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....