Some Thoughts on Faith

The last couple months have been tough ones; amidst some family issues and the usual distress from various situations global and local, I found myself and some of my family and friends in the middle of a campaign of hatred, prejudice, and vitriol so strong that we actually feared for our safety. Adrenaline kicked in and I watched so many amazing people who pitched in to get things done.  My own part in assisting was to help research and interview a firm to provide armed security so that our church community could go back to meeting together in person. Once that happened, and we all could relax just a little bit, we had our first in-person church meeting.  When our pastor asked if anyone had questions for God that they wanted to raise up, multiple people asked a variation of, “How do I love someone who threatens my life? How do I keep from hating a person who hates me when they don’t even know me?”  That moment broke me a little.  Maybe a lot. 

I have some really great friends and family - astoundingly good people.  A dear one had agreed, a few months ago, to rent me her beach house for a month at a price that was astronomically low.  The timing couldn’t have been better; I decided that it was time for LRM (Life Reset Month).  It would include some time with friends staying here, some time with my family here, and some time alone.  My husband supported me wholeheartedly, and stayed home to work while I drove off to reset. 

I would love to write the flowing prose that my sister does, or put my philosophies into words with little effort, but it’s not so much the case.  However, I am damn good at hearing or reading snippets that speak to me, and then reusing them (with credit given, of course).  Just before leaving the house last Monday, I watched the most recent episode of “Call The Midwife,” and the narrator at the end said, “Sometimes the fates decree we should start our lives afresh.  We must forgive where we condemned and seek to mend the things we shattered.”  It was clearly appropriate. 

My copilot for my trip was a Bendy Jesus that I had shamelessly asked for when they were being handed out to the children at church our first week back.  Anyone who knows me well may be shocked at my choice of companion; I am not Christian, and haven’t been for decades.  But I wanted to learn to not wish ill on anyone, even those who are hateful towards me, and Jesus is kind of a great example of that (incidentally, so are the characters in Winnie the Pooh, or Gandhi).  Plus, truth be told, it’s a fidget toy and my ADD loves these kinds of things.

For a week, I took walks on the beach, had long talks with my friend MK (the owner of the beach house, who came to visit for a couple days), and searched for some sort of definition of what my faith really is.  I often go back to a year ago, when I had surgery and was extremely fearful of what the outcome would be. There was a hole connecting my bladder and my colon, and it was unknown whether I’d need long-term catheterization, or whether I’d need a colostomy.  My friend Kati (who I often refer to as my moral compass) had an actual checklist in a text message to me of the exact things she was praying for.  It spoke to me, in part because I love me some checklists!  Kati has never, ever criticized my lack of Christianity even though she is the single most devout Christian I know.  She is the epitome of a gentle true believer.  Fast forward, and I came out of surgery to be told that I did not need a colostomy, and that there was no hole in my bladder.  My colon was still taking up a lot of real estate smack dab next to it (like an unwanted duplex wall), but when the two were peeled apart (the surgeon’s words) there was no hole. He shook his head and said he had no explanation for it, but that it had spontaneously healed in the previous week or so. I took this as miraculous, but when I told Kati, her calm, assured reaction was something akin to, “Yep.  These things happen.”  I hope to hell that, after she was done talking to me, she went and did a Rocky-style victory dance.  She certainly should have.  I will go to my grave believing that Kati is one of the best coaches on #TeamMiracle. That said, I still have to try not to bristle when the only comment in response to hatred and killing and destruction in this world is, “We send thoughts and prayers.”  (I’d rather they send thoughts, prayers, and votes for stricter gun laws).

At the end of my week of musings, I was watching a show called, “Tiny Beautiful Things.” In an answer to an advice column submission, a writer says, “So what if we thought about God differently, and realized that God isn’t just in the answers to our prayers, but in the people praying for us? What if, together, those people form a raft that will hold your weight and keep you afloat by the human love given to you when you needed it most? If I believed in God, I’d see His existence in that.  So, what if you didn’t worry about everyone’s God?  And allowed your God to exist in the simple words of compassion that others offer you? What if faith is the way it feels to lay your hand on your child’s sacred body under the same big sky where your mother held you?  What if, in your darkest hour, amidst your greatest fears and your deepest losses, you saw the miracle in that?”

I think that sums up my own version of faith: having faith in God but also in all of the beings, past and present, who have been part of a raft with the sole intention of helping another. And now, when I think of the ones who have caused so much pain with their religious-based hatred, I think that they, too, have built a strong raft.  In my mind, that raft has a black flag with a skull and crossbones on it; but maybe, just maybe, they will raise a new flag one day and sail for good.  If that is possible, how can I want them to drown?  (And hopefully, in the meantime, I will be okay with myself if I simply hope that they have plenty of water and just get caught up in a good riptide for a few years that keeps them from the shore).

 

-- J

NOW What??!!

The overturning of Roe immediately turned me into a roiling cauldron of anger.  Well, not immediately, because I was camping at the time and wasn’t constantly monitoring media.  I did, however, make the mistake of checking my Twitter feed at some point that morning and unraveled. 

BUT… I have learned, over the last few years, that anger is a fantastic catalyst and has very little ongoing, additional value.  It clouds my vision and keeps me from making logical, proactive decisions and plans.  The key, for me, is to have the anger jolt me into action, but then to be able to calm down enough to create a plan for action.  Thus, I found myself on Friday afternoon sitting with Ron among tall trees and a gentle breeze, brainstorming about what I could do about this travesty of justice.

Here are some initial thoughts; some of these might trigger some action on your own part.  I do know that just thinking and talking about these options with Ron and then with my amazing friend, Mary Kay (the non-prof queen), made me feel more focused and calm.  It also gave me a sense of purpose and the confidence that there would be something I could do, however small, to make a difference in our future.

 

1.      We need to expand the pool of diligent voters.  The only way for our voices to be heard at the polls is to VOTE.  In addition to encouraging registered voters to exercise their voting rights, I vow to find at least one (hopefully, more) unregistered voters and convince them to register and then to vote.  I live in California, so the easiest way to register here is online at this link: Online Voter Registration | California Secretary of State You can easily find information for your own state online.  Best place to begin to find people to register: Young people who have recently turned 18.  Do you know any?  GET THEM REGISTERED!!

2.      I am vowing to no longer do any direct business (in my case, travel is the best example) in states that have anti-abortion laws.  For example, I was on the fence as to whether to attend a wedding in Tennessee in September, and I have now declined to attend.  I am making one type of exception only to my no-travel zone (to be discussed in the next paragraph).  You can find a list of states who have already enacted or are about to enact anti-choice laws here: State Laws and Policies | Guttmacher Institute  This is pretty detailed information, for those of us who are data geeks.  For a simple color-coded map, you can click here: How major abortion laws compare, state by state | The Fuller Project

3.      The one exception to my “travel ban” is states where dearest family and friends live (currently, that would be Idaho, Montana, and Texas).  But I am going to try VERY HARD to give my business (hotel, restaurant, shops) to organizations who are “pro-Roe” and especially those who offer abortion benefits in their health coverage, and hopefully even provide for travel expenses for employees who have to travel to other states to avail themselves of services.  Here's an article about this subject, if you care to check out this issue: The growing list of US companies expanding abortion benefits — Quartz at Work (qz.com) Conversely, some companies have donated loads of money to Trump’s campaigns (and he set up this whole avalanche of crap, by appointing three SCOTUS justices, all of whom voted to overturn Roe).  It’s ALWAYS WORTH checking into things for yourself; information is augmented daily, and looking at current articles is always a good idea. Here is one list of companies to AVOID patronizing: Boycott Trump List - Updated for 2022 | DoneGood

4.      I am going to make myself available to transport women to clinics, if necessary.  Yes, it might mean driving pretty far to pick them up and take them home, but so be it.  I, of course, have no personal knowledge of who would need my assistance, but I tapped into a group who are doing that research and have told them that I’m “way in” to help with transportation when necessary.  This brings up a good point: you don’t have to do it all yourself!  Link up with larger groups who are already being activists and volunteer to help them out with time, talent, or treasure.

5.      My amazeballs husband gave me some amazing advice: Use my skills and passion to do something within my wheelhouse, with hopes of channeling anger into action.  So, we brainstormed and decided that my skills and passion are data collection and dissemination (yes, I do know that makes me a freak of nature, but we data engineers make your lives better in more ways than you know!).  I called my amazing friend, Mary Kay, because she is very like-minded (she gave me a couple of the links included in this post). In the coming weeks and months, MK and I will be gathering data and information, and disseminating it in some form (to be determined), but at the least I’ll make a few more (hopefully, shorter!) blog posts about this.

Stay strong and sane, my friends.  These are crazy times, but we CAN make a difference in so many small or large ways.

Peace,

Janine

Of Moving, Masks, and Medicine

I've been mostly silent on social media lately, but decided that I should give a quick description of how my last six months has been.

In March, Ron suggested that it was time for us to sell our home in Washington and move back to California, and I immediately agreed.  I have moved a LOT in the past 16 years (I think 11 times, if I am counting correctly), and I was actually feeling a little restless having been in the same house for five years.  In addition, our little town was growing more and more polarized due to a Q-Anon-promoting mayor and his henchpeople. Our next-door neighbors were getting closer to moving into their house full-time, and had made it very clear that they weren't happy with our "liberal a$$hole" presence, and we missed our friends and family in California.  Lastly (but not the least important, by far), Ron had a couple medical issues that turned out to be okay but made us realize that we were MUCH too far from specialized medical care in our small town.

So, we made a trip to Roseville, got on a wait list for a new house, got a house offered to us, went into contract, put our house on the market, sold it, packed up, and closed escrow.  All in the space of about three months.  It was cray-cray.

Our new house wasn't actually going to be completed until early September, so we were going to be nomadic for about three months.  This seemed like a fun, adventurous idea!  We have dear, amazing friends who offered us places to stay, we had an extended stay hotel in our back pocket, we had a couple trips planned, and it was all going to be (as my friend Mary Kay would say) both hunky and dory.

And then reality struck, in the form of a mystery medical issue...not for Ron this time, but for me.  Let me give a tiny bit of backstory here that would come to be very, very important: while living in Washington, there was only one medical insurance plan that the State of California (Ron's employer) would offer us: a Blue Cross PPO.  As of February, I was also on that plan because Ron had the good (?) sense to marry me on January 1, 2021.  We planned, once we were back in California, to reassess that situation and probably change plans during open enrollment in October so that we had an HMO (likely Kaiser or a similar Sutter-type plan) that would give us lower deductibles and lower out-of-pocket maximums per year.  That will come into play here in a bit.

Beginning in late May, just before we left, I began experiencing abdominal pain that was sometimes very slight and sometimes really, really ugly.  Over the course of the last six months, I have seen numerous doctors, had one surgery that ended up not fixing the issue, and ended up getting a referral to the Chief of Surgical Specialties at Mercy.  The ONLY reason I was able to use that referral (which was a godsend, believe me) is that we missed the open enrollment closing date and were "stuck" with keeping our PPO.  Since I have had numerous imagings, doctor visits, and that one surgery already (which would add up to about twenty thousand dollars, so far), and since those procedures have been in the Sutter, Hill, and Dignity systems, our less-desirable PPO has become a glowing light of happiness.  All of this has made us both realize just how lucky we are to have really decent insurance.  JUST SO DAMN LUCKY. If I were on the same insurance I was on last year, who knows how this would have gone.  And for people who have no insurance?  Holy smokes.  If we still lived in Sequim, I would likely have had to travel one to three hours for some of these specialized visits and tests, which would have sucked because one of the things that makes me really uncomfortable is any lengthy car ride.

Now, I have the utmost faith that Dr. House (not his name, but it's what I call my current specialist, because he is a medical sleuth extraordinaire) is going to get to the bottom of this pretty soon and I suspect I will have another surgery in January (hopefully) that will fix this.  But I cannot possibly be more grateful to my family, friends, doctors, medical assistants, schedulers, et al who have made this journey as easy as possible.  I have learned a lot about the medical field, and about myself. I so appreciate the hilarious things that have kept me smiling (like my friend, Kati, who asks me during phone calls, "Is it a day for platitudes or no platitudes?"). My sister texts or calls me multiple times a week, and makes me realize that her own chronic pain renders her probably the most able to help me deal with mine. I will endeavor to do a better job, as I and my peers get older, to help them in the same way. Paula, you will never know how much I appreciate you.

And Ron?  Holy cow, he has been a saint.  He picks up whatever slack I leave, he expects nothing from me other than what I say I can do day to day, he understands that I can go from "mostly okay" to "I need to go spend the next 30 hours in bed," and he has watched countless hours of Beat Bobby Flay and even the Great British Baking Show with me. (He does still watch a lot of Sci-Fi, but usually when I'm in bed or lying down).  I couldn't even have begun to imagine what an amazing COVID lock-down companion he would be.  And I couldn't have asked for better.

And now, I am still mostly at home.  I still struggle with being on lockdown (because I am a total extrovert), but every test means being COVID screened, and if I fail, it would mean rescheduling the test, which could delay things by weeks.  I had to be COVID-tested prior to my surgery in October; if I had tested positive, it would have been January before I could have rescheduled that surgery.  So, I am just so careful.  I know now that the "COVID comfort level" scale goes from "complete hermit" to "Aaron Rodgers," and I am somewhere at the lower part of that scale.  Be kind to each other, my friends.  You never know what someone else is going through, and what his/her reasons may be for being uber-careful or being a little less careful.  (And sorry, Aaron, but there's no excuse for your level of idiocy).

So, mask up, get vaccinated and boosted, be immensely grateful for modern medicine, and....don't move unless you have to (Ron says he is NEVER doing it again!)

Happy Holidays, my friends!

Of Marbles, Music, and Manicures

Today, I briefly lost my marbles.  All of them – the cat eyes, the boulders, the peewees, the steelies, the clearies.  Every.  Last.  Marble. 

Ron came home from dropping off our ballots and found me sitting in the backyard, just weeping.  He asked me what had happened, and what was wrong.  I said that nothing had happened, and everything was wrong; that I had crossed the line from dissatisfaction, pessimism, and anger to pure hatred and fury.  I told him that I didn’t know how anyone could still support our existing president, and that I had finally come to a place where I never again wanted to have anything to do with a person who would vote for him again in November.  I told Ron, during the brief periods when I could actually get a sentence out, that I hated myself for hating people; that I didn’t want to feel this way; that I wished something would happen to make sure that our current president could never be elected again.  Then, I ceased being able to speak at all.

In reality, something DID happen.  I watched the Axios interview with Trump this morning, in its entirety.  After a 37-minute-long demonstration of pure egotism, gaslighting, and complete insanity, I boiled it all down to one conversation snippet (because I am a 1-or-0 person; that’s how my data-driven mind rolls).  Trump said that we only have way more cases than most countries because we test more (we are apparently the BEST at testing! We have tested 50 to 60 million people! [note: we have administered about 57 million tests, but lots of people get tested multiple times – some daily – so that doesn’t necessarily equate to 57 million people]).  Then, he said we are the BEST because we have the lowest number of deaths PER CASE.  Hmmmm….he already said the case numbers are huge, so that means the denominator in the “deaths per case” is much higher than in other countries; therefore, we would definitely have a lower number of deaths per case.  The reporter, Jonathan Swan, reminded Trump that we are very high (in fact, we are the seventh-highest in the world) if you look at deaths per capita.  Trump said, “You can’t do that,” and continued to hold out pieces of paper with simplistic bar charts on them to prove that we are the BEST while Swan kept saying, “but it’s DEATHS…”.  Everyone really should watch the entire interview, because it holds great insight into the absolute mental illness of the man who can push a button and release nuclear missiles, but this one anti-arithmetical bit of conversation made me lose my marbles (even the aggies and red devils).

I decided, while sitting in the backyard waiting for the birds and the breeze to calm me down, that there are a lot of people who voted for Trump in 2016 who likely won’t vote or him again; some of those people are dear friends of mine.  But if people vote for him again?  I have literally not one inch of space in my life for them.  I want them out of my life (I’d love for them to be off the planet, but I can’t control that).  Then, the guilt set in and the weeping began (cue Ron’s homecoming).

After a long conversation (during which, I’ll admit, I was asked very gently if I needed medication and I thought yeah, if it’s cyanide and I get to administer it to whomever I desire), Ron finally got down to the simplest question: Do I want to have a contentious, hate-filled relationship with my next-door neighbors?  (They were the closest, most glaring example of people who will again vote for Trump).  I had to think about that; I do, honestly, believe that another four years under Trump will mean that my children will not die from natural causes.  Do I want to continue hating people who will empower him to start the spiral into global destruction?  No, I do not want to hate anyone.  It takes too much energy, and it makes me miserable.  Well, he said, then ignore them.  If they speak to you, just don’t respond.  When you post something about our responsibility to wear masks on Next Door and they add insane conspiracy theory propaganda as comments, shut the post down to future comments and state why (I have done this, in the past).  Stop hating and start ignoring.  In fact, ignore everything for a few hours, to get a feel for it.

I thought my beloved was being overly simplistic, and just didn’t get it.

But hey, my current way of being sure as hell isn’t working for me, so I gave it an afternoon.

Every day, my sweet friend Alba sends me a link to a song on Spotify, as well as a text with what she’s grateful for and what her “manifest” is for the day.  So, I clicked on the song link.  It was a song from the latest Taylor Swift album.  I love Taylor Swift.

While I was listening, I added to my Spotify playlist about a dozen albums from bands I had never heard of, based on an email my dear brother had sent me a couple days ago to get me listening to music again, instead of mind-exploding news.  Then, once Taylor had finished her song, I started in on one of those albums (the eponymous first album by a group called The Meadows).

To top it off, I listened to this while sitting in the sunshine and giving myself a really good manicure (the ultimate act of self-pampering).

An hour later, my nails are less splintered, my eyes are less red, and I have hope again.

Of course, this is all made easier by the fact that my neighbors are currently not in residence next door; but, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.  And, my attitude towards Trump supporters will be like that of Trump himself toward Ghislaine Maxwell; I’ll know that they’re contributing to corruption, pain, and criminal behavior, but I’ll wish them well and then say I don’t know them.

The Paper Chase

A little while ago, my sister, Paula, posted a lament on Facebook related to the skyrocketing cost of her daily paper.  She has been reading the San Francisco Chronicle, cover to cover, every day for as long as I can remember.  Like me, she doesn’t particularly like e-readers, and prefers the real thing in periodicals, newspapers, and books.  Plus, that paper has contributed to some of her best tales (like running out to get it in her coat over a slip, one day, before work, and then forgetting that was all she had on, and almost going to work like that). I may have gotten that story a little bit twisted, but I think I’m close. Anyway, she decided to fork over the funds and continue receiving her paper each day, despite the exorbitant price.

In a similar vein, I was at a home show a month or so ago, and the Seattle Times had a booth there.  I decided to sign up for the daily paper, since our local rags don’t publish daily (not do they have lots of national news).  I have grown weary of watching news on TV; it’s just the same 30 seconds over and over and over again (except for PBS Newshour, which I do love). 

I love everything about the newspaper: the feel of the pages, the rustling noise they make when I turn them, the more-in-depth information I can get from them…and the non-news bits.

 When I was a child, my dad tried to come home from work every day around 4:00 pm.  He and I would go downstairs to the family room, have a little drink together (I mentioned this in a previous blog post, and will again say that having a little bit of bourbon in the late afternoon with my father from the time I was about nine years old never seemed to hurt anyone), and watch chat shows while he read the paper.  I would wait (not so) patiently while he went through the “boring parts” (news) until he got to the section with comics and puzzles.  At that point, we would read the comics together, me perched on the arm of his big easy chair, and then we’d do the Jumble.  I think the comics page and those puzzles probably played a decent role in my early reading skills (that, plus my sister forcing me to read “Stage Coach Days,” which I bet Paula still has in her vast library).  I would even ask him to do the Bridge puzzle with me, but I didn’t have a clue what all of the information meant, and I’m not sure my dad even knew how to play bridge.  We typically skipped that one.

So, once my Seattle Times started showing up on my doorstep each morning, I dove right in and was reunited with all of my old friends, including the comics and the puzzles.  Now, when I turn the pages in the news sections, I think of my sister, and wonder if she’s having her morning cup of hot water and reading her beloved Chronicle at the same time that I am having my coffee and reading my Times.  I think of my brother’s house in Idaho, when we visit each summer, and how much I love coming downstairs, hearing the rustling even before I hit the landing,  and seeing the kitchen table with the paper on it, and Marc or Janet (my brother and sister-in-law) there reading through glasses, neither of them having yet put in their contacts.  But mostly, I think of my dad and doing the Jumble and reading comics with him every day for years.

Last summer, when we were visiting with Marc and Janet, my brother and I did the Jumble together.  Again, I was transported back in time.  It was heavenly.

So, I hope that Paula is reading this, and Janet, too.  Keep getting the real paper.  It’s not just about the news; it’s about a way of life that is valuable and so easily remembered.  It’s about comfort and happiness and warmth.  Not a bad investment, if you ask me.

Mission: Aborted

Sometimes, our differences are brought to light only during shared experiences.  And, those experiences can help to teach us that differences don’t indicate that one person is wrong and the other right; we can simply be different.  The good news is that these little life experiments can really shed some light into the minds and experiences of others.

Recently, my spousal equivalent and I decided to spend a couple months in California.  We could visit my kids, I could work in some much-needed meetings with my non-prof clients-to-be, and we could actually see some sunshine and feel some warmer temperatures.  We’d do all of this from the comfort (a relative term) of the AirStream Ambassador that Ron has owned for a number of years, but which we have not used since we met each other five years ago.  The silver twinkie has been in storage for quite a while, and Ron had the floor and counters replaced last winter in anticipation of spending some quality time in RV parks and campgrounds.

We really should have had a test run, even if in our own driveway.

Based on Ron’s assurances that we’d have plenty of space and all the comforts necessary for happy living, I flew down to Sacramento (as I had a commitment there that we necessitated a quick travel time), and Ron met me down there on a Sunday night with Lucy, the trailer.

And, it was there in a trailer park in Loomis, California, that we were made glaringly aware of a number of things that caused the experiment to fail.  We do have high hopes of making some adjustments (some to the trailer, some to each of our attitudes and expectations) that will allow us to use Lucy again in the future, but this journey was definitely not great, and so we came back home to our cold, cloudy, spacious home.  (Spacious is a key word here).

Here are some differences in our general needs and lifestyles that we became aware of:

       One of us is modest, and the other is, well, not.  I don’t like to even imagine having to walk through a public space (trailer park) in a robe in order to get a hot shower.  Since it happened forty years ago, I will freely admit that I somehow made it through four years of high school without ONCE taking a shower in P.E.  I also can’t be anything close to comfortable, to this day, taking showers in communal areas.  Not even the local YMCA, where most of the women there are twenty years older than I am, and gravity has caused all of their sexually-oriented body parts to be centrally located.  Can’t do it.  Ron, on the other hand, is rumored to have come upon a snowmelt stream once while hiking and, having hurt his knee and needing some of the icy water’s healing properties, simply stripped naked on the trail in front of a lot of people and waded into the waters.  I have also witnessed his “dropping trou” outside a backpacking tent at a crowded campground in order to crawl in and not have to undress in the tiny space inside.  I see this as total insanity, while he thinks it’s just normal.  Since the trailer, on that first night, had NO window covering up in the tiny bath area, I couldn’t pee comfortably, even in the dark.  Egads.

    One of us camped extensively from a young age, and the other did not.  Ron started going out on horseback for weeks at a time with his grandfather before he even started kindergarten, to bounty hunt stock-killing critters (cougars, coyotes, etc) in eastern Nevada.  I didn’t even sleep in a tent until I was in my late twenties, and then it was in tents in which I could easily stand up, get dressed, etc.

    One of us is a human heater, and the other has Reynaud’s Syndrome.  Ron routinely was throwing off the comforter at night, and my hands and feet just never seemed to get warm at all.

    One of us is seriously organized, and is thrilled by order.  The other is more disorganized, and lacks the ability to ever throw anything away.  Case in point: rather than add our aluminum cans to our municipal recycling, we save them in huge plastic bags and then bring them down to California like so many Santa’s bags full of clanging metal, because the localities up here do not have “paying” recycling plants.  The result of keeping a jillion aluminum cans in bags littering the garage for a year: $48.  I have now announced that I will hand Ron 50 bucks in cash each January 1, and put the f^%$* cans in the recycling each week.

    One of us is clumsier than the other.  Having to walk sideways like a fiddler crab to get past a bed to the bathroom area or a closet (which, incidentally, will NOT open if the bed is made up; don’t get me started) resulted in my having multiple bruises on my legs from running into corners of things, and finally a blue, painful lump an inch HIGH next to my elbow from ramming my arm into a wall corner.

    One of us is much more annoyed by water being on the floor from an unnamed leak in the roof, while the other just flops an area rug over it and calls it good.

You get the drift….

So, we decided to come home.  We also discussed the fact that compromise is lovely when each person is giving something up, but if my compromising means being more uncomfortable and his compromising means being LESS uncomfortable, it’s not really a compromise.  And, lastly, we got to laughingly talk about how we love our house SO MUCH that neither of us is really all that disappointed to be home.

So, we’ll fix the leak, make sure all the windows are covered, change the bed formation just enough that I can get the closets open when it’s out, and I will put childproof cushioning on all those nasty wall corners that keep wanting to reach out and hurt me.  Then, we’ll try again.  But, next time, we’ll try it out for two or three days instead of two months, so that we can discover issues and return home and fix things without having to travel 1500 miles to do it.  We have also both agreed that my maximum survival time in Lucy is probably a week or less.

Live and learn…now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go take some Advil and put ice on my elbow.  😊

Missing Persons

It happened again this week; it has only happened once before, but both times left me a little bit breathless and a large bit melancholy.  I was wandering the streets of my hometown at a summer festival, and I looked ahead a few yards and spied a man who looked exactly like Roy.  Exactly.  Like.  Him.

Now, I am not totally brain-dead, and I do know that my husband died over thirteen years ago, but for one tiny instant, I wanted to just run up and ask, “Where the hell have you been?  Why did you go away?  How ARE you?!”

(Incidentally, the first time it happened, I was walking back to my office in San Francisco in 2010, and I actually started to walk up to the poor guy, then realized that he was a stranger and there was truly NOTHING I could say to him that wouldn’t make me seem like a lunatic, so I let it go.)

But it makes a person realize how imprinted on our hearts our loved ones are, even when they have been gone for quite some time.  The influence, for me, is great enough that I can close my eyes and remember Roy’s tuneless humming, the scrape-scrape-scrape sound of my dad shaving, the fluffy softness of my mom’s robe on my cheek when I snuggled up to her on the couch in the evening.

Certainly, though, the recent memories are often the strongest, and when someone dies suddenly and before his/her time, it’s a huge blow, and the memories are all-consuming.  If there is a lot of “what-if”-ing (or, as one of my friends once termed it, “the curse of the shoulds”), it can be almost impossible to endure.

This past week, only a couple days after I had the jolt of seeing the Roy lookalike, one of Roy’s nephews surrendered to whatever demons were driving him, and took his own life.  The sadness of it is incredible, even to me, and I hadn’t seen him in, well, thirteen years.  I cannot imagine what his parents, and brothers, and children, are going through.  All I can do is hope and pray that they somehow, someday, find peace and can simply recall his huge laugh, his random (and hilarious) utterings, and his oh-so-kind heart.

There have been a couple times in my life (luckily, not recently) when I was weighed down by depression, and I often think that I just barely escape its cloud much of the time.  It’s a heavy, barren feeling, and it’s almost impossible to shake.  I have fought it with and without medication, and have learned some coping mechanisms that [mostly] help me tremendously.  I do, though, recall that in my darkest period I just plain wished I could go to sleep and never awake.  One of my friends told me once that suicide is a “long-term solution to a short-term problem.”  It makes sense to a sane person, but what if your problem is NOT short-term?  Or, what if your problem SEEMS short-term to everyone but yourself?  The solution begins to appear as a liberation, a perfect escape.  It’s really hard to shake that off, and I understand how it could become a constant companion that finally convinces you to end your pain permanently.

For those of you who have never felt this turmoil, I am truly happy.  Freedom from that kind of darkness is a huge gift, not to be taken lightly.  For those of us who have ever been plagued by darkness, I say this: Tell someone.  Tell everyone who will listen.  There *is* safety in numbers, and there is some freedom in the telling itself.  Seek help far and wide.  And for those who know someone who is struggling with this demon, please be supportive, and open, and loving.  Shower the people you love with love - unconditionally.  Don’t minimize their pain.  Hold them close.  And, if you think there is real danger, make a call.  Peace be with you all.

Waiting for a Pony

For years, I have wanted a pony.  I believe that my dad's cousin, Attilio, told me when I was three years old that he would buy me a white pony.  This brought up the hackles on my mom, who believed you should never make a promise to a child that you couldn't keep.  (If my friend, Ken Firl, is reading this, he will now know where this philosophy of mine originated.)  ANY-hoo-how, I spent years wishing in vain for an equine pet.  I wore cowboy boots.  I went on trail rides.  I kept a binder of pictures and articles on horses.  I subscribed, as a child, to Western Horseman magazine.  I dreamed that one day, like the boy in Lincoln Steffens' great Christmas story, a man would come down my street leading a pony, and I would joyfully realize that it was mean for me.  (If you have never read this tale, you should - you can find it here: A Miserable Merry Christmas  I cry every time I read it, or even talk about it.)

Alas, my pony never materialized.  But, still I persevered.  Any time ANYone asked me if I wanted anything ("Janine, i am going to the store - do you want anything?" "Janine, we're heading out for coffee - can we bring you anything?"  "Janine - it is Groundhog Day - is there something you'd like?") I always have replied with, "A Pony!"  In fact, one day while at work years ago, I was sitting next to a colleague who had brought in a set of walkie-talkies that he had scored on Woot!.  He had one on his desk, turned on, and somehow it picked up the NexTel devices of the construction workers out in the parking lot.  The walkie-talkie next to me suddenly squawked, "I'm taking a break - anyone need anything?"  Without hesitation, I picked up the device, pushed the "TALK" button, and said, "I want a pony!"  Pause...silence...then the same voice, an octave deeper, said, "I've got your pony right here, baby."  Funny, but NOT what I was hoping for.

A few weeks ago, sometime before my recent 56th birthday, 53 years after I first asked for a pony, my lovely Ron asked me what I'd like for my birthday.  "A pony," I said, and we both laughed.  He reminded me (for the 4,677th time, as he does every time I ask for a pony) that our subdivision has CC&Rs that restrict the ownership of anything other than "normal household animals."  Usually, I then say, "an alpaca? a llama?  an emu?" But, ever the practical lawyer-type, he has to tell me that I cannot have any of those, nor a springbok, a dik dik, or a nilgai.  Believe me, it's a looooong conversation some days when he asks if I want anything from the corner market.  He ended up getting me a really cool scrapbooking tool, and I thought that was that.  My birthday came and went, and nothing earth-shattering happened.

Then, the next day, he handed me a card and said he had reserved it for the day after my birthday because he thought my birthday had been a challenging day for me (long story), but that the 23rd had been a banner day (true, but a separate long story).  The front of the card's envelope alone was awesome, because, well, it looked like this:

It's just so cute.

The card was lovely, the sentiment perfect, and then, at the bottom inside, after his signature, was a promise to take me to two riding sessions.  I could keep both for myself, or he would accompany me for one joint session.

So, in addition to building me a house, taking really good care of me, agreeing to support me (and my scrapbooking habit) so that I could semi-retire this year, and being a steady source of joy in my life, the man gave me (in a small way) a pony.

Happy Christmas, everyone.  I hope you receive that super special thing that is your own pony this year.

Peace to all of you!

Social (In)Security

Recently, one of my Facebook friends posted about her wait time and not-so-good experience at the Social Security office, having her name changed (for a happy reason - she got married!).  It reminded me of the last time I changed MY name, and what a trial it was to get my Social Security records changed.  So, I thought I'd regale you all with the tale....

I was divorced in 1996, and took back my birth surname (which I retain, to this very day - who would want to give up a name with such culture?).  I never went in to the Social Security office, because who the heck ever wants to see your Social Security card?  (Apparently, SOME people do - more on that soon).  In any case, I had been happily trotting around for four years with a card that still had someone else's last name on it, even though I had been filing tax returns for four years under Bocciardi.

I had the good luck, in 1999, of meeting an amazing man who wanted to marry me, and so we looked into what we needed to get a marriage license in his county in Pennsylvania.  This particular county (another time, I will tell the story of the marriage license application meeting, complete with a blue-haired woman and a manual typewriter) required that I bring, as a form of identification, my (egads!) Social Security card.  So, I had to go to the dreaded office to get my card reprinted with my current last name, which was the name of my father - the name of my birth - THE NAME OF MY PEOPLE.  

Armed with a piece of identification with my "old" name (my previous married name), my "new" name (the birth name I reverted to after my divorce), and a full copy of my divorce decree stating that I was re-taking my birth name, I optimistically went to the office on my lunch hour one day.

The first sign of trouble was that there was a burly security guard at the door, checking purses and backpacks.  Remember, this was PRE-9/11, and the office had no cash!  I wondered why anyone would even begin to get violent at this place, but I was soon to learn that there were all sorts of reasons...

As I stood in line, a young man was called to the window, and his older sister was with him.  He explained that he was staying temporarily at this sister's apartment, but that he needed his SSDI check (which his previous roommates had stolen) to be able to come up with a deposit on a new place of his own.  The clerk said they needed a "permanent" address for him, and that they would re-issue a check only after 90 days and if the check they had sent him was never cashed.  But, without a "permanent" address, they could not put in an address change, and his upcoming checks would continue to be mailed to the home of the thieving roommates.  The young man explained again that he couldn't GET a permanent address until he had money for a deposit, and the sister was about to move, herself, so using her address was not going to work.  He and the sister and the clerk went back and forth maybe...oh, twenty-seven times in this manner, until the sister began yelling, and loudly questioning the clerk's parentage, the clerk finally slammed shut the window, then closed some wooden doors behind it, and ostensibly went to lunch.  More screaming and yelling from the sister.

The security guard was reading a magazine.  Twelve feet away.  And never budged.

Soon (ok, that is a lie - I was already into the second hour of my lunch hour), it was my turn at the one window that remained operational.  I stepped up with my documentation, and all of my completed forms, and informed the woman that I would like to have my name changed.  Here is the conversation that ensued:

SSA Harpie: "You need a piece of identification with your old name, and one with your new name"
Janine: "I have a driver's license in my new name.  I also have my old drivers license, with my old name."
Harpie: "The old license has your new name."
Janine: "No, it has all names.  It says Janine Rae Bocciardi Bassett.  Bassett was my old name."
Harpie: "But the Bassett part is on another line."
Janine: "Yes, because it was too long to fit on one line.  See, it's right there - after the rest."
(some perusal of the old license is done, and then she nods)
Harpie: "The old license has a hole punched in it; you cannot use that."
(why did we even go through all that crap, then?)
Janine: "OK, well, my divorce decree lists BOTH names."
Harpie: "I don't think you can use that."
Janine (victoriously):  "I have my old Social Security card with my old name!"
Harpie: "we do not consider that a valid form of identification."
Janine: "But you GAVE it to me!"
Harpie: "What else you got? How about a Costco card?"
Janine: "Everything I have already has my new name, and you'll take a Costcop card but not your own Social Security card?"
Harpie: "Yup.  If you don't have anything at all, you might not be able to do this today.  Well, maybe at all.  You have NOTHING with your old name?"
Janine: "Well, can we use the divorce decree for the OLD name, and the new drivers license for the NEW name?"
Harpie: "Maybe.  Let me see it."  (read through some of my divorce papers) "This has both names on it!  Why didn't you give me this in the first place?"
Janine: "But I tried to...I mean, I'm sorry.  My mistake."
Harpie: "You got divorced years ago.  Why are you doing this now?"
Janine: "Because I am getting married, and I need the new card to apply for a marriage license."
Harpie: (god's truth, she actually said this) "Well, you change your name like you change your underwear, don't you?"
Janine (seething): "Actually, this is the last time."
Harpie: "No, you'll have to change it again after you get married."
Janine: "No, I am keeping my name 'as is'."
Harpie: "What name will you file taxes under?"
Janine: "Bocciardi"
Harpie: "What name will your license say?"
Janine: "Bocciardi"
Harpie: "What name will be on your paychecks, and on your accounts?"
Janine: "BOCCIARDI"
Harpie: "What's wrong with your husband?"
Janine: "I dunno...maybe he's too tolerant and respectful of my heritage, and loves me too much?"
Harpie: "OK, here you go.  But I am just curious; WHY don't you want to change your name?"
Janine (making sure all validated forms were already in my possession): "Because I never, ever, EVER want to have to come in here and talk to you people AGAIN."

Are They Happy?

Last year, during the last phone call I had with my mother before she died quite suddenly a few days later, she said to me toward the end of the call, "Are you happy?"  Certainly, I hadn't ever been an easy child, and I had had a lot of woes (real or perceived) in my life.  I tend toward drama (surprise!), so pretty much everyone knows when I am unhappy.  But at the time of that call, after having moved to Washington with the man I love, and in the middle of looking for a lot on which to build our dream house, I could very easily and truthfully say, "Yes, I am really happy!"  And my mom said, "I am so glad to hear that.  That's all that really matters."

We parents want so much for our children, try to control so much of their upbringings, attempt to change the things that are bad in their lives (often, even when they don't think they are bad things!), and strive to either gently (or not so gently) guide them through this crazy obstacle course called life.

But in the end...I think it amounts to just plain wanting our babies to be happy.

A couple years ago, my daughter called me and told me (and I didn't expect it) that she was breaking up with her husband.  I recalled having to make the same phone call to my own mother, almost twenty years earlier.  My mom said to me, "Oh, Janine, after all your dad and I represented, how could you?" and I replied, "Mom, after everything you and my father represented, how could I NOT?!" And she understood.  She didn't like it, but she understood.  So, I got over my initial shock, and then asked my daughter what I could do to help the transition.  I have never, since those initial two minutes or so, questioned her decision, and I see now that she is happy, and healthy, and living the life she wants and loves with a man who is quirky, and irreverent, and adores her the way she deserves to be adored.  She is happy, so I'm happy.

Just before I moved from California, about a year and half ago, my son said, "I need to talk to you about something, and you should sit down."  Of course, my first response was, "Are you dying?  Do you have cancer?"  After a brief and minor heart attack, he assured me that he was healthy, and that he had decided to join the LDS church.  I asked him, "Are you happy?" and he said he was, so I went to his baptism, tried not to scold my daughter for joking around with the bishop (refer back to my second paragraph and the part about controlling them), and watched him grow to embrace this religion but also not leave the embrace of his non-LDS family.  

And now? My daughter is purchasing a home, all on her own merits.  She works for a great place, has a responsible job as a developer, has a great man in her life, and makes time to talk to me every week on the phone (ok, once I got over my passive-aggressive ways and stopped complaining bitterly about not hearing from her, she asked if it would be easier if we scheduled talks...it works great!)  My son has met a young woman and is fairly sappily in love.  (I haven't met her yet, but will soon).  He also has a good job, is looking to make his first big move, and seems to be a fully-functional member of society.  (This is a far cry from days of yore, when I used to tell my friends that if the cats were both still alive and nothing was on fire, it was a good day).

Sometimes, they do things we wouldn't do (or wish THEY wouldn't do).
Sometimes, they don't agree with us.
Sometimes, they get piercings and tattoos (oh wait, that was me).
Sometimes, they sing the same line from a song over and over for three days in Disneyland just to make you scream in frustration (even when they are 30!)
Sometimes, they play truly mortifying "games" in public places and you run from restaurants, thinking you can never show your face there again.
Sometimes, they go to college; sometimes, not.
Sometimes, they follow societal norms; sometimes, not.
Sometimes, they live their lives the way we'd choose for them to do so; sometimes, not.

But... ARE THEY HAPPY!????   Well, OK, then.  The rest is just logistics.

-- Dedicated to my two happy munchkins

Enough, Already!

A few weeks ago, one of my relatives posted on Facebook that she had unfriended everyone who she knew to be a Trump supporter, and asked that anyone she had missed do her the favor of initiating the unfriending for her.  I gotta admit, I thought it a little extreme at the time.  But now?  Not so much.

I have asked some of my friends who are Trump supporters why they would vote for the man, and they pretty much all come to this: "Because he speaks his mind and is honest."  Really?  Well, the speaks his mind part, sure.  But honesty?  Have you checked Politifacts?  He either blatantly lies or at least speaks less than half the truth (and I am giving the man credit for even HALF truths!) 77% of the time.  LIES.  77%.  Of. The. Time.  http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/

So, what is it REALLY that makes him attractive to voters?  I have come to the worst, most frightening conclusion.  People don't love Trump because he speaks HIS mind - they love Trump because he speaks THEIR minds.  He speaks out against minorities, against women, against people with disabilities, against specific religions.  And the people who love him are bigots, and racists, and misogynists.  They are angry that the world isn't "what it used to be," and they want desperately to blame someone.  Soon, they won't be able to blame President Obama any longer, so they will blame Muslims.  Or Latinos.  Or African-Americans.  Or women who are assertive and effective.  Or some other group who is different from them.  Does this sound familiar?  Hitler did it, and was wildly popular in his day, too, before he took absolute power and began murdering people based on their religion or ethnicity or sexual orientation or disability.

On top of that, the man is as un-Presidential as you can get.  He accuses a female newscaster of being on her period, as that would explain why she was tough on him at a debate. He curses in public, while campaigning.  He calls his opponents "pussies."  He discusses, at a debate, the size of his penis.  He talks about how sexy and desirable his own daughter is.  Can you really imagine this man in a G10 summit?  Trying to engage in diplomacy with any other world leader?  I curse like a sailor, and even *I* know not to do so in meetings, or with clients.  How hilarious that I, a person who is known for being undiplomatic, am probably better at it than a man who half the Republican party wants running our country.  And he goes to a Christian college and terribly misquotes the BOOK of the bible he is discussing (geez, Donald, I am not even Christian and I know it's "Second Corinthians," not "Two Corinthians!"), and still cannot seem to get dethroned in a party that is vastly Christian.

So, I can only conclude that anyone who thinks this man should be in charge of this country, a man who seemingly detests and looks down upon pretty much anyone who isn't a wealthy white male, also thinks that only wealthy white males are worthy of anything.

And really, if I have to make a decision, I'd definitely decide to NOT be friends with anyone who thinks that way (even if they are hiding their bigotry and letting Trump speak for them).

I shake my head when I think of the embarrassment that this country has become, and I can only hope that the Republican party can somehow get a brokered convention and get rid of this tyrannical madman.  If not, and he somehow gets voted in during a general election, then fasten your seatbelts, America - it will be a wild, crazy, and frightening four years.

Geysers, Hot Springs, Mud Pots, and Stupid Tourists

After a not-super night’s sleep, we got up a little late this morning, wandered to the lodge for breakfast (I had a shake, believe it or not…this diet is killin’ me), and hit the road to see more stuff.  First stop: Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.  But first, stop in a pullout and hop out of the truck to snap some bison.  And then onward…pictures of the falls, etc, then as we were exiting the upper falls parking lot to go to the Norris Geyser Basin, a delay.  A herd of bison crossing the road.  RIGHT in front of us.  Roll down the window, snappity-snap.  Baby bison are cute (and the size of a freaking pony).  And leet me tell you: they are acutely aware of the fact that nobody will hurt them.  Then amble.  They meander.  They stop to look at the tourists.  They move a few feet.  They smile for the cameras.  They are awesome!

But the BEST part of the day was going from basin to basin getting shots of geysers, mud pots, and those eerily-colored hot springs that I have only ever seen before in photography books.  My lord, the range of color is tremendous.  Porcelain blue, deep turquoise, crazy orange, intense greenish-yellow.  I think I took a hundred pictures of them.  And during one walk along a boardwalk rimmed by springs and signs warning people that they are HOT (Hello??!!  If it’s water and it’s boiling, it’s 212 degrees, you moron!), a tourist jumped off the boardwalk and went to put his hand in the spring.  Now, I never feel more American than when some crazy tourist decides to ignore every rule and defile MY country’s land.  As I was drawing breath to tell him to stop, six people in front of me, every one of them at least 6 feet tall, started yelling at him in Australian accents: “DO NOT TOUCH THAT!!!”  He looked at them, shook his head, and went back to his unlawful ways, at which point they all converged on that spot in the boardwalk.  Now, he was looking a bit guilty.  The woman he was with, who up to this point was pointing a camera at him and yammering at him in their native tongue and waving her hand as if saying, “No, a little to the left…no, get more in front of that geyser in the distance..” suddenly arose and, acting as though she’d never seen him before in her life, walked on without him.  Finding my voice, I looked at him, his beseeching gaze landing on me as if to say, “Holy shit; save me from the Aussie Amazons!” and I said, “You CANNOT be in there.  Come out of there.  Come out of there NOW!  GET OUT!”  Seeing he had no champion, he sheepishly climbed back onto the boardwalk.  When I saw him next, he was trying to take a picture of the woman who had rebuffed him earlier, and she was clearly not happy with his skills.  Maybe he just wanted to throw himself into the fiery cauldron; who knows.  But I do know that I LOVE my neighbors down under!!

More driving, more sightseeing, dinner at the Old Faithful Lodge (no, we didn't wait for it to erupt; we are going to see it at sunrise on Friday on our way out of the park), and now blog time and then bed.  I'M ON VACAYSHUNNNN!!

I'm Going to Jackson

We camped Sunday night just outside Jackson, Wyoming, in a campground with 350 sites (huge!).  It should have been uneventful, except that the weather forecast ended up being unreliable (what a surprise!) and it rained like the dickens much of the evening.  In addition to the rain, the blow-up bed that we were sleeping on in the tent lost most of its air overnight, and so I ended up waking up around 2 am and realized that I was sleeping pretty much on the (cold, cold) ground.  Not the most restful of nights.  Oh yeah, and I also had to pee but didn’t want to wander around in the dark.  So, I slept off and on until about 6:30 am and then decided to stumble to the restroom.  I walked into the restroom, straight into a cloud of hairspray.  Apparently, some women don’t like to go camping without their blow dryers and hairspray (I still can’t figure out where this woman and her two daughters washed their hair; there were no showers and no hot water!).  The good news is that all the blow drying heated the bathroom nicely.  The other good news is that it was all so ludicrous that my grouchiness dissolved.

Finished with my bathroom activities, I went back to the campsite.  By this point, my fingers were numb and my face was frozen (it was cold out!) and there was Ron, standing next to the camp stove, ready to make coffee and breakfast.  I said, “Would you like to just go into town for a nice, hot breakfast with lots of coffee to wash it down?”  He said, “Ummmmm….is this a hint?”  (Ron has learned to think carefully before answering my questions).  So, we got into the truck and decided to drive into town.  After one turn in the campground, Ron said, “Look to the left.  Moose!”  And sure enough, there they were.  At first I thought they were playing, and then I realized that the smaller (a male) thought he’d try to become amorous with the larger (a female).  She was having none of it.  In fact, she was bucking with an arched back and all four feet off the ground, the way I’d seen some horses do in rodeos.  Then, ears laid back against her neck, she trotted away.  Poor Bullwinkle, ever hopeful, ran after her.  All of this was happening in front of our truck.  So, I grabbed my camera and hopped out (MAN, those things are big when they are only a few feet away!) and snapped a couple pictures.  I also cried a little because, come on, how often do you get to see a failed moose courtship right in front of your nose?  Boy, am I happy I suggested going out for breakfast!!

So, we went out to a place that the locals frequent, had great breakfast, I bought the warmest hat EVER at the Pendleton store on the way out of town, and then we packed up the tent and the gear and we were off to Yellowstone.  On our way to our cabin (which is one of the cabins right next to Lake Yellowstone), Ron stopped the car and said, “There’s your elk..” and, sure enough, there were some elk just walking along the side of the road and occasionally rubbing against a tree or grazing.  The best thing was that they had the grace to do this right next to a pullout.  SO, out of the car I pop, shoot some pictures, back into the car, and on our way merrily.  Wow.  Not even checked in yet, and already I have moose and elk on my camera.  Lucky girl.

Rest of the evening was mostly normal; had dinner, offloaded pictures onto my laptop, gave Ron a short lesson in using Lightroom, the usual stuff.

But oh, the things I’ve seen.  I will never, ever forget those moose as long as I live (and no, I did not give them a muffin).

WWRD

I've been struggling a little lately, as I always seem to do this time of year.  I find myself looking at throngs of happy people, wondering, "Are they really that happy?  Or are a lot of them pretending?"

I spent a whole four bucks yesterday to indulge myself in a new shower gel, and as I was spending a bit of extra time in the shower this morning to enjoy the hot water and a new scent, I flashed back to late afternoons spent, as a child, watching Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin (the two original daytime chat shows) with my dad after he got home from work.  He would come home, pour himself a drink, make me a "highball" of a lot of 7-up and a splash of bourbon, and we'd go downstairs to sit and watch television, he in his chair and I on the couch.

OK, for those of you who are already judging the fact that I was drinking when I was 9, cut it the hell out.  It was one splash of bourbon.  I grew up in a house where drinking was not taboo.  My parents encouraged us (and were sad that we did not want) to drink wine with dinner.  I will also fast-forward to today and say that none of the three children in my family has a drinking problem, so you can stop thinking that it ruined me.  Other than an occasional glass of wine with dinner, I probably have two or three drinks a MONTH.  Why would I drink?  My dad is gone now, and so are Mike and Merv.

But, I digress...

There in my island cotton-scented reverie this morning, I thought, "Wow...what I wouldn't give to have one of those weekday afternoons back, watching tv with Dad.  I never really appreciated it."

Of course I didn't; I was NINE, for heaven's sake!  Nine-year-olds don't appreciate anything, nor are they really supposed to.  But 52-year-olds should.  I think that, possibly, the difference between my good days and my not-so-good days is my appreciation level.  On my good days, I revel in the small pleasures that come my way: seeing a cute post from an old friend on Facebook, writing a snippet of really good code for my client, laughing with abandon at something one of my kids says, or smelling island cotton shower gel.  Not so good days?  I recall the good things I did or had in the past, and wish I had them back.

WWRD?  

There are two camps of people in my life: those who are so glad that I will always have the wisdom and memories of Roy in my heart, and those who think I am "not over him."  To the former, I say thank you.  To the latter, I say that being "over" someone you still love dearly doesn't happen.  You see, when you break up with someone, you gradually stop loving him/her.  When someone you love dies, you never have to stop loving him.  It's AWESOME that you can love him forever!  And that doesn't mean I cannot love anyone else; who ever said that I have some sort of gas-tank-like heart that has a maximum capacity of 15.7 gallons of love?

But, I digress again...

Roy would tell me to get a clue.  He'd tell me to accept the memories as another thing to cherish, and not to let them become a sadness, but to inspire an additional happiness.  And then, he'd say, "Lighten up, Francis!" (And, if you have never seen the movie Stripes, go watch it.  NOW.  I can wait.)

My goal, then, will be to try to appreciate the little things now, instead of having to think about them twenty years from now in the shower and regret not appreciating them.  In fact, I think I should start by appreciating that I CAN take a shower; twenty years from now, I might have to be in one of those crazy walk-in baths that I see advertised on television.  Egads...

So, maybe those Christmas crowd people are simply smiling because it feels good to smile.  Maybe smiling and feeling good makes you a little happier, which encourages you to smile more.

And maybe this will be a happy holiday season, after all.

Perfection and Memories

Yesterday (Thursday), we went to the Gallerie with the sole purpose of seeing Michelangelo's David.  The statue was carved from fifteen feet of marble in the very beginning of the 16th century, and Michelangelo was actually the third artist to be contracted to do the creation.  David became the symbol for Florence, symbolizing the victory of the individual against corrupt leadership.

Regardless of the history, the statue is awe-inspiring and just plain beautiful.  I challenge anyone to stand in front of this chunk of marble perfection and not feel something (or a lot of somethings).  I don't know how Michelangelo accomplished it but he captured the smooth, muscled limbs and innocent  beauty that is so specific to a young man who has not really yet lost the look of youth.  I can't possibly explain it, but I know that it took my breath away. 

This morning, after going to have a cappuccino and pastry, we decided to go into the church in Santa Croce.  And there, the suprise.  Inside the church, first of all, was my favorite of all the ceilings I have seen.  Then, I realized that around the walls were various memorials, some including the actual graves (Enrico Fermi, Gallileo, et al).  But there, in front of me, was a huge memorial to Dante.  Now, I have never read Dante, but my dad was something of an expert on the subject, having earned a Master's degree in Italian from Berkeley.  Suddenly, I wondered: did my dad stand in this spot at some point in his life and look at this memorial?  And I found myself telling Sara that, because of Dante and Petrarc and Boccaccio (all great Italian writers of the early Renaissance and all Tuscan), it was the tuscan dialect that was adopted as the official Italian language.  As it turns out, Tuscan was also the dialect that had remained closest to the mother Latin.  My dad's lesson, learned at some point in my childhood while eating dinner, got passed along to the next generation, and in the most appropriate of all places.  Thanks, Babbo, for the lessons.

And the other goal for today?  Sara has officially decreed this the "Day of Gluttony."  Our last chance to have these pastries, that coffee, fresh mozarella and prosciutto pannini for 2.50... Tomorrow, it's onto a plane and back to reality.  

What I Know vs How I Feel

We've seen quite a bit of art in the last two days.  I know very, very little about art, so I can rarely look upon it with an educated eye, but I do love the feelings it evokes in me (sometimes).

Yesterday, we visited the museum at Il Duomo.  The quote of the day came from Sara who, when I marveled at the fact that there are so many 13th and 14th century busts and statues just out in the open, where everyone can touch them, retorted, "Bah.  Those things are a dime a dozen here."  Oh, how quickly we become spoiled by the multitude of centuries-old art around us!

Today, we went to the Uffizi and a couple science museums (which were awesome, but science isn't the subject of this posting).  The art at the Uffizi is astounding, and one of my favorite artists has numerous paintings there.  Botticelli was alive in the late 15th and early 16th century, and I have always loved his paintings.  I don't know exactly why, and I certainly cannot put it into words (because, as I admitted, I know little of art), but I do know that I want to climb into those paintings.  In the absence of being able to do that, I can say that Botticelli is one of the few artists who inspires me to sit and just stare.  Perhaps forever. 

I don't think I had ever put my finger on it, but I realize now that it's the softness , the roundness with which he paints women.  The muscled bodies of women in other paintings (heck, one in the Vatican was modeled after a man) are just not nearly as appealing.  Or, perhaps it reminds me of my dad telling me as a teenager that I was "bella grossa," and not fat, or how all of my Italian relatives always fed us to show how much they loved us.  Whatever the reason, those beautiful, soft women make me want to have coffee with them, and ask them whether they have any issues with their mothers-in-law, or if they have a really great recipe for chicken cacciatore.  And then, standing there, Sara once again put words to it.  She stared at a lovely Botticelli and said, "I like his ladies..."  Yep, Sara, I like his ladies, too.

The kids went to two more museums after lunch, but I wandered back towards the apartment.  On the way, I made a side trip back through the piazza near Santa Croce and found a gift for a girlfriend back home that was perfect.  Sometimes, the "aw heck, why go straight home?" moves are the best.  Home for lunch (which included prosciutto, of course - how will I live without having prosciutto every day after I get home?), then some time to sit out in the back garden, read a book, and watch the storm clouds gather.  By the time the lightning was flashing and the thunder booming, the kids came home and walked into the garden with a cup of gelato for me.  Then, a nap.

I could so get used to this....