The Yankee on Confederate Ridge Road

This year, I resolve...

2012-01-05T22:39:00.004-06:00

I'm not good at New Year's resolutions, although, like everyone else who fails miserably at keeping them, I always have the best intentions. Case in point: two or three years ago, one of my resolutions was to start bring reusable grocery bags to the store. Two or three years later, I have several of them hanging on my front door knob that never even make it to my car, let alone further than that. Of course, I rarely make it to the grocery store either. Which is why there's (a) leftover pizza, (b) leftover beer, (c) barely enough milk for a bowl of cereal, and (d) not much else in my fridge.

So I'm not going to say that I've resolved to blog more this year, although it won't be hard for me to blog more this year than I did last year. In fact, I'm already well on my way there. I also have an amazing inspiration in my cousin Nicole, who already has blogged more this year than I did in all of last year. Check her out at http://bestdressedtomboy.blogspot.com. Nicole posts her blog entries to her Facebook page (or "timeline," which is the new layout that I have yet to figure out), which gives me a daily reminder that she works a lot, spends more time in traffic in a day than I do in a week, has a kid, and still finds time to blog more than I do.

Being someone who lives and dies by reminders and increasingly depends on Outlook and my iPhone to do all of the remembering that I'm too lazy to do, getting a little bit of daily inspiration from Nicole might be just what I need to keep me motivated. Either way, it will definitely keep me laughing.

I did make one resolution, but only because it comes with built-in reminders. I downloaded the Project 365 app, and will be documenting my year with a daily picture and an occasionally-witty caption. Tonight I plan to take said picture at ClimBRIDGES, where I will attempt to haul my hasn't-been-to-the-gym-in-forever body up a rock wall. Hopefully the caption will not include references to brusied egos or broken bones.

A Few More for the Bucket List

2012-01-05T18:56:00.002-06:00

Maybe 2011 didn't go out with a huge bang, but I did manage to fit a few more special moments into the last few days:

After 11 years in Memphis and over a year living practically in the shadow of the stadium, I went to a game at the Liberty Bowl. As is typical for my record in spectator sports, the team I was rooting for did not win.
Finally christened the fire bowl that I bought a year ago as part of the most amazing New Year's Eve I've ever celebrated.
Most importantly, I did the one thing that I never in a million years expected to accomplish: I fell in love. Not the measured, cautious, carefully-considered, practical kind of love that I thought was the best that I could do at this point in my life. The crazy, giggle-like-a-teenager, snowball-rolling-down-a-hill, can't-quite-wipe-the-smile-off-your-face, takes-your-breath-away kind of love that I didn't really believe existed any more. The kind that melts your heart and tears down the walls that you build to protect yourself. The kind of love that makes you feel as if you've never been hurt before and never will be again.

All in all, 2011 was a pretty good year.

It Never Fails...

2011-11-25T11:17:00.003-06:00

... that whenever I make a plan for how to live my life, something or someone comes along to remind me that nothing ever turns out the way I plan it. So when I decided that I knew what I didn't want to do, I should have known that I'd end up doing exactly that. And sooner rather than later.

Knowing, as GI Joe told us when we were kids, is half the battle. And it's also the best weapon for going forward into potentially disastrous situations. What you don't know can hurt you a hell of a lot more than anything you've prepared to face. I guess I'm sticking to at least part of my plan: keeping my eyes open and accepting things for what they are and what they may turn out to be.

Time to Tell the Story

2011-11-23T17:50:00.000-06:00

If 2011 is the Year of the Bucket List, then November has definitely been the Month of Surprises. Unfortunately, not all of them have been enjoyable. For better or for worse, though, they've been thought-provoking.

By far the best surprise was finding out that a friend of mine is participating in National Novel Writing Month. Halfway through the month, she was halfway to her 50,000 word goal and incredibly excited about her progress and the process.

Hearing her talk made me realize how much I've missed writing, and how much I really depend on it to make sense of things in my life. I'm just not any good at sorting things out in my head. I wind up, as a friend pointed out last weekend, "thinking too much." Putting words, ideas, and emotions on the screen means taking them out of my head and forcing them to be what they are. Acknowledging them, re-reading them, maybe fixing a few typos here and there, but, for the most part, committing them to their place in the past. Telling the story means saying what happened, and separating that from what I could have done differently, or wish had been, or didn't understand at the time. The words on the page are the truth (or my version of it) that can't be changed. The story of the future is unwritten and is mine to shape with the choices that I make.

The last couple of weeks have brought both hurt and hope, and the realization that I'm going to have to risk the first -- and maybe a lot of it -- if I want to have the second. I've been pretty good at convincing myself that I could avoid getting hurt by setting my expectations really low and then not very being surprised when people lived down to them, so to speak, instead of rising above them. I've been afraid to hope for better for myself, from myself, and from other people, and I can't do that any more. What I might have lost is gone, and I need to let it go. What I might gain will be so much better if I have the courage to let it be.

The Year of the Bucket List

2011-11-18T18:06:00.001-06:00

I can't really say that I set out to make this the year that everything happens, but somehow it all did. Which I'm going to use as a very convenient excuse for having not posted anything.

So, the things that I crossed off my to-do list this year:

Went to the Super Bowl (of course, my team stayed home as usual).
Finally got an A in an Economics class.
Saw my first NCAA basketball playoff game. Almost saw my team pull off what would have been the upset of the century.
Saw my first (and second) baseball spring training games. Also saw my (very) local college team land a foul ball through my window.
Drove a Mustang convertible. Added "buying a convertible" to my bucket list.
Witnessed the aftermath of an epic battle between man and nature and the branches of a tree poking through my ceiling. I would gladly have left this one on the to-don't list.
Shouted myself hoarse at three NBA playoff games, including a triple-overtime monster.
Finally went to Disney World with some of the best friends in the world.
Got to be both a little bit country (CMAFest) and a little bit rock-n-roll (Bon Jovi).
Spent an entire uninterrupted week at the beach without getting sunburned.
Admitted to my mother that I got a tattoo.
Made a well-reasoned career change that didn't scare the hell of me.
Got my picture taken with Elvis. Actually, with five Elvises. (Elvii?)
Toured the World of Coca-Cola.
Crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and experienced my first two earthquakes all within my first 12 hours in California.

Somewhere in between all of that going and doing were a lot of small things that were, in some ways, just as big as the things that made my list. And that's what this year was supposed to be about: being happier with who I am and where I am. Fixing the things that made me feel broken. I did that, too, but along the way I think I got too protective. Kind of like the difference between driving a beat-up Corolla and a brand-new Mustang. I was afraid of going back to bad habits, but I might have let go of some good ones, too. If you really want to enjoy the drive, sometimes you have to loosen your grip on the wheel. So now I'm looking for a little more balance, and hoping that I'm heading down the right road to find it.

Turning the Page

2011-01-24T18:09:00.001-06:00

I can't say for sure that it's the end of the book, but I know that I've started a new chapter in the past couple of weeks. I'm still struggling to make sense of the plot twists, and maybe I'm reading too much between the lines trying to find things that weren't ever there.

I've always been the kind of person who does best when I take time to think before I speak, which doesn't always happen. I've certainly had my fair share of times when I've hurt people -- and been hurt -- by speaking too quickly or saying too much. I've learned that sometimes you shouldn't ask the question unless you're prepared for an answer that you don't want to hear. But I've also realized that you don't get any answers to the questions that you don't ask. No amount of chasing them around inside your head is ever going to resolve them with the certainty that you need to finally put a period at the end of the sentence.

Even if everything in life really does happen for a reason, in the long run, the reasons aren't what matters. Once you've made your peace with where you are, you stop thinking about how you got there and wondering what you could have done to get to somewhere different. It's a great feeling when you have it, but once you get it, you can't let yourself look back. The moment you do, you're trying to connect the dots and make sense of the past again. You get so caught up in the "why?" that you forget to concentrate on the only question that you can really answer: "what am I going to do about it?" It's not about what you should have done; even if you did make a mistake, you're still too close to learn from it. Picking it apart just prolongs the healing process. Until you can put it down and walk away, it's just baggage that you're carrying.

Nothing in the world scares me so much as a blank page. Given that I write for a living, that's probably a bad thing. I always need something to start from, even if nothing that's there at the beginning ends up in the final product. There's always a conflict between wanting to look back and needing to move forward, especially when you're not quite sure which is which. I know that eventually I'll get to a place where the difference becomes clear. I'm just not sure if it will be another new chapter, or the end of the story once and for all.

Getting into the Game

2010-10-25T18:49:00.002-05:00

Rule #1: always go down swinging. Especially when it's the last strike of the last out of the last inning and the winning run is standing on first base waiting for you to send him home. But that's all I'm going to say about that. Sigh.

Rule #2: keep your eye - and your hands -- on the ball. Do not fumble a hand-off on the 3 yard line. Do not allow the opposing team to move 50 yards down the field on a punt by fumbling the return. And, for the love of everything sacred, please stop throwing to the other team.

So this weekend pretty much summed up what it means to be a Philly sports fan. Starting out with a bang, ending with "what in the hell just happened?"

But sometimes just getting there -- with the right person holding your hand -- is good enough. Although winning would have been nice, too.

Farm to Fork to Fabulous

2010-10-12T19:31:00.002-05:00

Went to the Memphis Farmers' Market benefit at the Mesquite Chop House downtown last night. I think I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with butternut squash ravioli. Except that it's not really unhealthy to eat squash, especially when it's that good.

I did have a chance to work a few of the calories off in advance, since I helped to collect most of the produce -- including the butternut squash -- at the Farmers' Market on Saturday. I never in my life thought that anything -- or anyone -- could make me excited about getting out of bed before noon on a Saturday. I wasn't actually sure that anyone could get me out of bed before noon on a Saturday, but I was wrong.

I was also wrong about the unevenness that I thought was happening in my last post. Things have really smoothed out, mostly because I've stopped trying to convince myself that they were rough in the first place. Sometimes life just takes a while to get you to where you want to be, but everything that happens along the way makes you the person that you are when you get there. The trick is that you have to be able to learn from the past, and then let it go. That's the difference between "life lessons" and "baggage." I definitely still have some unpacking to do, but I'm getting there. I even found the cord for the modem.

Now all I need to find is some more ravioli...

Page 2

2010-10-04T20:45:00.002-05:00

Back at Republic Coffee, partaking of breakfast-for-late-dinner, a white chocolate Americano that I probably should have gotten in decaf, and free wi-fi, since I haven't found the power cord for my modem at home yet.

I should probably explain, of course, why the power cord for my modem -- along with many other items of varying importance -- is not where it should be. After three years in my beloved apartment with the high ceilings and walk-in closet, I decided that I really wanted a house. Wanted it enough to give up said high ceilings and walk-in closet, as well as the fireplace. In exchange, I get a great back yard (with patio, shed, and plenty of room for a hammock), a front porch that's just waiting for a rocking chair or two, and my very own driveway. I also get to be within walking distance of both my office and the campus pool, which unfortunately just closed for the season.

After two weeks of cleaning, painting, and packing -- interrupted by a semi-spontaneous road trip to Myrtle Beach -- I am now surrounded on all sides by piles of boxes, bags, and bins. At some point I will begin to make order out of the chaos. For now, I will make short work of my waffle and bacon.

The story that I began in my last post is progressing... unevenly. I'm trying not to read too much into either the highs or the lows, and realizing that most of the latter are, perhaps, only in my mind. Maybe the hardest part about starting something over is that you can't help looking back at everything that's happened in your life since the last time you tried it. I'm such a different person now than I was then, and in so many good ways (or at least I think so), but that doesn't mean that I'm always as strong as I pretend to be. Sometimes I wonder if I've learned to put up too many walls, if I'm building a trap for myself rather than a shelter. But I'm not ready to knock those walls down yet, so for now I'll just hang around inside and see what happens. And try to find that power cord.

Old Story, New Chapter

2010-09-18T17:40:00.005-05:00

Ever have one of those days where everything happens exactly the way you planned? No, me neither. But yesterday was pretty close.

The funny thing is, I still wasn't prepared for the way things turned out. Even though the pieces fell into place like they were meant to come together, I'm still a little bit amazed. If you have an idea, maybe a dream, of how you want something to be, why is it such a surprise when it actually is?

Last night might be the best thing that's happened to me in a long time. Or it might be the first step on the road to an incredible heartbreak. Either way, it's already taught me so much about second chances, about trusting my instincts, and about believing that the best part of a person really can rise above anything, and everything, that tries to pull it down.

So it's a new chapter in an old story, with a plot twist that changes everything about the way that I thought it would end. And I can't wait to write the next page.

Beach Blog, Part 2

2010-07-05T11:22:00.004-05:00

Back at the Mockingbird for more free wi-fi. On the menu today: an iced latte and a fritatta with an unexpected -- but very welcome -- side of spinach salad. Must get the recipe for this dressing. Not that I would make it, of course, but someone else should.

I've learned the hard way that I don't sleep well without a good pillow. Which, of course, one doesn't usually bring along when one is sleeping in a tent. But I did manage to take a very restful nap yesterday. Unfortunately, I was lying on the beach at the time.

So today I am rather pink and highly annoyed at myself. I'm usually very careful about sunburn, and I didn't even hit the beach until 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon. Sigh.

On a brighter note, I am happy to report that the tent, and my tent construction, passed the rain test with flying colors. And the sound of rain on a tent is actually very soothing once you're sure that there won't be any rain in the tent. Especially when you're using your comfy new "camping pillow."

Postscript: A reporter from NPR just came into the Mockingbird and is sitting at the table across the way from me talking to the manager. I'll post a link to the story when I find it.

Postscript #2: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128321481

Beach Blog, Part 1

2010-07-04T10:07:00.003-05:00

I'm a big-city girl at heart, but I have to admit that it's nice to spend a weekend in a place where you can just turn the car alarm off and forget that you have it.

I'm at the beach, finally, camping in Buccaneer State Park. This morning I'm taking advantage of free wi-fi and strong coffee at the Mockingbird Cafe in Bay St. Louis. Across the street is the Methodist church that I remember from my first post-Katrina visit here. At that point, six months after the storm, its steeple was still laying on the front lawn. Seeing it standing tall again yesterday made me want to smile and cry at the same time.

Katrina's fingerprints are still all over here. Part of Beach Boulevard is a dirt road, waiting to be re-built. Many beachfront lots are still vacant; others have only empty pilings and "for sale" signs. But the beaches are still beautiful, the Gulf water is warm, and I haven't seen any oil -- yet. BP's workers are walking the beaches, but the big plastic bags they're carrying have been mostly empty. Unfortunately for the local businesses, so are the beaches.

I Should Be Writing...

2010-06-30T22:37:00.003-05:00

... but not here. I'm supposed to be writing a paper for my first business school class. If I can get it done by tomorrow night, I won't have to write it while I'm on vacation. I think I've made it through the hardest part: I found a topic. Which is more than I've ever been able to do for this blog.

At first, I had no idea how to write a paper for a class about project management. I wasn't quite sure that I would be able to expound on the fine art of budgeting for six double-spaced pages. And I quickly discovered that I wouldn't. Time for a "change in scope."

So I decided to write about negotiation and conflict resolution, figuring that I could lump them both together in case I ran out of steam with one before I made it to the page limit. But I am quite proud to say that I don't think my cop-out tactic will be necessary. I found some pretty interesting research on conflict resolution styles that should do the trick. Especially since it involves illustrations, which will fill both space in my paper and slides in the PowerPoint presentation that I probably will have to do while I'm on vacation. Having a netbook with eight hours of battery life, however, means that I can work from the comfort of my lounge chair. If only they had WiFi on the beach, I might never have to leave.

I'm hanging out at Republic Coffee, substituting a nonfat vanilla latte for the cheap-draft-beer-in-a-plastic-cup that I used to drink while attempting to write papers in college. Last night I stopped by Starbucks and had the somewhat unusual experience of contemplating my paper while sitting next to a guy who was grading papers. Maybe I should have asked him for some tips. I just hope I don't have him for class next semester; I didn't see very many A's.

Just Visiting

2010-06-15T12:02:00.001-05:00

Dropped by while trying to help a co-worker figure out some technical stuff. May as well post something since I'm here.

Destination Uncertain

2010-06-03T18:05:00.001-05:00

I definitely inherited the road trip gene from my dad, because my mother doesn't believe in highways. I probably have more miles on my car now than my mother has ever accumulated on all of the cars that she's ever driven. Until he traded in his Honda last month, though, my dad had me beat by about 200,000 miles.

My earliest road trip memories are of our annual visit to my dad's parents in Chicago. We would make the two-day trek from Philly packed into the family station wagon. My mother would bail out halfway through for a conference in Ohio, leaving my father to deal with my younger brother and me. And leaving the open front seat as just one more thing for us to fight over.

My father's fatal mistake came when he implored us to "just sit still and watch the scenery." We happened to be passing a field full of cattle at that moment, and my brother and I decided that we would take turns mooing at the cows, with the approximate ratio of one moo for each cow that we saw. There are a lot of cows in Ohio and Indiana. I don't think any man was ever so glad to see a cornfield as my father was on that trip. It guaranteed him at least a couple of miles of peace. Or maybe not, because mooing at the cows was pretty much the only thing that my brother and I agreed about during those trips.

When I finally got my own car, my road trips were mostly out of necessity: visiting family, a friend's wedding, moving from city to city as I changed jobs. Not long after I moved to Memphis, I discovered the Gulf Coast, and I used to squeeze in a trip to the beach any time I could string together more than two days off in a row. I wish I'd done that last weekend before the oil got there.

Visits with my dad now don't include mooing or cows or grandparents (sadly) any more, but there's usually a road trip or two involved. We've covered a fair amount of Colorado -- mostly in the mountains and never during ski season. From Memphis, we've ventured mostly south: to Tupelo, Oxford, and, most recently, Vicksburg. To be honest, I had no idea how long it took to get to Vicksburg from Memphis, nor did I realize how much longer it would take with my dad driving. But we had enough time to make it around the battlefield, read historical markers, and eat some really good seafood.

I actually started this post a long time ago, even before the Vicksburg expedition. As the title suggests, I wasn't sure where I was going with it. I'd say that applies to a lot of things in my life right now, so maybe that's why I'm back to the topic. Sometimes it seems like everything you thought you knew about your life gets turned upside down. Then, just when you think you've figured out why, you find out that everything you've said to explain it to yourself no longer makes sense. Kind of like fate jumping up and biting you on the ass because you're arrogant enough to think you understand it.

No Regrets

2010-04-27T17:37:00.004-05:00

What a great name for a tattoo place.

I turned 35 a couple of weeks ago. I was really OK with the idea until last Christmas, when my aunt turned to me and said, "You're going to be thirty-five this year!!" in a way that made me suddenly think that turning 35 was not OK at all.

So maybe I rebelled a little bit. I felt the need to wear every mini-skirt in my closet at least one more time, because everyone knows women over 35 shouldn't wear mini-skirts. We had the coldest damned winter that I've seen in ten years in Memphis; it's a wonder I didn't end up with pneumonia.

A couple of weeks ago, as I was completing my Sunday ritual of buying a cup of coffee and a newspaper, I saw a woman with a tattoo of a cat on her ankle. Suddenly, I wanted one. Not a cat; I already have four. And not a tattoo of a cat; I'm really resisting the "crazy cat lady" label.

When I had my "one-third-life crisis" at the ripe old age of 28, I almost got a tattoo, but I chickened out and got my belly button pierced instead. I told my boyfriend at that moment (we broke up about three hours later) that if I ever changed my mind, I was going to make him go with me when I got my tattoo. He promised that he would, and he kept his word.

This time, I didn't chicken out. And 35 hasn't been such a bad year, after all.

Warning: Introvert on the Loose

2010-03-24T17:06:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my personality test scores over the years have placed me progressively closer to the "introvert" side of the scale. So when I found myself scheduled to attend four different social gatherings in one weekend earlier this month, it was a little bit overwhelming, to say the least.

I started the "introvert to party animal" makeover on Friday afternoon with a "life-changing" haircut. My stylist, who is the only person I have trusted to touch my hair in the past six years, has tried to sell me on a number of ideas that he has promised will "change my life." I've played along with some and passed on others, but the Sahag cut is probably the most drastic thing I've let Buddy do to my hair since the first time he touched it (when he cut off about eight inches and made me cry for about a week). Since then, every "let's try something new" suggestion from Buddy tends to prompt a "whatever you do, don't make me cry again" response from me.

At first, I thought my new haircut was so incredibly different that people wouldn't recognize me, but apparently that hasn't been the case. Which makes me feel better, because I really didn't want to change my look. Or at least the look that I get when the stars are aligned perfectly, the barometer is at precisely the right level, the humidity has mysteriously vanished, and I've used seven different kinds of curl-taming, frizz-fighting goop.

After my haircut epiphany, I headed to just-to-the-right-of-nowhere Mississippi for Party #1. After some good friends and good food (passed on the chocolate cobbler, but couldn't resist the brownies), I was off to Party #2. This festive occasion, however, required a pit stop to change into more formal attire and a networking frame of mind. Once inside, I commenced to mingling, and was rewarded for my efforts by a genuine compliment that I really appreciated, an invitation to join a striptease workout class (more on that later), and a "prom picture" that I can't wait to see. Except that our group seemed to have caused the camera to malfunction.

Day 2 of my socially-overloaded weekend featured my boss's 40th birthday party. Somehow I failed to notice the large tubs of beer on ice, so I made the questionable decision to mix my own vodka and tonic. Then I made the (probably wise) decision to sit very still for the rest of the night. Luckily, I chose to sit still with my boss's parents and a friend who's known him since middle school, so I have plenty of ammunition next time I need a day off.

For Day 3 and Party #4, I was back into networking mode for a work shindig. I got to spend the latter part of the afternoon with a woman who, I have no doubt, will be a source of inspiration for the rest of my life. At 92, she is newly- (and somewhat reluctantly) retired, although she admitted that she's enjoying retirement a little bit more than she had expected. Throughout our conversation, others at the party came up to say hello, always reminding her of their names. Each time, she responded, "I know that," in a tone that clearly showed she didn't appreciate the suggestion that she might have forgotten. Eventually the talk turned to college basketball, and she began rattling off names and statistics so rapidly that I wished I could ask her to help fill out my bracket form. (After the mess I made this year, I definitely will be asking next year).

All in all, I'd have to say that my temporary re-invention as a social butterfly turned out quite well. I'm still undecided on the haircut, though.

Trusting My Intuition... Or Not

2010-02-10T16:59:00.002-06:00

As I mentioned before, I always score very high on the "Intuitive" part of the personality test. I'm the kind of person who firmly believes that I can trust my instincts when it comes to most people and situations. Although I've recently decided to take a "Self-Defense for Women" class, just in case I'm wrong about that.

I'm having one those moments when I'm wondering whether I was really, really wrong about the way I read a situation. And one of those moments where I know that this blog is not the place to go into details. It's a damned good story, though. I'll leave it at that for now.

I am honestly considering doing something that I've only done twice in my entire life: once when I was 13 and once when I was in my late 20's. It was a big mistake (from the perspective of a 13-year-old) the first time, only slightly less of a mistake the second time, and it's probably an enormous mistake now. And no, it doesn't involve any kind of illegal activity. Nor does it involve activities that were illegal when I was 13.

My head is saying to cut my losses and move on, that I'm better off where I am now than where I might end up. But my heart is reminding me that it's usually not wrong about these things, and that maybe I won't ever be happy if I don't find out for sure.

The Private Face of Public Blogging, or vice versa

2010-01-22T21:58:00.002-06:00

I sometimes wonder if having a blog actually keeps me from writing. On nights like this, when I'm struggling with bigger dilemmas than Papa John's vs. Pizza Hut, it seems like I should want to pour my heart out on screen. But sometimes the knowledge that my blog is not entirely private really keeps me in check. On the one hand, what's the good of having a blog if it's stifling my creative muse? On the other hand, what's the good of having a blog if I end up in jail for libel? Despite the fact that I pretty much stick to a no-names-to-protect-the-not-so-innocent policy.

So maybe I'm overthinking all of this, although, as I learned in my Leadership Memphis class, thinking is not my strength. Of course, I have known this since about the fifth grade, or whenever I first took a temperment test. No one who spends as much money as I do on food for four formerly stray cats will ever be accused of letting her head rule her heart. My temperment has evolved over the various permutations of the test that I've taken, though. I've become more introverted, although I think that's because I've started answering the questions honestly and stopped pretending that I like people. And this time I scored higher on "judging/scheduling" than "probing/flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants." I attribute this entirely to my job, being a deadline-junkie, and my tendency to over-commit. I like to pretend that I can keep all the balls moving, although in reality I think my tendency sometimes is to throw them -- and my hands -- in the air and call it quits. But I've always been a strong "N" (intuitive) and an off-the-charts "F" (feeling).

Somehow, reminding myself of that makes me feel better, because I know that I'll never make a decision without letting my heart weigh in on the matter.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2009-12-06T20:57:00.002-06:00

Bah. Humbug. Let me get that out of the way right off the top.

I am sitting in my sunroom/office in my very comfy but highly impractical desk chair. I am not sitting at my desk, however, because it is, at the moment, covered with seven strings of lights, 60 assorted ornaments, three extension cords, and the angel for the top of my tree. So my netbook is in my lap and I am wishing that I had remembered to get the space heater out of the trunk of my car. There's no heat in my sunroom/office, which makes it almost as impractical as my desk chair.

My sunroom, like the rest of my apartment, is blessed with nine-foot ceilings. Which translates to a roughly 8-1/2 foot Christmas tree with just enough room for the angel on top. Said Christmas tree is being delivered some time tomorrow. Neither I nor the roof of my Corolla is large or strong enough to handle an 8-1/2 foot Christmas tree. And when they said "free delivery," they didn't say anything about charging extra to come to the second floor.

So I have spent at least some portion (though not nearly enough) of this weekend cleaning my apartment (well, my sunroom) in preparation for Christmas decorations. I suppose it's a little bit of overkill to have six large boxes of Christmas decorations for an 800-square-foot apartment, but I've never been one to take the holidays lightly. I'm just not sure how compatible six boxes of (mostly breakable) Christmas decorations are going to be with four cats. But I'm about to find out.

The Cool Guy

2009-11-07T18:45:00.002-06:00

I'm in Austin, Texas, this week -- went to a conference and am now taking the weekend to explore and/or raise hell.

I decided to start that process last night, even though my conference didn't end till noon today (and yes, I did make the 8:30 breakfast session, which is impressive even when I haven't been out frolicking the previous night). Seeing as this is Texas, after all, I felt like I needed to find myself some country music. Yes, I know that Austin is famous for all kinds of music, which is why I'm headed to Sixth Street after I finish this and find myself a good steak. Which, this being Texas, I also feel like I need to do.

Anyway, my concierge recommended the Broken Spoke, which is somewhat of an Austin landmark, so I hopped in a cab and off I went. I'm not as much of a two-stepper/swing dancer as I am a line dancer (some of my unsuspecting friends may have just choked on that revelation), but I found some nice guys willing to let me step on their toes and made the best of it.

Trying to explain that you're in town for a grant writing conference can be difficult under the best of circumstances; in the presence of loud music and alcohol, it's pretty much impossible.

"Oh, you write? Are you a blogger?"

It was just easier to say yes, so I did. It's not like I lied; I just don't blog full time. Or for money. Or sometimes more than once in six months. But I have a blog, obviously, so therefore I am entitled to claim the title of blogger. Which I did.

We eventually established (when the band took a break) that I don't blog professionally, and that my blog has no real theme or purpose. Then the guy that I had been talking to suddenly eyed me warily and asked, "you're not going to blog about me, are you?"

"Of course I am. Just tell me your name; I'll make you famous."

"I don't want to be famous. You can just call me 'The Cool Guy.'"

So, since he was in fact cool, I will do just that. And now I will go find that steak and raise some more hell.

"The fog comes on little cat feet."

2009-10-30T00:15:00.004-05:00

Carl Sandburg has obviously never been to my house. There is nothing silent about the haunches moving around in here. I am certain that my downstairs neighbors moved out because they got tired of hearing the fog roll in like thunder at about 2 in the morning.

Since I last blogged about my four-legged companions, the feline contingent in my home has doubled in size. Perhaps if I spent more time blogging and less time collecting cats, I wouldn't have these problems.

The $800 alleycat will celebrate his ninth birthday on Saturday, along with at least four humans that I know. I find it rather amusing that I know so many people born on Halloween; I can't think of any other day of the year that's a common birthday for more than two or three people.

The first new addition, no longer an alleykitten, has grown into a pretty pastel tortoiseshell about half the size of her big brother. She still thinks she's tougher than he is, though.

"The littlest one" is technically a "foster cat" on a long vacation from the House of Mews. She broke her leg last summer, and it had to be amputated. She came to stay with me as she adjusted to life on three legs, and instantly developed a crush on the alleycat. It's hard to argue with true love, so she ambles about on her unique version of "cat feet" and still expects to be congratulated when she jumps onto the dining room table.

"The baby" is still technically a kitten, yet she's bigger than the littlest one (obviously). She appeared one night in the parking lot outside the restaurant where my fiance and I had just had dinner. My fiance made the mistake of saying, "oh, baby, you can't rescue all of them." Determined to prove him wrong at least once, I managed to load the wide-eyed, skittish kitten into my car. Amazingly, she rode all the way home without a sound. She has found her voice (I think the alleycat gave her some lessons), learned to like being cuddled, and enjoys chasing her older siblings around the house.

Which sounds a lot more like a stampede than fog rolling across a bay.

Taking Care of Friends

2009-10-27T17:21:00.002-05:00

One of my few -- ok, probably my only -- pleasant memories of the infirmary on my college campus came in my senior year. A good friend of mine was stuck there with a genuine illness (as opposed to the self-inflicted ones that landed me there from time to time), and I was among a team of well-wishers that tried to boost her spirits. I was probably the only one who tried to cook her dinner, which I think that she actually pretended to eat.

On the particular visit that I remember best, I read aloud from The World's Best Rejection Letter. As seniors, we were all furiously applying for jobs and graduate schools and planning for The Future. The economy being in better shape back then than it is today, most of us eventually got hired. I was applying for jobs in theater, which meant that most companies apparently felt that their not-for-profit status and limited budgets absolved them from having to send out rejection letters. In response to what seemed like a hundred resumes and cover letters (back in the days before email when you had to actually print, sign, and mail such things), I received exactly one acknowledgement postcard, exactly one job offer, and The World's Best Rejection Letter.

The Letter, which included the sentence "I feel like a jerk" (I couldn't make this stuff up), came in response to my resume, which had apparently been received after the position I wanted had already been filled. The company's director, however, realized that the ad I had referenced in my cover letter actually stated that the application deadline was much later. Apparently, this oversight upset him so thoroughly that he felt compelled to apologize to me quite profusely. Unfortunately, he didn't feel compelled to change his mind and offer me the job.

By the time The Letter arrived, I had begun to despair that anyone anywhere was going to hire me. The fact that someone wrote me a letter suggesting that he had looked at my resume long enough to see which job he wasn't going to give me was a huge boost to my ego. And yes, I'm fully aware of how pathetic that sounds.

On the day that I received The Letter, I brought it to the infirmary room where my sick friend was staying and read it aloud with great expression to the genuine amusement -- and amazement -- of my friends. At that moment when The Future seemed so daunting to all of us, I think we felt better realizing that there might actually be real human beings out there in the world. And at least one of them wasn't afraid to use the word "jerk" in reference to himself.

Twelve years later, I still pull out The Letter when I need a good laugh, or a some encouragement, or a little of both. So, knowing that a friend of mine could use some of the same, I thought I'd dust off The Letter -- and my much-neglected blog -- and remind her that I'm still around to boost her spirits.

A Few of My Favorite Things

2009-03-29T17:23:00.002-05:00

Quesadillas at R.P. Tracks. If only the train would go by...

Blue Moon, even when they don't have oranges. I keep forgetting to bring my own.

Free wi-fi.

My netbook, source of this blog post.

Hopefully my new purse will be one of my favorite things. After spending the better part of a day shopping online (following several unsuccessful in-person shopping trips), I chose a rather unusual style made from recycled candy and soda wrappers. My contribution to the "green economy." And large enough for my netbook and everything else that won't fit in the pockets of my skinny jeans.

Free shipping, for both my netbook and the purse that will eventually carry it.

Being ignored by my waiter is NOT one of my favorite things. But knowing that he just read that sentence over my shoulder makes up for it.

Off to the grocery store, also not one of my favorite things. But I'm much better prepared now than I was before I stuffed myself full of quesadilla and beer. If only the train had gone by...

The Second Post of 2009

2009-03-12T17:00:00.002-05:00

Since yesterday's was the first, which didn't really occur to me until I "viewed" my blog today. I've been really bad about doing this, haven't I?

Unfortunately, this will have to be short, as I am off to stimulate the local economy by having dinner with a friend. If there were tax credits for eating out, I'd have a guaranteed refund instead of owing like I usually do.

For Anna, with love

2009-03-11T16:45:00.002-05:00

It's nice to know you're missed...

So the last time I did this was in December, when my sunroom was full of Christmas tree. Now it's March, and my sunroom still has lingering Christmas tree needles. I can honestly say that it's not just my poor blog that I've been neglecting. I've had the most rotten case of the winter blues that I can ever remember. The fact that it's supposed to be 31 degrees and precipitating in some frozen form tonight is not helping things. Especially since it was 80 degrees yesterday. It was about 70 degrees last Sunday, and the Sunday before that there was six inches of snow on the ground. Apparently the weather in Memphis suffers from bi-polar disorder.

I am blogging this from my new netbook. Binky the Third, my old, reliable laptop, has served me well for almost five years and, while still ticking along, he's starting to show his age. So I invested in a new toy, which would easily fit into a decent-sized purse if I had one. I've always been a "stuff in my pockets" type of girl, mainly because I'm really bad about leaving stuff places if it's not in my pockets. But Binky IV will not fit in my pocket, so I'm going to have to acquire a decent-sized purse. Actually, now that skinny jeans are making a comeback, there's very little that does fit in my pockets these days, so I guess the purse will come in handy.

I feel like the whole world has changed since December, and I can't even begin to describe how different it is. But, on the other hand, it's not all that different. The alleycat is still overweight; the kitten is still behaving badly. My fiance is still not my spouse, and I'm still happily living in the city. The Eagles have still not won a Super Bowl.

More for another post. Someday spring will really be in the air, and -- now that I figured out how to reset the password on my wireless router -- I will be able to blog from my back deck. No purse necessary.

Getting into the Festive Spirit

2008-12-17T17:51:00.003-06:00

I finally got my Christmas tree last night. My fiance, after protesting that I had to get a smaller tree than the one he had to carry up the stairs last year, agreed to help me. This year's tree, of course, is a full foot taller and about three feet wider than last year's. The good news for my fiance: it's just barely touching the ceiling, so next year's won't be any taller -- unless I'm living somewhere else.

As we wandered around the Christmas tree lot, my fiance hopefully lingering among the seven-foot-tall trees while I carefully inspected the eight- and nine-footers, I fondly recalled the day we got our very first Christmas tree. Because I am an electronic pack rat and can manage to dig up such things, here's how I told the story in an email to my Mom way back then...

So my (then-)boyfriend (now fiance) has this brilliant idea that we're going to cut down a Christmas tree. He doesn't want to buy one from a Christmas tree lot, because he says they don't stay fresh and they get dried out too quickly because it's too warm here for Yankee fir trees. Since it's supposed to be 70 degrees today, I suppose he has a point. (No such problem this year; the Yankee fir trees are feeling right at home. It's the Yankee woman who's doing all the complaining -- I moved here to get away from weather like this.)

So, on Saturday, we drive around out in the country (which starts about ten minutes outside of the town where he lives) for about an hour and a half looking for a Christmas tree. In honor of the occasion, my boyfriend's wearing his red plaid flannel lumberjack shirt. He said that he had found several Christmas trees -- cedar, not fir -- on empty lots over the years. Apparently people have gotten wise to this tactic, because all of the really nice cedar trees that we see are on the wrong sides of barbed wire fences. Including all of the ones on the "cut-your-own" Christmas tree farm, which we decide will be our last resort.

My boyfriend has one more idea before that: his company owns the huge, partially-wooded lot behind his office. It's only partially-wooded because most of the middle of it is a swamp. But it's too cold for snakes, so we trudge through the muck looking for the perfect Christmas tree. And it's there, with one small problem: it's about sixteen feet tall. I, of course, am determined to have this tree, or at least as much of it as we can fit into the house. My boyfriend, of course, thinks I'm out of my mind, and has no intention of cutting down a sixteen foot tall tree and lugging it through the center of town.

Half an hour later, he's dragging the top twelve feet or so of the perfect Christmas tree through the swamp and up the hill to the parking lot. He looks like a pissed-off lumberjack, I look like the cat that ate the canary, and the tree ends up sticking out three feet off the end of the pick-up truck as we drive through town.

I got my five boxes of Christmas stuff and the tree stand out of storage on Sunday, and we set up the tree (minus about another three feet off the bottom) that night. The tree is huge; it's about eight or nine feet tall and looks like it's almost that wide. We trimmed the "back" branches short so that we could put it closer to the wall, but that made it front-heavy, so we weighted the bottom down with bricks and tied it off to the wall so it wouldn't fall over. So far, so good. The only thing that didn't work was my angel; the top of the tree isn't strong enough to hold it up, so we put a bow up there instead.

So far, that tree is my favorite of all the ones I've ever had.

Blogging Creatively

2008-10-23T17:57:00.002-05:00

At the moment, I'm blogging from my phone, killing time before dinner and a show with a friend. Ah, technology...

I attended a panel discussion last night on "Working Creatively," which was originally billed as a session on how to bring creativity into jobs (like mine) which are not generally seen as "artistic." It ended up as a rather impassioned discussion on how to keep and advance the efforts of creative people in cities (like Memphis) which are not generally seen as supportive of such efforts. So I didn't come away with any new perspectives on how to make my work more fresh and exciting, but I did get a lot to think about on how to make the city more fresh and exciting. And some great insights on why people here think it already is.

It always inspires me to be around people who love Memphis for what it is and have great hopes for what it can be. Especially people who are willing to step up, in ways big and small, and do their part to achieve those hopes. I'm hoping that all the excitement that was generated last night can be channeled into something bigger.

For my small part, I am off to support local theater at The Glass Menagerie. The last time I saw a production of it was in college, on the tail end of the meltdown I alluded to several posts earlier. I am sure this one will probably resonate for me in different ways.

Last weekend, I saw 1776 for the first time since I worked on a production 10 years ago. I was struck by the references to tyranny and terror and the tradeoff between liberty and comfortable safety. It sounded so much like a commentary on wiretapping and waterboarding. But, of course, neither of those things existed in 1776.

Requiem for a Saloon

2008-10-16T17:07:00.002-05:00

I feel like I need to comment, at least briefly, on the passing of Shooters, which apparently burned to the ground this morning some time before I got out of bed. Although the place hadn't been called Shooters for at least four years, that's how most people I know will remember it. Those that are capable of remembering it at all, that is.

My own recollections are pleasantly vague for the most part, but I did make some friends there whom I still enjoy seeing in other places. It's definitely been a landmark of my time here, and one that I have missed and am sorry to now see gone forever.

A Simple Market Analysis

2008-10-11T11:34:00.003-05:00

As all of the conflicting reports and general chaos about the current financial crisis swirl around us, I feel like it is my duty to put my economics degree to work and provide some clear, concise, useful information to those lucky few who are smart enough to read my blog. So here, for your enjoyment (or despair, depending on whether your money is in mutual funds or under the mattress), is a Simple Market Analysis:

One share of Starbucks stock is worth approximately the same as one pound of Starbucks coffee. Or two triple venti vanilla lattes (make mine nonfat, please).

One share of GM stock is worth about as much as a quart of moderately-priced synthetic motor oil. Take heart, though, GM shareholders: you can't even get a quart of cheap motor oil for what Ford is trading at. You can, however, get one of those little pine tree air fresheners to hang from your rearview mirror. Maybe even two if they're on sale.

Last month's cable bill would have bought five shares in Time Warner Cable or seven shares in Comcast.

My cell phone charger cost more than a share of Nokia stock.

One share of Citigroup is worth about 1/3 of the late fee that they charge their credit card holders. And one share of Bank of America wouldn't cover a bounced check fee in most states.

One share of Coach stock will barely buy you a handbag at Target.

For what it costs to check one suitcase on most airlines, you could buy a share in American, United, AND Northwest. Which is why you should diversify your portfolio. And carry your luggage on the plane.

And one share of MGM Mirage costs less than I'm going to lose in poker tonight. Maybe I should try gambling in the stock market instead.

Untitled

2008-10-09T22:25:00.004-05:00

When I was 19 and a sophomore in college, I had a meltdown over a guy. Looking back later with the wisdom of many years and self-help articles, I came to realize that I was having a meltdown over a lot of other things. The guy -- who, at the time, I believed was the primary reason for my meltdown -- was, to be honest, probably pretty close to the bottom of a long list of reasons. Like my rapidly-declining academic standing, the fact that I'd gone from being a "really smart" high school student to a worse-than-mediocre college student, and not really having a clue how to fix that problem. Or the problem of being nearly 20, supposedly an adult, and not knowing what I was doing in college in the first place.

Grade school was all about getting into the "right" high school; high school was all about getting into college. All of that made sense, and I had succeeded into getting into a college that was supposed to be good at getting people into other things. I just couldn't figure out what I wanted to get into next. I felt, of course, as if all of my friends were completely focused, driven, and entirely sure of themselves, and would surely find it ridiculous that an almost-20-year-old could be almost half-way through college and not know what she wanted to be when she grew up. Some of my friends, who much later admitted to being equally clueless, will probably laugh when they read this.

When I was 28, I started to have a meltdown over another guy. Armed with the wisdom of several more years and self-help articles, a six-pack of beer, and a pack of cigarettes, I was determined to put a stop to it. This time, I couldn't even pretend that the meltdown had all that much to do with the guy, because we'd only dated for about three weeks. Even I couldn't squeeze that much melodrama out of the demise of a barely-existent relationship. But there was the problem of my rapidly-growing dislike for my brand-new job, my roommate's decision to move out, and my realization that everything that I'd been excited about three weeks earlier -- new job, new guy, newly-cleaned bedroom -- had been turned upside down. I was nearly 30 (though I never would have said that out loud), supposedly an adult, and still didn't have a clue what I was doing.

I flirted briefly with the idea of heading out to stay with Dad in Colorado while I "made a fresh start." My logic: I had made some ridiculously bad job choices out of the need to have an income. Any income. If I crashed with Dad, I could work part-time while I did a real "career" search. Then I'd get my own place, and hopefully get over the shock of living in a place where people exercised more in a week than I did in a year, despite the fact that there might be snow on the ground from Halloween to Memorial Day.

So I called up Dad and pitched my idea to him. He listened in his quiet, attentive, Dad-like way, and then he asked me if I still had "that cat." With a sinking feeling that I knew where the conversation was going, I told him that, yes, I did. "OK," he replied. "As soon as you find him a new home, let me know, and we'll talk about whether you should move out here." I protested, with a growing sense of desperation, that one doesn't just give away an $800 alleycat. Especially when I hadn't even finished paying off his surgery yet. "I know," Dad told me. "You're an adult, and you have a responsibility to provide a good home for that cat. My place isn't a good home."

"You're telling me I can't come," I accused him.

"You're my daughter and you're always welcome," he answered. "I'm just telling you that you can't bring that cat. If you'd like to visit, I'll buy you a plane ticket."

I did fly out, and made a big show of looking at apartment listings and job listings and talking about how it wouldn't be all that bad of a place to start over. My last night in Colorado, there was a frost warning, despite the fact that it was technically still summer. I gave up all pretenses at that point, got back on the plane, and went home to that cat. I found a new roommate, finally got around to that "career search," and paid off the alleycat repair bills. Somewhere along the line, I fell in love. But that's another story.

So why have I chosen to draft this particular chapter of my largely-unwritten memoir right now, when I finally have a clue what I'm doing and absolutely no excuse to be thinking about meltdowns? A random encounter got me reminiscing, and, actually, I did start with a title in mind. Just can't quite make it all make sense just yet, but I'm hoping that I'll have a chance to see where it might go. And then I'll write about that, too.

The Requisite Political Post

2008-10-02T17:52:00.007-05:00

Over the past year or so, I've pretty much managed to prove (and mention frequently) that I don't post often, and that my blog pretty much has no coherent theme or apparent purpose. But the people who read it like it, and I guess that's good, especially since I probably read it more than anyone else. It's good for me to like it; if I didn't, I might not post at all.

In one of my rambling commentaries on what I don't write about, I made some vague reference to not being inspired to write about politics beyond the humorous material generated by being a lifelong Democrat surrounded -- at least in my personal life -- by Republicans. When my fiance and I lived together, the comedic potential was, of course, much greater. Especially since we lived together in a decidedly Republican town in a decidedly Republican county. Unfortunately, I moved out before said town and county ended up with a decidedly Democrat Representative in Congress. Giggle.

Still, there's something to be said about the fact that we are quickly approaching the point in each election year when my fiance and I will cease to communicate with each other beyond pointed stares and cold silences. Given that we do a lot of our communicating by phone these days, I can't help but think that there might be trouble right here in River City. Which is yet another reference that my theater-oblivious fiance will not get. The previous one -- "Feed me, Seymour!" -- led to a discussion about why I had just called him by the wrong name. Please. As if I even know any guys named Seymour.

The latest volley in our war of opinion came today from my fiance, courtesy, I'm sure, of one of his decidedly Republican co-workers. I tried very hard to post it here, but I couldn't get it to be legible, so I will translate. In a cartoon strip, two people are walking down the street having the following conversation:

"Shouldn't voters have to pass an intelligence test?"

"You don't have to be intelligent to vote." (As if the results of the last presidential election didn't prove that beyond the shadow of a doubt.)

"What if there are more stupid people than intelligent people?"

"Then the Democrat wins."

Please. As if the party that nominated Sarah Palin has any room to talk about stupid people. Shouldn't vice-presidential candidates have to pass an intelligence test?

The Little One's First Big Adventure

2008-09-23T16:56:00.003-05:00

As I mentioned in my previous post (which was surprisingly recent), I had to take the new addition to the vet. The $800 alleycat was shamefully overdue for his check-up (I had been dreading the lecture about the dangers of feline obesity as much as he was dreading the rabies shot), so he got to come along for the ride.

And what a ride it was. I loaded the alleycat into the hardest working (pink -- it was the only color they had) cat carrier in town, and packed the kitten into a banker's box. I highly recommend banker's boxes for all your moving needs: no packing tape required, and the handles double as convenient air holes if you happen to be transporting live animals. Beware, however, of using the handles to transport the box, because the live animal inside will try to claw your fingers to ribbons.

With the banker's box riding shotgun (and me trying to hold down the lid while staying out of reach of the clawed paws flailing out of the handle holes) and the pink cat carrier emitting piteous howls from the back seat, I managed to make it the vet's office mostly in one piece and pretty dang close to on time. I carried the box into the waiting room and anchored the top down with some big, heavy books while I went back out to the car for the cat carrier. Upon returning, I replaced the books with a big, heavy, highly-annoyed cat in a pink carrier.

Next up: "the paperwork." Round one was easy: got the name and birthdate... breed = alleycat... gender = male... description = large, grey/white, overweight, slight limp. Round two was more of a challenge: name, none; birthdate, unknown; breed, kitten; gender, female(?); description, small.

The vet's staff didn't find this funny, of course. “We can’t make a file if she doesn’t have a name.”

I am, of course, a firm believer in the “if you name it, you must keep it” school of pet adoption. So the new addition -- still on adoption probation at that point -- now has a file bearing the name “Kitten.”

On to the exam room. The little one checked out “cute” and perfectly healthy, except for a bad case of fleas that was quickly remedied by a super flea-killing pill. The $800 alleycat watched warily from the confines of his pink cat carrier. Jury’s still out on whether he was more terrified of (a) the presence of a 4.4-pound interloper in his life or (b) knowing that he was next in line for the dreaded rabies shot. He, too, checked out healthy, but more overweight than ever. I managed to forestall the lecture with lots of questions about low-carb cat food.

We departed with the new addition in a more manageable carrier, my wallet significantly lighter, and a banker’s box full of dead fleas (courtesy of the flea-killing pill). The alleycat got to ride shotgun on the way home, though, since I didn't have to worry about the dead fleas trying to jump out of the banker's box.

... And Some Things Do

2008-09-17T17:02:00.008-05:00

Like people you haven't heard from in years showing up on your Facebook page. But that's definitely a change for the better.

So maybe you caught the subtle reference in the last post to the "new addition" to my household. And maybe you thought "wow, she complained about six weeks without Snickers bars, but she managed to be pregnant and never said a word?" Oh, hell, no. Not even close.

Earlier this month, I began volunteering at the House of Mews, which bills itself as the "oldest legal cathouse in Memphis, Tennessee." It's a no-kill shelter for wayward felines (male and female), including Penny (see picture), a rather large tortoiseshell with a penchant for unladylike postures. Apparently, new volunteers are immediately fitted with a unique tracking device: in a voice only cats can hear, it whispers "if you follow me home, I'll keep you." Fortunately, this device only activates outside the store, lest the unsuspecting volunteer find herself at the head of a Pied Piperesque train approximately 100 four-legged cars long.

The purpose of the device is to help any stray cats not fortunate enough to have landed themselves at HOM to locate cat-lovers like me who will give them an equally loving, and slightly less crowded, home. And it worked perfectly: two days later, I had not one, but TWO stray kitties try to follow me home. The larger of the two, sadly, I could only supply with food and some petting, and hopefully she will find an equally soft-hearted fool elsewhere on my block. The smaller of the two, however, scored the grand prize: deluxe overnight accommodations in my bathroom, a trip to the vet's office (more on that later), and an assortment of kitten chow and cute pink play toys. Congratulations, mom, it's a girl. Six months young, four pounds small, and spring-loaded like only a kitten can be.

Some Things Should Change

2008-09-11T18:33:00.001-05:00

Like I should really post more than once a month. At this rate, it'll take me at least 30 years to turn out enough stuff to make a novel.

Things that should change, besides my level of motivation:

Mornings should start later.

Chocolate should be a food group. Actually, it should be four food groups: dark, milk, white, and the kind with nuts in it.

There should be a 9/11 memorial in New York City by now. I started this post by re-reading the one I wrote this time last year. Yep, still feel the same way. That shouldn't change, though.

People in Memphis should do more than complain about the things that drag this city down. I went to a forum on crime last night that had so few attendees it was pitiful.

I've been on an anti-complaining kick lately. Maybe it's the stress of trying not to have a whiny blog. I'm not willing to let anyone else whine either. Except the overweight alleycat, who is downright indignant about the new addition to our household. But not nearly as indignant as he's going to be about the new diet cat food that I'm about to buy. And even he only gets to whine for a couple of days.

So I am off to buy diet cat food, an extra umbrella, and sunglasses, because somehow I managed to lose every pair I have within a week's time. But no complaining.

Happiness is...

2008-08-07T21:14:00.002-05:00

... finding out that your fiance likes your blog. Especially when you and your fiance have been going through some decidedly unhappily-ever-after type stuff lately. And when you weren't quite sure that your fiance was technologically savvy enough to find your blog in the first place. Even if there's a link to it from your Facebook page.

So I guess I should be glad that my aversion to whiny blogs has prevented me from writing about the potentially unhappy-ever-after stuff.

My fiance did suggest that I make a point of noting that he successfully drove across the bridge in BOTH directions the other night without even flinching. I will do so, but I can't resist adding that I always found his phobia all the more bizarre because he was only afraid of driving over the bridge in one direction.

I am sitting in my office at school because, at this hour of the night, it's cooler than my office at home. My sunroom/office/source-of-many-insightful-blog-postings has a big westward-facing window, which I'm sure is adding at least $20 a month to my electric bill. Despite the fact that it stays 100 degrees in there from mid-afternoon until well after midnight. My office at school is inexplicably comfortable at the moment, considering that it was miserable in here this morning when the A/C was supposedly running. I am sure that it's been turned off by now since I am most definitely the only fool still working at this hour. I may not be working at this MINUTE, but I was working within this hour. And now I am secretly gloating because I have overcome a huge case of writer's block and cranked out a decent draft of the proposal that I've been fiddling unproductively with up until late this afternoon. I am gloating in secret, of course, because having fiddled unproductively with said proposal means that I feel like I haven't gotten much work done in the past few days. Unless, of course, my boss happens to be reading this...

HawaiiBlog, Part 2

2008-07-23T18:11:00.002-05:00

Which, of course, I am not writing from Hawaii after all. Because I did get sunburned, and thus ended long mornings by the pool.

I'm not writing from my phone, either, although I was pleasantly surprised to see that my phoned-in post looks normal on my computer. I suppose I could have blogged via phone from the Phoenix airport where I got stuck waiting for my flight, and the Memphis airport, where I got stuck waiting for my ride home, but I was much more concerned at that point with actually getting home. Surprisingly, all my luggage did, too.

Hawaii was supposed to be about sorting out a lot of the stuff that's been rolling around in my head so that I could come back and start cranking out light-hearted, somewhat cerebral, occasionally witty blog posts. I don't think I'm quite there yet, though. But I do have some great pics that I will eventually get around to posting.

HawaiiBlog, Part One

2008-07-07T11:22:00.000-05:00

I just figured out that I can blog from my phone. Which solves the problem of not wanting to drag my laptop down to the pool each morning. It also answers the question of what I'm going to do for the next three mornings while I sunbathe.

Not that I need to do anything at all, of course. But I've never been good at sitting still, and I'm almost finished with my third book. I'm also bored with playing solitaire. Ah, the perils of vacation.

Right now I'm watching the Pacific Ocean crash into the lava rocks and trying to convince myself that my job, my cat, and my fiance are compelling enough reasons to go back to the mainland a week from today. Since both my cat and my fiance could move and my job still seems to be finding me even though I'm thousands of miles away and five hours behind, I'm thinking that it might be OK if I just stayed. After all, I could write proposals on my phone, too. And I'm much better at being a morning person here. Up at 7, down to the pool by 9. Back inside when the vog overtakes the sun. Which might not actually happen today. But my phone needs charging and I need to not get sunburned, so I will have to continue my pointless rambling tomorrow.

Cerebral is just another word for...

2008-06-04T01:32:00.002-05:00

... bullshit, maybe?

I was having a beer and some margaritas with my friend who reads my blog the other night, and he was talking about his roommate, who is apparently a much more prolific blogger than I am. My friend said that the speed at which his roommate types is directly proportional to how pissed off she is at a particular moment. Which means that earlier tonight I could probably have put a court reporter to shame, but that's another story. And one that I probably won't tell here, because, as I told my friend and as I've said here before, I don't want to have a whiny blog. I want to have a witty, charming, and memorable blog. Well, anyway.

"Your blog isn't whiny; it's very... cerebral," my friend replied.

So, a quick recap of the (short) list of "cerebral" things I've blogged about:

Googling ex-boyfriends
Borrowing parents
Paying way too much for playoff tickets
Having writer's block
Saying yes to mess
Having my car vandalized
My overweight, $800 alleycat (here and here and probably other places as well)
Veggie burgers (and lasagna)
Septic systems
Armadillo roadkill
Giant grasshoppers
Fruity drinks and sailors
Walk-in closets
Off-color jokes about flying reindeer
Laundry (and more laundry)
Bridges
Patriotic belly button rings
Wallpaper
Matchmaking
Taking on the U.S. Army - and winning
Beaches
Sesame Street Christmas ornaments
Brad Pitt
Bugs
Schmoozing
Googling Google

And insomnia, which is pretty much what this post was all about. Because it's way past my bedtime.

How Melissa Got Her Faith Back

2008-05-03T18:31:00.005-05:00

This post has been rattling around in my head for a couple of days, but I ran out of reasons not to do laundry. More importantly, I ran out of clean clothes. And now it's about to go off in a direction I never imagined that I'd ever have to go. But I'll get there in a minute.

It all started with some random musings about Facebook, which I admittedly neglect only slightly less than my blog. Musing led to thinking about the fact that my Facebook page identifies my employer as a certain Catholic university. It also identifies me as the genius behind this semi-anonymous blog, and provides a link. Which suddenly makes this blog considerably less anonymous.

I guess I always considered my potential readership to be composed of people I told about my blog (for whom it is not the least bit anonymous) and possible random people who won't ever know who I am (until one of them decides to publish my memoirs and make me famous). I hadn't really considered the possibility that I might be writing for people who know me that I didn't tell about my blog. Like people who find me, and my blog, through Facebook. And if I don't know that they're reading, then how can I know what I might not want them to know?

All of this is a very long-winded explanation of my decision to re-visit one of my very first posts (from way back when I posted more than once every couple months) about my relationship (or lack thereof) with organized religion. Which is one of the things that I might not want someone from the Facebook network of my Catholic employer to stumble across. I thought about practicing self-censorship: I could delete the post, or the link to my blog from Facebook. Not because I think it will get me fired, or reprimanded, but because I feel like I need to explain -- maybe to myself more than anyone -- how exactly I've reconciled my uncertain relationship with organized religion with working for a Catholic university. Hence this post.

Even if I haven't found a church home yet, I've had the chance to rediscover the one thing I've always appreciated most about the Catholic Church. I've always credited my Catholic education with teaching me to think, to question, to keep digging until I find an answer that works for me. Everything and everyone I ever encountered about my present employer showed me that passion for education: for teaching students to think and for listening to and understanding them. So I'm putting my passion into doing the best I can in support of that mission, and still having long talks with God about all the things I haven't figured out yet.

Which brings me to what will probably be the topic of the next one of those talks. On Friday afternoon, our university lost its president in a car accident. Before my first interview with Brother Vincent just over two months ago, I had been cautioned that he would be "a little intense." And he was: intensely excited about the university and everything that he wanted it to accomplish. Intensely proud of the people and the place that he obviously loved. Every encounter that I had with him reminded me of that energy, enthusiasm, and optimism. Every day from now on will seem a little empty without it. But I will always be grateful that I had a chance to know such an amazing example of everything that's ever seemed right about our shared faith.

Ghost Writer

2008-04-18T17:26:00.004-05:00

I started this post an hour or so ago, but I got temporarily sidetracked playing around with a new look for my blog. I think I'm in an "artsy" mood because I've been playing with pictures and stuff at work. I stumbled upon a blog by another displaced Yankee living in the South. She has horses, which made me think of my mom, and writes full-time, which brings me back to the post I intended to write.

I desperately wanted my current job because it involved more writing and less talking than my former one. Not that I am opposed to talking to people, but I like to talk to people for fun, not for work. I'm just the kind of person who has a quota for how much human interaction I want to have in a day, and I don't like to waste it all at work. And maybe I'm a little bit on the shy side.

Now that I'm writing at work instead of staring at my computer doing other things all day, maybe I'll write more at home instead of doing other things, like playing games and finding perfectly valid reasons not to do laundry tonight. Which brings me to my next great idea.

Most people who have jobs like mine have to do a certain amount of schmoozing. In my case, my office already has a very successful resident schmoozer, so I am largely off the hook. I am getting the impression that people really will not be offended if I sit in my office, or (if it ever stops raining) on my back deck, and write. Which doesn't bother me at all.

When I first met my super-schmoozer co-worker, I thought that he and I would make a perfect team. I should first clarify that in this case "schmooze" is not a derogatory term; it's a vital part of the job description, and one that I am glad that he does well so that I don't have to. It saved me a lot of money on golf lessons. We balance each other well: I'm the thinker-writer-planner-dreamer, he's the talker-mover-shaker-schemer. Ideally, he'll make me a more confident talker over time, but I doubt there's much he can do for my golf game.

Apparently I'm not the only one that noticed our particular yin-and-yang balance. Today, upon finishing one of his many anecdotes about his colorful life, my co-worker pointed out that I would make a good ghost writer. "You could write -- you write well -- and I could just talk, 'cause I have tons of stories." (See above re: my observation that I write and he talks).

I have to admit that it would probably be a lot of fun, and an excellent education on how to become an expert schmoozer. I could see him at book signings, doing NPR interviews, schmoozing, taking all the credit. And me working on the tell-all sequel...

Tradition Revisted

2008-04-16T19:29:00.003-05:00

My first job out of college was in Omaha, Nebraska, and I developed the after-work tradition of sitting out in the back yard each night with a cigarette and a beer while I was cooking dinner. Back then I did the kind of dinner-cooking that actually allowed time for the consumption of beer and a cigarette, unlike the five-minutes-in-the-microwave cooking that I do now.

Now that it appears to finally be spring for real and not just as a protracted (and repeated) April Fool's Day prank, I'm suddenly waxing nostalgic. But six weeks without Taco Bell and Milky Ways taught me the finer points of resisting temptation, so I managed to make it home (2.5 miles -- I love my new job) without stopping to buy a pack of cigarettes.

I grabbed a beer and headed out onto my back deck, which is usually as sadly neglected as my poor blog. On this particular night, however, I was joined by two dogs (neither of them mine), a baby (definitely not mine), and my neighbor (owner of one of the dogs and father of the baby). As I tried to juggle beer and laptop without accidentally locking myself out, my downstairs neighbor's adorable puppy squeezed past me into the kitchen and promptly began eating the cat food. My alpha-male, dog-averse cat took this surprisingly well, and I managed to get the puppy back out the door in one piece. I spent the rest of the evening nursing my beer and watching the baby unwittingly feed crackers to the dogs, while my cat sat wide-eyed and defensive on the other side of the security door.

I thought this post might turn into a long, rambling reflection on how much my life has changed since the summer of 1997, when my grandmothers were still alive and Google didn't exist yet (and yes, I did google Google to find this out for sure). But then my dad called, and all the words that I might have poured out onto the screen ended up in my conversation with him, so I'm honestly left with just one profound thought: a cold beer on a warm afternoon still tastes every bit as good as it did in 1997.

Starting out small

2008-03-14T18:57:00.002-05:00

But not nearly small enough.

Even though I have yet to fully explore the life-altering craziness of the past five weeks (only one more week to go until I can eat that Snickers bar in my freezer), this particular story's just bugging me to get blogged (pun intended).

I am officially one week and two days into my new job (the so-far successful result of the Major Life Decision-making), and trying desperately to convince everyone in my office (including me) that I am capable of arriving at work fully conscious and alert at 8 a.m. Until this morning, I like to think that I was doing a pretty good job. But my bad habit of turning off the alarm clock and rolling over for "five more minutes" finally caught up with me, and I ended up stumbling around my apartment in great haste. And then, in the middle of my kitchen, my morning rush minutes came to a screeching halt.

My boyfriend often says that I am "stable and rational" almost to a fault, usually when he is having a neurotic episode and I am being less than sympathetic. But at 7:45 this morning, I was reduced from "paragon of level-headedness" to blithering idiot by... a bug.

Granted, this was the biggest bug I ever want to see in any place that I intend that inhabit. And I did make an attempt to rationally assess my options in dealing with it. I even went so far as to arm myself with a clunky-heeled shoe and an attack strategy. I reminded myself repeatedly how ridiculously I was behaving. I mustered all of my courage... and then I retreated to that safest of refuges. I called my Mommy.

"I'm having a bleeping meltdown over a bug!" I wailed.

"Call the fire department," she advised.

We eventually devised a slightly less drastic solution, and I called my boss to make a vague excuse about why I was running a few minutes late. Then I headed around the block to the grocery store for a big ol' can of Raid. Somehow that bug didn't seem quite as big now that I was really armed. And somehow I can't help but think that a grown woman shouldn't need to call for a family intervention just to kill a bug.

Breaking the Silence

2008-02-06T17:41:00.000-06:00

For once in the year of my life since I started blogging, I really did have a lot to write about. I did a lot of thinking about writing, but I didn't actually do it. And not because I was afraid of baring my soul on the broad public stage of the Internet. I was actually concerned about the more private circle of people I know who know about my blog. Just like there are some things you shouldn't put in a bathtub, there are some things you shouldn't put in a blog -- namely, things you don't want people to read about before you've had a chance to tell them.

So for a long time I didn't write about how badly my Thanksgiving trip really made me want to move back to the coast, about how I'd started thinking that my time in Memphis was maybe finally drawing to a close. I didn't write about knowing that I'd have to move on alone, and how I felt about the fact that I knew that.

I didn't even write about the grand scheme I concocted for running into Brad Pitt in New Orleans over Christmas so he could hire me to run his community development project and go back to making movies and/or babies. Despite his rumored success with the latter, I did not actually see him while I was in New Orleans. Perhaps that's for the best, though, because it would have really complicated my best friend's plans to have Angelina Jolie play me when he exercises his option on the movie rights to my life story.

So I spent way too much time being in a funk about the fact that I had to make Major Life Decisions without any of the vices that I've always employed in the Major Life Decision-
making process: cigarettes, excessive amounts of alcohol, and long, rambling diatribes on how bad I am at making Major Life Decisions. But then, as always seems to happen to me, Life offered me an apparent no-brainer through a laughably bizarre coincidence that really just might have been divine intervention. Especially since I think my current boyfriend is God's way of allowing me to do penance on earth for every bad thing I've ever done in a relationship.

I am still getting slightly ahead of myself at this point, so I can't quite divulge all the details just yet. But let's just say that the no-brainer in question made it a lot easier for my head to want to stay where my heart happens to think that it belongs. More to come...

Today is the first day of Lent, the forty-day period for which I have decided to give up both chocolate candy and fast food. The former choice was prompted by the steady supply of temptation that has been lingering in our office since Halloween. The latter is supposed to compel me to save money by (a) bringing my lunch to work instead of going to the Taco Bell near my office and (b) cooking dinner at night instead of going to one of the two Taco Bells near my apartment. Somehow I think the more likely result is that I will spend twice as much on sushi as I would have on chalupas.

It feels good to have finally done this. Time to head to the grocery store to stock up on temptation-thwarters.

Decking the Halls

2007-12-14T17:28:00.001-06:00

When I was apartment hunting in June, I had three requirements for my new abode: there had to be a discreet, yet accessible, place for the kitty's litter box; there had to be ample closet space, preferably of the walk-in variety; and, most important, there had to be a suitable place for a Christmas tree.

I managed to find all three, complete with high ceilings to accommodate said Christmas tree, which now holds a place of honor in my front window.

As anyone who has ever spent a weekend unpacking six boxes of assorted holiday decor can attest, Christmas trees can be a lot of work. But they create such fond memories, especially when you have a live tree, which leaves so many reminders for you to enjoy all year long. Last year, my boyfriend carried out the post-Christmas tree while I was doing laundry, so I'm I still finding dried needles in the bottom of my hamper. Nothing like finding a pine needle stuck through your sock -- in March -- to put you in the Christmas spirit all over again.

When I first moved out after college, I decided that I would have a sophisticated, grown-up Christmas tree. My family's tree had always been a hodgepodge of things-the-kids-made-in- school, cute character ornaments depicting our favorite fads and hobbies, and a glorious assortment of mis-matched other stuff. I, as a mature single woman, envisioned a tree straight out of a department store display, with a perfectly coordinated color scheme. Even if nothing else in my apartment matched, unless you counted the fact that all the furniture was plastic.

My vision began to take shape at a "Christmas in July" sale, where I carefully matched a maroon, gold, and green velvet tree skirt to a tree-topper angel in a maroon and gold gown. Next stop: the annual flea market in my old hometown, where I would craft my masterpiece by starting with the "extra" Christmas stuff that my mother planned to sell. As we began to sort through her boxes, I reminded my mother that I was firmly committed to my chosen, and appropriately traditional, colors of maroon, green, and gold. And then I found the rocking horse ornament that I had painted for her in third grade.

"You can't sell this! I made this for you!"

My mother assured me that there was absolutely no more room in the attic for Christmas ornaments, and she simply had to part with this particular treasure. I decided that if I replaced the frayed ribbon hanger with a tasteful new gold one, it would be a "whimsical" addition to my still designer-esque tree. And then I unwrapped the Sesame Street ornaments.

"You can't sell these! We've had these since I was a baby! These have to be on the tree!"

"If they mean that much to you, you should take them for your tree," my wise and oh-so-sneaky mother replied.

"But they don't match! They're not my colors! My tree won't be perfect if I use them." And then I realized that my tree could never be perfect without them, either. I heaved a deep sigh and watched my dreams of sophistication and style float away like Big Bird's feather on a breeze.

So my tree's Sesame Street neighborhood is right around the corner from where the Tasmanian Devil chases the Coca-Cola polar bears and Pooh and Piglet walk hand in hand. Santa Claus strikes poses, not only in his red suits, but in Hawaiian shirts and cowboy boots. My favorite fads and hobbies are all depicted, from the dozen or so cross-stitch ornaments I've made, to assorted ballerinas and toe shoes (including Clara and her Nutcracker that I bought in Williamsburg when I was 13), to cats of all shapes and sizes, including the one that was a Christmas present from my mom to her favorite four-legged grandson last year.

My trees, I am proud to say, are never completely without touches of sophistication, provided by a beautiful brass butterfly from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a couple of Waterford ornaments that the cat hasn't broken yet (knock on tree trunk wood), and the delicate bone china snowflakes that my grandmother bought 15 or 20 years ago at a day-after-Christmas sale at our favorite department store. Being a lighting designer, I'm a big fan of "crystal" ornaments that catch all of the colors of seven strings of carefully-placed lights (including those with the chili-pepper covers). The tree-topper angel still matches the velvet tree skirt, but at the moment the latter is mostly hidden by Goofy in a Santa suit, the Velveteen Rabbit in a stocking, and the frog that used to croak "Jingle Bells." If I ever get around to actually wrapping the Christmas presents I bought, I'll have to put those down there, too.

My ornaments were all carefully selected, not to evoke comparisons to Martha Stewart, but to bring back memories of who and where they came from. Like the handmade Eagles helmet from my best friend, the painted seashell from Gulf Shores, and the French Quarter-style house with glowing windows that was part of my economic redevelopment mission in New Orleans. There's a delicate brass rendering of the FitzRandolph gates that my mom bought me just after I finally walked through them after four years of college and a by-the-skin-of-my-teeth graduation. The rocking horse ornament I painted in third grade is joined by one that my grandmother gave me a couple years later and a cowboy boot from a friend. And my very favorite '70's relic: a fuzzy pink ball covered in spangles.

This year is the first time that I've ever had the 360-degree tree experience. My trees have always had their "backs" to a wall, which comes in handy when you have to tie one off to keep it from falling over (more on that in another post). But this year, the "back" of the tree is facing the window and looking out over the street in front of my apartment building. And all of the passers-by will see colorful lights reflecting in elegant gold, silver, and crystal clear ornaments, and they will, I am sure, think "what a sophisticated and stylish tree." But the real fun is on the other side.

Back into the wake of the storm...

2007-11-22T20:56:00.000-06:00

Started this while I was away and never quite finished. Had better things to do,

like watch the sun rise...	...and set...

...and take long walks on the beach.

It had been over a year since I'd been on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Last time, a year ago September, I went through Gulfport and Biloxi on my way to a Labor Day weekend in Fort Walton Beach. The bridge between Biloxi and Ocean Springs wasn't rebuilt then, so I had to make a u-turn in front of the not-yet-open Hard Rock Casino and go back to I-10. This time, both the Hard Rock and the bridge were open for business.

The first time I came back to the coast after Katrina was in March of 2006. I spent a week in New Orleans volunteering and doing my part to stimulate the local economy (I ate and shopped a LOT). On my way back home, I decided to drive through Mississippi to Highway 49, to see what was left of the small beach towns I had come to love.

I'd never been to the Mississippi Gulf Coast before my boyfriend suggested a "getaway weekend" for our first New Year's Eve together. We made the long drive down to the coast on New Year's Eve, and ate a late dinner at the Fire Dog Saloon in Bay St. Louis. By the time we got to our motel, we were so tired that I set the alarm clock for midnight so that we wouldn't miss it. We wandered all over the coast for the next few days, to a beach in Pass Christian, a casino bar in Biloxi, Cafe du Monde and the French Quarter in New Orleans. I made my boyfriend jog off his hangover from the motel to the coffee shop, and he made me go to the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library (where not a peep came from my Yankee lips for fear of being discovered). I fell in love that weekend, with the old town charm of Bay St. Louis, the beautiful beachfront houses in Pass Christian, and even with Beauvoir, home of the Jefferson Davis Library. We even managed to sunbathe on a beach that was protected from the winter breeze. Most of all, I loved driving along Beach Boulevard and staring out the window at the white sand beach and the beautiful blue waters of the Mississippi Sound.

I knew coming back after Katrina would be hard. I didn't realize that I wouldn't recognize anything at all, that I'd be completely lost as I drove through Waveland to Bay St. Louis, that there wouldn't be a single landmark until I reached St. Stanislaus. Past that point, Beach Boulevard was gone, so I made my way up and down unmarked streets until suddenly I was stopped beside the Fire Dog Saloon. Through the empty doors and windows you could still see the dalmatian spots painted on walls inside. And then all the memories that I'll never get back came crashing down around me.

Back in town a year-and-a-half later, some things have changed. Beach Boulevard is reassembled but vacant, and the bridge between Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian is new and stronger and taller. There are still many empty lots, but there are some houses, too, even though they're standing on streets with no signs. I recognized an old favorite restaurant in a new location, but the Fire Dog, still minus its windows, is for sale now, despite its website's promise to return stronger than ever.

It was close to sunset by the time I drove back over the new bridge into Pass Christian, and I started looking for a place to park near the beach. The road I was on just sort of stopped, so I left my car at the end. The path I followed led to a sort of a ridge; it probably led out to a pier before Katrina. To my left, the sand was black-streaked and dirty, and some kind of construction equipment was parked on the beach. But to my right, the white sand reflected every color of the sky and the water glittered. I walked down onto the sand to watch the sun sink into the Gulf. As I headed back to my car, I noticed that the beach was perfectly protected -- by the little ridge and a small hill that had once led to a very large house -- for sunbathing. Even in January. And suddenly I realized that I'd managed to find my way back into a memory after all.

Make Art, Not War

2007-11-13T18:05:00.001-06:00

Last Thursday I broke my rule about getting out of bed before the sun comes up in order to put in some early-morning work on the high school production of Carousel that I just finished. It was more of a roller coaster than a merry-go-round ride, which is why I'm just now getting around to writing this post, but all's well that ends well, as Shakespeare put it.

I stopped into the high school office that morning to identify myself as a "visitor" (solidifying my claim on the Visitor's parking spot that I had snagged) and discovered that someone else had plans for the auditorium that morning: the U.S. Army was there to administer the ASVAB test. Not only would my plans to fine-tune the stage lighting be distracting, my very presence in the room -- even in the ceiling two stories up -- would be "a violation of federal law."

The school receptionist seemed sympathetic to my cause (the show opened that night, and I was running short on time), but the rather self-important-seeming Army recruiter wasn't interested in compromise. I told her that I'd be glad to turn the lights back on when she was ready to start her test, and headed out of the office before she could finish protesting.

The gym teacher eyed me suspiciously as I made my way to the auditorium. "You're not a student here, are you?" she asked uncertainly, dispelling once and for all my illusions that I look distinguished and professional in a pantsuit. "No," I replied, "they're all out of visitors' badges." She didn't look entirely convinced, but at least she didn't insist that I report to my homeroom teacher for a hall pass.

A few minutes later I had ascended to my perch in the auditorium ceiling and was in the process of hanging a disco ball when someone called my name from the stage below. "They said to tell the 'little girl' who's doing the lights that the Army is going to give their test somewhere else."

"Little girl," one. U. S. Army, zero. Not a bad way to start the day.

My Matchmaker Moment

2007-10-30T19:08:00.000-05:00

I went to one of my favorite bars last Friday night, which is significant because said bar is over an hour away from my humble abode, so it's not one that I frequent. Not that I frequent bars, of course.

At said bar, I was talking off and on throughout the evening to an older gentleman. We started out laughing about a guy who tried to pick me up with a line older than I am, and gradually progressed to talking about relationships, our respective failed marriages, and the sad state of courtship today.

During our last conversation, the music turned to a slow song. I watched out of the corner of my eye as a woman seated near us at the bar cast a few quick, sidelong glances at my oblivious new acquaintance. After a few moments, I couldn't resist leaning over to whisper in his ear that his lady friend wanted him to ask her to dance. He immediately looked doubtful and replied that she would never dance with him. At the same moment, the lady in question glanced furtively in our direction once again, and I almost laughed out loud as I assured him that, oh, yes, she most definitely would. He looked quickly and not quite furtively at her, and then back at me, and confided that he was "not much for dancing." I reminded him that he had two perfectly good feet, and not much more than that was required. Then I excused myself to step away, sit back, and watch.

For a minute, I didn't think it would happen. Then he turned around in his seat to shoot me a look that was somewhere between dumbfounded and terrified, and I responded with my best "what are you waiting for?" glare. Another long moment, a "what-the-hell" shrug, and my new friend FINALLY asked his probably-long-suffering lady friend to dance.

I watched them make their way to the dance floor, and flashed my friend a final thumbs-up before I headed for the door. I'll probably never know how it turned out, but I like to think that maybe I started something good.

So what's it all about?

2007-10-24T18:17:00.001-05:00

I mentioned to a co-worker recently that I have a blog, albeit a much-neglected one. Her immediate question was "What do you write about?" Hmm... a very good question, considering that I barely write at all. I think if I had to limit my musings and ramblings to any one topic, I probably would never write at all.

So what do I blog about? Maybe the better question is, what did I think I was going to blog about? I guess I thought I was a much more interesting person when I started this. And maybe I was, since at that point I was a suburban Yankee refugee living in the sticks in almost-nowhere Mississippi, which was at least marginally humorous, if not all that interesting.

I didn't think I would write about my personal struggles, except to poke fun at them, because I didn't want to have a whiny blog. I was mindlessly browsing blogs one night, and I found one written by a woman who did nothing but complain about her job and her supervisor. Every post -- and she wrote a lot more than I probably ever will -- was a tirade about her boss. I guess it's cheaper than therapy. Which, come to think of it, would be a really good name for a blog. Or that tell-all book I'm going to write one of these days. Except I really imagined that my memoir and each of its chapters would all have the titles of country songs, and each one would start with a few lines from the song. They could even use actual clips of the song when they publish it as an audiobook. Or a podcast, or whatever they're doing to books by that time.

The chapter about this week would have to be called "Songs About Rain," because that's all it's done for three whole days. Last Sunday I was sitting on my back deck enjoying my last naive glimmer of hope that the Eagles might have a decent season after all. It was about 80 degrees and I was loving life in the South. Now it's 52 and it'll be 46 by morning. My apologies to the people in California who would probably really like the seven inches of rain (OK, I'm exaggerating) we've gotten this week. I'd gladly send it to you if I could. But for now I'm going to go home and try to find some sweaters. And see if I can figure out what it's really all about.

There are just some things...

2007-10-04T17:13:00.000-05:00

... you shouldn't put into a bathtub. Hairdryers, radios, toasters, cats -- and ladders. Ladders do not work well in bathtubs, regardless of whether or not there's a bath in the tub. How do I know this? Because I tried it, of course.

Anyone who's talked to me recently has been subconsciously waiting for the wallpaper post. They knew it would be coming sooner or later. And I would never disappoint...

Two days after the bottom dropped out of the mortgage market, my boyfriend decided that he wanted to sell his house. For the first time in recorded history, every economist in America is in agreement on a single point: now is THE WORST possible time since the Great Depression to even dream about selling a house. But my boyfriend has never before let common sense get in the way of his enthusiasm. Why start now?

Fresh from many nights of HGTV research, I compiled a five-page pre-sale to-do list. I figure that by the time we get it done, the housing market will be well on its way to a rebound. Or the house will have fallen down.

First on my list: the wallpaper has to go. I convinced my boyfriend on this point with my large, and still growing, collection of quotes on how much homebuyers hate wallpaper. I had no idea how much I would come to hate wallpaper. Someone else who had lived in the house before had liked wallpaper, but apparently another someone did not, because he or she had painted over the old wallpaper. My boyfriend subsequently made a paint-and-wallpaper sandwich. And now it was up to me to clean the plate.

The kitchen wasn't that bad, mostly because I got to leave large piles of soggy, shredded, sticky paper all over every inch of countertop and most of the floor. My boyfriend is, by his own admission, obsessive-compulsive about cleaning his kitchen. So obsessive, in fact, that he's never actually cooked in the kitchen, because he doesn't like to mess it up. Not to worry, I had no such qualms. After all, I got to go home and cook in my own kitchen without being afraid that I'd end up picking wallpaper out of my dinner.

My boyfriend, being obsessive-compulsive, rarely cares to engage in projects that may upset his well-ordered world. I learned very quickly that the best way to cajole him into action was to start the upsetting process in as dramatic and disruptive a way as I could manage. That way, he'd have to finish the project as soon as possible to restore his order to my chaos. Hence, I started the de-flowering (as in magnolia-print) of the bathroom by tugging at a large piece of wallpaper that had already started to come loose above the shower. I left it hanging as obtrusively as possible, and waited for nature to take its course. Two days later, the vast majority of the magnolias had vanished, leaving behind a sticky residue of wallpaper glue that became my next home improvement project.

I came armed with iPod, scrapers, sponges, and a ladder. Six hours later, all of the above -- and every inch of me -- were covered in a sticky residue of wallpaper glue. Not that it stopped the ladder from sliding around in the bathtub, of course. There are just some things...

In Remembrance

2007-09-11T12:00:00.000-05:00

Today I'm wearing my little American flag pin (and a matching belly button ring, but I digress...). Not because I'm particularly patriotic, but because a friend gave it to me not long after 9/11 and I've worn it every year since.

It's not that I need a reminder, because I still remember that day, and those that followed it, very vividly. I remember getting into my truck on my way to a class that I was taking and punching the radio station presets looking for music. I changed stations as I drove, quickly at first, then more slowly, going from being annoyed to puzzled to horrified to blocking traffic. And then the second tower fell, and I pulled onto a side street and called my then-husband. "Is this real?" I asked, changing stations quickly once again in the hopes that someone might say it wasn't.

I remember parking in the mud and walking to class, certain that it would be canceled. Surely the whole world must be stopping... But not here, and I sat through class making a list of all of the people that I wanted to track down from wherever I had lost touch with them. At the end of class one of the other students was talking about a relative that he'd managed to contact, and the horror of what he'd been told. The girl sitting behind me had no idea what he was talking about, and I had to explain to her that the world had changed forever while she was putting on her makeup.

I remember sending emails and making calls, then waiting to see if they'd let me give blood (still didn't weigh enough). A man kept persistently asking if his blood would go to New York, as if the people here who might need it weren't deserving enough. The nurse patiently explained, repeatedly, that she could not personally put his blood on a plane and send it to New York because there were no planes flying at the moment, but she would put it to good use somewhere.

In the days that followed, I spent a lot of time online, talked to my high school boyfriend, and helped pack trucks of supplies that went to New York. I remember thinking how quiet it was in Memphis (home of FedEx) when planes didn't fly, and how inexplicably emotional it was, standing in line to get into my favorite bar, to watch a plane fly low overhead with a deafening roar. And I remember the punch-to-the-gut-like-feeling when I found out that I had lost a college classmate.

Bob wasn't someone that I knew very well, but I had met him at summer-before-freshman -year "getting-to-know-you" events because we both lived in the Philly 'burbs. He was someone I remembered instantly by both name and face (and I'm notoriously bad at not being able to put faces with names), someone I remembered as being quiet and friendly and maybe just as slightly overwhelmed as I was.

I went to New York with a firefighter friend that December, the first time for both of us. We stayed away from downtown by unspoken agreement. It was over a year later before I went to Ground Zero, walked along the fences, looked for Bob's name and others that I remembered hearing or reading. I tried to figure out where I had once bought tickets at TKTS or emerged from the PATH train trying to look like I knew where I was going. I wished that I'd given in to the temptation to stop and stare upward and be awestruck instead of worrying so much that someone might think that I was lost.

Back in Philly last November, I decided to do just that: to stop and stare and openly read my tourist map to find things I'd never seen in the city that I claim as home (though after yesterday I'm fixin' to disown the football team). I found my way to the new Constitution Center and, after a long afternoon touring the permanent exhibits, to 9/11: A Nation Remembers. A hundred photographs by Jonathan Hyman depicted memorials of every shape, size, and material: from honorary street signs to custom Harleys. In his photos, colorful murals covered walls and elaborate tattoos covered bodies of friends and relatives. And in one photo, Bob's name and face surprised me with that punch-in-the-gut-feeling once again.

If I had read the caption before looking at the photo, had known that the mural it showed came from a wall in Philly, I would have been prepared, would have known what I was looking for, as I did that day at Ground Zero. Even walking through the exhibit that day, I'd hoped to see a name that I recognized, to make a connection. But somehow I wasn't at all prepared when it happened.

I was thinking about writing this post yesterday afternoon (if I did as much actual writing as I do thinking about writing, this blog wouldn't look nearly as neglected) when I got a text message from a friend. The gist of the message was "At some point in your life you see who really matters. Send this message to those people. I just did." And now I am, too.

The Un-Civil War

2007-09-07T18:26:00.001-05:00

My mother sent me this humorous gem this morning, which promises to
"clearly explain" the difference between the North and the South.
Since I've become such an expert on the topic in the last seven years,
I figured I should add my two cents.

The North has Bloomingdale's, the South has Dollar General. Yes, but
smart people everywhere shop at Target.

The North has coffee houses, the South has Waffle Houses. And don't let
their bragging fool you, the only "best" thing about Waffle House coffee
is that it's hot and relatively fresh at 3 a.m.

The North has dating services, the South has family reunions. Couldn't
comment; I don't have any relatives in the South to date.

The North has switchblade knives; the South has Lee Press-on Nails. 
Which only goes to prove that Southern females are far more deadly that
than their male counterparts.

The North has double last names; the South has double first names. And
unfortunate hybrid offspring need extra space at the top of the page to
write their names.

The North has Indy car races; The South has stock car races. Not so sure
that this is true any more, given that NASCAR races in New Hampshire and
Michigan and you can't go too much further north than that.

North has Cream of Wheat, the South has grits. And neither one of them is
the least bit appetizing.

The North has green salads, the South has collard greens. One comes with
bacon bits, the other comes with bacon grease.

The North has lobsters, the South has crawfish. McDonald's has yet to offer
a Southern counterpart to the McLobster Roll I had in Massachusetts, but they
do sell sweet tea.

The North has the rust belt; the South has the Bible Belt. The South IS the
Bible Belt. And it gets tighter all the time.

The forwarded email also offered this advice "for northerners moving south":

In the South: If you run your car into a ditch, don't panic. Four men in a four-
wheel drive pickup truck with a tow chain will be along shortly. Don't try to help
them, just stay out of their way. This is what they live for. Unless, of course,
you run off the road in a snowstorm. You're out of luck then, because
everyone is at the grocery store.

Don't be surprised to find movie rentals and bait in the same store. Do not buy
food at this store. In general, it's a bad idea to buy food -- especially sushi --
at any store that sells bait.

Remember, "Y'all" is singular, "all y'all" is plural, and "all y'all's" is plural
possessive. Once you've mastered this, the rest is a piece of cake.

Get used to hearing "You ain't from round here, are ya?" And get used to the idea
that someday you'll be hearing yourself say it to someone, too.

Save all manner of bacon grease. You will be instructed later on how to use it.
See the explanation of green salads vs. collard greens.

Don't be worried at not understanding what people are saying. They can't
understand you either. The first Southern statement to creep into a transplanted
Northerner's vocabulary is the adjective "big'ol," truck or "big'ol" boy. Most
Northerners begin their Southern-influenced dialect this way. All of them are in
denial about it. I actually started with "y'all," followed by "fixin' to." And I
denied heartily until I went back up North and they couldn't understand me,
either.

The proper pronunciation you learned in school no longer applies. Especially if
you learned your proper pronunciation with a non-Southern accent. Re-
exposing yourself to your native tongue can be hazardous. Visiting my mom
and listening to Eagles games on 'YSP tends to bring out my Philly accent
loud and clear, but it's a temporary, and ultimately confusing, effect.

Be advised that "He needed killin'." is a valid defense here. No Twinkies or PMS
required. Although I personally will not need any of the above, because a jury
of my peers -- twelve girls who've dated my boyfriend -- would never convict.

If you hear a Southerner exclaim, "Hey, y'all watch this," you should stay out of
the way. These are likely to be the last words he'll ever say. Just duck and run.
Don't even look back.

If there is the prediction of the slightest chance of even the smallest accumulation
of snow, your presence is required at the local grocery store. It doesn't matter
whether you need anything or not. You just have to go there. And when you get
there, you will find that the shelves are completely barren of toilet paper,
white bread, and bottled water.

Do not be surprised to find that 10-year olds own their own shotguns, they are
proficient marksmen, and their mammas taught them how to aim. They also
have a complete wardrobe of camouflage and fluorescent orange. Camouflage
for girls comes in shades of pink, in case they need to disappear into a vat
of cotton candy.

In the South, we have found that the best way to grow a lush green lawn is to
pour gravel on it and call it a driveway. Maybe that's what my boyfriend
should do with his front yard. Planting grass seed in the dead of summer and
standing out in the 110-degree heat with a garden hose didn't seem to do it.

And remember, if you do settle in the South and bear children, don't think we will
accept them as Southerners. After all, if the cat had kittens in the oven, we
wouldn't call 'em biscuits. Even if their names are Joe-Bob and Lila-Sue.

Like all emails destined to become burdens on the bandwidth of our servers,
this message concluded with instructions: 

Send this to four people that ain't related to you, and I reckon your life will turn
into a country music song 'fore you know it.

My life already is a country music song. It's called T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

Troubled Bridge Over Water

2007-08-27T17:12:00.000-05:00

CNN reports that the I-40 bridge -- a/k/a the "New Bridge" -- over the Mississippi River has been closed because part of it sunk three inches. Traffic is, of course, being diverted to the "Old Bridge." Makes you feel really safe, especially since they built the "New Bridge" because there was too much traffic on the "Old Bridge."

My boyfriend has a paranoid phobia of bridges, which pre-dates, but has been greatly magnified by, the Minnesota bridge collapse. He didn't mention the Minnesota bridge to me until about two days after it happened, so I thought at first that he'd somehow managed not to hear about it. I thought maybe his co-workers, out of sympathy for his fears, had decided to carefully shield him from this disturbing news. Not so much. When we finally did talk about it, he said that his boss had yelled "Hey, come in here, you gotta see this!" as soon as he came into the office the morning after the disaster. My boyfriend was, of course, greatly traumatized.

So I am now actively in the market for a raft, suitable for carrying one traumatized boyfriend, one incredibly patient girlfriend, and a pick-up truck across the Mississippi River when necessary. Post replies here.

I really should be better at this

2007-08-22T18:36:00.000-05:00

Especially since I very, very jokingly nominated myself for "Best Memphis Blog" in the Flyer's poll. Guess I've been pouring too much creative energy into HGTV-inspired decorating binges and not enough into here. Cable and a new apartment are a bad combination. Not that my cable works all that well, which is why the cable man cometh BACK to my apartment this Friday. Just in time for football season.

So life back in the big bad city hasn't been nearly as exciting as I should be making it, but I'm using the ridiculously hot weather as an excuse, at least for now. At least I know I have at least until October to come up with a better one. And a better excuse for why I haven't joined a gym, started going to church, found some new places to hang out. Well, some place other than the finally-painted furniture on my porch where it's too hot to sit outside. Tonight's exciting plans? Laundry, and lots of it. Sigh. No wonder I'm so bad at this.

Single in the City

2007-06-21T18:26:00.000-05:00

Life's good in the big city. My apartment is still full of boxes, and my refrigerator is still empty save for a beer and leftover hot wings. But I now have a microwave, and a broom, and a brand-new bed with a brand-new comforter and a bunch of those matching throw pillows that I've always wanted to have but never bothered to buy.

I'm also digging through a mountain of boxes rescued from my storage unit, many of which I haven't seen or touched in about three years. It's a little bit like Christmas, especially when I found my favorite coffee mug with Santa's sleigh crashed into an outhouse and Santa yelling, "Dammit, Rudolph, I said the SCHMITT house!" Life's little pleasures...

I have to put in a plug for my friend's first novel, Into the Wild, which was released today. Sarah Beth Durst (I knew her way back when she was Sarah Angelini and writing plays for college theater) is incredibly talented and really just one of the best people you could ever hope to meet. Especially when you're a timid college freshman working on your first production (I was a stagehand, and I got to play a maid in one scene). Sarah and her book deserve their own post, devoid of off-color humor about flying reindeer, and I will do my best to write them one soon. The cable guy cometh to my apartment this Saturday, and I'll be back online for real then. In the meantime, check out www.sarahbethdurst.com.

VacationBlog, Interrupted

2007-06-15T17:14:00.001-05:00

Someday I promise I will finish the tale of my vacation adventures. But, as I said, so much for plans.

I returned from vacation a day late, because I foolishly violated the fourth rule of travel:

Never book yourself on the last flight out of town; it WILL be cancelled.

But I did get back, and now I'm off on a new adventure. After two years, two months, and two weeks of co-habitating in semi-bliss, I'm moving out.

I promised myself when I started this blog that I would never whine about my boyfriend unless I could find some humor in the situation to offset the whining. So let's just say that I'm still looking for something to laugh about here. Soon as I find it, I'll let y'all in on the joke.

We're not breaking up completely; we're just moving from committed cohabitation to semi-committed semi-cohabitation. As in I'll still make the trek down to the sticks sometimes, and he says that he'll come spend some nights in my new apartment. But that may just be because he knows I got cable...

I love my apartment. I answered the ad on Monday, saw the place on Tuesday, and signed the lease on Wednesday. When I decide to turn my life completely upside down, at least I'm quick and efficient about it. But I have a sunroom in front and a deck in back, and a walk-in closet somewhere in the middle. I don't think I paid much attention to anything after I saw the closet. My landlord probably thought I wasn't impressed; I was just mentally arranging my wardrobe and imagining a life where clothes come off the hangers without wrinkles from being shoved into a space the size of, well, a non-walk-in closet.

There are still great vacation stories to be told. Like how, after two skin-cancer-conscious days at the beach, I got a raging sunburn from sitting in traffic with the SUV's sunroof open, and about my great relief that most of the guys at my 10th college reunion still had most of their hair. But I must depart. After two years of cohabitation and several before that with well-supplied roommates, I am lacking in many basic necessities of the single life. Like a broom. And a microwave. And a pint of Ben & Jerry's.

VacationBlog, Part One

2007-06-05T18:05:00.000-05:00

The plan (and there always is a plan, though it rarely ever works) was to make regular blog posts from vacation. So much for the plan.

I left town a week ago Friday, giddy with a sense of accomplishment at having packed nine days worth of vacation necessities (including my one-quart plastic Ziploc bag of 3-ounce containers of liquids and gels) into two carry-on-able bags. I had managed to achieve three of the primary goals of stress-free travel:

Never check luggage.
Never fly a bankrupt airline.
Never travel with a person who hates to travel.

I arrived in Richmond safe and sound and more or less on time, and very nearly succeeded at conning my way into a rental convertible. But I couldn't have it for a one-way rental, so I settled for an SUV with a sunroof, and headed for the home of my former roommate.

Saturday dawned hot and sunny, so we headed for the beach after making an appearance at the annual church picnic. Virginia Beach was much like I remembered it: crowded with tourists and noisy kids, but still a beach. Which is good enough for me. Bring on the sunblock.

Post-beach, we headed out for the next item on my vacation must-do list: seafood. A pound of shellfish and a margarita later, I was trying to remember exactly why I had moved to an all-but-landlocked state. Then we were ready to really party.

We headed out to for a night of dancing and drinking, bringing along my old roommate's newly-divorced friend. We promised her a crash course in 21st-century dating, and did our best to deliver. Unfortunately, we couldn't convince her to have a "Tie Me to the Bedpost" (tastes kind of like fruit punch -- very dangerous), but she did try the ones we were drinking. We also sent her out to two-step over her protests that she didn't know how, and were pleased to see that she almost seemed to be enjoying herself by the end of the song. By that point, I was enjoying my second large fruity drink and the occasional attentions of a sailor who made it his personal mission to see if he could dip me low enough to make my hair touch the floor (he did). Note to those who were at my bachelorette party lo those many years ago: this was not the same bar. Unfortunately, there was no bull in this one. At least not the mechanical kind.

More on my coastal adventures in a later post.

Live from Ringside on Saturday Night

2007-05-22T13:50:00.000-05:00

Well, not quite live. Courtesy of connections that I'm not supposed to name, my college friend and I scored ringside seats for last Saturday's "Border Battle" at the FedEx Forum. While the Forum, being in downtown Memphis, is in fact near two borders (between Tennessee and Arkansas and, a few miles further, the Tennessee-Mississippi border), the border in question was actually the one between Missouri and Arkansas. The two boxers in the main event happened to be from neighboring states.

Unfortunately, being so neighborly, they seemed to not want to hit each other, which I kind of thought was the point of a boxing match? But I am new to the sport, so I just stifled a yawn and concentrated on things that I understand better. Like criticizing the fashion choices of people who attend boxing matches, including the ring girls.

I did learn enough about boxing to know that the final undercard fight, between Edison Miranda and Kelly Pavlick, was damned good. Unlike the main event, which prompted one spectator to yell, "Just kiss him already if you ain't gonna hit him!", by the end of the Miranda-Pavlick fight you really wanted them to stop hitting each other.

The whole day on Saturday started with a bizarre chain of events that was made even more bizarre by some stuff that I found out yesterday. A little Google can be a dangerous thing. Can't say too much, because I'm sure I'm supposed to be protecting the possibly not innocent. But the whole thing is highly amusing, at least to me, and if I ever write that tell-all book, it will be the best chapter, I promise.

Between the bizarre and the boxing, my college friend and I took an excursion to Graceland, armed with her mother's shopping list of desired Elvis souvenirs. We emerged a few hours later with a Corolla-trunkful of refrigerator magnets, keychains, t-shirts, a purple fleece blanket, and, my personal favorite: my friend's picture with Elvis. A little Photoshop can be a wonderful money-making scheme. If I can get my hands on a copy of the picture, I'll post it here later.

In other news, you can add a turtle and a giant grasshopper to the running wildlife tally. Still no lot.

Lions and tigers and bears ain't nothin'

2007-05-15T10:51:00.000-05:00

So it's been a while... Not that I haven't been thinking about posting... Busy at work, and we're still looking for a lot. Although the one that fell through is now back on the market. So I may be putting the pictures back up here eventually.

In the meantime, we've been taking an excursion through Wild Kingdom. So far, we've seen cats, dogs, horses, cows, sheep, goats, a llama farm (but no llamas), chickens, ducks, geese, an ostrich (maybe it was an emu), various other birds, deer, squirrels, a lizard, two armadillos (dead), two possums (one alive, one dead), one very big, very live snake, and the trash can knocked over by our friendly neighborhood raccoon. As a side note, although armadillo roadkill is a common sight in these parts, I've never actually seen a live armadillo outside of the zoo. All of this, and we still haven't found a place to build a house.

So it's been a wild couple of weeks.

And back to square one

2007-04-18T13:00:00.000-05:00

Our lot fell through, so it looks like we won't be building a cabin in the woods after all. Guess I'm just meant to be a city girl.

The Story of a Cabin in the Woods

2007-04-15T17:21:00.000-05:00

So I didn't do very well with keeping a vicarious quitter's diary. The actual quitter, however, has been much more successful: only one lapse in over a month of quitting. Said lapse resulted in a cold and a week of wheezing, which, to be honest, was probably caused by the wacky weather rather than his one cigarette. But that didn't stop me from playing the "see, I told you so" card repeatedly.

Today's post will begin the diary of yet another adventure, one that was born, in part, from the previous. The nasty bout of bronchitis that prompted my boyfriend to quit smoking kept him home from work for about a week. One day, he drove through a subdivision where we've thought about moving, and, lo and behold, he discovered a lot for sale. To make a very long and convoluted story very short and to the point: we'll be closing on the lot in a week or so. Along the way I've learned a lot about negotiating (mainly that we're really bad at it), neighborhood associations (a convenient excuse for everyone to know everything about everyone else, but an excellent resource for potential buyers), and more about septic systems than any self-respecting Yankee girl from the city should ever have to know.

So, as I said way back when, I probably won't ever be the Yankee on Confederate Ridge Road. But I'll stick with what I've got.

Diary of a vicarious quitter

2007-03-05T18:17:00.000-06:00

My boyfriend is quitting everything. Well, actually, he's quitting smoking, again. But he -- and a nasty bout of bronchitis -- has finally scared himself into the realization that (drum roll, please): SMOKING IS BAD FOR HIM. Earlier this winter he decided that his smoking was bad for me, so he started smoking outside. His rationalization: second-hand smoke is worse than first-hand smoke, and it was all worse for me because I don't exercise. Smoking, he argued, obviously wasn't bothering him, since he could still jog five miles every night. But soon it got to be not quite every night, and then not quite five miles, and finally he came sweating and wheezing into the house and declared that he needed to quit smoking. Then he woke up the next morning sweating and wheezing from some hybrid of bronchitis, possible pneumonia, and the flu, and declared that he was quitting smoking immediately.

So he spent the past weekend wheezing and coughing and surfing the web for articles about various lung diseases. "Read this," he would say to me, pointing to a page of medical gibberish. "What does it mean?" When I replied that I had no earthly idea, he would ask, "Well, do you think I have it?" I tried, repeatedly, to gently explain that since I had no earthly idea what "it" was, I could not tell him whether or not he had "it." I managed to keep my patience intact and not resort to telling him that, yes, he had "it" and he'd be dead by morning.

The good thing for him is that he's too sick to realize that he's in nicotine withdrawal. The bad thing for me is that he is not too sick to be in nicotine withdrawal. Having a sick boyfriend in nicotine withdrawal is like having a two-year-old and a new puppy all at once. My co-worker had sent me a 60-page unedited draft to read "in my spare time," and I tried to work my way through it on Sunday night amidst a hailstorm of questions.
"What are you reading?"
"How long is it?"
"Are you going to read the whole thing?"
"Do you have to?"
"What page are you on now?"
"What page are you on now?"
"What page are you on NOW?"

I surrendered at page 40. Which is the only unvicarious quitting I did.

As I said, my boyfriend is quitting everything. In an Advil-and-antibiotic-induced moment of "feeling better" on Saturday, he went to the grocery store and came back with four different kinds of veggie burgers. And veggie lasagna. "I can't eat red meat anymore; I don't want to get colon cancer." OK, but have you ever heard of CHICKEN? Or fish? Pork or turkey, maybe? Nope. Veggie burgers. I ate leftover cheeseburger pizza and gloated about the fact that the pizza guy liked my Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker.

He's also quitting second-hand smoke, so no more trips to our favorite haze-filled Saturday night hangout. "We'll find a bar where people don't smoke," he promised me. What's all this "we"? Are "we" moving to New York City?

So I am heading home to another night of all things veggie and lung-cancer- preventing. My boyfriend felt well enough to go back to the store and get spinach egg noodles and three-cheese sauce. Such is the life of a vicarious quitter.

Fighting back

2007-02-23T18:44:00.000-06:00

I've finally broken down and accepted the fact that I am never going to be an anal-retentive person whose car is so clean as to be completely barren of any attraction to would-be thieves. I've also realized that what little "luck" I have will run out, and I will someday be victimized by a car thief who actually knows how to steal a car. And since my car is now many miles past its factory warranty, I no longer have to worry about violating it by using an "after-market" product.

So I, like many cell-phone-toting, Blackberry-worshiping, Palm-piloting others, plan to compensate for my general carelessness and lack of organizational skills with an overpriced electronic gadget. I'm buying a car alarm. Did you hear that, scumbags? A car alarm. A big, loud, shrieking one that yells, "Get the f*** away from my car, @$hole!" Of course, I won't be able to set it at home, because I doubt that it would deter my overweight cat from sitting on top of my car to keep his feet dry when it rains. Or the giant raccoon from knocking the trashcans into my front bumper as he tips them over. But it would make me even more unpopular with the neighbors than my Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker does.

I'm sorely tempted to go for the whole enchilada: keyless entry, remote start. Not that I need it, but it makes it feel more like I'm getting revenge than caving in. "Look, scumbags, you think you've got me cowering in fear because you made me buy a car alarm, but ha-ha, I am living BETTER than I was before you smashed my window and stole my stuff!"

When I got done being panicked about being robbed (funny, the more times you go through it, the easier it gets), and finished the usual routine -- police report (clothed, this time, unlike in last post's adventures), freeze the bank account (though I realized afterwards that my checks actually hadn't been stolen), try to remember what I left where in the car and if any of it was worth anything, call the auto glass guy -- I tried to settle into my usual "could have been worse," glass-half-full mode. It didn't work as well this time, though.

Maybe I'm just tired and cranky, but a really stubborn part of me remains supremely pi$$ed off that I can't leave stuff in my car when it's convenient to do so. Why shouldn't I pull an all-nighter at work and swing by Starbucks on my way home instead of interrupting my flow to pack up a load of stuff, transfer a bunch of files, and fight traffic all the way to my safe, suburban home in the sticks to realize that I left something I need sitting on my desk 35 minutes and a gallon of gas away? And why do I, and apparently an ever-growing portion of the population, have to live in the sticks to feel safe, anyway?

The first time my car was vandalized, I was living in a quaint (read: run-down-but-not-yet- falling-down) apartment in the "historic district" of a city in Virginia. Which meant that most of my neighbors were paying a lot more than I was to live in not-quite-as-run-down apartments, and the only place to park was on the street. When I came home from work one day, there were two African-American kids on one bicycle riding down my street. I parked my car and started walking to my apartment, and the little voice in my head said, "you shouldn't leave your stuff in your car; go back and get it." I quickly dismissed it as the most racist thought I had ever had; I was embarrassed to let those two boys see me look at them, see that they were Black, and then think better of leaving stuff in my car. I walked on into my apartment, praising myself for being so liberal and enlightened.

The next morning, as I stood outside waiting for the tow truck to retrieve my undrivable car with the broken window and busted ignition, I had a fleeting thought that maybe I needed to be a little less liberal. I did also briefly think that my little voice might be psychic.

Many break-ins later (read the post before this one), I think I'm not psychic, just resigned. Which, I want to think, is not the same as being prejudiced, or even pessimistic. I'm not saying that the two boys on the bicycle broke into my car all those years ago, or that I know anything about any of the thieves I've attracted in the years since (except that one of them was named Tony and had a jealous girlfriend). I just know that the way I choose to live my life (leaving my car parked in a public space at night with stuff in it) is apparently so much of a temptation for some people that they can't do the right thing and leave my $h!t alone. It's a good thing they've never seen me in a short skirt and high heels.

Life in the big city

2007-02-17T17:24:00.000-06:00

I had planned to return to my long-neglected blog with a lighthearted post about my new striptease aerobics class (the best part so far has been the reaction I get when I tell former boyfriends about it). In fact, I planned to set aside some time this weekend to write, play Ms. Fix-it around the house, and check out Soup Sunday. I burned a good bit of midnight oil at work on Friday night; I had a project that I wanted to get done before Monday, and I didn't want to have to work on it over the weekend. Could have taken it home, but things were clicking along well at my desk and I just kept plugging away.

I wasn't altogether surprised that my car got broken into. In fact, I guess I expected it. Despite having been a victim a few times before, I haven't broken the bad habit of leaving stuff in my car. Especially stuff that I know I'm going to need to put back in my car in the near future. I guess I should look on the bright side: now there's less to take out.

As is usually my luck in victimhood, the thieves didn't get anything that will be of much use to them. In fact, my vehicles seem to attract dumb crooks. The first time my car got burglarized, my favorite backpack was taken. Since it was before the dawn of online banking, I had the remains of my monthly bill-paying (but no wallet and no checks) in the bag. The woman at the student loan company was quite amused when I called to get a new book of payment coupons. I told her to be sure to let me know if anyone actually mailed a payment in with one of the old ones.

Those first thieves of mine had apparently seen the episode of COPS, I think my friend said it was, where they talked about how you can start a car by jamming a screwdriver into the ignition and forcing it to turn. Obviously they didn't pay close enough attention, 'cause it didn't work for them. And I learned the peril of buying a new cheap imported car instead of a used one: spare parts are hard to come by in the first year or so. Mine had to come off an assembly line in Japan, or so the dealer said. But I think he was getting a kickback from the rental car place.

So I opted to lease American next time around. This time the thieves popped the lock out of the door and went straight (and unsuccessfully) for the standard issue factory radio, conveniently (for me) ignoring the $60 in cash I had stashed in the center console. A later go-round (when my car happened to be relatively empty) yielded the thief about $2 in change and my boyfriend's $9 watch from Wal-Mart. He left the $150 cowboy hat and a $1000 dent where his first attempt to throw a brick through the window went wide to the right.

Perhaps the most memorable episode was the one where I actually got some of my stuff back. Two of the city's finest showed up on my doorstep at an obscene hour of the morning, having found my address on an old parking ticket (of course I've paid it, Officer) that had been in my glove box. My dazed roommate let them in, and I stumbled into the living room in my underwear before she had a chance to warn me. Hard to say who was most embarrassed, 'cause I, unlike the cops, wasn't awake enough to care all that much. My things had been stuffed into my backpack (not my favorite one, which I've never been able to replace) and dumped in a parking lot.

That was also the first time I actually had any personal contact with my thief, or at least someone who knew him. After replacing my stolen cell phone, I got a call from a girl who sounded very indignant that I, a female, had answered my own phone. I asked her who had called her from that number, and she told me that Tony had called her the night before. I let her get good and jealous before I told her that her beloved Tony wasn't a playa, he was just a lousy thief.

Since most of my bad automotive luck has occurred in the parking lots of bars, for a while I thought that God was trying to tell me to quit drinking so much. So last night I skipped a planned trip to the bar and worked late instead. Wonder what God's trying to tell me now?

Back again...

2007-01-22T12:46:00.000-06:00

Not much time to write in the past couple of weeks. I worked on the local middle/high school production of Les Miserables.

This is my second go-round with Les Miz on a high school stage, and I'm always amazed by kids who can sing, no matter what they're singing. Honestly, I'm amazed by anyone who can sing, 'cause I sure can't.

I still remember the first time I saw Les Miz, on a high school trip to the Broadway production. I spent the entire second act sobbing into a cocktail napkin torn in half. My friend Marie was sobbing into the other half. To this day, I still get a little choked up by "A Little Fall of Rain" and "Bring Him Home."

Not so much so for the kids who came to our two school performances on Monday. Maybe it was because the acting wasn't quite Broadway-caliber (though it wasn't half-bad for a bunch of teenagers), or maybe it was because they all knew they'd see Eponine, Gavroche, and the student-soldiers in their fifth period math class the next day. But I couldn't help but think that some of the actors and audience members might find themselves in a situation where the guns aren't plastic and the dead don't scamper offstage once the lights go down. One of my favorite actors from last year's production is at the Air Force Academy this year. I don't know if any of the other students have military service in their future, or if any of the ones graduating this year will. But it made me look at and listen to the show with a different perspective than I had in high school or even when I did the show three years ago.

The Single Majority

2007-01-18T18:54:00.000-06:00

The New York Times (my favorite morning procastination device while I try to absorb enough caffeine to function like a normal human being) reports that 51% of women are now living without spouses. Well y'all, welcome to my world.

Not that all of us who are living without spouses are unmarried; some are temporarily separated by choice or by situation. But there's probably a lot like me, comfortably "shacked up" and enjoying the arrangement, thank you very much. Although I'd probably enjoy it more in a house with walk-in closets.

The New York Times is also the source of two of my favorite articles of late, one ("Saying Yes to Mess") that I shared with my boyfriend/housemate and one ("What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage") that I kept as my little secret. The boyfriend was not amused when I quoted the line in the former about really neat people being "humorless and inflexible prigs." But the truth hurts, ya know?

Both of the articles have been sources of comfort, inspiration, and outright laughter as I explore "living without a spouse" and the idea -- so incompatible with the mantra of "till death do us part" -- that living with another person is a choice that I get to make every day. If I really hated stubbing my toe on the boots he leaves right between the bedroom door and bedside lamp, arguing about how the extra light bulb in the bathroom fixture really is essential to keep me from slitting my ankles when I shave my legs and not just a waste of electricity, and (prepare to gasp in horror) living with a Republican, I wouldn't have to. But then I'd really have nothing to write about.

Writer's Block Already?

2007-01-17T18:50:00.001-06:00

If you want a boring life, I think your best bet is to start a blog. As soon as you do, all the crazy things that happen to you and the people in your life -- the things that you thought you'd love to blog about -- will stop happening. Or maybe they -- and your life -- will suddenly seem less interesting, and two weeks into the blog you'll feel like you've got nothing to say.

But maybe I'm just not ready to expose all the crazy things that happen to people in my life yet, and nothing recently has provoked me to the point of spewing my political, social, religious, or sexual guts yet.

Or maybe it has. I didn't think I'd end up writing much about religion, because I'm about as un-religious as it gets. Especially here in the South, where everyone seems to have a "church home" and ministers approach you in the grocery store and invite you to theirs. Not the type of "home" that I'm used to having a man invite me to -- or the type of man I'm used to being invited by, but that's another story.

Lately either the pressure of living under the buckle of the Bible belt or subconscious lingering doubt about the fate of my soul has started me on a half-hearted search for a "church home." I'm a recovering Catholic with a laundry list of complaints about the current state of that particular faith, so I turned my attention almost immediately to the numerous Protestant possibilities. A brief stint of being married to a Baptist convinced me that wasn't the direction to go. Not because I have anything against Baptists, even the one that I married, but because going to Baptist services made me miss the familiar Catholic Mass. Some people might argue that I want churchgoing to be a mindless ritual rather than a deep religious experience, but I find it hard to experience religion deeply when I'm worrying about saying the wrong prayer, standing when I should sit, or reading aloud during the parts that only the minister should read.

After attending a funeral at an Episcopal church, I thought I'd found the perfect solution: a service that was as comfortable as last century's jeans in a denomination that's living in this century (or at least some of it is). But there's no Episcopal church in my small town, and I realized that I needed to be practical above all else: I have a much better chance of getting to church on Sunday if I minimize the effort required. I decided that I would check out the local Catholic church, try to have an open mind and thick skin, and concentrate on deep religious experience rather than deep resentment of Catholic doctrine.

My decision hit a brick wall when I turned on NPR the next day to hear their series of stories on the scandals that have plagued the Catholic Church, and I realized that I'm not ready to forgive, forget, and support with my collection dollars all the practices, preachings, and ideas that drove me from the Catholic Church in the first place.

I don't believe the people who say that in order to embrace a faith you have to embrace all of its laws and teachings wholesale. I believe in coming as close as I can to doing right and having a long talk with God about the times I fall short. But I realized that there wasn't much about the Catholic Church that I could embrace anymore that wouldn't leave me feeling a little bit dirty and a lot bit disillusioned.

I do credit my thirteen years of Catholic education for teaching me how to have those long talks with God. And for helping me to become an intelligent person capable of questioning and drawing my own conclusions rather than swallowing what I'm fed. Maybe their success in that is part of what's led to the Catholic Church's decline.

So I'm still church-homeless, though I'm taking another look at an Episcopal church that's not too far from the couch where I spend my Sunday mornings now. In the meantime, I'm sticking to long talks with God and hoping for the best.

And so the countdown starts for next season

2007-01-16T16:33:00.000-06:00

Saints 27, Eagles 24.

The Eagles fan in the seat beside me (we were in a surprisingly large pocket of green just below the rafters of the Superdome) brought his lucky flask of Jack Daniels. So I shared sips of whiskey with strangers for each touchdown that the Birds scored. Right about the time the flask ran dry, the Eagles ran out of gas. Coincidence?

Probably. The Saints and their fans deserved to win the game, and the sentimental "gotta-root-for-the-good-story" part of me is glad they did. I rooted for them all season except for the two weekends that they played -- and beat -- us. If we had to lose, I'm glad it was to give New Orleans the chance to keep going. Of course, I'd rather that we didn't have to lose. But that's just part of being an Eagles fan. Sigh.

But the football-oblivious boyfriend has decided to become a Saints fan. So hopefully we'll make more trips to the Superdome next season. Till then, we'll be rooting for the Saints from home.

Fly, Eagles, Fly

2007-01-07T20:27:00.000-06:00

Philadelphia Eagles 23, New York Giants 20.
Playoff tickets for the game next Saturday night in New Orleans: a ridiculous amount of money.
Gas to and from New Orleans: about $100.
Hotel room in New Orleans: about the same.
Twelve hours in the car with the football-oblivious boyfriend: quality couple time.
Watching my team extend the season that many of us thought was finished a month ago: priceless.

Yes, this particular Yankee bleeds green, and now her wallet does too.

A hui hou

2007-01-05T17:32:00.000-06:00

Last night I said goodbye to my borrowed parents. They're moving to Hawaii for good next week.

I borrowed them (from their kids, who live out of town) when I moved here about six years ago. I already had an adopted mom (who really belonged to my best friend from high school) and surrogate parents (when I lived in Virginia). I also have two perfectly good birth parents and a recently-added stepfather. But it's nice to be able to borrow a pair of parents when you're in a new town. Especially when they're as wonderful as mine have been.

As we were leaving the restaurant, they taught me the Hawaiian phrase "a hui hou," which means "until we meet again." Which I hope will be soon. The island life is a lot more tempting now that I know I can bring the $800 alleycat without having to quarantine him. And I wouldn't even need to find a new pair of parents to borrow.

So, to my borrowed parents, who have meant more to me than I could ever tell them and have loved me as unconditionally as those who brought me into this world, "a hui hou." And mahalo.

Well, not quite...

2007-01-03T18:05:00.000-06:00

I don't actually live on Confederate Ridge Road -- yet. And I probably never will. My boyfriend and I were driving around aimlessly looking for a place to move to (not that he'll ever sell the house like he's been talking about for the last three years). This particular aimless drive took place at about the same time I started thinking about writing a blog (like I've been talking about for the past six months or so -- nobody's perfect).

We drove past Confederate Ridge Road and the house on the corner with the giant stars and bars flying high, and my boyfriend said, "wouldn't you just looove to live around here?"

"Of course, dear. I'd just never be able to open my mouth around the neighbors. I don't think they like Yankees much on Confederate Ridge Road." And in the back of my mind, the little voice said, "What a great name for a blog, if you ever get off your a$$ and start one like you've been saying you're going to."

So it's the time for New Year's resolutions, and I put "starting a blog" somewhere on the list with organizing my life, keeping my car clean, and working out more. OK, working out at all, ever. So far this year I've hiked about three miles (to and from the beach in high-heeled flip-flops -- not recommended), rearranged one pile on my endlessly cluttered desk at work, and made a list of things in the house that need for my boyfriend to organize them. Tonight when I get home I'll throw out the empty Oreo package in my car. Oh, yeah, and I started this blog.

That last item actually has a lot less to do with the whole New Year's resolution thing than with that other New Year's tradition: the bringing to mind of old forgotten acquaintances that people who actually know the words to "Auld Lang Syne" sing about at midnight. So last night after the boyfriend went to bed, I googled my high school sweetheart. As far as I can tell, he's making wine back in the 'burbs where we grew up. But maybe that's not him. Another high school boyfriend -- or someone with the same name who lives in the same city -- is designing video games.

Then I googled a summer romance from my college days. He apparently launched his website -- fourth on the list of Google results for his name -- long before I even started thinking about talking about writing a blog. Among his many posts that I sat reading until six this morning was an oblique reference to... me.

I was touched to think that he remembered me then (the post dated about eight years after we did), and might still remember me now (he does). And it resolved the last lingering doubt that I had about starting a blog of my own: how would my friends, family, co-workers, etc., feel if they ever realized they were reading about themselves? Hopefully they'll feel as I did, and then maybe they'll want to start their own blogs, too.

So that's roughly how I got here today and a taste of some the things you'll probably read about if I keep posting and you keep reading.