Sad

At a museum exhibit on time, I watched a video of a woman's face aging 50 years in 30 seconds - watched the clip of her hair whitening, cheeks falling in, jowls deepening, over and over. It seemed like one of the saddest things I'd ever seen. Aging is the great inescapable tragedy in all our lives. I want my parents and all the people I love to be healthy and go on living, forever - or at least, as long as possible. I can hardly bear to think of my husband, who is so strong and handsome, getting feeble or arthritic, his hands shaking.

Then, the next day, I saw a dairy calf being born at the fair. It was amazing watching the calf tumble out of his mother and seeing him there on the ground, glistening and panting. When his mother saw him for the first time, her ears shot out and she just stared, then she hurried to him and began vigorously licking him. Everyone cheered. But the mother was just a young heifer herself, not even fully grown, and destined to be worn out long before her prime - most dairy cows are exhausted and sent to the slaughterhouse by age four, though they have a natural lifespan of up to forty years. And the poor calf was destined for veal. Calves aren't allowed to stay with their mothers for more than a few hours after birth - then this one would be put in a veal crate that wouldn't even allow him to stand up or turn around, for the rest of his short life. I watched the mother licking her calf, knowing they only had a few hours together, and decided that was the saddest thing I'd ever seen.

More Thoughts About Population

I used to think I shouldn't have kids because there were already too many people in the world. Every time I was stuck in traffic, had to ride home in rush-hour on the subway, or got jostled in crowds at the mall, I thought of that. The world is already full. More people just add to the crush and the burden on the environment, and mean that resources must be spread even more thinly.

Today I realized my feeling is shifting to a more subtle one, that I shouldn't have kids because the world they'll grow up in is in such terrible shape. I want to give them a childhood of woods and open spaces like the one I had, and opportunities to choose the lives they want. But the environmental problems I've been studying for years are getting worse, not better, and starting to hook together. Global warming is related to deforestation is related to soil erosion is related to industrial agriculture is related to antibiotic resistance and invasive species and urban sprawl and loss of predators and pollution, and all of these things are building to a crisis that's going to change the very face of our planet. My life has been shaped by knowledge of the coming crisis, not the necessity of coping with it. I don't want my children saddled with the misery of the coming environmental and social collapse. Not to sound all doomsday-y, it's not like the world is going to fall apart in a single day like in The Day After Tomorrow. It will just be a series of crises, like Katrina, that happen more and more frequently and tax our ability to respond to them until it is clear there is no such thing as normal any more, and the idea of a childhood like mine sounds like a fairytale from a hundred years ago.

Q-Rebels

Yesterday I was reading the directions on the Q-tip box. Did you know that there is a houseful of uses for them? I wonder if anyone actually does use them for "beauty on the go", rolling them in makeup ahead of time, or "tender touch" to clean between babies' toes. The one thing that everyone does use them for, cleaning your ears, is the one thing the box warns you never to do!

Love

I'm so lucky. I have the nicest, most thoughtful, wonderful husband I could hope for. He understands me the way no one else does. I feel awash in love for him.

Rural Ambitions

Today my friend was talking about her childhood growing up on a farm in Wisconsin. It was the nice, old-fashioned kind of farm. As a teenager she always had to pitch in with the farm chores - baling hay, feeding the llamas, fixing fences. She said she wasn't much into it then, but now she feels nostalgic for it, and she'd love to spend a summer back on the farm.

I've never had that kind of life. But I feel like I miss it too - maybe just the idyllic partial glimpses I've gotten of it, which I know don't show the whole picture. Sun glinting off fields in the late afternoon. Tree shadows throwing speckles across a creek. The warm smell of grass and manure and large animals, that hearty crunching of molars as a horse grinds its hay. Swallows flying out from the barn eaves and curvetting around in the dusk. I wish there was room in my life that I could even incorporate a few of these things in. I'm so disconnected from everything real like that.

Some Ranting About Population

I read an article in Science about how fertility rates in developed countries are going down. As a result, many countries are now offering bonuses to entice couples to have children - in France, paid maternity leave of 18 weeks for each of the first two kids and 26 weeks for a third kid; in Australia, $3000 a child and mothers are expected to take a full year off (in fact, child care won't accept a baby younger than a year). In Sweden, it's a few thousand dollars per child and 16 months of paid leave that can be split between the parents. Sweet!

Here in the U.S., the federal government guarantees up to three months of unpaid leave from your job if you work for a large corporation - and that's it. Child care expenses are so high that some women can't afford to go back to work after having a baby; their salaries wouldn't cover the child care. More from USA Today

I think financial considerations are definitely playing a role holding us back from kids. We're doing fine now, but I'm not sure we could afford to support a third person, or that my job would allow me to put my child first. If I have to go back to work after only a few months, how am I supposed to breast-feed for the first year? And if I'm leaving my kid at a day-care center for ten hours a day, how am I participating in the life of this child? Someone else is essentially raising my child for me, which isn't what I want. Some women go to part-time after kids, but with my job I wouldn't be allowed to do that.

Oh well. In a broader social sense, I guess it's good that it's difficult and expensive to have children here. There are way too many people in the world. We're shooting toward the 9 billion mark, and our planet is already so severely stressed and overburdened, the prospect of adding even more people to it just makes me shake my head. I think government officials who encourage people to reproduce are crazy. All countries, everywhere, should be encouraging people who don't want kids not to have them - so that all children can grow up happy and wanted - and encouraging people who do want kids to stop at replacement.

A professor of mine had a good idea about giving every woman on earth two passes for children. Women who didn't want to have kids could sell theirs, and women who wanted more than their share could buy someone else's. Birth control would have to be abundantly available so that no one would ever be accidentally pregnant. (The Science article also notes that in the U.S., population growth is slightly higher than in European countries, in part because of "a higher rate of unwanted pregnancies due to restrictions on birth-control information." Sigh.)

I guess the good news to me is that so far the insane fertility bonuses aren't working very well. The fertility rate is still below replacement in a lot of European countries. The pro-population growth camp worries that European nations will enter a low-fertility trap from which they won't ever be able to recover. Please. Of all the species on earth, we are about the least likely (after cockroaches) to ever become endangered. Countries with declining fertility rates should celebrate the fact that with fewer people, there is more to go around, and everyone's quality of life will increase. Then, they should put their pro-population growth advisors to work figuring out how to shift resources from their countries, which have plenty, to those that are really hurting - like the disaster zone that is Africa, where the average woman gives birth to seven children. That ought to keep them quiet for a while.

The Regret List

Here are a few things I regret, that I'd love to go back in time and change:

1. That spring when my bird was sick, I'd spend more time with her. I was in the throes of a new and awful relationship and I kept thinking if I just put more time into it, it would get better. So I would feed my birds enough for two days and then take off and sleep at his house. It's not like more time and attention could have saved her, but it would have been nice - and now I can never have that with her. I still miss her so much.
2. That whole relationship, incidentally. What a waste. All that came out of it were a few good angsty poems, and a healthy suspicion of "that" type of person.
3. At all the rock concerts of my youth, I wish I had at least worn ear-plugs. After my first concert, I walked into the parking lot wondering why my ears had this fuzzy white feel to them, like they were wrapped in cotton wool. My friend grinned at me and said, "It'll go away in a day or two." At least, that's what it looked like she said.
4. I'd take that class my mom wanted me to, the one taught by the famous marine biologist. It was an elective and she kept reminding me about it, but somehow I just never found time.
5. The fight I had with my parents about a boy I wanted to date. It was our only fight, at least that I can remember. I even slammed doors, like a typical teenager. I probably made them feel awful.
6. Mean things I said when I thought we were breaking up last year.
7. Pinning moths for my summer job in the biology lab. They had been in the freezer for months and I thought they were dead. Some of them started to come back to consciousness after they were pinned, trying to twitch their wings. It was nightmarish. I put them back in the freezer and cried.

If I keep going, I could think of dozens more things, but that's enough for now.

Zzzzzz

Here's something really interesting. Did you know that hibernating animals have to wake up periodically during the winter - to sleep? I always thought "mmm, they get to sleep for six months straight, sounds nice." But apparently hibernation is below the level of sleep, metabolically. Their brain activity, immune systems, everything is suppressed. After a few weeks, they get really sleep-deprived! They have to wake up and fire up their immune systems for a few hours to take care of any problems that might be around, sleep for about 12 hours, then go back into hibernation.

Starless

We went out to see the Leonid meteor shower on Saturday night. It was really hard to find a place that was dark enough to see them properly. Even the city parks were lit up. We drove around, past parking lots, shopping centers, and apartment complexes ablaze with light. Finally we found a campground and drove in there, parked illegally (because there is no parking for people who aren't staying the night), and lay in a field watching the sky. The stars were tiny flecks of light. The sky was darkest overhead, washing out to a pale grey glow at the edges. We saw five or six shooting stars during the time that we lay there.

The Leonids always make me happy, and I was glad to see even a few of them, but I couldn't help thinking of a night I spent under the stars on a camping trip, years ago. The stars were enormous - blazing blue-white, all different sizes, with the Milky Way smeared behind them. They took my breath away. We saw many shooting stars that night, and it wasn't even a meteor shower, just a regular night in the country. It makes me sad that an experience like that is out of reach except for special trips, and so few people get to experience it at all. A whole generation is growing up without having ever seen a shooting star.

Odd

I was sitting in the park reading a book about suburban wildlife. I read the words, "-- park, scientists announced in 1981, has the highest population of squirrels per millimeter of any place in the cosmos." It was the very park I was sitting in!

Just as I read that sentence, I heard a voice say, "Squirrel?" I looked up and saw a gypsy-looking old woman sitting on a bench near me. "Did you say squirrel?" I asked. She nodded and smiled. Then she went back to feeding the pigeons. I stared at her. There was no context to her comment - and of all the words she might have said, how odd that she picked that one. It was like she read my mind and spoke the one word that was dominating my consciousness at that moment. I thought she might even be a figment of my imagination, that if I blinked she would disappear.

Adventures in Bike-riding

I took my bike out for a spin yesterday. I almost never ride it. Basically, I'm nervous riding around cars, and the city sidewalks are broken up with chunks of asphalt heaved up by tree roots, overhanging shrubbery, trash cans in the way, driveways with cars pulling unexpectedly out, etc. so I can't get a smooth run - it's an obstacle course the whole way.

I'm also just not that good at bike riding. I thought when I was ten that I'd get better over time because I'd be stronger and bigger in relation to the bike. But it's still heavy for me to lift, and I still bark my shins and lose my balance trying to get on and off. Curbs defeat me utterly. If I try to ride off them, I get jounced out of my seat and almost fall off. If I try to ride up them, the bike just hits the edge and bounces off. I know there is a technique to riding, something about weight and balance, that would put me in control instead of gravity and momentum, but I haven't mastered it. So, I ride where it's smooth, hop off and walk the bike when it's not. At least I'm not embarrassed any more to do that in front of everyone. A lot of things that probably should embarrass me just don't. Perhaps it's a necessary self-preservation technique I've developed as a result of so often being in situations where I'm not in control or simply unable to blend in.

Anyway, yesterday I jounced and bobbled my way around the neighborhood streets on a mission to find a proper bike path. I knew there was a swath of woodland to the west, possibly with trails running through it. I got there really quick - one good thing about a bike is, it really extends your range. It would have taken me forty minutes walking to get there, and I would have been a lot more tired. Then I slid/scraped my way down a hill onto the trail. The trouble was, it wasn't paved. It was a narrow dirt track running through the woods with big roots and boulders sticking out of it. I had to walk my bike a lot of the way. The trees were lovely though. It was so refreshing being in the shade, with all that whispering, lush green all around me. I felt like I was far away from the city. A creek babbled alongside.

All this was great, until as I coasted cautiously down a hill, I saw a huge fallen log across the path ahead. I put on the brakes and as the bike drew to a stop, stuck my foot out to catch myself. Unfortunately the bike tipped the wrong way. noooo! Suddenly I was leaning out over the steep bank, with about a ten-foot descent over craggy boulders to the stream below. My feet couldn't reach the ground because I was still sitting on the bike. And then bike and I were falling sideways down the bank, my foot trapped in the front wheel spokes, my arms flailing. A concrete barrier reared in front of me. Salvation! I fell on it, still tangled in the bike, cracking my jaw and knee against the concrete. Got some bruises today to show for my adventure, but nothing worse. At least I didn't crack my skull open on a rock, or fall in the stream.

Unfortunately after I got untangled and carried my bike back up the bank, the front wheel would no longer turn. The brake had been mashed in so it was jammed against the wheel at all times. Carrying the bike all the way home seemed like a bad option. Eventually I hunted around for a forked stick and propped it in place to hold the brake away from the wheel. It worked! I felt like MacGyver. The stick stayed in place, too, all the way home.

So that's my adventure. Basically, this is why I have such respect for bike couriers. It's amazing how they can weave in and out of traffic. They don't have to stop and carefully rotate the pedal around to the top before taking off. They don't fall down hills, either. How the hell did they get so good?

My Subconscious Luddite

I had a yearning to read some young-adult fiction while we were on vacation, so we went to the library. But this town's library was different from what I was used to - or maybe just modern, as opposed to the dusty, old-fashioned libraries of my childhood. In the young-adult section there were no books on the shelves. Just video games, DVD cases, and board games. I picked up Lego: The Board Game. It was basically Pictionary, but you had to build things instead of sketching them - a lot more challenging on the surface, except that the things were really simple, like "pillar" or "circle".

Eventually we found some books on the shelves at the side of the room, but all the kids and teenagers were clustered around the more exciting entertainment options in the middle. There were even some video screens set up where kids could preview games for a minute or two before deciding whether to check them out (like at music stores where you get a free listen for the first 15 seconds of each track).

Suddenly there was an announcement over the PA that the speaker was ready, and that everyone should take their seats. Wondering what was going on, we shuffled over to an area where ranks of plastic chairs had been set up and sat down along with all the other people. The speaker was a scruffy, goateed dentist who was supposed to give a motivational speech about the importance of dental hygiene.

Instead (and unexpectedly for the librarians who had arranged this), he launched into a tirade about the modern video culture. He walked up and down the ranks of seats emphasizing his points. Pulling a young girl up from her seat, he pointed out the fishbowl glasses that she now had to wear after years of focused video gaming. "See that? Those games are poison!" he exclaimed. Next he pointed out a fifteen-year-old boy and with a gesture got him to cover his ears to show that he was deaf (from too many rock concerts). "Poison!" the dentist said. "And how many of you can even see the lyricism in books like Love for Lydia or Wuthering Heights? Your ability to concentrate on the written word long enough to see the color in those pages is gone. Now, you can only see color where it already exists." He raised his arms and with a gesture, included all the shelves of games and movies that the library had spent the last decade amassing to keep kids coming in the doors. "Poison!"

That's where I woke up. I wonder if anyone has thought of that Lego game though. I think it has potential.

A Brush With Cool

I went shopping at a 'cool' urban clothing store yesterday. The kind with disco lights overhead, and industrial warehouse walls, that plays rap music turned up loud in a constant yelling clatter. I wandered in and out of the edgy displays, feeling my features stiffening into an attempt to look bored and unapproachable, which is the effect that music has on me. I hate it; it feels like someone is yelling at me, and they're so angry they can't even draw breath and give me a turn to speak, they're just spewing out the anger in a long running monologue.

I couldn't find what I wanted, and I couldn't figure out which of the contemptuous spiky-haired girls around me were employees, and which were just fellow shoppers. I also couldn't think how to phrase my question in a way that wouldn't elicit a snort of mockery, even though what I was looking for was perfectly normal. The conviction came into my head that if I spoke, I would stutter, and that no matter how I asked, the reply would be just a long icy glare. Finally I slunk out. Some people just never grow into that scene, I guess. At least I have grown far enough beyond it that it no longer seems so important to fit in there.

Ready and Not

Maybe my friend has the right idea after all. Just peck-peck-peck all the time, reminding her husband "that room will be the nursery, for when we have kids," "I'll cut my hours to part-time when we have kids, so you'll need to get a promotion by then," "we need to have both kids by the time I'm 30, so that means I'm pregnant by age 27." He just rolls his eyes and laughs and says "OK, OK." I always thought a better approach was not to say much about kids so as not to put any pressure on. Getting him to agree to marry me was hard enough. But at least my friend has been "softening up" her husband all this time. He's used to the idea. I'm married (finally), in a place in my career where I can afford to take a little time off, and I have some savings - thought just about all the hurdles were behind me. But he rolls his eyes like a startled horse when the subject of having kids comes up. There's no indication he's going to get readier over time, and meanwhile I'm just in a holding pattern. Arrrrrrrrgh.

A bigger question is probably why I routinely have to fight him to get him to do things for our mutual long-term happiness. We ought to be of like mind on these things. I'm not sure how much of it you can chalk up to "oh guys are always like that, they don't know what's good for them," and how much is really a discontinuity between us.

Mandatory Brekkie

I never used to eat breakfast. I wonder now how I did it. It's not that I love breakfast - there's generally nothing I want to eat in the morning - but the past few years I've found I have to make myself eat, or I suffer the consequences. Within an hour after rising, if I haven't eaten anything I start to feel woozy, and if I still don't do anything about it, I start feeling shaky all over, to the tips of my fingers. Sometimes even eating at that point is too late, and I feel off-balance for hours afterwards. Dumb response - if my body really wants me to feed it, it should ramp up the hunger pangs, so that any kind of food sounds good - not so nauseous that it's all I can do to choke down something.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

I saw an amazing documentary on electric cars. I never even knew that there were such things as fully electric cars, but apparently just a few years ago all the major car companies were making them and leasing them out to people. Think of never having to go to a gas station again. You just plug it in at night and in the morning it's ready to go. The cars were fast, quiet, and super cheap - $3 worth of electricity could take you 100 miles. And virtually no maintenance needs, no oil changes, for instance, like in an internal combustion engine.

The people who got to drive them loved them, they were passionate about their cars. But GM and all the other car manufacturers yanked them off the market and even repossessed all the cars they had given out. They publicly promised to recycle them, but instead they crushed them and shredded them into landfill scrap at a site in the desert, almost like they were covering up a crime. The motivation was an unwillingness to change business-as-usual - they felt they could make more money pushing gas-guzzlers than by selling these cheap, efficient cars. With the support of oil companies and service stations who didn't want to lose business, the car companies even pressured California to repeal its law requiring a certain percentage of cars to be zero-emission.

As a result of this decision, air quality in California (already the worst in the nation) will remain appalling, smog will keep clouding the cities, children will continue to have asthma, and adults will suffer from chronic respiratory disease. It makes me so sick and angry, to think of all the human suffering that will result. We were so close. The law was passed, the technology was available, the cars were rolling off the assembly lines and being sold to customers. Yet industry still managed to squash the whole thing in order to line their own pockets.

I almost cried at the part in the movie where the electric car owners, who had been keeping a vigil outside the GM parking lot where their repossessed cars were being kept, had to watch them loaded onto car carriers and taken off to the crushing site. They tried to prevent it through nonviolent protest, but were arrested and hauled away. I know I'm probably just responding instinctively to the emotional concept of cars as these big, familiar domestic animals like oxen, to the symbolism of them being loaded up like Boxer in Animal Farm - but there are good, real reasons to feel upset about it. As long as corporations like GM and Texaco continue to have power to rearrange society to suit their needs, we will never be able to make any progress. The environmental problems that are pressing in on us will overcome us. It feels like a really hopeless situation.

Anyway, go see the movie - it's really good.

The Greeting

Today I witnessed the nicest greeting between relatives that I've seen in a while. A mom was stopping by the office to visit her son at his first job out of college. She came in all smiles, looking forward to seeing him, and when he was paged to come to the front desk he said, "woo-hoo!!" obviously excited in kind. They hugged each other warmly and she said, "Hi pumpkin!" With obvious pride he proceeded to show her around the office where he worked. I thought it was so nice. It made me wonder, how did they develop such a natural, unself-conscious, loving relationship? What's their secret, that other moms (pecking away with sad questions trying to be included in their sons' lives) and sons (slouched down in their seats, shrugging or monosyllabic) have somehow missed out on? When I grow up and have children and they grow up, I want us to have a loving and warm relationship like that. I want to greet them with "pumpkin" and have them not be embarrassed.

I'm like that with my parents, pretty much. Perhaps slightly less effusive, but only because I see them so often. I often visit on the weekends, and meet one or the other for lunch or a movie during the week. But I'm still not sure what the secret is. I would chalk my relationship with my parents up to them being just really nice, wonderful people. But I don't know how to be that nice and wonderful in my kids' eyes, or indeed in anyone's.

Dragonfly Again

Yesss! I have witnessed a real biological phenomenon!
I wrote last week about seeing a dragonfly zooming around the roof of a dark car. Now I just read in Science magazine that that really happens.

"Ever since 1998, the year the water-beetle journal Latissimus published a landmark paper entitled 'Another case of water beetles landing on a red car roof,' entomologists have sought to understand why aquatic insects tend to lay their eggs on dark-colored vehicles.

Now a Hungarian team explains why. Biophysicist Gabor Horvath and colleagues of Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest laid out red, black, yellow, and white plastic sheets by a marsh one sunny summer day. Over the course of 3 hours, 1229 aquatic insects landed on the sheets: 700 on the red and 398 on the black, but only 88 on the yellow and 43 on the white. The scientists then measured reflection and polarization patterns from four automobiles in the same colors.

The secret? Aquatic insects detect water based on the horizontal polarization of reflected light. Light from the red and black cars was highly and horizontally polarized, so from a bug's point of view, the darker surfaces look like water, the team concludes in the 7 July issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

'We propose that visitors to wetland habitats drive light-colored cars to avoid egg loss by confused water insects,' the team wryly advises."

I get such a kick out of seeing things in the natural world and understanding why they're happening. Sometimes I think I missed my calling as a research scientist. I had the opportunity to go that route, and lots of encouragement. The specificity of the focus and the monotony of the routine turned me off though. I am really more of a naturalist.

Okapis On the Brain

Zen Dance

A couple days ago I went to a dharma talk about imperfection - learning to recognize that things aren't quite right, and being okay with it. There's a lot about Buddhist philosophy that really speaks to me. I remember once when I was caught in the rain, realizing that it was only uncomfortable as long as I was striving (mentally) to keep dry, and every raindrop that landed on me took me further from that goal. When I gave up the mental cringing each time a drop landed on me, the rain didn't bother me at all any more. The dharma talk called this the distinction between discomfort and suffering. It's interesting that we're hard-wired to notice problems and want to fix them, but we have to override our own natures sometimes in order to be happy.

I think I have a long-standing habit of feeling upset and frustrated that my body isn't more perfect. Mainly in the sense of being uncoordinated - not knowing how to move gracefully and not being able to picture what various poses look like - which makes my dancing entertaining to say the least. Last night at dance class, the dharma talk was fresh in my mind. I did my best to keep up with the choreography, but when I couldn't, I was able to feel a sense of forgiveness and liking for my body anyway, and to just enjoy the freedom of the movement. It was really a lot of fun. Once I think I would have left the class feeling ugly and disappointed in myself. So that's progress.

The Good Old Days

I miss homework. Not grueling term-paper style homework, but elementary school homework that was almost fun - lists of vocab words to memorize, math problems that were almost like little puzzles, assignments to read a chapter in our history book and answer the questions at the end. I wish for my job I was required to learn spelling bee words and read about the Pilgrims. At the time, I would rather have been playing outside with the dog. Or reading some horsey book. But now, those kinds of assignments seem like fun. Perhaps this is just an aspect of the general nostalgia that everyone has for "simpler times."

Spending Time

My friend says, "I don't want to look back on my life and think, 'I wish I'd spent more time cleaning.'" She is so right. So instead of cleaning, she tortures herself with impossible love affairs.

The fallacy I think is that love affairs don't make for long or even short-term happiness. Being pulled in different directions just makes you miserable. Cleaning does make for, if not happiness, at least a kind of contentment. At least, it does for me.

Maybe the real truth is that all of life is about trying to find worthy outlets for one's energy. The life-force just keeps going, we all just keep on waking up and being hungry and walking around doing things - being alive, and the passage of time, just never stops. So it's all about finding something useful to do with that time. There are adrenaline-goals, and mundane defaults. And maybe, if we squint hard enough and keep trying even when we're tired, there's a little glimpse of something that's worthwhile and lasting and the stuff that makes for good memories.

Doing Crunches All Day Long

I’ve been noticing a lot lately that my stomach muscles are clenched up, and my stomach's tied in knots. I have to consciously make myself relax – then a minute later I notice I’m clenched up again. It’s like the default position. I wonder why. I don’t have any particular stress in my life that should be making me tense. Despite probably sounding like a pathological worrier in my blog, I’m actually pretty laid-back. Well, the upside is that if this goes on for a few more weeks, I ought to have a great six-pack.

60+ Skeeter Bites

More than there are toes to clip! It’s the price for spending a warm summer evening outside with friends. I have bites all over my legs, ankles, even the soles of my feet, fingers, and palms (not to mention the two on my chest). I guess my blood is sweet.

Keeping It In Perspective

This morning I was talking to the maintenance guy for our building, and I found out he works seven days a week - holding down two jobs. "When is your next day off?" I asked him. "Christmas," he said. I was amazed. Here I am feeling a little like a cog in the machine because I'm just cycling through the weeks with not much to show for my time, but he never even gets a day to collect himself. His 'weekends' are an hour here or there at the end of the work day, a coffee break, a few minutes with his family at the breakfast table. Yet he still smiles every day.

Toe Woes, Part Dos

I am in charge of keeping 56 nails trimmed. At least I was until yesterday - now it's down to 55. And no, my husband's aren't included in that count.

In addition to my own fingers and toes, I clip my bird's nails every couple of weeks (four on each foot), and the nails on my two guinea pigs (four on the front feet, three on the back) every month.

Yesterday I was sweeping in the guinea pig area. They have a section of the apartment fenced off and carpeted for their use, with a bridge that I made to get in and out of their cage. While I was cleaning up, I noticed a big dark reddish-brown stain on the carpet. I couldn't think what it might be - I was trying to remember if I'd given them a piece of beet or anything like that to eat. It was in the hiding place frequented by our older pig, so I picked her up and took a look at her. One of her hind toenails was completely missing, and the stump was crusted over with blood.

As near as I can tell, it must have happened several days ago, and probably when she was crossing the bridge from her cage - the structure must have slipped and pinned her nail between the two pieces, and she had to tear it off to get free. Poor pig! then she must have lain in there bleeding for a long time, and we never even noticed.

She seems fine now and the nail will eventually grow back. I fixed the bridge so it can't happen again. I feel like a bad mom though. I should notice when things happen to my kids!

Flower Girl

A girl with a huge vase full of flowers sat down next to me on the bus - lilies, irises, roses, baby's breath. I smiled and said, "Is it your birthday?" She gave a short ironic laugh and said, "No, I wish!...just someone being kind." I said automatically, "That's nice."

Then I thought about it some more, what someone being kind meant, and realized she must have had something bad happen to her, maybe a death in the family. I shouldn't have said anything at all. The last thing she needs is nosy strangers assuming things are good, when they're the opposite. I also felt a little awed, that people around me might be coping with things like their parents' deaths, miscarriages, losing their jobs, cancer diagnoses, or any number of other catastrophes - and my life is so sunny and free in comparison. It's like I'm skating under the radar. I feel almost guilty that nothing like that has happened to me, and terrified of how I will cope if it does.

Still Got It

I got hit on at the bookstore. It's been a while since anyone hit on me. I wasn't expecting it - for one thing I wasn't exactly looking my foxiest, I had on old clothes and my hair pulled back.

Anyway, I was sitting on the floor shamelessly reading a book I wasn't planning to buy, when I heard someone say, "Hey, I always do that too!" He had to repeat himself because the first time I didn't realize he was talking to me. Then I glanced up, saw him, and grinned. That was all the encouragement he needed; he plopped down next to me and said, "So what are you reading?" and it went from there. He asked my advice on classes he should take next semester, wanted to know where I went to school, asked what my favorite movies were, asked if I believed in telekinesis (his attempt to demonstrate his powers involved holding my hand and trying to read my mind). He had this shy, dorky manner about him, but at the same time he was pretty forward.

I acted friendly but the whole time I was trying to think of a way to bring into the conversation the pertinent facts that I was a) married b) waaay too old for him. Funny, usually I want people to think I am younger than I am. He was a nice fellow, but I just didn't want him wasting his time. Finally I said, "It's nice talking to you. But do you mind if I finish reading this section? I really want to find out what happens next." He got the idea right away, said, "Oh! Oh, sure," and hung around for a few more minutes pretending to read a book off a nearby shelf, then moseyed off.

Fears for the World

Things seem to really be unraveling in the Middle East. It's very worrisome. It feels on the one hand very far away and nothing to do with me - yet on the other, it's events of the type of ferocity and political bent that in the past have started global conflicts.

Once again I'm struck by a sense that the world is really far too dangerous and crazy to have children. Perhaps people throughout history have felt this way. "How can I have children? Cave-bears will eat them!" "They'll be sent to fight in the Crusades!" "They'll die of malaria." (sadly, that's still true in many parts of the world.) Now, though most of the things that endangered children and the rest of us throughout human history are avoidable in the U.S., there are new dangers to contend with. Suddenly completely unrelated people thousands of miles away might pose a threat to us all.

Cycling Through

Sometimes it seems like I spend the whole week looking forward to the weekend, and the whole weekend resting, and I never actually make much life progress.

The weeknights are pretty much shot because I'm tired, so I don't make an effort to do much. But I have this vision that great things will be accomplished on the weekend - I'll write, I'll go to cultural events, I'll visit friends and family, I'll go hiking, I'll learn new recipes. Instead, given half a chance, I do homebody things, resting and reading, because that's what I like doing. Then suddenly it's Sunday night, and I write it off as "another relaxing weekend" and plan to do the great things next time around.

I think it's because I tend toward living for the moment (aka laziness), as opposed to having a productive and meaningful existence. They're both really good life philosophies, but they're in conflict with one another. Whatever I pick, I'm going to feel obscurely guilty that I'm neglecting the other philosophy.

Wants

It's so, so hard to be consistently happy. So I have this whole bee in my bonnet about how I want to have a house and babies and try to recreate a childhood for them like the wonderful one that I had. Afternoons in the park, me and my husband swinging the kids between our hands, trading smiles over their heads, etc. It seems impossible to get there, from here. And I feel occasionally unhappy, verging on panicked, because of this.

But if I had a mortgage running me into the ground like some of my friends, and if I was a parent, which is like accepting a full-time, 24-7 babysitting job that you have to pay someone else to take over for you if you ever need an evening off - whew, would that really make me happy? I can't help but wonder if I wouldn't look back wistfully on the afternoons when I could come home from work, flop down on the bed, eat potato chips, and read Steppenwolf, totally unencumbered.

Dragonfly

Yesterday on the way home on the bus, we were stopped in traffic when I saw a dragonfly dancing above a car next to us. The car was a shiny dark blue-black color, and the dragonfly must have thought it was a pond, because he circled it repeatedly and tried to land, then finally flitted off. Then I noticed the girl sitting in front of me turn to her friend and point out the car. I couldn't hear what she said, but when her hand described the exact arcs of the dragonfly, I realized she must be telling him what we had both just seen. I love it when there are those moments of shared perception. It was like one time when I was driving and there was a magnificent rainbow over the highway, and a woman called in to the local radio station to say that she was on this particular highway and anyone in the area should go look at the rainbow. I felt like all of us in our separate cars were united by witnessing this same glorious sight.

The Gardenwife

I realized why I enjoy gardening so much. It's basically like cleaning. Here I am trying to steer myself away from becoming a boring housewife by developing an outside interest like gardening, but no, the garden is basically just an extension of the house. When I'm out there pulling weeds, watering, planting, pruning, mulching, it's the same routine as when I'm cleaning the house - go through and remove what shouldn't be there, put in what should.

I think it's borderline unhealthy that I like cleaning. It appeals to some organizational instinct that I have. The sign of a small mind. I use it to procrastinate when I should be doing big-picture things that require actual mental effort. My dad laughed when I told him this and said he's the opposite, the knowledge of cleaning tasks awaiting him inspires him to sit down and work on mathematical problems.

At least gardening, unlike house-cleaning, has some physical results. I've already harvested green beans, tomatoes, and gladiolus, and there's dill, spinach, zucchini, carrots, beets, and yellow squash coming up.

All Good

Coming down off a great weekend and work seems a little unreal. On Saturday, I worked in my garden, my husband played tennis, and we went to a movie and then out to dinner with friends. Yesterday, I really got into this book about life on Guernsey Island in the early part of the century. Later, we invited people over to watch the World Cup, and I fixed dinner. Very simple, but nice. I just felt happy the whole weekend. I have a good set of friends, my health, and the nicest husband in the world. I'm really pretty lucky.

Feeling Loved

Last night after dance class my friend and I sat on a bench in the dusk eating cherries together and talking about relationships. It wasn't the class, or the cherries, or even the conversation so much that mattered. But somehow the synergy made me feel better. I went home relaxed and happier than I've been in a while.

Argh

I need to get better with relationships. I'm not smooth like I want to be. I get het-up about little things and end up having stupid arguments about sunscreen's effect on melanoma that aren't even about that - instead they are about being ignored all morning and worrying that our marriage isn't as perfect as other people's.

And I need to really pull back and do some thinking about the kid question. I tried to have a "talk" about it this weekend, but didn't get anywhere. I ended up just floundering with "but it will all be worth it in the end," while he brought up sensible concerns about how a baby would interfere with sleep, hobbies, etc. He is right. Having a baby would interfere with our lives. And I can't express articulately why that just doesn't matter to me, why I still want us to have kids. It's an emotion that goes below language.

I'm too focused on getting him to agree to have kids (soon), and not enough on what is actually important - I should be thinking and planning and interested in the whole concept of creating a person, and busily making room for this person in our lives. Instead I have some crackpot notion that if I can just get him to say 'yes', everything else will magically fall into place. I'm so stupid and naive.

And I can't focus when there are a bunch of people over. I'm supposed to be this great hostess and make everyone feel at home and get them talking to each other, and instead I just flit around trying to talk to whoever looks left-out, and ignoring everyone else, and I have no idea if people are even having fun or not.

At work, I go around with my ears flattened down and my tail tucked. I feel beaten-down and I don't know how to change that. Being more assertive just seems to get me in trouble - my job is to be the low man. But after a couple of years of this, I'm starting to feel incapable of taking on anything more challenging; my self-esteem is shot. Getting married is just about all I have to feel happy about and proud of right now. When that wears off, what will I have?

Chivalry

One of the bus drivers I ride with occasionally has a one-man chivalry crusade. Several times during the bus trip, he'll clear his throat and make a little announcement, like "Now I know there are some fine gentlemen on this bus. And they know it's not right for a lady to have to stand. So I'm sure they'll be happy to give up their seat and let the ladies sit." What's funny to me is how this announcement, which I'm sure he intends to be nice, makes people uncomfortable is such a variety of ways.
- The men who are sitting feel uncomfortable because they feel like they just got called rude.
- The women who are standing feel uncomfortable because they didn't think the men were rude, but the announcement makes it sound like they expected to be given seats.
- Some of the men, on hearing the announcement, get up and offer their seats to women. This makes men who did not stand up feel like they were rude.
- Some of the women, on being offered seats, decline them, to show the men that they didn't think they were rude. This makes the women who accepted seats feel rude.
- After a little while, if there are still women standing, the driver will repeat his announcement. Then the men who offered their seats and were told, "no, it's ok" feel bad all over again, because they did offer, and now they're being chastised since there are still women standing.

Meanwhile, on exiting the bus some women pause to say, "That was nice of you," to the driver, thus reaffirming his belief that this is a good thing to do, and ensuring that he will continue to do so.

What an amazingly complex social landscape we live in.

Foot Fetish

I saw a girl today with beautiful feet. I notice this kind of thing now. She was wearing flip-flops and slouched down in her seat. The sides of her feet were so straight and clean, there was no curve at the big toe joint at all. It's like, she's physically incapable of ever developing bunions. I just stared at her feet in awe.

The Blouse

I bought a new blouse that on someone else would show some cleavage. On me, there is no cleavage, so it just reveals an expanse of upper chest. The whole time I'm wearing it, I have to throw my shoulders way back and keep my chest inflated, or the top of it sags loose and you can see my bra. I like the color, and it looks good on me, but by the end of the day I'm just tired of having to stand up so straight. I can see the micro-flickers in people's eyes, too, flitting down from my face to my chest as they're talking to me to see if they can see anything. How do women who actually have cleavage deal with it?

Steppenwolf

I'm reading Steppenwolf. The back cover bills it as "a savage indictment of bourgeois society," and it's supposed to be a classic. I had trouble getting into it - the first 50 pages were really repetitive, describing again and again what steppenwolves are. I thought Hesse needed an editor. OK, OK, we know already that the Steppenwolf feels like an outsider in society!

But then it started getting really good. The main character, this lonely old guy who spends all his time reading literature and moping in his attic room, runs into an old acquaintance in the street, a professor he used to know. He doesn't have any friends and it's been so long since he even talked to anyone, that he feels really wooden and fake even standing there in the street talking to the guy. He feels like the "wolf" part of him is standing there laughing at him for trying to be sociable. When the professor invites him to dinner, he says yes but immediately starts freaking out about going. He knows the evening is going to be weird.

He goes back to his room to shower and dress, and the whole time he's wishing he could just stay at home and read his book - the evening looms ahead of him like a terrible chore. Eventually he forces himself to go, and yeah, it turns out pretty bad. He feels totally repressed throughout the whole meal because it's clear the professor's politics are the opposite of his, and he has to keep biting his tongue. After dinner, there's an awkward silence, and in desperation for something to say he ends up saying something insulting, and the professor gets upset with him, and he leaves in a huff.

The whole time I was reading this scene, I was enthralled. I know exactly how he felt. I am not a steppenwolf, but I am shy to a degree that I've never quite been able to overcome. If it was a pure and simple choice, I would much rather read a book than be social on any given evening. But I know being social, in the long term, makes me happier, so I usually talk myself into going. There have been many occasions where I basically browbeat myself into going to some party where I knew I'd be out of place, because I knew I needed the practice, and besides, if I didn't go out, how was I ever going to meet someone? I didn't usually insult anyone, but I'd generally go home afterwards feeling a combination of "whew, glad that's over" and "I'm so bad at this." It's so fascinating to me that Hesse was writing, in 1927, in German, something that speaks to me on a core level, something that makes me say, "ahh! He understands." Like he reached across the ages and squeezed my hand.

Americans and Loneliness

According to this survey, the average American has only one or two close friends, and most people confide only in their spouse. Twenty years ago, the average was three good friends and several confidants, including friends from the neighborhood or other groups outside the family. Commentary on the article speculates about why this is happening - there are plenty of places with social opportunities (the bus, the coffee house, the gym). But for the most part, we don't make connections with the people we see in these places. And in fact, if people approach us there, they're generally a little weird. It's safer, and more comfortable, to email people instead of talking to them, and watch NetFlix at home instead of going out.

Here are my theories about why:
- Transience. No one stays at the same address or job for long enough to really build connections. Maybe twenty years ago there were neighborhoods where people grew up together and all knew one another, like Sesame Street. Or companies where people started out at the bottom rung and spent their whole career working their way up. Now, you move into an apartment building and no one knows their neighbors. Even if you wanted to become friendly with them, it's not easy, either because of language barriers or just basic personality differences. And it's pretty common to change jobs every few years.
- Too many people. If you came in contact with just one or two strangers a day, it would be natural to strike up a conversation. You might be pleased if a stranger asked to share your bench in the park. But when you come in contact with perhaps a hundred strangers a day, it makes more sense to avoid connections. The ratio of "good" interactions with strangers, vs. bad, is pretty low. Now, chances are a stranger who approaches you in the park is a little mentally unhinged. Or wants money. Or both.
- Finally, the types of things we do for fun these days just aren't...well, fun any more. Like house parties where the music is so loud you spend all your time shouting "SO HOW DO YOU KNOW [host]?" and "WHAT?". Or happy hours with coworkers where you sip overpriced beer and try to pretend that these people are your friends. I think they cater more to edgy, kind of aggressive people who live and thrive on pop culture. Which, I think, is not most of us.

I'm not sure what would be better - but something that presents a comfortable environment and facilitates interactions. Something that the edgy cool people think is dumb, so they've replaced it with more demanding social activities where only they can compete. Maybe we need to bring back roller rinks and square dances.

Papering Over A Leak

I'm struggling a lot not to be envious of friends of mine who have real estate and kids. That's where I want to be, but I'm so far away from it right now, it seems like I'll never get there.

The real estate has to come first because our apartment is way too small to raise kids in - already we're tripping over stuff all the time. But we can't afford to buy a place right now, and probably never will, unless I can figure out how to get a job that pays about twice my current salary. Meanwhile, I'm scared of waiting because I worry that I might have trouble getting pregnant, and that childbirth might be more than I can handle...and it's only going to get harder as I get older.

But I made a decision just a couple days ago to stop fussing about this stuff. And I feel bad about even bringing it up in conversations because I don't want to stress out my husband. He has enough on his plate, getting his career going. This is supposed to be a chill time when we just relax and enjoy being married. I shouldn't be pushing him for more.

So, it's like constantly papering over a leak. There's a hose behind it, turned on full-force, but I keep laying fresh sheets of paper over it, trying to calm myself down. "Everything is fine."

The Call

It was 4:30 am and the phone was ringing. I leaped out of bed with my heart pounding, but it turned out to be just someone outside at the call box, wanting to be let in. She said, "Lemme in, I forgot my key." Lightning pause while I digested this. I thought of the episode in Seinfeld where Elaine says, "I didn't know it was a jewel thief," and the other girl lisps, "That'th why there'th a buzzer!" and about reciprocal altruism, how the costs of helping her were low, and the benefits for her high. I felt irritated with people who aren't together, who have kind of a disorganized hedonistic lifestyle and come home at 4:30 am without their keys. On some level, I think I knew it was the girl next door, who's always blasting her music at all hours and keeping us up. All this happened in an instant. Then I said, "I'm sorry, I don't know you," and hung up.

It turned out it was her, because we heard her coming in a few minutes later - I guess someone else let her in. I haven't met her face-to-face but I hear her through the wall a lot. She's really loud, she always seems to be having these angry confrontations with people on the phone. She also likes to have the music blaring and TV on at the same time, in competition with one another. I probably would have let her in if she had apologized for calling at that hour. Or if she wasn't so loud all the time. The thing is that she knows which apartment she called, and now she's probably thinking black thoughts about me. But I don't care.

My husband rolled over in bed and laughed at me. "You're funny," he said. "You said, 'I don't know you.' It's like...'I don't even know who you are any more!'"

The Deluge

Yesterday I decided to walk home, which is about three miles. About halfway there, the skies opened up and I got caught in a terrific downpour. I didn't have an umbrella so all I could do was just keep walking. Pretty soon I was soaked to the skin. Water was coursing down my face and into my eyes, my shoes were squelching with every step, and my clothes were totally plastered to my skin. It reminded me of times when I was a little kid and I would run out and play in the rain for the sheer joy of it. Being caught outside made me feel like a kid too - all the grownups were riding in their cars, or had sensibly checked the weather report and brought their umbrellas, but I was heedlessly out in the rain. After I got home and dried off, apparently my will-power had also retreated to juvenile levels, because I immediately tore into the bag of potato chips I'm not supposed to eat. They were really yummy.

I'm going to make an effort to stop worrying about finances and housing and my job and the tick of the tell-tale biological clock, and just take my pleasure in simple things. Life's too short to worry so much.

Feeling Humble

One day last week, I reread Lord of the Flies, which was assigned reading in high school. I always liked "children on their own, without grown-ups" adventure stories as a kid - The Boxcar Children, Five Children and It, the Narnia books, and the wonderful Far-Distant Oxus*. Those are happy-go-lucky stories, of course, and Lord of the Flies is really dark. But I still liked it.

The second time through, I particularly appreciated the writing. The descriptions of the tropical heat, the shimmering of the humidity on the beach, and the intense quality of the light, are so vivid. You really feel like you're there. Golding describes the beach as being "fledged with palm trees, their green feathers a hundred feet up in the air" coconuts being "skull-like", a wild sow "fringed with piglets," and those are such interesting, fresh words to use. Simon's encounter with the Beast is so spookily written you almost hear a hypnotic kind of drone in your ears as you read it. All of this is just icing on the cake, though, for the moral message the book is trying to get across, which is heavy enough to provide grist for any number of English class essays.

It's so much better than anything I think I could write. I could write something decorative and of interest to a few people, I think, but I'd have to really push myself to get the descriptions up to that calibre. And I just don't think I have it in me to write a "great" book that deals with human morality and society. Golding tosses it off like that's the whole point of writing. I'm awed.


* Far-Distant Oxus: No one has heard of this book, but it's really great. It's about six English children in the summer holidays riding their ponies around the countryside, totally unsupervised and having a glorious time. It's a good read by any account, but especially considering that it was written and illustrated by two girls who were 15 and 16 at the time of publication.

Filing And Its Discontents

Life is all about filing things. I've realized that's pretty much all I do, in my job, and at home. File the budget paperwork in the purchases folder. File the newsletters in the envelopes. File the groceries in the fridge. File the clean socks in the sock drawer. File the guinea pig poops in the trash. On my tombstone, it will read "She worked against entropy, a lot."

Entropy always wins in the end though. And while it gives me some measure of satisfaction to clean and organize things, I feel like these aren't really worthy activities I should be spending my time on. So what if the floor needs sweeping? I should be reading great works of literature (and writing same), improving myself instead of making these incremental gains in household orderliness that will only be lost over the course of the coming week. I often clean as a method of procrastination, because it's easier than self-improvement. But I ought to break myself of that - and at the same time, of the nagging desire to clean when I see something that should be cleaned. So what if the trash is overflowing? I ought to be able to ignore it and do more important things, instead of filing it down the trash chute. Someday, I'll regret that I spent time keeping things orderly instead of wildly, exuberantly, living.

Birdies

Today the weather is the type that makes me feel glad to be alive. It's summery with a light breeze, and most importantly the air smells good - warm and fresh like clean sheets. I went outside for lunch and sat in the park, where there was live music, and where there were sparrows dust-bathing. They are so adorable. I love the way they hunker down in a patch of bare soil and vibrate all over, shivering their wings in the dust. They almost look like wind-up toys gone nuts.

Worry, With a Side of Doubt

I've been worrying a lot about money lately. It's all just because I've moved up in the life bracket. Like tax brackets - you jump up to the next income level and suddenly the taxes are a lot fiercer. I was in the late-twenties-young-professional bracket, which is characterized by intermittent employment, a lot of transient living situations, Internet dating, and periodically having to go back to your parents' house to do laundry and pick up your mail. Not a lot of expectations because you're figuring things out.

Now I'm in the just-married-nesting bracket, which is all about investing in real estate and parenthood. I feel way behind the other people in this bracket. They already have their big houses in the suburbs and their pre-schoolers. I don't think we can afford to have either for a while. My job isn't prestigious enough, so I don't earn enough to pay my share of a mortgage, let alone childcare. And when I floated the idea of staying home with my kids to a friend, she just burst out laughing. "Honey, she thinks she can afford to stay home with the kids, and live in this area!" she told her husband, who also started laughing. Maybe that is only something Midwesterners can afford to do.

I never used to care about having a "prestigious" job. I guess before, it didn't matter because it was just me. Suddenly now I have responsibilities to my husband, to hold up my end of the finances, and to our future kids. Not earning very much money suddenly isn't OK any more.

The Perfect Job

I wonder, does anyone ever really like their job? I mean, in the sense that they actually enjoy being there, and would choose it over leisure activities, at least some of the time. I'm not sure I can imagine a job that I would prefer to go to over, say, sweeping the floor or clipping my nails or some other mundane task like that.

Right now I'm sure there are people out there who would say they genuinely like their jobs. Even people with jobs I would consider really hard and socially stressful, like youth camp counselor or reporter or public relations agent. But these are the sorts of blandly happy people who are just a lot more sunny about everything. I'm not sure I can trust their pronouncements, their happiness scale is so far out of whack from mine. These are people who run marathons for fun and give blood all the time, and are good at teaching martial arts to four-year-olds.

I always think that it's just a matter of finding the right job, that fits my personality and skills just perfectly. So I make lists of things I like doing. The lists usually have things on them like this:

- talking to and interacting with (gentle) animals
- cleaning, in moderation
- reading fiction
- being outdoors at least some part of each day
- being around people who are smart, but not competitive
- watching animals
- learning about structure/function in the natural world, and taxonomy
- writing, in moderation
- not having to be "on" - aggressive, competitive, concerned with hierarchy, politically aware, ready to defend policies, etc.

So this would basically qualify me to be some kind of Victorian naturalist or maybe run a nature center in a secluded location that no one visits.

I pretty much like my current job except it doesn't pay very much, and it does sort of carry a requirement for me to be "on". Which I am working on, but I'm awful at it. And afterwards I just go home and feel like I'm trying to shake some kind of poison out of my system from having had to act that way. So maybe I just have to accept that work is something you don't like doing (that's why they pay you), and just get through each day with the minimum of friction.

A Meeting at Dusk

Sorry my posts have been erratic lately. I had to travel for work, and then I got food poisoning, so I've been out of commission this week. My in-box is sky-high. But I want to write about the donkey I met a few days ago.

I was wandering around in the twilight, feeling kind of out of place and sad, and found this farm with a pasture (actually more of a mud-pit). I leaned on the fence railing watching the inhabitants - a horse, a mid-size pony, a donkey, a mule, a Shetland pony, a Holstein, and a boar - sharing a pile of hay. I've never seen such a diverse group of farm animals housed together before. The Shetland was kind of a rabble-rouser, starting up play-fights with the pony and sometimes the mule. They would cavort around the pasture together, chasing each other and even rearing up on their hind legs. It was adorable to see this little pony, just a muzzle poking out from under a haystack of mane, charging playfully at the bigger animals and then racing away. All the equines and the pig came over to see me at some point, but wandered off when they saw I had no food.

Except for the donkey. She was a sad-looking creature (like all donkeys), spotted brown-and-white, with a swayback and terribly overgrown hooves. I noticed the hooves right away because she was stumbling with each step as she made her way toward me. They were so long they were starting to turn upwards, and she had to practically walk on her pasterns. I felt a lump of tears in my throat looking at her - her suffering was so apparent, and borne so patiently. She was very cautious about approaching me, she'd come forward a step and then just wait, watching me, so it took about ten minutes for her to get close enough for me to touch her. I started rubbing around behind her ears and scratching her shoulder, and she just leaned into the touch. Every time I paused, she would press her head against my hand, so I kept going. She seemed totally starved for affection.

It was getting dark, but at some point I decided, "I'm not going to walk away from her. Everyone else walks away from her, but I'm going to stay with her, until she decides to leave me." So I stayed there talking to her and petting her for an entire hour. I felt kind of a sympathy with her because she was the out of place one in her group, too (the other equines occasionally acted aggressive toward her, laying back their ears and snaking their heads as they passed her; each time she flinched and jumped away, then came back to me). Plus, we both have foot problems. She still had such longing for human contact, even though she's being neglected and crippled by some farmer who can't be bothered to give her the care she needs. Finally it was full dark, and I was kind of worried about being out so late, so I said goodbye to her, gave her a final pat, and walked away. She lifted her heavy head up and rested it on the top rail of the fence, rolling her big eyes to watch me go. It was a look to break your heart.

I don't even know whose farm it was, but if anyone had walked around the corner of the barn and offered to sell her to me, I would've bought her on the spot. It's so sad to me that now that she's at the end of her useful life, they're just going to ignore her and let her be crippled - when one visit from a farrier could turn her quality of life around. It's so wrong.

Repeat Performances

Since we got back, lots of people have been clamoring to hear about the trip. We had a wonderful time, we loved Australia. I was excited to tell my family all about our adventures. But after spending a day talking with them, I kind of got my fill of talking about it. Now after a couple dozen repeat performances for the benefit of people at work, friends, and even neighbors and random acquaintances who want to know where I've been, I'm getting a little burned out on talking about it. I feel like I've recited our travel itinerary, and the major things we did, and the fact that we had fun, about a million times already - and we have yet to get together with most of our friends.

The clamoring for pictures is particularly strident. Before we left, everyone at the wedding, and my coworkers, and other random friends, all said, "Congratulations! Have fun in Australia! Take lots of pictures!" (like, those exact words, over and over and over on the day of the wedding) and we said, "Thanks! We will!" and now it is coming back to haunt us because they all want to see said pictures. There almost seems to be an obsession with the pictures. It's about the first thing people say to us now. ("So how does it feel to be married?" comes first actually.) Then in short order, "I want to see pictures of your trip!" We did take some, but I'm already tired of doing the show-and-tell narration, and I've only done it once. I am probably going to start telling people that we focused on the experience and didn't take that many pictures, to throw them off.

This is why I can't be a professional musician or actor (well, besides the talent thing) - I just can't do repeat performances. I do it once, and then if I have to keep doing it, I just feel interminably bored, and frustrated. But, everyone is really nice, and it's nice of them to take an interest, so I am doing my best to keep answering with a sunny smile, "Yeah, we had a great time!" and run through the whole thing, and agree to show them the *#&% pictures.

How It Feels

Everyone keeps asking me if it feels any different being married. I usually say, not really. We've known each other and have been living together for a long time, so it's not as though it really changes the fabric of everyday life. But, there is a subtle difference. I feel more like we are a team now, more confident about making decisions together. I feel happy looking forward to our future, knowing that there will be one. Every time I look at him and see that ring on his finger - or hear him say the words "my wife" - I feel proud and excited, that we've made this commitment together.

There used to be a tension and an underlying feeling of sadness in our relationship, I think, that had to do with me wanting to move forward and being afraid he didn't feel the same way, and worrying that all the little things I did that were annoying or dumb were ultimately being tallied up against me in some cosmic subconscious decision-making process. He never gave me any reason to worry - it was just that I never knew where we stood, and I was afraid of thunderbolts from the blue. Now, that tension is gone, and I just feel simply...happy.

Happily Married

The whole past month has been wonderful. First the wedding, which was a glorious day - I almost cried walking up the aisle and seeing all the beaming faces of my friends who had come to wish me well - then the honeymoon, a whirlwind tour of Australia through Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Cairns, and Melbourne.

Australia has always been on my list of must-visit places, but now that I've been there I can't cross it off - I have to go back. In fact we were so smitten with Sydney that we talked about living there. I don't know how the logistics would work - I just know we loved being there. Especially the harbour. And the Blue Mountains. Walking around the Opera House when it was all lit up at night, seeing flying foxes in the palm tree outside our window in Cairns, getting to touch a joey at a zoo in Adelaide, are all experiences I'll treasure. We were struck with how friendly and open and nice all the Aussies were. You'd think they would get burned out with tourists, but they were great. Now I have delusions of saying "to hell with it" about my job here, and the two of us moving to Australia so I can work with flying foxes. It's a delusion because I could never bear to be that far away from my family - especially if we start one of our own. But it's nice dreaming about it.

The best part of the trip was just having all that time to spend together. After the stressful weeks leading up to the wedding, it was lovely just being able to spend each day as we liked, exploring and eating at nice restaurants and having fun. Going back to work today has been hard just because it's the first time we've been separated for more than a couple of hours, since we got married more than three weeks ago.

Two Days

Almost there. The past week has been rushed, and the past few days have really been a crunch-time. I had lots of stuff I was going to do in my lunch hour, last-minute wedding planning, and it just didn't happen because I didn't have a lunch hour. Hopefully I will accomplish a lot tomorrow. Well, even if I don't, all the major stuff is in place.

I'm so happy. I still don't really believe this is going to happen. All day I've had a TMBG song in my head, "These things happen to other people...", a line I've often thought of whenever something particularly wonderful and unlooked-for came my way. Marriage is one of those things that I always really hoped would happen for me, and was secretly afraid would not. I still shouldn't count those chickens. But barring major catastrophes, it looks like everything is good to go.

I'll write again when we get back from the honeymoon - end of May. Cheerio!

Three Days

Lots of parties over the last week - I've eaten a lot of cake and said many thank yous, and the wedding hasn't even happened yet. I wasn't expecting everyone to be as generous and supportive as they all have been. Most of my friends are already married and I thought it would be old hat to them. And I thought people at work might even be grumpy about it, because they're not married, most of them, and sometimes it's hard to be happy about someone else's good situation when you're not there yourself. But that's just my bias speaking, assuming that everyone wants to be married, just because I've always wanted to. Perhaps it was ungenerous of me not to expect them to be so generous.

I'm nearly in the home stretch now. All I have to do is plow through the mountain of work on my last day before (nearly) a month off, and get through one final day of frantic shopping and cooking. Then - yippeeee!

Four Days

So much to remember. My brain is racing. I'm fairly organized, and I have lots of help, like I said, but even so this wedding planning business is a challenge. I keep getting hit with flashes like "what about money in Australia? we have to remember to change funds before we go" and "who will pick up the appetizers?" and "need to mail directions to those four people" and "got to look at the proofs for the wedding programs" and "did I call to confirm the cake order?" and a million other things. I'm not the type to stress over trying to make the day perfect, either. If anything, I think I'm too lax - I keep saying "It'll be fine," and then my mom or someone says, "Yes. But we still need to make this decision." I think the stress is getting to the boy, too - I've seldom seen him so busy and worried. I look forward to being married and being able to just spend relaxed time with him again.

Five Days

Today I'm just feeling happy, and lapped in friendship. Everyone is being wonderful. Though we tried to plan a really small, simple wedding, it turns out there are still a lot of things that have to be done, and it's more than we could do ourselves. I'm so grateful to my friends who are helping us with the music, lending us plates and chairs, picking up the food from the caterer the morning of the wedding, helping set up, doing the wedding programs, singing at the wedding, etc. My friends from home planned a great bachelorette party, and my friends at work gave me a surprise party this morning. Meanwhile my lovely fiancé is working hard to get all the music and other arrangements ready. Ahhh...it's going to be wonderful.

Dumb & Smart

Yesterday I was assigned to take notes during a meeting when I didn't know what was going on. It was just a barrage of acronyms, glancing references to coalitions I'm not familiar with, and meeting-speak phrases like "we'll leverage that issue" or "let's finesse our dialogue with him." Even if I understood all the words of the discussion, without knowing context I couldn't take good notes - so I had to either guess at what it meant, or copy down exact sentences - and I couldn't write fast enough to keep up with the pace of conversation. Why can't they take their own notes? Or at least "context it" for me? But if I interrupt to ask questions, they get annoyed at having to take time out to bring me up to speed. The whole situation made me feel pretty dumb.

I like it, on the other hand, when my speech patterns influence other people. If I can manage to use a particular word in conversation and it gets stuck in someone else's head and they inadvertently use that same unusual word a few minutes later, it makes me feel smart. It comes down to a battle of wills - who has the most dominant speech patterns? Maybe I am just an egotistical maniac for enjoying that. But cut me a little slack. Honestly, I have so little power in my life, the only beings I can control are my guinea pigs, and sometimes not even then. They flounce away from me in defiance if I don't come bearing treats.

How to be Happy

I read recently that many people confuse pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is a fleeting sense of joy in response to a sensation, while happiness is the underlying state of being. The book went on to note that people who are habitually optimists tend to be happier, and they live longer. It advised that you should practice thinking optimistic thoughts and consciously become a happy person.

I'm not so sure it works that way. Maybe your personal capacity for happiness is something you are born with, like brown hair or attached earlobes - not what you strive to be, but who you are. (Of course, maybe I think that because I am not practicing optimism hard enough!)

But really, it seems foolish to practice thinking these optimistic thoughts, if they are not my true feelings about a situation, or especially if they will hold me back from recognizing real problems and doing something about them.

It reminds me of the parenting strategy I witnessed once, of a couple who would not give their young daughter things she wanted unless she professed to be happy. "I'm haaaapppy!" she would sob, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Take The Long Way Home

I had a great walk home yesterday. I took a different route, through a lively urban shopping district. Here are some things I saw along the way:

Ben & Jerry's free scoop day. I tried vanilla Heath bar crunch - yum.

Two shoe stores. I've never been in a shoe store that didn't have all the different sizes stacked up on the shelves, in boxes - but both these stores had just a single model of each shoe style on display. You had to ask the clerk to try it in your size. Actually in the first store I thought all they had was size sixes for little-foot people, so I left, but when I saw the same thing going on at the second store, I thought, "wait..they must have other sizes." I guess I have never purchased shoes anywhere but Payless. And probably won't break that streak any time soon. All the shoes I saw cost $400 and up.

Bridge over the park. In the midst of urban wilderness, suddenly there was a glimpse of real wilderness - at least, a sea of treetops, and the glimmer of a creek down below. Joggers leaned on the railings breathing in the fresh wind while cars rushed by on the highway behind them. Far off in the distance, I could see the towers of the cathedral near where I live. It looked like a fairytale castle.

Candle vigil for Tibetan victims. Twenty-some people sitting in circles around flickering candles, holding signs and pictures of victims, some of whom were just children. They were all silent and it was really eerie. I felt a pang thinking of all the awful things that happen in the world, that I am insulated from through luck, not merit.

Quick detour through the zoo. It was an hour before closing time, and the gates were open. I got to see the kangaroo, the emu, the maned wolves, and a pile of cheetahs lying together in the grass. The wolves were the best. I've always really liked them, even with the smell. The way they move, they look more horsy than doglike - they have long necks and a horse-like way of swinging their heads around and swivelling their ears, and narrow sloping shoulders, and long legs. I sneaked up on them very quietly and stayed just out of view so I could watch them playing together - gently pouncing at each other. The way they walk, both legs on a side moving together, looks so alien.

Library, to drop off my books. I found a literature discussion group that my dad might want to join posted on the bulletin board.

Pet store, to get guinea pig stuff.

And home at last.

Superdreams

Things I want next time around, when I'm reincarnated as a superhero like Meg:

- wings (duh) - or actually, just flying ability. It must be hard to find clothes that fit if you have wings.
- finger-zapper of death to vaporize vexers
- stretchiness like the mom in The Incredibles
- Jedi mind tricks so I could cause a person to experience the same sensations they are causing in someone else - including good stuff
- built-in Babel fish
- ability to rewind

That's probably enough to start with. Wow, I'd have a great time racing around the world, reforming agriculture and correcting the balance of power. Oh and one more:

- an anti-nemesis force-field! Having to fight off a nemesis all the time must be such a drain on your productivity.

A Cause Without Rebels

Today, dodging the inevitable protesters handing out flyers near the subway station, it occurred to me how blase we are about free speech. There are protests and rallies going on all the time, people chanting and marching and handing out stuff. In many countries in the world, people who do those things are risking their lives - they could be arrested, tortured or even put to death. I get Amnesty International reports of people who have been imprisoned for twenty years, for doing less.

Yet, although we have the right to speak out about injustice, it's hard to get anyone to listen. In more authoritarian countries, anyone with a bullhorn on a street corner handing out flyers would be surrounded by an amazed crowd - people would listen, consider the words seriously, and perhaps join up. Here, busy commuters duck to avoid being handed things, or brush the protesters aside. Everyone is too accustomed to them to care any more - and there are so many causes worth fighting for, they all blend together. We're all blitzed by advertising and don't have room to think about anything more.

So whether governments choose to repress or allow free speech, it ends up having the same effect - nothing really ever changes.

Men

Occasionally I cross paths with guys who just make me glad to be female and heterosexual. I love men in the way that sculptors love curves, and painters love blue distance. They are just endlessly fascinating, a theme I can't help returning to. I can understand, if I think about it, what makes women attractive, but admiring men comes so much more easily to me.

Today I was buying a book, and the cashier had smoldering dark eyes and Bambi lashes. He kept looking at me - we looked frankly into each other's eyes and held eye contact the whole time as we were waiting for the machine to process my credit card. Maybe he liked the look of me, too. Maybe he just always does that. I feel totally in love with my fiance, and giving up other men is something I can do easily, in exchange for a life with him. But it still makes me happy to live in a world full of these other interesting men, and to see my life ahead filled with random encounters with them.

Turn, Turn

Today I've got that Quaker song in my head, "Tis the gift to be simple, tis the gift to be free, tis the gift to come down where you ought to be..." I am not quite where I ought to be. I need to be someplace where I'm not judged all the time - or at least, if I am being judged, then judged on something reasonable and considered to be doing well. I have fantasies of being somewhere where nothing is expected of me - like, just walking through a field of flowers. Doing such a fantastic job of being in that field. Or, feeding my guinea pigs, and their squeaks of approval are all that matters.

Being Soft, Reconsidered

I realized being soft isn't enough to save me from being yelled at. In fact, I think some people take advantage of it. If I want people to be nice to me, maybe I should inspire them with a bit of healthy fear by acting like a complete bitch.

Or, maybe I should just look for a new job. There are days when I really enjoy this one - opportunities to learn new stuff, in line with my interests, helping "save the world", a good group of people for the most part, etc. But there are other days when I'm bored to death doing menial tasks, and other days when people yell at me. More and more often, I find myself wondering why I put up with it.

Dang! Never fails - just as I get to the point in a job where I'm earning more than the minimum number of vacation days, it turns sour.

Wavering Resolve

I'm doing a terrible job of keeping my New Year's resolutions. They were:
1. Learn Spanish
2. Learn calculus
3. Find some kind of exercise to replace running
4. Don't buy any junk food

So far I have
1. Maintained a Spanish textbook in pristine, unopened condition on the bookshelf for three months until my coworker, from whom I had borrowed it, asked for it back.
2. Opened a calculus textbook exactly twice. Did all the homework for chapter one (graphs!) and half the homework for chapter 2 (functions!). Am now using the book to keep the Spanish textbook's spot warm.
3. Been running, haphazardly.
4. Been surviving nicely on the large stores of junk food that I socked away at the end of last year. The only thing I ran out of was potato chips, midway through January. Ahh! Then, last week, they were on sale and I bought two bags. I have not opened them. Perhaps it's OK if I just don't eat them. Honestly, how can I be expected to resist half-price chips?

Being 'Soft'

I wage an intermittent war with myself about being too much of a pushover. I'm a habitual avoider of confrontation, even the mild sort like delegating work to someone else to do - it just makes my heart pound to think about it. I'd rather do it myself than give orders. I think it hurts me in the long run because lots of people think they can walk over me - and they are so right. They can. At times I practically lie down in the road and say, "c'mon, step right there," all to avoid being yelled at.

It's not a totally self-defeating strategy, from an animal behavior point of view. I will never make it very far up the ranks. But, it does give me a reputation for being easy to work with. And it seems to win me friends among the other low-ranking females. I went to dinner with an old friend the other night, a really nice girl who, like me, is shy to an extreme. We were having a heart-to-heart and she told me that she feels "very safe" with me. And hearing that just made me so happy. Who cares about being the alpha? I would rather be trusted, any day.

Could It Really Be That Simple?

Could the solution to all my problems indeed lie in a simple haircut? A sweeping move that, along with my hair, takes away all of my insecurities, leaving me elegant, sleek, and always shevelled?

Why I Wouldn't Be A Good Farmer

I used to want to be a farmer when I was little. I liked the idea of living in tune with the seasons, completely supporting myself by growing everything I ate, and being surrounded by rolling pastoral landscapes.

Now I know enough about farming to understand how incredibly hard it is - and how it's not the kind of life you can buy into, from outside. Plus, for a small, independent farmer, having a second job to support the farming "hobby" is almost a necessity. So I just write about farming, instead of doing it.

Anyway, I realized today that there's an even more fundamental reason why I'd be bad at farming. I was working in my garden, which at the beginning of the week was entirely swamped in weeds. I've cleared half of it, and today I planted beans, tomatoes, and larkspur. Most of the weeds I ripped out were vetch - a nitrogen-fixer, good for the soil, and bearing tiny purple blossoms that feed lots of insects. As I cleared them, spiders and centipedes and beetles went scurrying out, looking for cover. I realized I was basically taking out a complete little ecosystem, which supported far more wildlife than my vegetable garden was going to, and replacing it with a monoculture. The land was more valuable to more species and certainly far more productive before I started "improving" it. Now I wonder if I shouldn't just leave the other half of the garden to be wild.

So there you have it - incurable idealism about the farming life has given way to incurable idealism about the value of undisturbed habitat.

Feeling Good

Great headline from yesterday's paper: Millions Rally to Support Aliens. Almost Onion-worthy.

Yesterday evening I planted three rows of cilantro in my new community garden. It's the first garden I've ever had that was all mine, and those are the first seeds I've planted in it. It was so lovely kneeling in the soft dirt with the pink sunset falling behind the trees, listening to birds settle down to roost and to the cathedral bells chiming (I was skipping practice). Later, I lay on the floor petting my guinea pig as she made little cheerful oinking noises, and listening to Tracy Chapman's "Baby Can I Hold You Tonight," and I just felt ridiculously happy.

Christine

I had an interesting conversation while stuck in an interminable line at the post office today. It started, as these things usually do, with an exchange of comments and some eye-rolling at the slowness of the line, between me and the girl standing behind me. Two of the post office clerks were apparently on break, leaving just one on duty to deal with a line that stretched out the door. Then she made an interesting remark about how a private company wouldn't tolerate such delays in service, and how this represented a failure of the free-enterprise system. I like it when people talk smart like that. Makes me feel like I'm back in college.

She was younger than me, and a lot more together-looking, with great cheekbones and the kind of straight, sleek, mousy-brown hair that doesn't need anything done to it. Though her English was perfect, she spoke with a faint accent. It turned out she was born in Macedonia. She came to the U.S. at the age of sixteen, and put herself through college all on her own. I said that it must be hard to be so far from your family. I said it genuinely, but also somewhat automatically. To my surprise, she reacted as though people had rarely said it to her. She got a far-off look in her eyes and said, "It is really hard. You never stop missing your family. You learn to survive with that ache, but it never goes away."

We compared jobs. She was an investment banker, one year out of college, working herself to the bone with twelve hour days. I said I liked my non-profit work, but was finding it very non-profit, and sometimes felt that I should have taken a more lucrative career path. She asked what I was earning (with apologies, but I didn't mind telling her - like all confessions, it was easy to tell a stranger). Her salary was quite a bit higher. "Must be nice to be able to leave work at five," she said wistfully. "Must be nice to earn what you do," I said, and we grinned at each other. Maybe someday we'll each get the chance to experience the other side.

After a pause, she said the thing that stuck with me. She said, "I didn't realize until this conversation how lonely I really am."

I wanted to reach over and hug her. She seemed a hair's breadth from crying. Instead I said something like, "It's hard, isn't it." It's even hard for me, and I grew up here, and I get off work at five. She said, "I just have no time for my own life, and I have no one here."

Then she straightened and said, "I hate it when I get like this, feeling sorry for myself." "Everyone is allowed to feel that way sometimes," I said. She nodded and said, "Anyway, I'm leaving in a couple months. I'm moving to California to live with my boyfriend."

We talked some more, about life plans and families and careers. We were just getting into that endlessly rich topic of how to balance childbearing with a career, when we finally reached the front of the line.

In parting, we wished each other well and said we were glad to have met. I hope things work out for her and the boyfriend. Maybe she can take him home to meet her parents in Macedonia sometime.

Expectations

It seems like a lot of people are suddenly laying expectations on me, that I never asked for (or expected, ha). Mi amigo, who now starts work earlier in order to waylay me and try to get me to speak Spanish, asks every time he sees me whether I have been studying, and tells me that I need to. Why?? Yeah, it would be nice if I could say more than "Hola" and "no comprendo," but why, out of all the people at my office, did he decide I need to learn Spanish? and why would I anyway - just so I could chat more with him? when I already tense up every time I see him, and wish I could sneak out the back door?

Then there's religious expectations - which, granted, are up a notch this week because it's holy week. But they're just going to intensify as it gets closer to the wedding and the forces of Catholicism and Episcopalianism duke it out over my soul.

Then there are general work-related expectations - that I do all the assignments first, that I give everybody's work top priority, and do it all with a smile. The bombardment goes up and down in intensity, but never quite goes away.

I wish I had an office with a door I could close, so I could control my work environment better. My territory is public space, and people use it as such - sitting on my desk, leaving their things there, and talking to me as long as they want (not as long as I want). That's more or less what it's like to be an introvert in all walks of life, I think. Other people use you. They control the conversation, not you, and they decide when you are allowed to leave. They even say things like "you're nice" or "you're easygoing" or "thanks for your patience." I'm not nice. Or patient. If I had a choice, I'd leave. Or yell at them. Someday there's going to be a breaking point, and some person will be innocently talking at me about their day and ignoring all my efforts to escape, and I am just going to scream, "Fuck you!!!" and run away.

Only A Month Away

Planning a wedding is really complicated. I think I should have started earlier. I keep making lists, and spending entire evenings online researching options, but I'm not making much progress. People tell me to enjoy my engagement, and I do get flashes of pure joy and anticipation, but then I come back to reality - ever-present worry and fear that indeed it will not get done.

So far I have bought a dress, booked the church, and picked out a man.

So far we have not gotten rings, a photographer, food, cake, music, a marriage license, passports, shoes, a suit, flowers, candles, or readers.

Luckily I have an awesome mom who is pitching in, and four more weekends to run errands and try to get some of this stuff done. Wish me luck!

900,000 Chickens A Week

Yesterday I toured a poultry slaughterhouse. We followed along watching as the carcasses, hanging from hooks on a traveling assembly line, were defeathered, chilled, and sliced into meat cuts. It's very state-of-the-art with machines transferring and deboning the carcasses, and workers inspecting and slicing them up. I was OK seeing everything after the birds were dead, because after that point there's no suffering. It was a little eerie, kind of like a sci-fi thriller, watching the ranks upon ranks of thousands of carcasses, traveling across the ceiling and down into giant machines. They kind of looked like dead baby dolls, headless, hanging by their stubby legs.

We also visited the kill room, and that was hard for me. Seeing the live birds in crates ready to go onto the conveyer belt, seeing them strung up by their feet and flapping to try to get away, and seeing them continue to flap and struggle after their necks were slit, was pretty disturbing. I just felt like what was happening to them was so awful and so undeserved. And not even in aid of any fine or noble cause - just to make chicken nuggets. I wanted it to be over for them as soon as possible. Knowing as each second passed that they were still alive and suffering was the worst part. We saw chickens with blood all over their wings and breasts, still flapping and trying to get away. I couldn't tell if it was reflex, or if they were really conscious and experiencing every moment of that.

I think as slaughterhouses go, this was one of the better ones. It was designed with worker comfort and humane guidelines in mind (for example, the chickens are hung onto the hooks in a darkened room, so they stay calmer). We talked a lot about how the chickens are raised, and this company is head-and-shoulders over the others in the business. But no matter how well you do it, it's still a terrible industry. At the end of our tour, the rest of my group was very enthusiastic about the facility, so I gather that others are much worse. If that's true, then I don't think I have it in me to see any others.

Friends

So yesterday I went to dinner with some new friends from work, and glibly confessed my aspirations to someday have a family and a house in the suburbs, and my worries that I'm not going to get there doing environmental work. I always fall into the trap of assuming that because people are treating me warmly and like I've known them for years, that I can relax and be open with them. Like I've already passed the test. But - Erin! You have not passed! This IS the test, going on right now! So I say things like that and the mood turns against me, almost like a temperature change. And I suddenly realize I'm not in the company of bosom buddies, at all, and that I just shot myself in the foot, and from now on there's always going to be a kind of frosty reserve in their eyes when they speak to me.

Yesterday my downfall started when someone asked if I partied a lot in college, and I said that I hardly ever went out, that I wasn't very cool in college, and then someone else asked what kind of music I liked, and I said that lately I've been enjoying classical (strike two), and then I wrapped it up with my confessions about the suburbs, after which there was a poignant pause and then someone said, "I'm really anti-all that. It's so terrible, environmentally. That's not how I would ever choose to live." Which was when I suddenly woke up and realized these weren't my friends, at least not yet, and perhaps now wouldn't ever be. The thing is, they're nice people. But you do have to keep up a facade of coolness as you get to know new people, and say what they want to hear, and later after they've decided you're in, you get to be yourself. I know that. I just forget to do it.