Single in the City

18 more weeks (again)

2012-01-29T22:39:00.002-05:00

After a 10-mile run (in shorts!) through Brookline this afternoon, I treated myself to a fresh salon pedicure with bright-green polish. The color is called Spring. It's a little obnoxious, to wit:

My tootsies certainly needed and appreciated the pampering. (Particularly since I wore high-heeled boots and stood and/or walked and/or danced for nearly 10 hours straight last night .... another story for another time.) But the timing was inadvertantly perfect ....

.... since tomorrow I officially begin Day 1 of 126 days of marathon training for #9 -- Stockholm! Yes, Stockholm in Sweden! -- on June 2.

I'm a crazy mother sometimes, yes. But when the Swedish cousins say, "Come! Visit! Run! And we won't take no for an answer!" and the training will complete before the heat of summer and all my knocking on wood since Marathon 7 seems to still be working because the legs and the lungs are still willing ....

Yep. No reason not to.

And I think I'm going to keep this old Spring color on the toes until race day. Periodic postings of proof to follow.

Appropos of nothing....

2012-01-27T12:53:00.005-05:00

... after noting that I hit up the Kendall Square Cinema

at the last minute last night

to see a late showing of The Descendants,

I'll take a break from my regularly-scheduled introspection

(and I'm hardly the first person in the universe)

to say:

Holy shit.

All humans should aspire to look this good

(and frankly, this cool)

at 50.

Dearest George

Dateline 1/26/12: E St & W Broadway, Southie

2012-01-26T08:38:00.000-05:00

Morning watch -- 7:22 a.m.:

In one swoop

confirms

I was asleep last night by 11:30

and

up this morning by 6:40

and

the #9 bus driver did brake

halfway between G Street and Dorchester

to pick me up

as I sprinted to catch the 7:20

which got me to Copley by 7:37

(because crowds on the 9

and E. Berkeley Street drivers

don't seem to get going until 7:45,

I learned)

and in the office

(after a Starbucks stop)

by 7:51,

and

while I know this indeed is not early

for most normal folks

I am not most normal folks,

and

I don't think I've been either

in bed by midnight

in the office before 8

on any day in the last year

and,

well,

it just seemed worth noting

in case it never happens again.

Working Hands

2012-01-24T13:05:00.002-05:00

Per rough calculation, I played piano for The Longwood Players -- much of it pounding Jason Robert Brown soul-chords -- for 27 hours last week, ending at 11 p.m. on Sunday night.

Woke up Monday with blood swelling and throbbing through both hands -- my right, particularly stiffened into a rigor mortis claw. Could not grip my toothbrush. Riding the bus to work, standing, I could not get purchase on a seat-back with either hand, resorting to straddling a pole with armpit and calf to keep standing. Today, typing is more comfortable .... although the computer's mouse is still my sworn enemy, as the area between index finger and thumb is puffed up like a bruise and resistant to that reclined angle.

Thankful the hands survived this week's (unusual, due to the concentrated confluence of auditions and rehearsals and shows) onslaught. The thumb will recover, the stiffness will undoubtedly subside because nothing is injured.

I'm reminded again how nice it is, and how grateful I am, when these wonders of God's creation work correctly.

So much for leaving early.

2012-01-23T10:09:00.002-05:00

What is the point of getting out the door at 8:11, a full 20 to 45 minutes earlier than usual, if I'm just going to stand in my sassy shoes in the slush pile at the corner of G Street and Broadway from 8:14 to 8:33 with 25 other people, seeing no #9 busses (despite a schedule that suggests between 7 and 9 a.m. there should be one arriving every 5 minutes), then get on the first one to arrive only to be wedged in like a stuffed animal in a pizza palace crane game, regretting the choice to wear the 4-inch heels (only worn because I was leaving early and was going to get to work quickly and thought there were busses coming every 5 minutes so I wouldn't be standing on the pavement for 19 minutes and would surely get a seat once it arrived), but not using that as an excuse to wonder grumpily how still, even in an age where chivalry is not required, there can be professional, working gentlemen who sit in the seats robo-checking smart phones for the entire 20-minute ride into Copley while above them, the aisles are filled with women staggering to stay upright as the bus lurches and groans down the road.

Fun find

2012-01-19T14:26:00.001-05:00

Found yesterday serving as a bookmark in my 1965 edition of Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, which (according to the sticker on the front) I purchased for $1 from the Brattle Book Shop on West Street on July 5, 2003, back when I still waited tables for a living at Legal Sea Foods:

Seems an appropriate tome in which to find a meaningful compliment from a stranger in a restaurant.

Oh! (for some luck)

2012-01-17T17:22:00.005-05:00

So the car's back in the shop again. The gear shift seized up while I was in the parking lot at Target on Saturday -- I was in an exit lane and couldn't shift out of Park -- facilitating a tow back to the good men of Emerson Auto. They're still looking into it. Something with the solenoid valve malfunctioning.... but for still unknown reasons. They'll call me when they figure it out and when they know what it's going to cost.

Meanwhile, I found a stray penny on the ground in the office kitchen today. I have very few supersitions in life, but one is that one should never walk past a stray penny on the ground without risking bad luck. So I picked it up. And discovered that the date on the penny is the year of my birth.

What are the odds of a 1973 sitting in my path on a day where luck is sorely needed?

Woo-hoo!

Holiday Monday (II)....

2012-01-16T13:25:00.000-05:00

.... because inappropriate boys do not have a rightful place to own the headlines today.

August 28, 1963

Holiday Monday (I)

2012-01-16T13:21:00.000-05:00

OKCupid message blotter:

31 - Oberhausen, Germany. hey beauty...how you doin? It's so boring right now...and I ask myself if you are in mood to meet...a funny...smart and nice guy?! I have to be honest today this nice guy is extremely horny too:-) the hormones are going crazy:-) so we could do something against that too...so I hope you are open minded as me....would be cool if you reply

23 - N. Scituate, RI. Hi! (5-minute gap) Hello?

18 - Avon, MA. I was wondering if you are interested in casual sex.

26 - Boston, MA. It's obvious that you have a problem with 22 years old men, but I'm soo old than them:) I'm 26 years old and 3 quarters:)) in April I'll be 27:)) JUST KIDDING! how e u?

21 - Peabody, MA. Heeeey

32 - Lake City, FL. u r so attractive can we chat or talk anytime ? my cell is 8XXXXXXXXX. (Ed. note: real number furnished upon request, in case you might want to chat or talk anytime.)

37, Washington DC. Hi, I think a WOW is in order!! You are stunning! I bet you are as sweet. I'm a good guy, just turning a page in life, and trying to have some fun. I have an insatiable 'drive' with the stamina to match and looking for someone that would enjoy that, and we seem like a high match.

And an old friend, this gentleman, popped up and requested a chat, too.

Thanks, boys, for the attention.

Tower in winter (II)

2012-01-12T13:58:00.002-05:00

Did I tell y'all that I gave up chocolate for January?

(And that so far I've been very, very good about that?)

Can you understand how much I regret this resolution today, after staying up way too late watching Season 1 of Downton Abbey and waking up to a thundering storm that blew my umbrella inside out on the way to the bus (and, yes, I'm one of those people who'd really rather have it be 10 inches of snow than an inch of rain) and wishing I could drink my coffee faster and enjoying the last 4 hours looking out onto a slate canvas of nothingness, listening to the creak of the tuned mass damper as the wind pushes this building in circles and diagonals and squares.

Tower in winter

2012-01-10T11:29:00.000-05:00

Took this phone photo of my workplace yesterday at 9 a.m., from the corner of Stuart Street and Trinity Place, shortly after parking my bike.

Initially, this was taken in order to have something with a time-stamp to text to MSF, as part of our semi-regular I Got to Work On Time!™ accountability exercise.

But I'm rather taken with it for what it otherwise represents....

.... that the cheapest cell phone can still take a decent picture.

.... that it's possible to ride bike on dry streets on January 9 in Boston, wearing a skirt and peacoat.

.... that I.M. Pei was inspired.

.... cloud coolness.

That is all.

Food for (Monday) thought

2012-01-09T11:03:00.005-05:00

The Most E-Mailed Article from the New York Times when I logged in at work today, in true Monday-morning fashion, was the first-person essay,"Alone Again, Naturally."

(Subheading: "Why Men Can't Stand to Be Alone After a Divorce or Break-Up." Accompanying photo: woman in 1950's-era headscarf, hands on the wheel of a convertible, chin up, mouth grinning. Author: Dominque Browning, 60-something divorced former magazine editor and essayist author of a book called "Slow Love," which is to "engage with the world in a considered, compassionate way, appreciating the miraculous beauty of everyday moments, and celebrating the interconnected nature of life.")

An excerpt, which focuses on a "revelation" the author had after slipping on her patio and cracking her tailbone:

"Most single women I know really love their lives.

Sometimes we suffer pangs of loneliness, sometimes we ache for the companionship of that mythic soul mate, but mostly we cherish our independence. We love doing whatever we want to do, when we want to do it.

Women alone eat breakfast at 11 if we feel like it, lunch at 3 and dinner never if that’s the way the day is winding down. Single women do not worry about cooking unless we want to. And we don’t want to unless we like to.

Single women love not having to get permission to spend our own money on a 10th pair of black boots or a painting or a wood stove.

We love not being judged, not being criticized, not being hemmed in. We love the give and take of making our own decisions. We love putting things down on a table knowing they will be there when we return. And eventually, we come to understand that there is no reason to curl up on “our” side of the bed while we sleep. We no longer have to take sides. We can sprawl across the expansive middle.

Single men could not care less about any of the above lifestyle features."

Later, Browning states: "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

Oh boy.

This is an opinion piece and Browning is opinionated ... and she's happy in her later-life singleness. I related to her points on the benefits of independence .... but the article is prone to broad and relative overgeneralizations on gender differences. As an essayist she is paid to be provocative. Naturally, such bald statements about what single men want or don't want brought out vehement responses -- from both men and women -- to the point where the comments section was shut down. For example, from a Brooklynite named Fred:

"i'm certain i missed a lot of meaning and nuance here, but this is one of many stories i've seen in the last two years by female authors writing about how wonderful it is to be single or alone. but if its so great, why is there a market for articles about how great it is? shouldnt everyone who is alone just know that? is there a benefit to preaching "alone-ness" to others, as if there's some sort of promised land to which they should aspire? or, maybe its not great, maybe its just one of many possible human conditions, and there is a need for us to explain it and thereby make it more acceptable...to ourselves. "a man needs marriage like a fish needs water", vs "women do not walk around alert for danger" and "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle". sounds awfully bitter. where does the bitterness come from? and why the need to preach the gospel of alone-ness?"

Browning also writes a Slow Love Life blog .... where, in that meta way of this time in history, she analyzed reader response to the Times article -- which in and of itself engendered another level of discussion and response. Her freedom to self-edit and known voice here seem to allow for greater nuance in conclusions -- and the admittance that, as we all know, no qualities are exclusively gender specific:

"Men are hard work. Women are hard work. (But that can be someone else's essay.) People are hard work. Relationships are hard work. They are wonderful work, too, when many things click along; the motivation is there when the nurturing is in balance. Someone made a point in the comments below that what I'm really talking about is the difference between people who give and people who take. We all fall along a spectrum, with some of us at either extreme; and temperamentally, the mix has to be right for the giver not to feel taken advantage of--or smothered, or the taker not to feel neglected. It is so simple, in a way, and so difficult in reality. Until that magic moment when it isn't hard, it is wonderful.

And I think that's what we all want. And often, we settle for less, because of fear of loneliness or fear of the unknown condition of aloneness.

Better to come to a relationship from a place of strength and security."

Hmm. Better. An apt assessment of what makes relationships work: when the balance between giving and taking is agreed upon by both parties. The last line also resonated. In my interactions and discussions with MSF these last months, he often asserts that feeling safe, secure and loved within a relationship is really the crux for making it work. It's one of the reasons I like him and, yes, what truth. The times I have been unhappy in love -- in current situation but, of course, in countless others from my past -- have all in some way circled back to insecurity and indecisiveness; pinpointing that source has been hugely helpful in informing my reactions to the ups and downs.

Happy Monday, y'all!

(Unedited and unordered) notes from the first Saturday of the year

2012-01-07T22:05:00.000-05:00

9:15 a.m. It's spring out, I swear. Lying here under the covers, I can see the sun streaming in. No better reason, then, to hit the snooze and roll back over every 10 minutes between 9:30 and 12:45 p.m., listening to normal people go about their business on the street outside.

Breakfast at 2:30 p.m. is possibly latest ever. Can it still be called breakfast?

Sunny and 50ish all day. Most spent in pajamas and cardigan, listening to Allison Krauss, sitting cross-legged on bed and websurfing. Did get out for the 9-mile run I'd planned ....in the dark of 5 p.m. Obviously body is fooled into thinking such spring weather should portend later sunsets.

Think carpal tunnel syndrome developing in right thumb from the angle of sitting at my computer cross legged on my bed and and how my hand works the touch mouse. Shift angle? Shift to roll mouse? Start paying for wireless so I don't have to hunch over my computer on the right-hand corner of my bed for best signal? Do something besides be on computer?

Also: Sore thumb makes it impossible to think about what I wanted to do today ....which was to practice the piano for 2 hours. Hah!

Read every commentary in the Times about the Republican presidential primaries in NH later this week. Recalled 4 years ago on this Saturday, I had trudged through the snow and cold up to Davis Square, to a windowless office, to phone bank NH residents into voting for Barack Obama.

(Wow. Mitt Romney's sons are hot.)

My cats really are capable of sleeping without waking for an entire afternoon.

Original plan: today is the day I planned to turn down my heat and pull the flannel bedsheets out of mothballs. New plan: to turn down my heat.

Love the inevitability of people's Facebook-post reactions to unseasonable weather. January of last year, with its 40 inches of snow and 3 major blizzards: "Yeah, there's such a thing as global warming, right." Today, with its April-style warmth that caused tree buds to pop: "Yeah, if there is such a thing as global warming, I'm all for it!"

Kinda want to go see my pianist friend Rusty play with his band up at a bar in Union Square tonight. Yet, I haven't yet spoken out loud today and frankly, don't have a huge desire to do so. Can I achieve ordering a beer with hand signals and a wink?

Know there is such a thing as lazy. And this is lazy.

Chaotic productivity

2012-01-05T14:11:00.001-05:00

Oh January, thank you. For a relative change, I've had a personally productive week:

1) Christmas letters DONE in record post-holiday time. (Boo-yah!)

2) Christmas thank you notes on schedule to be DONE tonight. (Yes!)

3) Church council Secretary minutes and materials from the 24 council and 9 voters meetings between May 2009 to May 2011 indexed, scanned, bound, and sent to appropriate parties. (Only 7 months behind schedule, but....DONE!)

4) Quest to devote 90 minutes per day to decreasing the height of the 20-foot pile o' backfiling on the counter behind my desk .....so far, on track, and today seems possible. (And it feels GOOD.)

5) Run 100 miles in January? Already 10-on-the-treadmill-in. (At 8-minute-mile pace, no less, which feels FANTASTIC.)

Of course, perfection is still elusive.... In the midst of typing the above list, after another night of near-complete insomnia, a colleague informs me that between he and me, sometime in the past 6 weeks, we misplaced a folder of original client-signed paperwork required to open a new account. Meaning between now and tomorrow one of us have to find it. It could be in that 20-foot pile o' backfiling. It could be in one of the 13,000 other folders in my possession in this office. One of us could have slipped it into the recycling bin during the first week in December.

Who knows. (Shudder.) I now have to devote my afternoon's productivity (including my 90 minutes of planned filing) to finding this folder.

I'm reminded of an article I came across last night at the gym, in the October issue of Vogue magazine: "Chaos Theory: Forgetful and prone to distraction, Andrea Cooper set out to uncover the cause of her mental mayhem and found a large number of women unwittingly suffering from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder."

In short: Ms. Cooper consulted doctors and took tests after her daughter had been diagnosed and medicated for ADHD, thinking that since it could be a genetic condition, it might be her genes causing it; a positive diagnosis might provide answers to explain some of her more scattered habits. But in the end the doctors didn't find her behavior pervasive enough to fit the definition and, as she admitted, "I must confess I was slightly disappointed that I couldn't attribute my household piles to a medical condition."

Yes. I too, today, wish I had a magic drug that would make that missing folder reappear ... or perhaps transport me back 6 weeks to the point before it might have been lost.

The Listmaker

2012-01-03T10:01:00.002-05:00

On the phone with MSF last night, I heard myself proclaiming with conviction, and not for the first time in the last 10 days, how this December, much more than in Decembers past, I was looking forward to the month ending and January beginning with its Automatic Restart Button, and even though it is already the 3rd of the month it was this morning I awoke with a grand sense of to-do lists to make: a list of what I was going to accomplish today, which includes making a list of what to accomplish both this week and in January (with its super-romantic goals such as getting caught up on filing old paperwork for a minimum of 90 minutes per day) as well as list of how I need to advise Claudia (and myself) in preparation for the marathon (yes!) we are running in Stockholm together in June, followed by a list of my exercise and eating routines for the week and month, which includes scheduling what yoga classes I can get to and finding a weight-lifting class (after 4-month hiatus) that I can commit to once a week and seeing if I can't keep up my 20-miles-a-week running pace, along with reminders about multivitamins and 8 glasses of water a day (because I've forgotten) and smiley-faced checkmarks to reward for every day I stay on the January Chocolate Moratorium bandwagon.

For a girl who didn't make any resolutions this week, I'm both overwhelmed and strangely comforted to have all these things to do.

New Year's sentiment

2012-01-01T16:37:00.001-05:00

As the service lector I was asked to speak this New Testament epistle in church this morning.

It might have been fatigue, but I found myself smiling while reading the first phrases, and how appropriate an admonition it is for fresh starts -- be you Christian or not.

Happy new year.

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:12-17 ESV)

Dateline: Dorchester Heights 12/31/11

2011-12-31T15:55:00.002-05:00

3:20 p.m.

All hail the feet that ran 1,000 miles this year without injury, without complaint.

Many thanks.

(And onto the next year, my friends.)

(Late at) the office

2011-12-30T22:41:00.000-05:00

It is rare for me
to be not upset
at still being
in the office
at 10:30 on the
Friday night of a
3-day weekend.

But then again.

It is rare for me
to have finished
2-years-worth of
back-filing and
be able to
start the new work week
(and the new work year)
with a clean desktop.

Stiff legs,
sore back,
crunchy neck,
weary fingers,
get me home.

There's a glass
of Pinot Gris
(and a jar of peanut butter)
(and a down comforter)
(and a hot bath)
with my name on it.

Did not acknowledge

2011-12-29T15:27:00.000-05:00

Have I written this post before? Can't believe I haven't ....

.... about how within a 5-day range of any major holiday, men from my past who have either a) ditched me b) ignored me or c) just generally been dismissive and uninspired and, therefore unworthy of my time, must insist upon pinging me as if we're best buds.

Ugh. The Holiday Booty Call. Or Call-o-Regret. Or I Have Nothing Better To Do So I'm Trolling For a Past Lover, Any Past Lover, to See if She is Available.

So not attractive.

Take Not Available Man, who always represented himself as Available but never proved to be). Who I never wrote about, because it was probably not public knowledge that he called himself Available. Who ditched at the last hour more times (3) in 2 years than he actually came through ... most recently in June of this year, without remorse or explanation. After which I told him to go (expletive) himself and deleted his contact info from all portals. He evidently did not delete mine. Last week he IM'd on Gmail twice. "Hi!", both times at 1 a.m.

As if I had not told him to go (expletive) himself. Did not acknowledge.

Then, take Coffee, Beer Big Hands Man. From Oakland CA, with family in Mass; our one face-to-face encounter in October 2009 ended with him leaving my apartment, red-faced. Who ever since, pops up on OKC every 3 months, as if it periodically occurs to him a cross-country conversation would be the cure to both our ills. Three months ago he wrote in the same fashion, and I cut the cord, suggesting I was weary of his no-effort approach: he either had to be interested in me and do something about it or go away. He apologized, but then didn't write again, so I thought he went away.

Until this weekend, when he wrote to say he was in Boston over the holidays and wanted to know if I wanted to get a drink. Did not acknowledge.

Amazingly, last night, Canoe Enthusiast joined the procession. Without any pretense. Just the message: "Want to get together?" As if, because we slept together in February 2008 and he ditched me in clueless forgetfulness on 2 successive dates in March, I might want to get together in December 2011.

While I was in mid-deletion of said request he, still online, pinged with an instant message, "Hello!" After which, when I didn't reply immediately, followed with "Hello?"

What the hell? Yuck.

Finally, as if he knew I was going to write this and wanted to provide a finale as the King of Such Behavior, in comes the 1:35 a.m. text from C-2: "Yo!"

I knew he wanted me to be my old spontaneous self, meet him for last call, get drunk fast, see what transpired on Kingston Street. As if he had been in any meaningful contact since June, other than several times to suggest that if I volunteered for one of his local campaigns, it might afford me the opportunity to see him. But that otherwise he was too busy. As if he even deserved to still have my number in his phone.

Awake, but pretending to be asleep, I did not acknowledge.

But I gave in this morning at 10, because he is C-2, and I do this for him.

Replying: "Are you in town?"

To which he said: "I was. Was at Foley's, but on road back now. :( "

To which I said: "Thanks for the ample heads-up, as always."

To which he said: "Sorry. I tried."

To which I wanted to say: "Really, no, you never really did, your apology is hollow, and I think I'm safe without ever wanting to see you again. Which makes me sad after all the things I liked about our friendship before you started treating me exclusively like your Boston booty call but, thanks anyway."

Next time, I swear:

Will not acknowledge. At all.

And 17 miles to run ....

2011-12-28T13:31:00.000-05:00

....with 4 days to do it.

(Thought y'all needed to be reassured that despite consumption of approximately 128 Christmas cookies since I first mentioned having 60 to go, my weekend in MSP with the family did not throw me off track, my legs are strong, my spirit is strong, my gym is open, my schedule is open, my iPod is charged, and Mother Nature is seemingly holding off on the snow and cold for my exclusive benefit.)

And therefore I say again:

I want this.
It will happen.

Kodachrome Project (2011): Unseasonable

2011-12-24T03:14:00.000-05:00

Longtime readers of this blog might remember the weather ghosts of Christmases past:

2008:

The Great Parking-Spot-Saver Acquiescence.

2009:

The Whew, Thank God That Blizzard Came 5 Days Before My Flight (rather than 2) Blizzard Drama. (Also known as: Where Will I Park My Car So It Doesn't Get Towed If There's a Snow Emergency While I'm Gone Conundrum.)

2010:

The Ha Ha, I'm Not Flying to MSP Until January! Evening but I'm Still Going to Drink Too Much Bailey's on the Rocks, because It Still Sucks to be Snowed In.

With those shots of my poor car and memories of inevitable flight delays fresh in your mind, note this very recent photo of the Boston Common heading from the Frog Pond towards the Back Bay and the Hancock tower:

That grass is GREEN, my friends.

Flight to MSP is in 6 short hours. I doubt the plane will require a de-icer. And I couldn't be happier.

Merry, merry Christmas.

A little metta with my coffee...

2011-12-22T11:33:00.001-05:00

If I were to write here what I was planning to write --

-- which was that at 12:45 this morning I was running 8-minute miles through Southie, in shorts and baseball cap, through the most unlikely of hurricane-strength downpours (never a sentence I'd expect to write on the first day of winter in Boston) and how even though I was drenched, I was invigorated, and how even running uphill into the rain and headwind and with water squishing in the lining of my shoes from the massive puddles felt good in that "I'm running through a metaphor about perseverance and overcoming adverse conditions and enjoying it" kind of way --

-- you'd probably correctly guess that I did not sleep enough last night, that I felt restless and wired from too many Christmas cookies and joy over having (amazingly, before the day itself!) completing my Christmas letter, that I stayed up way later than I should have and woke up pretty out-of-sorts.

Arriving in the office, though, I found a "Seasons Greetings" e-mail from my only known friend who embraces Buddhism in a real and comprehensive way-- a former co-worker from Minnesota, go figure. Here were his greetings.

Metta

"Monks, whatever kinds of worldly merit there are, all are not worth one sixteenth part of the heart-deliverance of loving-friendliness; in shining and beaming and radiance the heart-deliverance of loving-friendliness far excels them.

Just as whatever light there is of stars, all is not worth one sixteenth part of the moon's light; in shining and beaming and radiance the moon's light far excels it;

and just as in the last month of the Rains, in the Autumn when the heavens clear, the sun as he climbs the heavens drives all darkness from the sky with his shining and beaming and radiating;

and just as, when night turning to dawn, the Morning Star is shining and beaming and radiating;

so too, whatever kinds of worldly merit there are, all are not worth one sixteenth part of the heart-deliverance of loving-friendliness; in shining and beaming and radiance the heart-deliverance of loving-friendliness far excels them."

Buddha

Wishing you a metta, metta christmas and a metta new year...

In case you've not heard of the term metta, it has a lengthy definition, in part: "a multi-significant term meaning loving-kindness, friendliness, goodwill, benevolence, fellowship, amity, concord, inoffensiveness and non-violence ... the strong wish for the welfare and happiness of others ... altruistic attitude of love and friendliness as distinguished from mere amiability based on self-interest."

Richard's sentiments brought down my heart rate and shored up my focus for this last, hectic day before the holiday -- for which I'm grateful -- and reminded me of the many multi-significant and lovely people in my life I should also be grateful for.

Kodachrome Project (2011): The Grinch Who Keeps Stealing My Sky

2011-12-20T20:02:00.003-05:00

Oh, fair patio.

With lovely view of the waterfront since September of last year.

Occasional summer yoga studio.

Reliable summer party spot, among the impatiens and basil.

Frequent summer chill spot (and often insomnia hangout).

Only place I can say I've listened to both Jethro Tull live and a chorus of partygoers down the street wailing on Whitney Houston's "How Will I Know" at some early morning hour.

It is now the place where I watch construction workers hoist joists, tape wall panels together, add floors for future back-door neighbors; there has been another added in the week since this photo was taken.

I'm kind of praying there isn't a fourth floor.

I want the chance to keep at least a couple inches of sky.

When It Won't Start: A drama in 3 days and 2 nights (and/or beyond)

2011-12-19T14:16:00.000-05:00

Saturday, Dec. 17

1:48 p.m. (Scene: West First Street, Southie)
Very cold. Rehearsal starts at 2 at church (2.3 miles away).  Car does not start in kind ... key turn produces wan vroom followed by ticking clicks, successive key turns produce even wan-er vrooms and fewer ticking clicks. Abort driving mission. Return to apartment, add sweatshirt, hat with ear-flaps and backpack to current outfit, pump up flat-tire on bike, pedal on down the road to be late (yet again) for rehearsal.

4:30 p.m. (Scene: Rehearsal, happy Advent music)
Still very cold. Hands still numb from bike ride with $2 gloves. Friends Brian and Chris listen to vocal imitation of wan vroom and clicks, assess it "might be" the starter. Sympathies professed. Mentally calcuate cost of new starter to be more than value of all remaining current parts of car. Recall insurance renewal is mid-January and could be not-renewed.  Brainstorm scenarios for junkyard transport and/or zipcar membership and/or investment in sub-zero biking gloves.

6:46 p.m. (Scene: Red Line Subway Car)
Very cold and (now) very dark. Enroute to cookie-swap party in Teele Square in Somerville, 7-dozen gingersnaps in backpack, bike propped on knees.  Text MSF to gripe; replies I should attempt complimentary battery jump from mechanic on Monday before assuming worst. Reminded via loudspeaker of Red Line partial suspension on winter weekends and there are no trains to Davis. Curse and question choice of high-heeled dress shoes and skirt. Brainstorm fastest route between Harvard and Teele Squares.

7:10 p.m. (Scene: "Up" Escalator, Harvard Station)
Yoga abs-of-steel engaged to counter backwards torque from bike slanting diagonally over 3 stairs, front tire jamming on one wall, back tire jamming on the opposite. Brief view of possible death or mortal injury. Mental note:  escalators + bike + high-heeled dress shoes = pretty dumb idea.

7:15 p.m. (Scene: Mass Ave, Cambridge)
Twenty-mph headwind? Check. Spongy, low-pressured back tire? Check.  Crunchy glass sound underfoot? Check. High-heeled dress shoes? Still on. Sub-zero biking gloves? Not yet.

11:30 p.m. (Scene: Southie Apartment, kitchen)
Home to rehearsal (2.3 miles x 2) + Harvard to Teele Square (2.5 miles x 2) + Broadway Station to home (1.2 miles x 2) + Temps in single digits + Still-spongy back tire + Still inappropriate shoes and gloves = f***ing cold fingers and toes. Commence Maker's Mark cocktail.

Sunday, December 18

All Day (Scene: Back Bay and Surrounds)
Very, very, very cold. Very, very, very underdressed (see: Scene: Red Line) and required to be out all day for church, shopping, concert and dinner. (Author's Note: Audience is allowed to smack Yours Truly upside head for not picking up parka from the drycleaner on Stuart Street, where it has been since May.)

Monday, December 19

7:15 a.m. (Scene: Southie Apartment, Interior)
Very, very cold. Lying under 3 layers of covers, picturing moment of truth when mechanic declares car total loss. Close eyes, hit Snooze.

8:45 a.m. (Scene: Emerson Auto, Southie)
Mechanic hands over a portable hand-held battery charger (yes!), explaining that it should be used to start car to drive back in for the check, in one swoop eliminating tow truck fees. Briefly want to marry mechanic. Car indeed starts.

9:00 a.m. (Scene: Same)
Battery deemed low-ampage and unsuitable for cold-weather starts. Replacement suggested. Car left with said mechanic for replacement, oil change, nervous laugh and edict: "Call me if anything more serious shows up".

9:30 a.m. (Scene: Office Chair)
Gulp extra-strength coffee and check savings account balance. Try to work. Await call.

2:09 p.m. (Scene: Same)
Mechanic to call any minute. Or will he?

3:27 p.m. (Scene: Same)
Auto shop closes at 5 p.m. Mild ulcer forming.

4:50 p.m. (Scene: Same)
Borderline sadistic.

5:12 p.m. (Scene: Same, Only More Sanguine)
Mechanic calls: battery, windshield wiper, oil change, with labor- $215.   Ask:  "Anything else?" Hear: "Well, it holds fluids well." Reply: "Yeah, so about the carriage rocking [from the ostensible 3-inch layer of rust on the undercarriage from stem to stern] ....?"   Reply: "Yeah. Well. It's just an old car."    Proud to be the owner of a sparkling new battery in the oldest car in Southie -- which is saying something.

Fini.

Christopher Hitchens: Tribute

2011-12-16T21:12:00.000-05:00

Christopher Hitchens, the undefinable essayist critic author rhetoritician contrarian smoker-drinker brilliant world's-most-famous-atheist unapologist known for taking on both liberals and Mother Teresa and (quite famously) his own body hair, died last night from pneumonia outlying from esophageal cancer.

I have a hard time recalling any recent public figure more feted in life or in death -- a man who seemed to win respect even from those he decimated.

Reading the tributes today, and rereading many of his recent essays, I as a writer have, too, succumbed to the desire to highlight this larger-than-life icon .... even if he would have smote me dead for using such a cliched phrase to describe him. It was this article, just weeks after his all-encompassing cancer diagnosis last summer, that cemented my respect:

Vanity Fair (CH - from September 2010): "The notorious stage theory of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, whereby one progresses from denial to rage through bargaining to depression and the eventual bliss of “acceptance,” hasn’t so far had much application in my case. In one way, I suppose, I have been “in denial” for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can’t see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it’s all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me. Rage would be beside the point for the same reason. Instead, I am badly oppressed by a gnawing sense of waste. I had real plans for my next decade and felt I’d worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read—if not indeed write—the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger? But I understand this sort of non-thinking for what it is: sentimentality and self-pity. Of course my book hit the best-seller list on the day that I received the grimmest of news bulletins, and for that matter the last flight I took as a healthy-feeling person (to a fine, big audience at the Chicago Book Fair) was the one that made me a million-miler on United Airlines, with a lifetime of free upgrades to look forward to. But irony is my business and I just can’t see any ironies here: would it be less poignant to get cancer on the day that my memoirs were remaindered as a box-office turkey, or that I was bounced from a coach-class flight and left on the tarmac? To the dumb question “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?"

Thanks for your indulgence and for reading the tributes of others.... words tend to fail me when presented with such a work ethic, such practicality, and someone who most excellently lived his life his way.

The New Yorker (Jane Mayer): "Hitch lived so large, and so beyond the rules, that his mortality seems especially hard to accept. I remember the day some eighteen months ago when he told me that he was mortally ill. He had missed a few stops on his book tour, which wasn’t like him, so I called to see if he was all right. 'No,' he said frankly. 'I’m not. I have cancer.' I was so stricken for the next few days that I couldn’t get much work done. Then I noticed that during the time that I was using his illness as an excuse to procrastinate, he had himself authored a handful of brilliant pieces. I couldn’t work, but he couldn’t stop working. He was a born writer, whose irrepressible talent and verve put most of the rest of us journeymen to shame."

The New Yorker (Christopher Buckley): "When we made a date for a meal over the phone, he’d say, 'It will be a feast of reason and a flow of soul.' I never doubted that this rococo phraseology was an original coinage, until I chanced on it, one day, in the pages of P. G. Wodehouse, the writer Christopher perhaps esteemed above all others. Wodehouse was the Master. When we met for another lunch, one that lasted only five hours, he was all a-grin with pride as he handed me a newly minted paperback reissue of Wodehouse with 'Introduction by Christopher Hitchens.' 'Doesn’t get much better than that,' he said, and who could not agree? ..... Everything he said was brilliant. It was a feast of reason and a flow of soul, and, if the author of ‘God Is Not Great’ did not himself believe in the concept of soul, he sure had one, and it was a great soul.”

Vanity Fair (Graydon Carter): "He wrote often—constantly, in fact, and right up to the end—and he wrote fast; frequently without the benefit of a second draft or even corrections. I can recall a lunch in 1991, when I was editing The New York Observer, and he and Aimée Bell, his longtime editor, and I got together for a quick bite at a restaurant on Madison, no longer there. Christopher’s copy was due early that afternoon. Pre-lunch canisters of scotch were followed by a couple of glasses of wine during the meal and a similar quantity of post-meal cognac. That was just his intake. After stumbling back to the office, we set him up at a rickety table and with an old Olivetti, and in a symphony of clacking he produced a 1,000-word column of near perfection in under half an hour."

The New York Times (Ian McEwan): "The place where Christopher Hitchens spent his last few weeks was hardly bookish, but he made it his own. Close to downtown Houston is the Medical Center, a cluster of high-rises like La Défense of Paris, or London’s City, a financial district of a sort, where the common currency is illness ..... No man was ever as easy to visit in the hospital. He didn’t want flowers and grapes, he wanted conversation, and presence. All silences were useful. He liked to find you still there when he woke from his frequent morphine-induced dozes. He wasn’t interested in being ill. He didn’t want to talk about it .... And so this was how it would go: talk about books and politics, then he dozed while I read or wrote, then more talk, then we both read. The intensive care unit room was crammed with flickering machines and sustaining tubes, but they seemed almost decorative. Books, journalism, the ideas behind both, conquered the sterile space, or warmed it, they raised it to the condition of a good university library .... at Christopher’s request, Alexander and I set up a desk for him under a window. We helped him and his pole with its feed-lines across the room, arranged pillows on his chair, adjusted the height of his laptop. Talking and dozing were all very well, but Christopher had only a few days to produce 3,000 words on Ian Ker’s biography of Chesterton.Whenever people talk of Christopher’s journalism, I will always think of this moment. Consider the mix. Constant pain, weak as a kitten, morphine dragging him down, then the tangle of Reformation theology and politics, Chesterton’s romantic, imagined England suffused with the kind of Catholicism that mediated his brush with fascism and his taste for paradox, which Christopher wanted to debunk. At intervals, Christopher’s head would droop, his eyes close, then with superhuman effort he would drag himself awake to type another line. His long memory served him well, for he didn’t have the usual books on hand for this kind of thing. When it’s available, read the review. His unworldly fluency never deserted him, his commitment was passionate, and he never deserted his trade. He was the consummate writer, the brilliant friend. In Walter Pater’s famous phrase, he burned “with this hard gem-like flame.” Right to the end.

Kodachrome Project (2011): (At) the start

2011-12-15T17:35:00.001-05:00

Well, the camera has a definitive start date .... April 21, 2008.

It has a definitive start line too ..... that of the 112th Boston Marathon. Must have pressed a Children's Hospital teammate into service just minutes before hopping that white fence my left thumb appears to be holding up. The first-wave runners are underway....their cast-off warm-ups littering the ground behind me.

Here's the better version, same pose, with a mystery no-numbered runner crowding me out.

Don't recall how nervous I was that day. Do remember a specific mortification at my pale, exposed winter skin. Remember loving those (what must have been special edition) appropriately golden Asics. Had no idea that that rainbow bandana would not want to stay tied, or on my head, during the 26 miles to come, that I would stop to rejigger it 4 or 5 times, or photos from the finish would show it hanging off, bouncing against my neck.

I still own that damned bandana, incidentally. And wear it still; it's in my backpack this afternoon, ready to be worn for the treadmill tonight. It has the density of a piece of Kleenex, edges shredded as if my cats had played catch with it.

It's a weird nostalgia.

FWAB: Auf Wiedersehen (not goodbye)

2011-12-14T13:53:00.001-05:00

My man Mitch,

who in the 5 years I've known him has

a) got himself a true love,
b) got himself hitched,
c) got himself a doctorate,

Boston University (May 2011)

d) got himself a daughter in September,

(and through it all, got himself every new release of an iPhone since January 2007),

BC/UND Hockey night (October 2007) --
first (photo) illustration of what an iPhone could do.

finally

e) got himself a real job.

Unfortunately for me, it is in Maryland, which means much less common-sense shoulder-leaning advice or Minnesota Vikings griping in person.

Fortunately for him and his family, it is a new adventure capably undertaken. I trust he'll get success and happiness from it, just as he's gotten everything else he's strove for.

Auf Wiedersehen, mein Freund!

And (60) miles to run....

2011-12-13T18:44:00.000-05:00

... before I can rest
on January 1 and
relish in knowing
I logged
1000 (miles)
on these feet
in 2011.

Which means running
3.157 miles per day
each of the next 19 days.

Even if it's below zero, or
raining, or
Post-workplace-holiday-party-hangover Day, or
Christmas Eve in Minneapolis.

It will happen.
I want this.

(Off to knock off 5 more.)

Yes. It's that easy.

2011-12-12T10:59:00.000-05:00

Yesterday there was a party at Balint's place. It was as good of a time as a Sunday early-cocktail hour should be. Our friend Mark, dressed in sweater vest and tie and a serious countenance, muddled oranges and maraschino cherries with sugar into pretty scrumptious Old Fashioneds. Homemade peppermint bark on the appetizer table. I won a clip-on bow tie in the Yankee Swap gift exchange.

As evening came and the crowd thinned, Balint and another friend and I shot some palinka before settling in: Balint and Mike to the couch to discuss matters of physics, reasoning and philosophy; me, to Balint's Steinway for a playing tour through Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. I'd run through a prelude and a fugue, then break to flip pages, see what fingerings my slightly-tipsy brain could still handle .... and in the silence the boys would call out for me to keep playing, offering to toss a $20 my way for continued service. Once I got to #22, the Prelude in B-flat Minor (BWV 867), I stopped to work on it for awhile:

After that I had to stop playing because of the hour and the upstairs neighbors. The boys had moved to the breakfast table, still talking heatedly, and my buzz was still on and the air outside was still frigid and unwelcoming, so I busied myself .... bagged leftovers and put in the fridge, stacked placements, wiped the tables, swept the floor, loaded the dishwasher ... they were still talking. Finally then, acknowledging weariness, I settled in on the couch and tucked feet underneath, leaning head back for a quick doze. It was at that moment Balint seemed to first recognize I had just completed his party clean-up without him ... I heard his shuffling my way on stockinged feet, felt him settle onto the couch in front of me, hip against my hip, opened eyes as he leaned in to kiss me high on the cheek up by the ear and exclaim, "Did you do all that? That's sweet! I should marry you!"

Ladies....?

Yes. Bach. And elbow grease. It's that easy.

Peace, Generosity

2011-12-09T10:36:00.001-05:00

I know I've never said this before ... but damn, I did not sleep well last night. Yesterday was busy at the office and I was tense. I was thusly still tense while online Christmas shopping before leaving the office, and a vigorous run-and-row at the gym, a hot bath while downing a 3-shot bourbon cocktail, and a bowl of reheated Thanksgiving turkey soup did not take the edge off. Nor did a 90-minute chat with a (very) groggy MSF followed by perusing the The New Yorker (complete Nov. 7 edition), nor did playing Tetris on Facebook for 45 minutes before polishing the last 2 servings from a box of Kashi Go Lean and re-delving (for the third time) into Fred Emery's Watergate. (Yeah, I agree: conspiracy and breakfast cereal at 3:30 a.m. do not exactly inspire a mind to shut down.) Woke up hard at 6:45 out of a dream where I was biking as fast as I could through the Back Bay, along the brick sidewalks of Marlborough Street, and I still could not catch the insouciant man jogging in front of me, who I know I was meant to catch, needed to catch. And thusly could not get back to sleep and could not get out of bed and didn't know how I was possibly going to manage the latter, ever, body unwilling and brain frustrated. It wasn't until I recalled how some 6 weeks ago I had similar dread of the uncertainty around me and only recovered from that dread when realizing that I have Patience Judgment Family Friends Health and my world does not really suck ass. That still holds true. And I realized I could remind myself in this season (and any time, really), that when I want to mire in a self-centered wallow I can instead tell myself to aspire to a Peace Within and a Generosity to Others ... to let go of little annoyances, to realize the ones I think aren't so little are minuscule in the grand scheme, that peace indeed can be a chosen state of mind, and that anything I can do to brighten someone else's day is an anything worth doing.

So, eventually, I got up. (I'll let you know how the rest of the day goes.)

Bachelor of the Day!

2011-12-08T20:34:00.001-05:00

My e-mail account was pinged today by an OKC 'Hi!" courtesy of a 39-y-o man from Baghdad, Iraq:

Not interested beyond the fact that I wondered who in Iraq was checking me out, I clicked for a peek. He's a 59% Match (57% Friend). He works in Computer / Hardware / Software and makes less than $20,000 a year. He speaks English and Arabic.

He also seems to be, in another life, a 20-something woman from Virginia.

He likes long walks and being a good friend to others and enjoys driving to volunteer in his dad's office a couple times a week. His peep-toed pumps are among the things he can't live without. Also:

You should message me if:
- You want a new dental hygienist
- Need a gal to go to a concert with
- Need someone to talk about anything over a bottle of wine and good cheese plate
- Or....someone to potentially be a girlfriend.

Side note: Don't let my age discourage you. I appreciate men in their 40's and 50's. In fact, some of my best friends are in that age group. Some would say I am old soul at times. Also, I don't mind traveling to NOVA... Gives me an excuse to get out of Richmond. Although, I am willing to host here as well! Lots of goodies here in Richmond.

In addition to the cleavage shot above, according to his profile pictures, he looks like this:

And this:

Incidentally: between 6:30 p.m. when I first viewed his profile and 8:44 p.m. (now), his residence changed from Iraq to .... Bro, Finland.

Not that I am one to judge how other people productively or unproductively spend their time, but .... what the hell?

Kodachrome Project (2011)

2011-12-07T14:35:00.001-05:00

Among the many reasons I appreciated MSF's recent visit, one such was how the occasion inspired the deep-cleaning of several places in my apartment previously invisible through layers of dust and clutter. Not only did I organize my file of car-repair receipts by date, collate every set of tax returns since 2003, and locate my passport at the bottom of a laundry basket, I found this disposable camera in a box of miscellaneous stationary.

Seven exposures taken. Stamp on the bottom reading "Develop Before 07/2008." Probably purchased in 2006.

I immediately realized I needed to find out what those 7 pictures were of.....even if just the inside of my backpack, in error. I needed to shoot out the rest of the roll and scour the Yellow Pages to see if anyone anywhere still develops color Kodak film, since the company stopped making it in 2009. I realized that it was a bonafide opportunity to stop and document occasions with care like the photojournalists of old -- a la the Kodachrome Project -- and examine places around the city in this season when the city is adorned and the light in the sky is low, places that I walk by every day and, because I have lived here too long, never consider as much as I should.

'Tis the season for reflection, no?

I'll take 7 days shoot and the rest of 2011 to share. Meet me back here next Wednesday....

Shakespearean

2011-12-06T02:02:00.001-05:00

O blessed, blessed night!
I am afeard.
Being in night, all this is but a dream,
Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.
-- "Romeo & Juliet" Act II, Scene 2

I was not falling asleep quickly last night and then, remembering a half-unwatched Shakespeare in Love idling on iTunes from last week, kept myself even more from falling asleep (because I can watch this movie unendingly for its cleverness and passion even after growing tired), and where I picked it up was the rolling sequence of Will writing the balcony (Act II, Scene 2) scene from Romeo & Juliet as the players are both performing it and he is living it through gauzy exchanges with his half-dressed muse Viola, and I did not of course equate this tragedy and romance with the 3 days and 2 nights just spent with MSF (and the chocolate he brought with him on the Friday-night red-eye), because the 3 days and 2 nights were rife with easeful enjoyment and Kobe sliders from Lucky's and homemade banana bread with sharp cheddar and unexpected moments of realization that after 2 months of not being face-to-face, 3 days and 2 nights of face-to-face are only slightly bittersweet and moreso only luxurious and gratifying and filling, despite the necessary end and the distance so briskly reestablished as the Monday-night sun set along with the plane taking him home, real life crashing its way back in just as quickly.

Actions speak

2011-12-02T10:35:00.001-05:00

Got caught up last night getting my hair cut and going for a run and making banana bread and washing my kitchen floor. Which kept me up later than I probably should have stayed up. Which meant I was a tad tired waking up this morning. Which is not abnormal for me.

What is abnormal is getting to the office, taking off the commuter-girl tennis shoes I wore to bike in with, and zipping up these knee-length black boots

then walking the length of my office to make a cup of coffee and pick up something from the file room before realizing that something felt a bit ... off... then realizing I had zipped the boots onto the wrong legs

In my defense, this is how they look from above, on the wrong feet.

Not so obvious, no?

Still. It probably should have been, sooner than I deduced.

Oh, sleep. You necessary evil.

Birthday Shout-Out: O-Dog

2011-12-01T10:39:00.001-05:00

Mom and Oliver -- December 1, 2010

I've written before about how much fun it is to be an aunt.

That still holds true.

(Even when Henry is kicking Oliver in the head and laughing about it and laughing at me for yelling ....)

I've written before too, how, more than my own birthdays (or my parents' or my sisters'), it is these little men's birthdays that make me sense and appreciate just how much life changes in one short year and, more than ever, grateful for the joy of life.

Oliver riding shotgun -- Thanksgiving 2011

Happy birthday .... my stubborn, determined, strong (and no worse-for-the-wear-from-getting-kicked-in-the-head) adorable blue-eyed boy!

Thanks-Essay 6: Grateful...

2011-11-29T21:25:00.001-05:00

... today.

For:

Shavasana.

Steam room.

Stravinsky.
(Specifically Dawn Upshaw's singing some from A Rake's Progress.)

Snickerdoodles.

Sneakers.

Spring weather in Fall.

San Francisco, Man From.
(Arriving Saturday for a long weekend.)
(Requiring great patience for 3 days more.)

Spilled ginger ale on Macbook keyboard.
(From Sunday night.)
(So machine stays powered-down for 3 days to dry.)
(Freeing evenings ((from web-surfing habits)) for making snickerdoodles.)
(And ((more)) sleeping.)
(i.e. small blessings.)

Thanks-Essay 5: Mondays, mortality

2011-11-28T11:46:00.001-05:00

I read on Facebook this morning that a girl (woman now of course, mother of 3 teenagers) who went to high school with me died yesterday of fast-moving colon cancer. She and I were always just acquaintances and not friends and were never really in touch, but she was a good friend to many of my friends, and since I read the news her face as I knew her then, back in Cando, keeps floating up ... blonde, boisterous, saucer-eyed wild child with the biggest laugh ever, bangs teased to a tower, cadre of equally boisterous and loyal girlfriends with whom to cruise Main looking for the parties, her 80's era sports car a fixture at Bob's parking lot for years. She could not have known then that this would be how her life would end 20 years later ... although of course, none of us can know the hour or the time of our own ends.

Concurrently, today has turned into a very hard day for 2 of my other friends, coping with their own crushing loss of a similar sort. Watching, listening, wanting to help in whatever way but not knowing how, I am humbled (again) by the resiliency of the human spirit when faced with the things in life that can quickly become awful. These friends are able to, as they often do even in benign circumstances, approach the day with grace and selfless consideration of where it will fit into the larger scope of their lives -- and that in this case, it will somehow shape their futures in the way God somehow means them to be.

Again, can I possibly always remember this -- even in the good times? -- this edict that seems so obvious today, this necessity to live as if you can't know what the next day will bring, or how your life will change, or shape others, or end?

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” -- Albert Einstein

Thanks-Essay 4: To Not Griping

2011-11-25T11:13:00.001-05:00

Got into work quite late today ... the result of staying up very late. As in sun-coming-up late and not because I wanted to be. As in: for the first time in months being up with heart-racing insomnia that didn't abate with a hot bath, with rereading transcripts of past fond chats with MSF, with the eating of a plate of cold turkey breast at 4:30, or even pulling out EB White's "One Man's Meat" for folksy storytelling distraction.

I'm blaming Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, the account of a Mt. Everest expedition featuring loads of high-altitude frostbite, delusions, and death. I love the book and have already read it 3 times -- and for reasons unknown, last night was the night it decided to disturb the living shit out of me.

It took pulling the laptop into bed, queuing up the cartoon Ratatouille, and letting the happy rat chef make some splendid soup before my brain shut off and heartbeat relaxed and I drifted off at about 6....only to wake myself up with a dream about riding bike across an f#$%ing ice bridge while looking down at an endless crevasse in either direction.

Oy. Hope the pleasant dreams MSF wished me before we said goodnight at least came true for him.

Not to gripe, though. Last night I guess I could have been at Wal-Mart, getting pepper-sprayed by a fellow video-game shopper.

It's in this context -- a bit sleep-deprived, a bit sated from the food and fellowship of yesterday, a bit daunted with the to-do list that awaits these last November days -- that I was grateful to see David Brooks' Times column today editorializing on his project, "The Life Reports". His request:

"If you are over 70, I’d like to ask for a gift. I’d like you to write a brief report on your life so far, an evaluation of what you did well, of what you did not so well and what you learned along the way. You can write this as a brief essay or divide your life into categories — career, family, faith, community, and self-knowledge — and give yourself a grade in each area.

Of course I read most of these essays this morning, here at work in our sparsely-populated office after having death dreams and not sleeping... and promptly started crying. But even if you had productive slumber and are reading this blog entry in your pajams with coffee and curled up in front of a fir e... I highly suggest them for your post-Thanksgiving glad-you're-not-out-shopping-instead reflection.

Thanks-Essay 3: Garlic Mashed

2011-11-23T09:58:00.001-05:00

I hereby declare there has been too much talk of weight loss, exercise and healthy eating on this blog.

I also hereby declare that if you have never tried my sister Missy's legendary Garlic Mashed Potatoes recipe, you are Missing Out. Full Stop.

It is not too late to get to the grocery store for an extra block of cream cheese. Go.

Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients!
 5 lb bag of potatoes – russet or red
 1 stick of butter or margarine
 4 to 8 oz cream cheese (to taste)
 8 oz container of sour cream
 Fresh garlic to taste – minced as small as you can make it
 White onion to taste – minced as small as you can make it
 Garlic salt, onion powder, salt and pepper – to taste

Directions!
1. Scrub and cut up potatoes (do not peel) and place in a large pot. Cover with water.
2. Bring to boil and cook 20-25 minutes (smaller pieces cook faster). Drain.
3. Mash potatoes and add all ingredients. If you have a mixer, it works great for mashing and mixing the potatoes thoroughly!
4. Serve immediately OR refrigerate (up to 3 days) or freeze and serve up to 10 days later (maybe longer?). For re-heating, put potatoes (still frozen) in a 350 degree oven for 1-2 hours – the deeper the dish, the more time they will need. I actually think they are better reheated because the flavors have all melded together!

Oliver is a fan

Variations and adaptations!
 Use garlic salt and onion powder instead of fresh – almost as good, and way less work!
 Peel your potatoes and have more “presentable” potatoes (as my grandma would say…)
 Play with the amounts of butter, sour cream and cream cheese – you may find you like more or less of any and all of these; altering them changes texture and taste.
 For a unique taste, sauté the onions and garlic first with butter!

Thanks (Photo)-Essay 2: Iced Coffee

2011-11-22T09:34:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time,
there was a girl just out of college
who worked hard at her job
and stayed up all night, many nights,
thusly leaning heavily on her daily caffeine supply.

The girl drank easily 4
(or 5, sometimes mixed with orange juice)
cans a day (and night).

She is (and was!) not totally clueless,
but the girl somehow forgot about the
46.5 grams of sugar that accompanied each
54 life-saving milligrams of caffeine.

She also spent a lot of time stressing about
writing school board stories
and not sleeping very well.

By the time she left her job to go to grad school,
she looked kinda like this.

That year,
the girl started waitressing in a cafe with
3 flights of stairs,
then walking home every day
from the Theater District to the Fenway.

She had nothing against Mountain Dew,
but at the same time discovered that
Boston runs on Dunkin',
and that coffee on ice with cream and sugar
tastes kinda like a soda and is
cold and refreshing like a Dew
with 4 times the caffeine content.

She eventually went to a quarter-portion of the cream and
subbed artificial sweetener for the sugar
and often added espresso on top.

She started drinking it for the coffee taste.

She even started making it for cheap at home.

Real-time photo

The girl has probably drank 5 cans of Mountain Dew
in the last 12 years.
She's drank approximately 4,000 glasses of iced coffee
in the same timeframe.

And today she looks kinda like this.

With her lovely sisters

Coincidence?

I think not.

Thanks-Essay 1: Friends Who Run

2011-11-21T11:26:00.001-05:00

Saturday was being one of those days.

Yes, even a Saturday can start out being one of those days, when it involves a mid-morning landlord visit requiring finding and eliminating every kernel of stray cat litter (and hair) from premises, followed by an impromptu 3-hour nap (3-hours! as if a sick toddler!) complete with sweaty nightmares that not only left me more tired than before I started but sucked up 3 of the 4.5 hours of available afternoon sunlight. (And 4:30 p.m. sunsets suck, people. Even if they're pretty.) Followed by a trip to Family Dollar Store confirming that because there are now 15 aisles of stupid, cheap Christmas decorations, there is no longer room for 30-cent cans of cat food.

It was in this moment, while rounding the corner of Dorchester Street and Broadway and muttering about stupid, cheap Christmas decorations and overgeneralized holiday commericalization, I was blindsided by the blaze-orange sprinting shoes and the figure of my dear friend Chris. Indeed sprinting by. A friend who runs like the wind, but lives in Roxbury and wouldn't generally be in this hood this hour.

As he quickly explained:

"I just stopped by your place. I was headed out and realized today I wanted to run to Southie, but didn't think to call you until I was on my way. Wanted to see if you wanted to go for a run."

It was 3:30 p.m. and I was still in my pajamas, drowsy and bed-headed. But had I been in Family Dollar Store for 30 seconds longer or shorter than I had, Chris and I would have missed each other. The day was crying out for a divine kick-in-the-pants ... and it appeared.

By 3:45 I was in shorts, tech top and Asics and he and I were jogging west towards the other side of town. Chris is a much (taller and long-legged and) faster runner than me .... even with him cutting 2-minutes-a-mile off his pace, I chugged hard to keep up and not feel the guilt of boring him. But I kept up. We conversed in that necessary way friends who get too busy need to converse, passing the 4 miles to Roxbury in no time.

By the time we reached his home and I set out for the return trip (in the end, 8.75 total), the sun setting behind me in the cool afternoon, I was glad and grateful. To have shifted my day's attitude so thoroughly. To have run faster and longer than I would have ever done by myself. To have the privilege of such an awesome, selfless friend in my life ...

....especially one who runs.

Best. Lyrics. Ever.

2011-11-18T23:59:00.000-05:00

Such Great Heights
by The Postal Service
(sung more contemplatively, below, by Iron & Wine)

I am thinking it's a sign
That the freckles in our eyes are mirror images
And when we kiss they're perfectly aligned
I have to speculate
That God himself did make
Us into corresponding shapes
Like puzzle pieces from the clay

True, it may seem like a stretch
But its thoughts like this that catch
My troubled head when you're away
When I am missing you to death
When you are out there on the road
For several weeks it shows
And when you scan the radio
I hope this song will guide you home

They won't see us waving from such great heights,
"Come down now", they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away,
"Come down now", but we'll stay...

I tried my best to leave
This all on your machine
But the persistent beat it sounded thin
Upon listening
And that frankly will not fly
You will hear the shrillest highs
And lowest lows with the windows down
When this is guiding you home

They won't see us waving from such great heights,
"Come down now", they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
"Come down now", but we'll stay...

Blunt observation

2011-11-16T18:23:00.001-05:00

Something about there existing

anywhere in our world today

(or in any world anywhere)

a headline (on Yahoo! News)

proclaiming

"'Sexiest Man Alive' Stirs Backlash"

says to me that

maybe the End Times

are not far off.

Evidently this man is NOT sexy.
Who knew.

Take Back Thanksgiving

2011-11-15T17:50:00.001-05:00

I'm a fan (as you can see by the blogroll listing to the lower right) of the highly-trafficked healthy living blog Carrots 'N' Cake. The author, Tina, lives on the South Shore and writes several times a day about food, exercise, running, etc. etc.

On Sunday, she wrote a post about her frustration with current society's (mostly retail-based) trend of celebrating Christmas too early, and how it bypasses the arguably longer-traditioned and more-observed Thanksgiving holiday. Then today she put in a plug for a website by allrecipes.com called "Respect The Bird." The site implores folks to .... do just that ... and pledge to "restore Thanksgiving to its rightful place as a meaningful, respected American holiday, not one that’s merely a one-day delicious afterthought between Halloween and Christmas."

"Tapping into its original roots—thankfulness, a celebration of friendships, family, and gifts from the earth—Respect the Bird supporters want to create a Thanksgiving experience extending beyond meal planning. It is, after all, one of the treasured holidays that’s not about spending."

Organizers even put out a list of "suggested activities" to keep pledgers focussed on the task.

Corny a bit? Yeah. Sure. But I'll be the thousandth person to admit to feeling nauseous and annoyed at the sound of Christmas carols in department stores and the telltale red, snowy cups in Starbucks.

So I'm on board. Please feel so moved to do the same -- even if just in your mind.

Impermanence of objects

2011-11-14T18:51:00.001-05:00

I last saw C-2 in June. I last sought him via text in August, when running by Spy Pond late one night and feeling nostalgic. He last sought me via text late one night in September, in Boston for a candidate's primary election, but it was a highly inopportune time for me and I declined. He then e-mailed in October, also at an inopportune time, (nervily) asking me to volunteer on said candidates's general election campaign. I declined. Last week while in town for the general, on a night I couldn't sleep, he messaged at 2:45 to say, "Hey, you're already up, we should get coffee?" I again declined.

Please tell me you all are pleased with my behavior.

I'm pleased with my behavior. Especially since all denials were made without hesitation.

Funny then, my reaction when C-2 showed up in my Facebook feed this weekend -- a new profile photo, because he had gotten new eye glasses "after 8.5 years." I found myself the tiniest bit depressed. One thing I enjoyed about kissing him was that moment, after our respective lenses began creating a mild bonfire from scraping together, when he would stop and quite deliberately take my glasses off for me, set them on the dashboard, then take his off and do the same, at which point we'd quite get down to business.

Now those glasses have changed -- they'll never be the ones he took off to kiss me in -- and it's as if a link has expired.

Take that along with my growing conviction that (dictated by deterioration and expense) my car's registration and insurance should not be renewed in 2012, and that perhaps I should donate it for a tax deduction before Christmas.

The memories of that car ... full of so much more than kissing.

Oy. I'm forecasting un-tiny depression, soon.

Celebration of Eleven (and Nigel)

2011-11-11T10:49:00.001-05:00

With all due respect to Veterans Day

(and I do respect it and the veterans it honors)

this year's commemoration really does have to include
a shout-out to British mocku-rocker Nigel Tufnel
from the world's loudest band This Is Spınal Tap
and his amplifier that goes to 11.

Luckily, there is a group dedicated solely to that purpose:
The Nigel Tufnel Day Appreciation Society and Quilting Bee in Favor of Declaring & Observing November 11, 2011 as Nigel Tufnel Day (in Recognition of Its Maximum Elevenness),
doing most of the heavy lifting
in memorializing the genius whose seminal work includes
"Tonight I'm Going to Rock You Tonight," "Big Bottom," and "Lick My Love Pump".

Thanks, Nigel,

for always keepin' it real.

Thoughts on focus and practice

2011-11-10T11:08:00.002-05:00

I've already said this a couple times (here and here), but I'm struggling to write much meaningful in the face of momentous occasions and a steamer trunk's worth of conflicting emotions about them.

It's not just the blog. Focus on any task feels taxing: suitcase still open and full of last week's clothes, and now I've started throwing this week's clothes into it; paperwork at work I swore I'd do Tuesday and today don't know how and where it'll fit; wanting to blow off steam by playing piano but without the energy to set up my keyboard, resting on its end in the living room where I left it 3 weeks ago after transporting it back from a concert. Three weeks ago. I'm becoming frustrated at this scatteredness. Been on this earth awhile, have accomplished some things, and know I know how to focus. I don't know where this knowledge has seeped to.

(Come back, dear friend....)

When starting this entry, about 2 sentences in, I said to myself, "Girlfriend, people do not read this blog to hear more of this low-level negativity and the same lack of focus issues we all face in moments. It is 60 degrees on November 10 and the end of the tunnel is showing at work and you had a solid sleep last night and tomorrow is Happy Nigel Tufnel Day. Chin up!"

But truthfully, I'm not in the mood to censor myself. Today I just want to write about lack of focus. The end. And, I'm deciding I'm going to stop apologizing for it.

Presciently, a friend yesterday alerted me to a piece on the blog of novelist Steven Pressfield, regarding the so-called "10,000 Rule":

"The rule says that in order for an individual to master any complex skill, be it brain surgery or playing the cello, she must put in 10,000 hours of focused practice. Since a thousand hours seems to be more or less the maximum we humans can handle in one year, ten thousand hours equals ten years."

I've been writing this blog for 3-and-a-half, although I've probably spent at least 20,000 hours in my life writing something; very little of it has been focussed, though. Using that calculus, I've probably got 25 years of blogging to go before mastery. Sobering. However, the resonance of this piece was less about that and more about what he spoke of next -- which is that the time and practice of a skill allows the self-censoring to fall away and the individuality to emerge.

To wit:

"How does the actor get past his own excruciating self-consciousness? How does the entrepreneur come up with an idea that’s really new? The answer is they both beat their heads against the wall over and over and over until finally, from pure exhaustion, they can’t “try” any more and they just “do.” The writer says f*** it and writes a sentence in a way he would never imagine himself writing a sentence, and to his amazement that sentence is the first real sentence he’s ever written."

And:

"To speak in one’s own voice means to let go of all the other voices in our heads. Whose voices? The voices of what is expected of us. Yes, that means the voices of our parents, teachers, mentors. But it means something more elusive too. It means our own expectations of what we should be doing or ought to be thinking—what is “normal” or “right” or “the way it ought to be.”

"The price of achieving that breakthrough is time. Time and effort. Ten thousand hours if you’re lucky, more if you’re not. The gods are watching for those ten thousand hours, like instructors at Navy SEALs training. They can tell when we’re faking and they can tell when we’re for real. They can pick out those of us who really want it from those who are only pretending.

"In the end those ten thousand hours must be their own reward—which is the way it ought to be, don’t you think?"

Which is the way this blog has and, hopefully will continue, to resonate with both you and me. Despite the occasional scattered times where I'm trying to find my brains and my gut and my legs and the next steps I can take forward even if all aren't quite intact.

Anyway. Getting today's blog entry off my plate.....it is leaving me the time to focus on work. Really.

(Go.)

Tuesday jumble

2011-11-08T23:57:00.001-05:00

Weather not requiring even a fall coat. First decent run in 10 days. Suitcase open on bedroom floor, clothes jumbled and wrinkled . Dishwasher full of clean dishes, sink full of dirty ones. Desk stacked with trustee changes to facilitate and cost-basis updating projects and new accounts to open, left over from 5 days out of the office, now reaching semi-critical completion necessity. Cats spastic from lack of my attention, taking claws to the duvet and dining room chairs. Reflecting on vacation that contained just one rank certainty -- that Cousin J and her husband were meant to be married and did so -- compounded by so much family love, affection, coffee, cookies and friends who traveled from all over, that the heart is still full. Reflecting even more on all the uncertanties of a vacation where cousins and sisters let emotions and opinions hang out and a grandmother tripped briefly into a life-threatening situation and a long-distance boy instigated more fruitful, more emotional, and more wrenching conversations than previously thought possible. To the point where the mind is still as jumbled as the unpacked clothes -- getting through the stacked tasks of today impossible, much less thinking of all the things that could and might come after.

With thanks for the mild outside and the near-empty bottle of Maker's Mark inside and the strong feeling emanating this way from the Midwest and beyond.

Wednesday addendum: Love this photo of Dad and me from the wedding reception (one of many provided to this camera-less girl by Cousin J's maid-of-honor, Tashia). We don't get to see each other nearly enough.

Sorry to be lame... (blog-cation)

2011-11-03T13:27:00.002-04:00

.... but this trip around, I'm having a difficult time thinking about blogging while vacationing.

Marathon-completion emotional fall-out and the What Next. Parsing through some emotional ups-and-downs with MSF, only from a 2-hour time difference instead of 3. Family time in large quantities, particularly with folks I don't see often. Crisp, blue, central Minnesota skies .... cruising down 2-lane roads in mid-afternoon with sunglasses on, coffee in hand. Cousin J marrying the love of her life and the witnessing of amazing union and fellowship.

I'm not sure these things need to be dissected .... but, rather, experienced and taken as they come.

Thanks for allowing me a brief blog-cation. See you next week.

Sorry to be lame....

2011-10-31T21:38:00.004-04:00

....but after running a marathon,

even though it was a great marathon,

I only have a lame marathon recap in me.

To wit:

Strength at the start.

(And yeah, I'm not punching

that dude for his sour expression.)

Gratitude at the finish.
(And no, I'm not calling out
that person for her leopard-print skort.)

Orgasmic-sized jar of peanut butter

at the finish festival.

(And yes, yes I am fondling it.)

In between,

I ran a personal record time of

3 hours 53 minutes and 50 seconds.

And saw a whole humongous mess of

Marines along the way.

Cool.

Saturday afternoon quickie

2011-10-29T15:31:00.000-04:00

I'm at my friend Michael's place, in NW DC, on the couch with a wool blanket and a space heater at arm's reach.

Here's what weather.com says is going on in the city at this hour:

37°F | °C

Sat

Sun

Mon

Tue

Showers Snow

Wind: N at 17 mph

Humidity: 86%

38°

34°

47°

35°

53°

41°

55°

40°

It took me 3 hours to get here from BWI ... luggage delay, freeway bus, Metro ride, mile walk ... double the time it took me to get from BOS to BWI, although this leg did include a stop at Target for peanut butter, bananas, umbrella and fuzzy winter hat (see above).

In a half-hour I need to be leaving here, down to the DC Armory, to pick up my race bib and packet and then meet Alan for supper. My options of what do to before then would be:

1) Two-mile "shake-out" run.

2) Thoughtful blog post outlining fear/excitement/relief that wind and rain should abate and the sun is expected to shine at 8 a.m. tomorrow.

3) Sit here, awake, and be fearful/excited/relieved.

4) Put my head back and take a power nap and promise to give y'all a marathon completion update at some future moment when the time is right.

I think I'll take what's behind Door #4, Monty!

Anniversary of sorts

2011-10-27T15:09:00.001-04:00

Man From San Francisco and I were up late on the phone last night. Late-late. It wasn't supposed to be late. But when I worked until 8:30 and then stopped by the gym and rode the bus and made and ate a carbo-load feast and put out the recycling and emptied the cat litter, he dozed off while waiting, only waking when I pinged him an hour later on my real way-to-bed and at his request, I called him because we hadn't heard each other's voices since before his pneumonia interlude. Our IM conversation the night before lasted that late, too. This seems to be the habit: we start with the worthy intentions of a Quick Hi or Just 10 Minutes Because I'm Exhausted and We Both Know Better, but it soon becomes 2:56 a.m. Regularly flummoxed at how the time passes and how wordy, rewarding and frustating it can be to try to verbally express what is physically and emotionally craved. Perturbed by the time zones. This morning we circled back on IM from our desks at work, going over things said and heard, when I told him, "It also occurred to me: today is the 3-month anniversary of the night we first hung out," and he said, "Hrm.... I think it's actually tomorrow," and I checked my phone to find his first text and indeed stood corrected, pleased he remembered, noticing that unlike how quickly time goes when we're together, it conversely seems it has been much longer than that since we met.

Wellstone, marathons

2011-10-25T23:59:00.000-04:00

Today my friend Michael reminded me, via his Facebook page, that October 25 was the day in 2002 an airplane crash killed one of the great American populists of the last 30 years, Senator Paul Wellstone (and his wife and daughter and others) of Minnesota.

‎"If we don't fight hard enough for the things
we stand for,
at some point we have to recognize
that we don't really stand for them."

I met Wellstone for the first and only time just weeks before his death. Me: running my first marathon, toiling along at mile 24 near the state capitol in St. Paul. He: running for Senate for the third time, as well as being one of those high-energy, loud guys that sometimes pops out on race sidelines, bellering and half-striding into the street:

"Go get 'em, number 2-7-3-3! You're there! You're almost there."

With Cousin J - October 2002.
T-shirt courtesy of campaign volunteer
at the Twin Cities Marathon start line.

He drew attention to himself: his 5-foot-4 stature and bald head and furious enthusiasm so distinctive anyway. Since he was mid-campaign, it was logical he would be in town for this major event and within seconds I realized it was him .... and clapping for me, "number 2-7-3-3"! And I knew I had to go high-five him. At the beginning of the race his campaign volunteers had been everywhere; I had taken and attached a forest-green Wellstone! sticker to the seat of my running shorts on a whim ;.... and ended up being glad I had. Because if you're ever going to run headlong towards a US Senator, uninvited, it's better you be pointing at your rear end (to show support, I swear!) while doing so, rather than pointing at him and provoking his security staff.

Wellstone and I indeed slapped hands, me yelling, "I ran with your sticker, man!" as I hobbled away. While I finished that race relatively strong, a few minutes later, the hand-slap was the story I told everyone later.

I've thought of Wellstone whenever I've run a marathon since: mostly, his energy for everything, his unapologetic advocacy for community and education and the little guy (like me, the 10-minute miler at the end of the race). And with curiosity as to what kind of politician he might be in this age of the Tea Party intransigence -- he was plenty intransigent himself -- and what he might say to the proclamations of his colleague Michelle Bachmann.

I'll certainly and obviously be thinking of him when running in DC this weekend. Wellstone could be an ass, but he was an inspiring ass, and he finished the tasks that he believed in and set out to achieve.

Blessed is she who....

2011-10-24T10:52:00.003-04:00

... stresses unnecessarily about

losing a $100 shoe

in a shopping mall,

when all she did was

leave it

on the floor

in the choir loft

at St. Cecelia's

during Tuesday's rehearsal,

where it was found by the organist

and left thusly

(there among the Byzantime murals and chandeliers)

for her to find

when she returned

Saturday night to sing the concert.

Proof:

And blessed be the organist,

too.

T-minus Ten Thursday

2011-10-20T16:08:00.001-04:00

October 30: Marathon #8.

Gotta admit: I'm pretty pumped. Grateful I can be pumped because I took my vitamins, (knock on wood) have no injuries, went to yoga every week, (knock on wood again) feel strong, and after running (as of today) 486.5 miles since training officially began and just under 800 miles since the beginning of the year, have only 26 more to tick off, total, before running 26.2 a couple Sundays from now.

(Yeah: I am ready for a new pair of Asics Landreths before the race. Yeah: that is another $100 for a pair of shoes. Yeah: Patience Judgment Family Friends Health!)

Also: excited to get back to DC after almost 2 years, to stay with Michael and see my long-ago roommate Ryan and chow pasta with Alan. Head past the monuments. The Potomac. Arlington National Cemetery.

More excited, sincerely: that the the only major hills come at Miles 2 and 7 instead of 17.

(Yeah: Boston, I'm talking about you....)

Although: DC, it's you I'm talking about between now and October 30.

Bring it on!

Patience Judgment Family Friends Health

2011-10-19T16:17:00.000-04:00

It could have been one of those days. Hell, it still could be. I was fine waking up on time, from good dreams. Then when getting dressed I discovered that last night, while cutting through the Prudential Center, I (must have) opened my backpack to pull out an apple and dropped 1 of 2 lace-up pumps (Aldo, $100, bought new in Sept) somewhere in the food court. While calculating the odds of someone saving and turning in a shoe in a mobbed urban shopping mall I caught sight of the expensive steroids (as result of expensive vet visit) for Tusker's cold, sitting on the counter, undistributed still because, well, he seems to have gotten over the cold on his own. Grumbling, got on bike 15 minutes later than planned to discover a cool, breezy rain beginning in time for my commute, which was great, because I enjoy being both late for work and soaking wet while there. Arrival at the office heralded by the unexpected departure of long-time half-million dollar client. Followed shortly thereafter by e-mail from Mom detailing prolonged intestinal distress, layered with news that Grandma, who had fallen last week, had not been herself since. Trying trying trying not to be down, in an office blanketed on all sides by black skies and fog, missing the physical and peripheral presence of MSF who himself took sick with headache and fever on Monday and yesterday turned phone off, and I cannot make soup or bring water or scratch his head or help in any constructive way. Starting to think everything I own is breaking down and everything is expensive and everyone is far away.

So I'm kinda down. But there was a moment in that melancholy when I remembered I am a girl with Patience. Judgment. Family. Friends. And Health. Even if they aren't with me every minute. I still hate this cold fall bluster and I still miss MSF and I still worry about Mom and Grandma and still don't want to call up the Pru Lost & Found and even more don't want to spend another $100 on necessary work shoes that I already spent $100 on..

But. Patience Judgment Family Friends Health. My new mantra in time of need.

(Just writing that felt good.)

Annoying (but funny) things

2011-10-18T17:21:00.002-04:00

I still get an e-mail once a week with the latest articles from HowAboutWe.com, the website I came upon by recommendation of the Cosmo dating article sent to me by Cousin J's fiancé 6 months ago, from which I fashioned the Great Cosmo Challenge of which I completed about 5 of the 22 tasks, and certainly not in the original month I planned..

(Yes, that is a bit of a wind-around sentence .... my brain is in a bit of wind-around mode today.)

Despite not having attended to my HAW profile or solicited the profiles of men who are attending to theirs -- although I wouldn't rule it out -- I am often amused by these advice articles and how spot-on and only mildly sarcastic they are. Today's by Chiara Atik, particularly, made me dig into the link:

"The 9 Most Annoying Things to Say To A Single Person"

"The good thing about being single is that people are usually pretty willing to talk about your romantic life, because, let's face it, it's probably more entertaining than that of your seriously coupled-up friends. The bad news?

"Sometimes, people will want to talk about your love life regardless of whether or not you're in the mood to talk about it. And they will have opinions. And questions...

Well, I certainly confess to having put my love life on the front burner whether or not other people are in the mood to hear about it or not. And have left myself equally open to opinions and questions, which will infrequently annoy me and then make me feel like I shouldn't be annoyed, because I did put my life on the front burner.

Nonetheless, today I only print Ms. Atik's questions for your amusement. Here are my favorite 3 of 9; the rest are behind the bold-faced link above:

"Are you seeing someone? Why not?"
Amazingly, I get this question at least once a week. At least once a week! It's fun to turn the question around to the asker. "Why are you in a relationship?" "Because I'm in love!" "Right, well, I'm not." End of discussion!

"You need to put yourself out there more!"
Out where, exactly? [Whenever some helpful soul suggests this to me, I immediately picture myself in the middle of some crowded piazza, waving my arms around, saying "yooo-hoooo!"]

"Why don't you join a group?"
It's a common misconception for people to think you're single because you just don't have enough hobbies.

For the love of Jif

2011-10-17T17:40:00.003-04:00

For a mid-morning snack today,

I dug heartily into one o' these:

You can see obviously how tempting it would be to,
after getting the majority of the creamy goodness
out with a spoon,
use an index finger to get the last remnants.

Which is a dangerous thing,
because I am also absent-minded and
don't always remember to immediately wash my hands
after.

To wit:

Sigh.

Well, I could have had this response:

But instead,

I summoned my Inner Paternal Grandmother
and thought:

It's just clothes.

Peanut butter is always worth the mess.

Oh Weekend, my Weekend!

2011-10-16T23:41:00.001-04:00

My weekend was simple, with easily-described activities.

Friday night, I made this Vidalia Onion Pie by the queen of Southern cooking, Paula Deen:

MMMM-Yeah! That be some bacon!

I then ate said pie with some carmelized brussels sprouts and wild rice and drank a tall bourbon & ginger w/lime, while watching this fine Woody Allen flick:

The correlation of this movie's name
to both my food and beverage
did not occur to me at the time, no.

Saturday morning I stayed in bed until this time:

And yes, that is NOT p.m., smartass.

After which I donned rubber dish-washing gloves and wrestled my boy cat (the wheezing and sniffling Tusker) into carrier to visit his favorite place -- the x-ray machine at the Neponset Animal Hospital -- to discover, after 3 hours and $350, that he "just had a cold" and that I could give him steroids to ease his congestion while he "waited it out."

Have you ever tried to give a cat steroids? It's easy and fun!

Here's how excited Tusker was to take his drugs.

The day looked up after that. I did the last of my marathon training runs....this time up Mass Ave through the Cambridge squares to Porter, then back down through the downtown and home. Incidentally, running on a major thoroughfare at 8 on a Saturday night is wicked cool .... no drunk folks, no groups of 6 walking abreast, no college students passing footballs on the sidewalk .... no, none at all!

<a href="http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/54518340">A run mapped on 10/15/2011</a> <a href="http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/?location=Boston, MA">Find more Runs in Boston, MA</a>

After a lite supper and bath, I enjoyed some more bourbon & ginger and spent 5 hours in conversation with the Man from San Francisco. Yes, we did have a lot to talk about and I do understand that 4 a.m. is late, but it wasn't a work night. Yes, we had a pleasant time. We're getting along just fine, thank you. There are no photos of this event, sorry.

There are also no photos of me today ... singing in the church choir on 5 hours of sleep. Or eating seconds and thirds of Paula Deen's pie with full-strength sour cream. Or napping. Or running 4 miles around Southie. Or changing the sheets on my bed or riding the 9 bus uptown or typing this blog entry.

I also have no photographic proof that I tried to give Tusker his steroids today either because, well, I did not try to give him his steroids.

Just wait though; the weekend ain't over yet!

Feet (again)? Really?

2011-10-13T20:02:00.001-04:00

One of my life mantras is, truthfully: To each one's own.

This applies to anything: to weird food likes, to careers in questionable fields, to drug use, extracurricular sex lives, and one's decision to judge others if one feels like it. Mostly because, despite my relatively open nature, I can't help but judge even when it goes against my own mantra.

(And it is my mantra, damn-it.)

That said: what is it with folks and feet? Admittedly, I have an Inexplicable Need to Take Pictures of Them, as you well know. But I would never pick a partner or a friend to be my partner or friend based on what their feet did or didn't look like,or if they liked me to touch their feet in a certain way or not, and I don't think I would ever choose to use it as a pick-up line.

Nonetheless, from a 40-y-old Bostonian on OKCupid recently, a couple hellos (in their entireties) to my inbox:
Yesterday: "This is a lovely message."
Today: "Do you have beautiful feet?"
In hiw writeup, he mentions nothing of any special foot requests or indications of why that might be important to him. However, 1 of his 2 profile photos is a shot of a pair of black-haired shins, connected to feet in bright green socks printed with cartoon characters, without explanatory caption.

I'm curious what tomorrow will bring.

And I still don't get it.

Friends Who Are Boys: Shameless Plug

2011-10-12T16:49:00.000-04:00

Alan has now written his first book. He started forecasting the October 11 launch date months ago, when turning in final edits to his publisher, then a few weeks ago began plugging kick-off parties in New York and DC.

So I bought a couple copies to help with the initial sales push, and they arrived today at the office. They're currently sitting my desk counter so all the managers walking by would be tempted to look and wonder if knowing more about the world commodities market would help their investment choices.

I still feel too young to have a friend who has a publication for sale on Amazon.com and at Wal-Mart. Much less someone who has kick-off parties in New York and DC and whose book jacket has a quote from George McGovern, calling it "essential reading." Or being described in promotional copy as such:

"To understand the growing international food crisis, readers need an expert they can rely on. One of the most widely acclaimed journalists on food security, Alan Bjerga is up to the task, taking readers from the trading floor of Chicago to the highlands of East Africa to the rice paddies of Thailand on a global trek to find the causes of the food-price crisis—and the solutions."

But I'm very proud of my old bike-riding buddy ... and have no problem making a shameless plug on his behalf.

Meanwhile, 25 years after the fact...

2011-10-11T12:27:00.000-04:00

When a pre-teen growing up Cando, I wanted to be Kelly McGillis as Charlie in Top Gun. Full stop. I wanted her bomber jacket, her loose white t-shirts over tight jeans, her Oceanside house, her brains, and the chutzpah to say, when Maverick showed up all sweaty and heavy-breathing from his sand volleyball match with the boys, "You're late," and just go back to sauteeing the onions.

Most of all, though, I wanted her hairstyle. Blond and crunchy-curly. Swooping over the forehead, and blowing in the breeze as she and her sporty convertible chased after Maverick, zooming away on his motorcycle, to tell him that her review of his flying was spot-on.

This is, in truth, what I looked like in 1986. I hadn't figured out how to convey my Kelly McGillis Hair desires to Linda, the neighbor down the street who saw me in her basement salon, and still had bangs and bad side-wings.

So check out the girl behind me: Cathy, fellow leotard wearer and my next-door neighbor in Cando for most of my growing up. Now a pharmacist in Bismarck, married with 2 kids, she's hung out with me twice this week because she and her husband are in Boston on vacation. (Bless the Lord for Facebook, for reconnecting us.) In addition to overdosing on beer and seafood and late-night forays through Chinatown, it's been a hoot to both revisit a lot of memories of Cando, and to catch up on how we've both changed since the late 1980s. Which is to say, a lot.

Funny, then, that I would look in the mirror this morning and realize that, kinda, sorta, with the part on the opposite side and with slightly-less crunch, I've got the Kelly McGillis In Top Gun Hair Look down -- 25 years after the fact.

Teenage dreams can come true, my friends.

(Now about that bomber jacket.....)

Dateline: Carson Beach 10/08/11

2011-10-08T20:19:00.000-04:00

Never really expected to be

working on a tan,

in my bikini,

in 80 degrees,

in Boston,

in the late afternoon

on the 17th day of autumn.

But, so be it.

4:51: This dude wanted my apple core. Badly.

4:56: Apple finished. Seagull banished. Nap commenced.

5:44: Sunset over Southie

Friday playlist

2011-10-07T19:24:00.002-04:00

Maybe I should assign WERS 88.9 FM its own label in this space, since lately I've been drowning in my love affair with the stream it's spitting out.

Today I was re-reintroduced to Susan Tedeschi and introduced to her husband, Derek:

Tired of living without
When others have so much
If I could find someone
To bring loving touch
All this time been wasted
No more words to spare
If I knew how to love,
I would take you there

Got my daily dose of Ben Folds.

There was a time when I had nothing to explain
Oh, this mess I have made
But then things got complicated
My innocence has all but faded
Oh, this mess I have made

Was reminded that Johnny Cash's cover of Depeche Mode (Personal Jesus, anyone?) makes all the sense and no sense all at once.

From the Wikipedia: "The song was inspired by the book Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley. According to songwriter Martin Gore: "It's a song about being a Jesus for somebody else, someone to give you hope and care. It's about how Elvis was her man and her mentor and how often that happens in love relationships; how everybody's heart is like a god in some way, and that's not a very balanced view of someone, is it?"

And again, marveled that The Police's So Lonely is one of the most danceable depressing songs there is. (I immediately began chair-dancing at :51. You should too.)

Well, someone told me yesterday
That when you throw your love away
You act as if you just don't care
You look as if you're going somewhere
But I just can't convince myself
I couldn't live with no one else
And I can only play that part
And sit and nurse my broken heart, so lonely

A couple hours ago, I had flagged out the songs that I remembered most distinctly from 'ERS today -- swear it was done with no pre-meditation. Now as I cut and paste the lyrics, the melancholy run-through is not lost on me. While I'd suggest I wasn't in the best mood today ... hmmm.

Subliminal or not, I've got to kick this. It's the beginning of a crisp, fall (and for some, but not for me) 3-day weekend, and I've got to find a 21-mile run tomorrow morning, and this wallowy vibe, subliminal as it is, cannot prevail. Heading over now to Boston University, to hear the Arneis (string) Quartet play a bit o' this:

And this.

Hoping there's lift somewhere in them there 'cello swipes.

Anniversary Shout-Out: Roy & Martha

2011-10-06T12:39:00.000-04:00

Some days on the blog, I don't feel like/want to compete with/comment on the news cycle and/or date significance.

(Usually applies to major holidays and my birthday. But especially on days where I'm prone to overusing and/or statements with sassy backslashes.)

Today showed up as such with:

1) The death of Steve Jobs yesterday.

2) Sarah Palin's gracious (?!) quelling o' Presidential aspirations (and, could one hope, decline in media exposure?).

3) Hank Williams, Jr. being told to nevermore ask, legally, "Are You Ready for Some Football?"

4) A 37-year-old woman asking the Boston public: "Am I at a bad age to date?"

So all I want to do today is point out that October 6 was the day 68 years ago that my maternal grandparents married each other, in Minneapolis. You've met Martha, who turns 92 in a couple weeks, but Roy has been gone for 11 years; he died the first summer I lived in Boston. They had a pretty killer marriage, raised a pretty killer brood, and were pretty influential life examples for me.

I know I don't remember to mention that enough.

This May 29, 2011 photo made possible
by the events of October 6, 1943.

Happy hour ....

2011-10-04T23:45:00.000-04:00

.... bi-coastal style.

Which is to say, via cell phone.

9:31 pm (EST)

K: Stormy night calls for dark and stormy. (and ginger chocolate...:-)

6:40 pm (PST)

MSF: ::smile:: I had just poured (and photo'd) a finger of Maker's-Rocks for myself while I figure out dinner when your TXT came in.

20-Minute Monday: Contrasts

2011-10-03T23:45:00.000-04:00

Tonight I feel both powerful and fragile. After work I crossed Copley to the BPL to return 3 severely overdue books and, crossing back at the corner of Boylston and Dartmouth, strode straight through a minefield of skateboarders (doing their daily swings across the tempting marble slab) as if daring one of them to roll in front of me, then diagonal again across the 3 lanes of Dartmouth and daring the cars turning off St. James. Then to yoga, successful with its one-legged Chaturanga Dandasanas and warriors 1, 2 & 3 and the 10 minutes of ab crunches while in a supported bridge and the resonant Ujjayi interspersed with Lion's Breath. Followed by 500 calories burned on the elliptical machine.

Stepping back out of the gym into Copley, then, the day's earlier muggy warmth had dissipated, drizzle falling, the red lights of 3 ambulances and a fire truck on the same sidewalk that had entertained the skater bois hours before, the attendants working on someone, evidently, in a bad way on the benches there. The energy so rare and different.

The damp seeps in here on the library steps, even as I sit on my coattail to keep my butt dry. It's better to be out here, leaning against the pedestal of the lion statue, rather than back on the mugger's paradise of the main walls. Lion's breath earlier, lion protection now. I think I don't necessarily crave protection, not really needing it here in the well-lit public square, and otherwise finding it difficult to accept that sometimes I'm fragile and need to accept help and advice. MSF's visit reminded me how much I could learn about finding the comfort of that line between self-sufficiency and the relaxing of ego to someone else's care and concern. He helped with that, sometimes chiding, sometimes letting me chide him. Neither is a bad way to be....and on a night (and following a week) of the power/fragile struggle, I know it sometimes takes a surfeit of one to appreciate the other.

Monday, October 3, 9:25-9:45 p.m.

Boston Public Library

State of the union

2011-10-02T21:17:00.000-04:00

The cats are exhausted. I'm exhausted. The Mazda 626 is exhausted. MSF is somewhere over Colorado on an Airbus 320 and, I'd guess, also exhausted. I haven't been posting on the blog much this week because it's not as fun to write about being a single woman when, for at least 8 days and 10 hours, I didn't feel like a single woman. Even though I still am. But I'm a satisfied single woman. Who had good company. Who is grateful for that good company and believes that gratefulness might have legs, because it made me realize what good company is and how I shouldn't settle for less. Who doesn't harbor illusions or an upcoming plan regarding cross-country dating or sentimentality about having had good company, other than realizing that it is indeed possible to live in the moment (or 727,000 moments, more exactly), that having a lover's hand on my thigh while I'm driving is one of the best things ever and that, even though they need it, the bedsheets aren't getting changed until (at least) tomorrow. Or maybe the day after.

Alive

2011-09-28T17:52:00.001-04:00

Last night, MSF and I found ourselves at 10 p.m. at the Brattle Theatre, drinking beer and eating super-buttery popcorn and watching Cameron Crowe's documentary Pearl Jam 20 -- a celebration of the band's longevity since coming up during the grunge revolution of the 1990s.

Pearl Jam's first-ever released single from 1990, Alive, was the climactic end of the film.....writhing under a montage of live concert footage. Even though the song is Eddie Vedder's lament about the pain he felt in not knowing his deceased father -- and hardly meant to be uplifting when written -- I was mesmerized by the intensity and the countless iterations of the phrase,

"Hey, Oh, I, I'm Still Alive."

Which is kinda how I've been feeling this week. Appropos.

Happiness is ...

2011-09-27T20:19:00.003-04:00

... coming home from a day at work and a 4-mile run to find homemade soup cooking on the stove.

It's good to have company.

20-minute Monday: (Almost) 20 miles

2011-09-26T16:37:00.000-04:00

The Man from San Francisco and I went to a party Saturday night where both hosts and many other folks were runners and, after a couple of home-brewed porters, we were all sharing the idiosyncracies of our Reach the Beach teams from last weekend and whatever it is we're training for now and how any run this weekend was bound to suck with the 180% humidity non-seasonal to Northeast Septembers, so I shared how earlier in the day I had powered through 18.5 of my 20.5 miles before first struggling through to 19 and then tanking and walking the last mile uphill into Southie while wringing out a tank top and shorts plastered like magnets to my stomach and thusly creating an honest-to-God trail of sweat puddles along West 3rd Street, and after I said this all the folks nodded sympathetically because, yeah, it did kinda suck to run on Saturday, but I had no sympathy for my lack of mental and physical stamina at 5 weeks to race time and am glad for a second shot at a 20 in 2 weeks when maybe October will be a little more distance-runner friendly, and also was not sorry for myself because I got to spend that last mile of walking knowing that the MSF was sleeping off his red-eye flight while waiting in my air conditioned apartment and that, once I returned and stretched and drank Powerade and showered and and found a dry shirt, we were going to vegetate in that AC in long-awaited companionship and, at least for me, a rare reward.

Weekend forecast

2011-09-23T18:27:00.000-04:00

Oh.

The
weather looks crappy.

The
(purported) 20-mile run
(in crappy weather)
daunting.

(Scroll down to see....)

And
I've a floor to scrub before I sleep.

But
I've got bag of fall vegetables.

And
a pound of fresh coffee beans.

And
clean sheets.

And
a guest from the west coast
arriving tomorrow,
same time as the sun
(we won't see anyway).

Bring it on.

R.I.P. R.E.M.

2011-09-22T10:57:00.002-04:00

Yeah, so R.E.M. retired yesterday, and yeah, I'm joining the nostalgia club.

(P.S. This song. As of today. Is my new favorite. I swear.)

But only because I grew up in a time when my rock-n-roll knowledge came from watching Night Tracks on SuperStation WTBS every couple Friday nights, and MTV wasn't easily available, and there was no Internet-streaming radio or YouTube and we lived 2 hours from any cool radio station, for years only exposed to twang country and the Best Light-Rock Hits of the 60s, 70s and Today.

Then I went to college and made it to my junior year in 1993 and joined the newspaper staff. Alan was the editor and he ran the CD player on production nights and little else but Nirvana's Nevermind and R.E.M. got played that whole year. Alan owned all their CDs, but Automatic for the People had just come out the year before and it became the newsroom favorite ... even as none of us knew what any of the songs were actually trying to say. Alan, as a (now-reformed) music snob and self-proclaimed taste arbiter, once bluffed, "Yeah, I'd figure that of all their albums that would be the one you'd like because it's the most commercial."

Who gave a shit? Along with Out of Time, Automatic for the People got me through my junior year and my senior year and several years after and "Everybody Hurts" is still the world's greatest anthem to get and stay depressed to. An obsession and appreciation for the syncopated cello riffs on Sweetness Follows didn't come until just last year. And who can forget that aching piano cadence (learned and repeated endlessly, natch) on Nightswimming..... which, once titillating to a college student who couldn't imagine ever having the guts to skinny-dip and who now appreciates so many R.E.M. songs from so many different albums she's not going to get into listing them, is 20 years later still one of the Best. Songs. Ever.

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
The photograph on the dashboard,
taken years ago,
Turned around backwards
so the windshield shows.
Every streetlight reveals
the picture in reverse.
Still, it's so much clearer.
I forgot my shirt at the water's edge.
The moon is low tonight.

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
I'm not sure all these people understand.
It's not like years ago,
The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water.
They cannot see me naked.
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday.

Nightswimming, remembering that night.
September's coming soon.

I'm pining for the moon.
And what if there were two
Side by side in orbit
Around the fairest sun?
That bright, tight forever drum
Could not describe nightswimming.

You, I thought I knew you.
You I cannot judge.
You, I thought you knew me,
this one laughing quietly
underneath my breath.
Nightswimming.

The photograph reflects,
Every streetlight a reminder.
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night,
deserves a quiet night

Mulling singleness, longevity

2011-09-21T10:42:00.000-04:00

Have I told y'all that before moving to Boston in 1999, I worked 4 years as the features reporter for the Pipestone County Star, in the small town of the same name in southwest Minnesota? (Using the term y'all gives me away as a Midwesterner, right...?!)

I'm sure I have.

My main beat at the Star was covering the robust performing arts scene, community organizations, dairy and pork and corn-n-soybean farmers, and the non-stop activities and recognitions at 3 elementaries and 1 high school. Took endless photos of kids standing in rows, the community chorus with open mouths and hands outstretched, the Chamber of Commerce director shaking hands with new business owners. Made lots of trips into barns for photos of pigs and cows. One spring when the Star was down a sports reporter, I documented the track, tennis and golf teams' exploits and wickedly improved my skills as a sports-action photographer and writer. It's where I began a personal column, Thinking Aloud, which started me writing in the stream-of-consciousness style that presaged the tack I'd eventually take in this blog.

I loved what I did in Pipestone, except for the ulcer-inducing school board meetings to raise taxes for a new facility, and I loved my life there. But it was during the 3rd time through the same annual cycle of activities -- Homecoming, Christmas tree lightings, blizzard photos, Prom, the Watertower Festival, the Hiawatha Pageant features -- that I realized it might be time to explore different horizons.

And look where exploring got me.

This morning over my coffee, I came across a New York Times article titled, "In a Married World, Singles Struggle for Attention":

"Here’s a September celebration you probably didn’t know about: It’s National Single and Unmarried Americans Week."

I knew it sounded familiar, then realized it's because I, naturally, documented this week's occasion in September 2010. It was a relief to find that I hadn't also documented it in 2008 and 2009.

Funny, when I saw the Times article this morning, the intent was to delve into the content of that blog entry by Tara Parker-Pope. Specifically, how true these paragraphs rang:

"'There is this push for marriage in the straight community and in the gay community, essentially assuming that if you don’t get married there is something wrong with you,' says Naomi Gerstel, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst who has published a number of papers comparing the married and unmarried.

"'But a huge proportion of the population is unmarried, and the single population is only going to grow. At the same time, all the movement nationally is to offer benefits to those who are married, and that leaves single people dry.'

"Yet as she and other experts note, single people often contribute more to the community — because once people marry, they tend to put their energy and focus into their partners and their own families at the expense of friendships, community ties and extended families."

And these:

"The unmarried also tend to be more connected with siblings, nieces and nephews. And while married people have high rates of volunteerism when it comes to taking part in their children’s activities, unmarried people often are more connected to the community as a whole. About 1 in 5 unmarried people take part in volunteer work like teaching, coaching other people’s children, raising money for charities and distributing or serving food.

"Unmarried people are more likely to visit with neighbors. And never-married women are more likely than married women to sign petitions and go to political gatherings, according to Dr. Gerstel."

And these:

"The pressure to marry is particularly strong for women. A 2009 study by researchers at the University of Missouri and Texas Tech University carried the title “I’m a Loser, I’m Not Married, Let’s Just All Look at Me.” The researchers conducted 32 interviews with middle-class women in their 30s who felt stigmatized by the fact that they had never married.

" 'These were very successful women in their careers and their lives, yet almost all of them felt bad about not being married, like they were letting someone down,' said Lawrence Ganong, a chairman of human development and family studies at the University of Missouri.

"'If a person is happy being single,' he said, 'then we should support that as well."

Anyway. I'm pretty OK with being single in the city ... it has its benefits. Other than my wistful 93-y-old Grandma, no one is pressuring me to get married. I'll probably still go to political gatherings this season as long as my quease-factor stays in check. And it's a good article (thank you, Tara, who is also a marathon runner). Since I've now just quoted about half of it, feel free to decide, without my input, how you might feel about the conclusions.

I, on the other hand, have been freshly reminded of the time I have put into this blog -- 870 posts and 3.5 spins through the news cycle -- and am seriously wondering if it is time to explore different horizons.

Pros & Cons

2011-09-20T13:02:00.005-04:00

Last night starting at 9:45 p.m., I spent 2 hours getting my life in order via visits to Home Depot, Target and Stop & Shop at the South Bay Center in Dorchester. I could do this at this hour because I live in a large city and there are retail stores open until 11 and all-night supermarkets.

Last night starting at 11:45 p.m., I spent 30 minutes trying to find the One Available Parking Spot In All Southie. There were evidently Zero. In my 5 years here I have never not been able to park on a Monday night. In this perfect storm, it seems, the combination of massive utility work on W 1st Street and the Tuesday 5-7 am street-cleaning signs on Broadway meant all vehicles on these 2 major thoroughfares were vomited onto side streets.

While waiting at a stoplight, I texted Man from San Francisco:

K (12:06 am): For 20 minutes now i have been crusing for a parking space .... This f#*$ing neighborhood ...
MSF (12:07): ::Grraar!::
K (12:12): There are so many other things i'd rather be doing ...
MSF (12:14): I can think of one or two ....
K (12:22, after finally scoring): 6 blocks away. Down a hill. I see a large glass of wine in my near future.

Sleeping was among the other things i'd rather have been doing at that hour. Not buying cat litter. Not cruising. Not swearing. Not walking up Broadway in the dark by myself. Not, again, considering the truth of living in a large city: that the accessibility and public services that make it great also make it an insomniac-driven pain.

It's lunchtime on Monday ....

2011-09-19T13:58:00.003-04:00

... and I can't focus for s***.

It's the truth, and a common one for the Monday after a 3.5-day weekend.

One thought pulling my brain in directions it shouldn't go: that I haven't blogged since Thursday and don't foresee the focus to do so anytime soon.

Thusly, I've decided reconcile the truth and the dilemma by spitting out a list of random thoughts, like:

1) Just finished today's Lunch of Champions: peach Chobani Greek yogurt mixed with raw oatmeal, followed by baby carrots dipped in Jif.

2) I am now officially hungry all the time (thanks, marathon training). Already trying to not think about what to have for a snack and when to have it.

3) My quadriceps are still demolished from the combination of driving the 15-person van (too much accelerator pressing?), the brisk cold, and the 20 miles of Legs 10, 21 and 32 during Reach the Beach through rural New Hampshire Friday and Saturday.

4) I still wish I had gotten a photo at 6:25 Saturday morning around mile 5.5 of Leg 21 on Stage Road outside of Gilmanton when, following a taxing 500-foot elevation climb past cows and farms and frost-covered grasses, the sun came over the horizon to light the misty mountains and valleys like an Ansel Adams print, as if a reward for putting myself through hell first.

5) Being tired and sore this morning, it's a relief to see the President playing a bit of hardball on tax increases so I don't have to be cranky about intransigent Republicans, as well.

6) Can I convey that if hamstrings and quadriceps could speak, they would tell me that they simply cannot wait for a power yoga class at 7 p.m. .... Monday, move faster please!

7) I wiped down the shelves in my refrigerator last night for the first time in 5 years. They were gross; now they are not. That is all.

8) Did I tell y'all the the Man from San Francisco is coming to visit? That he'll be here for 8 days starting on Saturday? Guess I'm telling you now. I strongly suggest he and I are both looking forward to it.

9) It seems to be autumn now in these parts. Bring it.

10) How did I let 2 years pass in forgetting that WERS radio streams live online and is the perfect get-back-to-work-on-Monday-when-rather-would-be-doing-just-about-anything-else music soundtrack? Rock on.

(And work on ..... )

A (sort of) Good Poem

2011-09-15T14:51:00.000-04:00

There once was a girl
Who had great intentions
Of a great Thursday blogpost

But who was instead
consumed by
work (really!) and
getting ready to leave for
Reach the Beach Relay
(her 5th occasion of)
and ended up with
nothing to say and
no time to say it.

So, instead
she will
just post
a photo of the
Bubbly Sex Pot

(at Prohibition in downtown MSP)
and the
(inebriated) feet
of the 6 girls
who drank 2 of them
and lived to tell the tale.

(She realized it had been a
good party and
she'd never
told you about it.
You can guess
which one is her,
if you want.)

And
she'll see you again
on Sunday
(20 miles o'running
worse, or better,
for the wear).

Imaginary (donkey of) love

2011-09-13T14:08:00.000-04:00

Chomping on a tuna sandwich and reading Love Letters on my lunch break, I got sucked into a sidebar conversation thread titled "Facebook nonsense". It began on August 23, with a a post from:

-- A woman who friends an artist whose creative work she admires and feels mirrors her own; she visits and commented on his FB page. He responds and comments on her comments.

-- The two begin flirtatiously texting/e-mailing relationship; they don't live in the same city so they don't meet, but they soon have a phone call that leads to (the woman's) enormous hopes.

-- He drops off the face.

-- She's convinced she's screwed up something good, big-time, and apologizes. He says she has nothing to apologize for and wants to remain friends.

-- But their friendship has changed and seems, now, not destined for anything greater. She's, in her words, "bereft" over what could have been:

"You know, prolly wishful thinking on my part, but last week I really felt that this man and I could pull something together. I can't think of what I could possibly have said to have turned him off. But I won't bug him, I won't nudge him..."

If you've read this blog at all before today, you of course know this type of What Did I Do WRONG?!!!!! thinking has had its place here on too many occasions. Which is why I cringed viscerally at the resemblance to situations of past. Cringed reading through the 90 subsequent posts on the thread after her above self-admonition ("I won't nudge him...") stretching until yesterday. Even as other commenters advised her to move on, she continued stating admiration for her artist, the reasons why she thought she still wanted to be with him, and berating herself for holding out hope.

It took until today for her to say, "OK. I blocked his profile. Gotta let it go." But it took 3 weeks.

Not chastising this woman at all. Just understanding it (after all, it took me 9 months...) and marveling, again, how we humans get into draining situations that we can't see don't benefit us and, really, have no desire to get out of.

Somewhere on the thread, the woman posted a link to the British advice blog Baggage Reclaim, specifically to a 2009 column on "Letting Go Of A Relationship That Doesn't Exist":

"There are two big questions hovering in the comments recently that pretty much amount to the same thing:

How do I let go of the guy that didn’t reciprocate my feelings?

How do I let go of the guy that I didn’t actually have a relationship with?

In essence, how do you let go of a one-sided attraction which in your mind has created a relationship out of…your feelings?"

The blog author, Natalie Lue, is a prolific tough-love talker. In fact, she's written 2 books on the topic (one titled Mr. Unavailable and the Fallback Girl) in addition to this blog that has been ongoing since 2005). Her thoughts on "Letting Go Of A Relationship That Doesn't Exist" are countless, but these lines specifically spoke to me:

"For a start, you can’t ‘break up’ when there is nothing to break up from. The only person you have to break up with is you and your rather overactive imagination and feelings ....

"The thing is, from the moment that you recognise that you 1) are not having your feelings reciprocated and/or 2) that you’re not in a relationship with them, major warning signals should be going to your brain that there is something seriously wrong if you are still trying to get them to reciprocate and obsessing about them over an extended period of time ....

"Whilst I recognise that in some instances, we can be misled by a guy to believe that he feels more than he does, I tend to find that women who are in this situation are invariably in it because they decided that they were crazy about someone and don’t want to let that, and the fantasy go ....

"You’ve decided that you want him, love him, and to hell with it, you’ll find a way to show him that he should notice and love you too. You’re gonna ride this imaginary donkey of love till it collapses."

Wow. Can't think of a better way to describe making an ass of one's self and self-esteem. :-)

(Good to remember the next time, if ever, I get another gander at C-2.)

20-Minute Monday: Invincibility

2011-09-12T12:06:00.004-04:00

Looking out over my right shoulder tonight, as we flew higher than the piled-up thunderheads, and struck yet again by the miracle of flight: our human ability to be up among this planet's highermost creations and how seemingly blithely we do this ... hopping to Minneapolis for the weekend, no big deal, just a chance to see cousins and nephews (getting older and changing every minute just like the rest of us). So easily done when there so many things in the world so difficult.

How is it that flying -- being higher than thunderstorms, God-like -- has become such a mundane, everyday thing?

Now we're making a wide-right turn past the east edge of greater Boston and out over the Atlantic, approaching as one always does at Logan, above (and in spite of) powerful ocean waves below. Spotlit ballfields in the dusk. Freeways filled with cars as big as ants, their perceived size completely belying the lives, anxieties, dramas and goodnesses within each one. Lights of the metro spreading out in a vastness all made possible by human invention, too.

It's a day in this country that, out of necessity, overflows with introspection and demands to evaluate the present and its shaping by the past and how we, as humans, live with and hurt each other not only in the most henious ways but the most ordinary, in grievance and in compassion, in selfishness and in altruism.

Touching down now ... ripped suddenly from lofty vantage. Introspection seems more difficult when dealing with mundane issues of luggage collection, bus rides, the making of mental notes for a new Monday and the week ahead with its attendant complexities and uncertainities both tactile and vague. Despite being idealistic and financially unreasonable, it would seem easier, somehow, to just ride the air currents non-stop in the unimaginable insularity (and relative safety?) of an airplane, figuring it all out from a remove.

Sunday, September 11, 2011 (7:32-7:52 pm)

Aboard Sun Country 257 (MSP to BOS)

Fri-day Par-tay

2011-09-09T15:38:00.007-04:00

What
with
more market tanking (hooray!)
and
more obstinate political discord (no way!)
and
more flooding (damn hurricane season)
and
more terrorist threats (anniversaries, schmaniversaries),

it's
a relief
to see
the sun
and some
blue-sky
relief
this afternoon.

Seems appropriate that came
just as I'm
to get on a plane to MSP
and hang with
Cousin J
in celebration of her
wedding-to-be.

(She and I have always been
great partiers, natch.)

Oct 2002 -- Minneapolis
Red Zin in HS prom goblets 

Jan 2009 -- Washington DC
Inauguration meltdown

May 2011 - Columbia Heights, MN
Afternoon delight (w/Kristin & Missy)

Besides.

Haven't been to a
bachelorette party
in ages.

See ya on the other side...

Laugh. (Because, what else?)

2011-09-08T14:42:00.000-04:00

This is how my day started:

1) Get up extra early for a dentist appointment before work.

2) Drive (instead of preferred bike) to dentist because of buckets'o'rain falling from the sky.

3) Encounter standstill traffic (because of the early hour and the buckets'o'rain) to get on 93N, to get on Storrow Drive from 93N, and to get off Storrow Drive.

4) Pay for meter directly in front of dentist office, due to being 15 minutes late due to standstill traffic.

5) Apologize profusely to front desk staff for being 15 minutes late.

6) Discover appointment was actually yesterday.

7) Apologize profusely to hygienist, reschedule for her next available (November 15).

8) Hear front desk staff mock (yes! they did!) my profuse apologies as I head out, 2 minutes later, with wet head from previous downpour, to collect car from the meter spot paid for an hour.

9) Park car in more convenient location, walk 4 blocks to work, only to enjoy the continuing downpour while waiting a full minute to cross the St. James/Clarendon wind tunnel.

10) Sit at desk in air-conditioned comfort with wet legs, wet socks, wet head and potential tooth decay.

Later in the morning (to the great benefit of me and anyone else who was going to have to deal with my brilliant mood today) I came across a humor blog called Happy Place, which had just updated its ongoing list of "Brilliantly Sarcastic Responses to Well-Meaning Signs." Here are 2 of many:

Which made me do that thing at work we all do, which is wanting to laugh uproariously and realizing there are very few things happening in work life that seriously warrant laughing uproariously .... so I can't, because I would give away the fact that I am looking at something inappropriate .... and then trying to stifle my laughter, which in turn makes me start snorting and gasping and, generally, making worse noise than I would have if just f#$%ing LOL'd.

Man. That felt good.

Wanting to share the good vibe and the belly laugh, I e-mailed the link to a friend. He, in turn, shared a link back, this one to The Oatmeal and more specifically, "What we SHOULD have been taught in our senior year of high school". Here's one of the panels:

This time, I just LOL'd.

(Thank you very much.)

Farewell to (a necessary) evil

2011-09-06T20:15:00.001-04:00

I've been in mourning these past weeks: Jakki, the kick-ass instructor for my weekly weight-lifting class, the kicker-of-my-wimpy-ass on every Tuesday afternoon for the past 18 months is no longer teaching at my gym after today.

It's said that the best are always the first to leave and, well.... Seriously. Jakki gets full credit for any and all muscle tone I own. Relentless, demanding, creative, fun, aggravating, goading, with a buff physique only attributable to doing everything she's doling out, and -- oh, yeah -- evil.

As in, the first time I went to her class in November 2009, I. Hated. Her:

"On my gym's website, Jakki's bio states that she enjoys challenging participants with a safe but intense workout. "My favorite part of teaching isn’t the music or the exercises, it’s the smile I see when people leave class feeling better about themselves and more confident to take on a new challenge…maybe another class!”

What Jakki's bio didn't say: "I like to stride around the room when you're on the 13th minute of the 15-minute non-stop abdominal workout and shout out, 'I know what I'm asking you to do is evil. Who thinks I'm evil?! I don't hear you! Who thinks I'm evil! You will thank me later! You will!"

I'm thanking her now ... with fond regret.

20-minute Monday: Gluttony

2011-09-05T23:50:00.016-04:00

Walking down Elm Street tonight, into the center of Davis Square, I was trying to imagine how I would reflect back on a night like this. One of my best friends is at the hospital with his wife, preparing for their daughter to be born. Earlier, I both cleaned out my clothes closet for the first time in a year and still found time for yoga in Thomas Park in a gusty wind, with storm clouds threatening.

Made veggie curry in the crockpot, too. Go figure.

Now, I've got the Times sports section in front of me -- Nadal at the Open! -- and a fragrant bourbon, mint and ginger concoction to my left here at the bar. I just ate some Jonah crab claws and a BBQ chicken sandwich with apple coleslaw and fries. (Kind of but not really saving room for when Student Driver and I meet for ice cream later.) As I've been eating and drinking, the Man from San Francisco and I are texting images back and forth as if we were dining together: he's seen my cocktail and claws; I've seen his crusty sourdough, cheese spread, TCHO citrus dark chocolate and Big Daddy IPA, as clear as if it were in front of me and not 3100 miles to the west. We're calling these messages "food porn." I seem to have forgotten the potential sensuality of this medium, until now.

Everything about this day just seems right. The luxury in the good joy of friends, in the occasional gluttony, in girlfriends to talk shit with and boys to talk food with, in thunderstorms threatened but not materializing, and in (what I think I've deduced now as) relief at the forecast of a rewarding September, making short work of whatever past gloom has pervaded this so-called last day of summer.

Monday, September 5 (9:16-9:36 p.m.)
Davis Square, Somerville

Eleven-o'clock run...

2011-09-04T23:45:00.002-04:00

... on a Sunday night
of a 3-day weekend
at the start

of a new (school) year,
through the streets
of the downtown
of a college town,

is

a cool breeze and
no homework yet,
the pure smell of hormones
and too many girls
waiting in line at
too many bars
and looking
too young
to be facing down
bouncers that big
and wearing
heels that high.

And brother,
do I feel old.

One afternoon at the farmer's market....

2011-09-02T16:42:00.001-04:00

.....when I felt like crying

(can't really even say why I did,

but knew I needed to),

I lay on my back in the grass in Copley Square

and did.

Then I looked up at my workplace

and realized,

that even though it felt good to

(and I must have indeed needed to),

there is no need to cry

when the sky is this blue.

Mild vindication

2011-09-01T19:00:00.019-04:00

It wasn't yet officially summer the last time I saw (and kissed) or spoke to C-2. We've exchanged a couple brief e-mails and texts since then, pertaining to Guinness consumption and progressively Democratic political campaigns, but even those have ceased. Our day-to-day, mid-night exhortations from a past life are long gone. I've gotten fine with this fact. Which is why I was surprised Wednesday when:

(2:53 AM) C-2: mornin'

Which took me until that evening, after 3 glasses of white wine, to notice and respond with:
(10:12 PM) Karin: I missed your hello. How are you?

(10:29 PM) C-2: Hey, I'm good. Moving again. Wanna help?? :)
You of course recall what I helped him with 6 months ago was to move a thousand miles away, after which I cried for a week. As a Facebook friend, I have since seen in more detail that the move he's making is not back to here.

(10:38 PM) K: You know me. A couple shots of whiskey, a plane ticket, and I'm good for whatever. ;-) Good that you're good.

(12:57 AM) C-2: That's one of your more endearing qualities! :)

I'm glad C-2 wrote, because I thought we had trailed off for good. Which would have been OK, and is still OK. But to be the egotist I am, sometimes it's good to know someone I once cared about thinks about me with something akin to fondness.

(Another) Random Wednesday...

2011-08-31T12:48:00.004-04:00

....without much to add to it.

Hopefully that's OK.

It's OK with me, anyway.

I wanted a place and/or reason to post this video of
Johannes Brahms' Sonatensatz for viola and piano,
here played via cello transcription, which has been driving through my brain lately.
First played it in college; wish I still could play it and/or had someone to play it with.
Last week it seemed like the
perfect piece which which to await a hurricane.
Indeed, it is pretty perfect, whenever.

Speaking of (with Tropical Storm Katia threatening in the far east),
did you know that Karen (spelled incorrectly as it is)
is one of the only 6 "K" names on the Atlantic hurricane naming convention list?

And, speaking of years, it's this dude's 3rd time to rock today.

¡Feliz cumpleaños!, popsicle man.

I told you Henry takes after me...

20-Minute Monday: Unprepared

2011-08-29T23:14:00.004-04:00

Tonight I was all set to go to yoga at 7:00 .... until, at 6:42, standing in the locker room, stripped down to change, finding that what I thought was a pair of red shorts was actually a red tank top. And since it isn't exactly practical or in any good taste to do a standing split (or nearly any other pose) while wearing a knee-lenth Ann Taylor professional-line skirt, my plans rightly had to change. So instead I just rode for 60 minutes on the elliptical machine ... wearing the red tank top, my blue Asics and the green-flowered Ann Taylor professional-line (and now sweat-soaked) skirt.

Oh, to ever feel properly prepared. To have pulled together my yoga clothes last night instead of just before running out the door this morning. To have, maybe, even unfolded the red tank top enough to notice it wasn't something with a waistband. Or, to keep tank tops and shorts not in the same drawer so the odds of mixing them up might decrease.

What if. Perhaps if I were prepared I wouldn't be sitting here in the bucolic Boston Public Library courtyard, with its arched columns and lighted fountain resembling that of an ancient Greek tycoon's weekend home,

wearing the blue Asics, the green-flowered skirt, and the red, sweaty tank top covered with plum cardigan, college backpack at my feet, looking for all the world (particularly to the woman walking by right now in a, yes, Ann Taylor skirt with a blouse and heels) like a vagabond camp-out, rather than who I really am, which is an unprepared yogi with procrastination issues and only a minor sense of style but, perhaps, also enough chutzpah to not care about either presentation.

Monday, August 29, 2011 (8:31-8:51 p.m.)

Boston Public Library

Notes from Irene (Day 2)

2011-08-28T23:45:00.026-04:00

Neighborly, Again (Sunday, 9:30 a.m.) Thanks to morning goggles, difficult to tell if things are worse or better than last night: raining then and raining now. (When, exactly, were we supposed to get the worst of the worst, again?) Windbursts, capable of knocking over a person who only wants to walk to Dunkin' Donuts, are new. Coffee shop is open, natch, as is 7-11 and there indeed is a Sunday New York Times to be purchased. Clerk there looks both lonely and friendly. He asks how long I think the storm is going to last; 5 minutes later, we're still klatching. Weather .... now officially the best method to get to know your neighbors

Bad Attitude (Sunday, 11:15 a.m.) NYT website reports storm has officially moved through that hood. Manhattanites already noted to be bitching about overreacting city officials and resulting inconvenience. Wonder aloud to cat curled next to me on bed: why it is necessary for anyone to be an asshole in this particular scenario, and if this is specific to New Yorkers.

Unexpected Companion (Sunday, 11:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.) Still puzzling about what to most responsibly do with full day of unfettered house arrest when Man from San Francisco awakes and greets the morn, and me, via IM. Converse on chat and phone through brunch, lunch, the brunt of the wind and the better part of an afternoon. Bad news for the much-anticipated now-unopened Sunday Times. Good for warm fuzzies everywhere.

Good Attitude (Sunday, 12-2 p.m.) Bill, out in Holliston, just posted on Facebook: "And we have trees down in the yard." Within 2 hours, a fresh post, this time accompanying a photo of a half-drunk pint of beer: "Yup, when you watch a tree fall on your car, it's that time." Noble.

Running 2 (Sunday, 7:30 p.m.) No rain since mid-afternoon and the space between windbursts has stretched, rather like labor pains in reverse. No excuse to not head out for the 7-miler. Met by dozens of dogwalkers and their charges, most likely to shake off cabin fever much like myself. Streets curiously free of puddles. Yet why, pray tell, does a street sweeper run down the center of Broadway, in sweep mode?

Tree Death (Sunday, 8:30 p.m.) There are fewer finer and sadder ways to spend a Sunday evening than walking through the Back Bay with Claudia, surveying storm damage. And standing on Beacon Street next to the Public Garden, posing with fallen trees already chainsawed down to stumps.

Notes from Irene (Day 1)

2011-08-27T23:30:00.130-04:00

Irene approaches and the fun's just begun.

1) Batteries (Friday 6 p.m.)   Two days before landfall and the slots for Cs and Ds are bare in all stores visited along Broadway. Realize about this time that I don't actually own a flashlight and that I'm not actually going to find one of those anywhere in this city, either. Briefly consider going door-to-door to see who in the hood is hoarding.

2) Running (Saturday, 11 a.m.)  Sky benignly covered in low clouds, as if in sympathy for our neighbors in North Carolina currently enjoying the eye of the storm. Amazingly, since wind damage is set to be biggest adversary, the air is lifeless, thick and muggy; running on Day Boulevard, notice Carson and M Street beaches fully-staffed with lifeguards and absolutely zero beachgoers. Even though not in the mood for a 16-mile training run, know running in a downpour later in the day is less appealing. Glad for the opening.

3) Highway Driving (Saturday, 3 p.m.) Heading north on 93 for errand in Wilmington; combination of haze and downpour and kicked-up spray is good for a summer-variety white-out. Drive over Zakim Bridge and don't even realize it's a bridge because side cables are fogged out. What a great idea to run this errand on this day.

4) Friends to the South (Saturday, 4 p.m.)   Text Justin in coastal New Jersey, who had said yesterday he and wife and newborn son were most likely evacuating rather than waiting for potential power outages. Reply: "Just made it to our hotel in Harrisburg, PA....Long 24 hrs. :-)" Does not seem like a conversation he and I should ever realistically be having.

5) Neighborly (Saturday, 5 p.m.)  Rain continues, but less so. Decide to use the slowdown to stash the plastic chairs and table, along with the impatiens, basil and mint plants from on top of the patio to underneath. On last trip up for last pot, step in puddle with slippery boots and go ass-over-teakettle and back onto ass. Before a "S@#$!" even emerges, hear someone from 4 patios over yell, "My God, you OK?" Might be a more effective way to greet neighbors for the first time, but today this is it.

6) Power Outage Etiquette  (Saturday, 8 p.m.)  Talking with a friend, who explains how to treat a freezer and refrigerator in case of loss of electricity. Learn that I should stock a cooler (note: don't own one) with ice and the fridge food I'm most likely to need, fill the freezer with bowls of water, and don't, in any instance, open either door once the power goes, if it does. Stuff in the freezer should last 48 hours; stuff in the fridge 24 hours ......as long as the doors aren't opened. This seems both less and more complicated than possibly imaginable.

7) Drinking  (Saturday, 11 p.m.)  Peruse Facebook. Note that any friend along the North Atlantic Coast has a status that involves alcohol. Concoctions at The Foundry in Davis, waiting, with friends. Drinking wine, and waiting. Photos of bleary-eyed women with tequila nearly pouring out their eyes, waiting. Peach, sour mix and soda in a cartoon-character glass, waiting. Trying to figure out why I have no desire to drink my way through this.

7) Anticipating Tomorrow  (Saturday, 11:30 p.m.) Church cancelled -- yay. T shutting down at noon -- oh my. Gym closing at noon, and am I going to drag butt out of bed, losing current rock-star parking spot, to go there before that hour for the Sunday training run I can't possibly do outside? -- eh, know I should and somehow can't imagine it. Fantasy about how nice it would be to have a warm body other than a cat to spend a day inside with? -- sadly, just a fantasy. Fantasy about sleeping in, walking to corner for DD coffee, coming back with Sunday Times for a day of chillness marred by concern that with New York shutting down for the day, will there even be a Sunday Times tomorrow? -- another question both unrealistic and totally relevant.

8) Seriously?  (Saturday, 11:45 p.m.) Have always known that by being at the end of Irene's path, Massachusetts will get the storm at its least vigorous. Realize that by being at the end of Irene's path, the wait for if this is really going to kick our asses or not is all the more excruciating. Sixteen hours to potential impact, and still can't decide how seriously to take this. Kind of wish I could go somewhere and watch waves. Don't know how or where.

BBC 11: Old friend

2011-08-24T16:58:00.005-04:00

It was only because I had gone to run TMIRCE track workouts at Harvard Stadium last night after which I really needed a fresh bottle of Bolthouse Farms Vanilla Chai Tea and thusly stopped at Cambridgeport Whole Foods, where I lingered in the bulk food display sampling the 10 varieties of granola (and buying none), and then decided to walk the beer aisle even though beer doesn't fit in my backpack when I'm biking, that I could come around the corner and lock eyes with the 50-something match.com match I went out with 4 times in May 2009 so we could say each other's names at the same time and, after a hug, run down each other's checklists to make sure we were both working the same jobs and running routines and piano music (we were) and enquire as to each other's dating lives without providing any real details, then ride the escalator out together and wish each other well without pretending we wanted to make future plans, and as I rode down Putnam Ave on quiet streets, could once again be glad that a) this city is small enough that I can be somewhere I'm normally not and so can someone else I know and b) sometimes I let things that shouldn't go on end, but amiably enough, and that's always better than any other alternative.

Deep Thought: More chaos, please

2011-08-23T16:26:00.006-04:00

So, let's review recent happenings, in order of happening:

Nothing.

Stock market drops.

More nothing.

Stock market drops more.

Rebel forces storm Qaddafi's compound in Tripoli

Hurricane Irene forecast to reach Category 4 and head for North Carolina.

5.9 Earthquake hits the East Coast, evacuating DC and NY high rises, felt in Boston and beyond.

US Commerce Department releases poor housing numbers; survey from the Richmond Federal Reserve bank shows a drop in manufacturing activity; economists pare back on economic growth forecasts

Stock market has best day in 2 weeks.

Popular opinion is that today's 3% rise came because bargain hunters were picking up under-priced offerings due to the crappy conditions of the last month.

Eh. I'd say we just need more chaos.

20-Minute Monday: (Cor)related

2011-08-22T18:32:00.007-04:00

It's my Mom's 66th birthday today. I just tried phoning to wish her the best, but she's not home.

So I can't know for certain, but my guess is she has made note of turning 66 on the 22nd, will be able to find the number 3 somewhere in her day, and will have gleaned an extra layer of meaning out of the correlation. Like a triple Golden Birthday. Or, she might, at some point today, happen to be driving down a 66th Street or County Road 33. Or the hymn she'll be practicing for next Sunday's church service will be #822 or #845, or she'll notice the composer of the tune was born in 1945, too, or the lyricist was known to be born in Denver....like she was.

This is just how Mom rolls. She always finds these things, God bless her. Thrives on finding the small details of others' lives and their correlating meaning in the details of hers.

3 generations
Post-first-marathon -- St. Paul MN, October 2002

She might, for example, just believe that the reason I am the most physically similar to her (5-foot-3, chest prominent, potato nose and button chin) of the 3 daughters is because I, too, was born on the 22nd of a month. (And the 2nd child, too!) Could be how we share the same mad piano skills and the same desire to tell any story, written or verbal, with every rich detail and self-deprecating foible it deserves. Enjoying the relative embarrassment, as if we want to make people laugh with us before laughing at us so we can be in on the joke first ... without really trying to be. Could be how we're both iron-certain of our musical opinions and not afraid to share. Sensitive to criticism but eventually brought around to see the truth. And both often told we are leaving our own relative well-beings behind in our quests to plan other people's happiness....as we would see it.

But of course it is only conjecture. She knows she's her own woman, I'm my own woman. Besides, my sisters, more than me by a long stretch, share Mom's desire to shower generosity and love on others when they sense others need it the most, for no other reason than because they have it to give. It's a fine quality, and numeric relativism has nothing to do with it.

Monday, August 22, 2011 (3:47-4:07 p.m.)

Copley Square

Sunday numbers

2011-08-21T19:15:00.003-04:00

Proof

that I rose from the dead at

6 a.m.

and drove to Gloucester to

(alongside Anne and Chris)

complete a

7-mile road race at

8 a.m. in

62 minutes flat and in

80 degrees and 81% humidity,

that produced approximately

8 liters of sweat

(from me alone).

Pretend fisher(wo)men

Then,

as I dodged the
100s of tourists
to get out of town for
the 43-mile drive home,
my car stereo quit.
One minute on,
one minute off.
Forever.

Should have seen it coming:
for 2 weeks
I couldn't switch stations;
( WUMB 91.9 Folk Radio,
all the time, baby!)
it was original to the car,
and the car is 20.

I can't decide why I'm
10 times more upset
over this loss than
the impending demise of
the rest of the vehicle.

Early anniversary

2011-08-18T23:06:00.004-04:00

Tonight over happy hour cocktails, I asked my manager if he thought the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks would cause the financial markets to panic (like they did, screamingly, again today, natch) and he suggested most likely not because a) the markets of recent years have not been reacting to terrorist activity like they used to and b) the markets already have enough to be panicky about (or think they do, anyway), but by bringing up the topic I was reminded I'll be returning to BOS via an AirTran flight from MSP on that anniversary, which caused me to declare in a beer voice that I was not going to fall into the trap of thinking bad thoughts about doing so, which led him to tell me what it was like to be in midtown Manhattan at a conference on that morning in 2001 and watch Broadway go empty and traffic cease and ash-covered people stumble past his hotel and how no one could reach him because cell phone service was overloaded and how his hotel wouldn't let him leave town until the next day because the roads were closed down, and I was reminded of that same day in the town the planes came from, of walking through the Back Bay only to encounter Copley Square doing the same as Times Square and getting to work only to get sent home and sitting on a bench in the deserted Common under the bluest (and most deserted) sky ever and hearing the birds chirp because cars had deserted the city and that it was that silence I can't forget, more than the potential panic of not being able to imagine what was going to happen next, and as we were discussing these things I realized these kinds of stories are going to fill the air for the next 24 days, and that I found it a relief to get my reminiscing out of the way early so I can get on to enjoying the rest of my summer without fear.

True statistics

2011-08-17T15:55:00.008-04:00

2/24/11: date of most recent Asics Landreths purchase.

406.01: running miles logged on most recent Asics Landreths as of 8/17/11.

29: roughly estimated number of pairs of Asics purchased since the year 2000.

499.02: running miles logged in 2011 to date.

7.4: training weeks, out of 18, completed for Marine Corps Marathon.

0: current number of running injuries.

246: number of times I will knock on wood for the rest of the day because I commented, in the middle of marathon training, that I currently have no running injuries, a statement that traditionally results in me getting an injury shortly thereafter.

7.18: average minutes-per-mile pace achieved Tuesday, over 3.1 miles, running half-mile repeats at a TMIRCE track workout.

(7.50: personal record road race average minute-per-mile pace, over 4 miles, in 2007).

12: number of times Tuesday I headed west, while looping the Harvard Stadium track, and thanked God for the gorgeous sunset.

172: my weight, in pounds, when I moved to Boston in 1999.

100: estimated total miles run in the 26 years of life prior to 1999.

132: my weight, in pounds, today.

Infinite: number of times per day I thank God for the ability, desire, and health to run.

(Yet Another) Good Poem

2011-08-16T16:40:00.004-04:00

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

--Mary Oliver

20-Minute Monday: Coffee dream

2011-08-15T19:36:00.003-04:00

Yesterday afternoon it was drizzling and muggy outside and I was on Newbury Street and inside L'Aroma Cafe, ordering an iced red eye and looking at the help wanted sign. At that moment I really, really wanted to just say, "I'll do it. I'll pull espressos and dish quiche for 9 bucks an hour alongside a bevy of open-faced college kids, all completely hipper than thou (and me)."

The place is cozy and bustling. The manual labor once again -- says she of the years of table-waiting provenance -- seemed like it might be cathartic and relaxing all at once. My feet would probably blister over from standing long shifts like that again ... my back too. (Student Driver, who works in hospitality and would love to get out, confirms this job doesn't get better with age.)

But I've always envisioned working as a barista, especially in a pseudo-European stop-off like L'Aroma, as a great romantic ideal: tossing a decent (and decent-paying) job for cheap living and the adrenaline and good company of a coffee shop. Kind of like in the movie In Her Shoes ... when Toni Collette's dowdy, uptight corporate lawyer quits the firm and hurls into life as a dog walker. A move that puts apples in her cheeks, loses her 20 pounds, and gives her courage to relax and persuade her (extremely) hot male friend to date and marry her.

Yeah. It's a chick flick: idealized, unrealistic in its happy ending. I still kind of want it, though. Even if could physically walk 5 dogs at once. Even I could afford to do it.

This afternoon I took a break at Starbucks for a hang with Claudia ... and, otherwise lacking a notebook, thought it would be cute to steal recyclable beverage napkins to write this post on. Then Claudia and I got (predictably) chatty and I had to get back to the office without doing so. Now I'm sitting here after the closing bell, in my office's 28th floor lobby, its windows covered in water, the Charles obscured by the mist rising from the downpour coming down for hours already. Starbucks naps are not only proving impractical (lots of ballpoint drag), but now feel precious and not worth the effort. So I'm writing my wanna-be-barista post on a corporate-themed notepad, in a leather armchair, dry, mentally preparing for yoga, enjoying the comfortable view, and realizing I'm also kind of OK where I'm at.

The napkins will do fine with tomorrow's oatmeal.

-- Monday, August 15 (5:20 - 5:37 p.m.)

the 28th Floor

Market basket (o' quotables)

2011-08-11T18:14:00.012-04:00

Even if you're weary of reading about it, it's hard to avoid the screaming headlines on the recent stock market gyrations: down 600 points, up 400, down 400 again, up 400 again. After today's improbable uptick, no surprise that (even the) New York Times compared this week to (the obvious metaphor of) riding a yo-yo.

I myself am seasick here at the OK Finance Corral. It's the stomach-churn of 2 NFL teams in overtime: one offense driving 80 yards, then missing a field goal; the other driving 40 yards before turning it over; the other team reaching the one-yard line and not converting a third down; and so on.

But the day ended up. Not complaining about that. Also, since I don't have much choice but to read things online all day at work, I've come to cherish the rare brilliance of certain bloggers, friends and journalists whose quotes cut through the millions.

My favorites ... because it's an up day:

Nico Muhly, writing today on his eponymous blog:

"I had a crazy thing where I got back from London and immediately flew to Iceland and then flew home, and all the while, this debt ceiling thing has been raging. I got kind of obsessed with it, because it seems like both sides are working with entirely different sets of facts, rather than interpretations of the facts. I have never seen so many people shout at each other, “that’s just not true!” on television before! We are having a problem of definitions. I am normally used to arguments being about interpretation ... "

Joe Nocera, yesterday in his Times column "When the Markets Swoon":

"I know that there are limits to what any government can do to create jobs. But what one yearns for is a little imagination from this White House. Someone suggested to me recently that the government could create a $50 billion fund for small business, and use it to pay, say, 20 percent of the wages of new hires for two years — first come, first served. Why doesn’t Obama suggest something like that?"

Bob Collins, posting on (the severely down) Monday morning, for MPR:

Market Meltdown: Traders Looking Worried
"One question: If the stock market is so all-fire important to everyone, how come news organizations can only figure out one kind of photograph when covering it?"

Albert Einstein, via my friend Thea's Facebook wall today:

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."

And finally, San Francisco Man, via G-chat last night:

K: Since I've seen you, though, work has also been crazy for me. F***ing politicians....European and American both! The upside is that the drama is kind of adrenalizing.

SFM: Oh dear... financials. Ooogg.

K: My managers and I are jacked, running around, trying to solve problems.

SFM: I've been trying to ignore what's been going on in the stock market et al.

K: Yeah, me too. Today, particularly. The NYT likes to do these big shouting headlines and a minute-by-minute Dow Jones tally. I can't watch it or follow it.

SFM: sensationalism isn't all that sensual.

PS: I myself am rather chuffed to have thought of
putting all these related/not-related quotes in one handy locale.
Just saying.

Midnight rain

2011-08-10T01:07:00.005-04:00

Just walked home from the Broadway T station in the rain. Totally not dressed for the occasion, free of umbrella or jacket or even a shirt with sleeves, but it was only that wispy rain that lands rather quietly on hair and skin and clothes and creates a layer so fine that the wetness doesn't really register until I'm standing at home in the entryway, making a puddle on the rug while sorting through mail. Walked with glasses pushed up on my head because it was easier to walk blind than to walk uphill without windshield wipers. Only certain nights feel this kind of necessary, getting wet and cold and weary at an hour later than it should be. It was part the bourbon, mint and ginger beer mash-up (on the rocks) drank over salmon and duck confit and conversation in Davis Square. Part the quiet that is a summer Tuesday at midnight, and the minor awe felt when it actually IS quiet in this city, when the Southie teenagers are either at home or on some other street, and patio windows of bars are closed, and the squeak of sandals can't be heard over the hum of water as it lands rather quietly, not only on hair and skin and clothes, but on the sidewalks and the street lamps and the parked cars and the other people walking towards me, heads down, hoods up, and respecting their choice to go about it that way, even as I couldn't help but walk with head up, bare arms out, glasses off, water in the eyes, breathing.