Feeling Fortunate

I have such a great family! Last Saturday, I went over to my parents' house to celebrate my birthday with them. I knew my dad had invited a few of my friends to come over, but I had no idea who was coming or when. Over the course of the afternoon, I ran to answer the door again and again as people arrived until the den was filled with friends from high school, college, and grad school; there were neighbors, coworkers, old roommates, even a family with a toddler... They sang me an original song entitled "You Are the Sustainable Agriculture of Our Hearts." My terrific boyfriend composed a mini-treasure hunt for me, complete with a hand-drawn card. My dad gave me the annual treasure hunt he composes for me, which took up most of the day and was fiendishly clever as always. My mom had baked a Boston Cream Pie birthday cake. All day, I just kept hugging people and laughing and talking, and feeling like I was surrounded by well wishes. It doesn't get any better than this! It's almost ridiculous to think that I often feel I don't have friends (or at least not any close friends) - and yet at my birthday party the room was full, and I felt like I couldn't be any happier. I'm especially grateful to my family for pulling the whole thing together. So much more than I was expecting. It just goes to show how distorted my mindset can get when I'm awash in some sadness-of-the-hour.

For now, things are good - and I'm off now on a week's vacation. I'll write when I get back!

My New Jag!

This is my new jaguar! He's a birthday present from my brother. What a wonderful gift - makes me happy, and takes up no space (actually, jaguars take up lots of space, but this one lives in Belize, where there is room for him). The jaguar's name is Brooklyn; I'm his official adoption sponsor, through WCS.

I also sponsor a little boy in Brazil. I wonder if I could visit them both on the same trip sometime. I feel like Angelina Jolie, roaming the earth adopting. I had to laugh at that story, even though I think her choice to adopt instead of having kids is wonderful.

The Good Ship Self-Censor

I'm finding the blogger forum a little frustrating. There are things I want to say, but this isn't the best place to talk about everything that's on my mind. After all, nannies get busted for their blogs, secret agents get fired for describing their exploits online (hmm, maybe that never happened), and I bet countless relationships have hit blog-related snags. I'm not going to get fired from my job as a Supreme Court Justice for my blog, but the relationship snag is a possibility. Actually, if I were playing by the rules, I wouldn't even mention that I'm in a relationship. The ideal blogger is witty, self-aware, full of childlike enthusiasm for the little pleasures of life, quick to mock his/her own foibles, and above all single. Nothing kills interest in a blog sooner than coy mention of a significant other - the whole point is that this person you're reading about is lonely, attractive, and deliciously, potentially, available. So I've already effed it up. Although maybe I earned some points back for saying that the relationship is in trouble.

No comments yet since I started keeping this thing. Maybe I am just sitting in a white room talking to myself - "La la la la la!" - after all.

A Field Day for Freud

It's been a busy few days, dream- and otherwise. Every night I fall asleep with my brain scrambling to make sense of the latest activity, trying to figure out whether it should work on improving the skills in question, stitch the image into a dream somewhere to show that it really was paying attention, or just toss the whole lot on the ?undecipherable pile. In the last week, I've had a lot of skill-dreams in which filling in crossword clues were an integral part of the action. (Whee!) Also a lot of image dreams related to the concert, canoeing, and karaoke. In the ?undecipherable category was a dream that a female friend of mine had a penis. I also dreamed that I gave birth to a scary, alien-like premature baby that was almost all head, with a tiny body. It weighed a little over 5 pounds. After it was born, I thought it was kind of gruesome, and didn't want it any more. I also dreamed about a foster mother who was sexually abusing her foster children. I laid out an escape plan for them and was going to become their legal guardian after I rescued them. Where the hell does this stuff come from? Fortunately, most of my dreams are wholesome.

The Mystery of the Missing Cousins

I have three cousins who disappeared. From time to time, I wonder what happened to them. The oldest was about fifteen when we saw them last: nice, shy, the kind of guy I might have had a crush on if he hadn't been my cousin. He had a pet snake and some other reptiles, geckos maybe. He found a grass snake when we were walking outside once, and picked it up to show it to us. The younger two were eight and six, blond, serious, oddly fragile children. They had an intensity about them that I think is a family trait. During times of stress it merges into irritable brittleness; in happier times it's like being lit up from within. In my last images of them, the oldest one is truculent and lonely, being shipped off to boarding school; the youngest one is helpless, buckled into the back seat of a white van, straining to see out the window; the middle one is taking matters into his own hands and running away from his own mother calling his name. It's fifteen years later now, and the crisis in which my memory has suspended them is long over. I wonder where they are, and if we'll meet again.

Foxed

Sorry to get all heavy in the last post. Today's job (and tomorrow's, and tomorrow's): Determined optimism. I will be saintlike and cheerful around the house.

But honestly, it gives me pause, wondering if perhaps scientists aren't all they're cracked up to be. I've always liked the nerdy type - I wanted someone I could fence with. And that's what I've got, and there are days when it thrills me. But equally important, I think, is someone who will gaze adoringly, give back as good as he gets, go to the damn Lamaze classes with me, and coo over grubs (babies) even when they're grubby. Right now that's not what I've got. Whether it will come with time is uncertain.

On Saturday I saw a fox. It was the highlight of the day. Came out of the edge of the woods, so low-down I thought it was a cat, till I saw the pricked-up ears and the brush. If I could have a daemon, like in The Golden Compass, I would like it to be a fox - they're so agile and lovely. So far, no mythology or zodiac has identified me as being a foxy type person though. I keep getting classed as dragons and lions and (according to Native American mythology) salmon, all of which seem so unlike me. The fox watched me just for a flicker of time and then turned and disappeared back into the underbrush.

Sad Again, Naturally

Feeling sad and kind of cold today, in that hollowed-out from the inside way. Mainly because of a long talk yesterday that perhaps wasn't timed or phrased exactly right - but the stuff was on my mind and I couldn't keep squashing it down any more. I felt like a kettle, screaming inside. Anyway, the nicest moment was perhaps the end when we apologized to one another ("Sorry for pressuring you," "Sorry for keeping you hanging,") and had a smooch, but that was about as close to resolution as we got. So, more pressuring and more hanging to be expected in future.

I wish, I wish, this stuff would go easier for me. I feel like I've had to fight for it my whole life, it's never been smooth sailing like for other people. It's not like I have a weird birthmark across my whole face or a dealbreaker cackle, either. I think I am nice, and intelligent, and fun to be with, and I have passable looks that occasionally veer over the line into beauty, depending on the lighting and your perspective. Anyway, I'm good enough. And I have loads of compassion and warmth and generosity, and silly quirks. If I were a guy, I would want to date me. But sadly, guys have not historically taken initiative to do so. I've never had the luxury of sitting back and waiting (nor the patience) - I have had a number of boyfriends, but I have made the first move every time. And the second. etc. So now, having finally found the person I want to be with forever, who makes me damn happy, having tried living with him for a year and YES it works, I'm at an impasse because he doesn't want to move forward and I do.

Now I'm watching all my other friends get married like dominoes, and it almost seems magical to me that their guys WANT to marry them. I feel like there must be some trick to it. How did they get them to propose? Did they drug their coffee? Hit them over the head and elicit a proposal during groggy returning-to-awareness? It brings an ache into my throat, as happy as I am for them. It's like in sixth grade when everyone was getting their periods, and I wasn't. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I felt so defective, and stupid, especially as time passed and I turned thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. I finally got mine when I was seventeen and my doctor was on the verge of declaring me a freak of nature. Now everyone is getting married, something that is supposed to happen naturally and beautifully, something that happens to 90% of the population (or more?), something that happens to girls of all sizes and shapes and dispositions. Even the awful ones. But not to me. I've been with my boyfriend for longer than some of my getting-married friends have even known their beloveds, we live together which some of them haven't even tried, we love one another. But the next step just isn't happening. Every time I bring it up, he just gets defensive. Some girls get rings and flowers and parties and dresses and the whole deal. I don't even care about all that. All I want is the guy. I don't even need him to be excited about it, as much as that hurts my feelings - I'd take him, even reluctant and irritable, and hope that later on he'd realize marriage isn't so bad. I feel like his enthusiasm is yet another thing that other girls take for granted, but I have to be willing to do without, like the ring. I'm starting to think that wanting me is, after all, the most critical quality a guy can possibly have, and things like sense of humor, sobriety, intelligence, and non-abusiveness are quite a bit further down on the list.

3-2-1 Contact

Things to be happy about:

1) Yesterday the security guard in the front lobby saw that I was about to venture out in the pouring rain without an umbrella, and chivalrously, unasked, hurried around his desk to proffer his. It was so nice of him, especially since it was unexpected - I say hello and goodbye to him every day, but usually don't get much of a response, so I thought he was just kind of unplugged from people (or from me). Half the niceness, I think, was just realizing that he does recognize that I exist.
2) Purple potatoes. Whole Foods has them - they have bluish skins and are a rich and glowing violet inside. I think they are divine. I can't decide if the flavor is actually better, or if I'm just so psyched about the color, and the coolness of plant diversity that allowed this particular strain to flourish, that they taste better to me.
3) My dad is planning a birthday party for me. He's the greatest. Whenever I feel like I got a raw deal over something, I should just remember how lucky I am to have a good friendship with him - more than many people can say about their parents.

Things to be sad about:

1) A conversation overheard at the museum last weekend, between a guy and his 18-month old child. He wheeled the stroller up to a case displaying historic money from colonial America, and said, "Now here's something you'll like - look at all this money." The child said immediately, "I wan' it." The father laughed and said, "Well, of COURSE you want it, but you can't have it, this belongs to the museum." I thought it was so sad that the child was locked in to the consumer culture already. At that age, barely walking, barely verbal, she couldn't possibly have had her own money yet, or participated in any transactions involving money - how does she know it has value? What would she do with it if she had it? Yet she wants it, and her father immediately reinforces her, saying, "Of course you do." I cherish fantasies that my kids will value other things besides money. But perhaps there's no way to keep them pure.
2) The plight of chickens in egg-laying barns. Their lives are full of such suffering, and it's all for the sake of efficiency, wringing the most value out of each poor bird before she's too worn out and exhausted to live any more. I wish more people knew about it. No one would buy eggs.
http://www.eggscam.com/cfi/photogallery/

Things to be perplexed about:

1) I read that men and women use different parts of their brains to interpret speech of different pitches. Women use the language center of their brains to interpret both male and female speech. But men use the language center to interpret male speech, and the part of the brain that registers music to interpret female speech. I'm torn between a kind of knee-jerk sarcasm - "Hah, no wonder they don't listen" and a kind of unwilling blushy pride - "My voice sounds like music to men?"

Yea Canada

I've been scaring myself with this collection of stories lately: http://www.childbirth.org/articles/stories/collections/index.html. I'm totally impressed by the first story by the 18-year-old who had a virtually unmedicated first birth, and was so well educated about what she would experience and what was good for her that she was able to fight back when hospital staff tried to intervene in non-helpful ways. She's awesome.

I don't understand why in so many cases, women did encounter hospital staff who were nasty or unhelpful (stripping the membranes without the mother's consent, yelling at the mother, unrequested episiotomies, cutting the cord too early, unrequested circumcisions, etc.). In every case, the mother had her and her child's best interests at heart, and it seems wrong that she would have to fight staff who are supposed to have the same priorities. Not to mention, she's in pain and tired, and fighting antagonistic doctors and nurses just saps her strength. I wish hospitals were more supportive of women's desire to have control over their births, more hands-off, more patient.

I wish insurance covered more stuff, too. A lot of the stories are by women living in Canada or the UK, where health insurance covers not only your hospital stay during labor and birth, but your doula to help you through labor, a home visit by a nurse every day for the first week, and a mother's helper who actually lives with you for the first two weeks and does housework, babysitting, cooking, whatever you need 10 hours a day, so you can just rest and bond with your newborn. I was amazed to read that. Almost makes me want to move to Canada to have my kids, if I ever have kids.

I am reading the stories as a sort of preparation - I figure it can only help to know what other women's experiences were like, and might give me some valuable information about what to watch out for - but I'm not sure I'll ever be a mother. I've never tried to get pregnant. For all I know, I'm infertile, or will be too old by the time I'm married. So I'm trying to prepare, without hoping or expecting that motherhood will ever actually happen to me. From what I've read so far, I know I'd like to be at home without medication for as long as possible, and then go minimal with the drugs - not due to some bizarre masochism, but just because epidurals slow down labor so much, and lead to C-sections. Some days I feel oddly cheerful and confident that I will be able to do this. Other days I feel panicked and think, I will never have the strength, I'll end up exhausted, sobbing, and C-sected. Errrrrrgh.

I Miss Algebra

I've been getting into crossword puzzles and logic games lately. It makes me feel smart. My great-aunt does the crossword daily to, as she says, keep from getting senile. Last Saturday I spent a peaceful afternoon sipping tea and working on the puzzle - ideally I would've been occasionally directing queries about particularly difficult clues to my sweetie, sitting across the room reading or otherwise absorbed in his own quiet pursuits. As it is, I finished the puzzle on my own. I like the doable ones. I doubt I'll ever work up to the Sunday ones or the cryptic English crosswords that take hours/days of pondering. What's the point of just being frustrated for hours on end like that?

Speaking of wanting to feel smart (and of being frustrated for hours on end), sometimes I wish I could retake the math classes that drove me nuts as a kid. I can sort of glimpse the beauty of mathematics, shimmering on the horizon. I feel like I let - not myself, not even my dad who wanted me to enjoy math the way he did, but more the concept of knowledge - down. If it's possible to let down a concept. Here I am priding myself on having a scientific mind, and yet I never really appreciated algebra. Trig was fun, and so was geometry, but I didn't internalize the concepts enough to be able to use them now. Maybe sometime I can take a summer school class and relearn that stuff. Get it solid. Maybe I could even retake cal 2 - now that I've got the time to devote to it, instead of being distracted by five other classes.

Why We're Here

I've flirted with blogging for a while now. I've been reluctant because it always seemed to me there's something a bit sad about blogging. All these words, most of them doomed never to be read, all this time frittered away. All these thoughts, most of them so petty (in-depth analysis of shoelaces vs. loafers, musings upon protocol for avoiding phone call from clingy friend, little spike of joy from new haircut). Blogs thrive on the trivial. Plus, there's the danger of posting private ramblings and getting called on them - recognized by someone who knows you. Or just getting flamed for not having taken care to describe a ramble in approved politically correct manner. People can be so mean, especially when they know they're invisible.

There's a deeper sadness, I think, that lies in bloggers themselves. No one who really leads a rich and exciting life has the time and energy to post all these trivialities. And the best blogs are written by people who are borderline depressed, underappreciated in real life.

Yet worse than writing a blog is probably the kind of lurking I've been doing - I have my favorites I check during down-time at work. I get awfully disappointed when there are no new posts. It's about as vicarious as you can get. So, time to jump in and post some of my own. I'm not sure everything I write will be factual. Got to keep up the secret identity, for one - got to make it interesting, for another. So, here are some facts about me, some of which are true:

I like the words sauerkraut, frolicking, marshy, and fox.
My middle name is Phoenix. I think my parents wanted to give me some glamour to make up for my serviceable, ordinary first and last names.
I'm very fond of applesauce.
I have one sister and a bevy of cousins.
A snake is a really dumb place to hide a Horcrux. Because this is not technically a fact about me, perhaps I should say, I have an opinion that this is so.
I don't believe in the persistence of souls, but I have experienced the persistence of soils, particularly bird poop.
Reading is one of the great pleasures of life that I was happy to pick up again after I finished college.