel you again if you won’t play with me!” she seemed to say, brandishing the rope like a club, ready to bludgeon me again if I failed to join in her play.  Unless I was under a serious deadline crunch, this usually worked. It was hard to resist someone so determined to have fun.

That fall I purchased a sewing machine. As my first project, I decided to sew Autumn a little coat. I purchased a red, green, and cream colored fabric. I lined it in red and trimmed it with green piping. Autumn looked smart in the coat, its colors complementary with her creamy tan fur.

I also sewed Autumn a Halloween costume. Using bright, color-filled fabric, I sewed a ruffled clown collar, and ruffles for each of her paws. I also made a ruffle to go on her tail, but every time she wagged, which was frequent, the ruffle went flying.

On Halloween, we dressed her in the costume, and I painted colorful circles on her fur with washable fur paint from the pet store.  I encircled one eye in blue, the other in red.  Dan dressed in a clown costume as well, and I dressed as a ringmaster, using my riding breeches, coat, and boots. We made quite the festive trio as we handed out goodies to trick-or-treaters.

The children loved Autumn. Always a fan of anyone who would play with her, Autumn wagged her tail and snuffled the visitors at our door as we handed out candy. The way she sniffed at their various Halloween bags, I think she hoped someone might offer her a treat.

Later that evening we all went over to Dan’s parent’s for a small party.  We brought along our fur paint and covered Murphee in colorful circles as well.  We may not have been frightening in the traditional sense, but I think some of the other guests thought we were pretty scary to go to such lengths in dressing up our dog.

Not all of my friends shared my canine enthusiasm. Elizabeth, a friend I had known for years, lived with her husband and son in Eugene, south of us by about forty-five minutes.

On occasion, Elizabeth would ask me to watch her four-year-old son. I would drive to their house, Autumn beside me on the seat. I spent one cloudy Sunday afternoon babysitting for Elizabeth while she and her husband went out for a few hours. They owned a beagle named Lucy.  I always liked Lucy, but Elizabeth thought she had neurotic tendencies. I never saw these tendencies, but was assured they did exist.

I arrived for my babysitting and spent the afternoon playing with Elizabeth’s son and the two dogs.  Later in the day it began to rain, and we spent the rest of our time together playing in the house.  Near evening, Elizabeth and her husband arrived home.  Her son had fallen asleep next to me on the couch where I sat watching a movie.  The two dogs were sleeping on the floor until they arrived home, but once they came through the door, bedlam ensued as both dogs barked enthusiastic welcomes.  I gathered my things, rounded up Autumn, and headed home.

A month later, Elizabeth called and asked if I could watch her son again.  I checked my calendar and agreed, noting the details in my day planner.

Elizabeth paused for a moment, as if she wanted to say something, then said, “Would you please not bring Autumn with you?”

“Um,” I answered, “Okay.  I won’t bring her in the house, but I want her with me, so I will keep her in the car.  it is a long way away and I don’t like going that far alone.”

Elizabeth said that was fine, we said our goodbyes, and got off the phone.  I didn’t say anything at the time, we had known each other for years and it wasn’t worth a disagreement, but the request irritated me. I didn’t so much mind not bringing Autumn in the house, but I was, after all, helping them out; allowing the dog to visit seemed a small concession for the assistance.

I knew though, that Elizabeth’s husband was picky about cleanliness, pickier even than I (Which is saying a lot because I’m pretty particular in that regard. It is one of the reasons my dog got baths every few days).  It was only years later after their divorce that I understood some of the difficulties going on in their marriage, and I’m glad I didn’t make an issue out of it at the time.

Read Autumn — Chapter 7 here

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Autumn — Chapter 5

Read Autumn — Chapter 4

Autumn shared her birthday with anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley, August 16. I found it remarkable that decades after the man’s death, the date was still so publicly memorialized. Ah, the cult of celebrity. While many lamented the day, we were going to celebrate.

In hindsight, I realize that some of the way I cared for my dog was a little over the top, but I loved her. I did not have any children. To both Dan and me, Autumn was our child.  I had many friends with dogs, our parents had dogs, and having a party meant we could invite the dogs, but also see our friends and family. After a year across the country we welcomed this opportunity.

Just as with any birthday party, I sent out invitations to the party to be held in the park near our house. I purchased gifts and wrapped them  I bought food, made Autumn a dog food cake, and bought a human cake as well. I also got several balloons. We had celebrated Dan’s birthday when Autumn was five months old. At that celebration, Autumn was thrilled with balloons. She would pounce on them and pop them with her nose. I don’t know how she did it; balloons frighten me, especially near my face.

The day of the party was sun-kissed and warm. The park where the party was to be held was six blocks from our house.  I loaded the cakes, food, party favors, and gifts into a wagon and lumbered down to the park to reserve a table. Because of the season, tables were a rare commodity, and one had to arrive early to get one. Autumn was excited by the presents. She kept sniffing in the wagon and trying to remove the packages. I made her wait, pulling her from the toys and asking her to heel.

In spite of the fact that the purported reason for the party was Autumn’s birthday, nearly all the guests we invited showed up to see us, many without their dogs. Both sets of parents, Dan’s grandma, and a half dozen friends arrived to celebrate Autumn’s birth.  I played Frisbee with my friends while Dan and his played a mini version of softball.  Autumn ran back and forth between both activities, alternately chasing the softball, the Frisbee, or other dogs. Murphee hovered at our feet, willing us to throw balls for her.

When the time came to open gifts, Autumn tore into them. She loved presents. She had discovered at Christmastime that presents meant treats and toys. In fact, for every Christmas for the rest of her life we had to be careful about what gifts were placed under the tree. Even if they weren’t hers, if they contained something she liked, she would root around and find them, tearing off the wrapping to see what was inside. My heart swelled watching her; she was so dear to me and obviously enjoyed her presents.

None of the other dogs were really interested in the cake. They weren’t much interested in Autumn or one another either. Like toddlers at a first birthday party, they were in it for themselves. All the dogs were given treats, and all were allowed to share in the cake, so they went home happy.

I celebrated birthdays for Autumn for the first few years of her life, then we got Molly, and later Milla was born, but for the time, they were a fun way to get together with friends and enjoy our canine friends.

That fall, Autumn started limping after long days at the park or after I took her running with me. It got to be that my runs were take the dog out for a drag rather than taking the dog out for a run. After some months like this, we decided to take Autumn to the vet to find out what was going on.

Since we had arrived back in Oregon, I had taken Autumn to a veterinarian’s office near our house. I had a lot in common with the veterinarian there. His name was Dr. Ken Fletcher, and over time, we became friends.

I adore Dr. Fletcher. After him (who wanted me to go to vet school, and still does in spite of having chosen to go to law school), no other vet could compare. Dr. Ken treated me like a partner in my pet’s care. He told me honestly what I could do myself and what I should let the vet do. He told me how much things cost the vet and what was just junk profit. Basically, he gave me credit for having a brain and for being able to do some things on my own as a collaborator in my pets’ health care. He was not a director who acted as if I could not possibly understand the intricate undertaking of a shot or even more complex aspects of veterinary medicine. He was my partner, and he treated me as someone capable of managing my pets’ health.

When Autumn started having hip problems, Dr. Ken referred me to a specialist in Eugene named Dr. Barclay Slocum. Dr. Slocum was considered the top hip dysplasia doctor in the United States. He had developed the technique used to replace failing hips in dogs, and had performed the surgery on hundreds, if not thousands of dogs.

Dan and I made the drive south to meet Dr. Slocum and to look at Autumn’s hips. Dr. Fletcher had explained to us that if Autumn did indeed have hip dysplasia, the cost would run into the thousands of dollars. We were apprehensive because we knew if she did have the problem, we would not be able to afford to fix it, and we doubted our parents would lend us the money.

Dr. Slocum’s clinic was slick and professional. There was a room with a glass window where we could watch as they anesthetized our dog and took the x-rays of her pelvis. Autumn had to be asleep because they would lay her on her back and press her pelvis open, which would be difficult and painful if she were awake.

An unassuming man with careful bedside manner, Dr. Slocum spent some time with us explaining what would happen that day, as well as what would follow. During our conversation, an assistant came and took Autumn away. She was apprehensive, turning to look back at Dan and me as she was led into the other room. Tears welled behind my eyes. She looked so vulnerable and frightened.

Watching as the technicians worked on Autumn while she was anesthetized was heartbreaking. She lay on her back, her head tilted, her tongue pulled out to one side with a tube protruding from her mouth and throat. My chest tightened in apprehension; she was so still, and with her tongue out, she looked dead. Dan decided to wait in the other room, unable to bear watching, but I could not leave her. I held my fist to my lips, watching as she lay there, prostrate. She looked dead. It killed me.

The tests revealed that Autumn did indeed have hip dysplasia. Not only did she have the disorder, she had one of the most severe cases the doctor had seen. He explained that the hip sockets were supposed to be round so they would hold the head of the femur at the joint. Autumn’s were flat. Every step she took, her femur rotated back and forth across the flat plain of her pelvic bone.

Dr. Slocum displayed Autumn’s x-rays for us to see. The image looked like a Rorschach blot. As the doctor pointed out to us what the hips were supposed to look like, it was obvious that Autumn’s were a mess.

The cost to perform the surgery was several thousands of dollars. In addition, recovery would take nearly a year, as first one hip had to be replaced, then recovery, then the second hip.

We waited for Autumn to wake up from her anesthesia. She cried and yipped, kicking her feet. Both of us pet her and held her even though the technician had assured us that such behavior was normal when anesthesia was wearing off. It still scared me; she sounded in pain. Once she was up and awake again, at least somewhat, the technicians took her vital signs and pronounced her ready to go. Leaving the clinic and driving north to home, Dan and I were heartbroken. We knew it would be difficult to come up with the money, not while we were both full-time students, and working minimally. We were also really worried about the intensity of the surgery and the recovery time. Autumn would essentially be out of commission for a year. I held her in my lap and stroked the fur on her head. I loved this dog.

Once we arrived home, I made an appointment with Dr. Fletcher to go over the results. A week later, Dan and I met with him to discuss what to do.

“You know,” Dr. Fletcher informed me, as we sat with him in his office, stroking Autumn’s bunny soft ears as he spoke, “There is research out now that suggests that sometimes the best thing to do with dogs like Autumn is to wait and see.”

I raised my eyebrows at him and looked at Dan. This seemed to be an odd approach.

“I know it sounds strange, but you won’t lose anything by waiting. Her hips are what they are and the bones are not going to change shape for the worse. Basically you strengthen Autumn’s muscles by taking her swimming,” he said. “There isn’t any impact and over time, the stronger muscles keep the head of the bone in place where the socket can’t.”

It was worth a try. We couldn’t afford the surgery, and even if our parents were to lend us the money, the surgery would have meant Autumn would have to stay in a kennel for months, and then allowed gradual exercise for a year. I could not see putting her through that.

In the end we decided to try Dr. Fletcher’s approach, not only because of the cost of the surgery, but also because of the length of recovery, and we could change our minds if her situation worsened. Primarily it came down to the impact it would have on her quality of life during the prime of her youth. We just couldn’t do that to her.

I began walking Autumn down to the park near our house where a medium-sized creek ran into the swift Willamette River. Up the creek a half mile or so, there were several swimming holes that were ideal for taking a dog. They were off the main path where people liked to congregate, and Autumn loved the water, probably more than anything other than eating. She would jump in any puddle, any pool, any lake, any river. Basically if it was wet, she wanted to be in it. Since the diagnosis came in the middle of the summer, the timing couldn’t have been better.

Nearly every day I took Autumn out to swim. At first, she tired pretty quickly, but as she became fitter, she could swim for a couple of hours without tiring. She would chase any stick, no matter where we threw it, and retrieve it. We would toss colored balls or frisbees into the water and tell her which one to get. Always smart and attuned to our body language, she quickly figured out which was the green ball or the red frisbee, and would swim out to wherever to bring them back to us.

One scorching summer, in an effort to escape the heat vibrating off the cement and buildings in the city, I took Autumn along with my friends Debbie and Robert, and we drove out into the countryside.  As we wound out into the hills, the air became cooler and more tolerable.  We came upon a rocky stream, and pulled over to wet our feet.

Autumn jumped from the truck and scurried down the embankment straight into the water.  We followed more gingerly, seeking to protect our ankles and backsides from a fall down the gravely ridge.

The edge of the stream was covered in lumpy, grey river rocks.  Another fifteen feet in from the bank, trees hung low.  The water was runoff from the nearby Cascade mountains.  Even in late August, the water remained icy cool.  Logs littered the bank, evidence of winter storms and raging water, days when the stream was not nearly so docile.

I was wearing a bathing suit under my t-shirt and shorts, and quickly stripped down before wading midstream to my waist.  Debbie and Robert simply waded out in their clothes.  At its middle, the stream was about four feet deep, and fifteen feet across.

On days such as this, it was as if Autumn had been reincarnated from a fish.  She swam and swam, lapping and biting at stream bubbles, her legs churning under the water.  I would throw sticks for her, she would calculate where the stick would arrive as the water moved rapidly downstream, and meet the stick before it passed her.  On the few occasions the stick made it past before she reached it, she would swim faster, chasing it like a mad beaver determined to create a dam. Debbie and Robert laughed at Autumn and her water antics.  She was obviously having fun.

After tossing sticks for a bit, I sat down on one of the logs in a sunbeam to dry and warm my legs.  Autumn dragged herself out of the water and shook vigorously, sending droplets every which way.  She then bounded over to me and grasped a rock from the pile at my feet, picking it up and tossing it in my lap.

“Ow!” I exclaimed.  That hurt!  “I will throw rocks for you, but don’t hit me with them.”  I stood and chose a rock for Autumn to chase, locating one the size of a plum.  Autumn danced at my feet, barking.  Throw it! She seemed to say.

I tossed the stone into the river.  Autumn turned and hurled herself into the water, dove beneath the surface, then reappeared nearly immediately, a rock in her jaws.

Debbie, Robert, and I stared at one another.

“Do you think it is the same rock?” I asked.

“No,” Robert answered in his baritone, grumbly voice.  “She just found a rock.”

“But it looks like the same rock,” I stated, and Debbie nodded, agreeing with me.

“Let’s throw in another one and see if she gets it,” I said, already choosing a rock.  I looked at it closely to see whether we could identify it as the same rock, then threw it into the water.  Autumn had dropped the original rock at my feet and turned to race back into the water after the second one.  She plunged into the water, disappeared for a moment, then popped up a moment later, swam to shore and dropped the rock at my feet.  She didn’t even shake off the water, but stood dripping expectantly, waiting for another throw.

I examined the sopping stone at my feet.  There was no way I could tell if it was the same rock and told Debbie and Robert as much.

Robert pulled a pocket knife from one of the many pockets covering the overalls he wore, his default uniform regardless of the weather or occasion.

“We can use this to mark the rock, then we can tell if it is the same one,” he said as he picked up a rock and carved a long groove into pale grey surface.  He then dunked it in the water to see whether the mark was still visible.  It was.

Robert handed the rock to me and I threw it out into the water.  Autumn zoomed in after it.

Moments later she dropped the marked rock at my feet.  Amazing.

We played this game for a while, then I went out into the water with her.  I wanted to see what she looked like under the water as she retrieved.

Robert found and marked a rock, tossed it, and just as the rock pierced the surface of the water, I held my breath and went under.  I could see the rock as it slowed dramatically and settled onto the floor of the creek bed.  I also saw Autumn watching the rock as it landed.  She kept her eyes open underwater so she could pick the correct stone!  The dog loved water, there was no denying it.

In time, it became apparent that swimming was ideal for Autumn’s hip problems. Gradually she stopped having episodes of pain and limping. Over the years as she aged and developed other health issues, I was only able to take her swimming a couple of times a year, but she never experienced problems with her hips again. Dr. Fletcher still uses her story as an example to patients who come to him with dysplasia dogs as proof that surgery may not always be necessary.

Read Autumn — Chapter 6

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Autumn — Chapter 4

Read Autumn — Chapter 3

After a year, Dan and I were ready to go home. We were still homesick, and also the school I was going to was extremely expensive and not all the programs were as good as had been advertised when I applied. Dan had finally met the requirements for residency to obtain in-state tuition at the University of Tennessee, but we were both tired of the differences, and missed Oregon and our families. We wanted neighbors who would not look at us as if we were aliens. We longed for our friends.

Though we had not told our families, the two of us had gone to a justice of the peace in December and gotten married. The main reason we did this was because Dan could not qualify for financial aid based on his parent’s income and assets, yet they could not afford to pay for his university studies. After the marriage, we announced to the family that we were engaged and that we would be getting married the following summer. No one seemed surprised. Only Dan’s grandma seemed pensive at the scheme, believing we were still too young for marriage. We ignored her portentous concern, especially since the deed had already been done.

When Dan’s parents called to tell us they would allow us to live in their basement apartment for no rent if we stayed in Oregon after the wedding, we did not even think about it, agreeing immediately. I would attend the University of Oregon in Eugene, Dan would go to Oregon State in Corvallis, and we would live in Albany with his parents.

In retrospect, the decision to live with Dan’s parents probably sealed the fate of our marriage, but at the time, it seemed like the perfect solution. Living with Dan’s parents would not matter to financial aid since we were married, and paying no rent would allow us to go to school without having to work full-time. Considering I had worked full-time for my first two years of college, this part was especially appealing.

Once school let out for the summer, we set about selling all the furniture we had acquired during our year on the east coast, and boxing and shipping our belongings back to Oregon. This part was easy. Our biggest concern about the move was the drive back home in a car without air conditioning. We were leaving in late June, driving across the bottom half of the United States, and it was going to be hot. We also wanted to bring as much with us as we could manage to save on shipping costs.

Once we figured out how we were going to pack the car, the only room left for Autumn was at our feet in the passenger’s seat. This wasn’t going to be fun for either the passenger or the dog, but we were so happy to be heading home, we did not care. When we were ready to go, we got up at dawn and drove away, stopping only for breakfast since all our cookware was gone.

We drove straight for 25 hours into Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dan drove all of it.  He was so eager to get home he flew, breaking speed laws in five states. By the time we hit New Mexico, we were all exhausted and the heat was overwhelming. We arrived at noon and decided our best plan for the remainder of the trip was to sleep during the day and drive at night. We crossed Arizona in the dark, then drove north through Nevada during the early part of the day. The temperatures were staggering, near 120 degrees Fahrenheit, yet we had no complaints, gratified that the warmth was dry heat. After the dripping east coast humidity, we were fine with arid wind blowing in our faces.

Autumn managed the trip well. She was used to riding in the car, and since it was so warm, content to curl like a caterpillar, nose to tail on the floorboards. I was the passenger for most of the trip, propping my legs on the dash or in the edge of the yawning window.

When we finally arrived back in Oregon, we were exhausted, but happy. After the tawny deserts, Oregon was lush and verdant in early June. Driving north on I-5, the mountains were corpulent and green. Trite but true, there is no place like home.

Dan’s parents lived in a stucco, Pepto Bismol pink bungalow. Squat and square, from the outside the house didn’t look very big, but was actually quite spacious. They had renovated part of the basement and rented it out to some of Dan’s friends. This space was to be our new home. We would have our own entrance at the back if we chose to use it, or we could go through the house. We would share the upstairs kitchen.

Dan’s parents had a dog of their own, a black and white Border Collie named Murphee. To call Murphee neurotic would be an understatement. Typical of her breed, she wanted to herd all the time. She would skulk around, head parallel to the ground, a tennis ball gripped in her jaws. If she saw a human, she would drop the ball, then stop and stare intensely at it, her brown eyes occasionally flicking up to see whether the human was going to make a move to take the ball and throw it.

Autumn had not turned out to be the enormous beast we all predicted based on Maude and her paws. At just under a year old, she was only about twenty-five pounds. By the time she was six months old, it was clear to us that she was Cody’s daughter and not Jasper’s. Having spent many hours in the presence of the two potential fathers, we had witnessed Cody’s mannerisms in Autumn since she was quite small. Her trot especially was identical to his, their gaits like a Standardbred, front legs straight out in front as they moved. Cody was a very small Border Collie. I found it amazing he had managed to impregnate Maude, but such are the miracles of the animal kingdom.

Murphee, two years older than Autumn, was not much bigger, although she was much more filled out and thicker. Autumn was as tall as she would ever be, but still looked like a lanky dog teenager, with long narrow legs and a slim body. The two were destined to be nearly the same size, although Murphee was always heftier. Autumn’s fur was much softer than Murphee’s. Murphee’s hair was wiry and course. I often called Autumn “bunny ears” because of the blissful softness of the fur on her ears. All her life, rubbing those ears would bring me comfort.

We settled into the basement apartment. The space was open like a loft, only it was mostly underground. There were windows at the tops of the walls on both the east and west sides of the house, so we always had outdoor light. We set up the space like rooms, our bedroom at one end, an office in the middle, and the living room at the other end.

During Autumn’s entire life we had kept pet rats. She was used to them and was careful around them, having been bitten in the nose by our rat Shasta when she was only three months old. Sometimes if we were lounging on the bed or couch and holding a rat, Autumn would want to play with it or sniff it, but mostly she just left them alone.

Murphee, however, was entranced with our rats to the point of obsession. She would stare at the rats like they were tennis balls or sheep. If they were out when she was nearby, she would nose them roughly. I was certain that given chance, she would have eaten one of the rats. Because of this, we left the door to our apartment and the rest of the basement closed. Dan’s parents also used the other portion of the basement for laundry, and I wanted to maintain some semblance of privacy.

We kept the rats in a cage on top of a dresser in the “office” portion of our apartment. The dresser was one I had purchased used as an 11-year-old and refinished. One afternoon, I returned from my day at school to discover that Murphee, in her efforts to get to the rats, had scratched deep gouges all along the top of the dresser.

I was furious. Murphee was not supposed to be in our apartment, and she sure as hell wasn’t supposed to ruin my dresser.

After this, whenever Murphee would come down to whine at the door because she wanted to get to our rats, I would say, “Murphee, get out of here!” in a sharp voice. She would whine and claw until I either chased her away or took her back upstairs.

“Murphee, leave!” I would shout.

Over time, Autumn learned that “Murphee, leave!” meant that I did not want Murphee downstairs. She would growl a warning at the door. Because her growl sounded so fierce, we started saying the phrase when Autumn was terrorizing one of her stuffed animals. “Get Murphee!” we would growl, “Murphee, go away!” Autumn would shake the stuffed thing to death, growling like a crazed fiend, spittle splattering everything in her mock fury.

Over the years, even long after we had moved away from Murphee and the basement, saying the words, “Murphee, go away!” would turn Autumn into a crazy frenzy. I taught her a hand signal to go with the words. I would hold my arm down to my side and shake my hand really hard up and down, saying the phrase. Autumn learned that when I did this, she was to act like a crazy dog. When I stopped, she would stop abruptly. My thinking was that if anyone ever grabbed me around the body and arms, I could still make the hand signal so Autumn would act nuts, hopefully scaring the attacker away.

A few years later, I called into a radio program where the hosts gave out prizes for doing silly pet tricks on the air. “Murphee,” I hissed. “Go away!” Autumn snarled and shook. I stopped the movement. Autumn went silent. I made the movement again and she turned into a raving lunatic. I stopped and so did she. We won a DVD for our efforts.

Sometimes Murphee’s neurotic herding had unintended consequences. Dan was close friends with the two guys, Steve and Brian, who had rented the apartment from his parents for two years before we moved into it. They were a typical group of guys who had known one another since childhood. They liked hanging out and drinking beers, playing sports, and telling each other dirty jokes.

For Steve’s birthday the summer after we moved into the apartment, we decided to get him a crass, pornographic toy in addition to his real gift. After searching the local triple X store, we settled on a plastic labia. It barely resembled its intended design. The thing was baby mouse pink, with brown painted on the plastic to look like hair. There were also several nylon hairs that had been added for effect and a tube of plastic in the middle. It was hard to believe whoever designed the thing ever intended it to be anything except a joke.

We wrapped the toy in wrapping paper and gave it to Steve at his party, which was being held at our house. Dan’s parents had a fine backyard for entertaining, and we often invited Steve and Brian over for events like this one.

Steve opened the gag gift and reacted as we expected he would, with laughter and revulsion. The thing was perfectly hideous. The guys began tossing it back and forth between themselves. Murphee, as was the case anytime anything was thrown that she might catch, started tracking the thing in her Border Collie way, head low, one foot slightly in front of the other, never once taking her eyes from her prey.

Laughing hysterically, we threw it for her to fetch. She ran it down, retrieved it, then dropped it at Steve’s feet, staring at it rapturously. Over and over, we played this game, laughing until our sides hurt and tears ran down our faces.

In the house, we heard Dan’s parents come home. Murphee picked up the thing and ran into the house. We waited to see what would happen. A couple of minutes later, Dan’s mom and dad walked onto the back porch.

“We walked into the house,” Dan’s mom informed us, “And Murphee brought us this wonderful gift.”

She held the thing up for us all to see. “Can anyone explain why our dog is carrying around a plastic vagina?”

Read Autumn — Chapter 5

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In Another Galaxy

I am not a giant of the legal community. I’m probably not even an ant. My first reaction upon seeing a headline about some giants of the legal community is that I am not one. I thought of many quips to describe how un-giantlike I am. Then later, I reread the headline, and actually felt a bit of vexation. Why is it that we as people create these categories and rank people? And further, why is it that in order to become a giant of the legal community, one must work for a big firm that serves everything but the interests of most people? Our culture is so backward, rewarding wealth and considering those who acquire it great. I’m sure these giants worked hard; it’s not possible for them to have worked little for the firms who employ them, but to what end? Actually since they are both partners, in a manner of speaking, they employ themselves, but it’s a pyramid scheme with the associates at the bottom feeding the partners. Considering this, it is they who are more ants than I am. This isn’t sour grapes; it’s reality. They slave to feed the queens. During my first year of law school when I figured out how the whole lawyer scheme worked, I felt a desire to work at a big firm for about ten seconds, then my natural desire to help humankind kicked in and obliterated any such desire. All of them wear their clients like badges of honor, and perhaps for some, these badges really are something to be proud of, but I just saw them as bloodsucking corporate parasites using these lawyers to further their own powerful aims. Gag. Be a big firm lawyer and learn how to fuck over the common people. No, thank you. Okay, this just ended up being a judgmental rant. That wasn’t where I was going. One of my best friends works for a big firm, one of the biggest. She’s a decent person. She, however, is also not a giant. In fact she’s planning to go to “part-time,” which in big firm parlance is synonymous with a 40 hour work week. No, thank you. Come to think of it, I am not diminutive in relation to the giants of the legal profession. They would say that’s because I’m not even a speck on their radar. I’m less than speck; I’m a quark. I’m the space between molecules, an intermolecular space. Ha! Yet thinking about it, I realized that to fit this description, I would have to care and I don’t, not one whit. I’m in another galaxy where giants are not the people who make the most money. So I’m just me — not a giant and not a quark and not even anything in between.

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If It’s Not Okay, It’s Not the End

I have determined again what I already knew, that I am a hopeless romantic. Not romantic in the sense of rebellion against the industrial revolution and age of enlightenment, but romantic as in loving happy endings, but that isn’t exactly right either. It isn’t the happy ending I love so much as the happy possibility. Maybe romantic isn’t the best word; perhaps idealist. Yes, I’m an idealist (but I already knew that. I take those Myers Briggs personality tests and always end up the idealist (you are 1% of the population–lucky me!)). In any case, yesterday I saw Silver Linings Playbook and loved it. Just loved it. I left the theater feeling all warm and fuzzy. Then when gushing about it to a friend I realized it was similar to Crazy, Stupid Love, another film I absolutely adore, and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and Sliding Doors. I LOVE these movies. Love them. I can watch them over and over and over. I’m lying here thinking about them this morning because I was unable to sleep past 6:30 even if I didn’t fall asleep until nearly 1 a.m. because my daughter was wiggling because of the extremely late nap she took after a belated Thanksgiving dinner with Daddy and his family that ended with the nap beginning at 6. I thought she was down for the night, it was that late when she finally went down. I’m going to pay for this lack of sleep. Give me a few hours and I’ll be nodding off in my soup.

Alas, I digress. I’m lying here this morning in my sleepless state thinking about these movies and I realized yet again that yes, I’m a romantic/idealist. There is no getting around it. I like possibilities. These films are all like one another, and they are not typical romantic comedies. They are bittersweet. They are dark. . .then light. I leave them feeling like it’s possible the couples will last beyond the first blush of new love, that perhaps they will not be hating one another in four or five years, that perhaps because they see who their partner is and not who they want them to be, their loves might last. Yes, I’m an idealist. It will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.

I do not always adore or believe romantic comedies. Some of them make me absolutely cringe. They can be so formulaic or so far from believable, I squirm. I hate the ones where the couples fight the whole time because they are completely different people and will not accept one another’s flaws, but they have incredible sexual tension and therefore end up together at the end because Hey! they can get it on. Incredible sexual tension is just that, incredible sexual tension. It is meaningless in the scheme of things. What happens when they no longer want to screw one another blind? Then they just hate each other. Boring. What was that film with Jennifer Aniston and the hot Irish guy who is a bounty hunter? Oh, right. Bounty Hunter. I didn’t buy it for a second.  They’ll be miserable in 8 months.

Worse are the movies where the man is a shit to women his whole life but this woman saves him. Suddenly he becomes mature and honest after being shitty. He discovers that she is so golden and perfect, he must give up his evil ways, and of course, she takes him back, or he gets her, or whatever. It’s a miracle! Yuck. Or one of the couple has trouble with commitment, but the other gets them and so they certainly must end up together. All is well. Commitment issues — poof! Gone! No Strings Attached or Definitely Maybe. I don’t buy it.

Yet in spite of these bad ones I don’t believe, there are some I do, some that make me want to believe in the happy possibility. Most romantic comedies I like well enough. It’s a go-to genre I can watch if I have a couple of hours to spare, but a lot of them I forget as soon as the credits roll. Yet there are a handful I truly love. I think Silver Linings Playbook might be one of them. I can tell a film is a real favorite if I enjoy watching it multiple times. I won’t know if this is a keeper until I have seen it again and still want to see it again. I’m hopeful about this possibility, that since I want to see it again now, I’ll want to see it again after seeing it again. I can add it to the list of movies I really love. I remain the hopeless idealist, wanting the happy ending.

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P.S. Claiming technorati when you have already done it is ANNOYING!

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Thanksgiving Sonnet

It’s that time of year again, for me to repost a sonnet I wrote in college.  I’ve gone back and tried again and again to get the exact syllabic format for a completely proper sonnet, but could not find words to replace those here that would maintain the imagery and metaphoric content that I want, so it stays the same.

Thanksgiving Sonnet
Turgid turkeys, strained into rickety wooden coffins, exit four-by-four from a ten-ton hearse. Into the turkey mill: mutilation, holocaust.

Perspiring hormones, Tom Turkey stares with one cold eye at a crumbling chimney tower belching death in putrid smoke, blackening holiday skies. Annihilating light.

Bodies, bones. None remain unfrozen. With elaborate precision he’s taken apart; neck, gizzards tied in a bag between his ribs, head ground neatly into pink hot dog slabs.

Holiday skies are crowded with turkey souls, ascending to heaven like deflated balloons.

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Columbia River Law Group

I started a law firm with my friends. One of them will be joining us after the first of the year. I would love it if anyone who visits the site would give me their feedback.  It can be seen at CRLawGroup.com. If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to contact me on the website or here.  We are bankruptcy and consumer protection attorneys. We help people file bankruptcy in Portland, Vancouver, and the surrounding metro area.  We genuinely care about the people we help, and between the three of us, we have several decades of experience. If you know anyone who needs help with a bankruptcy, please do not hesitate to contact us. We like to help!

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Dental Floss Just Doesn’t Cut It

Blurb for the day:

I love popcorn. Too much. I often feel sick after eating too much of it, especially on an empty stomach, but I still keep coming back and love it. If you’re going to eat it though, you have to invest in a water pik. Dental floss just doesn’t cut it.

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Good People Turn Away

I have been studying, trying to come to an answer that may not exist, thinking about psychopaths/sociopaths, and further, about those surrounding psychopaths/sociopaths, and why it is these people support those who carry out evil, both on the micro and macro level. Ultimately, it seems to me that the danger of these people is greatly increased by these people who support them, the people who take action on their behalf, the people who stand blindly by and allow them to destroy.

This led to my wanting to know more about the citizens of Germany who allowed the Holocaust to happen. I keep thinking about average citizens walking down the street, passing internment camps where children were being gassed, their bodies burned in smoking ovens as the smoke rose into the sky, where people were being used as slaves or medical experiments and then murdered. This led to more reading. I spent a term at the University of Munich after a semester of intense study on the rise of Hitler and the NSDAP (Nazi) party, so I have some frame of reference.  We spent hours watching the videos of camp liberation. We studied the party’s propaganda videos, and learned of the history in the decades leading up to the second world war.

In researching the participation of ordinary people, or the ignoring of atrocities by ordinary people, I found a book by a man named Daniel Goldhagen that posits the theory that the German population simply harbored a massive hatred of the Jews, and therefore they were more than happy to participate, either directly or indirectly, in their extermination. There is much debate about Mr. Goldhagen’s perspective. He became an instant celebrity in a certain community and was hailed by those who want this simple answer, for whatever reason. I also read the primary criticisms of his perspective, and while they made some very good arguments against Mr. Goldhagen’s thesis, I did not find any satisfactory alternate response. I concluded that I do not agree with Mr. Goldhagen’s theory; while German antisemitism certainly played a part in the population’s participation and consent, implied or otherwise, it is not a complete answer. Ironically, Mr. Goldhagen came off as anti-German; is this somehow acceptable because of what happened to the Jews? But this is beside the point.

The world has experienced many genocides since that perpetrated against the Jews by the Germans, and the explanation that they are all singularly driven by the hatred of one population against another does not satisfy. There is more to it than this, and there can be no one answer as to why. However, it is important to consider why it is that seemingly ordinary people go along with murder, mass or otherwise. Why go along with any destructive behavior? Fear is an obvious culprit, and cowardice, but there is definitely more.

Recently I posted a story on Facebook originally published on Truthout about the crimes (both moral and actual) of the Obama administration. A Facebook “friend” (a person I have never actually met, but we were friends in the land of social networking because of some political similarity or other) attacked my post, stating his support of Obama, and pointing out my delusions. I countered, stating that I could not support someone who murders children with drones. He stated that Obama had not “murdered children” and that I was silly for even considering such a thing. I then posted for him two photos, one of a specific named, dead child, and a collection of several dead and injured children, all murdered or injured by American drones. The “friend” then unfriended me. I can only speculate at his reasons for doing this, but it seemed to me that in showing him what he did not want to see, he simply cut off the conversation. This led to my further rumination on those who would stand by as evil occurs. This man was not in any manner obviously fearful or even cowardly, but he supports Obama and he therefore did not want to hear any contradictions of this position, even if it meant ignoring the murder of children. To some extent, I was not surprised by his response. He was dismissive of what I was saying, and in some of his comments, sarcastic towards me, both critical and superior in his responses, as if I was just being a dolt who didn’t know any better.

More recently, while conversing intimately with a person who is quite thoughtful about the causes and effects of human behavior, I was surprised at her unilateral defense of Obama. She has been critical of him in the past, but it was always cautiously critical. Now that he has won the election, she is sure that he has changed, that things will be different, that he will go against his own words and make different choices. Without being sarcastic or nasty, she was unwilling to accept that this might not be the case. She was not supportive of him out of fear or cowardice, but she was supportive in spite of any abhorrent actions of this administration. She wanted to believe in him and was therefore supportive, in spite of what has been.

Somewhere in this is part of the answer to why we support those who harm others, from small abuses to genocide, why we as humans allow atrocities to occur. It’s not a simple answer. We participate, and through our participation, evil occurs. It isn’t only that we must examine the extremes, the angry man watching FOX News and ranting ignorantly against false birth certificates and making incongruous spelling errors about the socialist government while cashing his unemployment checks. Good people turn away too because they do not want to see or because they want to believe we are better than the worst of us. It is towards those living in this grey area that we need to turn our attention, because it is they who must see the damage that is done by standing idly by if we are ever going to stop abuse and human destruction.

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Pure Med Spa/Brite Smile

Something weird has happened. Maybe it isn’t weird. Maybe it’s normal. I don’t know. In any case, it used to be if you searched the internet for Pure Med Spa, Brite Smile, et al, my blog would come up and people could see the number of people harmed by this company. There are hundreds of comments on my posts from people who have been robbed or injured by them. Now you search these terms and my blog doesn’t show. In fact, it brings up all the current locations where these thieves are still operating. Want a burned face? How about some severe skin damage on your legs? Better yet, how about having a lot of your money stolen? If you do, head on down to your local Pure Med Spa/Brite Smile,GRF Medspa et al. Free pain and stealing awaits you!

To see those previous posts that have virtually disappeared, here are the links:

You Be Sorry You Mess with Me, Pure Med Spa!

Let’s Eliminate Pure Med Spa

Good Riddance, Pure Med Spa!

Pure Med Spa Again

Pure Med Spa, Brite Smile, Crooks All

Order By Bankruptcy Court for Pure Med Spa

Pure Med Spa/Brite Smile is Now Pinnacle

I Hope We Get You, Pure Med Spa, Brite Smile, et al

Groupon Does Business with Pure Med Spa

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Blind

Regardless how you feel about Obama or the voting process itself, I cannot put myself in the place of someone who would willingly endorse a man who strapped a dog to the top of his car and let it shit in fear across five states for several hours. There is something chillingly wrong with this man, and to ignore this is to reveal something of oneself.

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Ambivalence

I think buried in my disappointment that my days are not more than they are is the expectation that they should be. Somehow I’ve been convinced that the every day should be less everyday and more unique, and when every day is everyday, I feel disappointment. Here I lie in my bed after watching a well-written movie (a rarity these days), and feel less than for having lain here watching rather than having lain here writing. Yet I have not yet overcome the belief that took hold this summer that I am not a writer, although I recognize in saying that I have not yet overcome that this feeling can be subjugated, and honestly I’m not sure that it can. I remain ambivalent. I am suffering an artist’s crisis. It is not one of confidence, but one of belief. And threaded through this I wonder whether it is incorrect to have the expectation that it should be any other way, if I’m supposed to learn to accept the everyday every day, rather than to desire to create and to live beyond the everyday.

Does any of this make sense? To anyone except for me?

My soul is languishing.

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Insomnia is Evil

Insomnia, you are an evil bastard. I’m working on some alternative techniques to deal with you and finding some success, but alas, not yet enough. I’m still mostly thoroughly exhausted.

Some tricks:  Put an extra earplug or two under your pillow so when one of the two you wear nightly invariably falls out, it is not necessary to wake enough to reach over and open the drawer to the bedside table and find another, thus waking further and making sleep impossible. One other thing to note about earplugs, find the kind that work best for you and buy 1000 of the damn things. Manufacturers seem hell bent on reinventing wheels that work just fine every few years and you may discover that your best earplug choice disappears from the drugstore shelf, never to be found again. Buying the entire supply ensures you’ll have enough of your favorite for years.

Keep your eye pillow within arm’s reach for the same reason listed with earplugs. Anything that can be done before really waking will increase the likelihood of falling back to sleep.

The light-blocking shades available at hardware stores are the best thing since sliced bread. Nothing beats them for keeping out the dark. They’re worth every penny.

All the usual insomnia advice about not drinking caffeine later in the day, not drinking later in the day, keeping your room temperature at a point that doesn’t cause too much warmth or too much cold, and eating before bed so you don’t wake up hungry are  all useful too. Considering I have the smallest bladder on the planet, I really have to follow the advice about not drinking anything. Actually having to rise out of bed is a sure sleep killer for me.

I’m trying this Buddhist meditation thing. I have to become really mindful of my body, then focus on my breath, then move through my body and find tension and note that it is there, and move my mind back to this if it slips away. I find that focusing on my body and my breath forces my mind away from the usual suspects that cause it to spin, work and money. I’m getting better, but my brain seems hardwired to know if I’m going to have to get up in an hour or less anyway and will not go back to sleep, no matter how exhausted I am.

Insomnia is a bitch. Over twenty years of this. The only thing that really makes it better is feeling completely secure, and that hasn’t happened for years now. I can’t imagine that this will be a part of my life until I die, but I’m beginning to think that it will. Maybe it will even cause my death since sleeplessness is blamed for so many causes of death.

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The Pretend Society, by S. Brian Willson

This is from the website of S. Brian Willson, and the post is found here.

The Pretend Society

March 5, 2012

I was once a young man, very much like the young men and women who have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan as US military soldiers. I grew up believing in the red, white and blue. I believed that the United States had a sacred mission to spread democracy around the world. Viet Nam was my generation’s war. I did not volunteer, but when I was drafted, I answered the call. It was in Viet Nam that my journey toward a different kind of knowledge began.

One hot sunny morning in April 1969 I found myself in a small Mekong Vietnamese fishing village that had just been bombed, burned bodies lying everywhere. My job in that moment was to assess the success of bombing missions of so-called military targets. In my naivete, it never occurred to me that the countless targets, systematically being bombed, were undefended, inhabited rice farming and fishing villages. In effect, all that mattered was the creation of “enemy” body counts – lots of them – Washington’s demonic criteria for defining “success.” I was overwhelmed in grief as I looked into the eyes of young, napalmed, blackened mothers with children – hundreds of them – lying in their own village 9,000 miles distant from my sleepy farm community in upstate New York. I gagged when I witnessed these horrible scenes of carnage, and later became enraged at the incomprehensible lie that I had so easily believed in.

What on earth was going on? Americans were taught that among nations we were unique: a nation of laws, not of men. In one shamefully startling moment in a Vietnamese village, I realized I had been brainwashed, mesmerized by US American mythology. I was overcome by an irreversible knowledge that a huge lie had been perpetrated by men in open defiance of the laws of the land at the expense of countless innocent people.

I futilely demanded that my superiors in Saigon headquarters stop the bombing that violated both US and international laws of warfare prohibiting targeting of civilians or their infrastructure. My pleas were summarily ignored, confirming that in fact there are no laws of war. The pilots of these planes were rewarded for their routinely successful turkey shoots at 300 feet, while other young men back in the states were jailed for burning the national symbol that represented this very policy of burning human beings – the US flag.

The vast majority of US citizenry were paying taxes to finance this grotesquely criminal war, absurdly touted by political, religious, economic and many academic leaders as necessary to protect our national security by destroying other, far-away people’s aspirations for independence. I staggered at how preposterous and racist this policy was. Later I learned that Ralph McGehee, a CIA officer in Viet Nam, had revealed intelligence that could find no significant support for our intervention there. McGehee became depressed when his bosses in Washington reported exactly the opposite to the US American public. He reluctantly concluded that the CIA is the covert action arm of the President’s foreign policy advisers which reports and shapes “intelligence” to justify desired political policy.

This basic lie has been with us since our country’s origins. We ignore the fundamental fact that the US was built on dispossession and genocide of hundreds of ancient nations of Indigenous peoples, describing ourselves as being “as a city upon a hill,” and later as an “exceptional” people. We celebrate Thanksgiving, a holiday that was first officially proclaimed by the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637 to commemorate the massacre of 700 Pequot men, women and children at what is now Groton, Connecticut. Today, Groton is the home of the Electric Boat Corporation which makes US nuclear submarines. Thus, our official life as a nation is constructed on a shared denial of painful realities and the suffering they created, and continue to create. Denial as a way of life is politics in US America.

Even our founding document, the Constitution, is suspect. The Convention was conducted by 55 well-to-do White men meeting in strict secrecy, and the document was never submitted to a popular vote. Domination by a very few men and the subordination of the many was made the law of the land, in effect, assuring that inherited property replaced inherited government, commercial enterprises reigning over human liberty. However, that is not how it is taught. As we persist in believing the lie that it is “we the people” and not “we the largest property owners” who govern this country, we assure our continued disempowerment.

For more than two centuries, the process of preserving and expanding private property and profits under the lofty rhetoric of living in a democracy has been assured by over 560 US military interventions in more than 100 countries, murdering millions of people. I did not know this history when I was in Viet Nam. One discovers deceit and secrecy surrounding every one of these foreign interventions (necessary to assure public support), starting with the very first intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1798 and through all of our wars and interventions to the present ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. World War II was no exception. Journalist Robert B. Stinnett discovered similar deceit behind US entrance into World War II, the so-called “good war.” His research confirms that not only was the attack on Pearl Harbor known in advance at the highest levels from decoded Japanese intelligence, but it was deliberately provoked.

Psychologist Carl Jung has described how the psychology of nations with imperial ambitions successfully hides its dark internal “shadows” (harsh truths) by projecting outward its own evils onto other nations described as enemies (“demons”): Everything our nation does is touted as good, everything the “enemy” does is evil. But many of us obedient soldiers who participated first hand in these imperial wars of good versus evil had these projections quickly stripped from our eyes. We discovered in fact that we were the savages, not those lying dead at our feet in their home villages whom we had been taught to demonize.

It is easy to identify our nation’s shadows by carefully examining the images we project onto others. But if we continue to maintain a dangerous, distorted vision of the world, we assure protection of our moral high-mindedness at the expense of severely weakening our grasp of reality. We ensure our own destruction unless we muster the courage to look at our own dark shadows, whether as individuals or nations. Instead, we pretend, endlessly.

How many of our citizens know of the systematic crimes committed by the US throughout the world that have been constant, remorseless, and fully documented? As British playwright and Nobel Prize recipient Harold Pinter angrily comments: “Nobody talks about them…It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.”  The US just wouldn’t be involved in such criminal interventions any more than our origins are built upon dispossession and genocide.

Over 100 years ago, noted US socialist and reformer Upton Sinclair bemoaned our corrupt political and media system, and his words still ring true: “…we are just like Rome. Our legislatures are corrupt; our politicians are unprincipled; our rich men are ambitious and unscrupulous. Our newspapers have been purchased and gagged; our colleges have been bribed; our churches have been cowed. Our masses are sinking into degradation and misery; our ruling classes are becoming wanton and cynical.”

Pretending to be democratic takes a lot of effort

This harsh political reality has required the constant managing of the “public” mind to assure mass “democratic” compliance with the undemocratic oligarchic economic and political structures. Pretending to be democratic takes a lot of effort. Edward L. Bernays, the premier pioneer of US public relations, argued that the ability to shape and direct public opinion had become indispensable to the maintenance of order. President Woodrow Wilson was re-elected in 1916 on the promise that he would keep the US neutral, and would not send “American” boys to war in Europe. Once elected, however, ongoing pressures from US banking and other economic interests to enter the war on the side of England required Wilson to develop a strategy to convince a public overwhelmingly against the war to change their minds. With Bernays’ coaching, Wilson created the first modern de facto Minister for Propaganda, selecting liberal newspaperman George Creel to head up The Committee for Public Information (CPI). Creel launched an intense advertising campaign using catch phrases and fear-inducing language with 75,000 traveling speakers (the famous Four Minute Men), ads, and essays reaching every nook and cranny of the United States.

Fifty years later, as noted above, CIA officers realized during Viet Nam that another war was being stage managed from Washington, as the Vietnamese were telling us they understandably wanted no part of our imperial ambitions. This is systematically documented in the Pentagon Papers, released in 1971 by Pentagon insider Daniel Ellsberg.

Now, in the 21st Century we increasingly discover that the so-called War on Terror – actually a war of wholesale terror on retail terror, is itself stage managed, as Stephan Salisbury describes in his excellent expose, Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland. “The plain fact is that if there is no ‘enemy within,’ if ‘homegrown’ cells are not simply elusive but an illusion – as appears increasingly to be the case – then the entire apparatus of the war on terror crumbles in the homeland…What can be imagined has replaced the actual.”

Brazilian educator Paulo Freire observed that manipulation of public thinking “is an instrument of conquest” and an indispensable means by which the “dominant elites try to conform the masses to their objectives.” Everything is make believe; honesty is dangerous. Wars abroad and wars at home must be constantly stage managed to keep the pretentions alive. Our national news constantly stage manages events to conform to our convenient view of ourselves as “exceptional.” Infotainment replaces information.

Eminent quantum physicist David Bohm summed up our dilemma perfectly. Since exploitation continues to be the essential feature of a modern society bent on accumulation of “wealth,” and its popular consumption, man is doomed to ever-increasing confusion, for he has to justify this theft to himself. “This is in fact impossible, except by continual recourse to confusion. For how else can you justify the arbitrary authority of some people over others? You can pretend that God or nature ordered it, that the others are inferior, that we are superior, etc. But once you start on this line, you can never allow yourself to think straight again, for fear that the truth will come out. You tell the child that she or he must be honest, treat people fairly, etc. Just this one point is enough to destroy the minds of most children. How can you square up the emotion of love and truth with that of plundering an enemy, stealing his wealth, murdering helpless people, and enslaving others?”

Viet Nam was not a mistake any more than the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars were a mistake. There neither was or is anything different about these wars. They are part of a pattern of brutality written into our country’s DNA. The long pattern of US intervention policy does not make atrocities by individual soldiers inevitable, but it does make it inevitable that US soldiers as a whole would murder many civilians. Currently, Army private Bradley Manning is accused of revealing to the public numerous and egregious US war crimes in Iraq (the truth). He has been incarcerated for nearly two years awaiting a trial that military judicial authorities say promises life in prison or possibly death. This dramatically contrasts with the recent exoneration (pretend), with no jail time, by that same military system, of eight US Marines, four of whom were officers, of cold-blooded murder of 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha, Iraq, aged one year to 76 years, shooting them at close range in the head and chest. The evil of the US simply does not occur.

Since the first European settlers raped, pillaged, and massacred the local Indian populations in order to claim the land for themselves, we in the United States have felt it our manifest destiny as exceptional people to gain ever more material goods, even at the expense of anyone and everyone else, and the earth. We continue to treat others as inferiors. We are told that these human beings are demons – vermin – which we could only absurdly believe because we as a people have not yet found the courage to look within and discover our own inner darkness – our own vermin – that festers from believing in the lies of our national myths, that we are the “exceptional” people.

I can never forget the eyes I saw on mother’s faces as they clutched their children when they were caught by the bombs exploding in their villages. In a sudden moment of truth, I realized we are all connected. If we continue to pretend that we are not connected, we invite our own destruction, even extinction. How sad that we would pretend rather than be honest, and become real. Living in a pretend world assures that countless more men, women and children, here and abroad, will continue to be considered as worthless, as the power of the few continue their plunder. Our survival demands that we seek courage to examine our own shadows, rather than cowardly project those shadows onto others, and thus begin peeling back the layers of deception to recover our humanity.

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REFERENCES Cited:

Ralph W. McGehee, Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA (New York: Sheridan Square Publications, 1983), 192.

Robert B. Stinnett, Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor (New York: The Free Press, 2000).

Harold Pinter, Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics, 1948–1998” (New York: Grove Press, 1998), 237.

Stuart Ewen, PR! A Social History of Spin (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 49.

Stephan Salisbury, Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland (New York: Nation Books, 2010), 1–28.

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), 144.

Lee Nichol, ed., The Essential David Bohm (London: Routledge, 2000), 217.

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S. Brian Willson is the author of “Blood on the Tracks-The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson” (PM Press, 2011). Willson is a Viet Nam veteran whose wartime experiences transformed him into a revolutionary nonviolent pacifist. He gained renown as a participant in a prominent 1986 veterans fast on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. One year later, on September 1, 1987, he was again thrust into the public eye when he was run over and nearly killed by a U.S. Navy Munitions train while engaging in a nonviolent blockade in protest of weapons shipments to El Salvador. Since the 1980s he has continued efforts to educate the public about the diabolical nature of U.S. imperialism while striving to “walk his talk” (on two prosthetic legs and a three-wheeled handcycle) and live a simpler life.

This entry was written by brian, posted on at 1:07 pm, filed under Brian’s Blog,Challenging Traditional Patriotism, The Most Dangerous of Rogue Nations: The United States. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.
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Categorizing

I wonder sometimes, whether the person sitting on the toilet in a fancy restroom somewhere like the Waldorf Astoria or some other place catering to people with too much money (a place I wouldn’t even know about because I don’t give a damn about staying somewhere with obsequious staff or desperate social climbers — a statement which obviously reveals my bias), thinks about the person who placed the toilet tissue on the roll in the stall where they squat to excrete. Perhaps there is no toilet tissue there. Maybe the seat is a bidet, and it casually aims water at the person’s backside, so there is no need for tissue. Maybe a small towelette? If so, does the wiper wonder about the person who placed the towelette there, or the person who will be required to clean it? How bizarre it is that we have as humans allowed ourselves to be categorized as those who sit on bidets and those who clean that towels that wipe the ass of the bidet sitter.

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Lapsing

Lapsed. I’m lapsing. I’ve lapsed. From nearly everything.

Lapsed seamstress. Lapsed writer. Lapsed knitter. Lapsed runner. Lapsed cello practicer. Lapsed student. Lapsed lover. Lapsed homemaker. Lapsed housecleaner (Actually, this one gets many lapses in one: Lapsed duster, lapsed bathroom scrubber, lapsed dishwasher, lapsed vacuumer, lapsed mopper, lapsed ironer). Lapsed makeup wearer. Lapsed friend caller. Lapsed snappy dresser. Lapsed reader. Lapsed photographer. Lapsed French and Spanish student. Lapsed cook. Lapsed popcorn-maker. Lapsed wit (I’d like to think I’m a lapsed half-wit because that would imply I was getting smarter). Lapsed activist. Lapsed memory. Lapsed. Simply lapsed.

I can’t really call myself a lapsed sleeper because I’ve been insomniac for two decades now, so it’s a permanent condition. I could only say I’m a lapsed insomniac if I were to start sleeping regularly. I also can’t call myself a lapsed laundry folder because I’ve always been abysmal at that too.

Thankfully, I have not lapsed in tooth care, keeping my body clean, or playing with my children or dog, although sometimes I wish I could lapse on these things too. I skipped a shower yesterday, and could barely contain my desire to jump in the shower this morning. An itchy scalp makes me bananas. I hope I’m never a prisoner of war or part of some other catastrophe that keeps me from being able to wash.

Maybe it’s my hair that has me so stuck, so unalive, so lapsed. I heard someone say in a movie that you should not keep the same hairstyle for decades, but I have not followed this rule. I’ve made forays into other hair places, but I always veer back because the texture of my hair is so inflexible when it comes to hairstyle variety, at least if I want to look moderately presentable, that I end up drifting back into blow-dried straight, shoulder-length hair. It doesn’t do well with layers, mainly because it’s really actually curly and layers turn me into a square head, which is so unattractive. Bangs. Those stick out straight in front and I look like I’m giving trailer girls circa 1985 a run for their hairstyle money. Again, it’s because I’m mostly curly. That’s the other thing. I’ve tried Gresham…er…curly, but I think because I blowdry straight every other day, some of the strands have become straight, so I end up with some parts curly, some parts bent funny, and the rest frizzy. Ugly. Ugh. Hence, no hair style change. Most days, it’s in a ponytail. I look the same all the time and this is boring. Just like me.

Tag: Motivation, lack thereof. There isn’t one of those, but perhaps there ought to be.

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Two Completely Separate Ideas — Or Maybe Not

I love the silly rituals of fall, the creatures and trappings of Halloween. I love tromping out into a muddy patch to bring in a gourd for jack-o-lantern carving. The air is a blend of warm and cool, the sun drifting from behind clouds, then hiding its face again. Perfect weather. Ours is the perfect climate for this holiday, moving as it does between sun and rain, the harvest and mud perfuming the gusty air.

And now, for the other thought flitting through my brain…

What I do not understand is why the cultures who are invaded by missionaries so freely take on the religion of their imperialists. And I honestly do not know, but do other religions besides Christianity and its versions go out and take over other cultures? Do Hindus, or Islamists, or Buddists, worm their way into villages of third world countries and offer assistance in exchange for belief in their systems? There is no more beastly means of destroying a culture from within, I think, than invading the people and converting them to your way of assessing the world. It’s horrific. I do not understand why the peoples of Africa and South America have embraced these religions that allowed the imperialists to come in and proliferate. Be humble. Be a lamb. Do not put up a fight as we push you out and steal your land and resources. Just think about the afterlife and all that it will bring to you, all the riches. Look away as we pillage and destroy you. What an arrogant, abusive way this is. Several generations later, after the people have been displaced, their cultures fully appropriated, they then seek the values of the culture that plundered theirs. It is considered a mark of the true obliteration of all that had been there before. We seek your wealth. We follow your god. We are you. Truly, it sickens me.

Mulling over what I’ve just written, perhaps my paragraphs are not so unrelated. Perhaps some of my rituals of fall were stolen from the culture we obliterated to be here, or that of the culture of some tribe in Europe, or somewhere. I really do not know.

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Our Illusion of Connectivity

I go to facebook. I go to email. I check all the addresses. I go back to facebook. I check my blog. I go back to facebook. In all, I find not what I am looking for. It is not satisfying. I see posts I share. I read here and there. On email I get Truthout, read through the articles. Find one that is really interesting. Read to the bottom. Post on facebook. Go back to email. Go to facebook. Read Salon, click on the link to Continue Reading. In spite of my solid belief that this election is meaningless, I still recoil when a friend likes Romney. He’s such a self-absorbed, arrogant ass, an emotional toddler. And his running mate, ewww. That guy is a sociopath. I have a physical reaction to them and wonder what is wrong when someone I know thinks this person is worth supporting. Then again, I feel frustration at the Obama love too. He’s not the Jesus they want him to be. He’s worse than Bush. He gets away with more because the Dems have their man so no one is paying attention. Ughh. Go back to email. Nothing. Something from Powell’s. Something from Bug of the Day. Go back to facebook. Share a picture of some cute animal or funny thing from George Takei, but overall. No connection. Not really.

I go to these websites alone in my house looking for a connection but there is not one. I want to communicate. I want conversation. I want intellectual stimulation. I want to discuss philosophy, that amazing talk by Alain de Botton on atheism. I want someone else to care as much as I do about what we are doing to our planet. But it’s all futility, bytes and pixels and illusion that there is connection. Searching from page to page, hoping one of the people I know will actually speak to me, to ME, and not to the general public that is their online community, is an exercise in futility. We claim to be more connected than ever, but we are further from connection than ever before. Just because I can share a comment with a friend I met in the Hague last summer does not mean there is any connection. It’s so minute as to be laughable. I read a story that brings tears to my eyes. Instead of talking to a friend about the details there, I post a comment that says, “Dang, I cried.” “Me too,” she comments back. That’s the extent of it.

I long for stimulating dinner parties with friends. Or sharp banter about books over warm drinks in a cafe. Or even stupid, silly dancing and laughing with a best girlfriend. Yet I know this is an idealized version of community cultivated by movies and books. It doesn’t exist for most of us. It sure as hell doesn’t exist for me. I’ve tried to pull it together, to be the one who invites everyone over to make some feeble attempt at this, but no one ever shows up. I have a serious knack for being stood up at parties by all my guests. I think the problem isn’t that I’m some loser or something, but that I have an idealized idea of how these things should be, and that most or all of my friends have other things to do and are simply too busy.

So I troll. I make phone calls when I’m in the car and can’t do anything else (don’t worry, I have a car phone and I’m completely hands free). I write here and wonder if anyone I know will read what I write. They don’t, but I don’t begrudge them. If what I said was interesting, they would still be too busy, just as I am too busy too. It’s our 21st century, with its illusion of connectivity. It’s sad really. Sometimes I wish I had a big, ol’ front porch in a close-knit community where everyone came and shot the breeze. I know, I know. Too many movies like The Jane Austen Book Club, or Fried Green Tomatoes. It’s what some team thought of and put together on celluloid. I get it. Just like the teams that make families in catalogs look just a little too perfect. Just like Photoshop. It’s all an illusion. I don’t think we are better off. Not even close. It’s lonelier. It’s isolating. And I have no idea how to change it, at least for me.

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I Know Who Will Win the Election

There has been quite a bit of speculation about who is going to win the election next month. Since I already know who the winners and losers will be, I thought I’d do the responsible thing and share this information with you.

The Winners:  Goldman Sachs, CitiBank, Chase, Bank of America and the defense contractors manufacturing drones and bombs. They will continue to get trillions of dollars in no-bid, cost-plus defense contracts and bailouts.

The wealthiest 1% of the population, whose incomes will continue to rise disproportionately while everyone else’s income drops and the cost of living continues to rise.

The big corporate donors to the major parties who will continue to be invited to write legislation favoring themselves.

The big pharmaceutical companies who will be able to continue to market deadly drugs with no more than a slap on the wrist, that is, a fine equal to only a tiny fraction of their profits, when their drugs have to be recalled due to too many deaths from side effects.

The people in the present and past administrations who violated their oaths of office to uphold and defend the Constitution by legalizing cruel and unusual punishment (torture), eliminating due process, waging wars of aggression, and even killing their own citizens–a crime so horrendous that when we think some foreign dictator might be doing it we feel justified in invading their country and overthrowing their regime. These criminals will continue to be immune from prosecution.

The Losers:  The elderly and chronically ill who are bracing for the expected cuts (tweaks) to Social Security and Medicare that both candidates agree upon.

Education and transportation infrastructure, which will continue to be shortchanged in order to finance foreign wars.

The middle class, who are in many cases working two jobs, no longer receiving middle class pay, and having to simultaneously support their aging parents who can’t afford nursing homes and their grown children who can’t earn enough to move out and can barely make the payments on their student loans. These are the most productive and competent workers in the world, yet many cannot know from one day to the next if their job will be outsourced and if they’ll be able to find another.

The planet, which will continue to be raped and pillaged so a few can have their cake now and eat it too.

The voters, because no matter how they vote or who they vote for, nothing will change and their best interests will not be served.

As you may have deduced by now, I don’t believe that a choice between two people funded by the same corporations, is really a choice. I’m tired of having an uncounted vote for people we can’t hold accountable. I am no longer going to settle for a vote–I want a real voice in government, the sine qua non of any democracy. I have voted for the same party all my life only to find out that both parties reward loyalty with contempt. If this government wants to have the consent of the governed, it is going to have to start from scratch and learn that you can’t buy consent–you have to earn it.

We are the people. We can make a real change, and choose how to govern ourselves.  But first, the system as we know it has to end.

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My Ear Plug Problem

I have an ear plug problem. They fall out of my ears in the middle of the night while I’m sleeping, (Well, at least one does. Usually it is only one) and then I wake up. A side note warning here — do not start with the ear plugs. Once you start, you will be forced to continue for the rest of your life. I started in my early twenties because of a loud neighbor. I learned only to sleep in silence. It’s a problem. I’ve never been able to overcome it. It’s the same with babies. They say don’t be silent when they nap or you have to be silent. I’ve always continued with life as usual while my children napped and they both sleep through noise. I can only hope this continues for them into adulthood.

Anyway, digression aside. My earplugs fall out. Then I wake up. Then I have to reach over and if I remembered to leave the drawer open, just grab one from the bowl. If I forgot to leave the drawer open, then open the drawer and retrieve one from the bowl. In both instances, I wake up too much to fall right back to sleep. This is a problem considering the ear plugs are one of the many insomnia prevention tools at my disposal.

Well, I’m trying a small, albeit rather silly, experiment. I have tried it twice, but haven’t really gotten to used to it yet. My earplugs do not fall out every night, but a lot of nights. However, they have not fallen out the two nights I’ve tried my experiment, so I don’t know if it will work. The experiment is to put an earplug under my pillow. My pillow does not move a lot at night. If I wake up and need an earplug, it is there under my pillow. I wakened too early last night and ran my hand under the pillow just to adjust the fluff in it (I use down pillows). I felt the earplug and remembered it was there.

I think it might work. I’m not sure. It can’t hurt. I won’t wake up any more if I try and find it if it isn’t there than I would reaching over and trying to get in the bowl in the drawer next to my bed. Good luck to me.

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I Need to Look at the Moon

Even though I know, even though I have known for years, even though I still keep coming to the same unavoidable conclusion, sometimes it still comes as a surprise again to realize that I am third of three, that my hopes, desires, dreams, are not just not considered, but not even known. They did not care to ask. They have their presumptions and do not want to know anything of the truth outside their presumptions. This is my life, and in spite of complete understanding, I don’t know that there will ever be for me, absolute peace with it. Most of the time it does not bother me, but every so often, as infrequent as less than once a year, it comes to me again — you’re last to them — and this follows me for a while, even though intellectually and most of the time emotionally I know that it should not.

“When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.”  ~ Alain de Botton

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I’m in Love!

I’ve fallen in love. Truly, madly, deeply. I have no time to blog when I’m spending all my time with my new sweetheart. I am constantly stealing moments, here, there, and everywhere, trying to fit my love into my life. Who is it, this mad infatuation of mine? Who dares to take time away from home, hearth, job, and children? Who has so magically caught my attention, filling my every waking moment with thoughts, mulling and thinking, calling me away at a moment’s notice, and I follow, completely smitten? It is, it is, it is…a book. A story. A wonderful tale. I shouldn’t even start them, these love affairs. They are so all-consuming. I can’t focus on anything else. And this book, this author, he blows my mind with his attention to detail, his observation, his weaving to and fro. He’s a master, a true master. Sadly, he makes me question my own abilities as an artist. I contemplate the time it must have taken to weave a tale such as this. It’s utterly and fully brilliant. A work of genius. Pure mastery. I’m not capable of artistry such as this.

In any case, suffice to say I’m in love, and as long as this affair is going on, I likely will not be writing much here.

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Exposing My Breasts in a Law Office

I read this story about a professor whose breastfeeding was made into an issue because people are ignorant and have too much time on their hands. See it here. It made me think of my own situation where my own breastfeeding became an issue for the same reason. Her points were so valid, I felt a kinship with her expressions of frustration that anyone actually thought her public breastfeeding was worth turning into an issue. And actually, the breastfeeding that became an issue for me wasn’t even in public, it was in the privacy of my own office.

I used to share my attorney practice with a small firm, but basically ran my own practice my own way, which included nursing my daughter during the day during my breaks. I was in a satellite location and worked in that space alone. A couple of years ago, I was in my office breastfeeding one afternoon between clients. After she finished, I handed my daughter to her dad, who took his parenting time with her while I worked. I entered my waiting room to discover that the potential client who had been waiting there had left. I called him and he told me he didn’t want anything to do with my “kind of outfit.” I made some joke to my baby’s father, saying that my clothes must have been too nice for the guy, then promptly forgot about it. I didn’t actually know it was because I had been breastfeeding because I had been in my office with the door shut and he could not see what we were doing. It wasn’t until a situation arose later that I finally got what made the man leave.

Two years later, two YEARS! while having a dispute with the firm over something completely unrelated, one of the old partners of the firm out of the blue and in a completely non-sequitur response to what I had just said blurted, “Well, you lost a potential client because you BREASTFED in front of him. He ended up hiring your old firm.” He spit the words at me. I was in such shock at this for so many reasons, I was momentarily speechless. Then the rage took over. WHY was this relevant? WHO the hell was he to bring it up? Why NOW? It wasn’t even true! I did not keep my cool. I angrily explained that this had not been what happened and told him that his even bringing it up gave me an idea of the sort of person that he was. “Seriously?” I said to him, practically yelling. “Are you actually bringing this up as evidence of my lack of work ethic? First of all, I bust my ASS, working full time AND I’m a single mother! And secondly, I did NOT breastfeed in front of a potential client, not that I would object to doing so OR that it’s any of your business.” He tried to backpedal and tell me that he was only “Letting me know what people were saying,” because theoretically my old boss had shared this story with him. Later he recanted this assertion. He couldn’t even own what he said, but no matter. I was ready to part ways at this point anyway; this situation was just one of many that made this clear for me.

Like the author of the article, I’ve breastfeed my youngest daughter everywhere, on two continents, in half a dozen countries. I’ve never once had anyone say anything negative to me about it. I did the same with my oldest until she was four and a half years old. Never a peep, and here was this old jackass using it to create conflict because he had no reasonable arguments in our disagreement. I completely lost any shred of respect I had for the guy at that point. I had never really liked him. He seemed to spend all his time worrying about all the work others were doing and never doing any himself. In the three years I worked with him, I never once saw him actually working. I saw him loitering in the lobby. I saw him playing with plastic toys. I saw him complaining about money. Never once did I see him at his desk, doing his job. Our conflict was over him wanting me to work more than I already did. Apparently my taking time to breastfeed my daughter interfered with that, at least that was the only point I could derive from his saying what he did.

Unlike the author, I have been more outspoken about women’s right to breastfeed. I wrote a law review article on it in law school (see that here). I have long felt that efforts to marginalize breastfeeding are anti-woman and anti-child. Ultimately, though the author is not an activist in her choice, I share with her the view that feeding our children as they were meant to be fed is a basic right of our biology, and should receive no more notice than menstruating, or growing hair, or doing anything else fundamentally human and female.

I’m still breastfeeding. It’s great for my daughter’s health and immune system. It provides comfort and nourishment. As an infant it was available on demand, with no effort other than pulling up my shirt. It’s free. It makes her very happy. That’s good enough for both of us.

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Fears

My friend Karen tells me that in order to stop repeating dysfunctional patterns from our past, we have to recognize that a situation may be a repeat of past stories and then change our reaction going forward. When we are in a situation where we may have reacted one way before, and we want to react differently going forward, we just have to wade through slowly, trying not to drift back into automatic responses that may have served us previously, but do not now. This is not fun. God, thinking of the one I’m in now makes my little heart go all arhythmic. I hate that feeling, my heart speeding up and thwacking in my chest. Specifically, there has been conflict with the people I shared my work with for the last three years. I find myself automatically reacting to stuff that is said or done, then stopping myself and talking myself down from the ledge. Don’t get angry. Don’t get hooked in. Even if they’re acting on their own impulses, I don’t have to be impulsive in my actions. Damn it’s hard. I want to avoid it. I want to go and hide. But more than that, I want it over, so I’m proceeding slowly through and it is not fun. Sometimes, I just want to go hide.

 

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I Can’t Categorize This One

I’m not a seed, or a hipster, or anything that can be classified. Female? Wow, that’s original. Aren’t many of those around.

Have I mentioned lately that I’m in love with Isabel, Milla, my pets, and my new house? Not necessarily in that order. Well, that order, except the two children are interchangeable. And I do love my new little house. It’s not large, by any stretch of the imagination, but it suits us fine. My dad is bringing Isabel a playhouse. It used to be my sister’s children’s, then Milla’s, then niece Sarah’s, now Isabel gets it and she gets it at home instead of at my parent’s, which is nice for her because we rarely venture there. It’s a little blue house. I need to scrub and repaint it. I will probably choose a color other than blue to blend with the landscape.

I must go to bed. I must also confess, to the very few who read my blog, that in times of stress I resort to prescription sleep aids. After nearly two decades of insomnia, I finally gave in and asked Miss Doctor, is there something I can take while breastfeeding that will help me to sleep through the night and not wake up worrying about any number of things at 4 am? Why yes, there is one pill, and it won’t make you drive across the city to your boyfriend’s house in your sleep (like Ambien did the one time I took it four years ago). I was lucky I wasn’t killed. She said Ambien is not tested for breastfeeding. I would not take it, in that case, even if it weren’t for the driving incident. So I’ve been stressed about starting my own practice. I will be partnering with a friend and in that I’m grateful. I’m not concerned about the practice part of it. I do that, have been doing that for three years. It’s the bringing in business part that scares me, and the tension with the people I was sharing with before. Things have not been pretty and I don’t like this at all. So, the sleeping aid. C’est la vie. But it’s working and it’s working now so I’m going to snuggle my three-year-old, the three-year-old who now wears UNDERWEAR, I might add, because I knew she was ready and I told her three-year-olds wear underwear all the time and not diapers. She’s a champ and it’s going swimmingly. As is this paragraph. It has swum from one topic to the next. Amazing paragraph it is. I’ll let it go now and proceed forthwith to bed.

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Unspoken Messages Conveyed to Strangers

Have you ever noticed two people conversing with one another in such a manner that says to inadvertent eavesdroppers that they want people to listen to what they are saying? They speak just a little louder than necessary. Often the topic of the conversation is nothing special. Usually I find that the speakers carry an underlying neediness, but of course, that is my interpretation. See me, hear me! They seem to say.

Thinking this over, I realized most of us probably have unspoken messages we wish to convey to strangers. Mine is that I have children. Over and over when I’m out and about without one of them, I see moms with children in tow and want mine there with me so that I too show that I’m a mom. When they’re with me, I never think of it. Weird. I don’t know why I care, but I do.

I’m often shocked at the assumptions people form about me. So often I’m going along living in my head, wondering how I’m going to fit all I need to do into my day, and I hear back from someone that I was ignoring them as I passed them on the street. I hear this and think, I didn’t even see you, and hey, why didn’t you say something? Ah well. Such is life.

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Can Any of Us Fully See Others?

I think one of the hardest things to do is to accept, really accept another person as they are and not as we wish them to be. It’s also hard when you realize that people have an idea of who you are that is not based on reality, but based on their own skewed perspective of the world. I’ve experienced both ends of this spectrum this week.  Earlier in the week, I called my mom about something. I don’t even remember what it was now. It’s not important. She was helping to plan my niece’s wedding, a marriage I can’t see as anything except ill-fated. There are so many things wrong with the situation, it’s sad. However, my mom and sister are thrilled to death. They’re planning this big event and are genuinely pleased. I realized that my wish that either of them could see this for what it is and not as they wish it to be is no different than their seeing it as they do. We are all living in our illusions.

I am also continually surprised to find myself in situations where how I am perceived and the actions of people towards me based on these perceptions  is at complete odds with who I really am. I don’t even have to do anything that gives them their ideas; it’s based entirely on their own dysfunction. This is especially difficult when you deal with people who believe the world and others in it have the same agenda that they have, and their agenda is devious. More than once with this particular family I have been shocked at their expectation that I would act deviously and their treatment of me accordingly. I know I’m being vague, but unlike them, I’m not the sort to splash this shit on the internet for the world to see. If I did that, I could not count myself as having more integrity than they do. I don’t want to sink to their level. I’m finally really understanding what that phrase means.

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Empathy

It occurs to me that the creatures who die in windows — flies, bees, moths, winged things — die trying to escape. Why else would they be in windows? So close, yet so far from their desired destination. It’s sad really. All the trouble we go to in order to destroy them when they’re inside, but they don’t want to be in any more than we want them there. Their sad futility is wretched in its inevitability. I do believe we humans should consider such things more, rather than simply focusing on how they bother us.

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More Pointless Rambling

I started writing something, but it was so dumb, I had to erase it and start over.

Driving around, waiting in line at the movie theater, being alone nearly all the time (not counting when I’m with my daughters, which is most of the time), I have thoughts of what to write. It happens all the time. Then I turn on my computer and away it goes. I keep a notebook and if I’m in a position to write something down, I do, but mostly, I just forget. I did write an HM with a slash through it in my notebook to remind me to write something about the stupid signs on Highway 26. They are red HMs with red lines through them. NO HAZARDOUS MATERIALS. Um, I hate to break it to the genius committee that thought that sign up, if someone was going to drive some hazardous materials somewhere, that person is not going to give a damn about that stupid sign telling them no hazardous materials are allowed. It’s real purpose I think (in my cynical mind) is that it is to make all of us driving along look up and think, Wow, those road department people are really looking out for us. No hazardous materials. Next time I’m driving some, I’ll make sure to take another route. Dumb.

Oh, another thing I’ve thought of a lot is that we are all people. The person who puts up that sign. The police. The president. All of us. It is humans letting others decide how things are going to be, all of us agreeing to follow some social order, that allows it to happen. It doesn’t even occur to people while they are doing it. If I don’t do what is allowable in society, some other people by tacit agreement, will take me down, one way or another. We get the ticket for running the stop sign, we pay it or the people who give out tickets will eventually get me, be it through a higher fine or a bench warrant or whatever. That’s the unquestioned part. But what if all the people along the way decided they didn’t care that I got that ticket and didn’t do anything about it? What if we all stopped paying mortgages and all the people working at the banks didn’t pay theirs either or do anything when we didn’t pay? Who is to stop this? It’s all the people along the way agreeing to do what they do as a group that allows all the behavior control to happen. It’s too bad that more people don’t go along with some things.

Anyway, I had more thoughts, but I’m tired. Funny how people now use the new handy, dandy WordPress LIKE feature, a’ la Facebook and whatnot. I kind of miss the comments. I used to get all kinds of comments, but now it’s just likes, which is fine. I get it. But anyway, I think it’s cool that people like what I write. I like it.

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An Observation

Has anyone else ever noticed that the melody to the theme song to Jeopardy and My Little Teapot are the same?

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Why I Won’t Vote ~by W.E.B. Dubois

by W.E.B. Dubois

On October 20, 1956, W.E.B. Dubois delivered this eloquent indictment of US politics and why he would not vote in the upcoming Presidential election. Dubois condemns both Democrats and Republicans for their indifferent positions on the influence of corporate wealth, racial inequality, arms proliferation and unaffordable health care. The article appeared in The Nation.  This article is absolutely fitting today and sums up my feelings pretty much exactly.

Why I Won’t Vote, by W.E.B. Dubois

This article was republished in Hartford Web Publishing.

Since I was twenty-one in 1889, I have in theory followed the voting plan strongly advocated by Sidney Lens in The Nation of August 4, i.e., voting for a third party even when its chances were hopeless, if the main parties were unsatisfactory; or, in absence of a third choice, voting for the lesser of two evils. My action, however, had to be limited by the candidates’ attitude toward Negroes. Of my adult life, I have spent twenty-three years living and teaching in the South, where my voting choice was not asked. I was disfranchised by law or administration. In the North I lived in all thirty-two years, covering eight Presidential elections. In 1912 I wanted to support Theodore Roosevelt, but his Bull Moose convention dodged the Negro problem and I tried to help elect Wilson as a liberal Southerner. Under Wilson came the worst attempt at Jim Crow legislation and discrimination in civil service that we had experienced since the Civil War. In 1916 I took Hughes as the lesser of two evils. He promised Negroes nothing and kept his word. In 1920, I supported Harding because of his promise to liberate Haiti. In 1924, I voted for La Follette, although I knew he could not be elected. In 1928, Negroes faced absolute dilemma. Neither Hoover nor Smith wanted the Negro vote and both publicly insulted us. I voted for Norman Thomas and the Socialists, although the Socialists had attempted to Jim Crow Negro members in the South. In 1932 I voted for Franklin Roosevelt, since Hoover was unthinkable and Roosevelt’s attitude toward workers most realistic. I was again in the South from 1934 until 1944. Technically I could vote, but the election in which I could vote was a farce. The real election was the White Primary.

Retired “for age” in 1944, I returned to the North and found a party to my liking. In 1948, I voted the Progressive ticket for Henry Wallace and in 1952 for Vincent Hallinan.

In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no “two evils” exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say. There is no third party. On the Presidential ballot in a few states (seventeen in 1952), a “Socialist” Party will appear. Few will hear its appeal because it will have almost no opportunity to take part in the campaign and explain its platform. If a voter organizes or advocates a real third-party movement, he may be accused of seeking to overthrow this government by “force and violence.” Anything he advocates by way of significant reform will be called “Communist” and will of necessity be Communist in the sense that it must advocate such things as government ownership of the means of production; government in business; the limitation of private profit; social medicine, government housing and federal aid to education; the total abolition of race bias; and the welfare state. These things are on every Communist program; these things are the aim of socialism. Any American who advocates them today, no matter how sincerely, stands in danger of losing his job, surrendering his social status and perhaps landing in jail. The witnesses against him may be liars or insane or criminals. These witnesses need give no proof for their charges and may not even be known or appear in person. They may be in the pay of the United States Government. A.D.A.’s and “Liberals” are not third parties; they seek to act as tails to kites. But since the kites are self-propelled and radar-controlled, tails are quite superfluous and rather silly.

The present Administration is carrying on the greatest preparation for war in the history of mankind. Stevenson promises to maintain or increase this effort. The weight of our taxation is unbearable and rests mainly and deliberately on the poor. This Administration is dominated and directed by wealth and for the accumulation of wealth. It runs smoothly like a well-organized industry and should do so because industry runs it for the benefit of industry. Corporate wealth profits as never before in history. We turn over the national resources to private profit and have few funds left for education, health or housing. Our crime, especially juvenile crime, is increasing. Its increase is perfectly logical; for a generation we have been teaching our youth to kill, destroy, steal and rape in war; what can we expect in peace? We let men take wealth which is not theirs; if the seizure is “legal” we call it high profits and the profiteers help decide what is legal. If the theft is “illegal” the thief can fight it out in court, with excellent chances to win if he receives the accolade of the right newspapers. Gambling in home, church and on the stock market is increasing and all prices are rising. It costs three times his salary to elect a Senator and many millions to elect a President. This money comes from the very corporations which today are the government. This in a real democracy would be enough to turn the party responsible out of power. Yet this we cannot do.

The “other” party has surrendered all party differences in foreign affairs, and foreign affairs are our most important affairs today and take most of our taxes. Even in domestic affairs how does Stevenson differ from Eisenhower? He uses better English than Dulles, thank God! He has a sly humor, where Eisenhower has none. Beyond this Stevenson stands on the race question in the South not far from where his godfather Adlai stood sixty-three years ago, which reconciles him to the South. He has no clear policy on war or preparation for war; on water and flood control; on reduction of taxation; on the welfare state. He wavers on civil rights and his party blocked civil rights in the Senate until Douglas of Illinois admitted that the Democratic Senate would and could stop even the right of Senators to vote. Douglas had a right to complain. Three million voters sent him to the Senate to speak for them. His voice was drowned and his vote nullified by Eastland, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who was elected by 151,000 voters. This is the democracy in the United States which we peddle abroad.

Negroes hope to muster 400,000 votes in 1956. Where will they cast them? What have the Republicans done to enforce the education decision of the Supreme Court? What they advertised as fair employment was exactly nothing, and Nixon was just the man to explain it. What has the Administration done to rescue Negro workers, the most impoverished group in the nation, half of whom receive less than half the median wage of the nation, while the nation sends billions abroad to protect oil investments and help employ slave labor in the Union of South Africa and the Rhodesias? Very well, and will the party of Talmadge, Eastland and Ellender do better than the Republicans if the Negroes return them to office?

I have no advice for others in this election. Are you voting Democratic? Well and good; all I ask is why? Are you voting for Eisenhower and his smooth team of bright ghost writers? Again, why? Will your helpless vote either way support or restore democracy to America?

Is the refusal to vote in this phony election a counsel of despair? No, it is dogged hope. It is hope that if twenty-five million voters refrain from voting in 1956 because of their own accord and not because of a sly wink from Khrushchev, this might make the American people ask how much longer this dumb farce can proceed without even a whimper of protest. Yet if we protest, off the nation goes to Russia and China. Fifty-five American ministers and philanthropists are asking the Soviet Union “to face manfully the doubts and promptings of their conscience.” Can not these do-gooders face their own consciences? Can they not see that American culture is rotting away: our honesty, our human sympathy; our literature, save what we import from abroad? Our only “review” of literature has wisely dropped “literature” from its name. Our manners are gone and the one thing we want is to be rich – to show off. Success is measured by income. University education is for income, not culture, and is partially supported by private industry. We are not training poets or musicians, but atomic engineers. Business is built on successful lying called advertising. We want money in vast amount, no matter how we get it. So we have it, and what then?

Is the answer the election of 1956? We can make a sick man President and set him to a job which would strain a man in robust health. So he dies, and what do we get to lead us? With Stevenson and Nixon, with Eisenhower and Eastland, we remain in the same mess. I will be no party to it and that will make little difference. You will take large part and bravely march to the polls, and that also will make no difference. Stop running Russia and giving Chinese advice when we cannot rule ourselves decently. Stop yelling about a democracy we do not have. Democracy is dead in the United States. Yet there is still nothing to replace real democracy. Drop the chains, then, that bind our brains. Drive the money-changers from the seats of the Cabinet and the halls of Congress. Call back some faint spirit of Jefferson and Lincoln, and when again we can hold a fair election on real issues, let’s vote, and not till then. Is this impossible? Then democracy in America is impossible.

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Pointless Rambling

I had the weirdest dream last night. A woman I know who is my counselor, friend, confidant came over to me to give me a hug, and as she did, I felt something poking me in the groin. I looked down to see that she had a penis. Fully erect, it was prodding me. “Oops,” she said. “He’s a little excited.” This was her response to my discovery that she was a man. I stared at her, incredulous, searching her face for some masculinity, for something I had missed in all the times I had sat with her, poring over my life. Her visage had not changed. She was exactly the same, but then, she wasn’t. She was not the same. I could not wrap my brain around this. She is a man? I also felt betrayed that she had not told me. She had shared with me other aspects of her life that were as intimate, why not this?

I wakened from the dream slowly, existing in that place you do sometimes right on the edge of sleep, meandering between consciousness and unconsciousness. The dream stayed with me all day. I rose and performed the usual morning mundanity, then headed into work where it felt like many others I had to deal with were experiencing inner turmoil or something and wanted to hook me in. I just couldn’t get interested in the drama. I had a hard time focusing on work. I wanted to lie around reading a book. I slogged through the spate of emails, finished up some files, poked around, took a trip to the post office, finished up a few other things, and finally gave up and came home. Now I’m writing this. Not sure why. Not sure to whom. WordPress was open when I turned on my computer so I started typing and this was the result. How profound.

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Simply Not Motivated

Ooooh! September 7 I got 25 reads! How exciting! Harumph. I used to get 100s a day, back when I wrote a lot and tried to be funny. I don’t even care if I’m funny anymore. Is this apathy a signature of aging or is it just me? I realized while driving to work this morning that a lot of life seems so much effort. I used to be on top of it. Bill needed paying? I paid it. Dish needed washing? I washed it. Shelves needed dusting? I dusted them. Something broke? I fixed it. Never a wait. Never a pause. Just get it done. That was my motto too, get it done and then you won’t have it staring you in the face for weeks on end. Now? It stares me in the face. Oh yeah, I need to sew the hole in that pair of trousers. And then I don’t do it. I might even wear the trousers with the hole, that’s how little I care these days. It isn’t like I’m using the time for something more valuable either. I’m not. I did paint my kitchen, but the paint tape is still there, a week and a half later. I’ve been removing it gradually. Oh let’s see, I think I can reach this piece. Oh, I have to climb on a chair to get in this cupboard and get something, I’ll pull off a couple of more pieces. But I still haven’t fixed the places where the old paint is on the white woodwork because the previous painters sucked. I’ll do it, eventually. I’m AMAZED I remodeled an entire house by myself. Where did I ever find the motivation? I thoroughly lack motivation. What is this? I’m not depressed; not at all. I really just don’t give much of a shit anymore. And that’s probably not so good. I’m kind of in a zen mood, letting some things be as they are. Maybe someday my Type A-ness will return. Type Anus. Oh dang. That made me laugh. Silly, silly stupidity. The things that make me chuckle.

I think I’ll go have some hot chocolate and mull it over. I’m not motivated enough to write anymore.

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Delusional

Dear Person Selling Stuff on Craigslist:  Telling potential buyers that you paid $2400 or some other ridiculous price for the ugly couch you’re now selling on Craigslist does not make me more inclined to pay more for it. It makes me pity you for wasting your money, especially when it’s really hideous.

Just saying.

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Lasting for a Very Short Time

What happened to the young woman who cleaned her house from top to bottom once a week? Who if she saw a repair necessary, fixed it immediately instead of walking by it for weeks or months before getting around to it? Who finished moving into a place within two days, TWO DAYS! including putting all the photos on the wall? Who made dinner every night, or most every night?  Who always sent real paper cards for every birthday and every holiday to everyone in her address book and sent thank you cards in under 48 hours? Who even into adulthood had so much to say on this blog, she was typing late into the night or during the day when she was supposed to be working? Who had time to read other blogs and even made pen pals with other bloggers? Where did she go? I know she’s in here. Somewhere.

I would not trade my children for the world. I wouldn’t trade their littleness for anything either. Milla’s early childhood passed so quickly, like a breeze, or a hummingbird flitting by. Here, here, try to catch it, then not, and gone like a sigh. Now I want to hold onto every second of Isabel’s babyhood, but I find I’m losing that battle and not getting anything done in my own life either. The day passes. Have I learned any more Spanish or French? Not enough. Have I practiced my cello? Not enough. Have I written anything that is truly what I need to express. No. Gone, gone. Life is so short. I am grateful I finally realized about ten years ago that I could not waste my life watching television. It’s too ephemeral, time. I don’t want to have spent it on something as useless as t.v. Yet there in the cupboard sits the knitting project I started and didn’t finish, the fur ball guinea pig I was going to make, the sewing I haven’t completed, even without television, again. And the days were not filled with productivity. I did not save the world. I didn’t make a difference in any life except perhaps that of my children, and that doesn’t seem enough. Maybe my standards are too high. Maybe I too much know the limits of our existence. Maybe maybe, but I just don’t think I am doing it well enough.

Here I am again at the end of a long day and the enthusiasm I felt in the morning for all I could accomplish has filtered off, as I sat waiting at that light, as I drove through traffic, as I returned to the pet store yet a fifth time in as many weeks in an attempt to find a water bottle for my guinea pig that would not leak. And the bathroom wall did not get repaired. And the floors are still gritty. And the pictures are still not hung And the dust is that much thicker on the shelves in my living room. But Isabel is asleep beside me, and I did read three books to her before bed, and she is content. And I did run. And I did write these words and the word “and” more times than I probably should have in order to turn out elegant prose. But such is life. Maybe I need to stop trying to ascribe a grade to it. Maybe the young woman who could do all those things before is still here, she just doesn’t feel like bothering to get an A+ anymore when B or even B- seems adequate. As long as it’s not an F, I suppose I can live with that.

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Watching Tom Hardy

My boyfriend caught me watching Tom Hardy videos. Lots of them. In a row. My bestest friend and I are somewhat obsessed. Oh, okay, so I suppose “caught” implies more there was something naughty in the viewing, or that I’m not allowed or something, but it was rather funny when he came upon my watching them.

“What you watching there?”

Oh, nothing much.

“Really? That looks like Tom Hardy.”

Well, yes, it is.

“You like Tom Hardy then?”

Um, well, yes. He’s a very good actor.

“Is that it? You sure it has nothing to do with that little Aussie accent?” (Or the big lips, or that crooked smile…)

Oh, well, (hemming and hawing), it doesn’t hurt.  But honey, YOU have an Australian accent!

“Yes, yes I do.  But I am not making big movies, now am I? You aren’t watching me on video.”

No, I said, thinking just how adorable it was he said, watching me on video. But if you video yourself saying something cute over and over, I’ll watch you instead.

That seemed to cheer him up.

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Sleep Beckons

All the time, every day, I have ideas of stuff to write. Then it gets to the end of the day and I’ve been going and going and going all day long and I’m floored by exhaustion and there is nothing left of anything I thought of earlier. I’ve taken to carrying a notebook again and jotting notes, but so little time makes it nearly impossible to care when I actually have time to sit here and do it. I’m exhausted now, but figured I would throw in a paragraph. I’m so tired that sitting here I feel like I’m tipping. I’m probably not, it’s just that vertigo from need for sleep.

I can’t do it anymore. I have to go to bed. None of what I wanted to write seems more urgent than the need to lie down. Maybe it’s because I’m a single working mother. Maybe it’s because I’m a lazy lout. I don’t know or care right now. Sleep. Sleep.

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Too Much Input!

Our culture seems almost pathologically incapable of existing in the public sphere without inundating our senses with constant and invasive input. Go to the grocery store, noise playing or a television blaring in the background. Go to a coffee shop, loud noise playing, not even in the background. Go to the pool, loud noise playing on speakers. Those of us who would wish for the simple noises of the locale we are in are not even considered. We don’t exist in the mind’s of most of those in charge of public places.

The constant noise and bombardment wears me out. I feel it in my bones and cells whenever I go somewhere with a screen blaring or speakers turned much too high. Too much input! Every time it makes me wonder how many children with learning problems or various forms of autism or any other ailment where the senses cannot quite process all that is going on around them suffer in these places when those of us without any such ailment can barely tolerate it. It bothers me when I go somewhere that is theoretically designed with children in mind and the biggest thing available to them is a screen blaring some noise. I leave. My children, having been raised away from such things, are exhausted and overwhelmed by it all. I suspect other children are too. Both of my girls were always able to play and entertain themselves for hours on end. I gave credit to the fact that a television never babysat them. I find when either of them are around televisions for any length of time, they become hyper. Used as a tool to keep children busy, it is ironic that it seems to result in the opposite of the behavior desired. I’m an adult and televisions overstimulate me. I can’t imagine how it is for small children, with the constant noise and rotating images and advertising and noise, and more noise, and again, noise.

In any case, I began this post two days ago after going to a swim park with noisy music blaring. I later entered a grocery store with music so loud the cashier could not speak to me without yelling, all the while televisions were screaming in the background–well, foreground, really. It was all too much. Now it is days later and I’m at home and hear some birds outside and a breeze moving through the Camellia bush outside my window and the urge to write about all of it has passed. Such is the nature of my life these days. Maybe in having little to no time to express the writing urges, they have just left. I don’t know. I blame some of it on being a working single mother, so I guess I’ll know when my little one is bigger and off at school and time frees up a bit. If the writing urges take over again, I’ll know it was the busy-ness. If not, maybe it was a part of me that is gone. Such is life. Maybe I’ll mourn it when the time comes. For now, I’m just enjoying being able to hear myself think.

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Carving out a Canyon

It is foolish to believe that any day that is presumably more special than any other. All days, regardless whether we humans desire it otherwise, are basically the same as all others. What this means for me is that for the first 15 minutes of the day, sometimes more, sometimes less, life will be quiet and peaceful. Then the younger of my children will arise and usually be in quite a pleasant mood. Then the older of my children will arise and snarl about something, making sure all of us are aware just how unpleasant she feels and desiring us to share in this (she is altruistic in this, after all). Alternatively — and yes, while I am comparing the sameness of every day, it is the theme that is the same, but there are variations on the smaller of the details — the older of my children will arise and say something (pleasant or otherwise) to the younger of my children, who will then react with severe complaining because the older of my children is not allowed in the brain of the younger of my children to have anything to do with me, and this therefore results in quite a great fuss by the younger of my children.

Thus begins the day. It doesn’t matter if we are on vacation. It doesn’t matter if it is Christmas. It doesn’t matter if it is my birthday. This is how it goes and I would be a fool to desire it otherwise because any other way is not how it goes. This is how it is.

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Rootless

I have been trying to buy a house. I did all the things I was supposed to do, provided all the paperwork, yada yada. I had no reason to expect anything to go wrong. Making the offer, getting accepted, getting the inspection, all that, took hardly any effort at all and was complete in under a week. Then the process was passed on to the mortgage company.  After waiting and waiting and waiting, life suddenly turned to shit. It began with the incessant requests for documents, even those previously requested and provided. It concluded with multiple requirements to spend insane amounts of money, and still no closing date. Today, we still have no closing date.

Along the way, I asked the mortgage broker, what is the worst case scenario?  A week, or more? I have to give notice at my rental. If I give notice for the first, will this pose a problem (closing was originally scheduled for the 23rd of July)? No, I don’t think so, he told me (Liar. Unwilling bearer of  potential bad news.). A week out should be fine. So I gave my notice. Big mistake number one. No, actually that was big mistake number two. Big mistake number one was choosing the mortgage company that I did. I had been pre-approved by another company, but I chose this one on the recommendation of my realtor. She’s wonderful. She had all the best intentions, but certain aspects were out of her control, like a useless underwriter who considered other files more of an emergency than mine, even three days after the original closing. My realtor has been as upset by the turn of events as I have, but she could not fix it. She could not make the mortgage company act any more quickly, or go back and change the date I had to move out of my house, the date the landlord wasn’t willing to extend because new renters wanted to move in, the consequence being that although there was no closing date, I had to leave July 31. And here we are, living in a hotel until tomorrow and then on to couch surf friends for who knows how long after paying $600 for a rental truck that was going to cost 40. I’m ready to give up.

We drove over to the old neighborhood tonight, Isabel and I. Driving past the Whole Foods, I felt like an intruder, like I didn’t belong or deserve to be there. Rootless. Alone. Right now, I feel so alone, like even being around people I am still isolated. Is this how it is for real homeless people all the time? That in not having a place to call their own, they don’t belong anywhere? Would it be any easier or less lonely if I had a partner in life? Would it be better if Milla were home, more grown up and able to understand than Isabel? I don’t know the answers to those questions because they aren’t my life right now. What I do know is what is. If I’m supposed to be getting something from this, I haven’t figured out what it is. I don’t like not having a place that is my own, somewhere to be comfortable and settled as I go out in the world to do my job or live my life or just be. Maybe the point is to learn to just be without a base, but I don’t know why that would be a useful lesson. I think it’s natural for most creatures above a certain brain size to crave a secure place for themselves. Even my kitty, staying in a large kennel at a friend’s, longs for her home and family, eating nearly nothing and worrying at what has become of her life. My dog seems happy, visiting a friend with two other dogs as if at a makeshift doggy camp. Oh, and Milla, visiting her dad and playing the video games I don’t allow. And actually Isabel too, is content as long as I am nearby. Perhaps it is just the cat and I who cannot deal with this, both of us because we don’t know what will be next, as if anyone ever does, but we are used to life’s moderate predictability. I don’t know. I do know I’m not comforted. I think of all I have to do and I’m tired. I don’t believe I’m learning anything I needed to. Maybe there isn’t a lesson. Maybe sometimes life just sucks and you have to get through until it doesn’t anymore, and that’s just all there is.

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In Honor of Autumn, Dogs I Have Loved

Seven years ago today, I lost my first child. I chose Autumn the day she was born from a litter of twelve. For the next 11 years and 11 months, she was by my side through travels across country, marriage and divorce, and the birth of a new human baby. In honor and remembrance of our lives together, I am posting a piece of the book I wrote about her.  I miss my dear friend, my love.

The day Autumn died, I woke up and did not immediately know this would be the day. She was lying in the living room, half on the hardwood floors and halfway on the rug. She barely looked up to acknowledge my entering the room, a sure sign something was off, but she had been listless for days because of the unusual heat.

The night before, she had been so hot. So hot that after I removed her from the tiles on the bathroom floor and placed her in a cold bath, the place where her tummy had been touching the floor remained warm for hours. Literally hours. A sick and dreadful feeling filled my stomach when I walked into that bathroom so long after putting her in that bath and could feel the warmth in the floor where she had been.

The heat of those summer days finished her off, I have no doubt of it. She could not withstand the hundred degree temperatures. The last few days before she died, I would come home and find her inert with exhaustion. She would not move. Her stomach would feel like an iron. I would then run a bath of cool water and lay her in it. This perked her up because she needed that cooling off. I don’t know whether her body was incapable of regulating its temperature anymore. The diabetes did so much else to her body; I could see it killing her thermometer too.

That morning, she was lying there and I didn’t immediately register how badly she was doing. I began to get ready for work, roused Milla out of bed, was busily doing my thing, when I made a horrific discovery.

Neon green ooze had leaked of Autumn. It looked like she had peed and was lying in it, but it was not yellow. The color was not anything I had seen from a living thing before, the color of a summer lime popsicle. My entire body went cold upon seeing that ooze. I carefully cleaned it up and moved Autumn into the kitchen. She was more listless than ever. She could barely stand. My throat was tight. It was beginning to dawn that she would not reach her twelfth birthday.

What was that, the desire for her to reach another birthday? All along while dealing with this wretched disease, I had wanted her to reach another birthday. After her initial diabetic episode, I was not sure she would ever reach her eleventh birthday. Then it was Christmas. Then I began to think maybe she would just keep living through a few birthdays, just looking like a skeleton.

I realize now she was gradually worsening, but having her there with me every day I did not notice the decline. Up until three weeks before her death she still liked chasing things. She couldn’t see while she was chasing things, so we had to accommodate, but she still liked doing it. She even seemed to enjoy looking for the ball or stick or toy she could not see.

That’s the trouble with living with a degenerative disease; you don’t notice the degeneration because you’re so busy managing it. And when the good days completely outweigh the bad, which Autumn’s did, it is easy to forget that the one you’re taking care of is on her way out of this world.

And for some reason I had arbitrarily decided that Autumn had to make it to August 16 and her twelfth birthday. It was like that day could save her somehow, even though I knew in my gut it was not true.

While lying in the kitchen, more neon green ooze came out and she just laid in it. It was this that made it clear to me that Autumn was finally really dying. I gave her an insulin shot. I tried to feed her, but she would not eat. She would not even eat wet food. More dread. More tightening in the throat and drying in the mouth.

I knew.

I debated taking her to work with me, initially deciding against it. Then as I bustled about, fitting into the routine that made forgetting easier for the moment, I realized that if I did not take her to work with me I would not see her this last day and I could not do that.

I worried about the office, whether anyone would care that I dragged in my skeleton dog. I worried about her needing to go potty. I finally decided to bring a towel and tell anyone who cared that this child of mine, my first baby I picked out the day she was born, was dying and if that person was heartless enough to tell me to take her away I would tell them to go to hell, but no one did. No one said a word. If I hadn’t had clients, I would not have gone, but I’ve figured out working on my own that I am the only backup, the biggest drawback to self-employment.  The clients who came to see me that day were extremely sympathetic.  One woman who came in shared a similar story of losing her own beloved pet.

I still have the bowl Autumn drank from the day she died. I cannot bear to put it back in the office kitchen. The day I returned to the office after she died I bawled when I saw that bowl. I had heard people speak of feeling “raw” and I now know what they meant. I felt absolutely exposed those first days after she was gone, like nothing was protecting me. Vulnerable. Words I had heard and sort of experienced, but not like this. No, this was worse.

Watching someone gradually die is the epitome of the expression a blessing and a curse. You are blessed with having your loved one there with you, but you are cursed with their disease. One minute you are wishing they would just finally go, the next minute you are thrashing yourself for the thought, the guilt a cloak you wear constantly. When they finally go, those moments creep up on you, those moments when you had ardently wished the afflicted would die, and you curse yourself, wondering whether your wishes contributed to their demise, knowing intellectually this is not possible, then reasoning emotionally that perhaps the dying one felt your anger and this brought their death sooner. Guilt:  a horrible, ugly poison.

I know guilt is not one of the traditional stages of grieving, but they ought to add it to the list for those of us who have lived with someone who has a degenerative illness. It has to be there for all of us. I cannot imagine anyone being a one-hundred percent perfect nurse to a degenerative patient, and those moments when you are not perfect come back to haunt you. Maybe only a little bit, but they are there. I like to think I’m an emotionally healthy person. I’ve managed to talk myself out of those moments, but they came up nonetheless and they can be brutal during the first days after the loved one dies. Like little bits of acid spray on the raw wound of grief.

Mostly though, I remember Autumn with tenderness and affection. Her body was so decrepit in the end, such a mess. A few months after her death, I watched a video I took of her two weeks before that day and her body was an emaciated skeleton. So sad. I took the video that morning because I thought that was her last day, rather than the day she actually died.

Throughout her life Autumn followed me wherever I would go, no matter how trivial or short the trip. Going into the kitchen for a glass of water?  There was Autumn, at my side. Going for a short visit to the toilet?  Autumn would rise from wherever she had been lying, follow me in, sighing heavily as she laid down next to me, then rising again thirty seconds later to follow me back to wherever I had been.

On that last day, when work was over, I picked Milla up from school and we headed south out of town for Dr. Fletcher’s in Albany. Debbie and Robert maintained a phone link, planning to be there for me in the end. I called Dr. Fletcher as well, to let him know we were on our way.

It was a warm day, hot and yellow. Autumn lay on the front seat, curled up. I kept petting her and sobbing. During those moments I kept thinking to myself that in an hour and a half, she would not be there anymore, that I would drive home without her, that I would never see her again. Ever. The finality was like a cement brick to the head. I could barely drive through my tears.

When Autumn was little and she rode in the car with me, she would lay her head across my forearm as I held the gear shift. As we drove, I placed my arm on the seat next to her and she rested her head there, our last moment a microcosm of our life together, our last hour.

The sun was still fairly high when we arrived at Dr. Fletcher’s near 6:00 that evening. The air outside the car was hot, so I left Autumn in the air-conditioning while I went inside to let Dr. Fletcher know that we had arrived. Debbie and Robert had already arrived and were waiting for us.

It’s odd. Since that evening, I’ve had many moments of extreme stress where my body felt like it could barely handle taking another step, but my mind knew it had to and forced it to keep going, but that night I had not experienced anything like that in my life before, and it felt overwhelming, that forcing myself to go when I did not want to.

I returned to the car and carefully lifted Autumn from the seat. I held her close and walked over to a grassy spot next to the parking lot. She was so light, barely fur and bones. I held her closely in my lap. She did not lift her head or try to walk around as she had the many times she’d been there before. I just held her, and pet her, and told her how much I loved her. Milla crouched at my side, her hand on Autumn’s neck. Autumn had been a part of her life since birth. Debbie and Robert stood next to us, and Robert snapped a couple of photos.

Dr. Fletcher held a large syringe filled with pink liquid as he walked from his office and across the lot to us. He did not say anything, he just walked up and put the needle in her forearm, then whispered to me to talk to her.

She died almost immediately. I pictured her spirit fleeing that prison of a body, flying off into the ether, she left so fast.

Earlier that year, my mom had to put her dog to sleep. It took him several minutes to die. Autumn died so quickly, it just seemed like an escape. I truly imagined her flying away.

Dr. Fletcher helped me to place her body in the wooden box I had brought to bury her in. It’s a strange experience, carrying a box with you to hold the body of someone who is alive when you start out, but whom you know will be dead, so you carry a place to put them when it’s over.

I buried her in Debbie’s back yard. I wanted her in a place I knew I could come to for as long as I lived. I wrapped her in a special blanket and covered her with a shirt of mine. She looked curled up, like she was sleeping. I have seen a dead human once; that person did not look asleep to me, but very dead. Autumn was not like this. I know it sounds almost trite, but she just looked peaceful, resting. Useful words to describe how it is.

It took a long time to dig the hole, longer than I expected, plus it was hot and the ground was really hard. I had to pick with a pickaxe, then dig with a shovel, then pick again. It was after dark by the time the digging was complete.

Before I lowered the box into the hole, I opened it, and pet and kissed Autumn goodbye, even though she was not really there. I knew once she went into the ground, I would never, ever see her body again. Months later I would imagine losing control and going there, digging up the grave, and opening the box, just so that the last time I saw her wouldn’t have to be.

I found a perfect chunk of stone to place at the head of her grave. I surrounded it with bricks. A couple of weeks later, I came back and planted flowers all over the spot, a floral island in Debbie and Robert’s weedy back landscape.

When I visited the grave the following spring ten months later, the yard was full of wild and brown grass and weeds. Yet Autumn’s grave was covered with green, a grass that was a foot taller than the rest of the grass in the yard. It was a soft, green rhombus, Autumn’s little bed in the middle of the field.

Autumn was the first major death in my life that I actually remembered.  My grandma died when I was two, and apparently I missed her, but obviously a death at that age is nothing like death as an adult, or even as an older child.  The only other death I have experienced since Autumn is Robert’s, which broke my heart.  He died five years after she did, nearly to the day, of complications due to kidney failure.

Having now experienced the death of a close human, I can honestly say that Autumn’s loss was no less for me, and in many ways even more.  I grieved her closely for years.  Eight months after she died, I wrote in my journal that I was still mourning:

I ask myself why this grief can return so fresh eight months after her death. Then I realize that if she had been human, no one would begrudge my feeling this way, and I’m questioning the depth of my feelings because she was a dog.

I sat on the floor last evening near the couch and thought of Autumn and realized again that she will never be here. Ever. I hate the finality of that. I hate missing her so much. I hate the way it makes my heart hurt. I hate that I’m not allowed to feel this much pain because she is a dog and not a human. I loved her so much. I loved her more than any human until Milla was born. She was my first child. Of course I grieve. And I should not question that it has been eight months, or that she was a dog.

The idea for a book about her life tickled my brain shortly after she left me, and so I wrote down my memories of her death and illness while the pain was still fresh so I would not forget.  Then I had to put the book aside.  I could not write about her as a puppy without crying so profusely that I could not continue. Every so often I would remember something and take a note:  Don’t forget this about her! the note would read, whether it was the way she hopped up and down when I toweled her dry after a bath, or how she liked to hunt beetles. Autumn, killer of domestic bugs.

Autumn’s death was the first in a series of life events that nearly brought me to my knees, metaphorically speaking. Sad but true, the timing of her death in relation to everything else was actually fortuitous. Things went rather south with Bjorn once he entered a new relationship, and we suffered a rather protracted court battle for the better part of a year. During that time, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Bjorn’s new partner filed a bar complaint against me that lasted nearly a year. The area of law I practice changed drastically and my earnings plummeted to zero. Rather than lose the lovely little house into which I had poured so much of my energy, I sold it shortly before the economy crashed.

I am not so sure I could have managed Autumn’s illness while handling so many difficulties of my own. Yet perhaps I underestimate myself. It is amazing what one can endure when one has to, simply by placing one foot in front of the other, from one day to the next. Perhaps too, in living with her various degenerative ailments, I acquired the discipline necessary to meet further challenges.

Two months before Autumn died, I adopted an older greyhound. Her name was Edna, and surprisingly, she was a source of comfort in the months after Autumn’s death. She came to us having spent the bulk of her life in a kennel on racetracks. She had raced eight times and failed miserably at it, whereupon she was turned into a breeding dog. Edna had no idea how to traverse stairs or eat anything but kibble in a bowl. Teaching her these things and watching her make new discoveries was an utter delight. She brought us joy during those sorrowful days after Autumn’s death.

In April 2009 Molly suffered a severe seizure. The seizure was horrible. When I woke to her twisted body writhing on the floor, her eyes rolling in two different directions, feces and urine everywhere, I thought for sure she was dead. But she did not die. Three hours later, to the surprise of everyone who had seen her, especially the vet, Molly was 95% better. And she stayed better. The vet warned me that more seizures were to come, that she likely had a brain tumor and would continue to seize until one of them killed her, but that never happened. She never had another seizure.

Then four months later, Molly seemed to deteriorate before our eyes. She fell down the stairs to my then-boyfriend’s basement. She had been having difficulty with stability on slippery floors for some time and those stairs were covered in linoleum. She stopped wanting to eat. We thought maybe hard kibble was bothering her so we bought wet food for her. Molly gobbled that up like a starving beast and we thought things would improve, only the next day she did not want to eat wet food either. We fed her some by hand and she ate that, but the next day she wanted even less. Two days later when we took her outside to go to the bathroom, she slipped and fell going up the back porch steps, and the next day when she went out to go to the bathroom, she urinated, then lay in it.  Clearly something was dreadfully wrong. My dear, sweet, fastidious dog would never go anywhere near her urine if she could help it. We bathed her and I made an appointment with our vet.

Molly died the next morning. The vet said she had a large tumor in her spleen that had burst and her belly was full of blood. She said we could operate to remove the tumor, but Molly would likely not survive any surgery — there would have been no benefit in trying to save her life. She was fourteen years old.  Her body was old and worn out. Trying to keep her alive would have been selfish and cruel.

I am so blessed this creature was a part of my life for almost twelve years. She was always there, quietly in the background. Molly loved a lot of people. She was always so excited to see my mom or my good friends. She loved my boyfriend and enjoyed his company, following him around the house for a snack or to have her rear end scratched. She took a bit of time to warm up to a person, almost like she was sizing them up to determine whether they were worth her friendship. Yet once she decided she liked you, she always liked you and would remember someone after months or even years of an absence.

Upon hearing of her death, a close friend of mine said to me, “She was such a good friend and such a polite and gentle dog. What a blessing to have had her for so long – she loved you all dearly.”  These words were simply true. I am grateful Molly came to us. In her quiet way she was a fixture in my life for over a decade. Of the hundreds of dogs I could have chosen from the humane society that cold, winter day, I am so thankful I chose her.

In winter of 2009 I moved to New York. I had been telling Milla for months that after school let out for the summer, I would get her a small dog of her own. During the school year, we would prowl shelters and pet stores, seeing what was out there, looking for a new friend.

One afternoon in April, we stopped in a dog store after going out to a movie. While there, a small, impish, white maltipoo greeted me with enthusiasm and delight. She climbed up on the railing to the display area, hanging over the bars begging me to pet her.  She was utterly charming.

The store owners brought the little dog into a fenced area in the middle of the store so we could play with her. Milla and I sat and enjoyed her company for a half an hour before she wore herself out and settled in for a nap. As we rose to leave, I reached over the bars and lay my hand on her side. Something traveled between us in that moment. I felt her entire body relax beneath my fingers. She sighed and stretched her legs. I fell in love.

After we left I could not get the little dog out of my head. She was ridiculously expensive and I had determined we would be adopting a shelter dog. However, I kept thinking of her and early the next morning, which was Easter, I decided that I would call the pet store. If they were open, I would offer them less than half their asking price for her, the same price I would pay to adopt a dog in New York. If they accepted, I would go and get her. I called the store, they were open, and they accepted my price immediately.  Milla and I rode the subway north to Washington Heights and brought her home with us. I named her Ava.

I was already in love with this delightful creature. There are some just dog things, such as the way they trot in front of you with their ears back, heading where you’re heading, that I adore in this dog of mine. I love how wherever I go in the house she follows me, like Autumn did. It was one of the hardest things to lose when she died.

Ava also has her own unique quirks that I specially love about her. She sits on my feet. If I am in a place and standing and talking or sitting and talking to someone else, she perches on my foot. She will do this when I am saying goodbye to Milla as she leaves the house to go do something and I am staying home. Ava sits there on my foot, as if to say I am staying here with her. You go have fun. We will be here when you get back. Then as I move into the house to do whatever, she follows me. She likes to sit on the corner of my bed look out the window or watch me while I’m sitting at my desk. She hovers with her paws over the edge of the bed frame, her head rested on them, looking at me.

Ava makes distinct faces all her own. The most common is what I call her happy face, her mouth slightly open, tongue out, eyes bright, often one ear cocked. She’ll turn her head slightly as if to ask Do you want to play? In these moments I stop what I’m doing and play with her. In the morning, when she wakes up, she has the most incredible bed head. Her eyes are all sleepy, her hairs all akimbo. She’ll crawl to the top of the bed, as if the effort is more than she can bear, then sigh and relax as we snuggle and pet her.

Later, wild dog comes out, chasing bears and fozzies, rattling them mightily from side to side until they are dead. Sometimes she brings them to us and requests that we throw them. We do, because watching her little sheep butt run away to get them is one of life’s greatest joys. She does not like these stuffed creatures to see anything. Within a half an hour of getting a new stuffed toy she removes its eyes. Perhaps she does not want it to see her remove all its innards piece by piece. More likely she loves that the pieces are hard and fun to chew.

After Ava has a bath she runs through the house like she’s on fire, ears back, bolting from room to room. What is that, dogs running after baths? I understand their desire to rub themselves dry on the floor, but the running around after, I wonder why.  Almost every dog I have ever owned has gone running after getting a bath. However, none of them have run like Ava does. The others have all just gone for their run to dive into their rubs. This one just runs like a bat out of hell from room to room, then comes and stares at me with the happy face, tongue lolling out, eyes bright. Then off she goes again to make another round.  It’s hilarious.

Ava isn’t thrilled with the bath itself. She is actually one of the more obnoxious dogs I have had to bathe. It’s a good thing she is small and easy to hold down because she really hates it and tries to escape. Yet she is intrigued by the bathtub, or rather, people showering or bathing. When Milla takes a shower, it is a guarantee that Ava will be in the bathroom standing on the edge of the tub, peeking around the shower curtain, her little sheep butt wagging its mini tail. When either of us bathe, she comes and stands and looks in. Maybe she is curious why we would want to do something so hideously awful. Or perhaps she just wants our company. Maybe it’s a little of both.

Ava truly loves to snuggle. She is thrilled at her ability to jump on the bed. She could not always do it by herself, but she grew and figured it out, and now seems to take great pleasure in both jumping on and jumping off. I can jump on the bed!  I can jump off the bed!  See?  I launch myself many feet past the bed!  Aren’t I skilled?

She will jump on the bed if I am lying there and come and lie across my neck and sigh. She’s my little doggie stole. She’ll snuggle there a while and get kisses from me, and strokes and rubs. She knows I do not like her to lick me. She does not even try anymore.  My ex-boyfriend lets her kiss him — I think it’s gross — but Ava knows he doesn’t mind so she licks him all over. The only time she licks me is when I get out of the shower. She will come in and lick the water off of my feet  until I dry them.

This dog makes me happy. That’s the simple fact of it. She came along when I was very sad. There were so many reasons, many of them huge, for my sadness. One the biggest was grief over the loss of the dogs who had lived with me. I would have dreams about them, dreams they were still alive or still lived with me. Vivid dreams. Then this little dog came to live with me and I suddenly felt the desire to laugh again. I laugh every day living with her. She’s a happy, wonderful little spirit. Frankly, I’m completely smitten.

Years and years ago, I may not have even been out of my teens, I read The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck. I don’t remember much of it at all. I read it because it was a bestseller, and I don’t even recall its premise beyond the title.

However, I remember one thing vividly. Peck argued that humans can never really love a dog, or any other animal, because to love as he defined it requires reciprocation in kind. My feelings in response to his position are unchanged: I wholeheartedly disagree.  Life is full of different kinds of love. Some loves are equally reciprocal, usually with the person we choose as a mate, but also with certain friends or even family members. By Peck’s definition, I could not truly love an infant or a small child or someone who does not love me back in the same way and with the same articulation.

What a limiting view of human capacity. I absolutely loved my dog. It did not matter that her adoration of me was different. My love for her was there, and it still is. Autumn was a gift and I will love her forever. She helped to teach me selflessness. She brought me joy. She increased my humanity. For this and so much more, I will be forever grateful.

To read the story of Ava, please click here.

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How to Crap Your Pants in One Fell Swoop

This morning I came into work (early, I might add). I turned on my computer. I usually just send it to sleep, and it wakened without any issues. Then in the corner a little box popped up from my anti-virus program to remind me yet again that I needed to reboot for changes to take effect. What the hell. I’m in early. Why not?

Why not, indeed.

When the computer came back to life, it was not my computer. I logged in as me, but everything that defined this computer as mine was gone. All the programs. All the files. All the everything. Gone. Gone. Gone.

Commence crapping.

This is how to crap your pants in one fell swoop: Turn on your computer, reboot at the instruction of a sinister little box posing as one of your friends, and discover all of your work, work that is not backed up because every time you tried it would freeze your computer so you stopped trying, gone.

I’m now backing up using an online program. Thank goodness for system restore and thank further goodness it worked. I’ll get back to you all later and let you know how it goes. Google docs? You’re my new friend.

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This is Life and How it Goes Sometimes (hopefully without a bad soundtrack)

I wish when movie makers make movies and they want their movies to seem “fresh” and “modern” that they wouldn’t use music that will be dated in under a decade, especially when the movie really isn’t that bad, but the music makes the whole thing distracting. A couple examples of this? Top Gun. Oh gawd, that music is rotten and dated. Roxanne, same thing. Reality Bites. Yep, you got it. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. A theme in these three actually is bad saxxy jazz. Not good saxxy jazz, but baaaad jazz. It’s so distracting. All of these films have okay music mixed in, usually classics that stand the test of time. But those transitional melodies that aren’t really any songs anyone listens to, that were probably made just for the movie, long horn solos to show us this is a place to feel something? The worst.

And now for the non sequitur from my musings about lame movie music. This has been an interesting week. Guess all those astrological prognostications about funny business in the sky maybe apply to me. When faced yesterday with the realization that certain people in my life were capable of Machiavellian treachery, my initial response was disbelief. I finally decided late in the evening that continuing to chant “I don’t believe it,” was not going to remedy the situation, nor was “why me?” In an effort to root out all personal hypocrisy, I asked myself when I have been less than honest, what I have done that might make another shudder in disbelief. I do not want to make anyone feel the way I felt upon this discovery. The goal, going forward, is to behave as honorably as possible in all circumstances because all I can only control is my behavior and my reactions. So now I pick up the pieces and move ahead, knowing what I know and knowing who I’m dealing with. It certainly makes life interesting.

During all this, somewhat in a dither, I called my counselor. She pointed out that when people are operating from fear, they do some mighty unpleasant things. Fear and greed, maybe? In any case, she asked if I was feeling afraid and I had to admit that yes, I am. Part of me is fine, moving forward, setting up shop. The other part of me is scared shitless. How do we root this out of ourselves? Maybe it isn’t possible. Maybe it’s just enough to go ahead anyway in spite of being afraid? I don’t know the answer. I’ll go read my Pema Chodren book on such things and see if she has any advice. I don’t like the unpleasantness of it all, though. Not a bit. But this is life and how it goes sometimes.

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Priorities

Sleep or work on the book? A deadline is looming. Usually sleep wins. Tonight book is going to win, at least for a time. I managed today to channel some irritation into my character who is feeling a bit pissy herself. It was a useful tool, this directing of energy into someone in the book. I’m tired though, so eventually sleep will win out and it is therefore necessary to sign off from this now.

Logging into wordpress, I realized today just how shitty my stats are lately. Used to be 100, 200 readers a day. Now I’m lucky to get up to 25. I suppose that’s the consequence of rarely writing on here and even more rarely writing anything beyond stupid little quips like this one. No one bothers to notice. But honestly, I don’t care much, not much at all. Baby, teen, book. These are the priorities. Typing that last word less than 8 times would be nice too.

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Funny Comforts

Funny the things that comfort us. Today in my bug of the day email, the photo was of a smart looking little, yellow plant bug. Something in the light and the color of the wood of the post on which the bug was resting brought a sense of peace. And then there was that bright, calm bug. I’ve felt that seeing a house that looks familiar, even though it’s like no house I’ve ever lived in, at least in this lifetime. Maybe in my dreams?

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Ducking for Cover

The last time in my life when this many big changes came raining down on my head I wanted to duck for cover and run. Life was collapsing around me and I was stuck just dealing with it as each moment came along. This time, it feels like some of life is falling apart, but I don’t feel as bombarded by it as I did the last time. I recognize some of it is me actively making the changes, like buying a house. Now my work is going to have to change, and even though it was a change I was contemplating myself, I had planned to do it in steps, climbing off the mountain and up the next using lots of equipment and footholds. Now I’ve been pushed and I’m grasping frantically trying to regain my footing. My attention was elsewhere, focused on this lovely new home. I wasn’t prepared and it’s not fun being shoved when you’re not ready. Here I am trying to finish a book and buy a house, going along doing my thing, and wham! I guess that is how it is for people sometimes.

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Spammers

The spammers on WordPress who really, really want us to post their comments and crap are getting more clever. I wonder what third world country the drafters of these gems call home.  Some of them go to great lengths to get me to believe they are a real person with a real comment and not just someone trying to infiltrate the system.  The problem is that their comments have absolutely NOTHING to do with anything I wrote, and their grammar, spelling, and style are atrocious.

For instance, in response to a Pure Med Spa post, one spammer wrote:

I go there every summer. Been there 6-7 times. Speaking of the rorest and comfort, it’s excellent (and I’ve been to many other 5-star hotels so I can compare). Since you can find almost everything on the website, I’m going to tell you what the website does not: the rooms are very comfortable, very clean and nice, you will find many restaurants for your taste, many bars to keep you hydrated and happy all through the day, all kinds of water sports, archery lessons, water games, water gym, a fitness center and a friendly and caring staff. The food is great in the main restaurant you can find anything, from Turkish traditional food to sushi, and there are other restaurants as well (Turkish, Italian, sea food and barbeque restaurants). As for the beach and the sea, you can find beaches with clearer, bluer sea elsewhere in Antalya, such as in Kemer. The sea is a little bit wavy and therefore not very clear, you can come across seaweed floating on the water. But it’s great on the beach, you will find watermelon and corn service, iced towels that will relieve you from the hot weather. The nights could be a little bit boring, there is a show after dinner and there’s a disco, foam parties on certain nights, but for the ones who are looking for a crazier nightlife, the hotel staff is taking you to Lara to great clubs and parties.The pool area is very nice, around th olympic it’s quiet and peaceful, there’s a huge bar few steps away. There are enough sunbeds for everyone, and you get towels which you can change for clean ones as many times as you want during the day. Note that the rorest is a really big one and it is a 10-minute-walk from the beach to your room.I would recommend that you try to book a room on the upper floors and with a sea-view.The farther the room is from the elevators, the better the sight is (well you’ll have to make a few steps more but if you enjoy visual beauty, it’s really nice from the balcony at night especially if the moon is out!!) But there are also honeymoon villas, a VIP place, which make your vacation turn into an even more luxurious dream! You can order everything to your room, and your balcony opens up to the swimming pool, you won’t even have to step out of your villa but staying there is more expensive.I think you’ll really like it there. Here’s link to the website in English: If you have other questions, feel free to ask.Addition:Sorry, I have no idea about where to find the cheapest price. The prices are totally different for strangers.

That’s quite the comment!  It bears no relation to anything in the post. I think some computer algorithm pulled the word “spa” from the title and then they inserted this little travelogue, hoping I’d believe it was real. Problem is, the Pure Med Spa posts are NOT about traveling to a spa. Not even close. They are about what ripoff artists the owners are.  If this commenter goes there often, they are probably missing a few thousand dollars and have been burned by lasers.

The other common type of pretend comment are the blow smoke up my ass comments, those who want me to believe and be therefore excited by the fact they are telling me how wonderful I am as a writer.  Oh, you’re so great! Your post is the best ever! Then they offer some small suggestion. This is all written with wretched grammar and even worse spelling.  SPAM.  Here is one of these:

Well, the actual post is in fact the best on this worthwhile topic. I agree with your results and will thirstily look forward to the incoming changes. Just stating thanks won’t just be satisfactory, for the wonderful clarity inside your writing. Let me at once seize your rss to stay knowledgeable of any revisions. Good work and a lot success inside your business endeavors!

Thirstily? That’s pretty intense yearning for what I write. The funny thing about this comment is that it was in response to a post about my winning lottery national via an email message. Kind of apropos, in a perverse way.

Then this, in response to my article on long term nursing.  Obviously, an algorithm or whatever pulled from the word breastfeeding, but no human read anything I wrote. It says:

try the feed play sleep routine, i.e. brefoe bedtime give your baby his usual vegies and milk then let him play for about an hour or so and then let him sleep. if he wakes go into his room without turning on the light do not look at him but reassure him that you are there until he calms down and let him settle him self he may a cry a while but this is normal.it will get easier if you stick to it I did with my children and they still wake every now and then but they know I am there if they need me they are now 4, 7 years and 10 months.

First of all, I think this opinion on childrearing is a bunch of shit and that letting children cry it out teaches them not to trust. But that’s not the point. Note the lack of capitals at the beginning of sentences? Note the run-on sentences? “Brefoe” and “Vegies.” It’s not a real commentator. It also bears no real relationship to what was basically a post-feminist argument, and not a parenting article. Spam.

Good luck spammers, trying to figure out a way through. I have to give WordPress credit. They caught all but one of these and dumped them in my spam folder. I saw them because I check spam for real comments.

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Princess Slaying Dragons

I had a dream and it opened my eyes. So funny how this happens sometimes, during sleep or its edges our brains open and admit ideas we cannot consider during the day when the mind is wearing a suit, playing the daytime role and maintaining its vigilance. Yes, it keeps us operating, but in its watchfulness it keeps up walls that can block out the useful too.

In the dream, drifting there in the foggy place before I was awake, I saw her wearing a ninja scarf and holding out a sword, ready to battle with me. I stood and looked at her, then turned and walked away. She stood there holding out the sword as if in protection, but I had no business with her, and her sword would not protect her. I took up the hands of my children and we walked a path up the side of the mountain.

She says she is certain that with a tiara and cape she could conquer the world. She says that she is fierce, a ninja of the good and awesome. She sees herself as a brave warrior, protecting victims and innocents, and that she is doing so from strength. Yet I understand that all this external valor really masks of an almost pathological, fundamental sense of insecurity, which may be so buried she isn’t even aware it is there. Deep down, in the places she may not even visit, she does not believe that she is worthy. As long as she maintains the facade, as long as no one else can see this truth, perhaps she too can forget what she really feels, deep in these hidden crevices of her soul.

Recently, I communicated directly with her and she did not like this at all.  She believed that I was delusional and therefore cut off any communication, believing that she did so from power, from strength. I am superior and you are not worthy of my time, the action said. I am better than you.

The truth though, was that I made her uneasy because I had already been somewhere she has not yet been willing to go. At a level she cannot comprehend with her mind, she knew this. Yet the hidden place deep within her understood. It knew that I was facing this fear, was staring it down, was climbing the mountain and learning to ignore the battles that do not matter, and this knowledge terrifies her in that fundamental, unconscious place. She does not understand that I was not challenging her at all, and would turn away from unnecessary battles with her because real power comes from the realization of inner strength, not from the slaying of a perceived adversary. What she truly needs to understand is that I am not her foe, and that her only true enemy is herself, that a cape and tiara will not give her the power to conquer the world, but that really loving herself will give her the strength to realize she doesn’t even have to fight.

I wish her well on this journey.

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Scabs

Have you ever picked at a scab and it comes off, then bleeds a little, then comes back again, and you pick at it some more, and then at some point when it comes back it’s not as scabby? I’ve been picking at dried wounds, trying to make them smaller. It feels like shit. I’m hoping that eventually there won’t be anything left in the spot except maybe a small, reddish spot and that’s all.

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Pathetic

I feel like I’ve lost the ability to compose anything with any depth. Perhaps I’ve been working too long on my book and it has none. I don’t know. I’m slogging. It feels like I’m slogging. I don’t feel poetic or profound or like I’m saying anything that hasn’t been said. Part of it, I think, is that the plot must progress and it’s that progression that can so lack anything profound. Plus I really would rather take a nap. I’m pathetic.

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Stylin’

I realize on some level how silly this is, but I love the way I feel after having some beauty ritual performed, be it hair dressing or nail smoothing or whatever.  The other day I had my hairs arranged and cut and made to look beautiful.  Leaving the salon I could feel it silky and swinging on my neck.  Odd how simply having my hairs arranged can provide a pick me up.

I think I have mentioned before that I am not naturally the sort of woman who easily maintains makeup and hair styling and whatnot.  I am simply not one of those women who look perfectly made up at all times.  I cannot keep my sausagey fingers from looking unkempt.  I manage to keep pedicures looking somewhat okay, but I think mostly it is an illusion fostered by toes existing over five-and-half-feet from my eyes.  If I get closer, I often notice there are little bumps in the polish or nicks on the edges of my nails.

I am perpetually battling dry feet skin, never able to achieve the milky white perfection seen on Photoshopped advertisements.  I could probably make a mint if I figured out how to accomplish that little trick.  I will stay on top of the eyebrows for several days in a row, then realize one morning that Hey, I haven’t looked at them in a while.  It is with some foreboding I look into the mirror because I have had genuine fears of having my head turn into a shag carpet, Cousin Itt come to life.  Yikes!  Except for lipstick (my take-to-an-island mainstay), I have never been the sort to wear makeup for any length of time.  I invariably forget and rub my eyes, or smear the stuff on my lids, or do something else equally unattractive.

I try to maintain a well-put-together outfit.  I actually choose and wear quite pretty clothes.  The problem is when nylons start creeping down so the crotch ends up between my thighs, or waistbands creep into uncomfortable creases, or I dribble something on my chest.  You get the picture.  And after a while, in spite of my greatest efforts, my hairs just start to fly about.  I think it has something to do with the fact that my hairs would be curly left to their own devices.  I use a brush and hairdryer to make them straight.  They then wait and then when I’m out in public some of the hairs stage a mutiny, reverting back to their curly ways.

While I was in the salon I read a little article about which beauty regimens women are giving up in times of financial difficulty, and those they simply cannot live without.  I chuckled to myself at the irony of my sitting in that chair having my hairs arranged as my bank account is gradually depleted to nearly nothing since I have given the government all my extra cash.  Attempting some semblance of beauty through hair dressing is most certainly the beauty regimen I will not give up.  My answer to that question is easy.  No matter what, I always manage to get my hairs arranged.

Hair is a funny thing.  I tend to be the sort who, either through thin finances or thin time and sometimes both, leaves my hair arranging for 8 to 10 weeks rather than the recommended 6 to 8.  The result is that I usually arrive at the salon looking like a scruffy puppy.  While it is not much fun to go through life looking and feeling scruffy, it is marvelous to come out of the hair salon feeling like I got a shiny new coat of wax or something.  The feeling lasts for a couple of weeks after the arranging.  Then it fades into the background until the scruffiness reminds me that I really ought to do something and stop scaring people with the way I look.

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You Winner in Lottery National!

You winner in lottery national!

Ooooh!  Excitement!  I received an email today that said just these words.  Can you believe it?  Yeah, me neither.  Somehow I think if I won the lottery, several things would be different.  First of all, I would have had to have actually played the lottery, which I don’t, so it would be difficult to win.  Second, wouldn’t you think they would notify me in some other manner than email?  And finally, would the email really say, You winner in lottery national? Call me a fool, but I would think it would at least say You are a winner, not just You winner.

I hope I haven’t lost out by deeming this message junk and deleting it.  I really hope I have not done some serious damage or something.  Geez.  Oh well.  I have to hope I’ve done the right thing.

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These Breasts were Made for Feeding

This article was published on Huffington Post and can be seen here. If you like it, buzz it up and feel free to share, with proper accreditation of course.

These Breasts were Made for Feeding

~ by Lara M. Gardner

Time magazine recently ran a cover story about long-term breastfeeding. It depicted a cover photo of a woman standing and staring into the distance, a three-year-old boy standing on a chair in front of her, attached to her breast. Needless to say, the photo and article caused an uproar. Some people thought it was obscene. Others, myself included, thought it was misleading, to say the least.

It doesn’t surprise me that breastfeeding and breastfeeding to an age that more naturally suits biology has come to the fore in the public consciousness. It fits right in with the resurrection of the right-wing war on women, statements by politicians that women should never have been able to vote, laws that force women to share their sex lives with employers, and basically anything that says women cannot and should not be able to determine anything about themselves, and most especially their sexuality or anything related to their bodies (unless they are getting their breasts cut off because they have cancer, then it is okay).

All this furor over women breastfeeding children beyond an age our culture has deemed appropriate (corporate profits aside) belies a greater underlying issue. Ultimately, any discussion of breastfeeding as obscene is part of this American cultural hostility against women. Our culture would like to maintain that women’s bodies are property and should be available at all times as sexual playthings. Seeing the female body as life-giving and nurturing (i.e., breastfeeding) is a far more powerful message, and certainly not something that can be owned and controlled.

The Time photo is offensive precisely because it is obscene, but it is not obscene because the young child in it is breastfeeding. Rather, it is obscene because it has taken something that is nurturing (and arguably scientifically best for children and women), and turned it into something salacious and indecent.  Nothing about the photo is in any way representative of breastfeeding as it is. It seeks to make breastfeeding seem suggestive and forbidden, something tawdry that should be stopped before it gets out of control, something that should be hidden under a blanket.  No matter that breasts are flaunted as sexual playthings in advertising and on magazine covers. In the latter context, breasts are kept in their place. It is the former that touches a nerve because it suggests that breasts might have another, more fundamental purpose, one that doesn’t involve breasts as property or women as objects.

Perhaps the editors of Time intended for the photo to inflame and kickstart further discussion about women’s bodies and women’s place in our culture. Perhaps they understood that breastfeeding is something so fundamental to being a woman, something as life-giving as the birth process itself, that it should be acceptable in our culture, without question and without blankets. Perhaps they wanted to make it loud and clear just how ridiculous it is to claim this act is obscene. Maybe they weren’t just trying to sell magazines. I doubt it, but it is possible.

(In the interests of full disclosure, this article was written while my 2 1/2 year old daughter nursed in my lap.)

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Rats

I had rats. I suppose that statement is somewhat nebulous. Did I have rats in my hair? Did I have them as pets?  Were they running rampant through my house? Actually, two of these three statements are accurate, and if I hadn’t taken action when I did, likely the third could have been true as well.  I have had pet rats, and I’ve also had them running rampant through my house. It is the latter to which I refer. Rats infested my little bungalow, the one I restored in a SE suburb of Portland. I didn’t want to kill them. I started out using sticky paper to catch them and then I would take them to a park or somewhere else to release them. This was quite distressing. They would be so stuck to the paper and it would cause all sorts of physical stress reactions in the little things, and I could hardly bear it. I would cry as I used a stick or some other means to try and extricate them from the glue, whispering I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, over and over to them, pieces of their skin and fur left behind. I also tried live rat catching cages, but not one rat was caught.

Eventually the infestation became too great for humanitarian aid. My brother was staying with me at the time, as well as his girlfriend, and the combination of the two was more bait than any rat could resist. They were horrible housekeepers, which made them less than desirable house guests. The girlfriend especially. At one point during their sojourn, I found it necessary to clean up after them. The discoveries I made in the girlfriend’s belongings were enough to turn one’s stomach. Derek’s stuff, not so much. His stuff was just disorganized, but there wasn’t anything of organic nature in it. But girlfriend had bags full of clothes and at the bottom of bags were all manner of disgusting and rotten foodstuffs, as well as crusty-crotched underwear, and used menstrual pads. I could hardly manage. I’m on the clean end of the spectrum. I don’t like ghastly aged human excretions and rotten food being left in my home. Worst of all, the rats had burrowed into the bottoms of these bags and made nests filled with tiny torn up underwear crotches and pajamas.

As you can well imagine, the rats had a field day with this. They were mating and spawning like crazy. No sooner would I escort 6 teenage rats to the park than 20 more would appear, gorging on dog food, running across the basement stairs when the door opened, or tunneling through girlfriend’s sacks of nastiness. They also chewed cords and walls and were pretty destructive.

I finally realized that I was, unfortunately, going to have to cause some untimely rat deaths. I did not relish the thought.  Having been a rat owner for many years, I loved them. They are smart and cute and furry and all the things lots of people don’t think they are. Who cares if they have skin covered tails? Is a rabbit any different except that it has a fluffy tail? Not really.

I decided against traps. I could not bear squishing them. However, murderous bait was not much more appealing. They would suffer. Yet disposing of whole bodies were more palatable than getting rid of mutilated ones.

And so it began. I put out bait in big plastic things. Within days, I discovered slow moving creatures attempting to escape and find water. I would remove them to the farthest corner of the yard to die. This was horrible, but my cat and I could not keep up with their endless breeding and destruction.  Eventually my brother and the girlfriend left and I was also rat free. I cleaned the basement room thoroughly and made repairs where necessary. Life moved on and I forgot about the entire sordid affair.

So why did I bring this up now, six years later? Because I have a little safe in which I store a backup hard drive for my computer, and necessary papers like passports and birth certificates. Every now and again I have to get into the little safe for whatever reason, most often to back up the computer. This little safe was stored in the basement where my brother and the rats cohabited. One other problem I experienced with the rats is that they peed on things. They mostly peed on Sarah’s clothes (Sarah was Derek’s girlfriend), but they also peed on that safe. I’ve sprayed and scrubbed it and tried to rid it of that scent, to no avail. It is there. It smells. Every single time I open the safe for whatever reason, there is the smell, musky and stinky. It’s like cat pee; it never goes away. It has faded, but I doubt it will ever be gone. For as long as I own and use this safe, I expect I’ll have a little bit of rat urine in my life. I guess I can live with that.

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Thinking About Flora

As I sat in the drive through lane at Starbucks the other day I noticed that someone had tossed a used Starbucks cup in the Laurel bush planted in the corner around which drivers drove from the order sign to the pickup window.  I sat there mulling over that plant, wondering what it thought of being used as a trash can for someone, then thought further about plants in general and where humans choose to place them. Plants have little choice in where to be.  They germinate where their seeds land or they live in the pot or on the corner where humans place them, and that’s just their lot in life.

I wonder if plants have a hierarchy among themselves.  You got planted in a Starbucks drive through, I got planted on the edge of the governor’s mansion. Aren’t I the lucky one? But of course, this is a human construct, this version of higher in the hierarchy. In plant terms, maybe it’s totally different. You got planted in shallow soil with little drainage. I got planted in moist loam with plenty of room for my roots to expand. Aren’t I the lucky one? But I like shallow soil with little drainage; it is where I thrive. And the plant in the moist loam pouts because it couldn’t best the shallow soil plant.

I can even see plant junior high humor. Did you see Rhododendron over there? A dog peed on its lower branches! And the oak tree sapling and the crocus buds all snicker among themselves, as the Rhododendron droops in shame.

The corn would stand up and shout that it has controlled mankind, gotten it to plant corn from one end of the earth to the other. We, the corn, are superior! Or the wheat. Or the soybeans. Or the lawn grass, especially golf course lawn grass. We have what mankind wants and get it to put our seeds and roots everywhere!

I wonder how the plants feel about forced plant mating, putting a Gravenstein apple with a Fuji, or a Red Delicious with a Pippen, their little branches cut open and stuck onto one another, held together with plant tape and plastic. What if they didn’t want to mate with one another? They have no choice. Humans forcing apple rape.  Nice.

In any case, these were the thoughts that flitted through my brain as I sat in that drive through lane, waiting to buy and drink my socially acceptable drug.

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Question

Sidenote: It drives me to distraction the way web sites bounce all over the place while loading these days. It looks like a page is loaded and you click on something, but no.  It’s not loaded and the click results in something entirely different than what you wanted, which then forces you to go back, and then wait again for the page to load, making sure it’s completely loaded, which means sitting there. Okay. Long sentence.

In ANY case, my real point here is to state that I am writing a book with various journal entries throughout the book, and I’m wondering, should I put in dates? Or should I just say JOURNAL and then write it in italics so the reader knows it’s a journal entry. Since I’m not using the year because it could be any year (after a certain point when the internet and smart phones exist because the characters use these items), but should I add the month?

Anyone who cares to answer, please do. Thank you.

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Writing Over the Mountain

Most of the time I just write along on my book and I don’t concern myself with how much is left to finish it.  Then other times, like now, I realize what is left and think Gads, there is no WAY I’m going to ever finish this thing.  It’s like a damn mountain and I’m an ant.  How the hell do those authors who sit and write for 2 days and finish a novel do it?  I can type fast, but not that fast, and it’s a lot of work just putting it all together.

Oh well, plug plug.  I won’t get anywhere if I’m complaining on here.

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I Remembered Insomnia

I remembered that I didn’t sleep last night, that I woke at 4 in the morning and that the brain turned on, even though I ran through every means I know to try and shut it off, short of taking drugs, which are not useful when taken at that hour because they leave me feeling hung over the following day and I could not afford to feel hung over.

I remembered that I lay there thinking about finishing my taxes, and whether I’m getting enough exercise, and money, and my children, and global warming, and the novel I am not writing enough of, and you, even though you don’t deserve my thinking.  I also remembered that I thought “You don’t deserve my thinking” and took pains to steer my thoughts elsewhere, even if the alternatives were not very appealing either.

I remembered when I felt tired at 8 and couldn’t understand why because 8 is not that late that, oh yeah, I didn’t sleep last night, and that also, oh yeah, I didn’t go back to sleep, which I usually do, and that, oh yeah again, I had to get up at 7 a.m., but that when the alarm went off, I reset it for 7:20, but still didn’t fall asleep, so I reset it for 7:50, but finally gave up and got up at 7:30 because lying there and not sleeping was foolish and that if I did fall asleep I would feel misery at having to awaken.  Yes, this is a too-long sentence, but forgive me because I’m tired.

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Book Reviews

I can say without equivocation that if I ever published a book, I would avoid like the plague reading reviews by readers on Amazon.  Good God almighty some people are nasty! I just finished reading a book that was actually quite good.  The plot contained elements that were highly unlikely to happen, but isn’t that the point sometimes, to read about what might happen, not what is? It’s just like going to the movies, often they are fantastical, but we want that for the escape.  In any case, I googled the book and the Amazon reviews came up and boy, were some of the readers harsh!  I especially love the ones who wrote reviews with terrible grammar and they were complaining that the author should have edited her book.  Pot call kettle black much?   And then of course the negative reviews complaining that the plot was so unlikely.  Well, gee.  If you want real life, write a memoir and read that.  I suppose it is par for the course, and especially in today’s age of Twitter and Facebook status updates, everyone is an expert, so it is to be expected. I know though, that such reviews of my own work would drive me batty.

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Lobbyists, Guns and Money — by Paul Krugman

This is an article by Paul Krugman from the NY Times.  It can be seen here.  Please read and share.  Groups like ALEC are ruining our country. Their power and influence must be stopped.

Lobbyists, Guns and Money

By 

Florida’s now-infamous Stand Your Ground law, which lets you shoot someone you consider threatening without facing arrest, let alone prosecution, sounds crazy — and it is. And it’s tempting to dismiss this law as the work of ignorant yahoos. But similar laws have been pushed across the nation, not by ignorant yahoos but by big corporations.

Specifically, language virtually identical to Florida’s law is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence (only recently, thanks to yeoman work by the Center for Media and Democracy, has a clear picture of ALEC’s activities emerged). And if there is any silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is that it might finally place a spotlight on what ALEC is doing to our society — and our democracy.

What is ALEC? Despite claims that it’s nonpartisan, it’s very much a movement-conservative organization, funded by the usual suspects: the Kochs, Exxon Mobil, and so on. Unlike other such groups, however, it doesn’t just influence laws, it literally writes them, supplying fully drafted bills to state legislators. In Virginia, for example, more than 50 ALEC-written bills have been introduced, many almost word for word. And these bills often become law.

Many ALEC-drafted bills pursue standard conservative goals: union-busting, undermining environmental protection, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved with the organization.

What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism.

And in case you were wondering, no, the kind of privatization ALEC promotes isn’t in the public interest; instead of success stories, what we’re getting is a series of scandals. Private charter schools, for example, appear to deliver a lot of profits but little in the way of educational achievement.

But where does the encouragement of vigilante (in)justice fit into this picture? In part it’s the same old story — the long-standing exploitation of public fears, especially those associated with racial tension, to promote a pro-corporate, pro-wealthy agenda. It’s neither an accident nor a surprise that the National Rifle Association and ALEC have been close allies all along.

And ALEC, even more than other movement-conservative organizations, is clearly playing a long game. Its legislative templates aren’t just about generating immediate benefits to the organization’s corporate sponsors; they’re about creating a political climate that will favor even more corporation-friendly legislation in the future.

Did I mention that ALEC has played a key role in promoting bills that make it hard for the poor and ethnic minorities to vote?

Yet that’s not all; you have to think about the interests of the penal-industrial complex — prison operators, bail-bond companies and more. (The American Bail Coalition has publicly described ALEC as its “life preserver.”) This complex has a financial stake in anything that sends more people into the courts and the prisons, whether it’s exaggerated fear of racial minorities or Arizona’s draconian immigration law, a law that followed an ALEC template almost verbatim.

Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.

Now, ALEC isn’t single-handedly responsible for the corporatization of our political life; its influence is as much a symptom as a cause. But shining a light on ALEC and its supporters — a roster that includes many companies, from AT&T and Coca-Cola to UPS, that have so far managed to avoid being publicly associated with the hard-right agenda — is one good way to highlight what’s going on. And that kind of knowledge is what we need to start taking our country back.

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My Eyes Cannot See

I am learning that my eyes cannot see.  I have for so long had one view of how my body should look, that undoing that view requires changing my eyes.  They simply cannot see me physically for how I am, or see that how I am is how I should be.

Nearly 13 years ago, after the birth of my first daughter, I gradually realized how much I had wrapped up who I am into how I look.  When suddenly I did not look as I had, I had to adapt. I didn’t like it, but I had no choice. I weighed more than I ever had in my life.  It was still below average, but I felt huge, and I realized that I had to accept it because no matter what I did, I did not lose those last 15 post-baby pounds.  Considering I had always been below-average thin, it wasn’t such a bad thing.  Just different.

When my daughter was four, she was in a baby ballet pageant with a bunch of other toddlers and small children.  They looked like adorable little sausages in their fluffy costumes and wings. I thought they were precious.

Watching them dance on stage, my mom leaned over and whispered, “I can’t believe they would let all those little fatties dance in those tight outfits.”  The words were a slap. I realized in that moment that I had been hearing similar statements my entire life.  My looks had been commented on and dissected for as long as I could remember.  Still weighing 15 pounds more than I had pre-baby, it was an eye opener, further realization that my eyes had been wearing the wrong glasses for my entire life.

Within another year I was back at pre-baby weight. It took nearly 4 years, and ultimately I shed the final pounds when I stopped breastfeeding my daughter at age four and a half.  I was satisfied with this.  I figured I had learned the lesson those four plus years of being bigger than I was used to.  I also thought my eyes could see, that I had learned with a different prescription.  I was learning so much more about life, and unlearning so much other early conditioning, the body image adjustments were simply part of all of it.

Since gradually understanding this, I have noticed that both my parents are still completely fixated on looks and the body. I have wondered what happened to them in their upbringing that this is how they think.  They are raising my brother’s daughter.  She is nearly 5 and somewhat clumsy.  In terms of western ideals of beauty, she is not excessively beautiful or not.  She is an average looking little girl, based on this definition.  Personally, I think she’s darling. Her impish personality shines through in all she does.  However, when my parents visit us, they compare her looks to those of my daughters.  “Isabel is so dainty.  She has such “feminine” features, just like you had and Milla has.  Sara isn’t like that.  Sara is a clod.  She’s so much like her mother.”  Comparisons, comparisons, all based on looks. It’s constant.  During an entire visit I will hear how beautiful Isabel is over and over.  I notice and it feels strange.  I try to direct the conversation elsewhere.  I know my parents.  If I object, they’ll clam up and not visit for a long time and it will be because I was “too critical.” So to keep the peace, I don’t say anything and remember that their visits are infrequent. They will not have the influence on my children that was had on me. But not poor Sara.

In any case, here I am again, post baby at two and a half years. I have begun working with a personal trainer.  I’m struggling to bring my weight back down to that pre-baby level.  It’s not working.  I’m getting a lot stronger, but I’m not getting thinner.  I am still breastfeeding and this may be part of it, but yesterday when working on one of the many moves I struggle through in personal training (oh, it is so much more work at this age than 20), I finally allowed myself to look into the wall of mirrors and see what it is I saw.  I have avoided these mirrors.  When I’m facing them for whatever reason, I will not look at me.  I do not want to see how I look.

Yesterday, I looked.  I realized that the looking was completely uncomfortable, but I forced myself to keep looking.  I realized that my hips are slightly wider than I want them to be, that my breasts are saggier.  I kept looking away, but then told myself, NO.  I looked again.  I stared. I examined my body completely.  I criticized the self there.  Too big, too big, too big, I thought.

Last night and since, I have been thinking about that.  If I saw a woman with the body that I have, I would not think she was too big. I would think she is fine.  Why the double standard for myself?  I simply can’t see physical body as it is.  I then concluded that my eyes cannot see.  They have never been able to see.  It’s another layer of early conditioning I will need to undo.  Our culture makes it much more difficult. My upbringing makes it more difficult. I’m not sure what the result will be for me, but I want to change my eyes so I no longer believe that someone with my shape who is not overweight, is getting physically stronger all over, and is still actually quite athletic is just fine, and that no matter what I weigh, no matter what I look like, it doesn’t really change who I am.

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One More Word on the Page

It is very hard to remain motivated to write when I continuously feel that I am simply not good enough. I realize the issue becomes one of what “good enough” actually is, but I’m constantly reading other writing, always reading so many books, and I see where I lack, and it isn’t a stretch to believe that I’m not good enough. I wish I had known in college what I know now. My participation in creative writing classes would have been so very different. I seemed to get the analytical writing thing pretty quickly, and still feel strong about my abilities in this area, but not so much creatively. I just have nothing against which I can compare except what I read in other books. I know part of why I suspect my fiction writing is not very good is that I’ve given it to many of my friends to read, all of whom are intelligent, capable women, and none of them have said a word. Silence is quite the communicator, and I hear it. Also I’ve submitted some of it for publication or to contests, and have been rejected and have not won anything. It’s disheartening.

I have asked myself why I feel the urge to write and I just can’t come to any simple answer. I just need to, that’s all. This is not helpful. Even when I decide I’m going to give up and never do it again, not much later I’m thinking of something to add to whatever I am currently working on, or something to revise. Maybe it is just habit, but I can’t seem to stop any more than I think I’m not that great. Maybe I’m like the character in the movie Mermaids who wanted to paint, even though his paintings were pretty terrible. Except painting seems more fun than writing. I don’t know.

I wish I could find an editor or some other such person who knew what they were doing in that arena and could tell me how awful my fiction really is. I go to conferences or writer groups or whatever, and it is all about how to persevere through rejection, that J.K. Rowlings was rejected a dozen times before someone discovered her. But at the same time, I have also known people who really are not any good at all and persevere and it seems really pathetic. I guess if the point is to write and not to publish then being terrible doesn’t matter, but as with any artist, I desire an audience, so my quality matters to me. I don’t want to put any more crap out there. The world is so full it already, why add to it?

Anyway, this is my constant struggle. It is always there. I’m not John Irving or Joyce Carol Oates or Stephen King or any of these other writers who can rattle off fabulous book in a matter of months. No. Not me. I have completed one that I know is terrible and needs work, and I am in the middle of another and it doesn’t feel like it’s what I want it to be, and I’m tired. I need motivation, but I don’t know how or where to get it. This is actually a theme in my entire life right now, except for parenting, so maybe I should not be surprised. I just keep plugging on. I don’t think life is supposed to be just plugging on, but it has been that for so long, I accept that thinking it should be something else is perhaps magical thinking. My life has not been like a movie, but I don’t expect it to be. I’ll keep putting one more foot after the other, typing one more word on the page. I’ll finish and then it will be something else.

Maybe I should hire a cheerleader.  Craigslist ad: Needed, cheerleader to come to my house and say rah rah rah, sis boom bah. You can do it!

On second thought, no.

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Time Changes

Baby is perfect. She curls up her arms in sleep, her chin tucked, breaths even, and I want to nestle my face in her hair, breathing her in. She is utterly delightful. I love this baby like nothing else. I loved Milla like that. I still adore her, but it’s different from the crush of baby love. It is more established, the older child love. There is a solidity in her being there. She still lets me snuggle her, but not like the baby does. She doesn’t smell so sweet either. It’s like new marriage versus old, kind of. I love them both, dearly and completely, but the love for Milla has shifted into something like the love of an older marriage.

I have been keeping the self pact to write at least a page a day. It has resulted, every day, in more than one page, which I suppose is a good thing. What is different in the writing of this book from the last one is that I started the narrative knowing where it was going, then I veered off into other pieces. I now have these various pieces written as separate files that I will meld into the main later. Today I finished one of the pieces and had a place for it in the current narrative. What will be harder down the line I think is going through from beginning to end and reading it as one narrative because it is already so familiar. I am afraid I won’t know if there are holes. I need an editor. A good one. I need someone to read it and say This works or This doesn’t or I don’t get this, it needs more information, or You go on too much here, or Move this here. I need someone I can trust who will not criticize because they are not living up to their own potential and want to bring me down, or someone who will not criticize enough because they don’t want to hurt my feelings or they can’t see the flaws. I’ve experienced both. Neither is helpful.

Time for bed. The time change is hurting me. It always does, whether up or down. I wish we could leave our time on the sunny side all year around. I hate the dark winters, nights ending early. I could simply live the daylight time, but the world’s schedule would make this extremely difficult. I’d be at odds with it all the time.

It is time to snuggle the sleeping darling. I get to smell her hair, her skin, her breath. I feel this love for her in my belly. It’s the best way to fall asleep.

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Pointless Rambling Number 24

I have made a pact with myself to write at least one page per day on my book. It seems daunting when I’m not doing it, but when I sit down and start, I usually end up writing more. I guess that is the point of forcing oneself to write regularly, especially in spite of jobs and children. It is satisfying and somewhat overwhelming at the same time. I know what I’m going to say, but when I think of all of it, it makes me feel like a mountain climber at the base of Everest. Good luck with that.

I wish I had a trusted adviser, someone to whom I could turn when things go funny or when I have serious questions about how to live my life. I don’t, really. Have an adviser, I mean. Today there was more added to the conundrum at work. I ended up feeling worse, rather than, if not better, at least the same. This was not satisfying. I don’t want to dwell on it, but there is no one to talk to about it, and I think talking would help take it out of my head somewhat. Maybe that’s the real reason we all pair up, so there is someone at home we can talk to about what is going on in our lives. Too often I have conversations I can’t have with anybody.

My baby has a cold and as a consequence, when she fell asleep this afternoon at 5, she just stayed asleep. She is still sleeping. I tried to wake her up, but she wasn’t interested. She drank more milky and went back to sleep. Three times. Her little nose is stuffed up, poor dear.

Big child is washing the dishes. She is plugged into my ipod and listening to the soundtrack of O Brother Where Art Thou. She is singing songs from it. I suppose that, while I’m dismayed she is plugged in and not having a conversation with a live human (namely, me), she is still listening to something I simply cannot object to. Even more entertaining is the fact that periodically, she calls out a line in a song and gives a little shake to her butt. Down to the river to pray! Butt shake. Oh sinners, let’s go down! Butt shake. Good Lord, show me the way! Butt shake. Priceless.

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Foot Tied

I don’t know why I did it. Curiosity mostly. I could tell from the opening scenes that it was probably a bad idea, but I kept on, waiting to see if it really was as bad as it seemed like it was going to be. Time proved to be no cure for my presumptions. As the thing went on, it only got worse. The sanctimonious preacher became even more of a blowhard. The naughty teen girl became even more frisky. The bad boy lead character became even more BAAAAD!

What is it I’m speaking of? Footloose, the 2011 version. The 1984 movie is certainly not Academy Award material, but it is a testament to the folly of its year. Everything about the 80s begs parody, 1984 was ubiquitous, and Footloose was no exception. Big hair! Big music! Big dancing! Big blowhard politicians setting up the destruction of future decades!

But this version, this 2011 version, has such a self-important air it too begs mockery, but it does so too many years too late. We are living what the 80s wrought. This new Footloose should have changed the title and the names of the main character and put itself out in 1984. It might have been a classic. Now we are too jaded and it’s just too awful. And not only that, the music of Footloose wasn’t really so horrible, but for this version, they took it and “updated” it. WHAT were the producers thinking, that viewers today are stupid? Apparently so, because the thing was released. They got me, for about 15 minutes. That’s all I could take before I shut it off and wrote this.

There is a bright spot in the crap that is this movie. It can be used in B-Movie Bingo! B-Movie Bingo is a game played at the Hollywood Theater near my house. You get a card with various bad movie stereotypes all over it, and then you watch a bad movie. Whenever one of the bad stereotypes shows up onscreen, you mark the square. If you get a line, it’s BINGO!  Soooo much fun. This movie would be PERFECT for B-Movie Bingo. At last, a purpose for this really awful movie beyond another acting job for has been Dennis Quaid. B-Movie Bingo redemption.

Oh, and one other thing. The kid actors in the new Footloose are too young. They look like teenagers. The teenagers in the original Footloose looked like they were pushing thirty. The least they could have done was pay tribute by hiring some 35 year old actors to play teens. Jeez.

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February 29: Leap Day

February 29. Our odd little calendar balancing act. I feel as if I ought to commemorate it in some way. Today is leap day. Rather than take a day away from a 31 month here and there to give February 30 all year round, it gets only 28, but every four years it gets this unusual and special friend. I know it has to do with equinoxes and whatnot, but still. It does seem that it wouldn’t be difficult to let February have 30 days and maybe March and July could share one of their 31s or something, and become 30s, and it wouldn’t mess things up too terribly. Oh well, what do I know. It’s weird, but I always see this day as kind of green and kind of red. February is always red to me, mainly because of Valentine’s Day. Yet Leap Day seems green to me, mainly because of frogs. I associate it with frogs because of the leaping. It could just as well be some lords, but I don’t see them, I see frogs. Okay, I’ll stop.

I still want to move to Australia. I think about it periodically, go look up immigration rules and whatnot, but it’s a pipe dream I know.

My littlest dear is developing language skills so rapidly. Every day she takes it a step further. She can basically communicate nearly anything she wants to. Her words are vividly clear. Mainly at this point she leaves out determiners and prepositions, although sometimes they are there. For instance, she just took her doll to knock on Milla’s bedroom door, and she said, “Baby knock Lala’s door.”  She calls Milla Lala. She can say Milla. She sometimes calls her Mimi. She also sometimes calls her Mimi Lala.  She can say, “Milla.” Then she calls her Lala. I think she likes calling her Lala. We’ve taken to calling her Lala too. It’s sweet.

I found my diary from when Milla was this age. Isabel is quite similar to her sister. She loves counting and referring to things in twos. In my diary I read that Milla, who called her breastfeeding “Milky,” said she had “two milkies,” which meant my two breasts. She would tell me this all the time, just like Isabel now tells me all the time that I have one “Maa maa.” This is what she calls breastfeeding. Maa maa. It sounds like a sheep’s baa baa. I’m Mama and the boobs are Maa maa. Cutie.

Tomorrow is a big day for baby. She starts preschool in the morning, which she’ll go to every Thursday for four hours. Then later in the day she has her first swimming lesson. I expect all will be fun.

I’ve been personal training. It kicks my ass. There is no other way to describe it. I’ve been doing it a month now and I don’t notice that my body is any different. I don’t feel fitter. However I’m able to do many of the exercises with more ease, so the muscles must be strengthening. My trainer pushes me hard. Really hard. He has way more faith in my abilities than I do. He pushes me until my muscles are basically at fail. We do many different strengthening and cardio exercises for the full hour. I vibrate for hours afterwards. Tomorrow I have to go and then go to baby swimming lessons in the evening. I hope I can manage. I expect baby swimming lessons will be low key.

In any case, this is my update to no one. I don’t understand the urge to post goings on in my life in this manner. I have a private diary, but of course I won’t share what I say there here. No.

Time to go take Milla to get a bus pass. Fun stuff.

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Four Years

Four years ago I wrote a post on this blog on Valentine’s Day, and I was happy, at least happyish (if you’re interested, view it here).  I was sitting at the desk in my own house, the one I remodeled by myself into a cozy home for myself, my darling girl, and my animals.  Three of those animals lay beside me on the floor as I wrote. Milla played in the next room, and I wrote my strange post about the history of Valentine’s Day, examining it from an angle I think few have.

In any case, here I am four years later, and I barely recognize that person. Three days after that Valentine’s Day in 2008 I met the man who would become Isabel’s father.  During the months that followed I lost all of my animals.  A year later I was living in New York and barely pregnant.  A year after that I was back in Oregon, changed, somewhat obliterated. Since then it has been a rebuilding of the self, but as if with sand, one grain at a time. I barely even registered Valentine’s Day this year. Oh yeah, I thought the night before. Go to the store and buy the girls something small, and so I did. No rumination. No examination.  Nothing, really, except that I did remember the post four years ago and went back and read it, surprised at myself. I’d forgotten that I made Valentine’s Day presents with Milla, not only that year, but at all.

So much of the time then I was working to force myself to live in the moment. So much of the time now I am, but I feel like most of me is missing. I learned some hard lessons, with the result that I will never choose wrong again–I know that unequivocally. But I have to wonder at what price? Is there something to being in the cave and not knowing? Does not knowing really kill you? I can’t answer that. I must not forget that I was painfully, achingly, desperately lonely a lot of the time then, in a way I’m simply not now. Is it because I’ve stopped being lonely, or simply accepted that aloneness is a function of the human condition? Really accepted it? I don’t know.

I feel like a person who saw a river and jumped in to swim across to climb the mountain on the other side, but had no idea the dangers inherent in the enterprise. I thought I was prepared. I did what I thought would make the journey safe and doable. Yet during the crossing I was sucked into an undertow, and I nearly drowned. I bashed my head and body on rocks. I lost all the possessions I had tried to take with me. Finally, the river spit me out and cast me unconscious on the opposite shore, lying on the beach naked with grains of sand in my hair and my eyes, my body bloodied and scraped; beaten, but not broken. Gradually I dragged myself to my knees and crawled further inland. I waited, then stood. I walked ahead. I killed animals and ate them, making clothing from their hides, something I never would have done on the other side of the river. I kept going. I did not look back until a long time later, and when I did, I was up the side of the mountain, and there in the valley below was the river, appearing so serene, winding off toward the horizon. I was there, I think, and now I am here.

I know this metaphor is cliche’, but it fits. I feel like I’m still climbing the mountain, but I don’t even know what it was I’m trying to get to, except the pinnacle, and I wonder whether any of it was worth it. If I ever had to cross a river again, the journey would be very different. I wouldn’t even start at the same bank. I would take different tools. I might even choose a different river. I learned, but now I don’t know why.

I’ve spoken to my counselor about this, whether it is better to just stay in the cave. She reminds me that staying in the cave would result in making the same ill-fated choices, and of the reasons why making different choices will be better. Perhaps she is right. But sometimes I miss feeling the contentment I felt that Valentine’s Day, even if it was often countered with hideous, pitiable lows. Maybe there isn’t any better, there just is. That was how it was. This is how it is. Each has positives and negatives. In any case, I can’t change what has gone before so I might as well settle into how things are, which means that instead of a quippy, interesting post like the one I wrote 4 years ago, I write this.

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Who is Someone?

I don’t like it when people are secretive about who they are, at least when they are following me.  So who are you, Someone? Someone’s email address is yawsimon33@yahoo.com.  I know that much.  Why would anyone want to stalk my blog without admitting who they are?  I have some sociopaths in my past who have stalked me before.  They can’t get a life and so they bother me electronically periodically.  I also suspect a person I know through work, and a previous client.  Creepy. There is something creepy and weird about stalkers who won’t admit who they are, yet want to know what I am up to.  Guess what? weird stalker.  I don’t write about you.  I don’t give a damn about you. Yeah, I don’t like it that you are too chicken shit to own up to your identity, but beyond that, you don’t mean anything in the scheme of things.  So go ahead and read my blog.  More power to you.

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Mishappen

I got Isabel a new book called My Very First Book of Shapes.  The problem is, it’s not her very first book of shapes.  I wonder if in misleading her thus, I am causing her mind to become misshapen, let alone her understanding of what it really means to be first.

It’s a conundrum.

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Bipedal Sun Brain

I’m trying not to be grouchy. I’m trying not to react to a coworker who, in his own fear spiral, lashed out at me yesterday. I’m trying not to scream at the workers next door who decided to vibrate my house this morning at 7:15 a.m. with their power tools.  I’m trying.  It’s not working so well.  I lay in bed this morning thinking of all sorts of responses to the coworker.  I even began drafting an email in my head, but I reminded myself that I did not want to get sucked into his thing.  Still not satisfying.  I asked the workers next door to close the windows to the house so that it wasn’t so obnoxiously loud, and they did.   Now I can hear the noise, but it isn’t vibrating my house. My little one is next door playing in her bedroom, talking to her toys.  This squelches some of the grumpiness. Mainly it’s just this damn grey weather.  We had sun for a few days and I started feeling normal again, but then the last two days, we have this droopy, cloud on the ground, grey colorlessness, and my bitterness returns.  For someone of Scandinavian descent, I certainly don’t manage winter well.  I have often wondered whether humans were meant to live in such weather.  If we evolved in the deserts of Africa, maybe our brains are designed for that sort of light. Of course at that time we also moved an average of 12 miles per day, on our own legs.  Now it’s lucky if we move 1000 feet in one day on our own legs. Bipedal sun brains. Anyway, the grouchy isn’t completely gone; it’s beaten back for a while. Baby is coming to see me. That should help.

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Nail Clippers

I just found some of Autumn’s nail clippers and felt a pang at the thought that these clippers could survive, but my dog didn’t.  It seems unfair somehow, that this meaningless hunk of plastic and metal gets to be here and she does not. It’s such a strange feeling. I wonder if some of humanity’s desire to accumulate things comes from some underlying desire to have something that remains when we are no longer here.

My first inclination upon seeing the clippers was that I wanted to toss them in the trash; they are old and dull. Then I remembered that I had used them on Autumn, that they are one of the few things remaining that touched her, and I left them in the bag in the cupboard. It is the same with the last dish from which she drank water. The dish was a glass bowl from the kitchen where I rented office space. I had to take Autumn with me to work the day she died. An unpleasant consequence of working for oneself is that there is no one to take over when you have people coming in to see you on the day you awaken to your dog lying in a pool of neon-green ooze flowing from her bottom. I took her to work with me and laid her on a blanket beside my desk. I brought her water in that glass dish from the kitchen. She took some small sips from it. The next day when I returned, after Autumn was gone and her body buried in my friend’s yard 80 miles south of me, I saw that bowl and sobbed silently, tears running down my cheeks in rivulets. I brought the bowl home and I’ve kept it ever since, boxed along with other keepsakes, carried from one edge of the continent to the other when I moved to New York and then back to Oregon. Autumn’s tongue caressed that bowl; I can’t let it go even though it isn’t her, doesn’t even represent her. It’s just something else that got to touch her, something that may carry a molecule of her, and if that’s all I get, I’ll take it.

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We Need to Band Together

Fighting the tea party, fighting other religions or non-religions, fighting anyone who doesn’t agree with our views just keeps us all form pointing to the real causes of our collective global crises.  Follow the money, and in every case you’ll end up at the big bankers, who seek global domination.  They are succeeding and we help them when we are polarized against each other.

Get informed, speak up, and connect with others.

Bank locally.

Buy and invest responsibly and locally.

Audit the federal reserve.

Keep the internet fair and open.

Support independent media.

Support organic, non GMO farming.

Require election and campaign finance reform.

Advocate for renewable and free energy.

Bring integrity and healing to our current condition.  Limit government control to the protection of individual rights and the commons.  Live solely by voluntary cooperation: Rules, but no rulers.

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STORM OF THE CENTURY!!

I don’t have a television, so I can’t watch the local news. It’s unfortunate. I miss out, I’m sure. I have little doubt that today I’m missing out on the STORM OF THE CENTURY!! There are pitiful snowflakes mixed with rain coming down in Portland. It’s barely at freezing and there isn’t enough precipitation to create any snow of any substance, but I’ll bet anything the local news stations have camped out at the highest elevations, looking for that razor thin layer of snow to indicate it’s sticking and a tiny flurry of flakes in order to justify standing outside in their perfectly matched snow bunny outfits to warn us all about the STORM OF THE CENTURY!! They probably also found some moron who drove too fast on a curve and whacked into a tree to warn us just how “dangerous it is out there, Bob, and back to you.” And back at the station, “Yes, be very careful. This storm will cause very dangerous conditions.  Very dangerous.  The world is full of danger. Watch out.  Don’t go out.” It must be thrilling for the local newscasters to live in a state where snow is a major news item. They’d poop their drawers if anything ever really did happen.  I guess they would be prepared.

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Life is Like That

I often think of new little products, waiting patiently in their boxes to be used. They’re so new and orderly. Pick me! Their calmness and order seems to say as they lie there in their box, waiting to be chosen. They have been waiting their entire life for use, and here you are, choosing. Will it be me? Their orderliness seems to ask.

I wonder whether a pantyliner or other hygiene product really wants to be used. They might think it’s what they want, getting out of that box or off that shelf. A new home! But then they come to realize that their use isn’t necessarily something desired. It results in the trash can or the sewer or the landfill.

I suppose a pantyliner or other hygiene product has no idea that being placed in someone’s crotch or in an armpit or between toes is a bad thing. They have no other existence to compare theirs to. Although the pantyliner might. It meets the underwear and thinks, Oh, a friend. A different sort of friend. Then the pantyliner gets covered in goo and is tossed in the trash, and the underwear gets to stay. It’s not fair on some level, but life is like that. You get to be a professor. She gets to be a mother. He gets to be an electrician. Someone is born and starves in Africa. Another is born and is obese in America. We are all on our different journeys. This really is simply how life is.

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I’m Glad I’m not from a Crime Syndicate Family

I’m so glad I wasn’t born into a crime syndicate family.  I suppose had I been born into a crime syndicate family that perhaps I might not be aware how much the stress of the violence and constant disruption was harming me

I’m sitting here typing this and it sounds like a cat is growling outside my window.  However I got up (got cold) and went and stood out there, but couldn’t hear anything.  I leaned over to determine whether the moaning sounds might be some kind of deep whistle emanating from Isabel in her sleep, but it wasn’t.  No.  Definitely sounds like cat moan.  I have no idea what it could be that I can hear it in my house and not outside, which is where it would have to be.  I even checked upstairs and in the basement.  Silence.  Distraction.

My primary point isn’t the cat moan.  It is supposed to be my gratitude that I’m not from a crime syndicate family.  My family had enough problems without adding the stress of constant crime and murder and disappearing relatives and all that.  I’ve spent most of my adult life reconnecting the disconnected parts of myself, becoming whole, examining patterns from the past and working to change blind spot reactions and all that.  The result is that I’m beginning to see the splits all around me.  If I had been born into a crime syndicate family (I’m going to call it a CSF for short), I likely would not have these insights without having experienced some incredible trauma, and even then, it would have been really difficult.  In this regard, I’m so grateful to my family for only traumatizing me a little bit, in their own blind-spot way.

If I had been born into a CSF, I probably would have had to go live in Australia or some kind of witness protection program.  That would be rough in any circumstance, but imagine it from the perspective of a person who grew up in a CSF.  You have no normal moral compass.  You realize something is wrong, turn against the family, and have to be put into witness protection, whereby you are forced to live in some other place with strangers, etc., and act like a normal person, only you aren’t.  You’re used to seeing people handle problems with revenge and whatnot. Someone cuts in front of you in line at the grocery and you want to knock them in the head and throw them in the trunk, but you can’t, or you might get put in jail, whereupon the family would have you killed for turning snitch. Or the head hitting and trunking might end up on the news, at which point your protection isn’t so secret anymore.  Being in witness protection as one raised in a CSF is simply fraught with peril.  Perhaps there is some moral code if you grew up with the boss, and could see when the boss was lenient or whatever.  But what if you grew up in one of the lesser families, one where revenge and drug use were rampant.  Maybe because you were allowed to watch movies or something and you could see that others weren’t like your family.  Or maybe because a school teacher or counselor was kind to you, you figured out there was an alternative, but really you have no idea.  Or worse, you just turn against the family to save your own ass from jail.  Real issues there.  And then you get to go into witness protection.  That would be tough. It really isn’t something I would want in my life, that’s for sure.

I got this all typed up and then I was typing up the tags and picked “Crime syndicate family,” but I’ll bet I’m the only person with that tag on any posts.  That would be cool.  The only person in the whole wide world with CSF for a tag.  Awesome.

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Virtually Useless Post

This is one of those extra special posts where I say virtually nothing and put it in a blog post.  Come to think of it, isn’t that what all of my blog is, actually?  I’m gradually discovering that I have nothing of any value to impart via the written word.  Nonsense, nonsense, all of it.  This is not an attempt to fish for compliments from my friends, but truth.  Really, going back through every single post, if none of it had been posted, no one would be any the worse for it, except maybe for the Pure Med Spa posts, and that was a complete accident.  Happenstance.  Fortuity.  Anyone could have gone online and bitched about Pure Med Spa and it would have been them to whom all the traffic on the issue would have been directed.

Anyway, all this was a sidetrack. What I really wanted to say was that I have the most adorable little dog in the world.  I love the adoration of dogs.  I love how they pick you and you’re their person, which means you’re the one they follow when you get up to go in the bathroom or the kitchen or across the room.  I love how when I climb into my bed, for whatever reason, little Ava isn’t far behind.  And even as annoying as it can be, I love her shrieky little bark and licking.  I wish she would not lick most of the time, but it’s her, and therefore I love it. I hold her little face in my hands and ruffle the bed head fur on her puppy head, and completely melt. Keeping a dog like this one is like having a baby around all the time.  Having my baby around all the time is joy in and of itself as well, so the combination of the two of them makes life pretty sweet a lot of the time.

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More Stupid Things I’m Thinking

Yes, unfortunately, there are more.  It’s how I roll.  Stupid thoughts running in and out all the time.  For instance, tonight the local bankruptcy bar in which I practice held a CLE, a thing to go to and learn legal things, continuing legal things.  Hence the C in the CLE. A judge, a court rep, and a couple of trustees instructed us on the ins and outs of the new bankruptcy rules.  Good times.  After they invited us for snacks and drinks.  I thought, free snacks?  Sure.  Social hour with adults. Why not?

Well.  I never feel more a fish out of water than when I attend lawyer functions.  I am terrible at small talk and stand around feeling self-conscious.  Stick me in a room full of lawyers and judges and theoretical “peers” and I simply feel, well, peerless.  I’m terrible at it.  If there are issues to discuss, cases to analyze, things to talk about with a question to argue, basically communicating with the same people in my job, then I’m fine.  But take any of that away and I’m just pathetic.  I stand there holding a drink and feeling foolish.  I think things like, “I’m standing here thinking this,” and “My pantyhose are too tight,” and “I can feel my ears,” and also sometimes things like thinking another lawyer is hot, although tonight that didn’t happen.  I was too sidetracked by the tight panty hose.

Today while I was getting dressed, I posted a status update on facebook that said, I go for lawyer, I end up librarian. This about sums up how I am as a lawyer overall.  I’m not suave; I’m frumpy.  I actually asked a judge tonight whether he would kick back a brief because of bad grammar because I have gotten some really awful briefs from lawyers with terrible grammar and thought to  myself that if I were a judge I would send back a brief for bad grammar.  He kind of paused as he answered, “Well, um…” And I knew the answer was no. He probably realized in that moment that perhaps I wasn’t a normal person, but he did seem a bit tipsy, so that might have helped my case a bit.  I like it when most of the people at such a function start to take on a bit more alcohol then they probably should. Then I figure they aren’t going to remember my standing there like an idiot holding some glass and repeatedly crossing and uncrossing my legs because my feet hurt, and not because I have to go to the bathroom.

I’m not sure why this is.  When I was first a lawyer, it was lack of confidence. I had no experience and felt like everyone around me had tons.  Now I don’t feel inexperienced. In fact I feel quite confident about my practice skills for the most part, and I don’t care when I don’t know.  I just call someone up and ask.  No big deal.  It isn’t that I don’t have anything in common with anyone either. There are people in this group with whom I have enough in common to manage a conversation, and some of them interest me quite a bit.  I really want to know about what they do.  I just don’t schmooze well, and a lot of legal activities seem to be all about just that.  Ah, such is life.

Tonight Isabel pooped on her bed.  I have been letting her run around with a diaper because she has never pee-peed or poo-pooed anywhere except in her diaper or her potty.  Tonight I think the poop surprised her.  I heard her holler from her room, POOP!  I went in there and low and behold, that is exactly what had taken place.  She looked surprised and kind of scared, sitting there with a little turd on the bed and stuck to her bottom.  Okay, honey, I said, I’ll clean it up.  I was laughing so hard, I could hardly breathe, especially because I was trying to do it without her knowing I was doing it and it was strangling me.  Poor little pooper!  I got her all cleaned up and she helped me put on a new diaper and then take her bedspread to the washing machine.

On New Year’s Eve, I had the opportunity to venture outside my comfortable inner NE Portland bubble and visit the suburbs.  My friend Rita invited me to a party at her friend’s house.  Why not?  I could bring the baby. We could hang out, bring a small hostess gift, and then head home after.  My other option was movies at home on the computer after Isabel went to sleep. Not so fun.  Life is kind of boring around here when Milla is gone.  No one is around for me to boss around.

So out into the land of McMansions I trekked.  Rita asked me to meet her over at her neighbor’s house because she was picking up her son.  I parked at Rita’s house and bundled Isabel in her coat before trundling to the neighbor’s white colonial.  Bundled and trundled. The door bore the words WE_COME.  The L was curled up so it looked like a little dash.  I knocked and waited.  From within the house I could hear the sounds of children running and hollering.  A moment later, Rita’s son answered the door, followed closely by Rita, carrying another son.  Immediately in front of me were stairs up to the second floor of the house.  Each stair displayed a word or an inspirational saying in different fonts and letter sizes.  LOVE.  KEEP Faith ALIVE.  HOPE. God ANSWERS those who ask.  Okay, I thought.  Not my decor choice, but whatever.

Rita introduced me to the neighbor and we headed back over to her house.  Inside, I noticed Rita had Faith, Hope, Love in stick-on letters on her dining room wall.  Hmmm.  I thought nothing more of it.  We changed diapers, gathered diaper bags, bundled up children further, and headed out to drive over to the friend’s for the party. It was nearing 10 and we needed to get going.

I followed Rita’s Highlander as we drove out of her neighborhood onto a main road.  A half mile up the main road, we turned and drove along a road with countryside on one side and houses on the other.  We turned and turned and turned again. Mostly the roads stayed partially housed and partially country.  Rita lives in Washington county.  It is my opinion of Washington county that its perspective is to cover every available green space with a building, so it was actually quite refreshing that this countryside had not been tainted.  The night was clear and the moon was bright, so I was able to see the grayed landscape.

Finally we drove into a neighborhood.  Neighborhoods like the one we were driving into are popular in Hillsboro.  I think it is Intel; its base is there.  These neighborhoods are filled with houses that nearly obliterate their lots.  They are mostly snout houses, meaning the primary feature one notices when looking at them is their rather large garages.  We passed several such houses with three garages.  Who needs three garages? I thought to myself as we twisted and turned, twisted and turned.  Every house looked the same to me.  I would never have been able to find my way there if I had been alone.  Rita used to live in a neighborhood like this one, back when she was married to a man who worked at Intel.  I kind of pride myself on my ability to find my way and that I rarely get lost, but every single time I visited Rita when she lived in that neighborhood, I made at least one wrong turn.  It was uncanny.

In any case, eventually we arrived at a whole lot of cars and I knew the party could not be far.  We parked and walked a block to a nondescript suburb house.  Very large. Very snouty.  The cars were parked outside, which I later learned was because the garage had been turned into a storage facility.  Maybe that’s the purpose of the many and large garages, storage!  Fill your garage with things you never use and won’t see just in case someday you might need them, but you won’t know you have them so you’ll buy more of the thing you can’t find, use it once, then lose it in the garage again.  I get it!

I digress.

The point of this little tale is that upon entering, the very first thing I noticed was that all over the walls, in between the photos and floral hangings, were more stick-on, inspirational sayings!  Lots of them.  A little lightbulb popped on above my head right in that moment and I realized that this must be the in suburb thing.  I’m really out of the loop about in things, and I’m especially out of the loop about in suburban things.  I wondered, standing there, whether my many suburban Vancouver and Washougal and Camus had special sayings on their walls.  Probably.  Wow, I’m not in.  But I knew that.  I think about my pantyhose at lawyer functions, what the hell would I know about inspirational writings on suburban walls?

Now it is time to go to bed.  Isabel has been very patient as I write this.  Milla has been hiding in her room.  She came down to sit on my bed and scold Isabel because Isabel wants to touch Milla’s homework and Milla doesn’t want her to, but rather than ask nicely or move to a place the baby can’t get to, Milla is acting all teenagery.  Get a grip, Milla. Now baby wants to be on my lap.  I have to brush my teeth.  The stupid thoughts will just have to hang out in my head for now.

 

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Stupid Things I’m Thinking

These are some stupid things I’ve been thinking about recently.  As I’m sitting here thinking of these things to write down, there are quite loud bangs going on outside. I’m not sure what the bangs are for, as it is not near midnight. However the sorts of people who seem to find fulfillment in loud noises are probably also the sorts to find that fulfillment at whatever time of day. They are just glad of the excuse for a holiday with which to cause extreme vibrations to reverberate through the air.  I hope actually that this is what it is, because I would hate that these noises are caused by a shotgun or a canon or a home invasion or something of that ilk.  This would be not good.

My cat is bulimic.  If she’s gone bulimic to lose weight, it’s not working: she’s fat. Actually, the truth isn’t that she is bulimic, but that she is an irrepressible glutton who gorges on her food and doesn’t bother chewing it. This causes her to vomit all of it back up, whereupon she heads back immediately to the food dish for more.  I have begun to believe she was a starving alley cat in a past life or something, the way she eats. And she has always been that way, for as long as I have known her, which has been since she was six weeks old.  Glutton.  Bulimic glutton.

It used to be when I typed in WordPress, I could option delete back to delete an entire word.  They have changed something and now I can’t do that.  I must write to support and ask why because it is really annoying not to be able to do it.

About a month and a half ago, there was a story in the Oregonian about how personal care and cosmetic products are basically unregulated.  It cited many multiple ingredients in these products that can give you cancer and ultimately kill you.  A spokesperson for the industry was quoted as saying that the industry does not need to be regulated because the products are all safe; no one has gotten sick or died from personal care products.  The Oregonian left it at that. I thought the reporter should have pushed this point, although the article was probably written by the AP and not a human here and reporting in that manner is pretty shoddy.  In any case, this statement was pure foolishness.  All sorts of cancers have increased exponentially.  Breast cancer continues to increase.  Autism is at an all-time high.  We have millions of people with all sorts of increasing physical ailments putting known toxins into their bodies by an industry that is virtually unregulated, and their representative claims there is no evidence these products cause harm?  How about some long term studies to back up that claim, hmmm?  That would be nice.

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Lara Fauth

When I was in college I rode on the University of Oregon equestrian team.  We were all women and as is often the case with groups of women, there were arguments and disagreements that in retrospect seem juvenile and stereotypically female.  In spite of this, I still remember one team member as a complete reprobate and have less than fond memories of one of the others. However, one of the team members has since become one of my dearest and closest friends.  You win some, you lose some.

For some reason I cannot articulate, last night while expunging Christmas decorations from my home, I suddenly remembered one of the women I rode with. I remembered her with fondness and wondered what had become of her.  Of course I jumped online and searched her name and made some discoveries as to her whereabouts.  I’m hoping I can connect with her.

In any case, this got me thinking about the people I knew in college.  What with Facebook and this blog and my firm website, with little effort, if anyone wants to find me, they can.  I wondered then, why there is a whole group of people from my past who have not turned up as requesting my friendship or via emails and whatnot.   Then it dawned on me.  Duh, Lara.  For five years, I had a different last name.  Anyone searching for Lara Fauth wouldn’t find much at all.  I changed my name back to my maiden name of Gardner as soon as I got divorced in 1999, which is before the ability to locate one’s former friends and acquaintances online became so ubiquitous.

I’m not sure anyone has looked for me.  I searched for Lara Fauth and found a site linking Lara Gardner to that name, so it’s probable that if someone wanted to find me, they could.  But I did have to look in the site to make the connection, it wasn’t just sitting there on the search page in google.  The idea occurred to me that if I put the old name in my blog, if someone searched for that name, they would find me, and so that is what this is.  It’s an attempt to put my old name on a site linking to my new name, so that if anyone who knew me while I was married ever wanted to find me, they could search Lara Fauth and perhaps this page would show up.  It can’t hurt to try.

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True Confession

I must confess I spend too much time trying to get the lowest score possible on Yukon. It’s a bad deal.

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Isabelli Bear

Today when opening gifts, with every gift that Isabel opened, she removed the bow and placed it either on her head, my head, or Milla’s head.  It was darling. I love my girls.

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Laments

Alone. Alone. I spent most of Christmas alone. Milla went to her dad’s and Isabel went with her dad and I didn’t have either of them for about 5 hours. Last week when I was stressed I looked forward to the break, but I’ve had some time to relax a little and I was bored without them. I went to a movie and went for a walk with the dog. What was different in my aloneness this time is that I wasn’t achingly lonely, desperate for my life to be different. This is a huge shift from a few years ago, before my last relationship, when I would stand in my shower with my head on the tiles of the wall and sob.

As I walked along I thought about the fact that I’m spending no time at all with my parents, not even trying to maintain the charade we’ve kept up for the last 2 decades, and I was glad of it.  It was so much simpler not pretending that I gave a shit.  I was glad to be free of the resentment that every year my little family is given short shrift. A couple of years ago my mom stopped even pretending to try and see us on Christmas. My sister has been so relentless about everything being on her terms, even to the point that for years she would find out when I wanted my mom to visit me and then make sure that this was the time she asked my mom to visit her. I started keeping it a secret just so she wouldn’t know, but then that left my mom wondering and unable to schedule, and of course anytime I would allude to what I thought was going on, the denials would take over. So many years of me and my girls being the bottom of the priority list. If anything good has come of this backing out of any semblance of a relationship, it is the end of losing the argument over who gets my mother.  My sister won. And it isn’t even me being sour grapes about it; I honestly don’t care. I have nothing in common with my mother, nothing to talk about of any substance, so there isn’t anything to miss or be sour grapes about. Our conversations are empty.  There are long silences. I can’t talk about my life because she just doesn’t get it. My mom won’t talk about politics, or world events, or constitutional issues, or the kinds of movies I see, or the kinds of books I read, or any of it. And honestly, I don’t really like the kinds of movies she sees or the books or magazines she reads either. It isn’t all one way. I am just as disinterested in her interests as she is in mine. My mother is desperate to pretend the world is a perfect place. She sees movies that are so sappy and cloying, they make me want to vomit. She reads the Bible and books about how to be a good Christian, and I’m an atheist. I like The New Yorker. She likes Guideposts. She wishes I wouldn’t discuss the problems our world is facing  or rail against greedy bankers, even if she agrees with the sentiment, and that everyone would just get along.

Me too, Mom, me too, but life is not a Rockwell painting. If she knew me at all she would know how deeply I lament the complexity of the mess this world is in.  If she knew me at all she would know so much more about me than she does. I suppose it is probably a good thing, but she doesn’t even know I write this blog, and I’ve done so for years. I believe she doesn’t want to know me. She has avoided who she thinks I am for years, and the only reason I can come up with is that I scare the shit out of her, and that’s too bad.  She doesn’t even know the simple things. Grey has been one of my favorite colors to wear for several years now.  Last year she was going to give me some gift of an item of clothing, but said she did not because it was grey, and “Lara doesn’t wear grey.” Um, yeah, I do, I told her, marveling at how little she knows even the simple things.

With every failed relationship except the last one, she blamed me for the breakup, even when she had no idea what happened.  She thought I should have been less independent and more devoted to the man, and that if I had taken better care of all of them, they wouldn’t have left, as if it was always so simple, always my fault alone, and always that they left. She doesn’t consider leaving a miserable relationship, so she can’t conceive that I would do just that. Funny how you can love someone and not really like them that much.

You know, the thing I’ve noticed about spending so much time alone, never having any conversations of depth with anyone, is that I find when I am with people, I have very little to say.  It’s as if in failing to find relationships of the depth I crave, I’ve lost the capacity to have them.  I don’t think that’s true, but it sure seems that way sometimes.

I am too much alone.  I can be surrounded by people in my job or through the computer, but I am still alone. Blah blah blah all day at work, but nothing is really a meaningful conversation, the kind that nourishes my soul. I speak with people, but our words have no depth, and I am still alone. Of late, I can’t find anyone with whom to have these kinds of conversations. I think though,  that this situation has more to do with not knowing how to meet people who have these sorts of conversations.

I saw an amazing movie called The Artist.  It was a silent film about a silent film actor and what becomes of him when talkies take over.  It was utterly brilliant.  I could have discussed that film with someone for hours, but there is no one to talk to. I saw another great movie called Hugo with Milla. The two of us had a lot to say, and I loved discussing it with her, but I could have had even deeper conversations about that film as well, but there is no one to talk to.

I read The New Yorker. I devour The New Yorker. It is filled with amazing articles, but I have no one to discuss them with. I have one friend who reads The New Yorker, but he’s married with a small child and he doesn’t have time to discuss things like that with me. None of my other friends have those kinds of conversations, even if they do read the same things I do or see the same kinds of movies. If they do have those kinds of conversations, they certainly aren’t having them with me.

I read a eulogy by Ian McKellan about Christopher Hitchens.  It described their last days together, how they dissected films and books, and I felt my insides move with desire for those kinds of conversations, friendships with that kind of depth. But I have no clue how to get them. None. I have thought and thought about it, but I don’t know how. I don’t do the right job. I don’t move in the right circles. I don’t have friends who have those kinds of conversations. I’m starving.

This was supposed to be a writing about being glad I’m not pretending Christmas needs to be with my parents, but it’s gone to a darker place. I feel too sloth-like, too fat, too alone. The intellectual part of my head says This too will pass, but another part, a darker part, thinks This is how it is for you.  No one except Milla and Isabel would even notice if you were gone.

Reading back through this, it drifted inperceptibly into self-pity, as if I’m really desperately lonely, but it’s not true.  On some level I think I was supposed to feel lonely because it was Christmas, but actually, except for our rushed festivities with one another in the morning, it was just like any other day (we had to rush because Milla had to be at the airport by 11).  The only real difference between this day and others was that Milla left and that always causes some melancholy to float through me.  Those days always end slightly empty, whether they are Christmas or not.  In any case, I’m fine.  No self-pity here.  I’m going to snuggle my baby and get some rest and tomorrow will be another day.

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Oh, how lovely

I have such sweet and lovely children.  Having a forum to gush over my babies is one of many reasons I enjoy having a blog.  These are Christmas photos I took of the family tonight.

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The Internets Suck Out My Brain

Lately, as the days have shrunk further into darkness, and I feel even stronger the urge to settle deep into the comforters and down rather than getting up and moving around, ideas flicker in and out of my mind.  Clever ideas.  Interesting ideas.  Ideas I used to write and percolate and develop and turn into something for publication.  And yet I realized that I haven’t published anything in a really long time.  I haven’t written anything in a really long time, at least nothing creative for myself.  Oh, I’ve written work briefs and motions, but certainly nothing clever or interesting, and these lack even the slightest modicum of creativity.  I used to write all the time.  Little tidbits here and there would develop fully into ideas worth pursuing.  I’ve been lamenting this, believing it is having a toddler and a 12 year old and a job and being a single mom and all that.  But I did all this writing before while parenting and working and being a single mom.  I didn’t have the baby while I was doing this, but I had a lot more dogs, so I probably broke even in the busy department.  Really I can’t honestly blame these things.  It’s something else.  I had an inkling, but the idea never really germinated into a full fledged acceptance as to the reason for this creative apathy.

Then yesterday, a magazine I subscribe to arrived in the mail.  I was sitting at our dining room table and the mail slid through the slot in the wall next to the table.  Ah, reading material, I thought with a gleam in my eye.  I’m something of a reading addict.  I barely spend a moment without some grouping of words nearby to fill my brain.  The New Yorker is my favorite.  It comes frequently enough and with enough material to satisfy.  This was another, Poets & Writers.  I’ve only recently subscribed and this was my second issue. The first issue brought me a useful article, something I had been thinking about and needed confirmation about from another source. The second had something useful is well.  Good subscription choice, I thought to myself.

The cover proclaimed all sorts of stories that dealt with this issue I’ve been facing of never writing much anymore, never developing these creative ideas that flit in and out of my brain like sparrows flying through the treetops but never landing.  I immediately turned to the page with the article and read the author’s description of me.  He isn’t a working single mother, but he is a working writer father and he has been for some time.  It wasn’t this life that was sucking away his creative force, it was the internet, and the iPhone, and Facebook, and all these millions of distractions.  He described how so many writers have to work on computers disconnected from all this connection to get any work done.  Oh, ah ha! my brain cried. This is it.

I knew this.  It was when I got the iPhone that my productivity slowed to a crawl.  Since Facebook was added to the iPhone, my productivity has all but ceased.  I used to write at least a blog post a day, sometimes even more.  I haven’t done that in so long I can’t even remember.  Now I have an idea, I might write it as a status update on Facebook, and then that’s all there is to it.  On to the next thing. Nothing germinates.  Nothing grows.  Nothing becomes fully formed.  And most of the time I don’t even bother getting to writing down the point because I open the Facebook and see an article, read the article, pass the article on, then read the next article, or the next status update of a friend, respond or share, then on.  Then it’s 48 minutes later, I’ve done nothing of lasting creative effect, nothing that satisfies, and the time to do it is gone.

I have been feeling a strange, how do you say it? Dissatisfaction.  Yes, that’s it.  I’ve been feeling dissatisfaction with my iPone lately.  Even before reading this article, I’ve been annoyed with the thing.  The flat screen drives me to distraction.  I’m constantly bumping it and doing something like calling a client who recently called me, and who I did not want to talk to.  I rapidly hang up and hope my number didn’t show up on their screen. Or I’ll graze the glass with my wrist and bring up stock quotes.  Who the fuck cares about stock quotes?  Damn, that is one feature on an iPhone I’ll bet 99% of us could give a shit about.  Seriously Jobs, most of us don’t care.  I’ve been longing for buttons.  I want to feel the satisfying click click under my fingertips as I dial or type something.  And then there is the pain in my arm and wrist from typing on my iPhone.  It hurts.  All the time.  My right arm has golf elbow from using the damn thing.

Ooh, I just realized I spent the last half hour writing instead of surfing Facebook.  I might not have been writing anything clever or creative, but it wasn’t surfing uselessness, so that’s a start.

In any case, my iPhone has been giving me fits and I’ve toyed with the idea of getting rid of it and getting just a phone.  The thought gives me a panic.  It reminds me of going to Europe.  The first couple of days when I could not access the data portion of my phone, I had these mini panics.  It’s like some portion of my brain has come to depend on the instant gratification of looking and seeing that no one has called me.  No one has emailed me.  Oh yes.  I got the same political emails I get every day.  They are a let down. It’s like waiting for the phone to ring when you have a crush on someone, then discovering a salesperson on the other end of the line.  All these things we’ve created for instant gratification when it comes to contact from our friends.  Even in Facebook, the first thing I go to is the little red number in the top-right-hand corner of my iPhone to see what the notifications are.  Was it someone actually writing to me?  Oh no.  Just someone liking a link.  What a shame.

I’ve got to get off this train.  I have to somehow disengage from this iPhone and internet dragging me away from my creative work.  Even this morning, when I first sat down to do this, the WordPress page beckoned with its many new features.  I wanted to surf away and figure out what they are.  Distractions.  Distractions all.  Artists forever have had to deal with distractions, but never before, I think, have these distractions been so available and insistent.  Even more discipline is required to keep them at bay. I can’t stop the job.  I can’t push away my children.  But I can work around them as needed–Like right now, Isabel awakened because of my fake sunlight lamp, crawled into my lap, and started nursing.  I can type around that.

But I’m going to have to force myself to ignore the lure of the iPhone and the Facebook and the Internets. They will suck out my brain if I’m not careful.  They already have, to some extent.  I have these ideas percolating and dribbling and wanting expression. I’ve thought of so many ideas for my book I can’t even begin to count.  TextEdit has several pages of notes where I’ve jotted something down, but then I haven’t gotten back into the habit of writing every night.  I was doing it religiously before we went to Europe, and I was happy.  Nothing else was different except I was writing regularly and this made me happy.  Since we got back, school began, I had to catch up on work, the days shortened, we moved, and the iPhone and Facebook and the Internets began sucking at my brain and here I am, nothing further done on the book and desperate to write, and not very happy. I need that outlet for happyish to be a part of my life.  I realized I’m out of practice.  I used to actually practice writing, both here and in other journals.  I haven’t done that. I have to rein in that discipline. Maybe it can be a New Year’s resolution I start now.

Anyway, I can’t think of any clever ending. Isabel is done nursing and it’s time to go to work. So I’m just going to stop. Hopefully I’ll write more again soon if the internets haven’t sucked out my brain.

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This Should Scare Every American

Found here, please watch and share this video.  Click this link to view.

As soon as December 13, the President will sign NDAA Section 1031 into law, permitting citizen imprisonment without evidence or trial. The bill that passed Congress absolutely DOES NOT exempt citizens. The text of Section 1031 reads, “A covered person under this section” includes “any person who has committed a belligerent act”. We only have to be ACCUSED, because we don’t get a trial.

Indefinite Detention of American Citizens: Coming Soon to Battlefield U.S.A.

~ By Matt Taibbi

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/indefinite-detention-of-american-citizens-coming-soon-to-battlefield-u-s-a-20111209#ixzz1gOfaGTZC

There’s some disturbing rhetoric flying around in the debate over the National Defense Authorization Act, which among other things contains passages that a) officially codify the already-accepted practice of indefinite detention of “terrorist” suspects, and b) transfer the responsibility for such detentions exclusively to the military.

The fact that there’s been only some muted public uproar about this provision (which, disturbingly enough, is the creature of Wall Street anti-corruption good guy Carl Levin, along with John McCain) is mildly surprising, given what’s been going on with the Occupy movement. Protesters in fact should be keenly interested in the potential applications of this provision, which essentially gives the executive branch unlimited powers to indefinitely detain terror suspects without trial.

The really galling thing is that this act specifically envisions American citizens falling under the authority of the bill. One of its supporters, the dependably-unlikeable Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, bragged that the law “basically says … for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield” and that people can be jailed without trial, be they “American citizen or not.” New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte reiterated that “America is part of the battlefield.”

Officially speaking, of course, the bill only pertains to:

“… a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.”

As Glenn Greenwald notes, the key passages here are “substantially supported” and “associated forces.” The Obama administration and various courts have already expanded their definition of terrorism to include groups with no connection to 9/11 (i.e. certain belligerents in Yemen and Somalia) and to individuals who are not members of the target terror groups, but merely provided “substantial support.”

The definitions, then, are, for the authorities, conveniently fungible. They may use indefinite detention against anyone who “substantially supports” terror against the United States, and it looks an awful lot like they have leeway in defining not only what constitutes “substantial” and “support,” but even what “terror” is. Is a terrorist under this law necessarily a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban? Or is it merely someone who is “engaged in hostilities against the United States”?

Here’s where I think we’re in very dangerous territory. We have two very different but similarly large protest movements going on right now in the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement. What if one of them is linked to a violent act? What if a bomb goes off in a police station in Oakland, or an IRS office in Texas? What if the FBI then linked those acts to Occupy or the Tea Party?

You can see where this is going. When protesters on the left first started flipping out about George Bush’s indefinite detention and rendition policies, most people thought the idea that these practices might someday be used against ordinary Americans was merely an academic concern, something theoretical.

But it’s real now. If these laws are passed, we would be forced to rely upon the discretion of a demonstrably corrupt and consistently idiotic government to not use these awful powers to strike back at legitimate domestic unrest.

Right now, the Senate is openly taking aim at the rights of American citizens under the guise of an argument that anyone who supports al-Qaeda has no rights. But if you pay close attention, you’ll notice the law’s supporters here and there conveniently leaving out those caveats about “anyone who supports al-Qaeda.” For instance, here’s Lindsey Graham again:

“If you’re an American citizen and you betray your country, you’re not going to be given a lawyer … I believe our military should be deeply involved in fighting these guys at home or abroad.”

As Greenwald points out, this idea – that an American who commits treason can be detained without due process – is in direct defiance of Article III, Section III of the Constitution, which reads:

“No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”

This effort to eat away at the rights of the accused was originally gradual, but to me it looks like that process is accelerating. It began in the Bush years with a nebulous description of terrorist sedition that may or may not have included links to Sunni extremist groups in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But words like “associated” and “substantial” and “betray” have crept into the discussion, and now it feels like the definition of a terrorist is anyone who crosses some sort of steadily-advancing invisible line in their opposition to the current government.

This confusion about the definition of terrorism comes at a time when the economy is terrible, the domestic government is more unpopular than ever, and there is quite a lot of radical and even revolutionary political agitation going on right here at home. There are people out there – I’ve met some of them, in both the Occupy and Tea Party movements – who think that the entire American political system needs to be overthrown, or at least reconfigured, in order for progress to be made.

It sounds paranoid and nuts to think that those people might be arrested and whisked away to indefinite, lawyerless detention by the military, but remember: This isn’t about what’s logical, it’s about what’s going on in the brains of people like Lindsey Graham and John McCain.

At what point do those luminaries start equating al-Qaeda supporters with, say, radical anti-capitalists in the Occupy movement? What exactly is the difference between such groups in the minds (excuse me, in what passes for the minds) of the people who run this country?

That difference seems to be getting smaller and smaller all the time, and such niceties as American citizenship and the legal tradition of due process seem to be less and less meaningful to the people who run things in America.

What does seem real to them is this “battlefield earth” vision of the world, in which they are behind one set of lines and an increasingly enormous group of other people is on the other side.

Here’s another way to ask the question: On which side of the societal fence do you think the McCains and Grahams would put, say, an unemployed American plumber who refused an eviction order from Bank of America and holed up with his family in his Florida house, refusing to move? Would Graham/McCain consider that person to have the same rights as Lloyd Blankfein, or is that plumber closer, in their eyes, to being like the young Muslim who throws a rock at a U.S. embassy in Yemen?

A few years ago, that would have sounded like a hysterical question. But it just doesn’t seem that crazy anymore. We’re turning into a kind of sci-fi society in which making it and being a success not only means getting rich, but also means winning the full rights of citizenship. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t see this ending well.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/indefinite-detention-of-american-citizens-coming-soon-to-battlefield-u-s-a-20111209#ixzz1gOfSwf4F

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Who Took My Mother and Replaced her with a Lunatic?

Tonight while gathering up the boxes of unused holiday decorations to take to the basement, I had the thought that I would like to vacuum, and nearly simultaneously had the thought that I’m so grateful to now have a house again. The thought followed on the heels of the other because when one lives in a house, it is possible to do things like vacuum at 10:30 at night without worrying you will disturb the neighbors. Since selling my house in mid 2008, I have had to concern myself with nearby neighbors who would hear things like vacuuming, or hollering.

It is possible to spend your entire life doing something and not even notice you are doing it. Then one day you notice, and it is as if you are noticing yourself for the first time, wondering what in the world am I doing?

Twice this week I yelled at my Isabel. Yelled at her. I was in the car and she would not stop crying and yelling herself, and I turned and yelled, “Stop yelling!” I then realized immediately my hypocrisy in this statement. Yelling at her to tell her to stop yelling. She was so surprised by my yelling at her that she stopped immediately and stared. I faced forward to drive, then turned back to her and apologized, shamed and sorry. I love my little girl with my whole being. I don’t want to yell at her.

Then tonight, I was sitting in one of the chairs in the living room and begged Milla to push on my back and try to fix the cramp next to my right shoulder blade. It felt as if a rib was out. The pain was relentless, had been gradually increasing all day, and I could hardly bear it any longer. Milla agreed and I laid on the floor. Isabel immediately came and walked on me, her tiny feet making no impression in my skin. So soft, so dear.

Milla walked on the spot and I felt a pop and relief, but wanted more walking because the rubbing felt good to my sore muscles. While she walked, Isabel kept walking too, nearer my head, then she stepped onto the base of my neck and hair. She was wearing shoes with rubber soles and the rubber caught my hair she slid to the side, yanking my hair. I am a thorough tender head, and the pain was immediate and intense.

“Get off!” I screamed. “Get off! Get off now! Both off me now, off off off!”

More lithe and agile, Milla jumped off quickly. Isabel was slower. She slid off and landed on her backside, rolling to her back.

“That hurt!” I yelled at her. “That hurt so much! Don’t walk on my hair!”

Isabel looked at me as if to ask what had happened to her mother. Where had she gone? Who had taken her and replaced her with this screaming banshee? There was no fear in her eyes, only perplexity as she seemed to wonder whether I had gone insane, or had been kidnapped by aliens and replaced by a lunatic. I jumped up and ran to my bed.

Isabel and Milla kept playing. I fell asleep for about 15 minutes and when I woke up, I lay there and wondered what I had become. I don’t want to be a person who yells at my children. Yet I have. I don’t do it often, and this is the first time I have ever done it to Isabel, but I know I have hollered at Milla. It must stop. It’s that simple. I woke up today and saw myself in a way I have not before, not really. Maybe noticing is the key. I think it is.

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The US Government Hands OUR Money to the Banks Who Steal From Us

The US Government hands over OUR tax money to the banks who have driven us to this desperate economic situation that is hurting so many people.  This should cause serious concern.  Regardless of what you think of the Occupy movement, you should care that the government hands off your money to crooks, money that is supposed to be used for our schools, keeping our air and water clean, functional highway systems, and taking care of the needy.  There isn’t any money for any of these things because it has been given away to rich thieves.

See this transcript from the documentation proving these massive bailout transfers.  The original document can be seen here.

Federal Bailouts:  Money for Nothing
~ by Alan Grayson

I think it’s fair to say that Congressman Ron Paul and I are the parents of the GAO’s audit of the Federal Reserve. And I say that knowing full well that Dr. Paul has somewhat complicated views regarding gay marriage.

Anyway, one of our love children is a massive 251-page GAO report technocratically entitled “Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Policies and Processes for Managing Emergency Assistance.” It is almost as weighty as that 13-lb. baby born in Germany last week, named Jihad. It also is the first independent audit of the Federal Reserve in the Fed’s 99-year history.

Feel free to take a look at it yourself, it’s right here. It documents Wall Street bailouts by the Fed that dwarf the $700 billion TARP, and everything else you’ve heard about.

I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I’m dramatizing or amplifying what this GAO report says, so I’m just going to list some of my favorite parts, by page number.

Page 131 – The total lending for the Fed’s “broad-based emergency programs” was $16,115,000,000,000. That’s right, more than $16 trillion. The four largest recipients, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, received more than a trillion dollars each. The 5th largest recipient was Barclays PLC. The 8th was the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, PLC. The 9th was Deutsche Bank AG. The 10th was UBS AG. These four institutions each got between a quarter of a trillion and a trillion dollars. None of them is an American bank.

Pages 133 & 137 – Some of these “broad-based emergency program” loans were long-term, and some were short-term. But the “term-adjusted borrowing” was equivalent to a total of $1,139,000,000,000 more than one year. That’s more than $1 trillion out the door. Lending for these programs in fact peaked at more than $1 trillion.

Pages 135 & 196 – Sixty percent of the $738 billion “Commercial Paper Funding Facility” went to the subsidiaries of foreign banks. 36% of the $71 billion Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility also went to subsidiaries of foreign banks.

Page 205 – Separate and apart from these “broad-based emergency program” loans were another $10,057,000,000,000 in “currency swaps.” In the “currency swaps,” the Fed handed dollars to foreign central banks, no strings attached, to fund bailouts in other countries. The Fed’s only “collateral” was a corresponding amount of foreign currency, which never left the Fed’s books (even to be deposited to earn interest), plus a promise to repay. But the Fed agreed to give back the foreign currency at the original exchange rate, even if the foreign currency appreciated in value during the period of the swap. These currency swaps and the “broad-based emergency program” loans, together, totaled more than $26 trillion. That’s almost $100,000 for every man, woman, and child in America. That’s an amount equal to more than seven years of federal spending — on the military, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the debt, and everything else. And around twice American’s total GNP.

Page 201 – Here again, these “swaps” were of varying length, but on Dec. 4, 2008, there were $588,000,000,000 outstanding. That’s almost $2,000 for every American. All sent to foreign countries. That’s more than twenty times as much as our foreign aid budget.

Page 129 – In October 2008, the Fed gave $60,000,000,000 to the Swiss National Bank with the specific understanding that the money would be used to bail out UBS, a Swiss bank. Not an American bank. A Swiss bank.

Pages 3 & 4 – In addition to the “broad-based programs,” and in addition to the “currency swaps,” there have been hundreds of billions of dollars in Fed loans called “assistance to individual institutions.” This has included Bear Stearns, AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, and “some primary dealers.” The Fed decided unilaterally who received this “assistance,” and who didn’t.

Pages 101 & 173 – You may have heard somewhere that these were riskless transactions, where the Fed always had enough collateral to avoid losses. Not true. The “Maiden Lane I” bailout fund was in the hole for almost two years.

Page 4 – You also may have heard somewhere that all this money was paid back. Not true. The GAO lists five Fed bailout programs that still have amounts outstanding, including $909,000,000,000 (just under a trillion dollars) for the Fed’s Agency Mortgage-Backed Securities Purchase Program alone. That’s almost $3,000 for every American.

Page 126 – In contemporaneous documents, the Fed apparently did not even take a stab at explaining why it helped some banks (like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) and not others. After the fact, the Fed referred vaguely to “strains in the financial markets,” “transitional credit,” and the Fed’s all-time favorite rationale for everything it does, “increasing liquidity.”

81 different places in the GAO report – The Fed applied nothing even resembling a consistent policy toward valuing the assets that it acquired. Sometimes it asked its counterparty to take a “haircut” (discount), sometimes it didn’t. Having read the whole report, I see no rhyme or reason to those decisions, with billions upon billions of dollars at stake.

Page 2 – As massive as these enumerated Fed bailouts were, there were yet more. The GAO did not even endeavor to analyze the Fed’s discount window lending, or its single-tranche term repurchase agreements.

Pages 13 & 14 – And the Fed wasn’t the only one bailing out Wall Street, of course. On top of what the Fed did, there was the $700,000,000,000 TARP program authorized by Congress (which I voted against). The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) also provided a federal guarantee for $600,000,000,000 in bonds issued by Wall Street.

There is one thing that I’d like to add to this, which isn’t in the GAO’s report. All this is something new, very new. For the first 96 years of the Fed’s existence, the Fed’s primary market activities were to buy or sell U.S. Treasury bonds (to change the money supply), and to lend at the “discount window.” Neither of these activities permitted the Fed to play favorites. But the programs that the GAO audited are fundamentally different. They allowed the Fed to choose winners and losers.

So what does all this mean? Here are some short observations:

(1) In the case of TARP, at least The People’s representatives got a vote. In the case of the Fed’s bailouts, which were roughly 20 times as substantial, there was never any vote. Unelected functionaries, with all sorts of ties to Wall Street, handed out trillions of dollars to Wall Street. That’s now how a democracy should function, or even can function.

(2) The notion that this was all without risk, just because the Fed can keep printing money, is both laughable and cryable (if that were a word). Leaving aside the example of Germany’s hyperinflation in 1923, we have the more recent examples of Iceland (75% of GNP gone when the central bank took over three failed banks) and Ireland (100% of GNP gone when the central bank tried to rescue property firms).

(3) In the same way that American troops cannot act as police officers for the world, our central bank cannot act as piggy bank for the world. If the European Central Bank wants to bail out UBS, fine. But there is no reason why our money should be involved in that.

(4) For the Fed to pick and choose among aid recipients, and then pick and choose who takes a “haircut” and who doesn’t, is both corporate welfare and socialism. The Fed is a central bank, not a barber shop.

(5) The main, if not the sole, qualification for getting help from the Fed was to have lost huge amounts of money. The Fed bailouts rewarded failure, and penalized success. (If you don’t believe me, ask Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan.) The Fed helped the losers to squander and destroy even more capital.

(6) During all the time that the Fed was stuffing money into the pockets of failed banks, many Americans couldn’t borrow a dime for a home, a car, or anything else. If the Fed had extended $26 trillion in credit to the American people instead of Wall Street, would there be 24 million Americans today who can’t find a full-time job?

And here’s what bothers me most about all this: it can happen again. I’ve called the GAO report a bailout autopsy. But it’s an autopsy of the undead.

Courage,

Alan Grayson

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Century Link is Still Qwest and Still Shit

A little over a week before moving into my new house, I called the power company to set up service with them.  They offered to help me “explore my options” with different internet companies.  Because I am not thrilled with Comcast as a company, I decided to explore these options.  The person who helped me claimed I could get a better deal with Century Link.  I was skeptical.

Several years ago, over a series of months, I wasted more hours than I care to count on the phone with Qwest discussing the multiple issues I had with their DSL service.  Ultimately an electrician from their company got me a huge refund for several months’ worth of service I did not receive because the wiring to my house had been so old it wasn’t capable of managing the service I was supposed to have.

When Mr. Power Company Helper Guy urged me to switch, I was more than reluctant.  However, he assured me that more had changed than the name, and that I could get blazing fast internet for about $20 less a month than I was paying Telecommunication Monopoly, I mean Comcast.  I went ahead and signed up. However, Mr. Helper then transferred me to someone at Century Link to set up my account who read a disclaimer about the speeds, and I began to have buyer’s remorse nearly immediately.  The speeds quoted were apparently only the fastest possible, and not likely what I would get.  Oh great.  Here we go again.

After I got off the phone I called Comcast and without explaining why I wondered, asked what speeds my price was supposed to be getting me. They were over double the Century Link speeds.  The guy then set me up with a better plan and even faster speeds. The Century Link deal didn’t even come close.  I then called back the power company and explained I wanted to cancel the order.  They said it was too new and to call in the next day.  The next day I called back and was assured the order was cancelled, but the person said I should call Century Link to confirm, which I did. They said the order wasn’t even there yet, but the guy made a note for my address.  I called again a couple of days later just to make sure.  The person who answered said there was no account and that it must never have been set up.  He assured me that there was no chance I would get the service I did not want.  Still skeptical, but okay, if you say so.

The following weekend we moved into the house.  On Monday I went to work.  When I arrived home in the late afternoon, there was a package on my stoop.  Curious, I ran up to grab it before pulling into the garage.  What do you think it was?  Surprise!  A modem from Century Link.  Damn.  Not only do I already have a modem that is just great thanks, but there wasn’t supposed to be any Century Link anything in my life.

Back to the phone.  Back to holds and voice activated services that couldn’t figure out where I needed to be.  Finally a person who was able to give me a return authorization number and his assurances that the account was closed, there would be no residual expense, and that my time with Qwest, aka Century Link was over.  Satisfied, I believed him.  Fool I be.

A week and a half later, a thin envelope arrived bearing a bill for $34.95.  I didn’t even bother calling the louts at Century Link.  I wrote a short note on the bill stating that I had cancelled my service prior to installation and that there should be no charges.  I mostly believed that the bill issuance had crossed paths with the modem return.

Wrong again.  Today’s mail bore an even thinner, more demanding insistence that I pay Century Link, this time $19.99.  I put on my boxing gloves and called in.  I could not explain to the telephone computer person my reasons for calling in a manner that satisfied.  It finally transferred me to the wrong person, for whom I had to wait ten minutes, and that person had to transfer me to the right person. They may not have programmed in “Your fucking stupid company keeps billing me for shit I don’t want, you lousy corporate, monopolistic bastards.” but that was the line that finally did result in a human, so I suppose it worked.

Once I reached a human who could assist, I explained my situation.  He asked the usual litany of questions designed to prove I am me, then wanted to take a few minutes and “review the account.” Sure, I’ve been on hold for 20 minutes, what’s a few more?  He said the bill was for installation, then let me know he would do what he could to see about getting me a credit.  A credit?  No, sir. A credit will not do.  I cancelled your service before it was ever installed.  I don’t want a credit.  I want the charges gone, understand?  He said I needed to be patient.  I explained that I was thoroughly out of patience.  That I lost patience the day I came home to a modem and hours of holds and transfers.  That his employer had stolen time I could be spending with my children, walking the dog, doing my job, washing the dishes, anything except wasting hours on the phone with a bunch of incompetent hacks who couldn’t seem to get this right.  And that I would never pay them one penny of my money ever, especially considering all of the experiences I had suffered at the hands of their incompetence.  He was silent, then he said I needed to trust him.  I said I would try, but his coworkers had not instilled much trust.  He said the difference was that when he said he did something, he really did it.  I hope so.

I did not mail back the second bill. I’m hoping the phone calls suffice. We will see. In the meantime, I thought I would use this opportunity to warn every and all that Century Link is still Qwest, albeit with a brand new name, and that like Ally nee’ GMAC, and Springleaf nee’ American General Finance (see my observations about this here), they are still they same crappy monopolistic corporation, the same customer no-service, the same mess up even the most simple of requests, the same stay-on-hold-for-800-years, the same transfer to 13 departments before getting someone who may or may not fix your issue piece of shit company they have always been. Changing the name didn’t change anything except a few letters.

Rant over.

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The Shocking Truth About the Crackdown on Occupy

The Shocking Truth About the Crackdown on Occupy  The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class’s venality.

— by Naomi Wolf

This post is a reprint and can be found here.

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that “New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers” covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, andpenned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that “It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk.”

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on “how to suppress” Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors’, city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually “OWS has no message”. Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online “What is it you want?” answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, “we are going after these scruffy hippies”. Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women’s wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the “scandal” of presidential contender Newt Gingrich’s having been paid $1.8m for a few hours’ “consulting” to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies’ profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists’ privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can’t suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

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Thanksgiving Sonnet

It’s that time of year again, for me to repost a sonnet I wrote in college.  I’ve gone back and tried again and again to get the exact syllabic format for a completely proper sonnet, but could not find words to replace those here that would maintain the imagery and metaphoric content that I wanted, so it stays the same.

Thanksgiving Sonnet

Turgid turkeys, strained into rickety wooden coffins, exit four-by-four from a ten-ton hearse. Into the turkey mill: mutilation, holocaust.

Perspiring hormones, Tom Turkey stares with one sad eye at a crumbling chimney tower belching death in putrid smoke, blackening holiday skies. Annihilating light.

Bodies, bones. None remain unfrozen. With elaborate precision he’s taken apart; neck, gizzards tied in a bag between his ribs, head ground neatly into pink hot dog slabs.

Holiday skies are crowded with turkey souls, ascending to heaven like deflated balloons.

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Dribble, dribble, drip

Oh, moving is such a chore.  I haven’t done one creative thing in 2 weeks.  I haven’t worked on my book.  I have barely played my cello. I haven’t looked at my French lessons. I haven’t taken one photograph (except a couple with the iPhone). I certainly haven’t written any useless nonsense on this blog. I have spent all my free time packing and moving, then moving, and now unpacking.  Really I would like to find a home to stay in for a really long time. This one would work for me if the owner would sell it, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen.  I think next year I need to begin looking in earnest.  I don’t want to move again, but I need to find my own place.  However, I do like this house a lot.  It is much larger than the space we were in and it’s weird to be able to move freely and have places for things.  I loved the style and neighborhood of our little duplex, but the keyword there was little.  It was just too small, and it was never going to be a permanent home, as it was a duplex and a rental and I did not want to buy it. Plus three weeks before we left, the owner cut down the lovely tree in the front yard that was the only thing keeping the place from being a total fishbowl.  I had been feeling kind of sad about leaving the place, but the tree removal took care of that.

In any case, we are here now and the internet works, which is a plus.  I have been looking online on craigslist for some rugs.  I need one for Isabel’s room, the dining room, and perhaps up in what will be our family room.  The house is hardwood floors,so rugs make the house a home.

Craigslist is weird.  There are a whole bunch of ads for dead animal rugs.  First of all, how weird and gross is that, to walk around on some dead animal’s head and body?  I don’t get it.  There were a couple of tigers, a bear, and a cow skin.  Oh, last night i saw at Ikea that they were selling cow skins.  I just don’t find that look attractive at all.

The other thing I don’t get are ads that are selling some nasty old couch or something, with the caveat that it has holes and is covered in cat hair and probably stinks, but it’s a great, old friend, so you should want it too.  Oh, and it needs to be gone by this afternoon at 6.  And it’s $200.  Yeah, right.  Good luck getting someone to haul your ugly-ass piece of junk to the dump.

Work has been overwhelming.  I don’t know who I’m telling this to, but it has been crazy busy.  When I’m at the office I spend every spare minute cramming in work. A lot of the work is above and beyond the usual, so it’s even more workish.  I feel like a slacker for going to the bathroom or eating lunch, but since I’m one of those never-could-be-anorexic, desperate-for-food-every-five-minutes, kind of gals, I have no choice but to stop and eat.  Oh, and did I mention I’ve suddenly gone even blinder?  Last week after completely struggling to work because I could not see (this with + 5.25 prescription contacts in my eyes already) I got in the car and drove to Walgreen’s and bought some damn reading glasses for the office.  I already have several sets at home for playing the cello because I was having such a difficult time reading my music without them, but none were at the office and Walgreen’s was closer and I have no time to leave work and go home for glasses and….okay, enough long sentence.  You get the idea.  You being like the big, unknown they.  I don’t know who YOU is, or who I’m saying this to, I’m just saying it, or typing it, or something.  Oh, maybe Kathleen.  She said she reads these posts sometimes. Hi, Kathleen, if you’re reading this.

Anyway, I have to eat.  My stomach is growling.  I’m hungry.  It’s getting late and I need food.

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Little Liar

My clothing today is bearing false witness thanks to spandex and nylon.

I have more to say, but no time.  I must go spend time with my favorite trustee.  Good times. Hopefully the only dishonest thing there will be my clothes.

P.S. The cream under my eyes lies too.

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The Turn of the Screw

Sometimes I feel like a screw that is wound too tightly into wood, at the point where the wood is strained but not yet cracking.  One more twist and the wood will splinter.  I’m the wood; life is the screw.

 

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Wish

I wish people advertising on Craigslist wouldn’t say Vintage for something that is really not that old and is just ugly.

Not a high priority wish, but there nonetheless.

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Another Brilliant Observation

What I have discovered from looking at loveseats on Craigslist is that most furniture looks really ugly after people have used it for awhile.

That’s all.

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BedandBreakfast.com is a Big Lie Site

I used BedandBreakfast.com, also Inns.com, to locate a B & B in Barcelona.  The reviews for the B & B I ultimately chose were fantastic, not one bad one in the bunch.  They raved about the owner, the cooking, the facilities, all of it.  I sought reviews on other sites, but there weren’t many available for the place I wanted to stay.  After searching for a month and gathering quotes, I made my choice, primarily based on the information on BedandBreakfast.com, as well as the email conversations I had with the owner.

Unfortunately, our experience did not line up with our expectations, so much so that when we returned home, I wrote a diplomatic, but negative review.  The owner wasn’t there. The woman who replaced her was nasty.  The only breakfast was a couple of slices of bread with jam.  The location was a good one for Barcelona, but was situated next door to a fire station, not exactly relaxing for a vacation.  And the rooms had no air conditioning or fans, which was next to impossible to tolerate during August.

After I wrote the review, I received a message back from BedandBreakfast.com asking for proof I stayed at the B & B.  I sent the confirmation email from the owner.  Not good enough.  I sent the Paypal receipt for the deposit.  Not good enough.  I even sent a photo of us in the room. Not good enough.  We had paid in cash, and since the owner was not there and her replacement could not understand my request for a receipt, I had no further proof.  They would not post the review.  I have sent the owner 6 requests for a receipt, but except for one response in which she claimed to be out of town and that she would send one upon her return, I have had no response.  BedandBreakfast.com claimed I could have been a competitor trying to bring down that B & B.  Right.  I fabricated emails with the owner, I sent $45 through Paypal to some fabricated account.  I made up the whole thing, just to give a bad review? It’s ridiculous.

Don’t trust BedandBreakfast.com. I looked through their listings, and could not find any negative reviews. They filter them out. Don’t use their site to make your travel decision because you won’t be getting an accurate picture.  Their site lies.

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Laundry Shoot

I just saw an ad for a house with a “laundry shoot.” I wonder if it fires the laundry into its drawers and onto its hangers once it is laundered.

Laundry shoot.  Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

I know.  I’m easily entertained.

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The only time I will use staples will be in a stapler.

I have been very busy lately. I have to use a PC for work because the software I use in my job is only windows-based. As is the case with PCs, the damn thing started running really sluggy and slow. I knew it needed a cleanup and defrag and all that crap, but I just didn’t have time to sit around and stare at it while it wound its way through all that stuff.

One day while in Staples purchasing my latest round of toner and paper, I saw a circular advertising PC tuneup services for $9.99. Ah, I thought. Good deal. I’ll let them stare at the stupid thing for two hours. It would be worth it not to have to. I called and was told that if I dropped it off on Wednesday I could pick it up on Thursday morning. Even better. Wednesday after work I headed on over to leave my non-trusty-computer at the store.

It should have been clue one to me that there would be problems when, contrary to the information I had been given over the phone, I was informed nearly immediately that it would be three days to get the computer back. Oh no, that won’t work, I told them. If it was going to take three days, I was going to have to do this another time.  The salesman hemmed for a moment then said it could be done the next day.

Clue one, Lara.  Clue one.  You weren’t paying attention…

I then said I had to get going because I had an appointment.

Clue two, Lara. Clue two.  Mr. Computer Fixit guy kind of sauntered over to look at something else another Computer Fixit guy was doing, then went behind the counter and got a little widget to insert into my computer. He inserted it and stood there talking to me, telling me how my computer was the nicest he had seen come through the tune-up station in a while. He looked like Napoleon Dynamite, only without glasses. He kind of sounded like him too. In the end I spent a half an hour in there, in spite of my constant assertions that I needed to get going.

I explained that my computer had been running slowly. I explained that on vacation, my colleague had used the computer and claimed it had been infected with malware, but our office computer guy and she had removed this malware with some program from the web.  I explained that in spite of this, the thing seemed to be running slowly.

Do you use Norton?  No, I don’t like Norton. I have BitDefender. Bit Defender? Never heard of it.  Well, it was top-rated on PC Magazine’s choice for virus protection, and I bought it based on that review, and I haven’t had any problems with it. (Incidentally, since all this went down, I perused the web and saw that PC Magazine had again rated it in their top three.)

Well, I have never heard of it.  Okay, so that makes you a superstar.  Can you just take my computer and let me go now?

They told me they would call me when my computer was done and sent me on my way.  I wasn’t kidding that I needed the thing the next day for work.  It is all I have for work and all my work is on it.  Without it, I can’t do 99% of my job.  Well, more like 85%, but you get the idea.

The next day, Staples had not called me by 7:30 p.m.  I was beginning to worry, because I had a big response due on a file in less than five days and could not afford to be without my computer.

I called Staples and was patched to the computer center. The guy on the phone informed me that he hadn’t been able to get it to update. He had tried two times and it failed at the end each time. Okay, yeah well, I need my computer. I don’t care about the updates. I’ll get to them later. I need my machine. He said I could come pick it up.  It was late and baby was going to bed, so I said it would likely be in the morning. Okay, fine.

The next day I got busy with a bunch of other things and since I didn’t have the computer, I waited to pick it up until after picking Milla up for school. When I went in, I was told it had three viruses, and that if I wanted them removed, I would have to pay $200.  I asked what the viruses were and was told that they didn’t know, but it would cost $200 to have them fixed. The guy told me that the Staples tuneup hadn’t even detected BitDefender (See?  It’s such a horrible program!) He said I should have gotten the Norton antivirus software, and was told that Norton had picked up the three viruses on my computer.

At this point I began to believe this was all a scam to get me to pay Staples 200 more dollars. Whatever, I said to the guy.  I needed my computer yesterday so can I have it now? It was frozen in update land because, in spite of the fact I told them the night before that I was going to come and get it and to forget about the updates, apparently they had tried again multiple times anyway.
That evening I sat down to work. The computer had seemingly passed through its updates, although this proved false. Later when I had to shut down because of the other issues that arose, it turned out the thing still wanted to keep updating. I finally had to go in and manually choose updates, leaving off the last one. It’s still screwed up and every time the thing shuts down, it tries to install the last update and fails, freezing and requiring a hard reboot.
The machine ran slower than it ever had before I took it to Staples. Frustrated and worried I wasn’t going to be able to finish my work, I did something I should have done this in the first place, and called Costco support. Remember though, I was up against a deadline and out of time, so it did not occur to me to call them sooner. In this, please cut me slack for my lack of foresight.
After 45 minutes on the phone, the computer was running speedily again. However, there was one problem that the tech could not figure out.  I now have to log into my wireless by going through the control panel, going into network preferences, and re-entering my security key every single time I log on. I used to be able to right click on the now disabled icon on my taskbar, click my network, and voila!  Logged on. Not any more.

The worst thing though, did not appear until I sat down to finish drafting the response due in five days. My Adobe Acrobat did not work. Every time I opened it I received an error message letting me know the registration had been corrupted and I needed to uninstall and reinstall. I ran an uninstall repair, but this did not fix the problem.

Frantic, I called my office to see if they had a serial number.  The only serial number they had for me was one for Adobe Standard. I had Pro and needed Pro. The Standard would not work. I kept trying to do my job around the error, but it wouldn’t work. I optimize scanned text. I insert and delete pages. I enter in text boxes and rectangles. I used Acrobat. A lot. No more. Finally today, up against the deadline and sobbing in frustration, I uninstalled and reinstalled a trial version. Unfortunately it doesn’t allow the user to do any of the functions I use. In tears, I called my friend Debbie. She took my documents, made them into PDFs, stuck in the Exhibit words, and bundled them all together, then emailed it back to me to file.  I wasted so much time on this problem, the response wasn’t nearly as tight and good as it could have been, and I filed it near 4 in the afternoon.

During this, I called Staples. I have a salesperson online who helps me with purchases. I had written him an email on Sunday after wasting two hours slogging through computer problems. He called me Monday. We played phone tag until today. He said the store had told him I said the computer had viruses. No, I never said that. He wanted to three-way call with the store to get this straightened out, so we made an appointment for tomorrow, after the big monster response was turned in.

Today, during my frustration, I called the store and asked to speak to the manager. He knew my case. He said the techs told him I said the computer had a virus. I never said that. He said my computer was “riddled with viruses.” That’s funny, because that’s not what they said and if their “tune-up” was supposed to clean viruses, why didn’t they do it? Why did they say it would be $200 to do that or give me any information at all? He said the “tune-up” had failed. That’s interesting, because my receipt says it worked just fine, that only one update failed. Well, your computer is riddled with viruses. So you’re telling me that my computer, which worked just fine and dandy until the day I got my computer back from Staples, magically developed viruses that only affected Adobe after I got it back from you? No answer? And are the viruses the reason the internet hookup icon on my taskbar is disabled and that no amount of tech support with Costco will bring it back? Yes, it must be. No apology, only an offer to bring the computer back and let the trolls get their hands on it again. Not on your life. Kick me once, shame on you. Kick me twice, shame on me. I’m not G.W.

What a load of horse pucky. Seriously. These yahoos want me to believe that my computer was riddled with viruses and that these viruses worked their magic only after my computer was left in their store. That, my friends, is a pile of steaming poo, a lie, a foulness, a thing most unclean.

I decided then and there to tell my story. My hope is that even one other person will read my words and decide that staples are for staplers, not a place to shop in. Take your business elsewhere. I’m going to. Office Depot is right across the parking lot.

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Isn’t she just perfection?

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More Pithy Observation

Why is it that so many people think that for a woman to be self-actualized and equal — in the workplace, in the home, in her sexuality — she has to act like a man? I don’t see how sleeping with a bunch of men and ignoring them later makes me any stronger or wiser. I don’t see how shattering the glass ceiling by working ridiculous hours and ignoring my children gives me any sort of independence. I don’t see how ignoring household chores and letting my children care for themselves before they really understand who they are offers me freedom. So often what is held up as equality isn’t equal at all, it’s reduction of the female self to an outdated patriarchal view of how the world ought to operate. And I’m simply not on board with it.

That’s all.

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Pithy Observation & Simple Desire

Concise and forcefully expressive, but not really.  Concise, but maybe slightly less than forceful.  Insightful perhaps, but who really cares observations.  That would describe it best, but takes up too much room.

Simple desire?  I want to put a ponytail on my head like Pebbles in the Flintstones.  That’s my first one.

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More Pointless Rambling

I keep thinking that I want to start a page on my blog that is called Pithy Observations.  It would be filled with the sort of nonsense one normally finds on Twitter or Facebook, but that I generally don’t say because really, who cares?  No one would care here either, but since this is not read as much then my pithy ideas would go more unnoticed.  These thoughts are the sorts of things that pass through my brain for a while, taking up space.  If I wrote them down, they might go away.  Well, maybe.

 

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Halloween Comes Early Around Here

Some person calls our office and presses the number to get through to my mobile phone…at midnight and 2 in the morning. Creepy, freak-show stalkers like that give me the heeby-jeebies.

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Long Day

Isabel turned 2 today. She’s my sleepy, snuggly bear, breathing into my side. So warm. So soft. I love my little girl. I’m so grateful she was born.

The long-legged daughter came and nearly fell asleep in bed with me tonight. Are you going to sleep here, Miss Milla? Mmmm, nooo. Then more lying there. If you are staying, I need covers, which drove her to her own room and bed with the dog.

For some reason I have grown a sign on my head that says HELP ME and many are utilizing this service. I’m happy to help, especially my best friend Debbie whose close friend Jan died today. Many loose ends. Debbie managing, but some of it leaves her at a loss. Indeed, some left me at a loss too.  I had to call people and ask.  Another friend is going through more crisis.  It’s hard.  I wish sometimes for her sake it would let up.  Then many clients in crisis too. All money being taken from bank accounts because of fine print, and can’t pay rent now or buy food. Another cried out because of calls at work both embarrassing and frequent. Another is being hassled after filing. The bankers are winning, but that last one, I can help with.

And then there is me with these unusual feelings of attraction and the person is suitable. Mmmnn, unusual, these feelings. Haven’t felt this for a looooong time.  More unusual that someone is suitable. And single. And not bankrupt. I’m like a rusty old bicycle. I can still get on, but the wheels don’t turn so easily and I am not sure how to steer. Ah, we will see. It could go nowhere.

Weird, my life.

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Isabel, a Polar bear, and a Giraffe

Isabel went to the zoo with her cousin Sarah yesterday.  We saw lots of animals because it was early and the sun was hiding behind clouds (as opposed to the last time we went in the middle of a sunny day when they were all napping). I felt sorry for the animals.  Many of them were exhibiting behaviors associated with severe boredom.  Also I found it ironic that the zoo was filled with many signs describing the effects of climate change and the corruption we are causing our planet, and begging us to redefine our behaviors, yet at the same time they were selling tons of plastic junk.  Something of a hypocrisy there…

Anyway, here are photos I took of Isabel, a polar bear, and a giraffe.

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Introduction to Brain Rules for Baby

This is an excerpt from Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina.  I have fallen in love with his book Brain Rules, and discovered the baby version on his website.  I wish the school system would read this and stop trying to stuff reading in five-year-olds like they are pate’ geese on the way to slaughter.

From the introduction.  See it here:

Scientists certainly don’t know everything about the brain. But what we do know gives us our best chance at raising smart, happy children. And it is relevant whether you just discovered you are pregnant, already have a toddler, or find yourself needing to raise grandchildren. So it will be my pleasure in this book to answer the big questions parents have asked me—and debunk their big myths, too. Here are some of my favorites:

Myth: Playing Mozart to your womb will improve your baby’s future math scores.

Truth: Your baby will simply remember Mozart after birth—along with many other things she hears, smells, and tastes in the womb. If you want her to do well in math in her later years, the greatest thing you can do is to teach her impulse control in her early years.

Myth: Exposing your infant or toddler to language DVDs will boost his vocabulary.

Truth: Some DVDs can actually reduce a toddler’s vocabulary. It is true that the number and variety of words you use when talking to your baby boost both his vocabulary and his IQ. But the words have to come from you—a real, live human being.

Myth: To boost their brain power, children need French lessons by age 3 and a room piled with “brain-friendly” toys and a library of educational DVDs.

Truth: The greatest pediatric brain-boosting technology in the world is probably a plain cardboard box, a fresh box of crayons, and two hours. The worst is probably your new flat-screen TV.

Myth: Telling your children they are smart will boost their confidence.

Truth: They’ll become less willing to work on challenging problems. If you want to get your baby into Harvard, praise her effort instead.

Myth: Children somehow find their own happiness.

Truth: The greatest predictor of happiness is having friends. How do you make and keep friends? By being good at deciphering nonverbal communication. Learning a musical instrument boosts this ability by 50 percent. Text messaging may destroy it.

Research like this is continually published in respected scientific journals. But unless you have a subscription to the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, this rich procession of findings may pass you by. This book is meant to let you know what scientists know—without having a Ph.D. to understand it.

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Eggs in Spain, and indeed the Netherlands, too.

I have two observation about eggs from my trip to Europe.  A couple of days after my arrival in the Netherlands I was dispatched to the grocery store to fetch eggs.  I could not find them.  I searched and searched and returned empty-handed. Both Milla and Anne told me the eggs were by the cereal, so the next time I was in the grocery store I looked for the cereal.  Lo and behold, there on the shelf next to the cereal sat the eggs. They were not in the refrigeration section, which is why I had not located them previously. I had gone around and around to all the refrigerated sections in the store.  No wonder I hadn’t found them.

This was quite a revelation, these eggs on the grocery store shelf. I have known my mother to toss out entire cartons of eggs because they sat on the counter all day.  What a waste.  I will let her know, and everyone else who might care, that Europeans leave their eggs on the shelf in the grocery store.   There have been no major outbreaks of  Salmonella in the Netherlands (I checked, via the internets, so if the internets can be trusted, this is likely the case), which must mean that leaving eggs out of refrigeration for a while won’t hurt anyone.  I wonder how much money could be saved in the US on refrigeration if eggs were not kept cold.  Or maybe it’s that the US leaves them out longer than the eggs in Europe.  I will have to do some investigating and get back to that one.

I made another egg discovery in Europe.  You can buy, off the shelf, actual eggs from chickens that are truly free-range.  I’m not talking about the bullshit US version of free-range where they keep them locked up until they are 5 weeks old, then open a tiny door at the end of a long shed, knowing full well they will never leave that shed until the day they die.  No.  I’m talking true free-range from a field chickens who eat bugs and grass and scratch their little feetsies in the dirt.  I get my eggs true free-range from a field chickens.  I have to go to a neighbor’s house who has them brought in from a ranch and sells them to willing buyers.  I pay $5 a dozen, which isn’t horrible considering true free-range eggs at the local farmers markets are usually $10 a dozen.  The true free-range eggs in Europe were about $3 Euros a dozen, which was the same price as the non-true free-range eggs in Europe.  Not bad. Imagine that, true free-range eggs sold in the grocery store on the shelf for a moderate price.  And we’re told it can’t happen here. What a load of dooky (dookie?).

Finally, the absolute best egg discovery I made in Europe was in Spain.  Every single huevo I ordered in Spain was perfection. They were fried, with the whites completely cooked but not burned, the yellows still runny, and salted. NO PEPPER!!  Perfect.  I could not have ordered an egg more to my liking if I tried.  I have never, I repeat NEVER gotten an egg exactly as I like it at a restaurant in the US.  It is seemingly impossible here.  For some reason, either the whites not runny, or the whites not burned, or the yellows still runny, or the just salty part is a little too difficult for cooks here to manage.  Cooks here also seem to find it nearly impossible, even when asked, to leave off the pepper, which drives me to distraction because I can’t stand pepper and I really can’t stand it on eggs. I don’t send the eggs back for having pepper unless the pepper is so heavy I can barely see the egg, so I’ve had to scarf down peppered eggs on many occasions even when I didn’t want to.  Now I just rarely eat eggs out because it’s so hard for US cooks to figure them out to my liking.  But not the Spanish cooks, and I didn’t even SPECIFY!! They just came to me exactly as I like them, every single time I ordered them.  I loved it.  Maybe I was a Spaniard in a past life and this is why I like eggs the way they make them there.  I don’t know.

And another thing…the Spanish eggs, like the Netherland eggs, and like my true-free range eggs here, had the same bright orange, tasty yokes.  I suspect these Spanish eggs were true free-range as well.  Eggs that are not truly free-range, including the pretend free-range version in the US, simply do not have these healthy, tasty yokes.  They are anemic and bleah, with no flavor at all.  The Spanish eggs were utter perfection, through and through.