A random collection of thoughts that occurred to me during this morning's gasping, flailing run:
1) Abby, though an excellent pacesetter and pervert-deterrent, has mastered a universal contempt for the social niceties of public exercise. Example: she will pass up half a mile of scrubby empty lots in order to deposit vile, yellow soft serve on the nearest carefully manicured lawn. If possible, she will choose a house where the occupant is enjoying a cup of coffee on the front porch. She will not be dissuaded from this crime, and if pulled forcefully into the street, she will maintain crouch position and yelp, making me look like both lawn-destroyer AND dog-abuser.
2) Much has been made of this generation's short attention span and horror of good old-fashioned toil, but I'd have to offer up the example of skate punks as a counter-argument. Have you ever watched a skate punk at work? I have. As a bored teenage girlfriend accessory, I watched countless successful ollies and kick flips, but I've seen volumes, GALAXIES of failed attempts. Over and over and over: crouch, balance, kick, spin, clatter-crash, repeat. This generation doesn't have patience? I've seen pump jacks with less persistence.
3) Is it just my cat, or do all cats eat like wood chippers? I'm wondering if there's something wrong with him. He had a rough and rowdy stray cat infancy and came to us with scars, fleas, matted fur-- pretty much everything short of prison tats and a pregnant girlfriend-- so I guess it wouldn't surprise me that his way of tossing his food all over the place, letting half chewed chunks spew from either side of his head is some kind of residual effect of maternal abandonment. That doesn't make much sense, but I don't know shit about cats, so...
4) I need a job. My self-assigned pointless chores are getting old. I'd rather do someone else's.
5) Californians in my area of the state have a penchant for lift kits on their monster SUV's and this has been one of the biggest disappointments outside of the one my mother so aptly identified, loudly, in the local Walmart: "I really thought people would be better looking out here." I guess I'd been expecting a land of hyper-liberal shade-grown coffee drinkers zipping around in rainbow-emitting Smart Cars, tossing their glorious golden hair and talking about Sufism, but such was not the case. Maybe in parts of San Francisco. Out here, they are alarmingly fat (like, the rest of America fat), and knocking back those globe-topped goopy Starbucks creations and roaring past in shiny new Excursions with decorative chrome grills and massive, massive wheels. I want to leap up and grab the bottom edge of their open window and ask if we're going to the same gas stations.
6) We live near a cheese plant! Oh, God if all that is Good and Holy, a whole PLANT devoted to the making of CHEESE is nearby! I can finally live out my 3-2-1 Contact fantasy of touring a plant and nodding my hair-netted head appreciatively. Once, in junior high, I and two other boys were deemed "honors" students in a school too tyrannized by its board to have an honors program. They made it up to us by taking us on a one-time field trip to tour the nearby Tylenol factory. My favorite part was the giant industrial washing machines where the newly pressed pills go to get their colored coating. Then they showed us where the coated pills get dried and then sent across a huge shaker, separating the whole pills for Americans from the broken and wonky pills for Mexico and Panama, but NOT CUBA! Hm. Anyway, I think a good date night for Pants and I would include a romantic tour of the cheese factory.
7) Did you know duct tape kills plantar warts? It's true! I had one and inquired about that freeze-off treatment and when the doctor asked about my pain tolerance and I said never mind, I was asking for a friend, he recommended duct tape! So not only can you use it to create cleavage, supervise your children, and bind your bear bites, you can also suffocate an annoying little spot on the sole of your foot.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Relearning Money, Relationships, Breathing
Hello, and welcome to the post I've been trying not to write. Once you've found your seat, you'll notice that a few courtesy items have been placed there for you. Please take a moment to become familiar with them: 1) airline quality barf bag for the sheer stupidity and angsty-ness of our topic today, 2) radiation-proof apron to shield your vital organs from rampant cliches, and 3) a nice, expensive bottle of water because we're going to be here for a while.
This post is about money, about couples and money.
Let's take the TV sitcom director's approach here, fast forwarding through a montage of illustrative shots, chronologically arranged, to explain my personal progression from miserly child hoarding allowances and giving loans with interest to her own mother, to panicked sub-par teenage waitress making bank deposits with envelopes stuffed with ones, to bitter, bitter college grad languishing in the pink collar ghetto and too petrified of penury (consonance!) to quit a job she hates, all the way to fairly-OK-with-life 20-something who's finally figured out how to balance a checkbook and who (naively ignorant of how credit works) pays down her Visa to zero each month.
Got all that? That's pretty much how it went. Money was only money when it was in your hands or in an account earning interest, and boy did it feel good in your hands. One should never let money get too far from the hands, because then... oh, then...
Here's what I learned in the first 26 years of life about when money was in your hands: you win all arguments; you are independent and can come and go as you like; no one else may guilt you or force you to do anything you don't want to do; you don't have to hide the purchases you make; being on the highest rung (earning the most) means you may delegate all the shitty jobs to someone lower.
(Mom, Dad-- just to be clear, I'm also talking about college roommate situations and previous relationships.)
If we were looking for a T-shirt slogan to sum up my views about money and relationships, we'd be pretty safe with, "Money! The only way to Independence!" Note, if you will, the inherent contradiction between two major driving forces in my life-- the desire to have meaningful relationships, and the desire to be totally and completely independent. (Now might be a good time for the radiation shields)
For years, this worked. I never lived with a boyfriend, mostly out of the fear of getting screwed on the bills when we broke up (note the when, not the if), and most of my roommate relationships eventually sailed into treacherous waters over questions of finance (although I do want to state here, for the record, that with one notable exception, all of my college roommates were notoriously and catastrophically flaky about money, so it wasn't just my pathology at work here). Anyway, back to how it worked. I had a job I liked, a savings account, a retirement account, a credit card that didn't haunt me at night, and a budget whose only extravagance was rent for an apartment without a roommate.
And then Pants came along. And I had to subtract from the equation the certainty of an eventual break-up and the financial prophylactic measures I'd taken with previous boyfriends (the first rule is that we don't talk about money, we split things; the second rule is that we don't talk about money). And then the military got involved and everything sped up-- we'll get married and move together and I'll quit my job! (In fact, I'll quit my job every time we move, every eight months!) And we'll combine all our finances, with equal access and equal ownership for all, and we'll be partners in everything, everything 50/50, no matter what, no matter who earns more. We'll be the perfect loving communist state, just you and I!
Given 26 years of preconditioning, of me continually being the little girl with the Bandaid box stuffed full of bills this ideal of blissful equality was hard to master.
First of all, someone must farm the money, by which I mean organize it into neat rows, make sure it gets watered with measured contributions, and reallocated to make the best of changing conditions. What a nice little metaphor. I was a pretty good money farmer, albeit unsophisticated. Pants was far better, and it seemed to bring him much joy. I grimly watered with mechanical regularity but otherwise ignored my accounts; Pants was into organic fertilizer and root grafts. So I did what I thought was best and most helpful: I let him be the farmer.
Initially, I think this puzzled him, the fact that I appeared uninterested in all things money anymore. That wasn't it; I just lost faith that what I did was much help. Combine this with the difficulty of finding steady and gainful employment when you move every eight months, and pretty soon you get a two-fer, a nice combo meal of insecurity: what I do isn't that helpful AND what I earn can't ever be counted on as a steady income.
If we reference my 26-year conditioning, (barf bags ready, please), we now see that I view myself as the loser of arguments; dependent; perpetually guilty (about what? I don't know, so I'll constantly make something up!); a hider of purchases (oh, Starbucks, you saucy, tempting bitch-- I'll put it on the credit card); and the grumbling penetant, always trying to make up for my money-sucking self by scowling my way through household chores.
[I'm taking a breather here to walk around the house and deal with the fact that I feel like I'm about to post an unflattering Polaroid of my dimpled ass to the Internet.]
Ah, better.
Pants tried. He tried explaining the various interest rates on investments and accounts, the multiple, fluctuating military paychecks, the many scheduled automatic deductions for bills (see? so much more convenient!) He also continued to ask my permission before making purchases, a process so painful and confusing to me because my thinking was, it's your money, why ask? My answer was always a fatalistic laugh and then, "Yes?" I felt incapable of understanding the budget completely, and further, I had no faith that my involvement in any of this wouldn't result in sudden and massive failure. It seemed fully plausible that with the touch of button, our entire carefully orchestrated financial life would disappear-- zip! And it would be my fault.
We've managed to operate this way-- Pants the diligent farmer, always muttering and fretting over the state of the crops, and me the Monty Python-esque peasant, glopping around in shit and ignorance and hoping blindly that I don't bankrupt us each time I use the debit card-- for some time.
That all came to head recently. There's no need to go into all of it, but I think all the history I've explained above sets up a fairly logical explanation of a) how things were, and b) how they could never hope to continue on this way if we were to stay married. Obviously, I've left out any speculation on Pants' financial philosophy and history, and that is as it should be. It is largely healthy, with maybe a touch of extra anxiety, which, given his utter lack of partner involvement for the past three years, seems entirely logical.
The upshot of a week's worth of gut-wrenching discussions, is that there is now a financial command center in our study! A big white board with our budget all laid out and the bill amounts for the current month, along with an up or down arrow to indicate deviation from the previous month (my idea! I do have things to contribute!), and a running tally of the available balance along with anticipated, non-recurring costs (car repairs, etc.). We've also undertaken a series of commitments meant to bring greater clarity and substance to our communications about money.
And now, for the final barf bag/radiation shield declaration: I know what the balance is in all our accounts! I know why it is this particular number, and how it might reasonably be expected to change in the coming months! I don't want to vomit and run away when we discuss whether or not we can afford something, and my answer to that question no longer has a question mark on the end of it.
We're in Day 4 of the New Order with no problems so far. This may seem short, but believe me, four days with clarity, four days without the vague panic of anything money-related, is big. And this is not to say that we're totally in the black and lighting the grill with twenties-- things are tight. 80's jeans tight. But at least now I know what that means.
This post is about money, about couples and money.
Let's take the TV sitcom director's approach here, fast forwarding through a montage of illustrative shots, chronologically arranged, to explain my personal progression from miserly child hoarding allowances and giving loans with interest to her own mother, to panicked sub-par teenage waitress making bank deposits with envelopes stuffed with ones, to bitter, bitter college grad languishing in the pink collar ghetto and too petrified of penury (consonance!) to quit a job she hates, all the way to fairly-OK-with-life 20-something who's finally figured out how to balance a checkbook and who (naively ignorant of how credit works) pays down her Visa to zero each month.
Got all that? That's pretty much how it went. Money was only money when it was in your hands or in an account earning interest, and boy did it feel good in your hands. One should never let money get too far from the hands, because then... oh, then...
Here's what I learned in the first 26 years of life about when money was in your hands: you win all arguments; you are independent and can come and go as you like; no one else may guilt you or force you to do anything you don't want to do; you don't have to hide the purchases you make; being on the highest rung (earning the most) means you may delegate all the shitty jobs to someone lower.
(Mom, Dad-- just to be clear, I'm also talking about college roommate situations and previous relationships.)
If we were looking for a T-shirt slogan to sum up my views about money and relationships, we'd be pretty safe with, "Money! The only way to Independence!" Note, if you will, the inherent contradiction between two major driving forces in my life-- the desire to have meaningful relationships, and the desire to be totally and completely independent. (Now might be a good time for the radiation shields)
For years, this worked. I never lived with a boyfriend, mostly out of the fear of getting screwed on the bills when we broke up (note the when, not the if), and most of my roommate relationships eventually sailed into treacherous waters over questions of finance (although I do want to state here, for the record, that with one notable exception, all of my college roommates were notoriously and catastrophically flaky about money, so it wasn't just my pathology at work here). Anyway, back to how it worked. I had a job I liked, a savings account, a retirement account, a credit card that didn't haunt me at night, and a budget whose only extravagance was rent for an apartment without a roommate.
And then Pants came along. And I had to subtract from the equation the certainty of an eventual break-up and the financial prophylactic measures I'd taken with previous boyfriends (the first rule is that we don't talk about money, we split things; the second rule is that we don't talk about money). And then the military got involved and everything sped up-- we'll get married and move together and I'll quit my job! (In fact, I'll quit my job every time we move, every eight months!) And we'll combine all our finances, with equal access and equal ownership for all, and we'll be partners in everything, everything 50/50, no matter what, no matter who earns more. We'll be the perfect loving communist state, just you and I!
Given 26 years of preconditioning, of me continually being the little girl with the Bandaid box stuffed full of bills this ideal of blissful equality was hard to master.
First of all, someone must farm the money, by which I mean organize it into neat rows, make sure it gets watered with measured contributions, and reallocated to make the best of changing conditions. What a nice little metaphor. I was a pretty good money farmer, albeit unsophisticated. Pants was far better, and it seemed to bring him much joy. I grimly watered with mechanical regularity but otherwise ignored my accounts; Pants was into organic fertilizer and root grafts. So I did what I thought was best and most helpful: I let him be the farmer.
Initially, I think this puzzled him, the fact that I appeared uninterested in all things money anymore. That wasn't it; I just lost faith that what I did was much help. Combine this with the difficulty of finding steady and gainful employment when you move every eight months, and pretty soon you get a two-fer, a nice combo meal of insecurity: what I do isn't that helpful AND what I earn can't ever be counted on as a steady income.
If we reference my 26-year conditioning, (barf bags ready, please), we now see that I view myself as the loser of arguments; dependent; perpetually guilty (about what? I don't know, so I'll constantly make something up!); a hider of purchases (oh, Starbucks, you saucy, tempting bitch-- I'll put it on the credit card); and the grumbling penetant, always trying to make up for my money-sucking self by scowling my way through household chores.
[I'm taking a breather here to walk around the house and deal with the fact that I feel like I'm about to post an unflattering Polaroid of my dimpled ass to the Internet.]
Ah, better.
Pants tried. He tried explaining the various interest rates on investments and accounts, the multiple, fluctuating military paychecks, the many scheduled automatic deductions for bills (see? so much more convenient!) He also continued to ask my permission before making purchases, a process so painful and confusing to me because my thinking was, it's your money, why ask? My answer was always a fatalistic laugh and then, "Yes?" I felt incapable of understanding the budget completely, and further, I had no faith that my involvement in any of this wouldn't result in sudden and massive failure. It seemed fully plausible that with the touch of button, our entire carefully orchestrated financial life would disappear-- zip! And it would be my fault.
We've managed to operate this way-- Pants the diligent farmer, always muttering and fretting over the state of the crops, and me the Monty Python-esque peasant, glopping around in shit and ignorance and hoping blindly that I don't bankrupt us each time I use the debit card-- for some time.
That all came to head recently. There's no need to go into all of it, but I think all the history I've explained above sets up a fairly logical explanation of a) how things were, and b) how they could never hope to continue on this way if we were to stay married. Obviously, I've left out any speculation on Pants' financial philosophy and history, and that is as it should be. It is largely healthy, with maybe a touch of extra anxiety, which, given his utter lack of partner involvement for the past three years, seems entirely logical.
The upshot of a week's worth of gut-wrenching discussions, is that there is now a financial command center in our study! A big white board with our budget all laid out and the bill amounts for the current month, along with an up or down arrow to indicate deviation from the previous month (my idea! I do have things to contribute!), and a running tally of the available balance along with anticipated, non-recurring costs (car repairs, etc.). We've also undertaken a series of commitments meant to bring greater clarity and substance to our communications about money.
And now, for the final barf bag/radiation shield declaration: I know what the balance is in all our accounts! I know why it is this particular number, and how it might reasonably be expected to change in the coming months! I don't want to vomit and run away when we discuss whether or not we can afford something, and my answer to that question no longer has a question mark on the end of it.
We're in Day 4 of the New Order with no problems so far. This may seem short, but believe me, four days with clarity, four days without the vague panic of anything money-related, is big. And this is not to say that we're totally in the black and lighting the grill with twenties-- things are tight. 80's jeans tight. But at least now I know what that means.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Please Want My Help
Hi, remember me? I worked for you three years ago. I mouthed off in your class six years ago. Tall girl? Short brown hair? I once made that really inappropriate joke... I once burned the hell out myself making you coffee... I broke the copier that one time? Yeah! That's me. Um, so how are you? Great, great. Listen, I need to ask a favor of you. I'm applying for another job in yet another state. I'm thinking about applying for graduate school... still. Could I please give your number to a string of total strangers? I'd appreciate it if you could tell them I'm not a douchebag, and if they ask about specific skills or strengths of mine, could you maybe ask what they're looking for and then say I'm good at exactly that? That would really help me out.
The job search. It always seems coincide with the times when I'm really doubting my worth as a human being, and suddenly I need to update this slick-looking document with proactive verbs and examples of my own brilliance and efficiency. I've never lied on a resume, but I am sorely tempted to douse mine in a bath of acidic sarcasm every now and then: "Winged it for a year, managed to sound bright every now and then, was never found out." "Successfully disguised soul-crushing post-collegiate ennui while revamping vendor files."
So, I've compiled a list of jobs from local wants ads that I could do if I abandoned all sense of career continuity and instead embraced my appreciation for the absurd:
* Dating Agency Spokesmodel: they need someone to look regular and yet more attractive than average (which I could manage with professionally applied make-up and a soft-focus lens) to appear in commercials and spout off the advantages of hooking up online. I would also have to create a profile on the site, but I wouldn't be required to answer inquiries. The old bait & switch.
* Prisoner Transporter: I would need to drive a van to and from detention centers and be responsible for feeding the prisoners fast food en route whilst compiling receipts for food and gas. The ad doesn't say anything about what you're allowed to play on the van stereo, so I'd make a perplexing mix tape of my favorite Tupac songs interspersed with foreign children's folk songs and snippets of wacko conservative talk radio. My passengers would be the first to get shiv-happy upon arrival at their new destination.
* Tomato Quality Control Specialist: pretty self-explanatory. Pick out the moldy and deformed ones. I'd take this job as an opportunity to inspect the produce at friends' houses and deliver inappropriately long sermons on their poor decision making skills.
* Homeland Security Airport Screener: This one's just sad. Do you know how much they get paid? Almost nothing. No wonder they have no sense of humor.
* Human Billboard: you've seen these. The job pays remarkably well, seeing as how the only requirement is to stand on a street corner with a giant sign hung around your neck. I saw a girl in Florida do this every weekday for several months and the only difference is that the headphones she wore all day got flashier and flashier. If I had this job I might go topless under the sign. Or occasionally flip the sign over to the back where I would have written something universally inflammatory. Or just stand there bawling and see if anyone noticed.
* OB Tech: Seriously. You need no nursing experience to do this, you just set up all the sterile baby-catching equipment, stay out of the way during the delivery, and then mop up afterwards. For sheer wow-factor this job beats out all the others. I bet you don't have to see that many births before you've got some pretty great stories, and then I could see in advance how battle-hardened OB nurses and doctors become just like any other profession when it comes to serving patients/customers, which is to say jaded and full of sanity-saving insulting jokes.
Actually, until I get a forklift driver's license and a back-up certification in dental hygiene, the job search might be kind of slow. Seems all the positions for neurotic word nerd smartasses are full up these days.
The job search. It always seems coincide with the times when I'm really doubting my worth as a human being, and suddenly I need to update this slick-looking document with proactive verbs and examples of my own brilliance and efficiency. I've never lied on a resume, but I am sorely tempted to douse mine in a bath of acidic sarcasm every now and then: "Winged it for a year, managed to sound bright every now and then, was never found out." "Successfully disguised soul-crushing post-collegiate ennui while revamping vendor files."
So, I've compiled a list of jobs from local wants ads that I could do if I abandoned all sense of career continuity and instead embraced my appreciation for the absurd:
* Dating Agency Spokesmodel: they need someone to look regular and yet more attractive than average (which I could manage with professionally applied make-up and a soft-focus lens) to appear in commercials and spout off the advantages of hooking up online. I would also have to create a profile on the site, but I wouldn't be required to answer inquiries. The old bait & switch.
* Prisoner Transporter: I would need to drive a van to and from detention centers and be responsible for feeding the prisoners fast food en route whilst compiling receipts for food and gas. The ad doesn't say anything about what you're allowed to play on the van stereo, so I'd make a perplexing mix tape of my favorite Tupac songs interspersed with foreign children's folk songs and snippets of wacko conservative talk radio. My passengers would be the first to get shiv-happy upon arrival at their new destination.
* Tomato Quality Control Specialist: pretty self-explanatory. Pick out the moldy and deformed ones. I'd take this job as an opportunity to inspect the produce at friends' houses and deliver inappropriately long sermons on their poor decision making skills.
* Homeland Security Airport Screener: This one's just sad. Do you know how much they get paid? Almost nothing. No wonder they have no sense of humor.
* Human Billboard: you've seen these. The job pays remarkably well, seeing as how the only requirement is to stand on a street corner with a giant sign hung around your neck. I saw a girl in Florida do this every weekday for several months and the only difference is that the headphones she wore all day got flashier and flashier. If I had this job I might go topless under the sign. Or occasionally flip the sign over to the back where I would have written something universally inflammatory. Or just stand there bawling and see if anyone noticed.
* OB Tech: Seriously. You need no nursing experience to do this, you just set up all the sterile baby-catching equipment, stay out of the way during the delivery, and then mop up afterwards. For sheer wow-factor this job beats out all the others. I bet you don't have to see that many births before you've got some pretty great stories, and then I could see in advance how battle-hardened OB nurses and doctors become just like any other profession when it comes to serving patients/customers, which is to say jaded and full of sanity-saving insulting jokes.
Actually, until I get a forklift driver's license and a back-up certification in dental hygiene, the job search might be kind of slow. Seems all the positions for neurotic word nerd smartasses are full up these days.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Yo-se-mightily Impressive, but not for dogs
Opening shot (nothing to do with the majority of the post, but since it was the impetus for writing today, I feel honor-bound to include it):
Our house is directly behind a large Baptist church, the kind that eventually spawn food courts and become more like God malls than houses of worship, and evidently Monday is "Hour-long Splitting Howl Practice" for infants. The experience of sitting in my backyard with a cup of tea and a New Yorker, trying to be all urbane and up on politics, was so thoroughly hijacked just now that I felt like I had no choice but to come in and waste some bandwith on it. I mean, I recognize that they're babies and lack perspective, but what could possibly be so awful that you have to scream continually about it for-- and I'm not exaggerating-- one hour? And as a baby's caretaker, what level of catatonia have you reached that you can stand that? Is something wrong? Or is this just further proof that I am in no way ready to be a parent and won't be for at least another decade?
OK, done. On to the real thing.
This weekend, Pants and I went to Yosemite and it was every bit the living-in-a-screensaver experience I had imagined.
This was the view directly outside of a huge, amber-lit tunnel that plows through a mountain side as you head down into Yosemite Valley. As soon as the tunnel ends, people regularly slam on their brakes and yell expletives in their respective languages at the shock of the view, so there is a nice big parking lot to veer into while you do this.
We met a nice lady there with a golden retreiver. Both she and the dog wore big poofy pantaloons-- hers were Patagonia, the dog's natural-- and we took this as a good sign that dog-friendly fun would ensue. Sadly, this was not the case. Yosemite hates dogs, and for Pants and I, whose devotion to Abby I suspect is the source of many jokes behind our backs, the weekend brought on a moral crisis.
"Aren't dogs allowed on any of the trails?" I asked of one leather-tanned, blissed out female rangers. Wide-eyed and semi-offended, she answered, "Certainly not. They're predators!" "Even if they're on a leash? The website seemed to say they were..." "Forget it. We do have kennels though, if you walk to the horse stables."
I took our leashed predator (who gives high-fives and plays dead) to the kennels only to learn that they didn't open for another two weeks. After much grim-faced charging through crowded parking lots we finally realized our options were to either go back home or leave Abby in the camper part of the truck bed. We felt like the world's biggest assholes and Abby seconded that notion by barking forlornly at our retreating backs.
The first day, we did a 7-mile hike in to see the grove of giant sequoias. The trees themselves were humbling and hard to imagine. When you look at something 800 years old and think back to what the state of Western medicine was at the time this tree was young ("we'll just have to bleeeeed you a little!"), you really start to feel like just another fruit fly whining in the margins.
My favorite things about the sequoias were their bases. They have a way of splitting up the sides, whether from the heat of forest fires or just some condition of growth like the tree version of stretch marks, and the effect is of a small darkened stage flanked by scrolling wooden curtains.
We started out in late afternoon and saw very few people on the hike, which made the view from the top that much more religious for its solitude.
On the second day we hiked to the top of Nevada Falls, which was like having someone take an acid-soaked sledgehammer to my quads and calves but at the same time showing me views so beautiful that I was grateful for the pain. The trail to Nevada Falls stops off first at Vernal Falls, and is called the Mist Trail because you get soaked in rainbow-making waterfall spray almost the whole way up. It's a popular trail and whole Indian families, even the grumbling ancient matriarchs in saris and Keds make the trip.
After Vernal Falls, the crowd thins significantly and the percentage of brand name outdoor gear peaks sharply. Clearly, these are the Serious Hikers, the chosen few who will feast lustily on the far more exclusive views, made all the more impressive by the lasting tendon damage incurred to get there. At least, that's the vibe I picked up on as I wheezed and grunted my way to the top. At one particularly hairy switchback we encountered an older couple, the wife crumpled off the side of the rocky trail, her head on her crossed arms, her braced knee askew, panting in a state of near-total surrender. Her ropy husband stood above her, higher in the switchback with his hands planted on his hips, saying tightly, "Just a little bit longer, Nora." Maybe it was just me reading way too much into snippets of strangers' lives once again, but I felt like kneeing the guy in the nuts.
At the top of Nevada Falls, we soaked our feet in the clear green water and then laid out on a flat, moon-like expanse of granite for a short nap that got longer in ten-minute increments each time Pants' watch alarm beeped. There was no discussion about this, and after three extensions we both sat up refreshed. Getting to the top of a mountain is a great thing, but napping for the perfect amount of time once you're there is on a separate, higher plane.
And can I just rhapsodize about descents for a moment? There's nothing like the semi-controlled spastic ragdoll gait of a descent whose ascent nearly made you doubt your faith in God. It's almost a dance, a giddy, knee-destroying dance, that takes about of quarter of the time of the ascent, and for this one it was not uncommon to see people flat out running it in the safer places, their arms flapping in all directions and their feet slapping the rocky trail. Occasionally some mom would bark at her kid to slow down so he wouldn't hit a gravel patch and roll like a bowling ball all the way down, but then another adult would crash by doing exactly that and apparently loving it.
The whole trip was a much needed break from real life, and Pants took on his traditional role of fire wizard and camp gourmet, conjuring impossible luxuries from the bare earth and a few handily packed, collapsible gadgets from REI. Easily the best combination was our Saturday night meal, which came on the heels of the grueling falls hike: jambalaya with spicy sausage, Jack Daniels and coke, and then later, s'mores. I slept like a rock, like the dead, like a log, like a baby: a dead baby fashioned from petrified wood. I slept under a blazing blanket of stars next to a glass-clear river, and woke up feeling that even though I'd been rolled through a pasta press, I was clean and new and totally relaxed. . .
which is handy, since we've agreed that the home coffers are dangerously low and I need to find work. So much for my experimental hausfrau stage. Subsequent blog posts are likely to be heavy on the resume-related angst. Be forewarned.
Our house is directly behind a large Baptist church, the kind that eventually spawn food courts and become more like God malls than houses of worship, and evidently Monday is "Hour-long Splitting Howl Practice" for infants. The experience of sitting in my backyard with a cup of tea and a New Yorker, trying to be all urbane and up on politics, was so thoroughly hijacked just now that I felt like I had no choice but to come in and waste some bandwith on it. I mean, I recognize that they're babies and lack perspective, but what could possibly be so awful that you have to scream continually about it for-- and I'm not exaggerating-- one hour? And as a baby's caretaker, what level of catatonia have you reached that you can stand that? Is something wrong? Or is this just further proof that I am in no way ready to be a parent and won't be for at least another decade?
OK, done. On to the real thing.
This weekend, Pants and I went to Yosemite and it was every bit the living-in-a-screensaver experience I had imagined.
This was the view directly outside of a huge, amber-lit tunnel that plows through a mountain side as you head down into Yosemite Valley. As soon as the tunnel ends, people regularly slam on their brakes and yell expletives in their respective languages at the shock of the view, so there is a nice big parking lot to veer into while you do this.
We met a nice lady there with a golden retreiver. Both she and the dog wore big poofy pantaloons-- hers were Patagonia, the dog's natural-- and we took this as a good sign that dog-friendly fun would ensue. Sadly, this was not the case. Yosemite hates dogs, and for Pants and I, whose devotion to Abby I suspect is the source of many jokes behind our backs, the weekend brought on a moral crisis.
"Aren't dogs allowed on any of the trails?" I asked of one leather-tanned, blissed out female rangers. Wide-eyed and semi-offended, she answered, "Certainly not. They're predators!" "Even if they're on a leash? The website seemed to say they were..." "Forget it. We do have kennels though, if you walk to the horse stables."
I took our leashed predator (who gives high-fives and plays dead) to the kennels only to learn that they didn't open for another two weeks. After much grim-faced charging through crowded parking lots we finally realized our options were to either go back home or leave Abby in the camper part of the truck bed. We felt like the world's biggest assholes and Abby seconded that notion by barking forlornly at our retreating backs.
The first day, we did a 7-mile hike in to see the grove of giant sequoias. The trees themselves were humbling and hard to imagine. When you look at something 800 years old and think back to what the state of Western medicine was at the time this tree was young ("we'll just have to bleeeeed you a little!"), you really start to feel like just another fruit fly whining in the margins.
My favorite things about the sequoias were their bases. They have a way of splitting up the sides, whether from the heat of forest fires or just some condition of growth like the tree version of stretch marks, and the effect is of a small darkened stage flanked by scrolling wooden curtains.
We started out in late afternoon and saw very few people on the hike, which made the view from the top that much more religious for its solitude.
On the second day we hiked to the top of Nevada Falls, which was like having someone take an acid-soaked sledgehammer to my quads and calves but at the same time showing me views so beautiful that I was grateful for the pain. The trail to Nevada Falls stops off first at Vernal Falls, and is called the Mist Trail because you get soaked in rainbow-making waterfall spray almost the whole way up. It's a popular trail and whole Indian families, even the grumbling ancient matriarchs in saris and Keds make the trip.
After Vernal Falls, the crowd thins significantly and the percentage of brand name outdoor gear peaks sharply. Clearly, these are the Serious Hikers, the chosen few who will feast lustily on the far more exclusive views, made all the more impressive by the lasting tendon damage incurred to get there. At least, that's the vibe I picked up on as I wheezed and grunted my way to the top. At one particularly hairy switchback we encountered an older couple, the wife crumpled off the side of the rocky trail, her head on her crossed arms, her braced knee askew, panting in a state of near-total surrender. Her ropy husband stood above her, higher in the switchback with his hands planted on his hips, saying tightly, "Just a little bit longer, Nora." Maybe it was just me reading way too much into snippets of strangers' lives once again, but I felt like kneeing the guy in the nuts.
At the top of Nevada Falls, we soaked our feet in the clear green water and then laid out on a flat, moon-like expanse of granite for a short nap that got longer in ten-minute increments each time Pants' watch alarm beeped. There was no discussion about this, and after three extensions we both sat up refreshed. Getting to the top of a mountain is a great thing, but napping for the perfect amount of time once you're there is on a separate, higher plane.
And can I just rhapsodize about descents for a moment? There's nothing like the semi-controlled spastic ragdoll gait of a descent whose ascent nearly made you doubt your faith in God. It's almost a dance, a giddy, knee-destroying dance, that takes about of quarter of the time of the ascent, and for this one it was not uncommon to see people flat out running it in the safer places, their arms flapping in all directions and their feet slapping the rocky trail. Occasionally some mom would bark at her kid to slow down so he wouldn't hit a gravel patch and roll like a bowling ball all the way down, but then another adult would crash by doing exactly that and apparently loving it.
The whole trip was a much needed break from real life, and Pants took on his traditional role of fire wizard and camp gourmet, conjuring impossible luxuries from the bare earth and a few handily packed, collapsible gadgets from REI. Easily the best combination was our Saturday night meal, which came on the heels of the grueling falls hike: jambalaya with spicy sausage, Jack Daniels and coke, and then later, s'mores. I slept like a rock, like the dead, like a log, like a baby: a dead baby fashioned from petrified wood. I slept under a blazing blanket of stars next to a glass-clear river, and woke up feeling that even though I'd been rolled through a pasta press, I was clean and new and totally relaxed. . .
which is handy, since we've agreed that the home coffers are dangerously low and I need to find work. So much for my experimental hausfrau stage. Subsequent blog posts are likely to be heavy on the resume-related angst. Be forewarned.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
It's here!
It's here! The coolest computer ever is here, and it's writing the world's shortest blog entry because I'm about to go play with it all. day. long.
Pants and I are headed to Yosemite this weekend if he can manage to tear me away from this thing...
Pants and I are headed to Yosemite this weekend if he can manage to tear me away from this thing...
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
The Subtle Race
Tomorrow! Tomorrow!
I'm humming an obnoxious show tune in my head, complete with the Doris Day-like shout-singing of all good Little Orphans Annie. My computer arrives tomorrow, sometime before 12 PM, as in noon, which I'm embarassed to say has been a source of confusion for me ever since I was eight years old. I see the PM and I automatically think "night," an incorrect detour in the well-worn streets of my neural pathways that years of peer mocking has failed to correct. Thankfully, though, I caught this blunder before The Day My Mac Arrives, so now I'll have only 6 hours to fill whilst waiting for it rather than 12. I plan to enlist Pledge and caffeine to help in making the time fly.
It's hard to find anything else blogworthy today. This morning marked my second forray to the base gym, a place which received Arnold Schwarzeneggar's emphatically garbled Teutonic blessing when it opened. The place is nice-- all green glass and stainless steel archways, an intimidating effect immediately negated by the military's overbearing motherly signage: "If you have MUD on your feet or person, please REMOVE it before entering." Because I just mopped. Little warnings about heat exhaustion and slippery floors abound, as well as reminders to clean "bodily fluids" off all machinery after use. Why "bodily fluids" and not "sweat"? Or is this not stictly a gym...?
There's a nice lap pool outside, but I've avoided it thusfar because I'm still unclear on lane etiquette. Back in Florida, Pants and I swam laps for about two weeks in preparation for his "let's put on all your gear and see if you drown!" test. We always showed up at about the same time, so we started recognizing our fellow swimmers. One was a tiny Asian woman with a murderous breaststroke. This happens to be the only stroke I'm really any good at, so I used to subtly race her.
This subtle race thing-- I have a problem with it. I do it way more than is healthy, and I don't know if it's because I didn't get all the competitive sports burned out of me at a young enough age or what, but I seem to be unable to enjoy physical activity, except maybe running, for its own sake without inventing some elaborate internal fiction about who this other person is and why I've got to BEAT THEM. "Cold War Olympic Challenge" is a favorite scenario, as are "Alien Abduction Biometrics test" and the Ender's Game-inspired "High Ranker Fitness Test." Basically, nothing is too cheesy. And it never matters who the person is-- little old men, Marines, children-- doesn't matter. In fact, my success rate is quite poor, maybe 50/50 if I'm being generous, but all that does is fuel the fictional rivalry for next time. I've given grudging, narrow-eyed nods of respect to people who stare back at me in nervous puzzlement.
Back to the Asian breaststroker: she beat me night after night. 10 laps, 15 laps, 30. She kept handing me my ass and it was getting to me. One night I decided I would beat her, or at least match her, if it killed me. The pool was very crowded and people were doubling, and even tripling up in the lanes-- lots of different professions were having their "let's see if you drown" test in the next few days and people were cramming (which makes no sense for swimming, but whatever).
In retrospect, I realize I probably should have gotten out of the pool and let people who actually had something on the line have full use of the lane, but my fictive rivalry was such that I believed I did have something on the line. We started out matched in pace for the first 10 laps, but then both got company in our lanes and had to slow down. She had two freestylers (whom she still outpaced), but I got two doughy boys from Kentucky who were unfamiliar with any stroke beyond dog paddling, and who were also determined to hold a conversation as they paddled in single file. It was maddening. I've never felt like such a competitive jerk while also feeling I'd be entirely justified in dunking both of them repeatedly.
Needless to say, she completely obliviously handed me my ass once again, but the annoyance verging on rage I felt at the two doughboys made me leary of getting into a shared lane ever again. What if my lane-mate is someone with an imaginary axe to grind with a fellow swimmer? What if I'm driving the wedge of her delusion deeper with every leisurely frog kick, and the view of my moon-white tuchus is front of her makes her want to drown me?
Is it the mark of the truly insane that they imagine everyone else shares their peculiar hang-ups, or is the ability to at least partially imagine others' viewpoints, however incorrectly, still a saving grace, some proof that one is aware that a whole world exists outside of one's own mind? I don't know. Obviously I've spent my fair share of time exercising by myself in the last few years, but until I have indisputable proof-- I mean proof-- that it's making me spongy in the sanity department, I'll keep racing.
I'm humming an obnoxious show tune in my head, complete with the Doris Day-like shout-singing of all good Little Orphans Annie. My computer arrives tomorrow, sometime before 12 PM, as in noon, which I'm embarassed to say has been a source of confusion for me ever since I was eight years old. I see the PM and I automatically think "night," an incorrect detour in the well-worn streets of my neural pathways that years of peer mocking has failed to correct. Thankfully, though, I caught this blunder before The Day My Mac Arrives, so now I'll have only 6 hours to fill whilst waiting for it rather than 12. I plan to enlist Pledge and caffeine to help in making the time fly.
It's hard to find anything else blogworthy today. This morning marked my second forray to the base gym, a place which received Arnold Schwarzeneggar's emphatically garbled Teutonic blessing when it opened. The place is nice-- all green glass and stainless steel archways, an intimidating effect immediately negated by the military's overbearing motherly signage: "If you have MUD on your feet or person, please REMOVE it before entering." Because I just mopped. Little warnings about heat exhaustion and slippery floors abound, as well as reminders to clean "bodily fluids" off all machinery after use. Why "bodily fluids" and not "sweat"? Or is this not stictly a gym...?
There's a nice lap pool outside, but I've avoided it thusfar because I'm still unclear on lane etiquette. Back in Florida, Pants and I swam laps for about two weeks in preparation for his "let's put on all your gear and see if you drown!" test. We always showed up at about the same time, so we started recognizing our fellow swimmers. One was a tiny Asian woman with a murderous breaststroke. This happens to be the only stroke I'm really any good at, so I used to subtly race her.
This subtle race thing-- I have a problem with it. I do it way more than is healthy, and I don't know if it's because I didn't get all the competitive sports burned out of me at a young enough age or what, but I seem to be unable to enjoy physical activity, except maybe running, for its own sake without inventing some elaborate internal fiction about who this other person is and why I've got to BEAT THEM. "Cold War Olympic Challenge" is a favorite scenario, as are "Alien Abduction Biometrics test" and the Ender's Game-inspired "High Ranker Fitness Test." Basically, nothing is too cheesy. And it never matters who the person is-- little old men, Marines, children-- doesn't matter. In fact, my success rate is quite poor, maybe 50/50 if I'm being generous, but all that does is fuel the fictional rivalry for next time. I've given grudging, narrow-eyed nods of respect to people who stare back at me in nervous puzzlement.
Back to the Asian breaststroker: she beat me night after night. 10 laps, 15 laps, 30. She kept handing me my ass and it was getting to me. One night I decided I would beat her, or at least match her, if it killed me. The pool was very crowded and people were doubling, and even tripling up in the lanes-- lots of different professions were having their "let's see if you drown" test in the next few days and people were cramming (which makes no sense for swimming, but whatever).
In retrospect, I realize I probably should have gotten out of the pool and let people who actually had something on the line have full use of the lane, but my fictive rivalry was such that I believed I did have something on the line. We started out matched in pace for the first 10 laps, but then both got company in our lanes and had to slow down. She had two freestylers (whom she still outpaced), but I got two doughy boys from Kentucky who were unfamiliar with any stroke beyond dog paddling, and who were also determined to hold a conversation as they paddled in single file. It was maddening. I've never felt like such a competitive jerk while also feeling I'd be entirely justified in dunking both of them repeatedly.
Needless to say, she completely obliviously handed me my ass once again, but the annoyance verging on rage I felt at the two doughboys made me leary of getting into a shared lane ever again. What if my lane-mate is someone with an imaginary axe to grind with a fellow swimmer? What if I'm driving the wedge of her delusion deeper with every leisurely frog kick, and the view of my moon-white tuchus is front of her makes her want to drown me?
Is it the mark of the truly insane that they imagine everyone else shares their peculiar hang-ups, or is the ability to at least partially imagine others' viewpoints, however incorrectly, still a saving grace, some proof that one is aware that a whole world exists outside of one's own mind? I don't know. Obviously I've spent my fair share of time exercising by myself in the last few years, but until I have indisputable proof-- I mean proof-- that it's making me spongy in the sanity department, I'll keep racing.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Waiting for FedEx
Somewhere in a factory, someone is packing up my new Mac and getting ready to FedEx it to me. Its tender little circuits are being lovingly sealed away in classy, minimalistic bubble wrap, and its sleek, almost organic-looking shell is closed like a secret, waiting for me. Today, maybe tomorrow, maybe (God!) the next day, the delivery guy who's missing his left hand (but is somehow able to carry human-sized boxes *and* his little beeping signature pad) will pull up in front of my house and glance awkwardly at me when I throw open the front door before he's even pulled to a complete stop, and then meet him at the curb, bouncing back and forth on the balls of my feet. Until then, I'm going to wait in my house like one of those trap door spiders lest I miss his arrival and fail to provide the signature which will release My Mac to me.
I hope I can muster as much excitement when my first child is born. I may have to fake it.
The weekend passed fairly uneventfully. Pants and I and three of his buddies went to a triple A ballgame in Fresno. It was cold and the mascot, a Grizzly, allegedly, gyrated furiously in his dusty costume. One of Pants's friends is a baseball fanatic, but this only meant that he was a much louder heckler than anyone else. When I used to go to Astros games with my dad, a true fanatic, I'd leave knowing the family and medical histories of individual players, their seething personal rivalries, but M.'s contribution stopped at a folksy catalogue of pitching flaws delivered at high volume.
Fresno's Chukchansi Stadium, according to the teenager taking ticket stubs, is named after a casino. Whether that casino takes its name from a Native American tribe whose people once ruled the land with fearsome warriors or peaceful commerce or some combination of the two, we'll never know. Just beyond the right field fence, old downtown buildings, some with the names of bygone banks still sketched out against the skyline in iron letters, peer down. Back behind left field, the train station still has an open line and train whistles blot out the at-bat snippets of Nirvana and Marilyn Manson the players have chosen to introduce themselves. Center field is dominated by a massive electronic scoreboard/television/billboard, a short grass berm, and then a clear path of darkening sky beyond.
After the game (the Grizzlies beat the 51's handily) the stadium had a fireworks display that ended in a breathtaking finale given its small scale. It surprised laughter and yells out of me, and I imagined Fresno's homeless population, many of whom seem to live in the forested city pavilion a block from the stadium, looking up through the shadows of the trees at the exploding lights and wondering, like me, "Why tonight?" Oh well, why not? Maybe Chukchansi is just a casino.
The next day Pants and I took an evening walk to take the head of steam off the dog, who had been stalking around the house wide-eyed and grumbling all afternoon. We took her to a park downtown and made her run huge geometric paths, the greatest possible distance from point A (us) to point B (the ball), that space allowed. Two little boys came over and wanted to throw the ball for her, and she cowered and barked before finally relenting and chasing their short throws only to toss the ball back at them from ten feet away. They quickly lost interest and focused instead on a fallen nest of baby birds.
"This one needs help!" one of them shouted at me. I went over to look. One of the thirty-foot palms had dropped an armful's worth of nest, and five chicks, each as big across as my palm and covered in gray down with the black stubs of beginner feathers sprouting along their backs, lay scattered across the grass. "This one's still alive," one of the boys said, pointing to a chick who wobbled weakly on his side, "We have to help him."
I felt like a mom because I had to disappoint him. "I don't think he's going to make it, buddy. This happens sometimes." I squatted down next to them and held the kid's hand back when he reached out to touch the bird. "Probably shouldn't touch him." "Germs?" "Yeah." We stared and I wondered what to say. I pointed out what beginner feathers looked like, and described what I'd learned from David Attenborough about why baby birds have such pronounced, fleshy sides to their mouths. "It's so their moms can see where to put the food."
After a while the two boys stood up. "I have to go home now," one of them said to me, and then ran off. The other, the one who hadn't said anything at all the whole time, lingered. I started over to join Pants, who was standing over where Abby had finally collapsed in ecstasy, her tongue bright red and scrolling in and out of her mouth with her panting. I thought about telling the boy again not to touch the dying chick, but instead I said, "It'll be OK," and walked off, feeling thoroughly adult, and thoroughly weird in how automatic and obligatory it felt to say something like that.
Trucks keep stopping outside, and they keep not being the FedEx guy.
I hope I can muster as much excitement when my first child is born. I may have to fake it.
The weekend passed fairly uneventfully. Pants and I and three of his buddies went to a triple A ballgame in Fresno. It was cold and the mascot, a Grizzly, allegedly, gyrated furiously in his dusty costume. One of Pants's friends is a baseball fanatic, but this only meant that he was a much louder heckler than anyone else. When I used to go to Astros games with my dad, a true fanatic, I'd leave knowing the family and medical histories of individual players, their seething personal rivalries, but M.'s contribution stopped at a folksy catalogue of pitching flaws delivered at high volume.
Fresno's Chukchansi Stadium, according to the teenager taking ticket stubs, is named after a casino. Whether that casino takes its name from a Native American tribe whose people once ruled the land with fearsome warriors or peaceful commerce or some combination of the two, we'll never know. Just beyond the right field fence, old downtown buildings, some with the names of bygone banks still sketched out against the skyline in iron letters, peer down. Back behind left field, the train station still has an open line and train whistles blot out the at-bat snippets of Nirvana and Marilyn Manson the players have chosen to introduce themselves. Center field is dominated by a massive electronic scoreboard/television/billboard, a short grass berm, and then a clear path of darkening sky beyond.
After the game (the Grizzlies beat the 51's handily) the stadium had a fireworks display that ended in a breathtaking finale given its small scale. It surprised laughter and yells out of me, and I imagined Fresno's homeless population, many of whom seem to live in the forested city pavilion a block from the stadium, looking up through the shadows of the trees at the exploding lights and wondering, like me, "Why tonight?" Oh well, why not? Maybe Chukchansi is just a casino.
The next day Pants and I took an evening walk to take the head of steam off the dog, who had been stalking around the house wide-eyed and grumbling all afternoon. We took her to a park downtown and made her run huge geometric paths, the greatest possible distance from point A (us) to point B (the ball), that space allowed. Two little boys came over and wanted to throw the ball for her, and she cowered and barked before finally relenting and chasing their short throws only to toss the ball back at them from ten feet away. They quickly lost interest and focused instead on a fallen nest of baby birds.
"This one needs help!" one of them shouted at me. I went over to look. One of the thirty-foot palms had dropped an armful's worth of nest, and five chicks, each as big across as my palm and covered in gray down with the black stubs of beginner feathers sprouting along their backs, lay scattered across the grass. "This one's still alive," one of the boys said, pointing to a chick who wobbled weakly on his side, "We have to help him."
I felt like a mom because I had to disappoint him. "I don't think he's going to make it, buddy. This happens sometimes." I squatted down next to them and held the kid's hand back when he reached out to touch the bird. "Probably shouldn't touch him." "Germs?" "Yeah." We stared and I wondered what to say. I pointed out what beginner feathers looked like, and described what I'd learned from David Attenborough about why baby birds have such pronounced, fleshy sides to their mouths. "It's so their moms can see where to put the food."
After a while the two boys stood up. "I have to go home now," one of them said to me, and then ran off. The other, the one who hadn't said anything at all the whole time, lingered. I started over to join Pants, who was standing over where Abby had finally collapsed in ecstasy, her tongue bright red and scrolling in and out of her mouth with her panting. I thought about telling the boy again not to touch the dying chick, but instead I said, "It'll be OK," and walked off, feeling thoroughly adult, and thoroughly weird in how automatic and obligatory it felt to say something like that.
Trucks keep stopping outside, and they keep not being the FedEx guy.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Citadel
Imagine a very old man attempting to do the splits on a cold morning and you've got what it feels like to get back into writing after a long hiatus. I did the same with running two days ago, and was, for the first time in a long while, acutely self conscious of how awkward and pained I looked loping through the streets of this idyllic little desert town, frequently snapping Abby's leash as she strained in all directions trying to guess my next turn and map the contours of her new home from dog-level. She struggled with this, and once even clotheslined herself around a telephone pole's base when a mop-haired kid on a skateboard clattered past.
*side note: why do young boys these days [grimaces and shakes cane, then leans to spit off porch] attempt that wretched chili bowl-surfer-bedhead look? Very few have the right hair texture for it, and nearly all of them remain ignorant of the concept of hair products meant to de-frizz, give volume, etc. Cut your hair! Commies!
Today there are clouds in the sky promising to mediate between the sun and the ground. Good luck. Noon for the past week has been atom-bomb bright and merciless. The contrast between indoors and out has meant that most times when I enter a building I have to stand around for a while and wait for my vision to fade back in from a neon green haze. I've made no attempt to come up with some stage business for what I'm doing standing in the doorway, gasping and blinking and muttering, "Holy shit..."
The big question, now that the house is mostly in order (and looking far more like a home than anything I've lived in for the past three years-- thanks, Mom!), is should I immediately go out and find a job? In the past I've used my manic energy from gutting boxes and hurling plates into cabinets to funnel me right into interviews, and then jobs, but this time I'm wondering if maybe I should slow down a bit and try to make focused decisions.
When Pants came back from his horrific survival school, fifteen pounds lighter, quiet, and covered in weird bruises, he said quietly that he was going to try to eat healthier now that his stomach had shrunken from a week without food. He figured it was a convenient time to reset his food habits. Maybe it's taken someone starving my husband and beating him, but my inner Donna Reed has finally raised her sleepy head; I've actually taken a certain amount of pride in making nice breakfasts and dinners for the past three days. I've made spinach salad with citrus vinaigrette, pesto tortellini, red beans and rice (OK, not so much effort for that), bacon, eggs, and toast with fresh-squeezed orange juice-- and I've adjusted the lights and found good music to play while I cook and while we eat.
Pants is slowly recovering his strength, and is so grateful for the added effort that he hugs me and thanks me like a starving orphan straight out of Dickens.
Unfortunately, a few good meals have done nothing to calm his ever-resent money anxiety. Despite my protests, the calculator came out two days after he got home, and he steadily tapped and scribbled his way into grim-faced silence. So I'm torn between two directions, neither of which is mutually exclusive, I know, but they compete nonetheless: do I try to make a nice home for the two of us, fix healthy meals, and maintain a larger share of the bills and paperwork, or do I go out and try to find a job that will shore up our income enough to make him relax a little? Either way, my goal is the same-- to take the starch out of Pants-- but I've tried the job route before and it never seems like the money alone is enough, plus it wears me out to the point where I can't do everything around the house and we eat like fugitives at a convenience store.
Holding down a good job has always been a pride thing for me as well-- so few of the other military wives worked that it became something that set me apart (and above them, in my mind) and gave me convenient excuses not get involved in the gossip or in the competition over who wifed it up the best with her immaculate house and intricate brunch offerings. The other guys also gave me props for it with such classy statements as, "Thank God you don't sit around the house with your thumb up your ass all day."
Frankly, I'm considering some thumb up the ass time. Pants and I both need someone to balance out the schedule of full-throttle training and constant relocation. Since the weekend we got married two and a half years ago, there has been very little down time (and no time to use any of the mountain of expensive camping equipment we dutifully haul from one state to the next). Someone needs to be home. Someone needs to be the home.
Since we got to California, I've decided that part of what I'm going to do out here is read the literature of the area, and that's taken me first to John Steinbeck, who was born not far away in Salinas, and who wrote a lot about the migrant farm workers (albeit, not the brown ones) who made this area what it is. I'm starting with a re-read of The Grapes of Wrath (which rockets by when you're not being forced to read it), and then on to Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat. If I'm not burned out on him by then, I'll hit Of Mice and Men and maybe even The Pearl. Something he wrote early on in Grapes about Ma Joad has stuck with me:
"She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken . . . And since, when a joyful thing happened, [the family] looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials . . . She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply waivered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone."
I don't think I've given much thought to this role in a marriage, and ironically, I think I've been the first one to start feeling like we might need a wife around here. Not a maid, and not a cook, but someone who makes this a soft place to land, a break from the performance and endurance demands that never seem to let up. This is uncharted territory for me, and many ways, much scarier than going out and finding some job I can bury myself in. I know I can work. But what about making a home? The compensation, both in money and praise and advancement, is concrete at a job, but what if I'm not the valedictorian of wifery? My ego would be putting down a pretty significant down payment on a sketchy investment.
Off to the grocery store for dinner supplies while I ponder that...
*side note: why do young boys these days [grimaces and shakes cane, then leans to spit off porch] attempt that wretched chili bowl-surfer-bedhead look? Very few have the right hair texture for it, and nearly all of them remain ignorant of the concept of hair products meant to de-frizz, give volume, etc. Cut your hair! Commies!
Today there are clouds in the sky promising to mediate between the sun and the ground. Good luck. Noon for the past week has been atom-bomb bright and merciless. The contrast between indoors and out has meant that most times when I enter a building I have to stand around for a while and wait for my vision to fade back in from a neon green haze. I've made no attempt to come up with some stage business for what I'm doing standing in the doorway, gasping and blinking and muttering, "Holy shit..."
The big question, now that the house is mostly in order (and looking far more like a home than anything I've lived in for the past three years-- thanks, Mom!), is should I immediately go out and find a job? In the past I've used my manic energy from gutting boxes and hurling plates into cabinets to funnel me right into interviews, and then jobs, but this time I'm wondering if maybe I should slow down a bit and try to make focused decisions.
When Pants came back from his horrific survival school, fifteen pounds lighter, quiet, and covered in weird bruises, he said quietly that he was going to try to eat healthier now that his stomach had shrunken from a week without food. He figured it was a convenient time to reset his food habits. Maybe it's taken someone starving my husband and beating him, but my inner Donna Reed has finally raised her sleepy head; I've actually taken a certain amount of pride in making nice breakfasts and dinners for the past three days. I've made spinach salad with citrus vinaigrette, pesto tortellini, red beans and rice (OK, not so much effort for that), bacon, eggs, and toast with fresh-squeezed orange juice-- and I've adjusted the lights and found good music to play while I cook and while we eat.
Pants is slowly recovering his strength, and is so grateful for the added effort that he hugs me and thanks me like a starving orphan straight out of Dickens.
Unfortunately, a few good meals have done nothing to calm his ever-resent money anxiety. Despite my protests, the calculator came out two days after he got home, and he steadily tapped and scribbled his way into grim-faced silence. So I'm torn between two directions, neither of which is mutually exclusive, I know, but they compete nonetheless: do I try to make a nice home for the two of us, fix healthy meals, and maintain a larger share of the bills and paperwork, or do I go out and try to find a job that will shore up our income enough to make him relax a little? Either way, my goal is the same-- to take the starch out of Pants-- but I've tried the job route before and it never seems like the money alone is enough, plus it wears me out to the point where I can't do everything around the house and we eat like fugitives at a convenience store.
Holding down a good job has always been a pride thing for me as well-- so few of the other military wives worked that it became something that set me apart (and above them, in my mind) and gave me convenient excuses not get involved in the gossip or in the competition over who wifed it up the best with her immaculate house and intricate brunch offerings. The other guys also gave me props for it with such classy statements as, "Thank God you don't sit around the house with your thumb up your ass all day."
Frankly, I'm considering some thumb up the ass time. Pants and I both need someone to balance out the schedule of full-throttle training and constant relocation. Since the weekend we got married two and a half years ago, there has been very little down time (and no time to use any of the mountain of expensive camping equipment we dutifully haul from one state to the next). Someone needs to be home. Someone needs to be the home.
Since we got to California, I've decided that part of what I'm going to do out here is read the literature of the area, and that's taken me first to John Steinbeck, who was born not far away in Salinas, and who wrote a lot about the migrant farm workers (albeit, not the brown ones) who made this area what it is. I'm starting with a re-read of The Grapes of Wrath (which rockets by when you're not being forced to read it), and then on to Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat. If I'm not burned out on him by then, I'll hit Of Mice and Men and maybe even The Pearl. Something he wrote early on in Grapes about Ma Joad has stuck with me:
"She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken . . . And since, when a joyful thing happened, [the family] looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials . . . She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply waivered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone."
I don't think I've given much thought to this role in a marriage, and ironically, I think I've been the first one to start feeling like we might need a wife around here. Not a maid, and not a cook, but someone who makes this a soft place to land, a break from the performance and endurance demands that never seem to let up. This is uncharted territory for me, and many ways, much scarier than going out and finding some job I can bury myself in. I know I can work. But what about making a home? The compensation, both in money and praise and advancement, is concrete at a job, but what if I'm not the valedictorian of wifery? My ego would be putting down a pretty significant down payment on a sketchy investment.
Off to the grocery store for dinner supplies while I ponder that...
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