It has come to my attention that some people find the games on FB annoying. "I don't care if you just bought a dairy barn... or lost a cow.... or adopted a bandicoot," they say. "Stop sending me fig trees and quiche. I'm not playing!"
I can certainly understand that. I've never been a computer gamer. I mean, if you don't count Free Cell, 'cause honestly, is there anyone with a computer who hasn't played Free Cell or some other form of Solitaire? I've had friends virtually lost in World of Warcraft and the like, and I always felt a little sorry for them. Poor slobs, bless their hearts. Get a life.
Then at a party one night, I heard two friends talking animatedly about crops and barns, and I knew they weren't farmers. WTF?
"Farm Town," they told me. "On Facebook. It's a game."
"A game?" I asked, incredulous. "About... farming? You're kidding. Seriously?" Snicker.
Out of curiosity, I took a look the next time i logged into FB. It looked... interesting.
What could it hurt? I would just try it. Just to see what it was like. All my friends, it seemed, were doing it.
It seemed harmless enough. Someone sent me a sheep. It was so cute, so adorable. It went "baaaaaahhhh" and walked around. And you can't just have one sheep, it would get lonely, wouldn't it? If you got a few sheep, you might as well have a cow. Ooh, and a chicken!
When the pig fell over and went to sleep, snoring softly, I was utterly charmed. "Gotta have a pig," I thought. "Maybe three or four."
As my farm filled up with crops and animals and buildings, the lust for more land grew. I had to expand! More land! More crops! More cows!
My carpel tunnel began to flare up from nights spent clicking, clicking, clicking. I walked through the produce section at Kroger and felt the strangest urge to click on the piles of corn, as if I could harvest them. I would drive down the road, see a field and think, "I'd put a tree right there."
Still, I thought, "I can stop any time."
Then one night, it was three a.m. and I was actually contemplating buying more coins with a credit card because I really, really, really wanted that mansion and I was a mere thousand experience points from Level 32.
One night, I left my boyfriend in bed so I could go harvest my crops. That should have been a warning sign.
I did the math to figure out which crops had the best payoff to growing time ratio -- and I haven't voluntarily done math in more than 25 years.
When the game went down the night I had an entire crop of pineapples (the biggest money crop at the time) coming in, I hyperventilated, banged my fists on the computer and finally sobbed in frustration. When the game came back up in time to harvest, I experienced something akin to the ecstasy of Old Testament saints.
That's when I realized I had a problem. I needed an intervention. But not until I got to the next level.
And just when I thought I had mastered the game -- I had the biggest farm possible, and the mansion, and all the other neat stuff and animals -- the bastards added new stuff and new levels. Like Michael Corleone, just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.
I've tried other farming games, but I love Farm Town the best. It's the most interactive because you can work harvesting for other farmers, too; of course, that's also the most damnably addicting aspect as well, because you could work Farm Town literally around the clock if you had enough coffee. (In Farmville, the graphics are higher quality, but once you plant your crops, all you can do is wait for them to mature.)
In Farm Town, you go to the "marketplace" (which is really a chat room) and try to get a job. Or you just hang out and whine about how long you've been stuck at Level 24, or how you're scared of the big mutant turkeys that are twice the size of the horses.
If you see someone with a really big farm, and a crop of say, pineapples, almost ready to harvest, you chat them up, ask them to be your neighbor, negotiate trades. But it's not all about the game, you actually talk to other living beings. I've made friends (of a sort) in Australia, Canada, California, England.... seriously. We visit each other's farms, admiring new acquisitions. "Ooh... how'd you make that waterfall?" (There's actually a tutorial on You Tube.)
I even reconnected with friends from high school and college. It was kinda funny that I would be trading harvests with the former football player I was afraid to talk to in high school.
But what I love most about Farm Town is the chance to play God. To create a world in which I have complete and total control. "I will put a pond here... and the meadow here. This looks like a good spot for a windmill." I build orchards and fields, plant elaborate gardens and hedges and entire rivers. True, it takes a bit more than seven days, but what the hell. I have the time.
It appeals to the artist in me, and the apparent completion compulsion I didn't know I had. In real life, I am out of work and broke, but in the cyber world, I am billionaire farming tycoon, living in a mansion amid gently rolling hills and valleys. Life is good.
Unlike life, the rules of the game are clear. You do the work, you get the rewards. You know where you are and how you're doing because you have coins, and points, and levels.
I've dallied with other games: Sorority Life (a horrible, horrible game built on shameless material acquisition with an inordinate amount of face-slapping) and Mafia Wars, but I much prefer the building games. In Cafe World, you build a little diner -- though I am more about decorating the restaurant than cooking the food. I've started and abandoned some games --- such as Social City -- because they are so ridiculously slow.
My current obsession? My Town. Again, I'm building my own little world. And I like it there. I like it a lot.
So don't judge me too harshly when I post about my new amphitheater or parking garage. It makes me ridiculously happy to have something I can control. Something I can win at, when I can't seem to bend real life to my wants and needs.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go collect my rents and see if I am any closer to buying that big honking shopping mall.
Monday, May 17, 2010
I Love my Doctor
March 25, 2010
Today I went for my six-week (?) or is it eight? I can't remember... anyway, it was a followup on George, that pesky SOB. Which meant I had to drag my butt out of bed at 7:30, no coffee or breakfast, and fight the rain-impaired drivers of Nashville. I was in such a foul mood I had a pop a Xanax before I crashed into someone, yanked them out of their car and beat them to death with my shoe.
I complain here a lot, about many things, and I thought that today I should mention something I do like, my primary care doctor, John E. Anderson at the Frist Clinic.
When I first went to him -- good grief, was it 15 years ago? Or twenty? He looked more like Doogie Howser than Marcus Welby, and I was a little skeptical. I don't know how young he was, maybe he just has one of those faces who looks much younger than he actually is, but I was tempted to ask to see his license, just to be sure he had actually graduated.
(Hey, I once changed OB/GYNs because the guy was just too good looking; I know it's crazy, but I just didn't want him seeing me naked with my feet in the stirrups. That's not a situation where you want to be thinking how sexy your doctor is. Makes the breast exam really awkward. For me, that is. I'm sure that for him, it's just another pair of hooters in a day of female genitalia. But I digress.)
Over the years, Dr. Anderson has grown into a more "doctorly" appearance. (Rather attractive, actually, which is why even though he's offered to do my yearly pap smear to save me time and money, I just say, uh, no thanks. That's okay. Really.)
But in all these years, what hasn't changed is the care he shows. He's personable, but not in the superficial way of many doctors I've seen over the years. He never makes you feel like he's in a hurry -- and THAT is truly remarkable, in my experience. The last other doctor I saw, a dermatologist, diagnosed me before he'd taken two steps into the room, and was gone faster than you could say "tylenol."
Anderson asks a lot of questions and listens when you ramble through a litany of symptoms and dumb questions. He doesn't sneer derisively when you mention you read something on WebMD and just want to make sure you don't have mesothelioma or malaria.
He doesn't seem to overbook as ridiculously as most other doctors do, because I never spend an inordinate amount of time waiting. (I am, however, mourning the departure of his head blood-sucker. I can't remember her name, only that she was a superstar, the Tiger Woods of blood-drawing. I never ever even felt the needle. The new girl's not bad, but she ain't Tiger.)
True, he's still lecturing me on my smoking and aversion to exercise, but nobody's perfect. I think he took an oath or something that makes him legally bound to oppose the one and promote the other. Go figure.
When I told him about my recent calamities, he told me I could get my Metaformin at WalMart for $4 a month. He cleaned out his Cymbalta samples for me. And he assured me that his office would work with me to make sure I continued to deal effectively with George. Having just been dumped by my shrink, and obsessively worrying about my lack of insurance, it was good to feel like someone was in my corner.
He's proud of me for doing so well, and I am giddy as a schoolgirl getting a gold star. (Maybe bringing him my BS levels for the past two months on an Excel spreadsheet tickled him. ) I've lost a total of 16 pounds -- not miraculous, but a good steady downward.
Anyway.... all this rambling to say thanks, Dr. Anderson. You're a good guy, and I'm glad you're my doctor.
I complain here a lot, about many things, and I thought that today I should mention something I do like, my primary care doctor, John E. Anderson at the Frist Clinic.
When I first went to him -- good grief, was it 15 years ago? Or twenty? He looked more like Doogie Howser than Marcus Welby, and I was a little skeptical. I don't know how young he was, maybe he just has one of those faces who looks much younger than he actually is, but I was tempted to ask to see his license, just to be sure he had actually graduated.
(Hey, I once changed OB/GYNs because the guy was just too good looking; I know it's crazy, but I just didn't want him seeing me naked with my feet in the stirrups. That's not a situation where you want to be thinking how sexy your doctor is. Makes the breast exam really awkward. For me, that is. I'm sure that for him, it's just another pair of hooters in a day of female genitalia. But I digress.)
Over the years, Dr. Anderson has grown into a more "doctorly" appearance. (Rather attractive, actually, which is why even though he's offered to do my yearly pap smear to save me time and money, I just say, uh, no thanks. That's okay. Really.)
But in all these years, what hasn't changed is the care he shows. He's personable, but not in the superficial way of many doctors I've seen over the years. He never makes you feel like he's in a hurry -- and THAT is truly remarkable, in my experience. The last other doctor I saw, a dermatologist, diagnosed me before he'd taken two steps into the room, and was gone faster than you could say "tylenol."
Anderson asks a lot of questions and listens when you ramble through a litany of symptoms and dumb questions. He doesn't sneer derisively when you mention you read something on WebMD and just want to make sure you don't have mesothelioma or malaria.
He doesn't seem to overbook as ridiculously as most other doctors do, because I never spend an inordinate amount of time waiting. (I am, however, mourning the departure of his head blood-sucker. I can't remember her name, only that she was a superstar, the Tiger Woods of blood-drawing. I never ever even felt the needle. The new girl's not bad, but she ain't Tiger.)
True, he's still lecturing me on my smoking and aversion to exercise, but nobody's perfect. I think he took an oath or something that makes him legally bound to oppose the one and promote the other. Go figure.
When I told him about my recent calamities, he told me I could get my Metaformin at WalMart for $4 a month. He cleaned out his Cymbalta samples for me. And he assured me that his office would work with me to make sure I continued to deal effectively with George. Having just been dumped by my shrink, and obsessively worrying about my lack of insurance, it was good to feel like someone was in my corner.
He's proud of me for doing so well, and I am giddy as a schoolgirl getting a gold star. (Maybe bringing him my BS levels for the past two months on an Excel spreadsheet tickled him. ) I've lost a total of 16 pounds -- not miraculous, but a good steady downward.
Anyway.... all this rambling to say thanks, Dr. Anderson. You're a good guy, and I'm glad you're my doctor.
Up in the Air: Bad Movie Choices
Written: Thursday, March 11, 2010
I am a big movie fan, so I was looking forward to seeing "Up in the Air." But somehow, in all the stuff I'd read about it, I either didn't hear or blocked out one teensy, weensy pertinent detail: Clooney's character fires people for a living.
We're not just told what he does. No. Neither do we get just one scene to get the point across. No. There's scene after scene of ordinary people being terminated. Let go. Downsized. Devastated.
Someone in movie marketing actually promoted this movie as a "high-flying comedy." Sure, it has a few chuckles here and there. So did Sophie's Choice, but i wouldn't characterize it as a light-hearted romance.
It was a stroke of genius on the part of the director not to have these terminated people played by stars or even recognizable character actors. He chose instead people who look like someone you might have passed on the way to the copy machine. We don't even get the safety buffer of long shots or medium shots (to use camera angle jargon) but head-on in the terrible intimacy of the close-up. Face full frame, talking directly to us, the audience, as if we are the bastard laying their world to waste.
Face after face, crumpling in tears, anger, terror, disbelief, shock. Whimpering, screaming, shouting, threatening suicide. People agonizing about their kids, their mortgages, their heating bills.
I squirmed in my seat, felt my stomach twisting into an origami crane, and even contemplated turning the damned movie off, because who the f*ck needs to see even fictional lives shattered when you know so intimately how it feels, when you've been that person not once or even twice but four times now...
Clooney's character has a line he likes to use on these pitiful wrecks of human beings: "Anybody who ever built an empire, or changed the world, sat where you are now. And it's *because* they sat there that they were able to do it."
The first time he said it, I smirked and said aloud, "Screw you." The second time, I would have thrown something heavy at the screen except that I knew I couldn't afford to replace either a television or an ashtray.
But when the guy in Detroit responded to that line with: "I'm 57 years old! Who's gonna hire me?" -- well, that's when I finally lost it.
I wrote a blog after my third termination about the stages of being fired, most of which included hysterical sobbing. I was actually rather pleased, in a strange sick way, that I skipped some of those stages on this, my fourth trip around the dead end of my brilliant career.
I only watered up at the moment of first realization, and quickly choked those tears down a painfully constricted throat because my supervisor was still saying things he expected me to reply to. True, I was leaking a bit as I packed up my desk, but held it together until I was alone in my car.
But as soon as I had the privacy to cry, I didn't. I thought maybe it was because I was just too numb, or because I really loathed that job anyway, or because I was just making progress in the fine art of not giving a shit. Maybe, I thought, I'm just toughening up and realizing that tears are a waste of time, body fluids, Kleenex and decongestants. Tears never change anything. (Except that ticket for not wearing my seat belt; hysterical sobbing did get me out of that one, but that was a total fluke.)
But tonight the flood gates opened. The dam broke. Hysterical sobbing, wailing, a whole box of Kleenex sacrificed on the altar of self-pity, despair and abject terror.
Before anyone rushes to tell me to buck up, that it will be okay, that I'm too smart and too talented to stay down for long, that this is all for the best, that i'll find another job that better suits me... yada yada yada -- understand that I appreciate your kindness, but I don't write this to elicit sympathy. I just need to belch these toxic fumes into the safety of an internet that cannot see the snot hanging from my nose. And frankly, I'm too despondent and terrified right now for anything anyone says to matter.
What frightens me the most is my inability to come up with any serious plan of action. I look at job postings in my chosen field of graphic arts, and more and more I see that I'm just falling more and more behind in the required technology. I look at all the classes offered online and on campuses, financial aid information, yada yada yada, and feel more and more like a possum in the headlights. All I can do is curl into a ball and play dead. Seriously, I was reading on how to apply for a Pell Grant and I had a minor panic attack, the words on the screen didn't seem to be a recognizable language anymore....
I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO.
Many of you have so kindly offered suggestions and I know, i really do, that you're trying to show your support, and I do appreciate it. I do.
But the truth is:
Yes, I am a very talented writer. But I have spent the last ten years writing and writing and trying to get my work out into the world and so far, no one wants it enough to pay me money for it. I am trying to find the energy to go looking for a new agent, on the chance that it's not my own lack of talent but my agent's.... But publishing is dying. I fear that the only way I'll ever get people to read the four unpublished novels in my computer will be to turn them into three-minute blurbs on YouTube.
I do all the freelance graphics I can get my hands on, but those jobs are hard to come by, and even harder to get paid for. I know more unemployed graphic artists (i.e. "freelancers") than you can shake a stick at.
Even if I wanted to teach, I would have to continue my education. I am terrified that I will make the sacrifices necessary to get that education -- going back into the debt that I finally got myself out of -- only to find out that what I suspect is true: I will hate teaching. I will get sued for striking a student. That I lack the patience and dedication to deal with the average ignorant, willfully stupid student without resorting to violence or foul language or alcohol addiction.
I'm terrified that I'm too old to do it. How old will I be by the time I could get my Masters? Could I manage a doctorate before senile dementia renders me incapable of remembering even my last name, let alone the fundamentals of pedagogy? Can I even learn anything anymore?
I already make as much art and crafts as I can physically make, but have yet to find a way to live on what little money I earn that way. Yes, there are still people who will spend money on the most mediocre of stuff, but I've not had much luck finding them. (And I won't go into my other parallel crisis of faith brought on by watching "Amadeus" again. I realized that I am Salieri, and that i will never be Mozart. Not even Chopin or Barry Manilow. I am so discouraged about my art right now, my inability to translate what I see in my head onto the canvas, it all just comes out as trite mediocrity.... i want to burn it all. I know it's not terrible, it's just not very good. And that's almost worse. Hello, my name is Mediocrity.)
I am terrified of trying to open a business of any kind in this economy. I'm lousy with money anyway, and I don't want to run a business. Payrolls, taxes, zoning, bookkeeping, oh dear god just shoot me.
If I were to chose a completely different "in-demand" career path, I don't know what in the hell to choose. Court reporting? Medical coding? Paralegal? I'm an artist in my heart and soul. There is nothing else I want to do, nothing else I can even begin to imagine that wouldn't suck me dry of my will to live.
Today, I talked to a woman at a company called Lee Hecht Harrison, one of my termination benefits provided by Hewlett Packard. This is the crap they actually sent me about their program:
Lee Hecht Harrison, we believe that when it comes to career transition, individuals benefit from a proven process. That’s where AIM comes in - AIM (Assess opportunity, Implement search, Manage transition) is our business process that combines personal support and productivity tools to help you identify and achieve your goals.
Oh, dear God. Let me guess. I'll get a Briggs-Meyer personality test which will tell me I am best suited for a career in art and design. Someone with an associate's degree from a community college will help me proof my resume for grammar and punctuation. I'll get tips on how to interview successfully, which will probably be about as helpful as the ones I've already read on Yahoo, Linked-In, CareerBuilder, Monster and Oprah's magazine.
I know, I know. I'm so fucking cheerful and positive about this. But this totally pointless exercise will require me to put on a dress, hose and heels to sit in a conference room for two hours next Tuesday. Then they want to send me to a two-day seminar. Do they really think I haven't been trying? I'm not a moron.
Did I mention that their offices are located in the same building as the second job that fired me?
Clooney's character may actually be right. "Anybody who ever built an empire, or changed the world, sat where you are now. And it's *because* they sat there that they were able to do it."
But I'm afraid. I am so deep-down to my bones afraid. All i can see are all the obstacles. I'm walled in on all sides by fear of failure and a paralyzing lack of faith. I know I need to move beyond this, I just don't have any idea how in the hell to do it.
Warning: the following post is probably not going to be very funny. It will, however, be soggy with tears, stinking of desperation and mired in a deeply morbid self-pity only nominally covered by sarcasm and failed attempts at humor.
I am a big movie fan, so I was looking forward to seeing "Up in the Air." But somehow, in all the stuff I'd read about it, I either didn't hear or blocked out one teensy, weensy pertinent detail: Clooney's character fires people for a living.
We're not just told what he does. No. Neither do we get just one scene to get the point across. No. There's scene after scene of ordinary people being terminated. Let go. Downsized. Devastated.
Someone in movie marketing actually promoted this movie as a "high-flying comedy." Sure, it has a few chuckles here and there. So did Sophie's Choice, but i wouldn't characterize it as a light-hearted romance.
It was a stroke of genius on the part of the director not to have these terminated people played by stars or even recognizable character actors. He chose instead people who look like someone you might have passed on the way to the copy machine. We don't even get the safety buffer of long shots or medium shots (to use camera angle jargon) but head-on in the terrible intimacy of the close-up. Face full frame, talking directly to us, the audience, as if we are the bastard laying their world to waste.
Face after face, crumpling in tears, anger, terror, disbelief, shock. Whimpering, screaming, shouting, threatening suicide. People agonizing about their kids, their mortgages, their heating bills.
I squirmed in my seat, felt my stomach twisting into an origami crane, and even contemplated turning the damned movie off, because who the f*ck needs to see even fictional lives shattered when you know so intimately how it feels, when you've been that person not once or even twice but four times now...
Clooney's character has a line he likes to use on these pitiful wrecks of human beings: "Anybody who ever built an empire, or changed the world, sat where you are now. And it's *because* they sat there that they were able to do it."
The first time he said it, I smirked and said aloud, "Screw you." The second time, I would have thrown something heavy at the screen except that I knew I couldn't afford to replace either a television or an ashtray.
But when the guy in Detroit responded to that line with: "I'm 57 years old! Who's gonna hire me?" -- well, that's when I finally lost it.
I wrote a blog after my third termination about the stages of being fired, most of which included hysterical sobbing. I was actually rather pleased, in a strange sick way, that I skipped some of those stages on this, my fourth trip around the dead end of my brilliant career.
I only watered up at the moment of first realization, and quickly choked those tears down a painfully constricted throat because my supervisor was still saying things he expected me to reply to. True, I was leaking a bit as I packed up my desk, but held it together until I was alone in my car.
But as soon as I had the privacy to cry, I didn't. I thought maybe it was because I was just too numb, or because I really loathed that job anyway, or because I was just making progress in the fine art of not giving a shit. Maybe, I thought, I'm just toughening up and realizing that tears are a waste of time, body fluids, Kleenex and decongestants. Tears never change anything. (Except that ticket for not wearing my seat belt; hysterical sobbing did get me out of that one, but that was a total fluke.)
But tonight the flood gates opened. The dam broke. Hysterical sobbing, wailing, a whole box of Kleenex sacrificed on the altar of self-pity, despair and abject terror.
Before anyone rushes to tell me to buck up, that it will be okay, that I'm too smart and too talented to stay down for long, that this is all for the best, that i'll find another job that better suits me... yada yada yada -- understand that I appreciate your kindness, but I don't write this to elicit sympathy. I just need to belch these toxic fumes into the safety of an internet that cannot see the snot hanging from my nose. And frankly, I'm too despondent and terrified right now for anything anyone says to matter.
What frightens me the most is my inability to come up with any serious plan of action. I look at job postings in my chosen field of graphic arts, and more and more I see that I'm just falling more and more behind in the required technology. I look at all the classes offered online and on campuses, financial aid information, yada yada yada, and feel more and more like a possum in the headlights. All I can do is curl into a ball and play dead. Seriously, I was reading on how to apply for a Pell Grant and I had a minor panic attack, the words on the screen didn't seem to be a recognizable language anymore....
I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO.
Many of you have so kindly offered suggestions and I know, i really do, that you're trying to show your support, and I do appreciate it. I do.
But the truth is:
Yes, I am a very talented writer. But I have spent the last ten years writing and writing and trying to get my work out into the world and so far, no one wants it enough to pay me money for it. I am trying to find the energy to go looking for a new agent, on the chance that it's not my own lack of talent but my agent's.... But publishing is dying. I fear that the only way I'll ever get people to read the four unpublished novels in my computer will be to turn them into three-minute blurbs on YouTube.
I do all the freelance graphics I can get my hands on, but those jobs are hard to come by, and even harder to get paid for. I know more unemployed graphic artists (i.e. "freelancers") than you can shake a stick at.
Even if I wanted to teach, I would have to continue my education. I am terrified that I will make the sacrifices necessary to get that education -- going back into the debt that I finally got myself out of -- only to find out that what I suspect is true: I will hate teaching. I will get sued for striking a student. That I lack the patience and dedication to deal with the average ignorant, willfully stupid student without resorting to violence or foul language or alcohol addiction.
I'm terrified that I'm too old to do it. How old will I be by the time I could get my Masters? Could I manage a doctorate before senile dementia renders me incapable of remembering even my last name, let alone the fundamentals of pedagogy? Can I even learn anything anymore?
I already make as much art and crafts as I can physically make, but have yet to find a way to live on what little money I earn that way. Yes, there are still people who will spend money on the most mediocre of stuff, but I've not had much luck finding them. (And I won't go into my other parallel crisis of faith brought on by watching "Amadeus" again. I realized that I am Salieri, and that i will never be Mozart. Not even Chopin or Barry Manilow. I am so discouraged about my art right now, my inability to translate what I see in my head onto the canvas, it all just comes out as trite mediocrity.... i want to burn it all. I know it's not terrible, it's just not very good. And that's almost worse. Hello, my name is Mediocrity.)
I am terrified of trying to open a business of any kind in this economy. I'm lousy with money anyway, and I don't want to run a business. Payrolls, taxes, zoning, bookkeeping, oh dear god just shoot me.
If I were to chose a completely different "in-demand" career path, I don't know what in the hell to choose. Court reporting? Medical coding? Paralegal? I'm an artist in my heart and soul. There is nothing else I want to do, nothing else I can even begin to imagine that wouldn't suck me dry of my will to live.
Today, I talked to a woman at a company called Lee Hecht Harrison, one of my termination benefits provided by Hewlett Packard. This is the crap they actually sent me about their program:
Lee Hecht Harrison, we believe that when it comes to career transition, individuals benefit from a proven process. That’s where AIM comes in - AIM (Assess opportunity, Implement search, Manage transition) is our business process that combines personal support and productivity tools to help you identify and achieve your goals.
Oh, dear God. Let me guess. I'll get a Briggs-Meyer personality test which will tell me I am best suited for a career in art and design. Someone with an associate's degree from a community college will help me proof my resume for grammar and punctuation. I'll get tips on how to interview successfully, which will probably be about as helpful as the ones I've already read on Yahoo, Linked-In, CareerBuilder, Monster and Oprah's magazine.
I know, I know. I'm so fucking cheerful and positive about this. But this totally pointless exercise will require me to put on a dress, hose and heels to sit in a conference room for two hours next Tuesday. Then they want to send me to a two-day seminar. Do they really think I haven't been trying? I'm not a moron.
Did I mention that their offices are located in the same building as the second job that fired me?
Clooney's character may actually be right. "Anybody who ever built an empire, or changed the world, sat where you are now. And it's *because* they sat there that they were able to do it."
But I'm afraid. I am so deep-down to my bones afraid. All i can see are all the obstacles. I'm walled in on all sides by fear of failure and a paralyzing lack of faith. I know I need to move beyond this, I just don't have any idea how in the hell to do it.
A Few Thoughts on Mortality and Three Year Olds....
Friday, March 5, 2010.
Wednesday, I voluntarily got up at the ungodly hour of 7 am. There are few people for whom I would do this without having a gun put to my head. But on this day, I did it for Kelly and Elaina.
You should understand that for many, many years, Kelly and I roamed the streets like Thelma and Louise -- only without the guns, attempted rape and a half-naked Brad Pitt. You couldn't really call it shopping, because in the beginning, neither of us had much of anything to spend. Later, a lot of it was just running errands -- quite mundane stuff -- but it was always fun.
It became even more important when we were no longer roommates. These excursions gave us a chance to catch-up, and often a much-needed break from our significant others.
Over the last couple of years, such roaming has been seriously curtailed by life's crappy details. So I was happy to be on the streets with Kelly once more, even though our errand on this day was a heavy one.
We were going to pick up her mother's ashes.
First, however, I had to face off with a worthy adversary: Kelly's three year-old, Ben.
Don't get me wrong. Ben is a sweetheart - and I don't say that about every kid. I am not one of those people who go all mushy over babies and small children. But Ben is sweet and happy, particularly when you consider that in the last year he's spent a good bit of time at Vanderbilt's Children's Hospital being treated for leukemia. But he's only seen me a few times since babyhood. Once, when I visited him in the hospital and brought him a Funkee Monkee -- which has permanently made me, in Ben's mind, "The Monkey Lady." Then at the Tomato Festival when the poor little guy threw up in the middle of my craft booth, something that is bound to be a less than stellar memory for him.
I'm sure his reaction to me had a lot to do with the fact that his mother hasn't been around as much in the last couple of days, and the potentially confusing news that his beloved Me-me has gone to heaven. Kelly's not sure just how well Ben understands death. He has commented that "Me-me is running around heaven holding Pe-Paw's hand."
(This comment made Kelly nearly fall in the floor laughing. You'd have to have known both Elaina and Kelly's father, the notoriously insane Herschel, to understand just how absurd the image of them cavorting hand-in-hand through Paradise really is.)
At first, Ben seemed happy to see me. Much happier than the family dachshund, Doxy, at any rate, who barked nearly incessantly at me as soon as I stepped through the door. But Ben and I discussed his monster trucks, the cartoons he was watching, and his older brother's unfortunate decision to follow in his father's misguided footsteps as a Volunteer fan. (Ben is the only one of Kelly's children to Roll Tide, and the poor guy is forced to share a room painted Tennessee Orange. Shudder.)
But as Kelly was buckling him into the back seat of her Saturn, and I got into the passenger seat, Ben made his feelings clear.
"No! She goes in her car! Make her go in her car!"
You should also understand that this was not said maliciously, but with a happy rolling giggle. He seemed quite delighted.
"Ben, don't be rude," Kelly admonished. "She's going with us."
"I don't want her to," Ben insisted. (Giggle.)
"Can't I ride with you and your mom, Ben?" I asked, smiling to show I wasn't taking any of this personally, even though I was. Just a little.
"No!" There were more rolling peals of laughter from Ben.
A little ways down the road, at a stop light, Ben told his mother to "Go!"
"We can't go yet," Kelly said in that utterly imperturbable, endlessly patience tone of the World's Best Mother.
"Why?" Ben demanded happily.
"Because it's not our turn yet," she explained. "The other cars will hit us."
"Make her get out!" Ben exclaimed gleefully, pointing at me. "Make her get out so a car will hit her!"
I was torn between astonished laughter and a desire to throw something at the little emperor in the back seat.
I was reminded of his older brother, Christopher, who is now an unbelievable twelve. (How the hell did he get to be twelve? Who gave him permission to be twelve??)
Between the ages of two and four, Christopher loathed me. Probably because nearly every time he saw me, Mommy would leave with me to do our Thelma and Louise thing. He cried at the very sight of me. When we took him with us, he was cranky and (I am not exaggerating) downright antagonistic towards me. I bought him a soda, of which he refused to let me have a sip. He crawled under the table at a restaurant and tried to reach into my purse -- prompting me to act like I was three and slap at his sneaky little hand -- which in turn set him into sobs of outrage. It wasn't pretty.
So I was at least pleased that Ben was still giggling, in spite of his desire to see me smeared across the highway.
We got to his daycare and Kelly got him out of the car.
"I'm staying in the car, Ben," I told him cheerfully. "Don't worry."
Ben just giggled, then raced his mother to the door.
Kelly and I went to her mother's house to check in with her roommate, Claudia. Claudia was feeling the strain of the last few days, and said she was too tired to make the trip to the mortuary. While this was probably true, I think Claudia also wanted me and Kelly to have some time together. She knew that our having a little Thelma and Louise time would have made Elaina happy.
Elaina had been worried for the past couple of years that Kelly and I were drifting apart. She prodded Kelly repeatedly, and she called me about it a couple of times. "I know ya'll are both busy, but you need to make time."
Kelly asked my advice on how to word the obituary. She didn't want to say "Elaina Taylor Burch died" -- that sounded so cold -- nor did she like the euphemistic "passed away."
"I don't want to put in some ordinary, depressing obituary," Kelly said. "That's not who Mom was."
I told her I'd read a few obits that said, "So-and-So has gone on to his heavenly reward." And we both burst into laughter.
"Shuffled off this mortal coil" had the same effect.
"I wish I could just say she kicked the bucket," Kelly said. "Mom would like that, but other people might get offended."
"You think?" More laughter.
"You could always say, 'she has made forceful podiatric contact with a metal pail,'" I offered. "But I vote for shuffling off the mortal coil. Very poetic."
"Mom would be so pissed," Kelly laughed. "She'd come back to haunt me."
"Consider it a last joke on your mom," I said.
"Should we be having a good time doing this?" Kelly asked, sobering.
"Sure. Because it would make your mom happy."
"I know."
A box of ashes is amazingly heavy. Just a white cardboard container, with a wooden box inside. A wooden box full of all that remains in the physical realm of a good and wonderful human being.
"I guess I should put her in the floorboard," Kelly said when we got back in the car. "I wouldn't want her to slide around...."
I didn't tell Kelly then but I had a sudden flash back to a Monty Python reunion show, where they brought out an urn full of Graham Chapman's ashes, and placed it on one of the chairs with them. Of course, before the end of the show, Idle managed to knock over the urn, and Cleese brought out a dust buster to vacuum them up. It was hysterical and irreverent and would have made Chapman laugh. I realize now I should have told Kelly about it.
The plan is that Kelly and the rest of the family will take Elaina's ashes down to Gulf Shores, a place that Elaina loved passionately. And since Kelly still hasn't figured out what to do with her father's ashes, Herschel is going, too. Elaina had already told Kelly she didn't mind.
Though Kelly does think that her daughter Emily's idea to mix the two together is a bit much. There is a high probability for some kind of combustible chemical reaction.
We went to lunch and then to Hobby Lobby. No matter how much time has passed since we've seen each other, we pick up right where we left off. That's the wonderful part of friendship.
Then it was time to pick up Ben. Kelly transferred Elaina to the other side of the floorboard, commenting that it probably wasn't nice to let your child rest his feet on his grandmother's ashes.
I was again grateful that I have chosen not to have children. How do you explain a white cardboard box to your kids? What do you tell them about death and the afterlife if you're not sure there is one, or what form it might take? You can't tell a kid that that you believe the spark of our soul goes on somehow, somewhere, even if it's just back into the ebb and flow of all creation. Running hand-in-hand with Pe-Paw through the clouds sounds so much more comprehensible and more comforting. I don't envy Kelly having to deal with this along with her own grief.
"Not her again!" Ben exclaimed when he saw me. "Make her get out."
He turned and ran about twenty feet down the sidewalk.
"Ben! Ben, come back here right now."
More giggles as Ben raced back and forth.
"You are about to be in trouble, Ben!"
Finally, he came back to the car, but refused to get in. He made a sort of squealing sound when Kelly picked him up. He struggled not to be put into his car seat. He was still laughing, but his feet were kicking the door as he hollered: "I don't want to go with her! No! Make her get out!"
I burst into mock sobs and sniffles.
"See what you've done, Ben?" Kelly asked. "You hurt her feelings."
Ben was still kicking.
"Don't you want to take me back to my car?" I asked him, hoping it would pacify him to know I was going to leave soon.
"She can walk! Make her walk!"
Apparently, he wasn't even going to speak to me directly, only issue orders to his mother about "her."
"She might get hit by a car," Kelly said, matter-of-factly, but beginning to show a tiny throbbing vein in her forehead.
"I want her to get hit by a car!" Giggle. Giggle.
Thelma and Louise didn't have kids. Of course, neither did they have their mother's ashes in the floorboard. But I do have Ben's permission to come to dinner sometime soon.
Elaina would like that, I'm sure.
You should understand that for many, many years, Kelly and I roamed the streets like Thelma and Louise -- only without the guns, attempted rape and a half-naked Brad Pitt. You couldn't really call it shopping, because in the beginning, neither of us had much of anything to spend. Later, a lot of it was just running errands -- quite mundane stuff -- but it was always fun.
It became even more important when we were no longer roommates. These excursions gave us a chance to catch-up, and often a much-needed break from our significant others.
Over the last couple of years, such roaming has been seriously curtailed by life's crappy details. So I was happy to be on the streets with Kelly once more, even though our errand on this day was a heavy one.
We were going to pick up her mother's ashes.
First, however, I had to face off with a worthy adversary: Kelly's three year-old, Ben.
Don't get me wrong. Ben is a sweetheart - and I don't say that about every kid. I am not one of those people who go all mushy over babies and small children. But Ben is sweet and happy, particularly when you consider that in the last year he's spent a good bit of time at Vanderbilt's Children's Hospital being treated for leukemia. But he's only seen me a few times since babyhood. Once, when I visited him in the hospital and brought him a Funkee Monkee -- which has permanently made me, in Ben's mind, "The Monkey Lady." Then at the Tomato Festival when the poor little guy threw up in the middle of my craft booth, something that is bound to be a less than stellar memory for him.
I'm sure his reaction to me had a lot to do with the fact that his mother hasn't been around as much in the last couple of days, and the potentially confusing news that his beloved Me-me has gone to heaven. Kelly's not sure just how well Ben understands death. He has commented that "Me-me is running around heaven holding Pe-Paw's hand."
(This comment made Kelly nearly fall in the floor laughing. You'd have to have known both Elaina and Kelly's father, the notoriously insane Herschel, to understand just how absurd the image of them cavorting hand-in-hand through Paradise really is.)
At first, Ben seemed happy to see me. Much happier than the family dachshund, Doxy, at any rate, who barked nearly incessantly at me as soon as I stepped through the door. But Ben and I discussed his monster trucks, the cartoons he was watching, and his older brother's unfortunate decision to follow in his father's misguided footsteps as a Volunteer fan. (Ben is the only one of Kelly's children to Roll Tide, and the poor guy is forced to share a room painted Tennessee Orange. Shudder.)
But as Kelly was buckling him into the back seat of her Saturn, and I got into the passenger seat, Ben made his feelings clear.
"No! She goes in her car! Make her go in her car!"
You should also understand that this was not said maliciously, but with a happy rolling giggle. He seemed quite delighted.
"Ben, don't be rude," Kelly admonished. "She's going with us."
"I don't want her to," Ben insisted. (Giggle.)
"Can't I ride with you and your mom, Ben?" I asked, smiling to show I wasn't taking any of this personally, even though I was. Just a little.
"No!" There were more rolling peals of laughter from Ben.
A little ways down the road, at a stop light, Ben told his mother to "Go!"
"We can't go yet," Kelly said in that utterly imperturbable, endlessly patience tone of the World's Best Mother.
"Why?" Ben demanded happily.
"Because it's not our turn yet," she explained. "The other cars will hit us."
"Make her get out!" Ben exclaimed gleefully, pointing at me. "Make her get out so a car will hit her!"
I was torn between astonished laughter and a desire to throw something at the little emperor in the back seat.
I was reminded of his older brother, Christopher, who is now an unbelievable twelve. (How the hell did he get to be twelve? Who gave him permission to be twelve??)
Between the ages of two and four, Christopher loathed me. Probably because nearly every time he saw me, Mommy would leave with me to do our Thelma and Louise thing. He cried at the very sight of me. When we took him with us, he was cranky and (I am not exaggerating) downright antagonistic towards me. I bought him a soda, of which he refused to let me have a sip. He crawled under the table at a restaurant and tried to reach into my purse -- prompting me to act like I was three and slap at his sneaky little hand -- which in turn set him into sobs of outrage. It wasn't pretty.
So I was at least pleased that Ben was still giggling, in spite of his desire to see me smeared across the highway.
We got to his daycare and Kelly got him out of the car.
"I'm staying in the car, Ben," I told him cheerfully. "Don't worry."
Ben just giggled, then raced his mother to the door.
Kelly and I went to her mother's house to check in with her roommate, Claudia. Claudia was feeling the strain of the last few days, and said she was too tired to make the trip to the mortuary. While this was probably true, I think Claudia also wanted me and Kelly to have some time together. She knew that our having a little Thelma and Louise time would have made Elaina happy.
Elaina had been worried for the past couple of years that Kelly and I were drifting apart. She prodded Kelly repeatedly, and she called me about it a couple of times. "I know ya'll are both busy, but you need to make time."
Kelly asked my advice on how to word the obituary. She didn't want to say "Elaina Taylor Burch died" -- that sounded so cold -- nor did she like the euphemistic "passed away."
"I don't want to put in some ordinary, depressing obituary," Kelly said. "That's not who Mom was."
I told her I'd read a few obits that said, "So-and-So has gone on to his heavenly reward." And we both burst into laughter.
"Shuffled off this mortal coil" had the same effect.
"I wish I could just say she kicked the bucket," Kelly said. "Mom would like that, but other people might get offended."
"You think?" More laughter.
"You could always say, 'she has made forceful podiatric contact with a metal pail,'" I offered. "But I vote for shuffling off the mortal coil. Very poetic."
"Mom would be so pissed," Kelly laughed. "She'd come back to haunt me."
"Consider it a last joke on your mom," I said.
"Should we be having a good time doing this?" Kelly asked, sobering.
"Sure. Because it would make your mom happy."
"I know."
A box of ashes is amazingly heavy. Just a white cardboard container, with a wooden box inside. A wooden box full of all that remains in the physical realm of a good and wonderful human being.
"I guess I should put her in the floorboard," Kelly said when we got back in the car. "I wouldn't want her to slide around...."
I didn't tell Kelly then but I had a sudden flash back to a Monty Python reunion show, where they brought out an urn full of Graham Chapman's ashes, and placed it on one of the chairs with them. Of course, before the end of the show, Idle managed to knock over the urn, and Cleese brought out a dust buster to vacuum them up. It was hysterical and irreverent and would have made Chapman laugh. I realize now I should have told Kelly about it.
The plan is that Kelly and the rest of the family will take Elaina's ashes down to Gulf Shores, a place that Elaina loved passionately. And since Kelly still hasn't figured out what to do with her father's ashes, Herschel is going, too. Elaina had already told Kelly she didn't mind.
Though Kelly does think that her daughter Emily's idea to mix the two together is a bit much. There is a high probability for some kind of combustible chemical reaction.
We went to lunch and then to Hobby Lobby. No matter how much time has passed since we've seen each other, we pick up right where we left off. That's the wonderful part of friendship.
Then it was time to pick up Ben. Kelly transferred Elaina to the other side of the floorboard, commenting that it probably wasn't nice to let your child rest his feet on his grandmother's ashes.
I was again grateful that I have chosen not to have children. How do you explain a white cardboard box to your kids? What do you tell them about death and the afterlife if you're not sure there is one, or what form it might take? You can't tell a kid that that you believe the spark of our soul goes on somehow, somewhere, even if it's just back into the ebb and flow of all creation. Running hand-in-hand with Pe-Paw through the clouds sounds so much more comprehensible and more comforting. I don't envy Kelly having to deal with this along with her own grief.
"Not her again!" Ben exclaimed when he saw me. "Make her get out."
He turned and ran about twenty feet down the sidewalk.
"Ben! Ben, come back here right now."
More giggles as Ben raced back and forth.
"You are about to be in trouble, Ben!"
Finally, he came back to the car, but refused to get in. He made a sort of squealing sound when Kelly picked him up. He struggled not to be put into his car seat. He was still laughing, but his feet were kicking the door as he hollered: "I don't want to go with her! No! Make her get out!"
I burst into mock sobs and sniffles.
"See what you've done, Ben?" Kelly asked. "You hurt her feelings."
Ben was still kicking.
"Don't you want to take me back to my car?" I asked him, hoping it would pacify him to know I was going to leave soon.
"She can walk! Make her walk!"
Apparently, he wasn't even going to speak to me directly, only issue orders to his mother about "her."
"She might get hit by a car," Kelly said, matter-of-factly, but beginning to show a tiny throbbing vein in her forehead.
"I want her to get hit by a car!" Giggle. Giggle.
Thelma and Louise didn't have kids. Of course, neither did they have their mother's ashes in the floorboard. But I do have Ben's permission to come to dinner sometime soon.
Elaina would like that, I'm sure.
A Bad Week... and a Goodbye
Written: March 1, 2010
The week started out not so good for me. I was the victim of another "workforce reduction" on Monday... and it just seemed to slide downhill from there.
That same day, Rex crashed and totaled his beloved truck -- I am so grateful that he was okay, and please don't think I'm not aware that that single fact may have actually been an amazing stroke of luck that puts the rest of my whining to shame.... I couldn't bear to think of losing him. But the loss of that truck is a bad thing, not the least of which being that he and I both have a sentimental attachment to it.
Then last night, in the process of installing my birthday present -- a Roku gadget which allows me to download NetFlix directly to my television -- my Mac bit the dust. The" on" switch has been intermittently wigging out for months, but this time it's been 24 hours and I still can't get it to come back up. For me, the loss of the computer is a devastating loss.
It's not so much loss of files -- i had all the important stuff backed up but have lost some stuff that will be really annoying to replace -- as the fact that I am unemployed and broke and really, really don't want to go into the debt hole that I'd finally climbed out of when I don't know how I'm going to pay my mortgage, let alone a credit card bill -- to replace something so integral to my quality of life and a source of what little livlihood i have left.They will charge me $150 just to open the computer up.... it just makes me want to cry. (I am writing this now on Rex's NetBook. Blame any typos on my not being able to see the tiny screen very well.)
But then I got a phone call this morning that put everything in perspective, even as it proved a dismal ending to week that wasn't very good to begin with.
I have had a lot of "best friends" throughout my life, but the single most enduring friendship has been with Kelly Burch Cole. We met in college, lived as roommates for several years after my graduation, and -- as cliched as it sounds -- she is my sister more than just my friend. We've seen a lot less of each other in recent years -- she's a working mother with three children and I'm a single, often anticsocial person whose life has moved in far, far different directions.
But I always know she is there, and she - i hope -- has always known i was here.
And its not just Kelly who has become my family over the last 27 years -- her family has become mine as well. I dated her brother, Ray, on and off for a couple years; I lived with both her brother and her father in Huntsville for three years right after I graduated, working in their furniture store. (And I might add, I suffered all the same insantiy with Kelly's dad that his actual children did, and that alone bonded us in ways that can never be fully understood by anyone but us.)
Kelly introduced me to her mother, Elaina, while we were still in college. "Want to come with me to met my mom?" she asked one weekend. I was always ready for a road trip, so I packed a few things -- a dress, some heels, my hot curlers -- and off we went to Alabama.
Now, here is a point of continuing contention between myself and Kelly. I heard, "We're going to see Mom at the beach in Gulf Shores." Kelly swears she said: "We're going to see Mom CAMPING at the beach at Gulf Shores."
I still insist that I never heard the word "camping" because I would never have agreed to go camping, anywhere, anytime, with anybody. Imagine my chagrin to I find myself squatting around a campfire, ridiculously overpacked with nothing of any practical use but the jeans and t-shirt I was wearing. If I had not been able to borrow a sweat shirt from Elaina, I would have frozen to death. I'm not a camping kind of girl.
And yet, I had fun.(And I became addicted to Elaina's magnificent baked beans and ribs.... but I still do not camp.)
But Kelly's mom, Elaina, opened her arms and heart and home to me from that moment onward. During a long period when I was far from home, and my own family relationships were complicated, Elaina became my second mom, and I became a "yard kid."
When Elaina sent Kelly an easter basket at school, she sent one for me as well. When I spent my first Christmas away from home, Elaina included me in their family celebration -- an orgy of chili, homemade cookies and far too many generous gifts. I was blown away by the lengths at which she went to make me feel not just included, but as if I was a long-lost child.
When Kelly and I got our first apartment together, Elaina was there to help us move, to help us make it a home... and most importantly, she fed us when we were too broke to go to the grocery store.
Elaina was, even then, a "wise old lady" who listened to me through numerous crisis and heartbreaks. She truly taught me that sometimes you CAN choose your family, that blood is not always the most important thing that binds people together. She taught me what is is to have an open, generous heart.
A couple of years ago, Elaina was put on oxygen. A lifetime of smoking finally caught up with her. The last time I saw her, she couldn't walk four feet without gasping for air, and the sight scared the hell out of me.
The doctors didn't expect her to last as long as she did. Kelly called me Friday night, and the fear and sorrow in her voice was terrible. Elaina had fallen and broken her arm, and Kelly was certain that the end was near. Elaina seemed, finally, too tired to keep on fighting.
On Saturday night, the end came peacefully for Elaina, and Kelly was there with her. I thank God for both of those things.
I do have one regret... that I did not return Elaina's last phone call. She called me at Christmas and left a message to tell me that she loved me, and that she was grateful to have had me in her life. She knew her time was almost over, and it is typical of her generous spirit to want to share just a little more love with people she cared about.
I don't really know why I didn't call her back. I was probably caught up in my own petty, personal crap and just never got around to it. I know that she knew -- knows -- that she was special to me, that I was the one who gained so much by being a part of her life - but I wish I had told her that one last time.
Life is short. Tell the people you love what they mean to you.
That same day, Rex crashed and totaled his beloved truck -- I am so grateful that he was okay, and please don't think I'm not aware that that single fact may have actually been an amazing stroke of luck that puts the rest of my whining to shame.... I couldn't bear to think of losing him. But the loss of that truck is a bad thing, not the least of which being that he and I both have a sentimental attachment to it.
Then last night, in the process of installing my birthday present -- a Roku gadget which allows me to download NetFlix directly to my television -- my Mac bit the dust. The" on" switch has been intermittently wigging out for months, but this time it's been 24 hours and I still can't get it to come back up. For me, the loss of the computer is a devastating loss.
It's not so much loss of files -- i had all the important stuff backed up but have lost some stuff that will be really annoying to replace -- as the fact that I am unemployed and broke and really, really don't want to go into the debt hole that I'd finally climbed out of when I don't know how I'm going to pay my mortgage, let alone a credit card bill -- to replace something so integral to my quality of life and a source of what little livlihood i have left.They will charge me $150 just to open the computer up.... it just makes me want to cry. (I am writing this now on Rex's NetBook. Blame any typos on my not being able to see the tiny screen very well.)
But then I got a phone call this morning that put everything in perspective, even as it proved a dismal ending to week that wasn't very good to begin with.
I have had a lot of "best friends" throughout my life, but the single most enduring friendship has been with Kelly Burch Cole. We met in college, lived as roommates for several years after my graduation, and -- as cliched as it sounds -- she is my sister more than just my friend. We've seen a lot less of each other in recent years -- she's a working mother with three children and I'm a single, often anticsocial person whose life has moved in far, far different directions.
But I always know she is there, and she - i hope -- has always known i was here.
And its not just Kelly who has become my family over the last 27 years -- her family has become mine as well. I dated her brother, Ray, on and off for a couple years; I lived with both her brother and her father in Huntsville for three years right after I graduated, working in their furniture store. (And I might add, I suffered all the same insantiy with Kelly's dad that his actual children did, and that alone bonded us in ways that can never be fully understood by anyone but us.)
Kelly introduced me to her mother, Elaina, while we were still in college. "Want to come with me to met my mom?" she asked one weekend. I was always ready for a road trip, so I packed a few things -- a dress, some heels, my hot curlers -- and off we went to Alabama.
Now, here is a point of continuing contention between myself and Kelly. I heard, "We're going to see Mom at the beach in Gulf Shores." Kelly swears she said: "We're going to see Mom CAMPING at the beach at Gulf Shores."
I still insist that I never heard the word "camping" because I would never have agreed to go camping, anywhere, anytime, with anybody. Imagine my chagrin to I find myself squatting around a campfire, ridiculously overpacked with nothing of any practical use but the jeans and t-shirt I was wearing. If I had not been able to borrow a sweat shirt from Elaina, I would have frozen to death. I'm not a camping kind of girl.
And yet, I had fun.(And I became addicted to Elaina's magnificent baked beans and ribs.... but I still do not camp.)
But Kelly's mom, Elaina, opened her arms and heart and home to me from that moment onward. During a long period when I was far from home, and my own family relationships were complicated, Elaina became my second mom, and I became a "yard kid."
When Elaina sent Kelly an easter basket at school, she sent one for me as well. When I spent my first Christmas away from home, Elaina included me in their family celebration -- an orgy of chili, homemade cookies and far too many generous gifts. I was blown away by the lengths at which she went to make me feel not just included, but as if I was a long-lost child.
When Kelly and I got our first apartment together, Elaina was there to help us move, to help us make it a home... and most importantly, she fed us when we were too broke to go to the grocery store.
Elaina was, even then, a "wise old lady" who listened to me through numerous crisis and heartbreaks. She truly taught me that sometimes you CAN choose your family, that blood is not always the most important thing that binds people together. She taught me what is is to have an open, generous heart.
A couple of years ago, Elaina was put on oxygen. A lifetime of smoking finally caught up with her. The last time I saw her, she couldn't walk four feet without gasping for air, and the sight scared the hell out of me.
The doctors didn't expect her to last as long as she did. Kelly called me Friday night, and the fear and sorrow in her voice was terrible. Elaina had fallen and broken her arm, and Kelly was certain that the end was near. Elaina seemed, finally, too tired to keep on fighting.
On Saturday night, the end came peacefully for Elaina, and Kelly was there with her. I thank God for both of those things.
I do have one regret... that I did not return Elaina's last phone call. She called me at Christmas and left a message to tell me that she loved me, and that she was grateful to have had me in her life. She knew her time was almost over, and it is typical of her generous spirit to want to share just a little more love with people she cared about.
I don't really know why I didn't call her back. I was probably caught up in my own petty, personal crap and just never got around to it. I know that she knew -- knows -- that she was special to me, that I was the one who gained so much by being a part of her life - but I wish I had told her that one last time.
Life is short. Tell the people you love what they mean to you.
Day Four
I just finished rewatching "Witness for the Prosecution" -- the old black and white classic, with Charles Laughton, Tyrone Power and Marlene Dietrich. What a great old movie but provoked a couple of random thoughts:
First, Laughton is an amazing actor but lordy, lordy... he is a seriously unattractive man. Even without the makeup, he still looks like Quasimodo's only slightly more attractive brother, bless his heart. That he managed a career in Hollywood at all is an achievement. But the sheer presence of the man has to be part of the reason. I shall have to look for more Laughon in other films.
What amazed me this time around about WFTP-- I saw it years and years ago -- was seeing just how much of Marlene's performance inspired Madeline Kahn in "Blazing Saddles." I mean, I knew that Lilli Von Stupp was based on Marlene but really "seeing" it -- now that I've seen BS about a dozen times -- was fun.
Dietrich DOES sound like a German Elmer Fudd when it comes to pronouncing the letter "R." (It's twue, it's twue!) Even the scene in the club where Dietrich was singing was so much like Lill's stage show -- right down to the drunks storming the stage -- it was a hoot! And at the end, when Marlene is clutching at Tyrone Power crying, "Don't leave me! Don't leave me!" all I could see was Kahn hanging onto Sheriff Bart, saying the same thing before bursting into hysterical German. (Something really hysterical, though, was hearing Dietrich attempt a cockney accent. She just about nails it until an "R" comes along....)
Anyway.... i watched that while sewing a monkey (yes, I have monkeys all over the place), Then called Centennial and my doctor and my bank trying to figure out which medical bills got paid twice, once by me, once by my insurance... and now checking my online life.
Next on the agenda: ordering more socks, then adding embellishments to a couple of treasure boxes in the finishing stages of production, and finishing (hopefully) another monkey while watching "Frost/Nixon" later this evening.
Though I may opt for my NetFlix of "Mystery Science Theater 3000."
Or maybe seeing if Season 2 of "Breaking Bad" is available on InDemand. I've finished Season 1 and am loving it. Mr White is like a combination of Mr. Wizard and McGyver. Mercury fluminate, indeed. What a hoot. Though this series has shown me how very unlikely it is I would ever succeed as a meth dealer. I'm a lousy chemist.
First, Laughton is an amazing actor but lordy, lordy... he is a seriously unattractive man. Even without the makeup, he still looks like Quasimodo's only slightly more attractive brother, bless his heart. That he managed a career in Hollywood at all is an achievement. But the sheer presence of the man has to be part of the reason. I shall have to look for more Laughon in other films.
What amazed me this time around about WFTP-- I saw it years and years ago -- was seeing just how much of Marlene's performance inspired Madeline Kahn in "Blazing Saddles." I mean, I knew that Lilli Von Stupp was based on Marlene but really "seeing" it -- now that I've seen BS about a dozen times -- was fun.
Dietrich DOES sound like a German Elmer Fudd when it comes to pronouncing the letter "R." (It's twue, it's twue!) Even the scene in the club where Dietrich was singing was so much like Lill's stage show -- right down to the drunks storming the stage -- it was a hoot! And at the end, when Marlene is clutching at Tyrone Power crying, "Don't leave me! Don't leave me!" all I could see was Kahn hanging onto Sheriff Bart, saying the same thing before bursting into hysterical German. (Something really hysterical, though, was hearing Dietrich attempt a cockney accent. She just about nails it until an "R" comes along....)
Anyway.... i watched that while sewing a monkey (yes, I have monkeys all over the place), Then called Centennial and my doctor and my bank trying to figure out which medical bills got paid twice, once by me, once by my insurance... and now checking my online life.
Next on the agenda: ordering more socks, then adding embellishments to a couple of treasure boxes in the finishing stages of production, and finishing (hopefully) another monkey while watching "Frost/Nixon" later this evening.
Though I may opt for my NetFlix of "Mystery Science Theater 3000."
Or maybe seeing if Season 2 of "Breaking Bad" is available on InDemand. I've finished Season 1 and am loving it. Mr White is like a combination of Mr. Wizard and McGyver. Mercury fluminate, indeed. What a hoot. Though this series has shown me how very unlikely it is I would ever succeed as a meth dealer. I'm a lousy chemist.
The Last of the Oreos
Written: February 25, 2010.
Three days into unemployment... again.... and I'm having difficulty relaxing. Hmm.
Let me be clear about this. I am upset about losing another job -- demoralized, worried and a tad humiliated. I shouldn't say I lost it, because that just reminds me of an old Bobcat Goldthwait joke: "I didn't lose my job. I know where it is. It's just that when I go there, there's some other guy doing it."
But let's be honest. You all knew I hated that job, and on some level, I feel like one of the children of Israel, skipping into the desert after Moses and not even bothering to whine, "Are we there yet? Yes, the Pharaoh finally let my people go.
(Of course, you know what happened to them. They went a little nuts, started worshiping golden cows and really pissed God off. Jehovah gave them the longest time-out in history: forty years, just wandering around the desert. No pudding for them, either.)
So I have really mixed feelings at this point. If it weren't for the money thing -- and the health insurance thing -- I would be deliriously happy to never work outside my home again. I say "outside my home" because I do stay busy.
But right now i'm having trouble shifting gears. I'm so used to watching that clock in my head, the one that says in ticks of utter dread, "You have to go to bed now because you have to get up at 6 am.... you have to get off the computer now and make dinner...." The one that says, "Hurry, hurry, HURRY!"
If you sacrifice eight hours a day (more if you count prep and travel time) to the Almighty Dollar -- and if, like me, you count your "real" life only as the stuff you can cram into those other hours, and resent things like sleep and even showering because they take away precious moments you could be painting or making boxes or writing or stuffing monkeys while watching reruns of Law & Order -- you know what I mean. "Gotta" seems to rule your life, as in "I gotta get this done." "Should" comes in a close second: "I should clean the oven/vacuum the carpet/scour the tub/organize my tupperware/wash the walls/clean out the litter box/take out the garbage/chop the everlasting carrots and celery...."
You feel like you're running a race against the clock. Gotta, gotta, gotta. Should, should, should.
Luckily for me, the "gotta's" are the things I want to be doing. And I am never happier than when I'm at home, getting all that fun stuff done. It's just that ever-present, free-floating pressure that bothers me. Even on the weekends, I'm so damned aware of the sands running through the hour glass that I feel like I rush, rush, rush.
Now the pressure is off. Or is it? Because I know that the clock is still running, even if on a different level entirely. I've got sixty days (actually fifty-seven now) to enjoy the freedom of getting a paycheck -- meager though it is -- without having to do a damn thing I don't want to do for 24 hours a day. At some point, I will have to do something about my future in the workforce of America.
But I haven't been able to relax yet. And that's what I loved about being unemployed for such a long stretch before. The sheer joy of not feeling pressured to be doing something productive as efficiently as possible every waking moment. The freedom to nap at three in the afternoon without worrying that I won't be able to sleep that night.
During my last unemployment, I spent a solid hour at my kitchen window watching the guys across the street cut down a tree that must have been at least three stories high. I was riveted to that window. I thought they just cut the base and yelled Timber, getting the hell out of the way. But they don't.
They cut most of the branches off first. Then one guy in a safety harness climbed to the very top, and sawed off the first four or five feet. He then tied a rope around it, and he and the other guys standing around below carefully lowered the section to the ground. Then the process repeated itself, until the whole tree was horizontal. The most interesting part was when the top guy got to the bigger thickness of the trunk, and had to use a chain saw.
How often do you get to watch a man tied to a tree, twenty feet in the air, wielding a chain saw?
(Truthfully, I don't know how much of my fascination was in waiting to see if the tree-hugger would fall, or if a section would come crashing down onto the roof of the house a mere five feet away. It's the same lurid fascination that makes us watch NASCAR races, police chases and America's Funniest Home Videos. We wanna see that guy belly flop off the trampoline into the swing set.)
My point, however, is that having the luxury of time, I could enjoy the death and removal of a big honkin' tree. And now I know how they do it without crushing a car. Learning is fun, you know.
I'm trying to get back that relaxed pace of simply being, and not constantly doing. I sleep as late as I want. I get up and eat my Cheerios while I scour the tv offerings for the day. Yesterday I found "Reality Bites" on HBO and watched it again while stuffing a monkey. I had forgotten how clever that movie was, though at the old age of 47, that twenty-something angst is funny to me now in ways they never intended, and bittersweetly nostalgic as well.
I have been indulging in old episodes of "No Reservations" on In Demand. (I think In Demand programming is the bee's knees, perhaps second only to the iPod and Netflix as the top societal advances of the last 50 years.)
I would kill Anthony Bourdain, the host, if I knew I would get his job. I wouldn't even quibble about eating the disgusting things, too, if it meant I got to see as much of the world as he does, always working in a dinner or two at some fabulous four-star restaurant where he gets to sample everything on the menu. I'd have to go into serious training, though, to drink as much as Tony does. I assume they turn the camera off when he starts to slur his words.
But I do enjoy watching Tony eat a whole pig with drunken Greeks -- or Italians, or Czechs or Phillipinos, cause where ever in the world Tony goes, it seems someone is always slaughtering a hog for him, as if he's a traveling minor deity. How cool is that?
He's funny, too, in slyly confidential way. I have to admire a man who can eat bratwurst while managing to work in a Rocco Siffredi Love Bus reference, or slip in an off-hand joke about three-ways and reach-arounds while eating tiny lamb chops from a sheep that was walking around just minutes before.
Anyway.... it's now three a.m. and I'm not yet in bed. Maybe I am finally beginning to lose that inner time bomb.
But tomorrow, I really gotta take a shower
Let me be clear about this. I am upset about losing another job -- demoralized, worried and a tad humiliated. I shouldn't say I lost it, because that just reminds me of an old Bobcat Goldthwait joke: "I didn't lose my job. I know where it is. It's just that when I go there, there's some other guy doing it."
But let's be honest. You all knew I hated that job, and on some level, I feel like one of the children of Israel, skipping into the desert after Moses and not even bothering to whine, "Are we there yet? Yes, the Pharaoh finally let my people go.
(Of course, you know what happened to them. They went a little nuts, started worshiping golden cows and really pissed God off. Jehovah gave them the longest time-out in history: forty years, just wandering around the desert. No pudding for them, either.)
So I have really mixed feelings at this point. If it weren't for the money thing -- and the health insurance thing -- I would be deliriously happy to never work outside my home again. I say "outside my home" because I do stay busy.
But right now i'm having trouble shifting gears. I'm so used to watching that clock in my head, the one that says in ticks of utter dread, "You have to go to bed now because you have to get up at 6 am.... you have to get off the computer now and make dinner...." The one that says, "Hurry, hurry, HURRY!"
If you sacrifice eight hours a day (more if you count prep and travel time) to the Almighty Dollar -- and if, like me, you count your "real" life only as the stuff you can cram into those other hours, and resent things like sleep and even showering because they take away precious moments you could be painting or making boxes or writing or stuffing monkeys while watching reruns of Law & Order -- you know what I mean. "Gotta" seems to rule your life, as in "I gotta get this done." "Should" comes in a close second: "I should clean the oven/vacuum the carpet/scour the tub/organize my tupperware/wash the walls/clean out the litter box/take out the garbage/chop the everlasting carrots and celery...."
You feel like you're running a race against the clock. Gotta, gotta, gotta. Should, should, should.
Luckily for me, the "gotta's" are the things I want to be doing. And I am never happier than when I'm at home, getting all that fun stuff done. It's just that ever-present, free-floating pressure that bothers me. Even on the weekends, I'm so damned aware of the sands running through the hour glass that I feel like I rush, rush, rush.
Now the pressure is off. Or is it? Because I know that the clock is still running, even if on a different level entirely. I've got sixty days (actually fifty-seven now) to enjoy the freedom of getting a paycheck -- meager though it is -- without having to do a damn thing I don't want to do for 24 hours a day. At some point, I will have to do something about my future in the workforce of America.
But I haven't been able to relax yet. And that's what I loved about being unemployed for such a long stretch before. The sheer joy of not feeling pressured to be doing something productive as efficiently as possible every waking moment. The freedom to nap at three in the afternoon without worrying that I won't be able to sleep that night.
During my last unemployment, I spent a solid hour at my kitchen window watching the guys across the street cut down a tree that must have been at least three stories high. I was riveted to that window. I thought they just cut the base and yelled Timber, getting the hell out of the way. But they don't.
They cut most of the branches off first. Then one guy in a safety harness climbed to the very top, and sawed off the first four or five feet. He then tied a rope around it, and he and the other guys standing around below carefully lowered the section to the ground. Then the process repeated itself, until the whole tree was horizontal. The most interesting part was when the top guy got to the bigger thickness of the trunk, and had to use a chain saw.
How often do you get to watch a man tied to a tree, twenty feet in the air, wielding a chain saw?
(Truthfully, I don't know how much of my fascination was in waiting to see if the tree-hugger would fall, or if a section would come crashing down onto the roof of the house a mere five feet away. It's the same lurid fascination that makes us watch NASCAR races, police chases and America's Funniest Home Videos. We wanna see that guy belly flop off the trampoline into the swing set.)
My point, however, is that having the luxury of time, I could enjoy the death and removal of a big honkin' tree. And now I know how they do it without crushing a car. Learning is fun, you know.
I'm trying to get back that relaxed pace of simply being, and not constantly doing. I sleep as late as I want. I get up and eat my Cheerios while I scour the tv offerings for the day. Yesterday I found "Reality Bites" on HBO and watched it again while stuffing a monkey. I had forgotten how clever that movie was, though at the old age of 47, that twenty-something angst is funny to me now in ways they never intended, and bittersweetly nostalgic as well.
I have been indulging in old episodes of "No Reservations" on In Demand. (I think In Demand programming is the bee's knees, perhaps second only to the iPod and Netflix as the top societal advances of the last 50 years.)
I would kill Anthony Bourdain, the host, if I knew I would get his job. I wouldn't even quibble about eating the disgusting things, too, if it meant I got to see as much of the world as he does, always working in a dinner or two at some fabulous four-star restaurant where he gets to sample everything on the menu. I'd have to go into serious training, though, to drink as much as Tony does. I assume they turn the camera off when he starts to slur his words.
But I do enjoy watching Tony eat a whole pig with drunken Greeks -- or Italians, or Czechs or Phillipinos, cause where ever in the world Tony goes, it seems someone is always slaughtering a hog for him, as if he's a traveling minor deity. How cool is that?
He's funny, too, in slyly confidential way. I have to admire a man who can eat bratwurst while managing to work in a Rocco Siffredi Love Bus reference, or slip in an off-hand joke about three-ways and reach-arounds while eating tiny lamb chops from a sheep that was walking around just minutes before.
Anyway.... it's now three a.m. and I'm not yet in bed. Maybe I am finally beginning to lose that inner time bomb.
But tomorrow, I really gotta take a shower
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