How hokey am I? Resolutions, seriously.

be courageous
Do more things that scare me. Taking up snowboarding has really given me confidence that I can actually do this: that I can do something that scares the hell out of me and have fun. I’m not so much just looking for things to do for the sake of doing them (the wow that was scary and I hated every minute of it, so er, yay? approach) but more things that I will actually like. I was reading in this magazine about how this world-champion skiier does indoor rock climbing to help get over her fear of heights (her? afraid of heights like me?) and then I remembered that earlier this year, I thought that would be a good, fun way to try to get over my own fear of heights, but I never went. P. thinks I should try heli-skiing. He dreams big. Hallucinatory, crazy big.

buy new slippers
Do you have any idea how often I wear slippers? And do you know how old and smelly they are? It’s bad, trust me.

eat healthy! work out!
How trite, I know. I can barely stand myself as I type the words. But, God, I already have one achy knee, and the orthopedic surgeon tells me that added weight doesn’t help; working out does. I don’t want to get too decrepit to enjoy my life just when it’s reaching its prime. I want to be able to hike and snowboard, and well, climb indoor rocks. Again, I feel confident I’m not entirely talking out my ass because I’ve gone to the gym five times a week for the past four weeks. Now, four weeks does not a permanent change make, I realize this. But it does make a start. Also, P. got me a shiny new iPod for Christmas, and I have been claiming for months that this was the one work-out accessory I needed to ensure success. And now he’s calling me on it.

be organized
Lord knows this is my goal every day of my life. I once hired a personal organizing coach-type person to help me. Only she didn’t. Obviously. Instead, she gave me color-coded folders and a tickler file and an inbox. Well, “gave” would be the wrong word. She did charge me for them.

It’s just that the clutter is like quicksand. It drowns me. And not just paper clutter, but life clutter, time clutter. And being organized leads me to not only having clothes to wear in the morning, but also to finally writing that cookbook I’ve been trying to write for the past year, maybe planting a window sill herb garden. It leads me to doing things I love, to loving my life. I am in all sincerity outraged at myself that I’m letting my own laziness keep me from what I want in life. It’s baffling and it’s insane.

be nice
Let’s face it, I’m kind of a bitch. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a bitch, and sometimes it’s warranted. But, other times, being a bitch just makes me feel crappy about myself and cranky. Like when I leave the garage after work, there are two interesections at which I am almost always a bitch.

The very first intersection I encounter is a two-way stop, and I am going one of the directions that does not require stopping. However, about 75% of the time, a car coming from a direction that does require a stop thinks that I do too and attempts to drive in front of me, which causes me to have to slam on my brakes and causes them to look or gesture at me in a threatening manner, because of course they think I’m the idiot who ran the stop sign. Without fail, my first reaction is to want to whip around and force them to pull over and explain the concept of a two-way stop. However, I do not. I simply look at them angrily. Yes, I am a bad ass.

Only a few blocks later, I come upon a light at which I turn left onto a one-way street. Both streets, the one I begin on and the one I end on, have three lanes. Only the left two lanes are turn lanes. The third lane, according to the handy arrows that hang below the light, is only for those driving straight. The one-way street eventually becomes the onramp to the freeway. It backs up a lot. At least half the time, someone darts out of line in the middle lane (where I generally am), zooms around the line in the always-empty third lane, turns left in front of all of us, then zooms back into the middle lane. Often this person zooms directly in front of me and cuts me off, causing me to slam on my breaks to avoid hitting them and hope that the person behind me is paying attention. When this happened to me a couple of weeks ago, I made a fairly angry guesture (no, not that gesture, I really try to avoid that one) at a man in a BMW who nearly sideswiped me and forced me out of my lane. He, of course, countered back with his own gesture that involved him sticking a finger from one hand into a hole he had made with his fingers of the other hand. Well, that showed me.

The point is that being bitchy to these people only makes me angrier. And why end every work day angry? When I just laugh at their idiocy, these truly idiot drivers (and in the second case, they really are assholes; the first group is just a bit clueless and non-observant) have no power over my mood, my day. Also, I always fear that the person I’m yelling at is going to turn out to be my boss or something.

And I yell at my coworkers sometimes (well, not yell, but I can have a definite cranky edge in my voice). Sure, they deserve it, but you never get anywhere yelling at coworkers. You have to keep working with them, and yelling never ever helps. It doesn’t stop them from doing all those little things that made you cranky to start with. All it does is make you mad. And make them mad. And make it harder to work with them. It’s dumb.

read more poetry
How could I forget how much I love poetry? At the risk of sounding unhip and uncultured, I don’t really like modern poetry much. My first love is really old British poetry. I spent ninth grade curled up in a corner with a dusty book I found in an auction box my parents bought for their antique store: British Poetry and Prose, reprinted 1950.

I still have that book. On the inside cover, I wrote the page numbers of my favorite poems. It was around this time that we got another auction box with old records in it. I snuck the records home and listened to them when my parents weren’t around. I recorded some of my favorites in these pages also, wonderous singers I had never heard of: Percy Sledge, Aretha Franklin.

On one of the back pages, I transcribed a poem that I wrote. It begins:

I once thought love would be so true
If only I had known
That love brings heartbreak, grief, and tears
To all whom love is shown

Yeah. I should have stuck with reading poetry, but if I had to be an angsty teenager, at least I was an angsty teenager who used the word “whom.”

In light of that, I guess it’s no surprise what I was drawn to in those days. I circled the following from William Blake:

Love’s Secret
Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind doth move
Silently, invisibly.

Soon after she was gone from me
A traveller came by,
Silently, invisibly:
He took her with a sigh.

Published in 1804 but it rang so true in 1987.

On page 467, underlined, this by Robert Herrick:

For to number sorrows by
Their departures hence, and die.

My angst continued. My favorite Ben Johnson was apparently “A Farewell to the World”. Favorite Shakespearan sonnet? Number 29, which begins,

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate

And did I love me some John Fletcher. “Away, delights! Go seek some other dwelling, for I must die!”

Surreptitiously plant British Poetry and Prose somewhere a teenager can stumble upon it and you’re assured of nurturing a poetry fan. What teenager wouldn’t love “There is, underneath the sun, Nothing in true earnest done”?

In college, I went even farther back, reading Beowulf in Old English. I had a brief fling with American poets. I still think fondly of Emily Dickinson. But then I tried to be mature and cool and read the new stuff, but there was no passion, no spark there for me. And in my disappointment, I forgot about my loves. But now I remember.

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day.

My vegetable love, it yet grows.

keep cooking
I love to cook. I love combining ingredients and trying new things and well, eating. And if I just remember to cook instead of ordering take out, it’s much easier to keep my resolution of eating healthfully. For instance, I just now made the best sandwich, which could also be a side dish, or a pasta sauce, or any kind of dish you want, really. I’m not here to stifle you.

I sliced two zucchini and two yellow squash diagonally (I know, they’re out of season, but at least I found organic ones) and put them in a baking pan. Then, I heated two tablespoons of olive oil and added a couple of smashed garlic cloves. I drizzled the oil and garlic over the squash (leaving a little oil in the pan), added kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, and then baked the squash for about eight minutes at 450. Then, I flipped the squash and topped it with some Italian seasoning, sliced red onions, and a splash of balsamic vinegar and baked it for another eight minutes.

Meanwhile, I sauted more garlic and red onion, then added a 28 oz can of drained fire-roasted chopped tomatoes and 8 oz of tomato sauce. I tossed in some salt and pepper and a splash of red wine vinegar and then let it simmer.

Since I was making a sandwich, I sliced some french bread and topped it with a little shaved parmesan and Jalsberg (yes, I realize mozzarella would be the more traditional choice but I’m contrary like that). I put that under the broiler for a minute. I assembled it all together with some torn basil leaves. For those of you keeping Weight Watchers score at home, this was a whopping 6.5 points (assuming the vegetables would make four servings). Subtract the bread and cheese and you’ve got a great low-point side dish. Add some whole-wheat pasta and maybe just the parmesan, and you’re still doing great for dinner.

Making this was surely as fast as driving down the road to the McDonald’s drive through. And McDonald’s doesn’t even have zucchini.

keep writing
It makes me happy.

Is that enough? Should I be more ambitious? Most days, just managing to do my laundry feels like all the ambition I can take. There are lots of other things I want to do, that I plan to do: travel, read, learn more about wine, find new trails to hike, places to camp, spend lots of time doing wonderful things with P. But all of that feels more like life than resolution.

A few nights ago, I had this dream that I was still married, but separated, and instead of deciding to divorce, the dream me decided to try again to make things work. I cannot tell you the sense of loss I felt when I realized. It was like the dream me knew the parallel course the real me took and could see the life that she, er, I, wouldn’t have. Finally, the dream me decided it just wasn’t going to work. I said, “I know compromise is important in any relationship. But we are so far apart that if we compromised enough to meet in the middle, we would both be so far from where we want to be that neither of us would be happy.”

I guess it’s not so surprising that I would dream this. Even though my decision to move out and end the marriage didn’t happen in 2004, this year has been tinged with a little guilt. Although I did everything I knew to try and work things out, and after all of the therapy and agonizing, there’s still a little part of me that thinks I made a committment for better or for worse, but obviously I only actually meant the better part. It’s hard to, well, marry, the two thoughts: that I made this committment that was meant to last a lifetime, and that if we continued, neither of us would be happy, for a lifetime.

I also feel a little guilt that I am happy now, after not being happy for a really long time. And that I don’t miss my ex-husband or think about him, or get teary on what was our wedding anniversary. I was reading the journal of a friend this morning. Today is what used to be her wedding anniversary. And although she too is happier with her life now, on this day she remembers. It’s not a bad thing, taking stock of the past, but for me, it feels like another lifetime from long ago, one I’ve put behind me.

I don’t know what that means about me. I worry it means I’m cold inside. Or that I’ve walled in my emotions like those people with selective amnesia about traumatic events and one day I’m going to go crazy insane with the repression. But I look deep inside, and I don’t feel cold, I don’t see a wall, I just see distant memories of another life.

I am taking all the lessons I learned with me into this life. I just wish I could leave behind the guilt.

I have begun to realize that failure and setbacks are necessary obstacles in life, and that without them, we couldn’t learn to be successful. Well, sort of. I mean, I realize it in an abstract, theoretical kind of way, but I don’t want to actually experience failure myself. I just want to be imparted with instant knowledge. It’s all fine and good to reminisce about how foolish you were that one time in college or whatever when you didn’t know you actually had to check your car for oil and then you ended up on some lonely country road with a clunking sound in your engine and no cell phone and had to walk ten miles back to town and you were wearing high heels so that your legs would look slimmer in case that cute guy from Biology happened by and then he did drive by, only by then the heel of your shoe was broken so you were slim but at an odd angle, and he didn’t even stop so fuck him anyway, and laugh about how you would never make that mistake now, but the current mistakes, the ones happening right now that will seem foolish in ten years, well those aren’t quite so funny.

And anyway, there are certain subjects for which trial and error should come earlier on in life, at a time when it all seems like a really big deal, but in the overall life picture, not so much. Relationships, for instance. You have to learn about being in one somehow, and mostly it’s by, well, being in one. Better to make pathetic phone calls to hear his voice then hang up, and casually drive by his house twelve times just in case he comes outside, and wait at home on a Friday night just in case he might call if he gets bored and comes home early from whever he might be when you’re say, in high school. At some point, you’ll realize that you are completely and utterly insane, which will save you years later from staying late at work every night for three weeks so you might catch a glimpse of the new guy, although if you fake like you’re actually working, it could get you a raise, so maybe that’s not such a good example after all.

What I’m really talking about here is investing. It’s one thing to screw up your portfolio when it contains twenty bucks, quite another to learn from your mistakes when you’re ten years from retirement and lose your life savings. Unfortunately, I didn’t really have money with which to error and trial when I was younger. Until very recently, my financial decisions were along the lines of, “well, this credit card isn’t maxed and we have one of those check things from it, so I’ll use that to pay this other bill so the creditors don’t call and harrass me.”

I have now entered into the world of real-life investing, which consists of reloading the page for my online account. The thing about investing is that everyone tells you that you HAVE to do it. It’s the only smart thing to do with your money. So, you read the fine print that tells you how you might lose all your money and cry and end up penniless in a cardboard box if you invest, but what are you supposed to do with that fine print? Not invest? You HAVE to invest. Duh. I mean even those guys in the jester hats with the bells are investing.

I’m actually doing OK so far. (Although I will cry and cry if my investments lose money, even though I know it’s supposed to be long-term and the market rebounds and all that crap, I will cry a lot). But where I’m completely stymied is with my short-term investments. I read on the Internet so must be true that you should put short-term investments into bond funds. They’re low risk; you won’t make a ton of money, but you won’t lose it all with no time for that whole rebound thing you can wait out with long-term investments; etc. Right.

So, I take some of my savings and I invest in two bond funds that Money magazine has given very good reviews. Well, fuck you Money magazine, because while my regular savings account just gave me $14 in interest, my low-risk bond funds have stolen $101.70. I could have lost $100 on my own thanks, maybe doing those $15 tequila shots down at the tequila bar. The hell is that?

So, now I’m back to realizing that maybe I don’t know what I’m doing here. It’s like when I was a kid. I bit my nails. I don’t know when or why I finally stopped, but I bit them for a really long time. And so my sisters would get manicure kits as gifts, and I would get that icky stuff you paint onto your nails to make them taste bad. And my mom would give my sisters lessons in filing and painting and all of that while I sat by myself, all bitter. (In all honesty, this probably happened exactly once, but in my memory, they were always getting cute little manicure kits for their stupid unbitten nails.) Eventually, I stopped biting my nails. But there I was, in high school or whatever, and no clue about how to file my nails. I didn’t even have a nail file. And seriously, I just ignored my nails and sort of peeled away at them until after college when I finally went to a manicurist and watched what she did. Of course, right now, I’m sitting here with chipped metallic polish on about four nails, but that’s entirely beside the point.

The point is that I don’t want to make a mistake with my money. I don’t want to fail in order to learn how to succeed. I want to be the one who listens when someone says the stove is hot, not the one who has to check to see for myself. The trouble is that I don’t know who to listen to, which I guess is also part of the learning.

But dammit. I just want instant knowledge! And well, to be rich.

December 28th. A fine day to be motivated and inspired to leap into action, to accomplish many things, make plans, or at least do the laundry. After all, I just spent five days doing just about absolutely nothing other than eating and drinking and opening presents. A fresh new year is upon us, and it’s not proper etiquette to face that with a sink full of dirty dishes. I didn’t even get in late last night–my plane got in at noon.

But here I am, in wet hair, a cat on my lap, surfing the Internet. I’m supposed to be at work today, but I somehow never made it in. I suppose I’m technically working from home, but the only real work I’ve done is answer a few e-mail messages. I went to the gym, but that hour hardly accounts for the entire day. No, mostly, I’ve been sitting here with the cat on my lap.

I’ve been mulling over this last year and what I want out of next year, but that all seems so much to write about right now. Or to think about right now.

I guess it’s ironic. One of my main complaints of this past year, as well as one of the main obstacles I want to overcome in the next is being so lethargic (if I don’t call it lazy, does that mean it’s not?). There’s a time for petting a cat on your lap, but then there’s a time to, well, not. Unfortunately, I seem mostly unable to do the latter.

I just want to drink coffee and write all day. And while in the vaguest sense, that is what I do at the job that pays me, writing about functions and parameters and hiragana to midashigo conversions just isn’t the same as rambling about whatever the hell I want. Also, at my paying job, I have to deal with people. You know how it is, dealing with people. It’s the primary reason you get paid to do your job–all that people-dealing. If I could just, say, write a novel all day, I’d only have to deal with the crazy characters inside my head. But then, there is that issue of getting paid, which I’m also rather fond of.

As P. was reading the silly story I wrote for him for Christmas, he started to say that I should turn it into a children’s book. But then he got to the part about how Santa’s flamethrower met Frosty the snowman and changed his mind.

I always have such grand plans in my head. I’m going to file all of my receipts! And send in for that rebate! Purge and back up my hard drive! Organize my recipes! Brush the cats! Discover the secret to cold fusion! (Or has someone discovered that already? Maybe that was just a movie.)

And then I make fondue and drink wine instead.

I love food. I love to cook it, eat it, read about it, watch it on TV. Food is awesome. However, over the past couple of years, I have been learning about making better choices about the food that I eat. Post-30 metabolism is a harsh teacher. I never used to worry about that kind of thing, so I’ve been through a lot of trial and error lately, figuring out the little choices that make a lot of difference.

The holidays brought a whole new set of challenges. It’s easier to choose well when you’re at home, where you’re forcing good choices on yourself by not stocking your refrigerator with cheesecake and french fries. I’m not saying it’s easy, just easier. It still can be fairly difficult not to order Indian take-out and eat the entire thing in one sitting on some nights. But I’ve discovered some healthful foods that I really like through a lot of experimentation, and I’ve mostly been doing OK lately.

For me, the hard part about choosing well during the holidays isn’t managing to avoid the various candies and cookies thrust at you from every angle. Probably it helps that sweets are not my weakness. If the holidays were about thrusting various carbohydrates and things that are deep fried, such as mashed potatoes or those avocado egg rolls from the Cheesecake Factory at you all day long, I wouldn’t be so holier than thou. And if the spirit of the season were deep-fried mashed potatoes? Well, never mind. Let’s just stick with the sweets. Ha! I am so good, I can totally say no!

It’s hardest to choose well when I’m away from home and my compact four-point egg muffin (Egg Beaters, Morningstar sausage patty and english muffin) is not available. Here’s how well I did:

Day 1
Shouldn’t be too hard not to eat poorly, as am boarding a flight and would throw up if ate anything. Well, I really do need a latte. I’d hate to have a caffeine headache while I throw up. But I’ll get a nonfat one.

Um, yeah. Maybe I should do a tequila shot before I board the flight. But the lime is fruit. You need five servings a day, you know. And tequila is made from the agave plant, so also fruit, or possibly vegetable. Maybe I’d better do another shot, that first one was only two servings of fruit and vegetables. I need to be healthy for the plane ride.

Maybe to distract myself from hurdling through space many thousands of feet in the air, I’ll eat this croissant sandwich I grabbed at the airport. Croissants are thin, so surely they’re low in calories. And there isn’t even any mayonnaise on it. That’s what causes sandwiches to be so bad for you: thick bread and condiments. (P.: “A croissant? Those are full of butter! I mean, I say eat it, but it’s not going to be low fat or anything.” Me: “Is too.” Very much later I look up the nutrition information on the Internet to prove him wrong. Fuck.)

Arrive at P.’s parents house that evening. Hungry.

P.’s mom: “P.’s dad smoked a brisket! You can have sandwiches and this cole slaw I made to go with it. We made it just for you.”

Well, OK. I am in Texas. I should have barbeque at least once. Surely these thick rolls, brisket, and slaw are not too bad for you. Besides, it would be rude to refuse it. Right? Right. Also, the slaw will give me my fifth serving of fruits and vegetables for the day! I am healthy!

Day 2
Need coffee. Must have coffee. Now. Normally, I have as much as coffee is possible in the morning. I figure since I just add a splash of skim milk or low-fat vanilla soy milk in it, it’s not too bad, calorie-wise. And in my sleepy state, it doesn’t occur to me that might not be the case elsewhere.

P.’s dad: “Do you have cream with your coffee?”

Me: “Milk.” (Thinking, oh right, they probably don’t have skim milk here. That’s OK, it’s only a splash.)

Watch as P.’s dad fills half the cup with heavy whipping cream, tops it with a little coffee and hands me the mug.

So what can I do really? I can’t be rude and pour out the coffee. I make a mental note to get my own coffee next time.

P. and I decide to go to the gym with his dad. There is a lot of argument from the rest of the family about this. I used to be one of the arguers: you’re on vacation; it’s the holidays. You can take a break from working out and watching what you eat. I don’t think that people say these things because of guilt that they’re not also going. I think it genuinely is that they want you to enjoy yourself. The trouble with that for me is that if don’t think of working out and eating healthy as just part of my life, like say, brushing my teeth, then my grand plans completely fall apart.

Returning from the gym, hungry. Breakfast choices are eggs with bacon and sausage or waffles. No four-point breakfast in sight. Wonder how to eat and yet avoid heart-attack inducing breakfast made lovingly by P.’s mom. Shower. Find that P. has made me an egg white omelet with onions, mushrooms, and smoked jalapenos. He’s really good to me. Make mental note to keep him.

Dinner: homemade pizzas. Cool idea, wherein everyone has their own pizza and they add their own toppings. I load up on veggies. (Again, I’m fulfilling the five-serving quota!) And it’s not like I could ask someone to go to the store and buy some low-fat mozzarella special just for me.

But the multiple margaritas are entirely my fault.

Day 3
Christmas! Again, we go the gym. Again, we are harangued. Initial reason I give for going: I’m giving myself the gift of fitness. At the fake gagging, I then admit, by burning a few calories in the morning, I might not feel so guilty about the calories I plan to consume later on. Knowing gift opening won’t occur until after we get back from the gym, we stay only 45 minutes. We’re truly thinking of others, not ourselves.

After shower, find that P.’s mom has thoughtfully made me an egg white omelet. She acts like it’s not even because I am a bitch. She claims she had to make P.’s brother different eggs too because he definitely wanted his onion-free, so it was no trouble to make mine as well. I feel like a bitch. Attempt to pour own coffee; am thwarted:

“Oh, milk is fine!”

“Oh no. Cream is SO much better in coffee. Here you go, honey.”

(Sigh.) Thanks! Feel even more like a bitch. Sincerely hope do not appear to be a bitch.

Afternoon: Must try hot cocoa (that I made from Alton Brown’s recipe), spiked with Godiva liqueur. Somehow my ability to make good choices has begun crumbling all around me.

For dinner, P.’s parents bought a beef tenderloin. A beef tenderloin that costs them over $100. Consider asking for steamed broccoli instead. Oh who am I kidding. Fuck that.

Fortunately, P. and I had recently watched the episode of “How to Boil Water” that featured tenderloin. We are thusly given the task of cooking it. We stuff tenderloin with onions, mushrooms, garlic, and peppers that P.’s sister sauted and begin the task of sewing it all together (using the courageously obtained twine). We cut it in half, and sear each half in hot oil, then give them to P.’s dad to barbeque.

I then attempt to make gravy from the pan drippings. You have to understand how stressful it is to cook in front of P.’s family. His sister has even published a cookbook that features many recipes created by his mom. They all cook, really well. And it’s great for me because P. cooks the most fantastic things for me, but I get really nervous when I cook around the whole family. Obviously, I have to have a margarita. I totally improvise on the gravy. Hmmm… deglaze with red wine and water; add a flour/water paste to thicken it up a bit, then more wine, red wine vinegar, spices (possibly a bit of butter), and hell, a little more wine (everything’s made better with a little wine, yes?). Simmer, strain. Greatly relieved when turns out well and seems to be well-liked.

Decide Christmas dinner is not the time for choosely wisely. I figure it like this. Eating is a lot like spending money. Mostly, you want to budget and save and research what you buy. But every so often you splurge. You can’t splurge every day, but what’s the point of money if you never spend any at all? Right? Well, it sounds logical after the margarita. We had brought this really great wine (Paradigm 2001 Merlot), so must have a glass of that, or two. It is really fantastic, and I’m not even a big Merlot fan.

After dinner, we have our choice of butter cake (featuring an entire stick of butter!), apple pie, or ice cream. I make the healthy choice and refrain (or perhaps it’s just that my stomach can’t possibly hold another inch of food. Suspect the mashed potatoes are what did me in).

Day 4
I finally manage to pour my own coffee. (”But wouldn’t you rather have cream?!”) Have another of P.’s great egg white omelet. We decide to take a day off from the gym. However, Sonic is a requirement. It’s difficult to tell your hosts that you are watching your weight and therefore aren’t going to have the wonderful waffles they are making, and yet you are going to have lunch at Sonic. It’s just that, well, we don’t have Sonic in Washington and I swear I have dreams about their vanilla cherry limeades. If you have access to a Sonic and have not tried this, you have to go try it now. Seriously. I’ll wait.

However, I also somehow transform into Jessica Simpson.

“I got the chicken fried steak sandwich, because even though I know it’s really bad for me, at least chicken has less saturated fat than beef.”

P: “You got the chicken fried steak because you think it’s chicken?”

Um.

“It’s not chicken?”

He waits patiently for the light to come on. And then, of course, mocks me mercilessly for the rest of the day. I still eat the sandwich. It is really good.

That afternoon, we realize we needed more of that hot chocolate, er, spiked. And for dinner, well, we were in Texas. You have to have Mexican food when you’re in Texas. Especially when you live in Washington state. We’re much too close to Canada to have really good Mexican food. And when you’re having Mexican food in Houston, you need a margarita. Or possibly two. (I suppose the appropriate naming of this journal is becoming more apparent.) Should have healthy Mexican food though. Ah! Spinach! (I think I hit my five-serving quota again!). Margaritas help me imagine that spinach and cheese enchiladas are, in fact, quite good for you.

Day 5
Again, no worries about food, due to the whole possibly throwing up before the plane thing. And even though we are once again hanging in the airline lounge with the free drinks, I am really only up for coffee at 7:30 in the morning. And they even have skim milk. I also am not tempted by the cereal offered on board the plane as a snack. Actually, the Xanax causes me to pass out most of the flight.

We get back in the early afternoon, with plenty of time to stop by the grocery store to pick up stuff for a healthful, homemade dinner. We finally are in control of our own choices. We don’t have to worry about offending our hosts who are offering us homemade meals, or choosing among high calorie and higher calorie. We are masters of our destinies!

We make spinach and artichoke dip, fondue, and french onion soup. And drink a bottle of wine.

There’s something inexplicably alluring about having sex in your parents’ house. Well, maybe for some people, thinking about sex in any kind of juxtaposition with parents is the quickest way to call the whole thing off. But for some of us, we know we really shouldn’t be doing it, and so we just can’t help ourselves.

For me, it’s not exactly that its semi-forbidden nature makes it hotter. I don’t find it nearly as hot as sex at home: you have to worry about being too loud, or that the bed’s squeaking, or that his mom is going to call upstairs and ask if you want pie or something. It’s all so distracting.

I think it’s the romanticism of it, if having sex in a tiny bed while being as quiet as possible and hardly moving can be in any way romantic. It’s the idea that you really should just hold out until you get home when you can have sex anywhere, anytime, even on the kitchen counter if you wanted to (although probably you wouldn’t because the granite is cold and hard and and you might roll off and crack your head open and have to explain it to the ER doctors and you’re not very good at drawing diagrams), as loudly as you damn well please, but you just can’t wait. It’s like saying “I can’t resist you. I must do you now, consequences be damned!” That’s hot.

On Christmas Eve, it was cold outside and snowing a little, and P.’s family decided to go for a walk. We felt we could enjoy the snow just as much from inside the warm house, so we stayed behind. As soon as we heard the door close, P. leaned over to me: “I bet they’ll be gone for at least twenty minutes.”

I very casually leapt up the stairs.

I don’t know if they were gone for twenty minutes, but I do know they came back before I was ready for them to. And at that point, you really don’t have much time, because you know they’re going to come looking for you, to tell you about the magical Christmas walk and the magical Christmas snowflakes.

We figured we could blame the flush on the margaritas, should anyone ask.

It was a very nice Christmas Eve.

There’s one grocery store open in Houston today, Christmas. It’s a Randall’s in an otherwise empty shopping center and three people are working. I’m sure these three people would rather be home, sitting by the fire, sipping eggnog or some otherwise spiked beverage, watching the Orange County Choppers marathon, and I’m sure they’re wondering why the thousands of people in line at Randall’s are not also home doing that very thing.

People who are not in their houses on Christmas are either at the movie theatre or the video rental store. At least this is what I always believed. Now I know that the streets are empty because everyone is at Randall’s.

We went to get some cooking twine to tie up the beef tenderloin we’re cooking for dinner tonight. (And by “we”, of course, I mean P.’s mom.) We thought we might pick up an extra bottle of wine too. Randall’s didn’t have any twine (we had to make due with several packages of needles for sewing up turkey, each with tiny length of accompanying string), but they did have lines. P. came up with a plan. I would hold our place in line while he hunted for the wine. The lines snaked around through the aisles to the back of the store. One ended at the meat counter, another at the pharmacy. We communicated by cell phone:

“Well, they have on German Riesling. It’s in a blue bottle. It’s $6 though.”

“Huh. $6?”

“Yeah. It’s the best thing I see.”

Randall’s may be open on Christmas, but people are not flocking there for the extensive wine choices.

The woman behind me was a chatter. Did I think the frozen pies she was getting would be good (as good as frozen pies can be, I thought), did I think the early edition of the Sunday paper was out yet (I have given this no thought at all, actually), did I think she was getting enough food? I smiled; I told her the pies were fine. I continued to do this for about 45 minutes. P. finally arrived with the wine and took over small talk duty. How did he think the pies would be?

She seemed mostly concerned about the cashiers. You know, the ones wondering why we weren’t all home with our hot chocolates spiked with Bailey’s. She felt so bad for them, working on Christmas. So, so bad. Seriously. Bad.

Finally, it was our turn in line. As our cashier was scanning our make-shift twine, she chatted with the cashier next to her, also scanning. They were pleasant as could be, and told us Merry Christmas with a smile, rather than the “why the hell are you here” they were surely thinking. And they busily continued scanning.

The woman behind us, the caring woman, so concerned about the poor cashiers, working on Christmas, raised her voice:

“Are you talking or are you scanning?!”

The cashier, still at this point fairly pleasant, answered, “we’re doing both.”

The caring, considerate woman was not appeased: “Well, I think you should concentrate on scanning. Some of us have places we need to be.”

That, apparently, was the end of the pleasant rope for the cashier, faced with miles of endless lines rather than a soothing beverage:

“Then maybe you should have done your shopping before Christmas.”

(We attempted not to laugh in front of the caring bitch of christmas joylessness.)

The woman stormed off to find a manager. We could feel the caring in her stride. We paid for our twine, wished the cashiers a very Merry Christmas, and left as quickly as we could.

I guess the caring woman, so concerned about the poor cashiers on Christmas Day, didn’t mean she thought they should be able to talk or anything.

It’s Christmas.

Well, it’s Christmas Eve, which is the same thing, really. At every momentous day of the year: my birthday, New Year’s Day, Christmas, I expect some big Life Change. Like a spotlight is going to shine down on me and my fairy godmother is going to float down on glittering breezes and swoosh her magic wand and make everything wonderful and joyous. But in the end, I’m still me.

My life is pretty great, really. It’s been a gradual climb, as life always is, with crappy days and wondeful days, and lots of ordinary days.

Now that I’ve finally let go of all the meaningless stress, this holiday is pretty great too. P. and I made the airport yesterday to find that our flight was right on time, while the earlier flight to Houston was delayed more than five hours. We hung out in the airline’s private lounge. Everyone there was on the delayed flight and hanging out in the bar, where the alcohol is free. We had two shots of tequila with lemon (lemon?) and had a fairly uneventful flight. (Well, I did apparently squeeze P.’s hand almost completely off at one point, but there were bumps!)

Today, we wrapped the gifts, and have been drinking margaritas (the traditional Christmas drink!) and it’s snowing.

But I’m still watching it all from the outside with a critical eye. Watching me. Maybe I’ll at least get the glittery wand in my stocking in the morning.

I’m getting on a plane today. I am not overly fond of planes, what with being exceeding high up in the air with no visible means of support, and being trapped in a tube that’s zooming through space, and being unable to get off at any time I might happen to feel like it. Even trains have those emergency pull things. Planes? Not so much. Although, one time, I was on a plane and someone had a heart attack and we made an emergency landing at the Denver airport, going from 30,000 feet to the ground in under five minutes. And they had to call a maintenance person out of bed to inspect the brakes before we could take off because they had overheated a bit with all the abrupt stopping. But normally? Planes won’t stop just for you.

I think I even have everything packed, although it’s mostly pajamas come to think of it. I also managed to print the silly polar bear story. Of course, I still don’t know how to bind it into a book, but that’s a problem I’m going to tackle after I successfully make this flight. I’ve been known to back out of them.

I’ve also been known to take Xanax and drink wine on these flights, which I don’t think it recommended but it does tend to get me through the turbulence. And since to me, turbulence is any bump we might happen to encounter, I need a lot of wine.

I’m hoping that once I get there, I can forget all about my irritating work issues, and not stress about giving the perfect gifts, and everything else zooming through my head at a million miles and hourm and find the holiday spirit.

Or possibly really strong eggnog.

It doesn’t feel like Christmas. I have no holiday spirit. I have been too busy to really even notice that Christmas is three days away. And I was given a last-minute project at work that I’ve been frantically working on and today I sort of lost it a little. I called it done and left before I lost all sense of professionalism right in the hallway.

All this means that I have yet to pack for our flight that leaves tomorrow morning. And I’m only now finally finishing the silly polar bear story I wrote for P. It’s not easy to write a silly story, even one about a polar bear, when you’re ten ways of cranky. And I don’t want to tell him what I’m busy doing because last-minute gift preparations just make it seem like you didn’t put much thought into it earlier. That’s not at all true, and I’m sure he knows that, but still, I don’t want to ‘fess up that I’m not quite done.

I’m getting a little nervous now, too. Maybe the finished product will be stupid. But it’s too late. All I have left to do is print. I found the pictures online, and I’m sure I should give credit where credit is due, but my search was along the lines of “not that ugly polar bear; something cute. File not found? Fuck. Oh wait. This one!” Without much regard to where I was actually clicking.

So, here are a couple of my favorite pages, without proper photographic credit, although the silly story is mine. And P. will get a polar bear Christmas after all.

(I ended up with 40 4×6 pages, so these three may not make a whole lot of sense. But they are in order, if out of context.)

If the printer cooperates and I can figure out how to bind them together, I may end up in the holiday spirit after all.

I’ve been trying (for several years now, actually; I mean, I was even still married when I first started trying) to read this mostly terrible book called Morning Pages: The Almost True Story of My Life by Joseph Sutton. The author reminds me of an untalented version of Dave Eggers–the prose is in that same self-important, egotistical style but without Egger’s imagery or turn of phrase. You know the kind of thing I’m talking about.

I was brushing my teeth. I was struck by the whiteness. I noticed the brown coffee stains and it reminded me of life. Dark and smudged. I rinsed. I used a blue cup.

I waste precious minutes of my life reading that kind of shit and I want to hunt the author down, hurl the book at his head and yell “Just brush your fucking teeth and fucking be done with it already! I don’t need to hear about your fucking coffee stains or your endless brushing or your life or your fucking blue cup. So, just shut the fuck up and don’t write again. Ever.”

Anyway, I’m not positive that this book is that way because although I’ve had it for several years, I haven’t made it past page 18 (or, using his clever chapter naming, “Day 7″; Day 7 is subtitled “Melosha spills the nail polish”). I have tried to read it, but every time I do, I get about three sentences in and have the throw the book far across the room.

The author does have one interesting thing to say though. Well, actually, I’m not even sure that it’s him saying it, as he’s quoting someone from a different book he’s read. And the book is only “almost true”, so I’m not sure if that’s one of the true parts or something he made up. At least with Dave Eggers, you’re clear on the fiction parts. Running down a hill and then flying into the sky? Probably metaphor. Reading a book? Who the hell knows.

Anyway, the author of this other book who may or may not be real says that writers should do something they wouldn’t ordinarily do at least once a week. Sutton goes on to say that the writer should do this thing alone to nourish creativity, but I don’t know how that helps anything.

(Ha. It is real. Reading the reviews, I am quite sure I never want to even go near this book. Especially based on the review of the woman who quotes Oprah, says the book changed her life to the point that she dumped all of her friends, and then quotes from the “real bible” (she says this Artist Way book was the Bible to her artistic true self). I now am fairly convinced that everyone who reads her book is part of a cult and since I have criticized one of her disciples, the mob will hunt me down in my bed and drag me off into wilderness writing survival school until I too understand the beauty of tooth brushing.)

But getting back to the part that I liked. (Hear that, cultists?! This is something I liked! You don’t have to hunt me down! Really! That other thing was just a joke. Ha! Ha!) The thing about writing is that it’s not just about words, it’s about ideas, perspectives, experiences. Unless a piece is both well-written and conveys something of value, it’s boring to just about anyone. (Judging from my experiences, even to the writer.) And writing about something is easier if you’re out there experiencing something.

The other part that I liked was the concept for the book (the terrible one), which apparently was based on the other book (the cultist one). That is, to write every day. The idea of doing it in the morning and to write exactly five pages or whatever the hell kind of defeats the purpose really, because the point is just to write every day. To practice. Musicians practice. They do scales even if they’ve done them for twenty years, even if they will absolutely go crazy insane if they hear a scale one more time. Football players often have to practice twice a day. But writers sometimes feel they should wait for inspiration to strike and then a wonderous gift will appear on paper. And OK, maybe sometimes that even happens. But mostly, I find that when I’m not writing, I get rusty. And inspiration is far less likely to strike.

All those complicated rules remind me of this diet I just read about called the Bite Diet. You can eat 18 bites per meal. It’s supposed to get you into the habit of eating less. But instead of just saying that: “eat less”, you have to count each bite and hold your fork a certain way and get this, not work out because that will make you hungry and you’ll want to eat more than 18 bites at a sitting and I’m not even going to get into that now because this rant is about this crappy book. So anyway.

A book I’m finding a little easier to read that talks about this same thing is A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves. Reeves says writers should write every day: write great stuff, write crap, whatever. Just write. She doesn’t say you have to write at a particular time. Just that you should do it. And she gives a writing prompt for every day. They’re like scales. I don’t even think the prompts are really necessary. If you have ideas to write about, write. If you’re stumped, don’t use lack of ideas as an excuse for not practicing. Grab a prompt and go.

One thing I don’t agree with in that book (See cultists! There’s something I don’t like about nearly every book! Not just the sacred tome of your Master! I’m just overall kind of a bitch!) is the author’s contention that you have to write by hand when you practice (to connect your hand and heart or slow down your thoughts or something zen like that). I used to always write by hand. I would scribble and circle and draw arrows and label order with numbers and have my writings strewn across notebooks and torn out pages and napkins and only when I was completely done would I transfer everything to the typewritten page (you know, using a typewriter, back in the ancient days before computers were all mainstream). I still have notebooks everywhere, including a pocket one I carry in my purse, but I like writing on a computer. If an idea won’t come, I can skip down to something else, and then go back when I’ve worked it out through the other writing. I can move things around. I can keep up with my thoughts. And if I’m at work or someone else’s house or an Internet cafe, I can write in some protected Web space and get to it when I get home.

One time, I was trying to figure out how to be A Writer. An acquaintance who is a best-selling author told me that before he writes a single word, he has the entire outline of the book sketched out. He knows exactly how it’s going to end, what happens during that scene in the middle, and he understands the personality of every character. So, I thought, best-selling author and all, that must be the way to do it. I’m trying that.

My writing came to an abrupt halt.

I never know how anything I write is going to end. Whether it’s a journal entry or a novel, I get a brief glimpse or an idea and that’s all I have to go on. I write the one little part I know and then I just keep writing. I leave dotted lines for gaps and write what came before. Or what comes next. In On Writing, Stephen King compares writing to archaeology. He said writers use pens (or, er, keyboards) rather than brushes and chisels to slowly uncover artifacts. That’s the only way I know how to write. Who knows what part I might uncover first?

I gave up the idea of writing from an outline.

Neil Gaiman’s journal has been comforting. He’ll write something like “I was writing all day and the ending completely surprised me. I had no idea that was going to happen!” And I think, well, if that’s how Neil Gaiman writes, then it must be OK. In a recent entry, he said,

“I don’t even care whether it’s any good or not. I do know that I’m at the exciting bit, and I have to keep writing to find out what’s going to happen next, and then finding out what happens next, than which there can be no more delightful a feeling. And anyway, the people in the book are depending on me.”

That’s not someone who writes from an outline. And I say it’s comforting to read him because only a few days earlier, he said, of the same book,

“told my agent today, when she made the mistake of asking how the novel was going, that all was misery and gloom and that in addition I couldn’t write for toffee.”

Ah. So, sometimes it’s crap. But then it gets better. Not that I’m comparing myself in any way to Neil Gaiman, obviously. But reading about his writing process as he writes makes me feel like maybe my own chaotic mad-dash forays into the unknown are OK.

Which isn’t to say my best-selling author acquaintance is wrong, just that there’s no one right way to do things. And writing, like any other endeavor that involves emotion, has to feel right.

I don’t know how this ends. I just am going to keep writing.

I had a last minute flash of gift-buying brilliance and decided that what P. really should have for Christmas is a vintage polar bear toy. I cannot explain what goes on in my stress-addled brain that resulted in this revelation, and even more alarmingly, what is causing me to think it’s so brilliant, but this is what I’m stuck with today: the absolute and utter need to find a toy. Of a polar bear. On a bicycle. Wearing a hat. Shut up.

I was thinking maybe a tin wind-up toy, something a little scratched but still recognizable as the brilliant gift that it is. Not a polar bear drinking Coca-Cola. I wasn’t looking to give an actual ad. Christmas may have gone commercial, but that’s going a little far.

So, I did what any normal person does. I did a search on eBay. Never in my life have I been so frightened. Looking for polar bears under vintage toys gave me exactly three results. And by that I mean these hideous creatures were the only things that showed up. Nothing else. Only horror.

The first one was scary, but not from The Shining or anything. The description said: “Overall a very interesting and Whimsical Toy!” You know it’s truly Whimsical because of the capitalization. It looked like this (note its uncanny resemblance to the picture on the box):

And if that view wasn’t enough to convey the essence, the seller kindly included this shot of the bear’s ass:

With two days left, one eager person has bid on this little bit of whimsy, for $29.95.

The second item was disturbing for other reasons. The title read thusly: “old cast iron bear,white,polar bear,male for sure.” To assure suspicious bidders of the bear’s erm, maleness, the seller helpfully included a picture of the relevant area. I won’t do that to you. This bear is scary enough. And you can even own him at the opening price of $9.

But this creepiness pales in comparison to the Polar Bear of Horror. (and I am shocked that no one has taken the seller up on the Buy It Now option for $3.50 except that once this this was in your house it would terrorize your children and murder you in your sleep.) The description benignly points out the minor flaws in the bear: “Please note that there is a split down the center of his face which also has a dent. The rest of the bear is in good condition.” The rest of the bear may be in good condition for a bear that has just been hatcheted to death by scantily clad teenagers in Bear of Chucky and then resurrected in that inevitable scene when the serial killer bear springs back to life and massacres everyone at the prom. The picture tells it better:

So, I can go with fuzzy ass bear, assuredly male bear, or serial killer bear. They’re all so jolly I just might have to buy them all.

If you want to throw a wine and cheese party, and I definitely think that you should, the first thing you should know is that it won’t be cheap. Oh sure, all the how-to Web sites will tell you that you don’t need to buy expensive wine, and that’s true, but presumably you’re not inviting everyone over to sample and savor the taste sensations of wine from boxes and jugs, although that would be kind of funny, wouldn’t it? People come over for a swanky wine and cheese tasting, and you say, “this is from the $3 jug, vintage yesterday; I believe the grape varietal is concord”. And if you decide to go that route, seriously invite me, because that sounds like a totally fun party. I might bring my own wine though.

Otherwise, this party is going to cost a few dollars. You want to have a variety of wines for the guests to taste and compare, and you want to have extra because you never know which one they’ll really like and want to taste a lot. So, say you include five or six wines, and you get a couple of bottles of each, and you spend between $10 and $25 per bottle… but you like your friends, right? They’re worth it.

You’ll probably end up spending a few dollars on cheese as well, unless you’re planning to go with Kraft singles and cheese whiz, which again, I think would be awesome.

Another option is to have each guest bring a bottle of wine, and that’s really not a bad idea. Just be prepared for a wide variety of tastes. You might give them a few guidelines. “Bring your favorite bottle of Italian white!” or something. Except then you might have everyone bring the same bottle, if it happens to be on special at the local Safeway. Have a back-up plan just in case, if you don’t want to have to say “here’s that same wine again. Only this time it’s from this bottle. Does it taste any different?”

P. and I had a wine and cheese party a few weeks ago and I overdid it a little with the cheese part. Not that anyone complained, but we did have a lot left over that obviously, we had to eat, and it’s possible that all that cheese and cream and butter had a little to do with my current participation in Weight Watchers.

We did a tasting of each wine with assorted cheeses and other accoutrements. Then, we all grabbed a glass of our favorite and I brought out the cheese-centric entres.

The tasting went a little like this:

“And here’s a taste of the first wine. It’s a Chardonnay from…”

“Hey, that’s practically a full glass! Are you trying to get me drunk?”

“Ooh. Come pour mine. You can pour for me anytime.”

And then we all tried to be snobby and describe what we were tasting.

“Gamy!”

“Really?”

“No, I just wanted to say that.”

“Earthy on the nose with a long floral finish.”

“You mean you actually know what you’re talking about?”

“No, I just read some of the words off the back of the bottle.”

We tasted two Chardonnays, two Rieslings, and a Gewurtzraminer. We stayed with whites to keep it simple, if simple means utter confusion involving alcohol. We made little score cards so that everyone could rate the wines, but after a couple of wines, not many of us could add very well and only one of our friends was even attempting it.

After a while it was:

“Yum! Bring on more wine!”

The favorite cheese was the Wensleydale with cranberries, so if you do have a party, you should definitely include that one. Especially if you’re inviting me. The least favorite wine was the Chateau Ste. Michelle Indian Wells 2001 Chardonnay, which we all agreed tasted mostly like burnt rubber. One friend arrived late after having a spectacularly bad day.

“Don’t make her drink the burnt one!” Came a slurred shout from somewhere in the room. We made her at least try it for the sake of completeness. She pronounced it burnt. (I suppose the more snobby thing to say would be that it tasted of toasty oak, but really, it didn’t. Just charred.)

In Chateau Ste. Michelle’s defense, their Reserve Chardonnay is one of my favorites, and their Indian Wells vineyard produces other really great wines, but this wine just doesn’t do it for me, being burnt and all.

We had nuts and dried fruit and olive oil and truffle oil and spicy mustards, but it soon became apparent that we’d better start serving actual food. We served:

Pasta salad with ricotta salata and broccolini
Tomato salad with arugula and shaved parmesan
Puff pastry filled with gouda and topped with jalapeno jelly
Wild mushroom tartlets with goat cheese, shallots, garlic, and truffles
Pizza Rustica filled with ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan cheeses, spinach, and hot Italian sausage
Goat cheese ravioli with butter sauce, crisp pancetta and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

It was not the most healthful, diet-conscious meal. The tartlets were the most fun to make. I love wild mushrooms, but they look like something from another planet. I mean, who first looked at these and thought, “wow, I bet those are tasty!” But they did turn into fantastic appetizers.

My favorite was the goat cheese ravioli (and with two sticks of butter and heavy cream in the sauce, how could it not be?), but the pizza rustica was a close second.

Once we were all stuffed from all the cheese and wine and accoutrements and food, obviously, it was time for dessert. We had two dessert wines, including Bonny Doon Framboise served in little chocolate cups. And P. made a cheesecake, because it is my favorite dessert in the entire world and he is very good at making it.

There’s a lesson in all of this. Have wine and cheese parties as often as possible. Make lots of things with cheese, but probably not quite so many things. You don’t need recipes, just combine butter and cream with some herbs. Believe me, no one will complain about the cooking. Have a variety of wines on hand. When a guest says the wine reminds him of his mother-in-law as it’s her favorite, make sure you have back-up wine to provide. Score cards just get in the way of the drinking. I mean, of the sniffing and the tasting. Even calculators won’t help, so you may as well keep the counter space open for more cheese.

And make P. bring the cheesecake.

When I was in the second grade, my family moved to a very small town in Oklahoma (population: 200). And I spent the second half of the school year in a freezing building that lumped two grades into each classroom, possibly to save money on teachers. Or maybe that’s all the room they had. My stepsister was in the third/fourth grade classroom and they had to wear mittens because of the big hole in the middle of the floor that blew in cold air, so I guess I had it easy. My younger sister was in kindergarten, and I’m sure she didn’t know what to think.

I had come from a school at which I only had to share the room and teacher with other second graders, and my main goal in life was to progress in my reading enough to make it to the big red book. The red book was the hardest one we had. And now, I had class with first graders, and the teacher tried very hard to manage to teach both grades at the same time, but that would be difficult under the best circumstances, and we didn’t have heat or a chalkboard and honestly, the kids were pretty rowdy. Also, there was no big red book.

I spent my days as the teacher’s helper. I would go around the class and help the younger kids with their math and grade papers and I don’t remember that I really learned anything new, although that school did introduce me to beets. I was shocked and horrified to find this lump of red on my plate, bleeding into my perfectly good mashed potatoes and roll.

The kids introduced me to schoolyard songs too. You know, “the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout.” I didn’t knowwhat pinochle was, but I sure didn’t want it played on my snout. We were also partial to the one about fighting with spitwads, gum, and clay for longer recesses and things.

We lived in the woods, and to amuse ourselves we would:

• Turn over rocks and look for scorpions. When we found one we would taunt it with sticks so its tail flailed about in the air.
• Try to catch lizards in Coke bottles. Once, I grabbed a fairly large one by its middle and it turned right around and sunk its mouth into my hand. And refused to let go. I was shaking my arm, trying to get him off, and he just dug in. Another time, I was trying to corner a lizard and get him to run into my bottle and I slipped on a rock and smashed the bottle into bits. A piece of glass flew into my knee and blood started gushing out. I didn’t want to tell my mom because I was sure I would get in trouble, so I just stayed out until the bleeding was easy to hide. I still have the scar.
• Ride the top of a nearby oil well. It was a little like riding a horse, except that it was somewhat tricky climbing up there, what with all the moving parts that could smash your fingers and toes off, and once you got up there, you realized it was pretty high, and there wasn’t much to hold on to.

• Slowly inch our way onto on icy pond and try to be the one who got the farthest out. It was a delicate balance between being chicken and staying where the ice was solid and being stupid and breaking through.

Somehow, I survived.

The kids in the house nearest us had the following pets: a tarantula, two ferrets, a dog, a horse, a pony, chickens, one rooster. Sometimes, we would ride the pony and I pretended it was fun, although we rode him bare back and we only knew how to make him trot. We would go to their house and listen to The Rose on their record player. The older girl had a KISS record, but I knew, because my mom had told me so, that KISS worshipped satan, so I always made her turn it off. She explained to us once about sex using play-doh for the relevant body parts.

The kids in the next nearest house were also a bad influence, because their mom was an aerobics instructor, and aerobics was this new, racy thing that featured both dancing and rock music, so obviously of the devil, just like KISS. Also, the parents watched Dallas, which we were not allowed to watch. Everytime I was at their house, I felt like I was doing something wrong.

But kids are hard to come by in town with a population of 200, so we muddled through with our Satanist friends. When I started third grade, my parents transferred us to a Christian school.

My cat has not gotten over the shaving incident. Of course, it’s not as though his fur has grown out in three days or anything, so I really shouldn’t blame him. I had to get up extraordinarily early this morning, and he must have overhead me talking about it on the phone, because he spent the entire night licking my nose. Oh, that’s so cute, you might say, if you’ve never had a cat lick your nose at 1am when you have to get up in four hours. No, it’s not cute. It’s insidiously evil is what it is.

I was all snuggled up my my blankets trying to sleep, and here’s this cat. He would curl up on one side of me and twirl around so his tail wacked me in the face. Then he would decide that wouldn’t do at all and he would climb over my breasts and curl up on the other side. Do you think it’s comfortable to have a cat stomp all over your breasts? No it is not. Once he started trying to make himself comfortable on that side of me, he would realize I wasn’t paying attention to him so he would lick my nose. Lick, lick, lick. For the love of all that is holy and good in this world cat, I am trying to sleep. Lick, lick, lick. Climb, climb, climb.

I was about to fall asleep at work today, so I finally decided to head home, take a quick nap, and then get a little more work done. All that got me through the drive home was the thought of my warm fluffy bed. That the cat had used as his litter box while I was gone. He’s determined to keep me from sleep. He’s developed this custom hell just for me in retaliation. So, instead of napping, I’m now doing laundry.

It’s just as well I left work though. My coworkers couldn’t stop talking about my shaved pussy. So much for ethics training.

At my day job, I write documentation that attempts to describe to programmers how to integrate my company’s software onto mobile devices (primarily cell phones). I mostly like it, although I’ve been doing this same kind of thing for a really long time, so sometimes I get antsy. One irritating thing about doing the same basic job for lots of years at several different places is that you have to solve the same problems over and over. It gets to be a little like Groundhog Day, and I sort of hated that movie. Sometimes, I want to sneak little messages into the boring discussions of function calls and variables: I’m not wearing any panties right now.

Today had its own set of challenges.

I finished up a project early last week and had long since forgotten about it. I used to be able to keep years’ worth of project information in my head, but these days, I’m lucky to remember what I was working on yesterday. My head is now filled with remembering who won America’s Next Top Model last year and the difference between reposado and anejo tequila.

I got an e-mail this morning letting me know that the software I documented — for the project that I was supposed to be finished with nearly two weeks ago — people, that ship has sailed! — is compatible with a newer version of this other software and could I update the documentation? Well, I could if I remembered what I even did with the files, but OK. I went to talk to the developer, since I figured he wrote the software and he’s bound to know something about it. Sometimes I’m so naive.

“This software is compatible with this newer version. Does that mean it can be used with the newer version or it only can be used with the newer version?”

“Huh. I don’t know.”

I just stared at him. I think he knows the look by now. He seemed a little scared.

“Just stay here.”

He started hunting through the code and mumbling. “Well, it might work with… but over here it…”

I sat down. And waited. And listened to the mumbling. And amused myself by staring out the window. Of course, it’s nearly identical to the view out my own window, so it wasn’t really all that amusing.

Another coworker walked in. She looked at me, then followed my gaze to the back of the developer’s head.

“Is he talking to you?”

“Presumably. Welcome to my life.”

I summoned my authoritative voice. Which isn’t very authoritative, but it’s the best I have.

Dude, which is it?” He’s from Japan so I probably should have said “Dude-san, which is it? Arigato!” But I was in a hurry.

He turned back to me with a look of something less than confidence. “Well, it probably still works with the older version, but we haven’t tested it.”

I used my vast expertise to make an executive decision.

“OK, I’m going to say that they have to use the newer version then.”

“Yeah, do that.”

Right.

That problem solved, I went back to what I was working on before the great versioning debacle, which was trying to get long explanations of a difficult-to-explain product to be readable on teeny tiny cell phone screens. Yes, again. Do I structure the HTML as XHTML? WML? What? I found this:

While doing the research for this article, I actually walked away from my computer right in the middle of my umpteenth developer guideline PDF download, hopped in my car, picked up a bottle of wine, three DVDs, returned home, and crawled into bed. That’s how bad it is.

Well, that’s promising.

I hobbled something together and figured I should actually look at it on a tiny screen before I went much farther. Hmm… tiny screen… tiny screen… where can I get a tiny screen? I work for a mobile device software company. Surely, we have plenty of tiny screens around. I went to see a developer. Thankfully, not the mumbler. He had about 10 phones piled on his desk, but none were Internet-enabled. Could I load the files onto the phone? Yes, but I’d need a special USB cable. Did he have one? He looked around his piles of cables dubiously. No. But, he did know of two Internet-enabled phones in the office! I would just have to track one down. Amazingly, I did. This is where my years of experience really pay off. I’ve become extremely efficient at tracking people down. Generally, they’re playing ping pong.

So, I uploaded the test files to my server, opened the browser on the phone, typed in the hella long url, and no page. I asked the developer. Oh, he said. They must have shut off our service for not paying the bill again. The fuck?

I should point out that while I work for a small company, we are owned by a very large one. Huge actually. I’m pretty sure they have the money to pay the cell phone bill. But I was stuck until I had service, so I went to see the admin.

“Oh, which account is that? Cingular? Yeah, Verizon got turned off too. I’m trying to get accounts payable to process the checks.”

I then went back to my desk and found a new e-mail from the head of our larger company telling us that he’d just written a $510 million check to get the Department of Justice and the SEC off his back. And also reminding us not to commit fraud this holiday season! And suddenly the light went on and I realized that those dumb workshops I had to take where we all had to watch little skits and talk about ethics were probably also to get the SEC off his back and not just to annoy me personally. The annoyance thing was just a side benefit.

What bugged me the most was that they had to announce this big settlement today. Which meant the stock went up. Today is the first day of this cycle’s employee stock purchase program. In six months, we buy the stock at 15% below today’s price. If only they had waited just one more frickin’ day, I could maybe make a little money. That, I think, they must have done on purpose. To annoy me personally. Lord knows they’re probably not going to be overflowing with the raises this year what with that $510 million check, so the least they could do is time their stock-influencing announcements to benefit me, right? Oh. There was probably something in that dumb ethics workshop about that. What I recall most from the workshop is that they were really adamant that we put these “standards” stickers on our badges, so at any time, a manager could confront us in the hall and we could pull out our badge and prove we’d been to training. I think hallway manager confrontations are unethical so I am participating in a one-person protest. And anyway, I lost my sticker.

I decided that since my company could not pay its bills, I would just use my own phone for testing. Only, I would have to brave the customer service people who are intent on keeping me from Internet access. I have tried to get Internet access on my own phone before, without much luck. Here’s how it went today:

“All of our agents are busy. Agents are available 24 hours a day so you can call at your convenience.” (As long as your convenience is 3am.)

The guy I talked to was completely out of his league, but in his favor, he knew it, and transferred me to the next tier of support. She thought I was an obvious idiot who was doing something wrong, so she asked me to recount my steps exactly. I was on to her game because I do this same thing with my mom when she tells me windows are flying off the screen of her computer.

Now first of all, I don’t begrudge the people who answer the phone for not knowing all the answers. I know they get a script and they’re only told a certain number of things, and not all calls fit into that. Also, I don’t expect everyone to know about every browser in the world, but I do sort of expect the person I was transferred to who is a “data services expert” to know about the browsers installed on the phones that this company sells. Apparently, my expectations are way too high.

I recounted my steps:

“I go to the menu, I open Opera, and it asks me for an access point.”

“OK, so you’ve got an .mp3 file of opera that you’re trying to play?”

Clearly, today was not the day I get Internet access on my phone.

“Opera is a browser.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Like Internet Explorer? Just a different browser.”

“I’ll have to ask my supervisor. I’ve never heard of this Opera.”

I’ll spare you the tedious details, but she finally realized she had to send me their network information. She was very excited: “I have a tool for that!”

And the reward for it all was that I got to go back to work. I’m thinking of picking up a bottle of wine and crawling into bed before I go any further.

I am still, after therapy, after clearing seeing the ludicrousness of it, after having life go terribly awry because of it, obsessed with people liking me. Never mind that I know that desperately wanting people to like you is wholly unlikeable, that obsessing about this exact thing caused me to lose my very self. Still, there it is. And when I think about it, I swear my brain recoils in horror: “Well, you don’t want to be a total bitch who doesn’t care at all what anyone thinks of her do you? But what’s the alternative, being a pathetic person, craving appreciation and love?” At no time does any part of my brain step in and suggest balance. It’s either cold bitch or sniffling ass-kisser. There is no in between.

But get this. At the same time, I am turning into the most anti-social person I know. At the store, I get personally offended if an employee asks if I need help. “No thank you,” I say, when what I really mean is “can I not shop in peace? Do you have to get all up in my personal space and interrupt me when I clearly have not asked for help?” Seriously, what kind of a bitch am I? Yesterday, standing in line at the post office, this guy was way too close behind me, and every time the line moved, I would attempt to get away from him and he kept inching closer and closer and his packages were actually poking me in the leg and it took all I had not to whip right around and tell him to take his fucking packages somewhere else and as I was not his date, he could just step off and stop spooning me. That’s me: full of holiday spirit.

I want people to like me, but I don’t want to atually have to talk to any of them. I guess I just want to be admired from afar. I want to sit in my perfectly cleaned and decorated apartment, curled up next to my perfectly lit fire, and enjoy the silence while people in their own homes think lovely thoughts about me. “That Alice. She sure is admirable. And I bet her house is perfectly clean!”

In reality, I did try to have a fire over the weekend, but managed only to light several thousand matches. The logs were unfazed. It is apparently much easier to burn down your kitchen than it is to start a fire in your fireplace. Forget having a perfectly manicured life, I can barely make it in to work.

If you’re striving to be perfect, you’re fucked. There is no perfect. It’s predetermined failure. And besides, when you die, will it matter more that you’ve enjoyed your life or that you’ve achieved some state of perfection? And yet, that little voice won’t go away: If you don’t strive to be perfect, you’re aiming for mediocrity. You’re stepping up and proclaiming to the world that your ultimate goal is averageness. You want everyone around you to see your accomplishments and universally proclaim, “eh.” (Although they’d better do their proclaiming from over there.)

I don’t have a blinding flash of insight to sum this all up. I do know, in a tenuous, unsure way, that maybe I just need to measure success differently. That’s it’s not about being perfect or mediocre, but about living your life as fully as you can. And while I can see the logic of it, the emotion of it is more difficult. It may be a choice, to live my life differently, but it’s more an uphill climb to the top of a towering mountain lined with slippery rocks and shifting sand than it is a simple fork in the road. And as I climb, that post office guy had better not be behind me.

My cat is really mad at me right now. You see, he used to look like this:

And now, he looks like this:

The other cat has been mocking him all morning and sniffing at him like he smells bad. He just keeps glaring at me menacingly. It’s not good when cats are being menacing. There’s no telling what they might do. A dog might glare at you, but 30 seconds later, he will have completely forgotten what all the glaring was even about. “Why am I glaring?” the dog would ask himself. “I’m going to go smell some trash! Maybe I can even lick it!” Cats are different. Cats remember forever. Ten years from now, I might be peacefully napping and hear a faint noise. And when I slowly open my eyes, I’ll see the cat staring at me. “This is for that time you made me look like a rat.” And it’ll be all over for me.

So, my cat’s really mad at me, but he’s also confused. He doesn’t understand where half of him went. Things don’t feel so fluffy anymore. He just doesn’t know what to do. So he alternates his evil glances with looks of helplessness. He circles around on the bed and starts to lie down, but something feels different, so he pops back up and looks around, trying to figure it out. He follows me and meows in this pathetic voice, but when I try to pick him up, he remembers that it’s all my fault and he leaps out of my arms and goes back to the glaring. And the plotting.

Meanwhile, the other cat just laughs.

He may not be laughing soon though, because his gift from the vet was yummy new hypo-allergenic food: peas and duck. Seriously, peas and duck.

You know, when we pack up our pets to bring them to the vet, we always try to soothe them with words of comfort: “it’s just the vet. It’ll be fine. You’ll get to visit some nice people and we’ll be back before you know it. You’ll love it!”

We lie.

You know the one about being home for Christmas, if only in your dreams. You’ve seen that Folger’s commercial where the guy is home from college or the Peace Corps or prison or whatever and he sneaks in and makes Folger’s to surprise his family. If someone snuck into my house and made me Folger’s, I would kick them right back out into the snow and tell them that Starbucks was just a few blocks’ walk, but the commercial family seemed all excited so there’s no accounting for taste I guess.

Anyway, holidays and home are apparently like peanut butter and chocolate only even better (although it’s not physically possible for anything to be better than that) but I just don’t feel it. I have exactly zero urge to be at some vague location known as “home” for any period in December. I think of home as, well, my house, but I’m thinking that’s not what the song means to say, because how hard is it to just be at your own house? You simply have to not go anywhere. I’m really good at that.

I’m assuming that “home” is where you grew up, or barring that, where your parents live. Although I also don’t get why grown people would consider their parents’ house their home when they have homes of their own. It’s not that I’m judging, I just can’t relate.

We moved a lot when I was growing up. And by “a lot”, I mean we moved all the time. It was as though we were on the run from the law, but I don’t think that was the case because we seemed to end up back in the same places again and again. At one point, the moving got to be so much that my parents decided that going through the trouble of looking for a place to live and then dealing will selling the house with every moving whim was too much and they bought a fifth wheel travel trailer so we could live wherever we happened to drive.

Looking back, I realize my parents were crazy people. My sister and I shared the roll-out couch in the teeny living room as our bed. And if you think that the roll-out couch of a travel trailer is comfortable, then you’re as crazy as my parents. I don’t even know where we kept our clothes, although I know we didn’t keep much else in that place.

Taking us in and out of schools would have also been too much trouble, so instead my mom home schooled us. You don’t know how funny that is if you haven’t met my mom. We did our school work at the flimsy table in the tiny kitchen. You know the table I’m talking about. All the RVs have them. They are covered with this plastic fake-looking wood grain, flip over to provide additional sleeping space, and have a little curvy booth for seating. This is where we sat, all day every day, and did our school work.

It’s not a home I really care to go back to.

So, forget nostalgic memories of home pulling me back for the holidays. There is no home. There is no nostalgia. And there isn’t really even a “place where parents currently live.”

When I think of my parents, I think of my mom and my stepdad. They got married when I was four. However, they divorced when I was 18 and I haven’t heard from my stepdad since. Actually, I did talk to him on the phone for about five minutes ten years ago. He was probably too drunk to remember it. I couldn’t tell you how to find him. Or for that matter, how to find any of the people I called aunt, uncle, or cousin while I was growing up. So much for family.

I also couldn’t tell you how to find my biological father. Or any purported family therein. Actually, I could probably figure out how to find him, but I wouldn’t want to, so I won’t. Not many thoughts of home there.

Which leaves my mom. She doesn’t actually have a home at the moment. She’s living with her parents after a spectacular burst of deciding not to work anymore. Because it didn’t make her happy. Of course, living with her parents doesn’t seem to be making her happy either, but you take what you can get when you decide the working life just isn’t for you.

So, there is my grandparents’ house. Actually, I love their house. I think I love it most for staying put. My grandparents lived there when I was born; they live there now. Some of my earliest memories are of that house. My mom lived there when I was tiny after she split up with my biological father. When I think about that house, I can understand a little what people mean when they say they’re going home for the holidays. It’s just glimmers though. We moved around too much for me to have spent any length of time there growing up. But every time I went back, it was always there. The same as it ever was. Same as it still is.

My mom called me tonight: “So, I guess we’re not exchanging presents this year.” Huh? I told her that of course I didn’t want her to get me anything, as she’s short on money with no job and all. “No, I want to buy presents, but I don’t have any money. So, I guess we’re not exchanging. That’s why I called.” I told her that I got her presents and they were already mailed, but that I didn’t get her things because I was expecting an exchange. God, why does Christmas have to be about obligation and reciprocity anyway?

I’m not going to my grandparents’ house for Christmas. I would like to see my sister and my niece, but when I think of going there, I don’t think of going home. I think of the overwhelming stress of my mom and relatives I never see and playing some part that I don’t know how to play. I can visit my sister when things are quieter, when we can spend time together without all the distractions of the holidays.

Instead, I’m going with P. to his parents’ house. I don’t think he thinks of their house as “home”. It’s not even the house he grew up in. But the house will be full of his family, and we can relax in our pajamas all weekend. Last year, we even made a liquor store run in pajamas. It will be warm and comforting. The stay I mean, not the liquor.

It’s not as though I feel like I don’t have a family. Well, actually, sometimes it does feel that way. My mom, for all she tries, needs parenting herself. I’ve been closer to my sister this last year than I ever have, but that’s still new. “Family” and “home” don’t bring up warm, fuzzy memories for me. Instead, they make me feel alone. And if I went “home” for Christmas, I would feel alone there. I don’t feel alone with P. I feel loved. I don’t feel the pull of obligations and roles being the responsible one. I feel like me. And it feels like home.

Going to gay bingo is exactly like going to church. OK, maybe church doesn’t have as many drag queens, but they have ladies in way too much makeup and really big hair, so there’s no visible difference. The drag queens are good at tucking. There’s singing and clapping and waving your hands in the air, and standing up at the appointed times. Sure, at gay bingo, you yell “O-69!” when you stand up, which I haven’t heard a lot in church, but the sentiment is sort of like “amen”, in a way. Gay bingo even has nuns. And the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are there to provide support and comfort, and to make me very jealous of their jeweled eyelids. And church just about invented the idea of playing bingo on a Saturday night.

Just as in church, you hug and kiss everyone around you, even if they are all total strangers. And everyone is welcome at gay bingo, even straight people. This exactly like some churches, although others, not so much. Church tends to be a little more hardcore about its conversion attemps. At gay bingo, they tend to more have the attitude of “well, I don’t know the heck you’d want to be straight, but OK. Carry on then. We’re here if you need someone to talk to about giving up those odd straight ways.” Someone sent a note to Miss Glamazonia: “I’m a straight woman, but you turn me on. What does this mean?” She sent him over a calendar of gay men to keep things confusing.

The most frightening point of the evening came when Miss Intermission, looking deceptively harmless in her pink prom dress, started hurling candy in the crowd. Hard candy. Lollypops with sticks that could definitely poke someone’s eye out. It was like a scene from The Birds as everyone scattered for cover and tried protecting their heads with their hands. Fortunately, Miss Intermission can’t throw very far, and we were mostly safe. Although she came by later and handed me a button with a pin in the back that I put in my pocket and forgot about until later when I started wondering what it was that was causing my leg such great pain. Maybe they should call her Miss Bringer of Terror and Torture, although that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

Gay bingo is more popular than church generally is. You have to reserve a table in advance if you want to be assured of a seat. We had a table of eight, and someone in our group even got a bingo. This someone was not me. No, I am not bitter even though my thong speedo-wearing construction worker dauber leaked blue ink all over my hand and I got it on my head and someone started talking about how hot someone was and I thought, hey, maybe my hair doesn’t look so bad after all. And then I realized he was talking about the dauber.

The girls at the next table leaned over. “You sound a little bitter.” They were smoking candy cigarettes. And probably laughing at the blue ink on my forehead. But they were really nice about it. My friend E. offered to spit-wipe it off for me. She’s just that good of a friend.

You’re supposed to dress in costume, although the theme was Freaky Friday, so we didn’t feel we had much to work with. We’re definitely dressing up for Reject Barbie Night though. With this big blue ink smear on my forehead, I’m already halfway there.

It came to me with perfect clarity yesterday: why we all have such a love-hate relationship with the holidays. I was listening to a holiday mix CD in the car as I was driving to yet another mall to fend for my life in the parking lot and look yet again for pie dishes. The songs were cheery and lovely and full of peace and love and joy. And lies. The clarity moment came about here:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on
Our troubles will be out of sight

Are you fucking kidding me? Who wouldn’t jump on that bandwagon? I want some of that light heart, vanished troubles holiday. Where can I sign up for that? I’ve accidentally stumbled into the extra stress, additional troubles and not just with strip searches at the airport and figuring out how to keep gifts secret while not wrapping them and thusly making them appear bomb-like to screeners holiday.

All this time, all I’ve wanted is for my troubles to be miles away. What am I doing wrong that I’m sitting here with pie dishes wondering how the hell I’m going to ship them to Los Angeles without being the unintended giver of a box of broken glass for Christmas? And how I can I package the essence of my deepest love and tie it with pretty ribbons? For that matter, why am I out of ribbon when I know I bought three miles of it last year? Where are my fucking dancing sugar plums?

We want to love the holiday season, with its joy and cheer and glistening snow and peace and goodwill towards men or whatever the hell and laughter and giving and magic reindeer. But while I have experienced many a holiday season, I have yet to spend one with magic reindeer. Which might be a good thing, because knowing my luck with animal encounters, they’d likely have trampled me to death. But the point is, I haven’t even had the opportunity to be killed by a herd of stampeding magic deer, only by those peaceful, joyful mall shoppers. And by peaceful and joyful, of course I mean willing to kill you if you take the last gravy boat, that while ugly, is on sale, and obviously embodies some sense of holidayishness, being about food, which we are told in commercials is a cornerstone of the season, and thusly, will make Christmas complete. I can’t blame them really. They’re just looking for what the songs have been promising them all their lives. And they’ll have it even if they have to kill every person they see.

If the carols told the real story, I think December would be a little less popular. We’d spend the month hiding in a closet, waiting for January. We’d huddle together for warmth and drink hot cocoa. That’s where I’d be right now except I have heavy glassware to wrap. And I still haven’t found those damn ribbons.

I had two shots of tequila and a breakfast bar for dinner last night. P. called me when he was on his way home from work and I was picking up my car registration sticker. He asked me how my day was. I told him that I didn’t go to work. That something was wrong with me, but I didn’t know what it was. That I was stressed and overwhelmed about nothing at all and couldn’t face the idea of adding work to the toppling heap. Even if it was a heap of nothing.

The house is a mess, I need to go through my mail, I hate how much I weigh, and I have barely started shopping for Christmas presents. None of this is reason to melt down and not go to work. The real thing I’m worried about can’t be solved with a day off.

I went through a lot emotional turmoil during the last few years. But I didn’t go through anything unique and I went to therapy, and I had some realizations and I’ve moved on. But my emotional baggage keeps following me. And I don’t know what’s wrong with me that I can’t just leave it behind and go on with my life. So, I get mad at myself. And I feel insecure about everything: what I say, what I do, how I write. And I hate feeling insecure, and it makes me not like myself very much. Or really, at all. And I don’t want to go back my therapist and tell her that I’m struggling, but that I don’t know why, that I should be better, healthy, and well-adjusted, because I don’t want to admit that to myself. And I don’t know where the anxiety is coming from, but it feeds my insecurity and I lay awake at night wishing it away.

So, P. asked if I wanted to go out and do something, and suddenly I realized that I did. That I needed some distraction. So, we decided to go see The Incredibles because I heard it was funny and I wanted something funny. Only it was starting soon, so we didn’t have time for an actual dinner. Because P. and I are twelve, we tend to smuggle tequila into the movie theatre in these little bitty flasks that each hold about two shots. We learned our lesson the other day, when we instead relied on a bar’s margarita to see us through a movie. We clink the flasks together in the dark and giggle.

Apparently, my flask wasn’t quite big enough, because I didn’t think the movie was funny. I thought it was sad. People unhappy with their lives, unsure of a way out, lying to those around them, feeling unappreciated. The inevitable struggles and disappointments of life… Maybe it was my mood. Even the short before the movie was depressing. (P. leaned over and whispered, “what the fuck was that?” while I felt like the naked lamb.)

I should probably go to work today.

When I was a kid, my stepsister would get into huge fights with my mom. About laundry. Mom always buttoned shirts she hung on hangers; my sister wanted to just reach into the closet and grab a shirt. She didn’t want to have to unbutton anything. She thought mom was buttoning things to spite her. I didn’t like the way mom did laundry either, although my complaint was with the way she matched socks. She put any two socks together that were the same color and I would end up with mismatched socks on my feet and feel out of sorts all day.

I didn’t get into fights about it though. I didn’t have the fear that maybe she was messing up my laundry because she wasn’t my real mom. That wasn’t why my mom buttoned my sister’s shirts, of course. And I never understood why my sister would get so upset. Either did my mom, because my mom is as oblivious to that kind of thing as she was about matching socks. I didn’t understand it because I was a kid, and to me, we were just a family.

Weird how such little things from when you were a kid affect you later. I still have a thing about matching socks. If I have even a suspicion that the socks don’t quite match, I put them aside and look for better candidates. Which is probably why I have a huge pile of unmatched socks that never seems to get any smaller. And all the shirts hanging in my closet are unbuttoned. My coat closet is filled with unzipped hoodies. Just about every time I open the door, I have to rehang one that’s fallen. And I do. But I still don’t zip them.

If you’ve worked for a technology company for any length of time, chances are you’ve experienced layoff day. If you are lucky on layoff day and are not one of the many victims, you instead experience a surreal barrage of e-mails from people, some you may know very well, others you may have never heard of, wishing you well and fondly remembering your working time together. Often, this is the only way you learn that someone was laid off.

I’ve been through layoff day several times, yet never once have I gotten an e-mail saying “well, screw you guys; this job sucked anyway”. Instead, the e-mails always talk about how wonderful the job was, while at the same time vowing that the next job will be at least as great. I don’t know if layoffees have to keep the positive attitude to avoid killing everyone around them, or, more likely, don’t want to mess up their chances of getting a good reference.

Honestly though, I don’t get why people send out these e-mails at all. I was victim to layoff day once, at a company where I had worked for nearly six years, and the last thing I wanted to do after that was log on to e-mail and send out a fond farewell. I did want to crawl under the covers and cry a lot. But sending out good wishes? Not so much.

You generally know that the day is coming. Rumors, oddly worded announcements, strange reorganizations. Employees know. Today’s event was a little different in that I first heard of it on CNN. And then in the weeks preceding, read the world’s opinions of it on message boards around the Internet. Executives tried to save face by sending out a global e-mail shortly after the news broke, implying they were planning to tell us all along, acknowledging that yes, soon before Christmas, some people would be “separated” from their positions.

I wasn’t too worried about my job, because I work for a division of the company that has been spun off into its business unit, and word on the street was that as we were actually making money, we were the only division in the company with open requisitions, rather than layoff requirements. But still. You can never be sure until the day is over. And when you’ve once been victim of layoff day, you can’t help but be a little nervous.

When I was laid off, it hit me like a truck. So much of my self-worth was tied up in that job that it devastated me. I was a remote employee, working in a different state from the office, so I had to wait as everyone else was called into the manager’s office, one by one, and told the news. I heard from nearly everyone, by e-mail, instant message, or phone call once it had happened to them. And then my call came. My manager said she had to read me a prepared statement. She called me that night from home to tell me what she really thought. She had no say in the matter. Higher ups made all the decisions based on the org charts. It was still devastating. Plus, we had just bought a new house and a new truck and suddenly I had no income.

Looking back at the online journal I kept back then, it all comes rushing back to me.

January 7, 2002: “Company apparently gearing up for big layoffs. Including our department. I won’t get laid off, right?”

January 21, 2002: “So, I’ve spent the weekend trying to continue forward momentum. If I slow down and think, I feel this tugging at me. It’s the pull of backward momentum, luring me to curl up into a ball and cry. So, in an effort to outpace that pull, I’m moving ahead in the forward direction. If I stop, I feel like things are passing me by.”

And on January 23, I got the call from the company that hired me away from my deep, dark funk. Which meant that while I was overjoyed, I also had to adjust to lifestyle changes after working from home for so long.

January 28, 2002: “So, since I’ve worked at home for the last almost five years, I’m thinking I need to do a little shopping before I start working in an actual office on Monday. Considering that a sample of the clothing I’ve bought over the last year is:

I know I’ve been out of the office for a while, but I’m thinking these items are not generally worn office attire.”

(As it turns out, I mostly was wrong. I do, after all, work in the software industry.)

So, I had a new job within a couple of weeks. I had severance. But it was still terrible. It happened nearly three years ago and I still can remember how awful it felt.

In some ways though, it feels like a lifetime ago. So much has happened since then. I’m scarcely the same person. And actually, a lot of that change was motivated by the layoff. I needed an identity beyond my job. I had to stop giving so much to my employers. They treated me as a business resource; I should treat them the same. All the extra hours and hard work and caring didn’t stop them from letting me go when it made business sense to do so. It’s not that I stopped being a good employee. In fact, that’s what I became. I stopped being a superemployee, glued to my job. I stopped spending weeks of working until 4am, grabbing a couple of hours of sleeping and starting work again. I no longer spent all my weekends and spare hours researching better ways to do my job. I started looking for a life outside work.

There’s a part of me that worries that if I’m not this superemployee, that I’ll be victim of layoff day once again. But the other part of me replies that I was a victim of it anyway. I may as well have a life in the meantime.

In any case, I was not a victim today. The rumors were true, and my division was not affected. However, people in my office who work for another division were: the person who interviewed me for the job, who was reorged into the other division of our office right before I started; a QA engineer who I shared an office with for a while. I read the slashdot boards, and they say who cares; the company sucks, so the people who work for the company suck too. But I know otherwise. I’ve been there I don’t wish it on anyone. We lost nine people in my office, and 750 companywide if you believe the news stories. Internally, I hear it’s a lot more if you count all the contract employees they let go.

It’s a jarring reminder of a big turning point in my life. I guess layoff day affected me after all.

It’s a question for the ages: is it better to shop online?

With online shopping, you can easily get reviews, compare prices, and simply type in a search to find what you’re looking for. You can then click your mouse and have the item gift wrapped and sent right to the recipient’s door. However, all you can see is an image. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell if something is really worthwhile from a picture. Also, all that gift wrap and shipping can get expensive. And you have to worry about whether the package will get there in time.

Saturday night, I decided to do a bit of Christmas shopping in my robe. I needed a present for my grandparents. They like to bake pies, so I thought I’d get them a couple of pretty pie dishes that they could use for baking and serving. How hard could it be to find them? In fact, it was very simple. Cooking.com has a very large selection of ceramic pie dishes. I thought they’d like the one with the bird in the middle. And maybe a fluted one. So, I grabbed those and a pie server and went to check out. Once I added gift wrapping and shipping, my total price had gone up by $25. Surely, I thought to myself all snug and warm in my robe, I could find similar items, wrap them myself and ship them, and save some money. Am I really $25 worth of lazy? (Well, I am actually, but I thought I’d give this mall shopping thing a try.)

So, I canceled the order. Here’s what the non-online version was like (you don’t really have to read this to know the inevitable conclusion: it’s worth the $25 worth of lazy to shop in your robe):

P. and I decided to go shopping Sunday morning. I needed to run home and do a couple of things, notably get some cat litter for the poor cats, so I said I’d meet him back at his condo in 30-45 minutes. I drove up the hill towards the icy peak where I live. You know how in scary movies and Tom and Jerry cartoons the sky is blue, sun is shining, white, fluffy clouds float by and then the hapless heroine drives up the winding road to the top of the mountain and sees a dark castle, surrounded by a stormy sky, black clouds, and lightning? (See also the travesty of the nostalgic Disney ride of my childhood, The Haunted Mansion.)

Anyway, that’s where I live. Only without the castle. Seattle may be known for its rain, but just about any time it’s raining in Seattle, I get snow. Fortunately, everything was starting to melt, so I drove on through the slush to the grocery store to get the litter.

Actual conversation while in line:

Old man behind me (upon seeing the litter): Oh. You’re buying litter. You have cats.
Cashier: Or maybe she has to clean up an oil leak!
Old man (with growing revulsion): Stinky cats. Annoying cats.
Cashier: I need to get litter too.
Old man (now incredulously horrified): You have cats too?!
Cashier: Yeah, my girlfriend brought him home from the bowling alley.
Other cashier (to old man): I can take you over here.
Old man rushes to other line to get away from stinky cat owners.
Cashier: Man, I’m broke. They really need to give me more hours.

Fortunately, I was not required in this conversation.

I made it home to more snow and the stinky cats. I took a quick shower, changed the litter, stood in my closet, trying desperately to find something to wear… and the phone rang. “Hi.” “Has it been 30 minutes?” “It’s been an hour and a half.” “What?”

I had suffered from missing time yet again. Surely only the ringing phone broke me free from the alien abduction.

Cost Plus had no ceramic pie dishes. None. So, we braved the mall parking lot, where no one had Christmas spirit. William Sonoma had exactly one choice for ceramic pie dish. The Bon Home Store had one choice as well. And that was it for the entire mall. I picked up a gift certificate and that was the extent of our mall shopping. Surely Bed, Bath, and Beyond would have pie dishes. And we had coupons!

Sadly, Bed, Bath, and Beyond had exactly zero choices. However, they did have Senseo coffee makers, which I have been eyeing for a while. For myself, I mean, not as a gift. They were $70. But I had a 20% off coupon, which took $14 off. Plus, the box included $10 in free coffee, and I was about out of coffee anyway. Also, BB&B had a $10 gift card rebate. And Senseo is offering a $20 rebate. Which brought my total to $16. How could I not get it? That would be just throwing money away.

Unfortunately, there ended my search for a pie dish because we had a wine tasting reservation to get to.

So, I spent all day searching, and ended up with no gift. This would teach me that it’s better to grab something online when I see it, shipping and gift wrap costs be damned, except that had I done that, I wouldn’t have my shiny new coffee maker. So, maybe in-person shopping really is better.

A get a lot of variations on the question “would you ever get married again?” And I don’t give anyone the real answer, which is, the idea really scares me. A lot. I have the same fears about living with someone.

I learned a lot about myself in the soul searching and thrashing about that went on during the months and years before I decided to leave my marriage. I realized that I feel selfish if I think of myself first. But that it’s not that I’m selfless and noble. I’m scared of being alone. Afraid of not being liked. If I don’t do what you want, you won’t be happy. And you won’t like me. It’s hard for me to say no or to ask for things I need. Because I’m afraid.

It’s not that I think I’d fall back into that pattern exactly. I’ve worked really hard to dig out of that, and yet not go too far over to the other side, where I only think of myself and don’t care about anyone else. And I know that the problem was not just that I was so quick to give, but that I was with someone who couldn’t to see that, and became comfortable with the dynamic. And when I realized I had to change, was unwilling or perhaps unable to change with me.

When you’ve finally mustered up the courage to ask for what you need and to make changes, and you’ve made yourself vulnerable and explained why past behaviors have overhwhelmed you to the point of exhaustion, have wounded your soul, you don’t want to hear “I want to go back to the way things were before.”

I know that’s not going to happen again. I’m not afraid that will happen again.

But I am afraid that my insecurities will undermine my relationship. And that my need for acceptance will try to persuade me to give too much and that the struggle itself will be damaging. I really lost it the other night. A feeling of certain failure follows me everywhere. I failed at a relationship I tried so hard to save. Why should things be any different now? What if I’m unable to be successful relationship ever?

So, there I was, crying for no reason, after a particularly pleasant evening with P. I mean, he made me go see National Treasure with him, so I guess I had reason to be upset, but then he had to sit through it too, so that was punishment enough. But we had margaritas (that were not at all strong enough to carry us through the movie) and sushi and the wasabi almost made P. cry. So, it was a good time all around. And I felt like a dumbass, crying over nothing.

“Do you think I’ll always be a failure?” I wailed.

“Of course not. Do you think I would be wasting my time with you if I thought that?” (He’s very romantic.)

When I get like this, he reminds me that I’m in a shame spiral (he even has a little hand motion to go with it). And he’s right. I start to feel as though I’m unlovable and then I realize that I’m sabotaging my life by being so insecure which makes me mad at myself for being so dumb. Which makes me feel more unlovable. It’s a vicious cycle.

Fortunately, he’s very patient. He’s the most patient person I’ve ever known, maybe. But even his patience scares me sometimes. He doesn’t tell me to stop crying because it makes him feel bad (which I have been told in past relationships, and that of course, doesn’t help, because in addition to being sad, now you’re mad that the other person is making it all about them and how they feel, but anyway). He supports me, and lets me cry and complain, even though he’s heard it all before. And then I wonder if one day he’ll break. If he’s the long-suffering partner who can only suffer so long.

He would remind me of the shame spiral.

But anyway. Living in the same house is tricky for other reasons. You don’t have to care about lots of little things that take on greater importance when you’re living together. Like how and when you clean and do laundry. I’m thinking mostly of me here as I’m reminded of the huge pile of clothes on my closet floor. There’s even more to worry about when you’re married, of course. Suddenly, all of these places — credit reporting agencies, car insurance firms — think of you as a single entity. If your boyfriend gets a speeding ticket, you can laugh and mock. If your husband gets a speeding ticket, suddenly your insurance premiums go up. If your boyfriend gambles away all his money in Vegas, again, you can laugh and mock and make him perform special favors so you will cook him dinners. If your husband does that, well, so much for the down payment on that new house you both had been eyeing.

And I don’t want to get caught up in the little stuff. I don’t want to worry about becoming a naggy, controlling overseer. Of course, again, this isn’t likely to happen. If you have a true parternship with someone, you’re in life together. You plan together. You compromise together.

But it’s hard for me not to feel that I’m doomed. To forever repeat my past mistakes. And, as I tell P., to end up a crazy cat lady, alone with my piles of laundry.

I still have writer’s block, and actually, it’s grown into a large looming mountain. Which is a little inconvenient for me since I write for a living, after all. All I really needed to do today was edit something. However, I didn’t need to make it better; I needed to make it shorter. The text has to fit onto teeny tiny Pocket Internet Explorer pages on cell phone screens. And to edit text to make it shorter, you really need to rewrite it. Only even rewriting is a lost cause at the moment.

I think part of the trouble is that I’m feeling a little overwhelmed and out of control in general. Things I need to do are stacking up. Suddenly, it’s the end of the day, and I haven’t done all of those things I need to do. It’s making me distracted. I’m also trying to eat more healthfully, which means of course that I suddenly want food that’s entirely bad for me. And I want it now. I think I should resolve to eat only fast food because that would cause my brain to rebel and crave only fresh vegetables.

Well, block or not, I need to get this text to fit onto itty bitty screens by tomorrow, so off I go. Fortunately, I only have to get a rough cut done for translation estimation purposes. I can refine the text into something that’s actually good a little later. Hopefully I’ll be past the block by then. Well, the project keeps slipping so anything’s possible.