The fix
I meant to write here to say that I found my fix, my change-junkie fix. I switched up my career again, back to journalism, which given macro trends is pretty counter to, well, everything.
And the job is great. And I could, if I was noble enough, write an earnest post about how thankful I am to be back in journalism at this crucial time with an opportunity to take a run at a new business model. All that is great.
But what really motivated me to write is @fightingfinn. She wrote recently about her One and Only. It was heartfelt and lovely and I could so relate.
I am sitting next to my own One and Only right now. He’s watching the Charlie Brown Christmas Special for the second time this season and keeps laughing his head off.
My husband is going to come home from walking the dog and be mad at me for paying another the $2.99 to Comcast to view this very ’70s, vaguely religious show for the second time. But Judson is laughing so hard he can’t even sit still. Belly laughs. Repeating every line with his own spin.
And as much as I always say I don’t want to be a mommy blogger, it’s this kid that keeps rising to the top of my priority and interest list.
Now that I work downtown I have occasion to pick Judson up at school on foot and walk with him to the bus stop to catch the bus home. Both of us enjoy it more than the exercise warrants. (I’ve always liked public transportation. I know, it’s odd.)
Tonight we barely missed a bus and Judson cried real tears, inconsolable, taking it personally that the bus hadn’t waited for us. A few minutes later another bus showed up and he was squealing with delight. “IT’S A FOURTEEN!” he shouted. A weary commuter smiled and said, “I feel the same way.”
Experiencing the highs and lows of the everyday is probably more painful than it needs to be but I’d rather feel more than not at all.
Also: If I could make my ringtone the sound of my kid’s belly laugh? I’d totally do it.
Regret
I don’t have many regrets.
That may sound trite but it’s true. First, I am more likely to regret something I have done than regret something I haven’t. When I’m in doubt about whether or not to do something I usually do it. Second, I don’t usually regret the maybe-less-than-optimal decisions I’ve made because I tend to believe that all the flubs and mis-steps got me here, and here ain’t bad. Sort of like that Poi Dog Pondering song, “Thanksgiving.”
But I was thinking about this the other night, trying to come up with some things I regret not doing and I landed on a few.
The first is easy. In the mid-90s I was living in San Francisco with an office job and roommates and a boyfriend. A typical mid-20s existence that I desperately wanted to escape. I wanted to be a real writer, a journalist, an adventurer — really anything that had to do with exotic locations and the romance of words.
So one day I received in the mail an amateurish type-written flier inviting me to join a group of writers, rogues and literary-types for heavy drinking and a Liar’s Dice tournament in North Beach. It was something close to those exact words.
I held it in my hands, it was printed on sea foam green copy paper. I was fascinated: not only did I dream of hanging out with writers, rogues and literary-types, but I adored Liar’s Dice. I was good at it. I all but looked over my shoulder as I read the invitation again. Who was it from? How did they get my name, my address? There wasn’t a clue.
The thing I loved most about living in San Francisco was the possibility that anything could happen on any given day. It was foggy and expensive and, granted, I’ve never lived in New York, but San Fransico had glamor lurking on every block, legends both established and emerging and just enough intimacy to throw people together in unexpected ways.
The Liar’s Dice invite vibrated with potential. I pictured a clubby dive bar packed with all the best writers in town, dice rattling and pints draining.
And I didn’t go.
I didn’t even go.
Stinson
The lagoon at Stinson Beach was glassy, reflecting the perfect sky. Robed in fog one morning, but clear the rest. Rambling modern houses crowded its bank, dipping docks into the water, trailing canoes and kayacks.
We sat, lounging on well-worn outdoor furniture or stretching out on its padding on the weathered deck, and talked. For four days straight.
It’s what we do. Friends since the furniture was new. Or at least newer.
We met early in our 20s, some of us even earlier: awkward teenagers finding our way in dorm-life college. Over the decades we have fought and forgiven. We cheer each other’s strenghts and make jokes of our own weaknesses.
It isn’t therapy, these days at the beach. We’re as likely to gossip about celebrities as we are to mention our own lives. We pick up conversation threads from when we last spoke, though now the interim has been filled in some with online updates.
We watch paddlers and fishing pelicans.
We don’t tell each other everything. But there is a comfort in knowing that we could.
My Escort
Chapter One
My older sisters (2) will tell you that the fact that my parents bought be a car when I was in high school proves that I was, perhaps even am, spoiled. I would counter that at least 50% of my sisters did not receive their drivers licenses until well beyond high school.
The fact was that my parents were sick of negotiating with me for the use of the family cars and/or carpooling with me to work/school/whatever else. The solution came in the form of 0.9% financing and a gently used 1983 Ford Escort that was a screamer of a deal at the dealership owned by a guy who went to the same college as my dad.
So it was announced: I was getting a car. I could use it to get around during my senior year in high school and then sell it when I needed the money for college.
Chapter Two
I went to college in Santa Cruz, California and when I decided I needed my car there, I flew home to get it and my parents bought me one of those lunch box pull-out car stereos (so the robbers wouldn’t steal it, get it?) I drove the car from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Santa Cruz. But to give myself a break from the driving, I took the car ferry between Haines, Alaska and Prince Rupert, British Columbia.
When I first got on the ferry, I loved it. It was like a cocktail party with outdoorsy types and whales on the starboard side. I met a bunch of nice people including a chatty old guy who was getting off in Juneau. While the ferry was in port he suggested we visit a local bar, one of those places where you can throw peanut shells on the floor. So I climbed into his pickup with him and went driving off into the evening light, listening the gun rack rattle behind my head. I remember vaguely questioning my judgment.
We went to the bar, enjoyed a beer and stopped at a grocery store so I could buy some provisions for the balance of my trip. Then he drove me back to the dock where we found the gangway up and the ferry preparing to pull away. I bolted from the cab of his truck with a “Thanks” and a wave and bellowed to the guys untying the ferry. I could picture my Escort in the hold, loaded with all my earthly belongings, including a small cardboard box of cassette tapes and the lunch box stereo hidden cleverly beneath the passenger seat to thwart robbers.
The dock guys swung me on board, my provisions under my arm. I ran up to a family of brothers from Round Lake, Minnesota I had met on the fist leg of the trip and was about to launch into the fresh tale of my close shave when a voice over the loudspeaker stole the punchline. “Will the girl who just jumped ship please come to the bursar’s office and show your ticket?”
I kind of dated one of those brothers for a while. He drove with me for a while after we got off the ferry. He made fun of my John Denver tape.
Chapter Three
As it turns out, the 1983 Ford Escort was one of the worst cars ever made. Something was constantly wrong with it. I lived in San Francisco after college and the car would die without warning or explanation and I would have to pull over and wait until it would start again. It became a joke among my friends and once when I was stranded and it wouldn’t start, I had to call the boyfriend I was in the midst of breaking up with for help. The car had to go.
I spent a week calling various junk yards and charities finding out the best way to get rid of the car. The best offer I came up with was $10 cash for the car and I wouldn’t have to pay any towing fees. I held off, hoping I could do better.
But then one Sunday, I was walking home from the grocery store enjoying the slanting sunlight of a summer evening when I remembered: Monday morning street cleaning. The car, which I hadn’t driven all week in a fit of PTSD, would have to be moved. I walked toward the Escort weighing the odds of it starting. I perched the grocery bag on the roof, slid in the stale smelling car and turned the key. Nothing.
I got out again. Cursing mightily and grabing for the groceries. I made eye contact with a hapless looking guy walking up the sidewalk trailing his unicycle behind him. I scowled.
“Hey it can’t be that bad,” he said to me with a carefree grin. “At least you have a car.”
I turned on him, I’m sure I was laughing maniacally. “Car?” I sputtered. “You want this car? $10 and it’s yours.”
He carefully set down his unicycle and reached into his pocket. He counted out a stack of one-dollar-bills collected that afternoon from tourists at the wharf taking in his juggling routine. He had 12. “I’ll give you $12.”
The transaction was simple. I ripped a swipe of my grocery bag and wrote a bill of sale. I took his $12, informed him he’d need a tow truck and shook his hand. We parted and I walked toward home, feeling smug.
He had to chase me down. I’d forgotten to give him the keys. And later he called to work out the transfer of the title and told me, post-mechanic, that I didn’t get a bad deal.
I spent most of the money that night on a forgotten movie.
Digging in
So maybe you saw, but I was super honored to be write a story for Back Fence PDX. After all, they inspired this blog, those beautiful women with their literary sensibilities.
The theme this time was Fish Out of Water and I asked Melissa if i could write because, really, I’ve spent pretty much all my adult life feeling like a fish out of water. I figured there had to be a story in there somewhere.
My not-so-secret secret is I like to shake things up (see: change junkie). I left Fairbanks Freaking Alaska to go to U.C. Santa Cruz. I showed up there, blinking, without a friend in the world, wearing ACID WASHED JEANS. Talk about a shell shock. It was exhilarating and, although I made fabulous friends in college, there was also anonymity and the ever-present possibility of reinvention. And I really liked that. So I kept moving.
So, as I’ve mentioned, Mike is looking for a job. And given that Portland is a small market and what he does is kind of specific, so there’s been all this talk about maybe moving. And as much as I love Portland (it’s home) I also love the idea of a shake-up. I have this idea that it takes strength of character to be able to pack up and move some unknown place.
But maybe we’re not moving after all. And I realized last night that not moving is more daunting than moving. And that digging in and putting down roots might even take more strength of character than moving every few years and starting over.
Small example: This blog. I haven’t decided what to do with it, really. And the whole domain might have changed if we packed up and moved, right? But the idea of being in limbo has made it easier to put off making any decisions or putting in much effort. See how it works?
The New Austerity
Here are the things I’ve given up since Mike was laid off:
1. The housekeeper was a luxury to begin with. I never really got comfortable saying “my housekeeper.” Mike would just call her “The Lady.” I would stumble over her name, Olia, which I never properly learned how to spell because I wrote the checks to her boss, the owner of Fresh Start Housekeeping. They were wonderful in every way and if you live in Portland, I’d recommend them. There is nothing quite like walking into your house after it’s been owned for three hours by a someone who knows what they’re doing with cleaning implements. For a good 24 hours, you can pad across the spotless floor in bare feet. And you didn’t have to nag or argue with anyone about how it got that way.
2. The lattes were another extravagance. I may not be a math wizard, but I know that $3 a day for fancy coffee is an indefensibly reckless expense. But! I work from home. And before I acquired a job-hunting officemate, those trips to Stumptown or Haven or Peet’s supplied what was sometimes my only face-to-face interaction of the day. I loved ambling through the neighborhood with Seeger, tying him up outside the door of a shop for all to admire while I chatted up baristas (or sullenly mumbled my order, depending on my mood) and procured my foamy, caffeinated delight. These days: The dog still needs to be walked, I still amble. But I miss the ceremony of those exchanges. I miss the first sip. I miss wrestling with my eco-guilt when I forgot my thermos mug at home. I miss the extravagance of it all.
3. We go to the library pretty much every week to get books for the boy. We have to. We read to him every night and without some new material, it’s pretty easy to lose your mind. So it occurred to me that instead of picking up a paperback at Powell’s I could just, you know, check out a book. Groundbreaking. The problem with this little brainstorm is that I go to the library with the boy. And I go utterly unprepared with a title or author of something I’d like to read. So I walk over to the adult fiction section with an armful of books about animals and trains and start scanning. The boy, meanwhile, starts running laps around the library. I linger to read the back of a novel they have propped up on top of the shelf. It sounds like crap. The boy does another lap and clips some guy working on the computer. I finally grab something that looks mildly interesting and wrestle the boy to the checkout desk. The first time I did all this, I got lucky. I grabbed Roddy Doyle’s Paula Spencer, which even though I haven’t read the prequel, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, was a delight. Last night, though, I picked up some novel about a young woman in war-torn Iraq. It looked like it had potential, but it’s poorly written enough to be annoying. I’ll finish it, though, out of some retarded sense of duty. I’ll just be annoyed.
4. Okay, I can’t really blame the wine fast on The New Austerity. But it became evident that I was using it to self-medicate and going through bottles at an alarming rate. So I swore it off for lent and it’s been a helpful exercise. I haven’t given up beer or liquor, I’m no superhero. But those are easy to turn down, it’s wine that seduces me.
5. Having a nearly 3-year-old it’s not like we went out to eat a ton, but we did have our circuit of brewpubs with train tables and decent food that we frequented when I couldn’t be bothered to cook. Weekly pizza nights. Getaways without the boy to the bar at Higgins for pricey wine and unbelievably good food. A few weeks back we tried pizza night at home but the misshapen pies and odd toppings tasted like a budget. But sometimes we pull of a meal that wouldn’t look out of place on a parchment menu. Tonight it was rosemary lamb shoulder chops served with mashed sweet potatoes tinged with basil and topped with shaved parmigiano and perfect green beans. A glass of wine and I could have ignored the smeared food on the dining room table and the distinct stickiness of the floor.
But, yeah, nobody’s suffering unduly.
By the way, I have a little blog crush on Fighting Finn. You should check her out.
New realities
I was at a conference last month.
I’ve spent many hours of the last decade in conferences of one sort or another. Mostly as a journalist where sometimes I was there to get a story and sometimes just there to learn about what the next story might be. I remember spending a day at a conference at the Wharton School of Business and coming home feeling like my head had literally expanded because I had learned so much there.
Other times I’ve sat in conferences and let the spoken words wash over me as I used the time to do other things. Sort ideas, plan logistics, imagine romantic conversations, scan the room for familiar faces.
But at this last conference I went to, I realized those days are gone. I sat in the back with my laptop, catching up on some email, grateful for the wi-fi access. When I finally looked up, I marveled at all the bent heads. Was anyone paying attention to the lecture? Doing more than glancing at the images on the screen between squinting at the one on their Blackberry?
Even during the break it seemed different than the, well, old days. Sure there was still glad-handing, still obligatory hello’s when you bumped into someone at the coffee urn. But smart phones are also wielded like security blankets: Don’t talk to me right now, please, I’m picking up an urgent message, I’m needed elsewhere. I actually had a guy sit next to me at lunch chiming in boisterously on a conference call while he polished off his salad and started in on the chicken.
It strikes me as odd.
Then something else happened. My husband was laid off from his job. It was a wrenching event for our family but nothing unusual. All of us are staring down economic uncertainty in one way or another.
But the upheaval has introduced a certain amount of uncertainty — which, I have to admit, I find ridiculously exciting in some ways. For example, there is a job possibility for M. in an exotic, far-away city and me, being the change junkie, I’m all for it.
So I of course get all ahead of myself and start poking around online and find the blog of a mother of a toddler who has moved to that city from the Western United States for her husband’s job.
And I start reading. And I keep going until I have read all of the posts. And I’ve developed strong opinions about this person. I have agreed with her and disagreed. I have met her friends and gotten to know intimate details about her family. I have judged her adaptation to this new life and considered how I might do things differently. I have conjured up advice I might give her (but never left a comment on her pages) and considered whether we might be friends if we became neighbors despite our many differences.
While the potential job has receded into the rear view mirror as a crazy idea we once tossed around. I still find myself checking this woman’s blog. I feel sad that one day I’ll probably stop reading. I think I might miss her.
And that strikes me as odd.
Obsolescence
chirp
The first time you hear it, you’re never sure. Is that what I think it is? I am, of course awake, listening to the winter wind and rain pound the side of the house, wishing I could sleep. My mind, wanders aimlessly as I wait.
chirp
Yes. Yes it is. The smoke alarm. The one in the hallway. That ridiculous relic of 1970’s-era technology. Why do we still need smoke alarms?
I remember my childhood best friend, a spunky redhead named Sharon Sue, solemnly showing me a a collapsible ladder she kept under the bed of her second-floor room. Its box had a picture of a blond woman in her quilted bathrobe, clutching a toddler and climbing down the ladder from a window with flames shooting out of it, a fireman with sideburns waiting for her on the ground below.
The danger of fire somehow seemed real then in a way it doesn’t now. Especially in soggy Portland where everyone in my house (except occasionally the dog) sleeps on the ground floor within inches of a window.
chirp
Nice. Not quite loud enough to wake my sleeping husband but just enough to keep me from drifting off, back to sleep.
I know. One is supposed to replace the batteries of these ridiculous smoke alarms every year. But it seems wasteful to change out a battery before it’s done and, frankly, I’m lazy.
It’s only a matter of time before smoke alarms will seem quaint. Soon we’ll all live in smart houses with brilliant appliances and high-speed everything. The house won’t need a fire alarm because it will know better than to actually catch on fire.
chirp
I mean, I downloaded the new Firefox today and found the whole process rather cumbersome even though the download was snappy and the install painless. I mean shouldn’t my laptop just know there’s a new version of my browser and do all that on it’s own?
Then I start thinking about shrink-wrapped boxes of software on the shelves of stores like CompUSA. Yes, smoke detectors are going the way of shrink wrap. Yes, the way, as they say, of the poor, flightless Dodo.
chirp!
Is it getting more insistent. And annoying.
I picture getting up, dragging a chair over to the floor beneath my bane and reaching up to wrench it off the ceiling, opening the back door and tossing it outside. Yes, I suppose I could just replace the battery, but the chances of me figuring out how to take out the old one, let alone locating the proper replacement battery somewhere in the house are about equal with the odds of me, oh I don’t know, becoming a celebrated opera singer.
But I have to do something. So I wake up Mike. He gets up, pees, and stands listening in the middle of the room. For at least a minute.
The chirping, it seems, has stopped on its own.
7 Things (I hate about memes … just kidding)
I guess this is one way to, ahem, put this blog in a bit more of a spotlight.
The fabulous JCloe tagged me for this 7 things thingie and I hemmed and hawed briefly about whether or not I want to play the game. I mean, really, haven’t we all grown out of the chain letter phase? But I didn’t want to let the diva of classic rock down.
So, here it goes. First, the obligatory listing of the rules, which are:
1. Link to your original tagger and list these rules in your post. (check)
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post. (see below)
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs. (see below below)
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged. (see Twitter)
Okay then. Now the hard part. My 7 things.
1. I am an aspiring geek. Here is a short list of the geekeries to which I most aspire: cheese geekery, social media geekery, WordPress geekery (stop laughing, I am just beginning this one), wine geekery and smart-grid technology geekery.
2. I hate The Gypsy Kings, chewing gum and lima beans. I know, hate is a strong word, but it applies in these cases. Except maybe The Gypsy Kings because I am sure they are nice people.
3. I grew up in Alaska but spent the better part of my formative years in denial of that fact (think mini skirts and tanning beds and teeny tiny little shoes with no socks – it was the ’80s!). I hate cold weather and I don’t know Sarah Palin.
4. I have written about open source software in one capacity or another since 1998. Yet I have never owned a machine, on purpose anyway, that runs open source. (This is not a fact of which I am proud.)
5. I like to bust out whenever possible. “Busting out” in my definition includes everything from packing up and moving to a new city (complicated currently by the fact that I’m not-so-secretly in love with Portland) to dressing the busting-out part for no particular reason.
6. I love going to movies by myself, going to bed with wet hair, and drinking pink wine in the summer, red wine in the winter and white wine all year round.
7. My son is going to be famous. My husband and I are banking on it. But he has all the traits: huge head, outgoing personality, a knack for charming large groups of people…
Tah-dah!
And here are my 7 tags:
1) Tyler Ashcraft of Spending Days (and, yes, I’ll fix the link on my blogroll) because he beat me to this blogging thing and I’m sure his New Year’s resolution is to update more often.
2) The inimitable Don G. Park who was also helped nudge me in the blog direction and who is sure to have an interesting seven.
3) Jay Parkhill of Startup Toolbox, a talented lawyer, my Twitter tutor and dear friend who is really bikey and belongs in Portland.
4) And of course Cory Frye of The Daily Wrazz, truly the most creative writer I know and the coolest cat in Albany, Ore.
5) Kathleen Mazzocco of kmazz, whose global savvy, PR smarts and approach to life in general I really admire. Plus she takes awesome food porn photos in France and then shares.
6) The lovely and talented Media Chick of I Heart Media because I’m a huge fan and she’s joining the Beer & Blog franchise and ‘09 is going to be a BIG year for her, I can just tell.
7) And, finally, reaching randomly into my list of Twitter friends who blog, all of whom would generate interesting lists that I would surely enjoy reading, I tag Mara Collins, Oleoptene,who I had the pleasure of meeting at a recent BackFencePDX and whose writing I enjoy.
Endings
I didn’t even consider how apropos it is to write about endings this time of year until I just typed that title. So please don’t think I’m cheesy.
Endings are the most difficult part of every story. It’s much easier to wrap up a story with an “And that’s my story,” or “Tah-dah,” or even “The End” than it is to think of a true ending.
But it’s reflective of life isn’t it? The endings are never so clear cut. The calendar may say January 1 but the load of laundry I put in the drier last year will stay there until I take it out and fold it, I still need to lose 15 pounds, my desktop is still a mess and I’m still a mom, wife, friend, employee of the same cast of characters. Where’s the ending?
Relationships do end. But they seldom have a well-defined ending. Any breakup I’ve ever been a party to has happened in fits and starts. Despite the declarative statements there is often breakup sex and more often tearful phone calls. The shorter the entanglement the easier the clean break. But the longer the plot line of the relationship the harder it is to write a suitable kicker.
As a newspaper reporter, the easiest way I found to close a story was to give someone the last word. I’d dig through my notebook and find a suitably pithy, summing-up quote and I’d use it as the final words of the story. It was a crutch that I resolved one year to abandon, so I pushed deadlines to the limit trying to write my own suitable closing lines, which were so often, well, bad. When I had copy editors calling me at home at night to suggest changing my endings to close with a quote instead, I abandoned my quest.
Who knows, maybe it’s just me who finds endings tricky, arduous and elusive. After all in my first year as a flack, the loss of my first account brought me to breakup-worthy tears (the been-jilted kind).
For example, right now I’m struggling with how to end this post. This post that few will read and fewer will remember. Because it seems to me I had a point to make when I started here or at least thought I’d find my way to one by the time I got here.
Tah-dah?