Having been raised in Texas I am, by nature, a sun baby and a hot weather girl (read that as you please). Give me sun and lots of it and I'm a happy camper. I can even tolerate relatively tough cold weather IF there is an abundant source of sunlight. As it is, living in DC is about as far north as I can tolerate and still stay sane. I did two years hard time in the mid-west and learned this lesson at great personal sacrifice. By the time February rolls around in DC I'm climbing the walls jonesing for a little sun. Just two days of sun. That's all I need and I'll quit pacing at the window like a frantic house cat. So with this in mind, and knowing that this would be a milestone birthday for me, I succumbed to a moment of pure decadence and booked a cruise for myself in January.
Now this is where the story gets sad. I asked everyone I knew if they would like to come with me. Everyone. I asked friends. I asked family. Nope, not a one would go. My married friends all have spouses and my single friends are all destitute. I came very close to inviting the produce guy at the supermarket who always checks me out when I'm buying organic spinach (again, read that as you please), but figured that if that went south the negative consequences might hit a little to close to home. No, if I was going to go on a cruise in January, I was going to have to go all by lonesome. Well, okay then. I said to myself, Self, you've traveled much farther on your own and had great adventures by yourself; there is no reason not to take to the high seas on your own. (Just between you and me, myself can get a little preachy and begin to sound like a bad motivational speaker, but her intentions are pure and ultimately no harm has ever endured from her busybody ways.) So just like that I booked that cruise -- my very first cruise ever.
As it happens there were a number of factors which influenced my booking the cruise. The first and foremost factor being the promise of at least two days of sun in the middle of January when I knew I would most desperately need it. The next factor was of course price, but there are a lot options available when it comes to cruising so that didn't box me in too much at the outset. Then I discovered that I could sail out of the Port of Baltimore. Very quickly cruising as a vacation option suddenly became a much better financial choice because I wasn't going to have to go to the expense of flying to the port of origin. An inexpensive cruise becomes much more expensive if you have to purchase round trip airfare just to get to and from the boat. So, yea! for sailing out of Baltimore. Then I discovered that there was a cruise leaving on my birthday! That's got to be fortuitous, right? Lonely, single woman cruising out of Baltimore in January--that's got fabulous adventure written all over it! So I booked my little birthday cruise and, knowing that all I really wanted out of the bargain was two days of sun, I booked the least expensive inside cabin I could find. It was a marvelous boon to have the cruise line call me several weeks later to inform me that, with my permission of course and at no additional expense, they were going to upgrade my cabin! It seems that the ship was about to undergo some renovation and that by the time I set sail the cabin I originally booked would have been converted to a storage closet. Would I mind terribly much if they moved me to an cabin with an obstructed view? Of course not! say I.
So that's how I found myself in January on my way to the Bahamas celebrating my birthday on the Carnival Pride. It was only while I was on the cruise that I discovered certain key details which could have perhaps better shaped my expectations of said cruise experience. Such is the fate of the cruise novice. It turns out that this cruise is the cheapest cruise on the cheapest cruise line of the entire year. At no other time will you find such a rock bottom price for adventure. It also gradually came to my attention over the course of the week long cruise that the Carnival Pride is in fact the failed dedicated LGBT ship of the line. So, not only have I managed to book myself on a gay cruise ship, but on a failed gay cruise ship. Happy Birthday, Goo! Wasn't this always how you dreamed of spending your fortieth birthday? Alone, surrounded by strangers--octogenarians, frat boys, and family reunions--on the saddest gay ship (or the gayest sad ship) in the fleet? Bon voyage, Goo! Don't take it too hard. It could be worse. At least you're not like the chick at the next table who's friend-with-benefits decided the benefits weren't good enough for a cruise to the Bahamas. You might be cruising alone, but at least you didn't get stuck for someone else's fare.
And that's the story of my birthday this year. :) I've got more cruise stories. More sad, gay, cruise stories, but I think this is enough for a start. My apologies to those of you who have been waiting six months for me to tell you anything about this. And if I've been so out of touch that you haven't even known you were waiting for stories about this, well, my apologies for that too.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
please, step away from the cookies
NAPLES, Fla. — Police say a brawl between roommates over Girl Scout cookies led to assault charges against one of them.
According to the Naples Daily News, the Collier County Sheriff's Office reports that 31-year-old Hersha Howard woke up her roommate early Sunday and accused her of eating her Thin Mints.
They argued and deputies say that it turned physical with Howard chasing her roommate with scissors and hitting her repeatedly with a board and then a sign.
Police say the roommate's husband tried to separate them. The roommate said she gave the cookies to Howard's children.
Howard is charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. She was released Monday on $10,000 bail.
A telephone listing for Howard could not be immediately found.
The Associated Press
Updated: 7:42 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011
Posted: 6:33 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011
Found at Palm Beach Post
According to the Naples Daily News, the Collier County Sheriff's Office reports that 31-year-old Hersha Howard woke up her roommate early Sunday and accused her of eating her Thin Mints.
They argued and deputies say that it turned physical with Howard chasing her roommate with scissors and hitting her repeatedly with a board and then a sign.
Police say the roommate's husband tried to separate them. The roommate said she gave the cookies to Howard's children.
Howard is charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. She was released Monday on $10,000 bail.
A telephone listing for Howard could not be immediately found.
The Associated Press
Updated: 7:42 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011
Posted: 6:33 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011
Found at Palm Beach Post
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
miss kate hardcastle
Back in August in the midst of all the workplace nonsense - a sort of haphazard redistricting of responsibilities - my new boss (formerly my colleague) and I had a tough conversation about communication. We both were aware that in all the change our ability to communicate easily with one another was suffering. This had been one of my major concerns about the new structure; up to this point we had been wonderfully, happily collaborative peers. Now we were boss and subordinate.
In the course of this conversation we covered a lot of ground, and, at least from my point of view, not all of it was legitimate territory. One of the criticisms which came my way was that sometimes I am condescending. To which I replied, “That’s not always a bad thing.” My boss, “Umm, yeah it is.”
Now, I've heard variations on this theme since early childhood. I have variously been described as condescending, arrogant, aggressive, know-it-all, stuck up, and a bitch. This last was mostly during my teen years; I don’t miss high school. I've also been described as confident, assured, self-possessed, intelligent, and a natural leader and teacher. Often, but not always, by the same people who employ the less positive-sounding phrases.
Yesterday my boss and I were talking again. Just to be clear, while the previous conversation was difficult, it did a lot to clear the air and we've been working together well ever since. We have had occasional flare-ups, but nothing insurmountable. In the course of our conversation yesterday she brought up her previous comment about condescension. Having reflected more on the subject she has determined that what she perceives as condescension is really just me being right. That it is her ego getting in the way which colors how she receives questions and information from me.
To my mind, what would be truly patronizing is me agreeing with her and reveling in this exchange. In reality, my actual response was, “No, no, no. I’m not always right. Don’t persuade yourself that I am.” This dynamic too easily becomes a loaded weapon and it’s not one I care to shoulder, thank you very much.
Unfortunately for my boss she inherited with her new position a tremendous amount of long-standing friction between departments and, in some cases, between colleagues, much of which has, thankfully, died down over the last several months. However, she was previously out-of-the-loop in a lot of these tensions, so being confronted with the depth of them has caught her off-guard. She finds herself in constant mediation of workplace squabbles which draw her attention away from the mountainous workload we carry. We are all, every one of us, feeling the strain of long hours and too much work. Certainly, neither she nor I is exempt from this.
The only way we’re going to get through it is if we work together. We all know it, still we all find it hard to do. There is all the bad history to overcome, all the better communication practices we need to learn, and all the ego of which each of us needs to let go. Our work is fundamentally collaborative and when we shortcut the process of working together, not only does the product suffer so does the environment in which we work. We all have to begin on a level playing field. We have to find the lowest common denominator from which we can expand our process. Together we must let go of our lofty sense of who each of us is and come down to that place where we can meet as equals.
In short, we must condescend.
In the course of this conversation we covered a lot of ground, and, at least from my point of view, not all of it was legitimate territory. One of the criticisms which came my way was that sometimes I am condescending. To which I replied, “That’s not always a bad thing.” My boss, “Umm, yeah it is.”
Now, I've heard variations on this theme since early childhood. I have variously been described as condescending, arrogant, aggressive, know-it-all, stuck up, and a bitch. This last was mostly during my teen years; I don’t miss high school. I've also been described as confident, assured, self-possessed, intelligent, and a natural leader and teacher. Often, but not always, by the same people who employ the less positive-sounding phrases.
Yesterday my boss and I were talking again. Just to be clear, while the previous conversation was difficult, it did a lot to clear the air and we've been working together well ever since. We have had occasional flare-ups, but nothing insurmountable. In the course of our conversation yesterday she brought up her previous comment about condescension. Having reflected more on the subject she has determined that what she perceives as condescension is really just me being right. That it is her ego getting in the way which colors how she receives questions and information from me.
To my mind, what would be truly patronizing is me agreeing with her and reveling in this exchange. In reality, my actual response was, “No, no, no. I’m not always right. Don’t persuade yourself that I am.” This dynamic too easily becomes a loaded weapon and it’s not one I care to shoulder, thank you very much.
Unfortunately for my boss she inherited with her new position a tremendous amount of long-standing friction between departments and, in some cases, between colleagues, much of which has, thankfully, died down over the last several months. However, she was previously out-of-the-loop in a lot of these tensions, so being confronted with the depth of them has caught her off-guard. She finds herself in constant mediation of workplace squabbles which draw her attention away from the mountainous workload we carry. We are all, every one of us, feeling the strain of long hours and too much work. Certainly, neither she nor I is exempt from this.
The only way we’re going to get through it is if we work together. We all know it, still we all find it hard to do. There is all the bad history to overcome, all the better communication practices we need to learn, and all the ego of which each of us needs to let go. Our work is fundamentally collaborative and when we shortcut the process of working together, not only does the product suffer so does the environment in which we work. We all have to begin on a level playing field. We have to find the lowest common denominator from which we can expand our process. Together we must let go of our lofty sense of who each of us is and come down to that place where we can meet as equals.
In short, we must condescend.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
cutlery
A new phrase quickly making its way into our workplace lingo is, "May I borrow your fruit knife?" This phrase is understood to be code for, "I'm about to stick a shiv in someone."
The variant, "Where is your fruit knife?", often expelled in duple iterations, is likewise understood to take on the slightly more emphatic meaning, "Seriously, I'm about to cut the bitch."
The quick rise in usage is seen to have a correlation in the popularity of summer stone fruit among staff and a general sense of unrest.
There is some expectation that use of these catchy new phrases will taper off as autumnal fruits come into season.
My thanks to John and Katie Koellen for providing said knife as a holiday gift to staff. I have found it comes in quite handy.
The variant, "Where is your fruit knife?", often expelled in duple iterations, is likewise understood to take on the slightly more emphatic meaning, "Seriously, I'm about to cut the bitch."
The quick rise in usage is seen to have a correlation in the popularity of summer stone fruit among staff and a general sense of unrest.
There is some expectation that use of these catchy new phrases will taper off as autumnal fruits come into season.
My thanks to John and Katie Koellen for providing said knife as a holiday gift to staff. I have found it comes in quite handy.
Monday, August 30, 2010
paradise
I think I may have found the most wonderful place on earth.
When you come to visit, I'll take you there.
When you come to visit, I'll take you there.
Monday, August 2, 2010
just pict
This post is solely for the purpose of making Lit jealous.
And then, just rub it in.
And, finally...
Mmmmm...veggies...
And then, just rub it in.
And, finally...
Mmmmm...veggies...
Friday, February 12, 2010
for the record
I have discovered that as weird and twitchy and anxiety ridden as I become when massive amounts of snow fall from the sky and pile up all around me trapping me indoors, that is NOTHING compared with how nuts I get when massive amounts of snow fall from the sky and pile up all around me trapping me indoors while a former president is whisked away to the hospital with chest pains the week before Ash Wednesday. Just sayin'. For the record. Not a happy feeling.
I made it to work today and Bill went home, so all is now right with the world. Pippa has passed. Please do not scare me like that again.
I made it to work today and Bill went home, so all is now right with the world. Pippa has passed. Please do not scare me like that again.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
weather update
I usually envy my neighbors who, thanks to winds, direction, and position in the building, get bigger snowdrifts than I piling up on their balcony rails. Let's be clear, I hate the snow but I can be both greedy and competitive. Today, however, I actually have a drift ON my balcony, not just on the ledge. I consider this a victory in my favor. Mock me if you must.
I'm also very aware today of the cracks in my concrete balcony. What kind of severe temperatures and snow buildup could my balcony withstand before simply snapping in two and disappearing down the side of the building? I'm on the sixteenth floor, so an avalanche scenario is not completely out of the question. And, without the balcony, there would be no need to get all worked up about the drifts.
I'm also very aware today of the cracks in my concrete balcony. What kind of severe temperatures and snow buildup could my balcony withstand before simply snapping in two and disappearing down the side of the building? I'm on the sixteenth floor, so an avalanche scenario is not completely out of the question. And, without the balcony, there would be no need to get all worked up about the drifts.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
snow days
I hate snow. I mean, I really hate snow. It is evil and will do its level best to ruin your life. I hate snow. People think I'm exaggerating when I talk about my intense loathing for snow, but I'm not. I hate it. It's occasionally attractive in a photo or painting, but it doesn't have a frame around it snow is awful.
We had ghastly amounts of snow here at the end of last week and over the weekend. So much so that the plows haven't been able to keep up with the snowfall and some roads still haven't been cleared. Thousands of people are without power. The feds, and schools, and a lot of businesses have been closed since last Friday. Now it's snowing again. We anticipate maybe another ten inches before morning. AAAARGH!!!!
I had to go in to work today. I didn't drive; I took the bus--a 90 minute trip each way. On a nice day I can walk it in 45. I hate snow. The roads are a mess and the sidewalks are even worse. Thanks to the snow, I spent the entire day with my stomach in knots trying to get four days worth of work done in six hours and then get back home before nightfall when you have no hope of seeing the icy patches on the path in front of you. I'm jittery and freaked out and desperately want some cookies to distract me from being jittery and freaked out, but there's no way in heck I'm leaving my apartment now that I've made it home and I know I wouldn't even be able to taste cookies (what with being all jittery and freaked out) and would just snarf the entire package of cookies without even thinking about it. This is why I don't keep cookies in the house.
However, I may need to start keeping tranquilizers in the house. You know, for the snow days.
We had ghastly amounts of snow here at the end of last week and over the weekend. So much so that the plows haven't been able to keep up with the snowfall and some roads still haven't been cleared. Thousands of people are without power. The feds, and schools, and a lot of businesses have been closed since last Friday. Now it's snowing again. We anticipate maybe another ten inches before morning. AAAARGH!!!!
I had to go in to work today. I didn't drive; I took the bus--a 90 minute trip each way. On a nice day I can walk it in 45. I hate snow. The roads are a mess and the sidewalks are even worse. Thanks to the snow, I spent the entire day with my stomach in knots trying to get four days worth of work done in six hours and then get back home before nightfall when you have no hope of seeing the icy patches on the path in front of you. I'm jittery and freaked out and desperately want some cookies to distract me from being jittery and freaked out, but there's no way in heck I'm leaving my apartment now that I've made it home and I know I wouldn't even be able to taste cookies (what with being all jittery and freaked out) and would just snarf the entire package of cookies without even thinking about it. This is why I don't keep cookies in the house.
However, I may need to start keeping tranquilizers in the house. You know, for the snow days.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
may your heart be light
I hope you’re having a happy Christmas. And, if Christmas isn’t your thing, I hope you’re finding a reason to celebrate as we move from one calendar year into the next.
Speaking for myself, which is pretty much what one does on a blog, I’ve had lovely holiday thus far. I’ve gotten another few months reprieve on moving (hallelujah!) and work is going reasonably well at the moment. And while I haven’t had much in the way of vacation this year, I am receiving some comp time as we wind down post-Christmas Day.
For those of you who may not know, the year started with work on the Presidential Inaugural Prayer Service. Mid-year, I was working on the 76th General Convention of The Episcopal Church. Since August I’ve been in a constant whirlwind of weddings, funerals, Sundays and special services, concluding with a major revamp of print materials for Christmas services in addition to writing what amounts to promotional copy for ministries and services.
So, yeah, big year.
Oh! I almost forgot; one of my poems made a public debut as, well, sacred text. I wrote it as a hymn text and shared it with a friend who chose to include it in a Benedictine worship event. There’s been a little noise about setting the complete text to music. I don’t put a lot of stock in that. We’ll see what happens.
I think that’s most of the major stuff that I did this year.
Oh! And I saw Hair in New York with Plug and we ended up dancing on stage at the end. After all these years, we finally got our big break and performed on Broadway. We were fabulous and received a standing ovation as the sun shone in.
Okay, I think that really is all of the milestones for this year.
There are also a couple of things that I’m not doing. I’m not singing in a choir this season. I’m still taking voice lessons, but—for the moment—I’m not doing any choral work. There are a lot of reasons for this, but basically it boils down to my deep-seated belief that singing in a congregational choir should be ministry in relationship with God. If it’s not ministry, one that serves a broader community while nurturing the community of the choir, then what differentiates it from a civic choir or the opera chorus? It was pretty clear to me that the desire was to have a volunteer choir that functioned as a professional choir, in the sense that a professional chorister is a person doing a job, without feeling, without motive beyond a paycheck, and certainly without God. Obviously, I can go on and on about this, but I won’t.
I will say that singing with this group did a lot to improve my singing. I’m probably singing better now than I ever have. My voice coach, Kayo, warned me at our last session that my voice is about to get a lot bigger. That scares the crap out of me; my voice is already much larger now than it was a couple of years ago. Kayo did, however, commend me for my decision not to sing chorally this year. She says now that I’m not trying to match my idea of what a director is looking for, nor trying to “blend” with other unhealthy sopranos, my real voice is beginning to emerge. Kayo is also suggesting, firmly, that I step down from the excruciating heights of high sopranoland—not that I don’t have the notes, but that’s not where my voice is at its best. Kayo’s promising to come up with some interesting challenges for me for the Spring. I can’t wait to see where I end up.
The other thing I’m not doing at the moment is regularly attending worship. Heresy, I know. I jumped into singing with the last choir because I needed, NEEDED, a place to sing, but I always knew it wasn’t the right place for me to pray. Now, I’m taking my time. I’ve been strongly encouraged to dive into the deep end of Latino mission in the diocese. This is where my heart has been for a long time, but I’m trying to be cautious about choosing my next commitment; I know all too well how quickly I will find myself up to my ears in new congregational commitments, this time in two languages. Part of that is the nature of the beast that is the Church; the other part is all me—I’m too competent by half!
I actually sat down today to do a quick recap of this year’s Christmas gifts. As you can see other things got in the way, but now for a quick rundown (because I’m braggy and you really want to know).
First, there is the wonderful and highly anticipated page-a-day calendar that my office mate gave me. This is the third year in a row on this gift. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This is the calendar, which this year has provided us with the fabulous word BUNGFUNGER, meaning to utterly confound. I have found this word to be extremely useful around the office. I highly suggest you add it to your functional vocabulary.
See what I mean? It’s so useful. I can’t wait to see what this year brings.
I received two Christmas ornaments from co-workers: one inviting peace, and one reminding me that there’s no place like home. I desperately need peace, and I really miss home sometimes. We left work on time one evening to see the 75th anniversary movie theatre release of Wizard of Oz. Terribly digitized, but we saw soooo many things we’d never seen before.
My boss gave me paper dolls and chocolate. Yippee! Two of my faves. Another co-worker gave me some lovely stationery. I also netted a pint of fresh salsa from one of the vergers and a slice of rum cake which has worked it’s way into my Christmas Eve ritual. I work both services, get home about 1 a.m., call Lit and talk with her while I open my presents and then unwind with a slice of the famous rum cake.
Yum!
I also got a big kiss.
After carefully thinking it through, I determined that this was not cause for a sexual harassment complaint.
From Santa this year I received a slew of effort. You know, times are tough for everyone. There’ve been layoffs at the North Pole. The workforce is smaller, but the demands are higher than ever. That’s why you have to really appreciate the tremendous time and energy that went into presentation.
Paint bucket lip gloss wrapped in a weird paisley bag,
a book which mocks my paragon of a mother was wrapped in glitter tissue,
a vaguely anti-Semitic, candy striped apron (Oy veh!) wrapped in what I believe was originally a wine bottle gift bag,
and the piece de resistance—a ballpoint pen wrapped in a toilet paper roll.
(Santa’s helper would like to interject at this point that it was not a toilet paper roll, it was custom cut from a wrapping paper roll.)
True. I have made sport of Santa’s efforts, even though I know that this kind of gift giving doesn’t just happen. Real work goes into it, and more importantly, love. Thank you, Santa!
This came from Dagromm, Taz, and company. Thank you all so much! It’s EXACTLY what I asked for. The cold dry air up here is murder on my hands and I went through quite a bit of hand cream on Christmas Eve alone. This shea butter stuff is fabulous. And the OPI Meet for Drinks nail color is gonna be a lot of fun, too. I have plans for a manicure over the weekend. Oooeee! I’m living it up big time now.
From Lit, who is the unrivaled queen of weird gifts gleaned from estate sales, I received everyone’s favorite board game
That’s right, it’s Scripturama! To see, to play, to learn, to enjoy—or so the game box tells me. I haven’t read through all the rules yet, still I have no doubt that my friends and I will have hours of fun with this. As you can see it comes with a full complement of exciting game cards for loads of scriptural fun.
And, as if Scripturama wasn’t enough to keep a party going for hours, she also sent along a perennial favorite gambling rodent dice game
Skunk! I have no idea how to play, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out next time you come for dinner. It comes with scorecards, chips, and rodent dice—it MUST be fun! The fun never stops at the Goo Factory.
Lit also sent along a food processor. We are currently in a hot debate about whether or not all of the parts were included when she sent it. She says yes, I say not so much. I believe there is an adaptor shaft missing. This belief should not suggest that I am ungrateful, but I wouldn’t bring the subject up with Lit unless you plan to take sides.
My final gift from Lit was a nativity set. Mary and baby Jesus (check out that full head of hair!) are pretty clear, and the guys down front are most likely shepherds—one is clutching a sheep (or just really shy) and the other is blowing a pipe (insert off-color shepherd joke here). Anyone care to explain the two homeboys hanging out at the back?
I love this set! They have such character, such panache. This may have to become my new office crèche. Lit has been hanging onto this set for years. I don’t remember her buying it, but I remember the Beard estate sale from which she purchased it. I don’t know if she was waiting for just the right year, or put is away and forgot about it until now, but I think it’s terrific.
Of course, the gifts I can’t show you are some of the best gifts of all: the cards, emails, and phone calls I’ve received over the last couple of weeks. Some of the gifts have come in the form of much-needed hugs, or meals, or just time hanging out with friends. This year my dad and stepmother are gifting me with a four-hour performance workshop with the Neo-Futurists. Thank you, both, very much! I’m doing that this Saturday and looking forward to stretching some muscles I haven’t used in a while.
That’s my recitation of Christmas fun. I know there’s more yet to come and hope your Christmas has been wonderful, too.
Speaking for myself, which is pretty much what one does on a blog, I’ve had lovely holiday thus far. I’ve gotten another few months reprieve on moving (hallelujah!) and work is going reasonably well at the moment. And while I haven’t had much in the way of vacation this year, I am receiving some comp time as we wind down post-Christmas Day.
For those of you who may not know, the year started with work on the Presidential Inaugural Prayer Service. Mid-year, I was working on the 76th General Convention of The Episcopal Church. Since August I’ve been in a constant whirlwind of weddings, funerals, Sundays and special services, concluding with a major revamp of print materials for Christmas services in addition to writing what amounts to promotional copy for ministries and services.
So, yeah, big year.
Oh! I almost forgot; one of my poems made a public debut as, well, sacred text. I wrote it as a hymn text and shared it with a friend who chose to include it in a Benedictine worship event. There’s been a little noise about setting the complete text to music. I don’t put a lot of stock in that. We’ll see what happens.
I think that’s most of the major stuff that I did this year.
Oh! And I saw Hair in New York with Plug and we ended up dancing on stage at the end. After all these years, we finally got our big break and performed on Broadway. We were fabulous and received a standing ovation as the sun shone in.
Okay, I think that really is all of the milestones for this year.
There are also a couple of things that I’m not doing. I’m not singing in a choir this season. I’m still taking voice lessons, but—for the moment—I’m not doing any choral work. There are a lot of reasons for this, but basically it boils down to my deep-seated belief that singing in a congregational choir should be ministry in relationship with God. If it’s not ministry, one that serves a broader community while nurturing the community of the choir, then what differentiates it from a civic choir or the opera chorus? It was pretty clear to me that the desire was to have a volunteer choir that functioned as a professional choir, in the sense that a professional chorister is a person doing a job, without feeling, without motive beyond a paycheck, and certainly without God. Obviously, I can go on and on about this, but I won’t.
I will say that singing with this group did a lot to improve my singing. I’m probably singing better now than I ever have. My voice coach, Kayo, warned me at our last session that my voice is about to get a lot bigger. That scares the crap out of me; my voice is already much larger now than it was a couple of years ago. Kayo did, however, commend me for my decision not to sing chorally this year. She says now that I’m not trying to match my idea of what a director is looking for, nor trying to “blend” with other unhealthy sopranos, my real voice is beginning to emerge. Kayo is also suggesting, firmly, that I step down from the excruciating heights of high sopranoland—not that I don’t have the notes, but that’s not where my voice is at its best. Kayo’s promising to come up with some interesting challenges for me for the Spring. I can’t wait to see where I end up.
The other thing I’m not doing at the moment is regularly attending worship. Heresy, I know. I jumped into singing with the last choir because I needed, NEEDED, a place to sing, but I always knew it wasn’t the right place for me to pray. Now, I’m taking my time. I’ve been strongly encouraged to dive into the deep end of Latino mission in the diocese. This is where my heart has been for a long time, but I’m trying to be cautious about choosing my next commitment; I know all too well how quickly I will find myself up to my ears in new congregational commitments, this time in two languages. Part of that is the nature of the beast that is the Church; the other part is all me—I’m too competent by half!
I actually sat down today to do a quick recap of this year’s Christmas gifts. As you can see other things got in the way, but now for a quick rundown (because I’m braggy and you really want to know).
First, there is the wonderful and highly anticipated page-a-day calendar that my office mate gave me. This is the third year in a row on this gift. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This is the calendar, which this year has provided us with the fabulous word BUNGFUNGER, meaning to utterly confound. I have found this word to be extremely useful around the office. I highly suggest you add it to your functional vocabulary.
That meeting left me completely bungfungered.
She’s managed to bungfunger everyone involved with that project.
The boss is in the conference room bungfungering the new interns.
See what I mean? It’s so useful. I can’t wait to see what this year brings.
I received two Christmas ornaments from co-workers: one inviting peace, and one reminding me that there’s no place like home. I desperately need peace, and I really miss home sometimes. We left work on time one evening to see the 75th anniversary movie theatre release of Wizard of Oz. Terribly digitized, but we saw soooo many things we’d never seen before.
My boss gave me paper dolls and chocolate. Yippee! Two of my faves. Another co-worker gave me some lovely stationery. I also netted a pint of fresh salsa from one of the vergers and a slice of rum cake which has worked it’s way into my Christmas Eve ritual. I work both services, get home about 1 a.m., call Lit and talk with her while I open my presents and then unwind with a slice of the famous rum cake.
Yum!
I also got a big kiss.
After carefully thinking it through, I determined that this was not cause for a sexual harassment complaint.
From Santa this year I received a slew of effort. You know, times are tough for everyone. There’ve been layoffs at the North Pole. The workforce is smaller, but the demands are higher than ever. That’s why you have to really appreciate the tremendous time and energy that went into presentation.
Paint bucket lip gloss wrapped in a weird paisley bag,
a book which mocks my paragon of a mother was wrapped in glitter tissue,
a vaguely anti-Semitic, candy striped apron (Oy veh!) wrapped in what I believe was originally a wine bottle gift bag,
and the piece de resistance—a ballpoint pen wrapped in a toilet paper roll.
(Santa’s helper would like to interject at this point that it was not a toilet paper roll, it was custom cut from a wrapping paper roll.)
True. I have made sport of Santa’s efforts, even though I know that this kind of gift giving doesn’t just happen. Real work goes into it, and more importantly, love. Thank you, Santa!
This came from Dagromm, Taz, and company. Thank you all so much! It’s EXACTLY what I asked for. The cold dry air up here is murder on my hands and I went through quite a bit of hand cream on Christmas Eve alone. This shea butter stuff is fabulous. And the OPI Meet for Drinks nail color is gonna be a lot of fun, too. I have plans for a manicure over the weekend. Oooeee! I’m living it up big time now.
From Lit, who is the unrivaled queen of weird gifts gleaned from estate sales, I received everyone’s favorite board game
That’s right, it’s Scripturama! To see, to play, to learn, to enjoy—or so the game box tells me. I haven’t read through all the rules yet, still I have no doubt that my friends and I will have hours of fun with this. As you can see it comes with a full complement of exciting game cards for loads of scriptural fun.
And, as if Scripturama wasn’t enough to keep a party going for hours, she also sent along a perennial favorite gambling rodent dice game
Skunk! I have no idea how to play, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out next time you come for dinner. It comes with scorecards, chips, and rodent dice—it MUST be fun! The fun never stops at the Goo Factory.
Lit also sent along a food processor. We are currently in a hot debate about whether or not all of the parts were included when she sent it. She says yes, I say not so much. I believe there is an adaptor shaft missing. This belief should not suggest that I am ungrateful, but I wouldn’t bring the subject up with Lit unless you plan to take sides.
My final gift from Lit was a nativity set. Mary and baby Jesus (check out that full head of hair!) are pretty clear, and the guys down front are most likely shepherds—one is clutching a sheep (or just really shy) and the other is blowing a pipe (insert off-color shepherd joke here). Anyone care to explain the two homeboys hanging out at the back?
I love this set! They have such character, such panache. This may have to become my new office crèche. Lit has been hanging onto this set for years. I don’t remember her buying it, but I remember the Beard estate sale from which she purchased it. I don’t know if she was waiting for just the right year, or put is away and forgot about it until now, but I think it’s terrific.
Of course, the gifts I can’t show you are some of the best gifts of all: the cards, emails, and phone calls I’ve received over the last couple of weeks. Some of the gifts have come in the form of much-needed hugs, or meals, or just time hanging out with friends. This year my dad and stepmother are gifting me with a four-hour performance workshop with the Neo-Futurists. Thank you, both, very much! I’m doing that this Saturday and looking forward to stretching some muscles I haven’t used in a while.
That’s my recitation of Christmas fun. I know there’s more yet to come and hope your Christmas has been wonderful, too.
Monday, August 24, 2009
baa baa baa
My friend Bonnie made too many sheep.
Probably not the sort of sentence one gets to write terribly often, so I think it's worth repeating. Bonnie made too many sheep.
As I understand it, in the process of building a nativity scene Bonnie went a little overboard on the sheep. She made entire flocks. Prior to slaying Goliath, David didn't tend this many sheep. There were lots and lots of sheep. More sheep than a chronic insomniac could hope to count. Okay, maybe I'm beginning to exaggerate slightly, but seriously, there were a lot of sheep.
Then, of course, after Christmas you have to figure out what to do with all the sheep. Bonnie's solution was to give them away. She took photos of all the sheep (imagine this as a sort of cross between passport photos and mugshots) and then passed the contact sheets around among various friends and invited everyone to choose one. Three or four contact sheets, sixteen or twenty photos per page, three or four animals per photo--LOTS of choices!
By the time I saw the photos, several of the little creatures had already been adopted. I must admit, I was more strongly inclined to choose a sheep of color. The white ones were fluffy and cute, but the black and grey and mud colored animals just seemed more interesting. Then I saw the goats. If the black sheep, with all of its cultural implications was tempting, the goat and its biblical import was an even greater lure. Oh, did I like the goats? I could choose a goat if I liked. Or an angel; there are angels, too. Everytime I decided that I really liked the texture of this one, I'd notice the horns on that one and change my mind. Then I'd see this one over here had a fabulous tilt to it's head, only to find that the one in the next photo had so much character! (When I reread this while editing I got a chuckle at the image of horned angels, but decided you'd appreciate the image also, so I left it.)
If you're having trouble understanding why it was so difficult to just pick a sheep and say, "Thank you, Bonnie" and get on with my life, you should know that Bonnie taught animation for several years. And although I met her through singing, I don't think there is any artistic expression she hasn't put her hand to at some point. Being presented with photographic vignettes, pictorial essays of ovine social structures, made it almost impossible to select a single example of her work. Choosing any one meant breaking up a scene. How do you decide which single one will continue to charm you without the interplay with the one next to it. Finally, I told Bonnie I couldn't choose for myself, but, yes, please, I'd love to have one. This is the truth. Had I been forced to choose from the photos, I can almost guarantee that I'd be disappointed with my own selection and wonder endlessly if I couldn't have made a better choice.
Last Friday Bonnie came by my office to borrow my Pantone book and brought with her a selection of five sheep from which I was to choose. She brought two white sheep, two brown sheep (one medium brown, one camel-colored), and one dark grey-black sheep. While I loved the caramel colors of the camel and the mix of colors in the medium brown, they didn't convey the personality of the others and were quickly eliminated. And while I very much admired the striking looks of the darkest of the sheep, I wasn't as enamored with him in person as I had expected to be from the photos. In contrast, the white sheep which I had written off at the outset were the most engaging. They had much more depth of color than the photos indicated and their expressions were charming. My co-workers were brought in to help me make the final choice. And although I was very much taken with a fat little sheep with floppy ears and a pleading expression, my co-workers felt that that sheep was too needy for me. I suspect they think I lack in the tender depth of feeling necessary to meet the emotional needs of four-inch-tall inanimate creature. (If I worry about this too much I'll end up injured by their judgment. Crap. Now I've put it in writing and I'm sure that's what they were implying!) Anyway, they felt the fifth of Bonnie's sheep was the one meant for me, the one best suited to my temperment.
I believe there was a certain level of determination, nay belligerence, conveyed in the tilt of this little sheep's head that my co-workers believed made it a perfect match for me. Not they would ever suggest I maintain these qualities. Merely that they thought the presence of this fuzzy guardian at the gate of my workspace might invite others to think twice before inviting my attention. Hmmm...
Now we need a name for my little baby. Post your suggestions in the comments. I won't guarantee that I'll choose from the submissions, but I will agree to consider them all.
PS Bonnie is now making MORE sheep (and goats, and giraffes, and who knows what else). There's been discussion of a gallery show. Really, my photo doesn't do justice to her work, but in groups they are truly outstanding.
Probably not the sort of sentence one gets to write terribly often, so I think it's worth repeating. Bonnie made too many sheep.
As I understand it, in the process of building a nativity scene Bonnie went a little overboard on the sheep. She made entire flocks. Prior to slaying Goliath, David didn't tend this many sheep. There were lots and lots of sheep. More sheep than a chronic insomniac could hope to count. Okay, maybe I'm beginning to exaggerate slightly, but seriously, there were a lot of sheep.
Then, of course, after Christmas you have to figure out what to do with all the sheep. Bonnie's solution was to give them away. She took photos of all the sheep (imagine this as a sort of cross between passport photos and mugshots) and then passed the contact sheets around among various friends and invited everyone to choose one. Three or four contact sheets, sixteen or twenty photos per page, three or four animals per photo--LOTS of choices!
By the time I saw the photos, several of the little creatures had already been adopted. I must admit, I was more strongly inclined to choose a sheep of color. The white ones were fluffy and cute, but the black and grey and mud colored animals just seemed more interesting. Then I saw the goats. If the black sheep, with all of its cultural implications was tempting, the goat and its biblical import was an even greater lure. Oh, did I like the goats? I could choose a goat if I liked. Or an angel; there are angels, too. Everytime I decided that I really liked the texture of this one, I'd notice the horns on that one and change my mind. Then I'd see this one over here had a fabulous tilt to it's head, only to find that the one in the next photo had so much character! (When I reread this while editing I got a chuckle at the image of horned angels, but decided you'd appreciate the image also, so I left it.)
If you're having trouble understanding why it was so difficult to just pick a sheep and say, "Thank you, Bonnie" and get on with my life, you should know that Bonnie taught animation for several years. And although I met her through singing, I don't think there is any artistic expression she hasn't put her hand to at some point. Being presented with photographic vignettes, pictorial essays of ovine social structures, made it almost impossible to select a single example of her work. Choosing any one meant breaking up a scene. How do you decide which single one will continue to charm you without the interplay with the one next to it. Finally, I told Bonnie I couldn't choose for myself, but, yes, please, I'd love to have one. This is the truth. Had I been forced to choose from the photos, I can almost guarantee that I'd be disappointed with my own selection and wonder endlessly if I couldn't have made a better choice.
Last Friday Bonnie came by my office to borrow my Pantone book and brought with her a selection of five sheep from which I was to choose. She brought two white sheep, two brown sheep (one medium brown, one camel-colored), and one dark grey-black sheep. While I loved the caramel colors of the camel and the mix of colors in the medium brown, they didn't convey the personality of the others and were quickly eliminated. And while I very much admired the striking looks of the darkest of the sheep, I wasn't as enamored with him in person as I had expected to be from the photos. In contrast, the white sheep which I had written off at the outset were the most engaging. They had much more depth of color than the photos indicated and their expressions were charming. My co-workers were brought in to help me make the final choice. And although I was very much taken with a fat little sheep with floppy ears and a pleading expression, my co-workers felt that that sheep was too needy for me. I suspect they think I lack in the tender depth of feeling necessary to meet the emotional needs of four-inch-tall inanimate creature. (If I worry about this too much I'll end up injured by their judgment. Crap. Now I've put it in writing and I'm sure that's what they were implying!) Anyway, they felt the fifth of Bonnie's sheep was the one meant for me, the one best suited to my temperment.
I believe there was a certain level of determination, nay belligerence, conveyed in the tilt of this little sheep's head that my co-workers believed made it a perfect match for me. Not they would ever suggest I maintain these qualities. Merely that they thought the presence of this fuzzy guardian at the gate of my workspace might invite others to think twice before inviting my attention. Hmmm...
Now we need a name for my little baby. Post your suggestions in the comments. I won't guarantee that I'll choose from the submissions, but I will agree to consider them all.
PS Bonnie is now making MORE sheep (and goats, and giraffes, and who knows what else). There's been discussion of a gallery show. Really, my photo doesn't do justice to her work, but in groups they are truly outstanding.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
monumental 2.0
I got some good feedback--thanks!--and I've incorporated much of it. Most of the feedback hit on the same points that I had privately noted for myself. That's good news for me in that other people try and convince me I'm hypercritical. Now I know I'm just right. :) Here's where it currently stands. It looks like it's working toward becoming a clumsy sonnet, but I'm not feeling bound by literary conventions at the moment.
I was in bed with the lights off trying to put myself into a happy dreaming attitude and had to get up out of bed to work on this some more. Grumble, grumble, grumble...Great. Now the phone's ringing! Aaargh!!
What monument to thee, my God, could convey thy grandeur,
What lofty height of man’s design impart thy grace,
What sparkling glass reflect thy splendor,
Or carvéd rock reveal thy face?
Such follies do men build for thee,
And treasure stores amass,
To mimic thy heavenly beauties
Which all earthly work surpass.
No, no monument to thee will I offer
Nor semblance of thy state will I effect,
But thy image marked on me to all I proffer
In hope thy vessel thou wilt perfect.
I was in bed with the lights off trying to put myself into a happy dreaming attitude and had to get up out of bed to work on this some more. Grumble, grumble, grumble...Great. Now the phone's ringing! Aaargh!!
Monday, July 13, 2009
monumental
What monument to thee, my God, could convey thy grandeur,
What lofty height of man’s design impart thy grace,
What sparkling glass reflect thy splendor,
Or carvéd rock reveal thy face?
No monument to thee will I then offer
Nor semblance of thy state will I effect,
But thy image marked on me to the world I proffer
With hope thy image in me thou wilt perfect.
I wrote this yesterday while sitting at the Navy Memorial. We've been subject recently to some poor writing at work in which WNC was referred to as a "monument". Needless to say, that kicked off a round of argument from our departmental point of view. I think, the juxtaposition of that internal document and my having a few free minutes at the Navy Memorial is what brought this on. I feel like it needs a transitional second stanza, but know that I also have a tendency to overwrite. Thoughts?
Saturday, June 20, 2009
overload
So, I’ve been having stress dreams. It’s not so surprising, really. I’ve been working ‘round the clock for the last few weeks, lots of late nights and not much down time. In addition, all the extra time spent working (a special convention project that I was asked to contract for) has completely derailed me from all the good habits I’ve been cultivating since Lent. Don’t get me wrong, I can get back on the good-living train, but it has seriously pissed me off that I was thrown off the tracks. With all the extra stressors it’s no great surprise that I’m having stress dreams.
Now, I don’t know about you, but my stress dreams usually come in two varieties: the ones that are just extensions of the things causing all the stress to begin with, and the “classic” stress dreams. The former freak me out because I wake up at two a.m. worried that this hasn’t been done or that that was done wrong, but I find them to be totally normal and fairly easy to deal with. Go to work and see where things stand, then it’s dealt with. Of the “classic” stress dreams, I’ve long been prone to dreaming that all of my teeth fall out. I’ve had several versions of this dream over the years and it’s always super creepy and takes me a couple of days to come down off of. I have a very clear, dream-based sense memory of each tooth coming loose in my mouth, usually followed by the very specific feeling of spitting them out. Gross, right? Sometimes they all fall out all at once and sometimes it’s one at a time, one after another. Trust me, there is no better version of this dream. However, over the years I’ve grown – somewhat – accustomed to the dreams and can usually realize that they are dreams as I’m having them.
Recently, just before Pentecost, I, for the first time, had the classic “undressed in public” dream. I’ve heard about this all my life, but I haven’t ever had it before. I dreamed that I was in the south transept of the Cathedral during a major service at which I’m supposed to be a chalicer. In the dream, I’m so tired and spaced out that I suddenly realize communion is almost finished and I haven’t ever moved from my seat. Not only have I screwed up, but I’ve created a situation where other people are having to scramble to cover for me. I get up and begin walking toward mid-nave to apologize to the vergers and see if there’s anything I can do to help fix the problem I’ve caused. About halfway to my intended destination I suddenly realize I DON’T HAVE ANY PANTS ON and make a quick about face and head for one of the side chapels. As I’m going up the steps into the chapel (ass toward the congregation), I pass one of my co-workers and hiss, “Why didn’t you tell me I don’t have any pants on?!” To which she responds, “We thought you knew.”
It’s okay, you can laugh at my pain. It’s only dream pain and I laughed when I told the same co-worker about the dream the following day. At which point she tells me, “Yeah, that probably would be my response.” Great. If I ever do lose it and start showing up for church only half-dressed it’s unlikely anyone will tell me because they’ll just assume I’ve made a daring fashion choice. This realization does nothing to alleviate the stress, let me tell you.
In the meantime, here I am working lots of extra hours on the Big Project. Allow me to interject at this point that while, yes, I am complaining about having a lot of work, it is in no way lost on me that a lack of work is a major crisis point for lots and lots o people at the moment. Most of my stress dreams have been the easier to deal with work-related sort. The panic about them is straightforward. Sometimes I just boot up my computer in the middle of the night, or the early morning hours, and check my e-mail to look for answers. Other times, I call my vendors at eight in the morning or send a text message late in the evening to check where things stand. As a last resort, I go in to work earlier than usual, or on the weekends, just to make sure everything is as it should be. But, I’m stressed out and not sleeping well, nor eating as well as I should, and hardly getting out to play much at all. Can someone reassure me that the sun still exists?
In fact, I was so tired that I made it casual Tuesday this week. Exhausted and unable to come up with any sort of rational reason why I needed to wear office clothes to work, I decided to go into the office in jeans and sandals. I didn’t have any meetings Tuesday, why really did I need to wear grown up clothes? It was, of course, then inevitable that Tuesday was the day I ended up having an interview with the FBI. Yes, the freakin’ Federal Bureau of Investigation. Completely wacked out from sleep deprivation and dressed in baggy jeans and a blouse that I hadn’t bothered to iron, I got ushered in to speak with an agent because I was the only one who would admit to having worked with Mitch Feinberg, who has applied for a position with the State Department. (The better part of this story is that his name is NOT Mitch Feinberg, but, although Mitch has been sucking up to the bosses with tremendous enthusiasm, the executive who came looking for anyone who could speak with the Fibbies regarding Mitch repeatedly got his name wrong—and he reports directly to her.) So, there I am being presented with the agent’s credentials just the way the do on TV, but I think in my exhausted haze I stared at them a little too long. Then I handed the little leather wallet with the plastic window back to him and said, “I feel like I should give you something now.” I proceeded to answer his questions as best I could, dancing diplomatically around the tricky ones. I have no first hand knowledge of Mitch’s penchant for dancing topless in gay bars, his pattern of dating foreign nationals, or what the hell he does on his trips to South America. And, yes, while I am aware that in the wake of the last round of Cathedral layoffs he purchased a new BMW, I have no idea whether or not he lives within his means. I am not aware of any history of drug use or mental illness, but I do know that he sings. The FBI agent asked me if I’d ever actually heard him sing? Absolutely honest response, “Yes.” Is he any good? Now, I have no idea why the quality of Mitch’s singing would have any impact on his background check for an overseas post with the federal government, but I wasn’t going to attempt to roadblock the FBI. Yes, he is good. As is his brother, they both sing in the opera chorus. Their mother sings also, they do a little annual recital in Virginia. Yeah, I got real chatty with the FBI about Mitch’s singing. I’m helpful that way. And freakin’ exhausted.
So, it caught me a little off guard Tuesday night to have a stress dream unlike any of my previous ones. In this dream I came face to face with a former beau whom I haven’t seen in ages, one I haven’t even thought about in quite a while. If it had involved the FBI I could have made sense of it, but an old boyfriend? Really?! I woke up depressed and tired and angry with someone I haven’t seen in forever BEACAUSE OF WHAT HE DID IN A DREAM. I totally get that this is irrational, but it continues to bother me. Even days later, I’m still upset with him and trying to figure out if the elements of the dream that so upset me actually upset me, or if it’s all just a big pool of stressed out emotional garbage that doesn’t mean anything more than I need to get some sleep.
So Wednesday I turned the corner on the Big Project, and Thursday I was able to go home at a normal hour for the first time in weeks. I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to buy fresh fruit because I had completely run out. I spent twenty minutes in the store and came back out to find my battery had died. Yeah. Just what I needed. Seriously, it could have been so much worse than it was. It was daylight, and I was three blocks from home, and a freaking shuttle bus would take me free of charge from the grocery store directly to the front door of my building if I needed it to. Had this happened two days earlier at ten p.m. in a sketchy part of town it would have been so much more difficult. So, after a few attempts to see if one of my local pals could help me out, I prevailed upon the kindness of a total stranger to get a jump. She was a very sweet Georgetown student, but we eventually figured out that the battery of her macho SUV wasn’t putting out enough juice to jump my little Honda’s battery. Mall security had by that point come along to help and brought around a sedan and jumped it very quickly. Despite all the horror stories, strangers can sometimes be good people. Sure enough, my battery was dead again by morning, but I anticipated that and planned to take it in to the garage Saturday morning.
Stella and I have a standing Saturday morning brunch date and this week we were going to meet up and window shop all the new luxury stores that have opened up in the district between her home and mine. This was my suggestion last week and I was really looking forward to it. I called the garage Friday evening to make sure I wouldn’t have any problem bringing in my car on Saturday morning. It would take less than an hour to install the new battery and then I would go home and walk over to meet Stella at ten. I took the car in (after getting one of the maintenance guys in my building to jump it) and it died just as I pulled into the driveway of the shop at eight-thirty a.m. I went next door to the drug store to kill time until my car was ready. Can anyone explain why CVS has a Kama-Sutra Weekender Kit on clearance 50%off? When the mechanic hadn’t called by nine-fifteen I got a little nervous about our plans and Stella and I came up with a contingency arrangement. She came and got me, and then we headed north and found a place to have breakfast. Just as I ordered an egg-white omelet, the mechanic called. The $150 charge I had expected for the battery and an oil change was going to be sooooo much more. New alternator, new belts, new brake pads, soooooo much more. We talked about what needed to be done immediately and what I could put off a couple of months. He held firm about what really needed to be done now and came down to a price that was (barely) within my range.
Stella and I had a yummy breakfast (and got the hard-sell to “come back soon” (what can I say, we’re cute and we smile a lot)), then we went to the mall to kill time. I’m not much of a mall-person, but it was raining buckets and I needed distraction. We wandered through the stores with an arresting fixation on shopping for accessories. Not that I was spending any money, mind you, I had just agreed to give all my liquid assets to the guy fixing my car. But I did a mighty fine job of encouraging Stella to spend and every dime was a balm upon my stressed-out, beleaguered soul. The best sales staffs in the stores we went into were at Bloomingdale’s and the Coach boutique. Correct me if I’m wrong, Stella. She now has some fab new pieces to accessorize her life. I’m jealous. She makes mall shopping tons of fun. She’s also a great friend because when she took me to pick up my car, she stuck around until I’d made sure that everything was going to work out – that the car would start and the plastic would clear. She even checked in on me an hour later as the panic of having released all of my cash to a grease monkey, while not knowing when I would get paid for the Big Project, began to sink in. She then berated me for not having gotten a written contract for the Big Project. Like I said, she’s a great friend.
After checking my accounts online and assuring myself that everything really would clear, I placed a pre-emptive Father’s Day call. We had a nice chat and I told him what I was up to and proceeded to get almost hysterical on the phone with him about my finances. Like I said, the charge is going to clear my account. The car is running much better now (I hadn’t realized how rough it had gotten). And I anticipate a sizeable bit coming in from the Big Project. However, I got increasingly panicky as I talked with him on the phone. I think all the stress I’d been carrying just hit the breaking point. I could hear myself talking faster and faster and hear the pitch of my voice getting higher and higher and I finally just caved and asked if I could borrow some money for a couple of months. It could be that I get paid very quickly once the work on the Big Project is all complete, but we’ve still got some proofing to do, and there’s one day they are going to attempt “paperless” (but I’m anticipating being prevailed upon to put in some hours on it). The length of time between my bank account being emptied and the new influx of cash refilling it suddenly seemed to be a black unknown stretching into eternity. I felt pathetic and ridiculous succumbing to the cliché of borrowing from my parents, but I also knew in that moment I wasn’t going to sleep at all until I had things under control again. I’ve been so relaxed and happy the last few months—clear of debt, able to pay all my bills without worrying about juggling the checkbook, finally able to begin saving again—and in one moment I had gone from stable and secure to on the brink of a complete disaster. I leave it to you to figure out if I’m talking emotionally or financially, because I don’t know that I can see a difference anymore.
He agreed, by the way. He’ll front me some money and I’ll pay him back as soon as I can. I don’t like debt. It drives me crazy. It’s the constant stressor that follows me everywhere. I keep reading about how this is exactly the kind of situation that spins people out of control. First the car breaks down, then they get sick (oh my god, what if all my teeth fall out?!), then they lose their jobs (because the car is unreliable and they can’t get to work on time and the illness leeches away all their energy). Once they lose their jobs, the debt grows exponentially and then they lose their homes. Next thing you know I’m walking around church naked. God, I really shouldn’t have watched ten minutes of Oprah talking about people living in tent cities! I mean, I’d already read about tent cities, but I should know by now that ten minutes of Oprah can completely skew one’s world view.
Breathe.
Really. Everything is fine. I’ve got a job. I’ve got more money coming in. I’ve got a short-term family loan to help me sleep at night. My car is repaired and I’m not extended beyond my ability to repay. I’m just a little overloaded.
Now, I don’t know about you, but my stress dreams usually come in two varieties: the ones that are just extensions of the things causing all the stress to begin with, and the “classic” stress dreams. The former freak me out because I wake up at two a.m. worried that this hasn’t been done or that that was done wrong, but I find them to be totally normal and fairly easy to deal with. Go to work and see where things stand, then it’s dealt with. Of the “classic” stress dreams, I’ve long been prone to dreaming that all of my teeth fall out. I’ve had several versions of this dream over the years and it’s always super creepy and takes me a couple of days to come down off of. I have a very clear, dream-based sense memory of each tooth coming loose in my mouth, usually followed by the very specific feeling of spitting them out. Gross, right? Sometimes they all fall out all at once and sometimes it’s one at a time, one after another. Trust me, there is no better version of this dream. However, over the years I’ve grown – somewhat – accustomed to the dreams and can usually realize that they are dreams as I’m having them.
Recently, just before Pentecost, I, for the first time, had the classic “undressed in public” dream. I’ve heard about this all my life, but I haven’t ever had it before. I dreamed that I was in the south transept of the Cathedral during a major service at which I’m supposed to be a chalicer. In the dream, I’m so tired and spaced out that I suddenly realize communion is almost finished and I haven’t ever moved from my seat. Not only have I screwed up, but I’ve created a situation where other people are having to scramble to cover for me. I get up and begin walking toward mid-nave to apologize to the vergers and see if there’s anything I can do to help fix the problem I’ve caused. About halfway to my intended destination I suddenly realize I DON’T HAVE ANY PANTS ON and make a quick about face and head for one of the side chapels. As I’m going up the steps into the chapel (ass toward the congregation), I pass one of my co-workers and hiss, “Why didn’t you tell me I don’t have any pants on?!” To which she responds, “We thought you knew.”
It’s okay, you can laugh at my pain. It’s only dream pain and I laughed when I told the same co-worker about the dream the following day. At which point she tells me, “Yeah, that probably would be my response.” Great. If I ever do lose it and start showing up for church only half-dressed it’s unlikely anyone will tell me because they’ll just assume I’ve made a daring fashion choice. This realization does nothing to alleviate the stress, let me tell you.
In the meantime, here I am working lots of extra hours on the Big Project. Allow me to interject at this point that while, yes, I am complaining about having a lot of work, it is in no way lost on me that a lack of work is a major crisis point for lots and lots o people at the moment. Most of my stress dreams have been the easier to deal with work-related sort. The panic about them is straightforward. Sometimes I just boot up my computer in the middle of the night, or the early morning hours, and check my e-mail to look for answers. Other times, I call my vendors at eight in the morning or send a text message late in the evening to check where things stand. As a last resort, I go in to work earlier than usual, or on the weekends, just to make sure everything is as it should be. But, I’m stressed out and not sleeping well, nor eating as well as I should, and hardly getting out to play much at all. Can someone reassure me that the sun still exists?
In fact, I was so tired that I made it casual Tuesday this week. Exhausted and unable to come up with any sort of rational reason why I needed to wear office clothes to work, I decided to go into the office in jeans and sandals. I didn’t have any meetings Tuesday, why really did I need to wear grown up clothes? It was, of course, then inevitable that Tuesday was the day I ended up having an interview with the FBI. Yes, the freakin’ Federal Bureau of Investigation. Completely wacked out from sleep deprivation and dressed in baggy jeans and a blouse that I hadn’t bothered to iron, I got ushered in to speak with an agent because I was the only one who would admit to having worked with Mitch Feinberg, who has applied for a position with the State Department. (The better part of this story is that his name is NOT Mitch Feinberg, but, although Mitch has been sucking up to the bosses with tremendous enthusiasm, the executive who came looking for anyone who could speak with the Fibbies regarding Mitch repeatedly got his name wrong—and he reports directly to her.) So, there I am being presented with the agent’s credentials just the way the do on TV, but I think in my exhausted haze I stared at them a little too long. Then I handed the little leather wallet with the plastic window back to him and said, “I feel like I should give you something now.” I proceeded to answer his questions as best I could, dancing diplomatically around the tricky ones. I have no first hand knowledge of Mitch’s penchant for dancing topless in gay bars, his pattern of dating foreign nationals, or what the hell he does on his trips to South America. And, yes, while I am aware that in the wake of the last round of Cathedral layoffs he purchased a new BMW, I have no idea whether or not he lives within his means. I am not aware of any history of drug use or mental illness, but I do know that he sings. The FBI agent asked me if I’d ever actually heard him sing? Absolutely honest response, “Yes.” Is he any good? Now, I have no idea why the quality of Mitch’s singing would have any impact on his background check for an overseas post with the federal government, but I wasn’t going to attempt to roadblock the FBI. Yes, he is good. As is his brother, they both sing in the opera chorus. Their mother sings also, they do a little annual recital in Virginia. Yeah, I got real chatty with the FBI about Mitch’s singing. I’m helpful that way. And freakin’ exhausted.
So, it caught me a little off guard Tuesday night to have a stress dream unlike any of my previous ones. In this dream I came face to face with a former beau whom I haven’t seen in ages, one I haven’t even thought about in quite a while. If it had involved the FBI I could have made sense of it, but an old boyfriend? Really?! I woke up depressed and tired and angry with someone I haven’t seen in forever BEACAUSE OF WHAT HE DID IN A DREAM. I totally get that this is irrational, but it continues to bother me. Even days later, I’m still upset with him and trying to figure out if the elements of the dream that so upset me actually upset me, or if it’s all just a big pool of stressed out emotional garbage that doesn’t mean anything more than I need to get some sleep.
So Wednesday I turned the corner on the Big Project, and Thursday I was able to go home at a normal hour for the first time in weeks. I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to buy fresh fruit because I had completely run out. I spent twenty minutes in the store and came back out to find my battery had died. Yeah. Just what I needed. Seriously, it could have been so much worse than it was. It was daylight, and I was three blocks from home, and a freaking shuttle bus would take me free of charge from the grocery store directly to the front door of my building if I needed it to. Had this happened two days earlier at ten p.m. in a sketchy part of town it would have been so much more difficult. So, after a few attempts to see if one of my local pals could help me out, I prevailed upon the kindness of a total stranger to get a jump. She was a very sweet Georgetown student, but we eventually figured out that the battery of her macho SUV wasn’t putting out enough juice to jump my little Honda’s battery. Mall security had by that point come along to help and brought around a sedan and jumped it very quickly. Despite all the horror stories, strangers can sometimes be good people. Sure enough, my battery was dead again by morning, but I anticipated that and planned to take it in to the garage Saturday morning.
Stella and I have a standing Saturday morning brunch date and this week we were going to meet up and window shop all the new luxury stores that have opened up in the district between her home and mine. This was my suggestion last week and I was really looking forward to it. I called the garage Friday evening to make sure I wouldn’t have any problem bringing in my car on Saturday morning. It would take less than an hour to install the new battery and then I would go home and walk over to meet Stella at ten. I took the car in (after getting one of the maintenance guys in my building to jump it) and it died just as I pulled into the driveway of the shop at eight-thirty a.m. I went next door to the drug store to kill time until my car was ready. Can anyone explain why CVS has a Kama-Sutra Weekender Kit on clearance 50%off? When the mechanic hadn’t called by nine-fifteen I got a little nervous about our plans and Stella and I came up with a contingency arrangement. She came and got me, and then we headed north and found a place to have breakfast. Just as I ordered an egg-white omelet, the mechanic called. The $150 charge I had expected for the battery and an oil change was going to be sooooo much more. New alternator, new belts, new brake pads, soooooo much more. We talked about what needed to be done immediately and what I could put off a couple of months. He held firm about what really needed to be done now and came down to a price that was (barely) within my range.
Stella and I had a yummy breakfast (and got the hard-sell to “come back soon” (what can I say, we’re cute and we smile a lot)), then we went to the mall to kill time. I’m not much of a mall-person, but it was raining buckets and I needed distraction. We wandered through the stores with an arresting fixation on shopping for accessories. Not that I was spending any money, mind you, I had just agreed to give all my liquid assets to the guy fixing my car. But I did a mighty fine job of encouraging Stella to spend and every dime was a balm upon my stressed-out, beleaguered soul. The best sales staffs in the stores we went into were at Bloomingdale’s and the Coach boutique. Correct me if I’m wrong, Stella. She now has some fab new pieces to accessorize her life. I’m jealous. She makes mall shopping tons of fun. She’s also a great friend because when she took me to pick up my car, she stuck around until I’d made sure that everything was going to work out – that the car would start and the plastic would clear. She even checked in on me an hour later as the panic of having released all of my cash to a grease monkey, while not knowing when I would get paid for the Big Project, began to sink in. She then berated me for not having gotten a written contract for the Big Project. Like I said, she’s a great friend.
After checking my accounts online and assuring myself that everything really would clear, I placed a pre-emptive Father’s Day call. We had a nice chat and I told him what I was up to and proceeded to get almost hysterical on the phone with him about my finances. Like I said, the charge is going to clear my account. The car is running much better now (I hadn’t realized how rough it had gotten). And I anticipate a sizeable bit coming in from the Big Project. However, I got increasingly panicky as I talked with him on the phone. I think all the stress I’d been carrying just hit the breaking point. I could hear myself talking faster and faster and hear the pitch of my voice getting higher and higher and I finally just caved and asked if I could borrow some money for a couple of months. It could be that I get paid very quickly once the work on the Big Project is all complete, but we’ve still got some proofing to do, and there’s one day they are going to attempt “paperless” (but I’m anticipating being prevailed upon to put in some hours on it). The length of time between my bank account being emptied and the new influx of cash refilling it suddenly seemed to be a black unknown stretching into eternity. I felt pathetic and ridiculous succumbing to the cliché of borrowing from my parents, but I also knew in that moment I wasn’t going to sleep at all until I had things under control again. I’ve been so relaxed and happy the last few months—clear of debt, able to pay all my bills without worrying about juggling the checkbook, finally able to begin saving again—and in one moment I had gone from stable and secure to on the brink of a complete disaster. I leave it to you to figure out if I’m talking emotionally or financially, because I don’t know that I can see a difference anymore.
He agreed, by the way. He’ll front me some money and I’ll pay him back as soon as I can. I don’t like debt. It drives me crazy. It’s the constant stressor that follows me everywhere. I keep reading about how this is exactly the kind of situation that spins people out of control. First the car breaks down, then they get sick (oh my god, what if all my teeth fall out?!), then they lose their jobs (because the car is unreliable and they can’t get to work on time and the illness leeches away all their energy). Once they lose their jobs, the debt grows exponentially and then they lose their homes. Next thing you know I’m walking around church naked. God, I really shouldn’t have watched ten minutes of Oprah talking about people living in tent cities! I mean, I’d already read about tent cities, but I should know by now that ten minutes of Oprah can completely skew one’s world view.
Breathe.
Really. Everything is fine. I’ve got a job. I’ve got more money coming in. I’ve got a short-term family loan to help me sleep at night. My car is repaired and I’m not extended beyond my ability to repay. I’m just a little overloaded.
Monday, June 1, 2009
jealousy
What follows is what was, perhaps, the most thrilling part of my Monday. Mind you, not all of my Mondays are this fast-paced and exciting. But this was, I thought, worth sharing.
From: Stella
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 12:18 PM
To: Goo
Subject: Well?
From: Goo
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 12:27:06 -0400
To: Stella
Subject: RE: Well?
From: Stella
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 12:35 PM
To: Goo
Subject: Re: Well?
From: Goo
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 12:48:07 -0400
To: Stella
Subject: RE: Well?
From: Stella
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 12:53 PM
To: Goo
Subject: Re: Well?
From: Goo
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 1:48:27 -0400
To: Stella
Subject: RE: Well?
Now that I look back over this, I retract my earlier statement. My Mondays are pretty typically this earth-shattering. Be jealous.
*NB: The children are hypothetical. Doug is not. At least, I don't think Doug is hypothetical. Wow. If Stella has a hypothetical guy trying to strong arm her into sending their hypothetical children to Evangelical boys' schools, I really am jealous and I may need to plan an intervention.
From: Stella
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 12:18 PM
To: Goo
Subject: Well?
Okay.
Doug won’t let me stay in DC with the children*. This could be a deal breaker.
I think maybe I made him my backup and now he’s calling me on it. But we have a few years to work on this.
I ate Korean food last night. Here’s a picture.
From: Goo
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 12:27:06 -0400
To: Stella
Subject: RE: Well?
I’m jealous.
I’m jealous that you have a backup.
I’m jealous that you have a few years to work out the details.
I’m jealous that you ate Korean food.
I’m even jealous that you took a picture.
I’m just a seething, writhing mass of jealousy.
Toodles!
From: Stella
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 12:35 PM
To: Goo
Subject: Re: Well?
1. You haven’t met Doug. You would not be jealous.
2. The Korean food had hidden spiciness that turned evil. You should not be jealous.
3. The picture is remarkably poor quality. You could not be jealous.
4. Don’t seethe. It’s bad for your skin.
Toodles?
From: Goo
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 12:48:07 -0400
To: Stella
Subject: RE: Well?
1. You know a man who talks with you about marriage and child-rearing. Doesn’t matter if it’s a joking fantasy or a ring and a bassinet. I’m jealous.
2. The genius of Korean food is the hidden spiciness. I am jealous.
3. The photo shows chopsticks and four billion little dishes someone else prepared and someone else will wash. I’m jealous.
4. My skin is looking pretty damn good these days. Be jealous.
From: Stella
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 12:53 PM
To: Goo
Subject: Re: Well?
1. Marriage has not been mentioned. “Ocala Christian Academy” has. (Shudder.)
2. The spiciness HURT. I was NOT enjoying it. I didn’t taste food for like 15 minutes. Just the epic burn of “spiciness.”
3. The little dishes of not immediately identifiable food were nice, I’ll say that.
4. Your skin has been looking wonderful lately. I AM jealous.
5. I have roots already. A WEEK, it lasted. A WEEK.
From: Goo
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 1:48:27 -0400
To: Stella
Subject: RE: Well?
1. The Ocala Christian Academy will not admit the bastard children of people who defy the will of God by living in sin. If he mentioned the school, marriage was definitely implied.
2. I think what you refer to as “epic burn” is what the Buddha meant by “attaining enlightenment” and what the Hindus refer to as “nirvana”.
3. Well, I think we’ve pretty much exhausted that.
4. I appreciate your covetousness and only wish I had your legs.
5. Look at it this way: even when you die, your hair keeps growing. You’d have roots even if you were dead. You are not dead and will be able to do the upkeep to maintain your current bombshell appearance. Life means growth; death means growth. Any way you slice it you still end up singing Hakuna Matata.
6. NO ONE is paying the kind of microscopic attention to your cellular hair growth that you are. Get over yourself.
Now that I look back over this, I retract my earlier statement. My Mondays are pretty typically this earth-shattering. Be jealous.
*NB: The children are hypothetical. Doug is not. At least, I don't think Doug is hypothetical. Wow. If Stella has a hypothetical guy trying to strong arm her into sending their hypothetical children to Evangelical boys' schools, I really am jealous and I may need to plan an intervention.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
coddling
I’m enjoying a lovely Christmas and I hope you can say the same. If Christmas isn’t your thing, I hope at the very least you’re finding a moment’s respite during these cold winter months. With the exception of a couple of bitter days, we’ve had a very mild winter thus far in this little corner of the world. Given that I’m not a winter enthusiast, this comes as a great relief to me. I may not be getting all the sun I’d like beating down upon me, but thank goodness I’ve been able to keep snug and warm.
The time from Thanksgiving to Christmas was, well, nuts. At work we had the pleasure of a particularly ugly round of staff cuts (as per previous post) and, for me, an increased workload. I’ll do a little bit of work over the next week, but for the most part my office is shut down until January 5. Happy Birthday, Jesus! I need the break; on January 5 I expect all hell to break loose again. But in the meantime, I’m taking care of me.
Actually, a lot of people are taking care of me these days and I’ve got to admit I like it. There’s something a just a bit fabulous about having people go the extra mile for you. Case in point: my Christmas presents this year. My first gift arrived on my cell phone a week ago. A message was left on my cell by a beloved friend who’d seen me making a spectacle of myself in an online video and called to say how happy he was to see my smiling face. This would have been gift enough, but he then managed to give me a spot on critique of the video, and commentary on my boss, which had me in stitches. I’ve shared the message with a select few friends, who all ask which of my boyfriends it is (I wish!), but I never tell. As hard as I laughed when I got the voicemail, it is nothing compared to watching other people first smile at the sweet tone, then double over with laughter at the caustic commentary. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.
My second Christmas present also came via phone. I arrived home on the 23rd to find this message on my answering machine (yes, I still have both a landline and answering machine—call me old-fashioned, but at least I gave up the party line and rotary dial):
I played the message. Then I played it again. And again. If it isn’t obvious, Capt. Lucky is a pilot. I don’t know if you’ve ever had someone call to let you know they’re flying past and wish you a merry Christmas, but it was a first for me and made me feel incredibly special. If he made this same call to a half dozen other people, including his mother, sister, and fiancée, I have no idea; but it worked on me. Better than roses on Valentine’s or diamonds and champagne, Brandon’s voice on my answering machine was one of the high points of my holiday. To top it off, Capt. Lucky called again in person the next night; unfortunately, he caught me just as we were opening the doors for the first Christmas Eve service and I couldn’t really chat. Don’t worry, we caught up on Christmas Day as I recovered after the last of four major services in 18 hours and he cooled his heels doing a jigsaw puzzle in West Palm Beach. Poor boy!
I did manage a late night Christmas Eve phone call with Lit while I opened my presents over the phone. Luckily, Santa had already stopped by my place and she got to share my holiday glee. I’m not quite sure what Santa was thinking this year—not that I didn’t get great gifts—I did! I did!—but there was some sort of theme going on that caught me by surprise. I received a packet of my favorite cookies, a little case (similar to a pencil box) containing two pair of chopsticks (one big, one little, one smooth, of textured—kind of like the Japanese equivalent of dinner pair and luncheon pair), a jar of chicken-tomato bouillon, a packet of instant soup, and a used VHS copy of Mr. Holland’s Opus. Okay, maybe “glee” was overstating it a little, but Christmas in our house has never been about the expected. From Lit I received a set of six tiny Bohemian glasses, which at this point we assume are for liqueur, a British dessert cookbook published in 1980, a single, brand-new hot pad (which she claims had been left in the gift box recycled from two years ago when I got the box and an ornament at a choir party, so technically it was given to me by someone else and she just shipped it along), a pudding mould she’d picked up at an estate sale, and a boxed pair of Royal Worcester egg coddlers in the “Birds” pattern (regular, not king size). I’m willing to bet I’m the only person you know who got egg coddlers for Christmas. It’s definitely the coolest gift I’ve gotten in years. Of course, I’m now obligated to come up with a menu that involves coddled eggs, liqueurs, and steamed pudding, but Lit knows I like a challenge. And, if this seems like a weird, random list of stuff to make up a Christmas gift, well, maybe you’re right. There’s certainly not a bit of I would have thought to ask for, but it does clearly exhibit that she’s always thinking about me. Everywhere she goes, every sale she hits all year long she’s looking to see what she might find that I don’t even know I want and she’s usually right.
Then I got a gift via e-mail. This one I asked for, but didn’t really think I’d get—kind of like when you ask your parents for a pony. (Actually, I don’t think I ever asked my parents for a pony, that’s something kids in books and movies do, not kids who grow up in major urban areas. If your response is that YOU asked for a pony (and got one), good on you, but this is my Christmas tale I’m telling, so go blog on your own dime.) But this year, I mustered up my courage and asked a friend for what I really wanted and miracle of miracles if it didn’t show up in my inbox on Christmas Day! And, even though I asked for it, it caught me totally by surprise and it was even better than I hoped.
The last Christmas present I’ll tell you about involves my friend B who came over for Christmas dinner and by coming gave me a terrific Christmas present. I got to clean my house (kind of), and shop for groceries, cook a delicious meal, lay out my best china, and sit at the dinner table like a civilized human being. She also brought Mississippi Mud-pie brownies. Delish! Now in order to understand how fabulous a present this was, I have to back track and tell you have awful my Thanksgiving was. It really, really sucked. I was exhausted and angry from work (what with all the layoffs and other assorted changes) and spent the day alone. No phone calls, no e-mails, no dinner companions: alone. Several people said to me going into the holiday things like “you should go out with/get together with some friends”; they said these things until I wanted to scream out to them that telling me what I “should” do was a wonderful way of pointing out that I wasn’t included in their plans and I had best make plans to be with other people. No one ever explained who those other people were. If I haven’t made it clear, I was miserably depressed. I did try and make plans with local friends, but everyone was leaving town, or having family in, or generally booked and their plans didn’t include me. I spent the day wound up and pacing, too busy chasing myself around in my head to watch parades or movies, or read, as I nibbled on leftover Chinese food. Capt. Lucky did call late in the evening and chided me for not having gone out, but he can’t really conceive of my reluctance to force myself on other people. He’s known me so long now that he has no memory of my ever having been shy or cautious with him. So, having endured such a crappy Thanksgiving I looked ahead to Christmas and got pro-active and invited B over for dinner and I’m so glad I did, because without her it would have been, if not awful, at the very least lonely. By coming over to my house and letting me coddle her little bit, she helped me make Christmas out of what would have otherwise just been exhaustion. And it was lovely.
The time from Thanksgiving to Christmas was, well, nuts. At work we had the pleasure of a particularly ugly round of staff cuts (as per previous post) and, for me, an increased workload. I’ll do a little bit of work over the next week, but for the most part my office is shut down until January 5. Happy Birthday, Jesus! I need the break; on January 5 I expect all hell to break loose again. But in the meantime, I’m taking care of me.
Actually, a lot of people are taking care of me these days and I’ve got to admit I like it. There’s something a just a bit fabulous about having people go the extra mile for you. Case in point: my Christmas presents this year. My first gift arrived on my cell phone a week ago. A message was left on my cell by a beloved friend who’d seen me making a spectacle of myself in an online video and called to say how happy he was to see my smiling face. This would have been gift enough, but he then managed to give me a spot on critique of the video, and commentary on my boss, which had me in stitches. I’ve shared the message with a select few friends, who all ask which of my boyfriends it is (I wish!), but I never tell. As hard as I laughed when I got the voicemail, it is nothing compared to watching other people first smile at the sweet tone, then double over with laughter at the caustic commentary. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.
My second Christmas present also came via phone. I arrived home on the 23rd to find this message on my answering machine (yes, I still have both a landline and answering machine—call me old-fashioned, but at least I gave up the party line and rotary dial):
Hiya, yeah, this is Brandon from the Global Data Center with a message from Aircraft 123XX from Captain Lucky to Goo. “Tuesday about 4:30, passing by high and east on our way to West Palm Beach. Merry Christmas!” End of message.
I played the message. Then I played it again. And again. If it isn’t obvious, Capt. Lucky is a pilot. I don’t know if you’ve ever had someone call to let you know they’re flying past and wish you a merry Christmas, but it was a first for me and made me feel incredibly special. If he made this same call to a half dozen other people, including his mother, sister, and fiancée, I have no idea; but it worked on me. Better than roses on Valentine’s or diamonds and champagne, Brandon’s voice on my answering machine was one of the high points of my holiday. To top it off, Capt. Lucky called again in person the next night; unfortunately, he caught me just as we were opening the doors for the first Christmas Eve service and I couldn’t really chat. Don’t worry, we caught up on Christmas Day as I recovered after the last of four major services in 18 hours and he cooled his heels doing a jigsaw puzzle in West Palm Beach. Poor boy!
I did manage a late night Christmas Eve phone call with Lit while I opened my presents over the phone. Luckily, Santa had already stopped by my place and she got to share my holiday glee. I’m not quite sure what Santa was thinking this year—not that I didn’t get great gifts—I did! I did!—but there was some sort of theme going on that caught me by surprise. I received a packet of my favorite cookies, a little case (similar to a pencil box) containing two pair of chopsticks (one big, one little, one smooth, of textured—kind of like the Japanese equivalent of dinner pair and luncheon pair), a jar of chicken-tomato bouillon, a packet of instant soup, and a used VHS copy of Mr. Holland’s Opus. Okay, maybe “glee” was overstating it a little, but Christmas in our house has never been about the expected. From Lit I received a set of six tiny Bohemian glasses, which at this point we assume are for liqueur, a British dessert cookbook published in 1980, a single, brand-new hot pad (which she claims had been left in the gift box recycled from two years ago when I got the box and an ornament at a choir party, so technically it was given to me by someone else and she just shipped it along), a pudding mould she’d picked up at an estate sale, and a boxed pair of Royal Worcester egg coddlers in the “Birds” pattern (regular, not king size). I’m willing to bet I’m the only person you know who got egg coddlers for Christmas. It’s definitely the coolest gift I’ve gotten in years. Of course, I’m now obligated to come up with a menu that involves coddled eggs, liqueurs, and steamed pudding, but Lit knows I like a challenge. And, if this seems like a weird, random list of stuff to make up a Christmas gift, well, maybe you’re right. There’s certainly not a bit of I would have thought to ask for, but it does clearly exhibit that she’s always thinking about me. Everywhere she goes, every sale she hits all year long she’s looking to see what she might find that I don’t even know I want and she’s usually right.
Then I got a gift via e-mail. This one I asked for, but didn’t really think I’d get—kind of like when you ask your parents for a pony. (Actually, I don’t think I ever asked my parents for a pony, that’s something kids in books and movies do, not kids who grow up in major urban areas. If your response is that YOU asked for a pony (and got one), good on you, but this is my Christmas tale I’m telling, so go blog on your own dime.) But this year, I mustered up my courage and asked a friend for what I really wanted and miracle of miracles if it didn’t show up in my inbox on Christmas Day! And, even though I asked for it, it caught me totally by surprise and it was even better than I hoped.
The last Christmas present I’ll tell you about involves my friend B who came over for Christmas dinner and by coming gave me a terrific Christmas present. I got to clean my house (kind of), and shop for groceries, cook a delicious meal, lay out my best china, and sit at the dinner table like a civilized human being. She also brought Mississippi Mud-pie brownies. Delish! Now in order to understand how fabulous a present this was, I have to back track and tell you have awful my Thanksgiving was. It really, really sucked. I was exhausted and angry from work (what with all the layoffs and other assorted changes) and spent the day alone. No phone calls, no e-mails, no dinner companions: alone. Several people said to me going into the holiday things like “you should go out with/get together with some friends”; they said these things until I wanted to scream out to them that telling me what I “should” do was a wonderful way of pointing out that I wasn’t included in their plans and I had best make plans to be with other people. No one ever explained who those other people were. If I haven’t made it clear, I was miserably depressed. I did try and make plans with local friends, but everyone was leaving town, or having family in, or generally booked and their plans didn’t include me. I spent the day wound up and pacing, too busy chasing myself around in my head to watch parades or movies, or read, as I nibbled on leftover Chinese food. Capt. Lucky did call late in the evening and chided me for not having gone out, but he can’t really conceive of my reluctance to force myself on other people. He’s known me so long now that he has no memory of my ever having been shy or cautious with him. So, having endured such a crappy Thanksgiving I looked ahead to Christmas and got pro-active and invited B over for dinner and I’m so glad I did, because without her it would have been, if not awful, at the very least lonely. By coming over to my house and letting me coddle her little bit, she helped me make Christmas out of what would have otherwise just been exhaustion. And it was lovely.
Monday, November 17, 2008
cheerio
As we all know, times is hard. People are being laid off in every sector and in my little corner of the world we’ve spent the last few weeks imaging and re-imagining every possible disaster scenario in an attempt to ward off what we’ve come to see as inevitable. We went through a vicious round of lay-offs in late spring, and we were told that this terrible thing was happening to regain sound financial footing. Furthermore, we were told that there would be no second round of cuts. As God is my witness, there will be no second round of cuts. Thank you, Scarlett.
Of course, if you know the story, once she is past the worst of her crises Scarlett doesn’t ever go hungry again but she pays an awful price for satiety. She will kill and cheat, lie and steal to avoid going hungry; nor does she ever admit that the luxury she enjoyed in her youth itself carried a heavy price. And so does life continue to imitate art, or if not art then, at least, best-selling fiction. We are now waiting our second round of staff cuts and budget slashing.
I keep being assured that my position is secure, but I only become more uneasy with every reassurance. Even if I can keep my job, will my pay be cut? Even if I keep my pay, is cost of living about to go through the roof as everyone—and I do mean everyone—struggles to survive? Even if everything in my life remains stable, people I know and work with, people I love and care for, and even people I don’t particularly like but upon whom I depend are going to loose their jobs. Some of them already have. So every time some has the desire to comfort me with repeated claims that I shouldn’t worry, I’ll be just fine, I want to scream, “Maybe, but what about everyone else?!”
In the midst of all of this we’ve been working to figure out how to make my final product as inexpensive as possible, and lest the point of the exercise be lost, to clearly exhibit a reduction in expenditure. There were about ten days here where it seemed that the appearance of having cut costs was in fact more important than actually cutting costs. I still have moments where I question the purposes of those making decisions in this enterprise. My days have been filled with drafting and redrafting cost projections and production schedules and version after version of finished product to the point of exhaustion. Yeah, it’s been fun for all of us.
The problem with redesigning my portion of our entire product is that everything is of a piece. In changing the dimensions within which I work, which up until now have been relatively flexible, we are forced to re-examine every other choice we’ve made to see if it is compatible with a new rigid format. Last year was, for me, a hard fought battle to make these kinds of choices early and in a scheduled fashion so that we didn’t spend hours and days drafting and redrafting at the last minute. We finally achieved a point where we are consistently, manageably behind; we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but can’t ever quite make it out. Having upper management suddenly decide to throw a massive wrench into the works is not helping my stress level.
Every day I’m reminding people of the trade-offs we’re making in choosing this path: we’re losing hospitality, we’re losing an educational tool, and we’re losing a promotional tool. We are making gains with this choice: better fiscal responsibility, better use of natural resources, and a cleaner, more contemporary look. This isn’t the first time this suggestion for change has come up; in the past when someone looking to save money, usually my boss’s boss, would say, “Why don’t we do things the way ____ does?”, I have always responded that the reason we don’t do things that way is because that way isn’t suited to the way we do things. I’m right, but it seems that is no longer argument enough. Therefore, one of the trade-offs we’re making is to stop doing things the way we do things and do them instead in a way which will fit a proscribed format; in making this choice, I believe we’re losing integrity.
But, perhaps, I’m too quick to judge. I was chatting with a colleague this week about all of these things, a colleague whose work is on the absolute periphery of mine, and we got to talking about the box of Cheerios. You see, every week at our largest Sunday morning service a plate collection is received and presented to God at the altar. Along with the cash offering—pardon my vulgarity, but let’s call a spade a spade—one of the most annoying ushers I’ve ever met solicits the most telegenic children of the day to carry forward a basket of foodstuffs as an offering to God. The contents of the basket have not changed during the time I’ve been here (except at Easter when, to my horror, the annoying usher included two cheap, pastel stuffed bunnies in the basket). I am irritated that the same institutional size box of name brand breakfast cereal is given to God week after week. I am also irritated that we pander to sentimentality by seeking out unwitting children who will present the most attractive picture. I am further irritated that we make no statement explaining this practice of ours; it is assumed that because the priest asked that we make an offering and has reminded us that all things come from God, we will draw the appropriate conclusion when we see some adorable tots taking an enormous box of America’s most beloved cold cereal to the Table of the Lord. Then, my colleague says to me, “You know the box is empty, right?” Just when you think it can’t get worse.
I may not always agree with the liturgical choices that are made for our worship, but for better or worse they have always had the integrity of being our choices. Would I do things differently? Yes. Would you? Yes to that, too. Admit it, there is always that hymn you don’t particularly like, that prayer that seemed awkward, that passage of scripture that doesn’t make any sense (or which makes explicit sense and with which you simply disagree). So, I will declare again that while I may not always agree with the choices that are made for our worship, they are deliberate, intentional choices made in the belief that they will best serve our needs. So, when I write that in changing the parameters of my work, we will be forced to re-examine every other choice we have made for the coming year, I’m not exaggerating; I’m stating fact. When we limit our worship of the Lord to what will fit within fixed parameters, we will inevitably make trade-offs: hospitality, accessibility, evangelism, formation, creativity, innovation, and, yes, integrity. Every day, and some days every hour, I am asking again, “What are you willing to sacrifice?” If you get this, you must sacrifice that. If you want that also, you must give up something else. And then they start in with the questions, all of which are variations on “Can’t we just expand the parameters?” No. These limits were set by those above me and those above you, and you agreed that we could work within those limits. Now we must live into it.
God bless me, I’m tired of this conversation. All I can see ahead of me are weeks and weeks of tumultuous change, and just as the change begins to take root we will once again be in the heart of the Nativity storm. I can hardly bear to think of what Christmas will bring. This year we’re adding a “new” item to our holiday line-up, and letting the axe fall on an old favorite. “New” in that we’ve given an old friend a flash name, Carols by Candlelight, and moved it forward on the calendar. Amongst the staff we’ve taken to calling this service “Uncle Sammy’s Spectacular Christmas Jamboree: The Greatest Liturgy on Earth!” In reality, it is Christmas Lessons and Carols on the afternoon of Advent IV with the addition of a “candle lighting ceremony”. It’s all a bit theatrical for me, but I gave up on that score after our Christmas Day service won an Emmy last year. I ain’t kidding. Who could make this stuff up? But the coup de grace is what is happening to the L & C we record for broadcast on PRI. Think of it as a greatest hits liturgy. The plan is to cobble together a “new” version from the recordings of the last few years: carols, hymns, readers; all we have to do is record a new sermon and paste the whole thing together. No choir or congregation needed. It is the full-scale liturgical equivalent of an empty box of Cheerios.
Perhaps we’re really not giving up so very much. Perhaps I am the only one really bothered by any of this. Perhaps by February things will have reached calmer waters, but for now the seas are rough. Perhaps.
Of course, if you know the story, once she is past the worst of her crises Scarlett doesn’t ever go hungry again but she pays an awful price for satiety. She will kill and cheat, lie and steal to avoid going hungry; nor does she ever admit that the luxury she enjoyed in her youth itself carried a heavy price. And so does life continue to imitate art, or if not art then, at least, best-selling fiction. We are now waiting our second round of staff cuts and budget slashing.
I keep being assured that my position is secure, but I only become more uneasy with every reassurance. Even if I can keep my job, will my pay be cut? Even if I keep my pay, is cost of living about to go through the roof as everyone—and I do mean everyone—struggles to survive? Even if everything in my life remains stable, people I know and work with, people I love and care for, and even people I don’t particularly like but upon whom I depend are going to loose their jobs. Some of them already have. So every time some has the desire to comfort me with repeated claims that I shouldn’t worry, I’ll be just fine, I want to scream, “Maybe, but what about everyone else?!”
In the midst of all of this we’ve been working to figure out how to make my final product as inexpensive as possible, and lest the point of the exercise be lost, to clearly exhibit a reduction in expenditure. There were about ten days here where it seemed that the appearance of having cut costs was in fact more important than actually cutting costs. I still have moments where I question the purposes of those making decisions in this enterprise. My days have been filled with drafting and redrafting cost projections and production schedules and version after version of finished product to the point of exhaustion. Yeah, it’s been fun for all of us.
The problem with redesigning my portion of our entire product is that everything is of a piece. In changing the dimensions within which I work, which up until now have been relatively flexible, we are forced to re-examine every other choice we’ve made to see if it is compatible with a new rigid format. Last year was, for me, a hard fought battle to make these kinds of choices early and in a scheduled fashion so that we didn’t spend hours and days drafting and redrafting at the last minute. We finally achieved a point where we are consistently, manageably behind; we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but can’t ever quite make it out. Having upper management suddenly decide to throw a massive wrench into the works is not helping my stress level.
Every day I’m reminding people of the trade-offs we’re making in choosing this path: we’re losing hospitality, we’re losing an educational tool, and we’re losing a promotional tool. We are making gains with this choice: better fiscal responsibility, better use of natural resources, and a cleaner, more contemporary look. This isn’t the first time this suggestion for change has come up; in the past when someone looking to save money, usually my boss’s boss, would say, “Why don’t we do things the way ____ does?”, I have always responded that the reason we don’t do things that way is because that way isn’t suited to the way we do things. I’m right, but it seems that is no longer argument enough. Therefore, one of the trade-offs we’re making is to stop doing things the way we do things and do them instead in a way which will fit a proscribed format; in making this choice, I believe we’re losing integrity.
But, perhaps, I’m too quick to judge. I was chatting with a colleague this week about all of these things, a colleague whose work is on the absolute periphery of mine, and we got to talking about the box of Cheerios. You see, every week at our largest Sunday morning service a plate collection is received and presented to God at the altar. Along with the cash offering—pardon my vulgarity, but let’s call a spade a spade—one of the most annoying ushers I’ve ever met solicits the most telegenic children of the day to carry forward a basket of foodstuffs as an offering to God. The contents of the basket have not changed during the time I’ve been here (except at Easter when, to my horror, the annoying usher included two cheap, pastel stuffed bunnies in the basket). I am irritated that the same institutional size box of name brand breakfast cereal is given to God week after week. I am also irritated that we pander to sentimentality by seeking out unwitting children who will present the most attractive picture. I am further irritated that we make no statement explaining this practice of ours; it is assumed that because the priest asked that we make an offering and has reminded us that all things come from God, we will draw the appropriate conclusion when we see some adorable tots taking an enormous box of America’s most beloved cold cereal to the Table of the Lord. Then, my colleague says to me, “You know the box is empty, right?” Just when you think it can’t get worse.
I may not always agree with the liturgical choices that are made for our worship, but for better or worse they have always had the integrity of being our choices. Would I do things differently? Yes. Would you? Yes to that, too. Admit it, there is always that hymn you don’t particularly like, that prayer that seemed awkward, that passage of scripture that doesn’t make any sense (or which makes explicit sense and with which you simply disagree). So, I will declare again that while I may not always agree with the choices that are made for our worship, they are deliberate, intentional choices made in the belief that they will best serve our needs. So, when I write that in changing the parameters of my work, we will be forced to re-examine every other choice we have made for the coming year, I’m not exaggerating; I’m stating fact. When we limit our worship of the Lord to what will fit within fixed parameters, we will inevitably make trade-offs: hospitality, accessibility, evangelism, formation, creativity, innovation, and, yes, integrity. Every day, and some days every hour, I am asking again, “What are you willing to sacrifice?” If you get this, you must sacrifice that. If you want that also, you must give up something else. And then they start in with the questions, all of which are variations on “Can’t we just expand the parameters?” No. These limits were set by those above me and those above you, and you agreed that we could work within those limits. Now we must live into it.
God bless me, I’m tired of this conversation. All I can see ahead of me are weeks and weeks of tumultuous change, and just as the change begins to take root we will once again be in the heart of the Nativity storm. I can hardly bear to think of what Christmas will bring. This year we’re adding a “new” item to our holiday line-up, and letting the axe fall on an old favorite. “New” in that we’ve given an old friend a flash name, Carols by Candlelight, and moved it forward on the calendar. Amongst the staff we’ve taken to calling this service “Uncle Sammy’s Spectacular Christmas Jamboree: The Greatest Liturgy on Earth!” In reality, it is Christmas Lessons and Carols on the afternoon of Advent IV with the addition of a “candle lighting ceremony”. It’s all a bit theatrical for me, but I gave up on that score after our Christmas Day service won an Emmy last year. I ain’t kidding. Who could make this stuff up? But the coup de grace is what is happening to the L & C we record for broadcast on PRI. Think of it as a greatest hits liturgy. The plan is to cobble together a “new” version from the recordings of the last few years: carols, hymns, readers; all we have to do is record a new sermon and paste the whole thing together. No choir or congregation needed. It is the full-scale liturgical equivalent of an empty box of Cheerios.
Perhaps we’re really not giving up so very much. Perhaps I am the only one really bothered by any of this. Perhaps by February things will have reached calmer waters, but for now the seas are rough. Perhaps.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
sainthood
The saints we are today,
like saints in ages past,
do struggle, strive in joyful toil
to follow in Christ’s path.
We saints of modern age
must heed the ancient call:
to love our neighbors as ourselves,
love God the first of all.
To live a sacred life
make holy every act
speak only justice, mercy, love,
God’s reign on earth enact.
One holy people, we
blest saints and martyrs stand
before the throne of God the King,
sing praises without end.
like saints in ages past,
do struggle, strive in joyful toil
to follow in Christ’s path.
We saints of modern age
must heed the ancient call:
to love our neighbors as ourselves,
love God the first of all.
To live a sacred life
make holy every act
speak only justice, mercy, love,
God’s reign on earth enact.
One holy people, we
blest saints and martyrs stand
before the throne of God the King,
sing praises without end.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
bookends
In truth, I forgot. I completely forgot he was coming. We’d talked about it when I was home on vacation. We’d e-mailed back and forth about it, and I’d avoided making conflicting plans with other people. But by the time Friday rolled around, I’d been so chewed up and strung out by the week that all I wanted, before I left the house to go to work, was to come home and take a nap then hibernate all weekend. Man, I so wanted that nap! Then he called and my elaborate plans to go home, put on my sweats, and curl up in a ball were all shot to hell.
He called in the afternoon to let me know he’d made it safely to his hotel. He was in town for a convention, and wanted to go register, but thought we could meet for dinner that night. Oh, and there’s a dinner Saturday night, I should come to that too. And what time were services on Sunday? Was that the service I sang at? He’d call me back in a couple of hours and we could figure out where to meet up. I was exhausted before I answered the phone; bewildered by the time I disconnected the call.
Five o’clock rolled past and I barely had time to race home and spruce myself up a bit after an extremely casual day at the office. (Seriously, I almost wore the sweats to work in anticipation of a nap.) As night and rain were falling in equal measure you would have found me in Dupont Circle waiting and watching passersby. There is a dread like no other that comes from standing in a public place waiting for man to show up. It’s different from the fear that comes with walking through a sketchy neighborhood or into a dark parking garage; that is the very real danger of physical harm. The eternity between arrival and encounter is an interminable period that can only be measured in comparison to continental drift, even in the rare case where the eventual encounter is certain. As the hour turned from six to seven he arrived and we randomly chose a direction in search of food. In Dupont Circle you can manage that sort of thing. We ended up at Kramerbooks & Afterwords Café, largely through dumb luck. I’d made a quick call to a reliable friend before heading out and she had easily recommended the place. I thought I’d misheard her. Nope. Dinner at the bookstore really was the recommendation.
We passed between racks and stacks of travel books (with me thinking the whole time that it would be smart to get a guide to the city—just in case anyone else ever came to visit). The whole evening was a bit surreal in its normalcy. It’s difficult to explain the strangeness of it all. I’m accustomed to having to pull a few teeth to keep the conversation going, and I’m a relentless conversationalist. On this rare occasion he was full of stuff to talk about. Where normally I might have had to come at a question from two or three different directions before getting an opaque reply, he was forthcoming and easily introduced new topics. I heard about his recent trip to the UK, the goings on back home, his growing desire to move back north, and more. It was nice. Refreshing. Weird. But nice. However, the truly stupefying part was when I asked why he hadn’t pursued a liaison with someone I had fully expected to catch his eye. He answered me. No hesitation, no pretense that he’d never looked her direction. He told me about the one time he’d asked her out and that there simply wasn’t any spark.
Now, I’ve heard this “spark” thing from him before and in the past I’ve accused him of carrying around bucket to douse any flame that might spontaneously burst forth. I don’t discount the value of an immediate electro-chemical sexual response to an attractive individual. It’s a very nice thing; and I, for one, enjoy it tremendously, but I don’t trust it. I don’t trust it at all; still, I’m not a man. So, I wanted to know a little more. What did he mean by spark? In this case at least, he meant a connection, an ease. He described an evening spent working to sustain a conversation, of questions that led nowhere, and a failure to find any common ground. No “spark”.
In the midst of all this the waiter came by to light the candle on the table before serving our dessert. We talked a bit more about current events: Wall Street, the election, and the evening’s debate, providing goodly fodder. As we finished up, we made our plans for the next day and parted ways in the steady rain.
***
Saturday morning I have a standing coffee date with a couple of local friends. We waited for our coffee as the breakfast crowd thinned out and exchanged stories of the night before. These are newer friends and we don’t yet know all of one another’s tales of days gone by, so when I told of dinner the night before and the dinner yet to come one looked at me and said, “What’s that little smile about?” All I could say was, “Nothing.” How could I explain that, truly, there was nothing to cause that that little smile—the same one I can feel even now curving my lips? Nothing, that is, except a profound sense of the ridiculous.
The three of us passed the morning in high fashion: boutique coffee for breakfast, a meander through a well-appointed toy store, wander down the block to lazily browse the drugstore, then decide we’re all hungry again and go for Chinese. All the while we chattered over office politics and national politics, travel and pop culture, men and money and the lack thereof. In short, girl talk. We were on this occasion firing on all cylinders, or perhaps it was simply that I was relaxed and for once free of the tension that comes with forging new friendships. I could have spent the whole day in idle occupation, accomplishing nothing of any measurable worth, but eventually it was time to get on with the day, and I had a couple of errands to run before my big night out.
He called just as I was backing out of a parking space. I’d almost finished my errands, but I still needed to buy gas before going home to shower and change. It was my own fault that I’d spent the day in lazy companionship so that by the time he called I was sticky, and sweaty, and running out of gas five miles from home along a busy stretch with only ninety minutes left on the clock. I was more abrupt than I’d like to have been with him on the phone, but the engine was still running, and we have laws against driving and talking on cell phones, and my time was running out. For the second day in a row I raced home, out of and back into my clothes, juggled jewelry and mascara, and hot-footed it to the metro station to catch a train, this time to the Mayflower Hotel. Witness me now standing in a hotel lobby amidst wedding guests and conventioneers once again waiting for a man.
He arrived shortly and we strolled a bit, people watching, chatting about our respective days, and waiting for the bus that would shuttle us to the evening’s destination. This was my introduction to the Civil War Preservation Trust. That’s right, I was choosing of my own free will to spend the evening with a battlefield preservation nut.
Actually, this is one of the things I’ve known longest about him. Years ago, when I was first making the attempt to befriend him—something that I liken to my mother’s penchant for adopting feral cats—he told me of his long term goal of purchasing the site of his “favorite” Civil War battle and developing an historical park. I remember the conversation vividly. We were sitting at an outdoor table, lingering over Sunday lunch at a gas-station-cum-Greek-restaurant, and suddenly this very private man briefly opened for me a window onto his inner life. We had known one another for less than a year, he was bored with his daily grind, and for a couple of hours a real conversation blossomed from what had been, up to that point, labored exchanges in which I had to work to prompt him to come out with anything more than short declarative sentences. For a brief time he transformed in front of me from a pretty, aloof stranger into a vibrant, fascinating man. Then, lunch was over, and he retreated, and years passed before he let me see him like that again. This is why we’re friends. This single incident is the reason I persisted in making myself his friend.
So there we were, enjoying a private party at Arlington House, the former Custis-Lee estate located in what is now Arlington cemetery, surrounded by Civil War enthusiasts. The house was phenomenal. It is currently undergoing renovation, so all of the furniture has been moved into storage, but it is easy to see how well it would suit me (and my fantasy life-style). Plus, the view from the front porch is killer. We wandered in different directions through the home with guides in period dress waiting around each corner to pass on yet another tidbit of information. My particular favorites were the office and the central hall; the walk-in closet/birthing room is not as attractive as one might hope. I loved the interior proportion of the house. The exterior proportion is another kettle of fish entirely and seems a bit much on close inspection, but when one considers that the façade is scaled to be best view from the valley below, it makes good sense.
After going gaga over the house we went out to have dinner under a marquee on the lawn. With my buddy on my left and a couple from West Virginia on my right we sat down to a delightful meal inspired by the period cupboard. I’m making no claims that this was authentic Civil War era fare, merely that the ingredients were what would have been available at the time. Between courses we were entertained by an awards presentation. The first award was given posthumously, and the recent widower accepted the award while giving vent to his rage at having lost his wife. By all accounts the late award recipient was a gracious woman devoted to the cause, but the unintentional lesson was that when inspired to honor someone posthumously, wait a full year before asking the bereaved to accept an award or the speeches could get awkward. The second award recipient was an impassioned gentleman who invoked what for me was an uncomfortable amount of god-language. He spoke a great deal about battlegrounds sanctified with the blood of the fallen, all of which did a fair job of delineating my own reservations about battlefield preservation. I’m all about learning the lessons of history, lest we repeat our mistakes, but I start getting edgy when war is raised up as a sacred enterprise.
After the awards had been presented and received, we were served our main course and the lady to my right smiled and asked me, “So, are you ready to join?” It was such a close parody of cult initiation that I was momentarily flummoxed before I smiled back and said, “No.” The West Virginians were, in fact, a riot. When I was first seated he was quick to ask if I shared a deep and abiding interest in the Civil War. He hoped, for my sake, that I did. For a moment I was tempted to mention my interest in the Spanish Civil War, but was concerned this might lead to detailed discussion of the campaign to win Madrid, so I kept mum. Much of the dinner conversation involved the gentlemen at the table comparing notes on battlefields visited, tours taken, lectures heard, and, of course, spirited discussion of Ken Burns’ Civil War. It has been impressed upon me that I haven’t been watching the right documentaries; the one I watched about the Japanese military in the wake of WWII, the one I loved about crossword puzzles, the riveting biography of Jock Soto, and the fabulous Independent Lens piece about women mariachis helped me not at all in making dinner conversation with the members of the Civil War Preservation Trust.
The keynote speaker of the evening, about whom my companion had been very enthused and had really given me the hard sell, was James Swanson, author of Manhunt. He was, I will heartily agree, an engaging speaker. He entertained us with the tale of how and why he’d written the book, rather than simply read from it. Even I, who have very limited interest in the flight and capture of John Wilkes Booth, was left thinking, “Gee, maybe I ought to read this.” As you know, my reading list is extensive at the moment, but I just might get around to reading it at some point. If nothing else, reading a book titled Manhunt on the metro is sure to drum up more interest than say, knitting. At least it says I’m looking.
After dinner we strolled back around to enjoy the view one last time and allow the most eager of the attendees to fill the first two shuttle buses returning to the Mayflower. The view really is spectacular and, cemetery or no, I could happily move-in tomorrow and spend my evenings porch sitting. On the ride back the hotel I was regaled by my pal with the story of Moses Jacob Ezekiel, Virginian, artist, sefardí, and ladies’ man. When we arrived back at the hotel we made arrangements for Sunday and he walked me to the metro. As I rode the train home I reflected on what a strange evening it had been. It was…effortless. A social function involving a lot of people I’d never met in a place I’d never been focused on a subject about which I was hazy at best would normally kick-off a massive fit of social anxiety, and I had initially resisted accepting the invitation for just this reason. But it turned out to be something I never expected; it was fun.
***
Sunday began for me as most Sundays do: I fought my way out of sleep in a vain attempt to haul myself to choir rehearsal by 7:45. I was, it seems inevitably, a few minutes late, but still managed to snag a seat on the front row. (Those front row seats can inspire death matches between territorial sopranos.) The anthems came off far better than we could have possibly anticipated after the strain of Thursday night’s rehearsal, and as soon as the service was over I was on my way to retrieve my constant companion. Don’t get me wrong, I was thoroughly enjoying his company, but I was mystified by how much of it was mine to enjoy. It never occurred to me I’d see this much of him. Taking into account my past experience with him, I anticipated I’d see him once during the whole of his trip, perhaps for an hour or two. By Sunday morning I was almost accustomed to his persistent presence and, admittedly, I was basking in it. Who could blame me?
I picked him up at his hotel and took him back with me to see my workplace, my current worship home, and my center of gravity in this city. I never get to be the one to show people around, tell them a little about this and that. This was fun. As we went inside we began to run into people I know and I got to show off my friend to my friends and vice versa. We lingered and chatted a few minutes with various people and had only a little time to orient ourselves before I told him it was time to make a claim for a good seat. Normally, I’ll hang back and let the tourists and regular parishioners fight it out for the better seats, but I wanted to offer him the best we have. The woman in front of me hesitated a moment too long and I cut her off to snag two aisle seats. (I believe I mentioned cutthroat sopranos and seating arrangements.) As we waited for the service to begin he asked me questions about the lights and platforms and such, and before very long the time had come to still ourselves and prepare for worship.
We have known one another for ten years. For eight of those years we sang in the same choir, comfortably segregated by our respective voice parts. I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve had occasion to worship in close proximity to one another. So this was a special occasion. Unique. Noteworthy. If you come to visit, you can bet I’ll invite you to come to church with me. No pressure, no sales pitch; you’re a grown up and can make your own decision about it, but it’s what I love. I am an avowed worship junkie and approach it with intensity. The hours I spend in corporate worship are, by far, the most intimate moments I share with other people each week. Here I was with my strange friend, in a situation so familiar to us both. We stood side by side to sing and I was aware that the height of my shoulder only just cleared the height of his elbow. We sat in chairs joined together in fixed rows and I was aware of the narrow, inviolable channel of space we maintained between us. We turned to exchange the Peace of God, he shook my hand, and I smiled at nothing.
After the service I took him on a tour of the chapels and then we headed over to one of the local haunts for sushi. There we met up with the Episcopal Princess and her knight-errant of a godson. If you’ve never had the practice of Sunday lunch you may not understand my sublime joy in this. I like social routine. Sunday lunch was for a time a kind of security blanket for me. It was a constant. They players might change, the location was always up for grabs, but the certainty of the routine did a lot to sustain me. I miss it. I really do. Moreover, I’ve always maintained that I only have one circle of friends. I won’t tell your secrets, but I will share your triumphs and tragedies with the rest of the group. I will also, when called for, mock you mercilessly to people who have yet to make your acquaintance, but only when called for. The chance to introduce one friend to another is its own special joy—when they hit it off, it’s all the better. I only wish I’d had the chance to introduce him to more of my local friends.
Before much longer it was time to go. He asked if there was time to stop by a bookstore before heading to the airport; he wanted to pick up a copy of Manhunt. The Princess gave me directions to Politics & Prose, which I remembered from a long ago visit with Brendarling as the nirvana of bookstores. We found the bookstore without too much trouble and hurried inside to complete our business. My friend headed straight to the racks, quickly locating the section he needed, and pulling a display copy of another work by the same author from a high shelf. But he couldn’t find what he was looking for. He began hunting Manhunt along the shelves of books in a more or less methodical fashion. I watched him for a minute before bending down and pulling the object of his search practically from beneath his feet. Two copies were sitting there on the bottom shelf, too low for him to notice. We went to the checkout and the clerk, taking careful note of his selection, suggested that if he’s into presidential assassinations he might like Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation. She gave it a rave review and let us know they are having a Sarah Vowell event October 9. I love good sales staff.
I took him to the airport, arriving at 4:03 although I’d hoped we’d make it by four. This is a milestone: the first time I’ve driven to the airport since moving up here. Woohoo! We got turned around a couple of times, but my departing companion made for a good navigator—aside from that unaniticpated introduction to the steepest cobblestone street in town. I’d happily skip doing that again. The closer we got to the airport the faster the man seated next to me transformed into the man I had expected to meet on his arrival. With his mind fixed on the travel ahead he retreated further and further into himself, and in the stress of driving unfamiliar streets I made less and less attempt to overcome it. I dropped him at the airport, we said a quick good-bye, and as he walked away I smiled and reminded him to stay in touch.
Ha. Stay in touch. Who am I kidding?
Then I went home, and took a nap.
He called in the afternoon to let me know he’d made it safely to his hotel. He was in town for a convention, and wanted to go register, but thought we could meet for dinner that night. Oh, and there’s a dinner Saturday night, I should come to that too. And what time were services on Sunday? Was that the service I sang at? He’d call me back in a couple of hours and we could figure out where to meet up. I was exhausted before I answered the phone; bewildered by the time I disconnected the call.
Five o’clock rolled past and I barely had time to race home and spruce myself up a bit after an extremely casual day at the office. (Seriously, I almost wore the sweats to work in anticipation of a nap.) As night and rain were falling in equal measure you would have found me in Dupont Circle waiting and watching passersby. There is a dread like no other that comes from standing in a public place waiting for man to show up. It’s different from the fear that comes with walking through a sketchy neighborhood or into a dark parking garage; that is the very real danger of physical harm. The eternity between arrival and encounter is an interminable period that can only be measured in comparison to continental drift, even in the rare case where the eventual encounter is certain. As the hour turned from six to seven he arrived and we randomly chose a direction in search of food. In Dupont Circle you can manage that sort of thing. We ended up at Kramerbooks & Afterwords Café, largely through dumb luck. I’d made a quick call to a reliable friend before heading out and she had easily recommended the place. I thought I’d misheard her. Nope. Dinner at the bookstore really was the recommendation.
We passed between racks and stacks of travel books (with me thinking the whole time that it would be smart to get a guide to the city—just in case anyone else ever came to visit). The whole evening was a bit surreal in its normalcy. It’s difficult to explain the strangeness of it all. I’m accustomed to having to pull a few teeth to keep the conversation going, and I’m a relentless conversationalist. On this rare occasion he was full of stuff to talk about. Where normally I might have had to come at a question from two or three different directions before getting an opaque reply, he was forthcoming and easily introduced new topics. I heard about his recent trip to the UK, the goings on back home, his growing desire to move back north, and more. It was nice. Refreshing. Weird. But nice. However, the truly stupefying part was when I asked why he hadn’t pursued a liaison with someone I had fully expected to catch his eye. He answered me. No hesitation, no pretense that he’d never looked her direction. He told me about the one time he’d asked her out and that there simply wasn’t any spark.
Now, I’ve heard this “spark” thing from him before and in the past I’ve accused him of carrying around bucket to douse any flame that might spontaneously burst forth. I don’t discount the value of an immediate electro-chemical sexual response to an attractive individual. It’s a very nice thing; and I, for one, enjoy it tremendously, but I don’t trust it. I don’t trust it at all; still, I’m not a man. So, I wanted to know a little more. What did he mean by spark? In this case at least, he meant a connection, an ease. He described an evening spent working to sustain a conversation, of questions that led nowhere, and a failure to find any common ground. No “spark”.
In the midst of all this the waiter came by to light the candle on the table before serving our dessert. We talked a bit more about current events: Wall Street, the election, and the evening’s debate, providing goodly fodder. As we finished up, we made our plans for the next day and parted ways in the steady rain.
***
Saturday morning I have a standing coffee date with a couple of local friends. We waited for our coffee as the breakfast crowd thinned out and exchanged stories of the night before. These are newer friends and we don’t yet know all of one another’s tales of days gone by, so when I told of dinner the night before and the dinner yet to come one looked at me and said, “What’s that little smile about?” All I could say was, “Nothing.” How could I explain that, truly, there was nothing to cause that that little smile—the same one I can feel even now curving my lips? Nothing, that is, except a profound sense of the ridiculous.
The three of us passed the morning in high fashion: boutique coffee for breakfast, a meander through a well-appointed toy store, wander down the block to lazily browse the drugstore, then decide we’re all hungry again and go for Chinese. All the while we chattered over office politics and national politics, travel and pop culture, men and money and the lack thereof. In short, girl talk. We were on this occasion firing on all cylinders, or perhaps it was simply that I was relaxed and for once free of the tension that comes with forging new friendships. I could have spent the whole day in idle occupation, accomplishing nothing of any measurable worth, but eventually it was time to get on with the day, and I had a couple of errands to run before my big night out.
He called just as I was backing out of a parking space. I’d almost finished my errands, but I still needed to buy gas before going home to shower and change. It was my own fault that I’d spent the day in lazy companionship so that by the time he called I was sticky, and sweaty, and running out of gas five miles from home along a busy stretch with only ninety minutes left on the clock. I was more abrupt than I’d like to have been with him on the phone, but the engine was still running, and we have laws against driving and talking on cell phones, and my time was running out. For the second day in a row I raced home, out of and back into my clothes, juggled jewelry and mascara, and hot-footed it to the metro station to catch a train, this time to the Mayflower Hotel. Witness me now standing in a hotel lobby amidst wedding guests and conventioneers once again waiting for a man.
He arrived shortly and we strolled a bit, people watching, chatting about our respective days, and waiting for the bus that would shuttle us to the evening’s destination. This was my introduction to the Civil War Preservation Trust. That’s right, I was choosing of my own free will to spend the evening with a battlefield preservation nut.
Actually, this is one of the things I’ve known longest about him. Years ago, when I was first making the attempt to befriend him—something that I liken to my mother’s penchant for adopting feral cats—he told me of his long term goal of purchasing the site of his “favorite” Civil War battle and developing an historical park. I remember the conversation vividly. We were sitting at an outdoor table, lingering over Sunday lunch at a gas-station-cum-Greek-restaurant, and suddenly this very private man briefly opened for me a window onto his inner life. We had known one another for less than a year, he was bored with his daily grind, and for a couple of hours a real conversation blossomed from what had been, up to that point, labored exchanges in which I had to work to prompt him to come out with anything more than short declarative sentences. For a brief time he transformed in front of me from a pretty, aloof stranger into a vibrant, fascinating man. Then, lunch was over, and he retreated, and years passed before he let me see him like that again. This is why we’re friends. This single incident is the reason I persisted in making myself his friend.
So there we were, enjoying a private party at Arlington House, the former Custis-Lee estate located in what is now Arlington cemetery, surrounded by Civil War enthusiasts. The house was phenomenal. It is currently undergoing renovation, so all of the furniture has been moved into storage, but it is easy to see how well it would suit me (and my fantasy life-style). Plus, the view from the front porch is killer. We wandered in different directions through the home with guides in period dress waiting around each corner to pass on yet another tidbit of information. My particular favorites were the office and the central hall; the walk-in closet/birthing room is not as attractive as one might hope. I loved the interior proportion of the house. The exterior proportion is another kettle of fish entirely and seems a bit much on close inspection, but when one considers that the façade is scaled to be best view from the valley below, it makes good sense.
After going gaga over the house we went out to have dinner under a marquee on the lawn. With my buddy on my left and a couple from West Virginia on my right we sat down to a delightful meal inspired by the period cupboard. I’m making no claims that this was authentic Civil War era fare, merely that the ingredients were what would have been available at the time. Between courses we were entertained by an awards presentation. The first award was given posthumously, and the recent widower accepted the award while giving vent to his rage at having lost his wife. By all accounts the late award recipient was a gracious woman devoted to the cause, but the unintentional lesson was that when inspired to honor someone posthumously, wait a full year before asking the bereaved to accept an award or the speeches could get awkward. The second award recipient was an impassioned gentleman who invoked what for me was an uncomfortable amount of god-language. He spoke a great deal about battlegrounds sanctified with the blood of the fallen, all of which did a fair job of delineating my own reservations about battlefield preservation. I’m all about learning the lessons of history, lest we repeat our mistakes, but I start getting edgy when war is raised up as a sacred enterprise.
After the awards had been presented and received, we were served our main course and the lady to my right smiled and asked me, “So, are you ready to join?” It was such a close parody of cult initiation that I was momentarily flummoxed before I smiled back and said, “No.” The West Virginians were, in fact, a riot. When I was first seated he was quick to ask if I shared a deep and abiding interest in the Civil War. He hoped, for my sake, that I did. For a moment I was tempted to mention my interest in the Spanish Civil War, but was concerned this might lead to detailed discussion of the campaign to win Madrid, so I kept mum. Much of the dinner conversation involved the gentlemen at the table comparing notes on battlefields visited, tours taken, lectures heard, and, of course, spirited discussion of Ken Burns’ Civil War. It has been impressed upon me that I haven’t been watching the right documentaries; the one I watched about the Japanese military in the wake of WWII, the one I loved about crossword puzzles, the riveting biography of Jock Soto, and the fabulous Independent Lens piece about women mariachis helped me not at all in making dinner conversation with the members of the Civil War Preservation Trust.
The keynote speaker of the evening, about whom my companion had been very enthused and had really given me the hard sell, was James Swanson, author of Manhunt. He was, I will heartily agree, an engaging speaker. He entertained us with the tale of how and why he’d written the book, rather than simply read from it. Even I, who have very limited interest in the flight and capture of John Wilkes Booth, was left thinking, “Gee, maybe I ought to read this.” As you know, my reading list is extensive at the moment, but I just might get around to reading it at some point. If nothing else, reading a book titled Manhunt on the metro is sure to drum up more interest than say, knitting. At least it says I’m looking.
After dinner we strolled back around to enjoy the view one last time and allow the most eager of the attendees to fill the first two shuttle buses returning to the Mayflower. The view really is spectacular and, cemetery or no, I could happily move-in tomorrow and spend my evenings porch sitting. On the ride back the hotel I was regaled by my pal with the story of Moses Jacob Ezekiel, Virginian, artist, sefardí, and ladies’ man. When we arrived back at the hotel we made arrangements for Sunday and he walked me to the metro. As I rode the train home I reflected on what a strange evening it had been. It was…effortless. A social function involving a lot of people I’d never met in a place I’d never been focused on a subject about which I was hazy at best would normally kick-off a massive fit of social anxiety, and I had initially resisted accepting the invitation for just this reason. But it turned out to be something I never expected; it was fun.
***
Sunday began for me as most Sundays do: I fought my way out of sleep in a vain attempt to haul myself to choir rehearsal by 7:45. I was, it seems inevitably, a few minutes late, but still managed to snag a seat on the front row. (Those front row seats can inspire death matches between territorial sopranos.) The anthems came off far better than we could have possibly anticipated after the strain of Thursday night’s rehearsal, and as soon as the service was over I was on my way to retrieve my constant companion. Don’t get me wrong, I was thoroughly enjoying his company, but I was mystified by how much of it was mine to enjoy. It never occurred to me I’d see this much of him. Taking into account my past experience with him, I anticipated I’d see him once during the whole of his trip, perhaps for an hour or two. By Sunday morning I was almost accustomed to his persistent presence and, admittedly, I was basking in it. Who could blame me?
I picked him up at his hotel and took him back with me to see my workplace, my current worship home, and my center of gravity in this city. I never get to be the one to show people around, tell them a little about this and that. This was fun. As we went inside we began to run into people I know and I got to show off my friend to my friends and vice versa. We lingered and chatted a few minutes with various people and had only a little time to orient ourselves before I told him it was time to make a claim for a good seat. Normally, I’ll hang back and let the tourists and regular parishioners fight it out for the better seats, but I wanted to offer him the best we have. The woman in front of me hesitated a moment too long and I cut her off to snag two aisle seats. (I believe I mentioned cutthroat sopranos and seating arrangements.) As we waited for the service to begin he asked me questions about the lights and platforms and such, and before very long the time had come to still ourselves and prepare for worship.
We have known one another for ten years. For eight of those years we sang in the same choir, comfortably segregated by our respective voice parts. I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve had occasion to worship in close proximity to one another. So this was a special occasion. Unique. Noteworthy. If you come to visit, you can bet I’ll invite you to come to church with me. No pressure, no sales pitch; you’re a grown up and can make your own decision about it, but it’s what I love. I am an avowed worship junkie and approach it with intensity. The hours I spend in corporate worship are, by far, the most intimate moments I share with other people each week. Here I was with my strange friend, in a situation so familiar to us both. We stood side by side to sing and I was aware that the height of my shoulder only just cleared the height of his elbow. We sat in chairs joined together in fixed rows and I was aware of the narrow, inviolable channel of space we maintained between us. We turned to exchange the Peace of God, he shook my hand, and I smiled at nothing.
After the service I took him on a tour of the chapels and then we headed over to one of the local haunts for sushi. There we met up with the Episcopal Princess and her knight-errant of a godson. If you’ve never had the practice of Sunday lunch you may not understand my sublime joy in this. I like social routine. Sunday lunch was for a time a kind of security blanket for me. It was a constant. They players might change, the location was always up for grabs, but the certainty of the routine did a lot to sustain me. I miss it. I really do. Moreover, I’ve always maintained that I only have one circle of friends. I won’t tell your secrets, but I will share your triumphs and tragedies with the rest of the group. I will also, when called for, mock you mercilessly to people who have yet to make your acquaintance, but only when called for. The chance to introduce one friend to another is its own special joy—when they hit it off, it’s all the better. I only wish I’d had the chance to introduce him to more of my local friends.
Before much longer it was time to go. He asked if there was time to stop by a bookstore before heading to the airport; he wanted to pick up a copy of Manhunt. The Princess gave me directions to Politics & Prose, which I remembered from a long ago visit with Brendarling as the nirvana of bookstores. We found the bookstore without too much trouble and hurried inside to complete our business. My friend headed straight to the racks, quickly locating the section he needed, and pulling a display copy of another work by the same author from a high shelf. But he couldn’t find what he was looking for. He began hunting Manhunt along the shelves of books in a more or less methodical fashion. I watched him for a minute before bending down and pulling the object of his search practically from beneath his feet. Two copies were sitting there on the bottom shelf, too low for him to notice. We went to the checkout and the clerk, taking careful note of his selection, suggested that if he’s into presidential assassinations he might like Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation. She gave it a rave review and let us know they are having a Sarah Vowell event October 9. I love good sales staff.
I took him to the airport, arriving at 4:03 although I’d hoped we’d make it by four. This is a milestone: the first time I’ve driven to the airport since moving up here. Woohoo! We got turned around a couple of times, but my departing companion made for a good navigator—aside from that unaniticpated introduction to the steepest cobblestone street in town. I’d happily skip doing that again. The closer we got to the airport the faster the man seated next to me transformed into the man I had expected to meet on his arrival. With his mind fixed on the travel ahead he retreated further and further into himself, and in the stress of driving unfamiliar streets I made less and less attempt to overcome it. I dropped him at the airport, we said a quick good-bye, and as he walked away I smiled and reminded him to stay in touch.
Ha. Stay in touch. Who am I kidding?
Then I went home, and took a nap.
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