Dinner Conversation

I had been feeling like I hadn't been out anywhere fun lately. Then today I got an email from Alisa, let's go out to dinner! Yes! Lynn could come too! So we went to Sagebrush Cantina, a very good Mexican restaurant that everyone else thinks is a good place to go for dinner on a Friday night too. We had to wait around for an hour before getting a table, but it wasn't too bad, they make excellent Margaritas there.

Do you ever look around when you are in a restaurant and wonder what the people at the other tables are talking about? Well I had the unusual sensation of feeling like I was listening in on the conversation that I was already in on. Maybe the tequila caused that. But now I will share it with you:

Alisa: Nolan swallowed a marble and thought he was going to die.

Mindy: Why was a marble in his mouth?

Lynn: I hope it wasn't magnetic. They had that on Grey's Anatomy, it was serious.

Alisa: It wasn't Magnetic, but it was from the Magnetix toys but the ball is made of metal, I checked.

Mindy: I am suprised that he put a marble in his mouth.

Lynn: Our dog swallowed a marble, but it was a real marble. I called the vet and he said if the dog didn't choke on it then it would probably poop it out.

Alisa: Nolan was scared because it hurt his throat going down. Remember when he put the corn kernel up his nose?

Mindy: That's why I'm surprised he would be putting that in his mouth. I remember the corn kernel incident was awful, he had to go to the hospital to get it out.

Lynn: And then you put the corn kernel in your scrapbook.

Alisa: Well he hasn't pooped it out yet.

Mindy: How could you possibly know that?

Lynn: I had to check the dog's poops for the marble. Since they're small I could tell.

Alisa: Nolan's poops are big and soft.

Mindy: Refried beans anyone?

Lynn: The other day Emily had a little skateboard in her mouth, and I got mad.

Alisa: I looked up "swallowed objects" on the internet, there's not much out there.

Mindy: Poison control center is very helpful. At least they were the time that Timmy bit into that glowing necklace...


And then we moved on to other subjects. It was a great night out as it always is with these good friends. And in case anyone were to look over at us and wonder what we were talking about, well, now you know.

A White November

Seasons are out of whack this fall. Some trees still have leaves when they should be down already, and now it's snowing. Pretty, though.

Thanksgiving

Ah, Thanksgiving. A National Holiday rich with tradition going all the way back to when the first pilgrims traced their hands on construction paper and made a turkey out of it. No? Oh, right, it's when we fill our hearts with gratitude for all the wonderful things in our lives such as our health, and our loved ones all around us, good food and shelter...but then what about those who aren't in such good health, or are missing someone dear to them, or lost their job and maybe their homes this year. It starts to seem like what we're really being grateful about is good thing it's them not us, and that seems uncomfortable so we donate some canned goods to the local food bank to try to even things up a bit.

I wonder if there are some billionaires sitting around the table on their own tropical island giving thanks for the private jets that got them all there, and for the skill of their personal chefs, and for how nicely the renovations to the waterfall in the pool came out. And what they're really doing is being thankful that they're not like us, and they donate an old Porsche to Mother Wattles to make themselves feel ok about that.

And then there is the vision of people who have almost nothing, but are happy and grateful anyways, like Bob Cratchit's family in A Christmas Carol. There they were all cheering around that weird figgy pudding, and cute little Tiny Tim..oh it's so confusing.

So I was going to try to come up with a list of things to be thankful about that weren't so much about having or not having, such as "the love of my family and friends" or "freedom" or "Jesus for saving our souls" or "sunsets and sunrises" but I risk making you want to hurl your sweet potato casserole all over the freshly pressed tablecloth, so I won't do that. I considered listing the irrelevant but nice things like: cranes in the lake, my close parking spot at work, blog comments, warm weather in November, a cat that curls up in my lap and purrs. Stuff that just happens, whether I deserve it or not, that makes me feel fortunate. But you know that somewhere within me is another possibly longer corollary list of irrelevant undeserved things that really TICK ME OFF and the thankfulness out there is that I'm finally learning that it's best not to go on about all of it quite so much.

So here's what Thanksgiving really means to me: Going to my Aunt Judy's house and eating the most incredible meal I will have all year. She is a phenomenal cook and goes all out to put forth this amazing spread of food for our family and hers, over 20 of us counting the kids. Of course we bring along our own pathetic little food offerings, a pie or a side dish, but it never seems like enough in comparison to what she has provided for us on that day every year. I do know that she enjoys doing this and that it's important to her to keep a connection to her brother's family and see all us kids and our kids interacting together. That's when I feel gratitude. Thankful to her for giving of her talents in a way that has come to mean so much. It makes me want to be like that. Except for the cooking part, you know how that's going for me.

This summer I got a chance. My niece and nephew were already here for a sleepover, and we worked it out that my mother and Aunt Judy would come over to visit with her two grandaughters. I served deli sandwiches so it wasn't about the food. It was about these 6 cousins, so close in age, having a ball of a time swimming in our backyard pool, going around the path in the park, and playing "tiki bar." So there we were on the patio in the perfect sunshine and the kids were serving us lemonade and cut-up hotdogs that they made themselves, and Aunt Judy was sitting there remarking about how very wonderful this day was for her. She was feeling grateful to me. How good that felt.

So that's what I think thankfulness is to me. It's being able to share the good things you do have, be it a talent for cooking or a sunny backyard, and someone appreciating it. It's such a great feeling, they should make a holiday out of it.

Go out and shoot a Feral Swine

This weekend we got an extra day off for what I call Hunting Day but is officially associated with Veterans Day, which falls earlier in the week. I have mixed feelings about hunting. I can see the attraction of hanging out in the woods, feeling close to nature, and looking for something. It's just the shooting it dead part that makes me uncomfortable. Largely because deer are so pretty, with those big eyes, and the way they run, I just love looking at them. Except when they are staring at me blank-faced from the top of a truck on I-75.

But then on the radio I found out that this year they are allowing a new kind of hunting: Feral Pigs. I never knew they existed around here, but according to the DNR they are a problem that must be stopped, and hunters are invited to take a go at it. I must say I have never seen a furry tusked pig trotting past my backyard but they are even here in this county. There's something about the mental image of those big bad hunters in their camouflage suits driving home with a pig strapped to the truck strikes me as funny and not as disturbing as the deer.

Maybe that's because I don't find pigs as pretty as deer. Or because pigs are already considered food, and deer seem more like lovely forest decorations. And I believe that pigs are supposed to be smart. Perhaps that is how they got to be feral pigs in the first place, they escaped their captivity. If they're smarter than the hunters then it could get interesting.

Mystery from the Mud

Jeffrey and his friend Jerrod were walking around out in the lake, exploring. It is still very low and mostly just mud on our side, due to the low precipitation and a broken dam. (Don't even get me started on that...) I was in the kitchen, where I could look out and see them poking around in the muck, turning over logs to see what hid beneath. Looks like I'm going to have to launder his winter jacket already, the second time he's worn it this season.

The next thing I knew, there was a cacophony of stomping up the deck stairs, shouting and shrieking and muddy hands pounding on the doorwall. Breathless, they were both talking at once: "We found something!" "There's a driver's licence!" "It's a purse!" Jerrod produces a smeary card. "I used my pocket knife to rip it open and I got this out!" (File for later consideration: a 9 year old who carries a knife) I asked where the purse was now. "It's still in the mud! We'll get it out! We need help! TIM! TIM! Get your boots on!" Of course, when nine year olds need assistance, an authority, someone with skills beyond their own, it has to be...a twelve year old!

So they managed to ply the thing out of the muck and lay out the contents on our patio for inspection. Everything was soaked in mud and badly decomposed, but you could make out the contents: A case with some glasses, 2 sets of keys, a checkbook, a 10 dollar bill, loose change, a calculator, a velvet ring box (with a folded paper in it, no ring) a matchbook, makeup.

How very interesting, to be looking at someones possessions like this, uninvited and unexpected. It reminds me of the "Artifacts of the Titanic" exhibit we went to see downtown a couple of years ago. All of those personal objects, retrieved from the bottom of the ocean after so many years, from an event so haunting and dramatic. They seemed to speak the story of the people who once owned them, crossing time and distance to that moment, right there, when you are looking at them and thinking about it. Make me wonder what someone would think if they contemplated the preserved contents of my purse: Hey look a single gold hoop earring...

So here we have an actual mystery: What in the world was the purse doing there? The location of the find is actually in a place that is difficult to get to and unlikely for anyone other than migrating deer and exploring little boys to access. Ramona was over and joined in the speculation, wide-eyed. Here are the theories they considered:

A pick pocket absconded with it from the library to our lake

An animal got ahold of it and dragged it there

The woman was going to change her identity and pitched the purse to erase all evidence of her former self

A murder case...maybe she was buried in the muck along with her purse! (They went to check, no bones found)

Eventually, they agreed upon the one most plausible solution, to their childhood minds, which was, of course:

It must have been dropped from a hot air balloon flying over the lake, as they often do. Yes, that has to be it, they concluded.

Back in the house, the obvious first thing to do was go to the internet and check the National Registry of Missing Persons for the name from the license. Nothing. Next, I googled the name, looking for clues. Not much came up, but there were some videos posted under that name, mostly scenes from a drag race. I couldn't identify the location of the track. There was one video with people in it, a woman doing a silly dance...hey she just mooned the camera! I was trying to match her face with the tiny picture on the driver's liscence when Larry walked in holding the local phone book and dialing the cordless telephone. "I'm calling her." No answer.

Jerrod's father came to the door looking for his muddy son who enthusiatically related the whole exciting story. He asked if we had called the police. Um, no, but we could do that too, sure!

Well, eventually we did reach her on the phone and arranged for her to stop by the next day to pick up her purse. She explained that it had been stolen from her car when it was parked at the house two doors down from ours. Her son had borrowed her car and was over there visiting late at night. She was incredibly nice and certainly not the woman from the internet videos. She said it felt a little weird that strangers had looked in her purse (if only she knew!) So we handed her the plastic bags full of muddy purse contents and she handed each of the boys a gift card to ColdStone Creamery as a reward.

I have to wonder if this is one of those situations that the kids will recall someday when they are older and more tuned in to the realities of the world. When they'll look back at the situations that seemed so incredible and thrilling from a childish perspective, and sit around and recall them with a "hey, remember the time" and for a moment the magic is back. When everything was perceived with the possibility of adventure and excitement. For now we don't know, but the ice cream was really good.

Unpack Your Adjectives

I drove the boys over to the high school to sign them up for wrestling. There is always wrestling going on in our house and it drives me crazy, so I figured this was a way to get them to do it in a place where there aren't any table lamps and maybe release some energy. I can get my money back if they don't like it after the first two practices so I agreed to the sign up even though Sharon told me that I will hate it. I suspect that she is right but we'll see what the boys say.

Anyways, we were driving home and Jeffrey was poking Tim in the back of the head and I had to holler at them to be quiet and don't make me have to stop the car! So it was quiet for a few moments as we drove along and then I heard a little lilting voice singsonging: Un-pack... your ad-jectives...at first I wasn't sure if it was coming from the deep recesses of my inner brain, like a leak or something. I asked "What was that?" Timmy hesitated, and then said, "we're learning about adjectives in school, and the teacher played a video." So the rest of the way home the three of us sang the chorus loudly and repeatedly, and when we got there we looked it up.

It is, of course, from the Schoolhouse Rock series of mini-cartoons that played in between Saturday morning TV shows as a sort of mental experiment on the young Generation Xers to see if they could sneak some education into our brains sideways in between episodes of Bugs Bunny and Scooby Doo. I don't know if it made anyone smarter but those SONGS will be forever burned into my memory. I just wasn't expecting one of them to come out of my own kid's mouth like that.

It turns out that this one was first shown in 1975. I was ten, about the same as Jeffrey is now. And try not to think about this: Tim's 7th grade teacher that showed this video was born in 1981. He probably thinks of it as some quaint retro curiosity. I suppose it is.

So you too can have this tune playing uncontrollably across your consciousness, here it is. This is my first time posting a video on this blog, let me know if it causes you any problems.

Grammar Rock Adjective

Contempt of Court

Maybe you remember the time I stopped to help after witnessing the Rollover accident, and then later got subpoenaed to court as a witness. I like to think of my self as a good citizen, which is why I stopped at the accident scene in the first place, and why I planned to attend the trial. That and the fact that the subpoena was an official document with a Seal of the Supreme Court on it and had this sentence in bold black print:

FAILURE TO OBEY THE COMMANDS OF THE SUBPOENA OR APPEAR AT THE STATED TIME AND PLACE MAY SUBJECT YOU TO PENALTY FOR CONTEMPT OF COURT.

This wouldn't have been too difficult except that the court date was for October 31. I happen to have other things to do that day, #1 being be at work, and I'm out of vacation days. But I asked and found out that there is a policy for this and I would be excused similar to jury duty. #2 is that it is a half-day at the elementary school. So I signed Jeffrey up for a field trip with the extended day program. It's expensive but I wanted to make sure he would be cared for. #3 is that I have always attended (and often organized) the class party and school parade, usually I use vacation time for this important day. This time I donated chips ahead of time and hoped that if my obligation at the court ended early there might be time for me to at least stop in. #4 is that Halloween is always a day with a huge traffic jam because all of the working husbands have been instructed to get home early enough for trick or treating. #5 is that at work they were having a week long international business meeting in my department, and the highlight was to be a department-wide luncheon that day with everyone in costume. On my very first day when I met the executive director he encouraged me to participate in this. Since I knew I couldn't be there, I offered to help organize my work group's costumes, there was a circus theme. I put together a spreadsheet of costume ideas, and my boss liked the "Lion Tamer" idea. He would say he needed to talk to me and I'd get the status of my project together only to find out it was about the costumes. I had to repeatedly explain why I would be absent that day, and did not pay for the lunch.

The subpoena came with a letter from the attorney that contained the line:

"It is always wise to call the court the day before, or the day of the scheduled hearing to verify that the case has not been rescheduled."

So I did that, and after finally getting through the recorded-menu maze I got a clerk on the line and asked about this case, by number. She looked it up and said: "Oh....it looks like that was rescheduled for October 23...but the defendant didn't show up." Incredulous, I asked: "So I shouldn't go anywhere? Why wasn't I informed of the change?" She assured me that there was nothing for me to attend, but suggested I call the lawyer's office for an explanation.

So I did, and got an assistant on the phone. I asked her if I would be in contempt of court for not showing up anywhere. She said no. But why wasn't I told of anything? She said: "Oh, well that's why we put that disclaimer on there, because we really don't keep track of who we sent subpoenas to."

I am flabbergasted.

I ended up working from home that day and taking an hour to go over to the school, and of course having a good Halloween. But still...just who was in contempt of whom in this case?

contempt (kən-těmpt') –noun
1.the feeling with which a person regards anything considered mean, or worthless; disdain; scorn.
2.the state of being despised; dishonor; disgrace.
3.Law.
a.willful disobedience to or open disrespect for the rules or orders of a court (contempt of court) or legislative body.
b.an act showing such disrespect.

Trick or Treat

Things I love about this night:

All the neighborhood lit up, and everyone is out in it.

Adorable little toddlers dressed as fuzzy animals who just make noises for "trick or treat."

Our porch decorations, added to every year, to make sure our house is a "must go to."

Giving out glowing bracelets to the kids that I know the best.

The little Smiles girls, even more lovely when dressed up like princesses.

Timmy stopping home for a minute and letting me dig out some chocolates to munch while I sat on the porch.

When Tim's friend Lewis was at our house when they finished the sub, and he laid down on the lawn and then jumped at kids that walked by.

When Missy the cat went darting out into the darkness and thank goodness we caught her.

Jeffrey as Elvis saying "Thank you, thankyouverymuch" and getting a laugh.

When the little Spartan football players thanked me for putting on the sub parade on Sunday.

That Nee Nee who moved away this year was in the neighborhood again, but crying because she missed everyone.

That a lot of the dads walking down the street were carrying "beverages."

The sense of community I get when I realize I know almost all of these people and their kids.

When people know about my kids allergies and try to give them candy they can have.

Betsy the spoiled little white dog in costume.

Scaring the kids with our bowl with the fake hand on the outside and the black glove on the inside.

That the blasting rain paitently waited until after it was al over to come pouring down.

And my favorite, when a girl looked at me and asked: "Is that your real hair?"

And what are you supposed to be?

Today was the deadline for getting Jeff's Halloween costume ready: the first party of the season. After this it's the subdivision parade that I organize every year, and then his class party and finally trick-or-treating on Halloween night. There is less for Tim to do this year, but he is going to go trick-or-treating. At first we had the idea that they could be the guys from their favorite TV show "Mythbusters" and we started thinking up how to do those costumes but I was concerned that when Jeff went to things alone his wouldn't make sense. And then he announced that he wanted to be ELVIS. How could I argue with that one? Luckily they had an Elvis costume at our local costume shop, although I had to spend a little more on it than I would have liked. I figure that there aren't many big costume years left, so I justified the splurge. Plus Tim's costume won't cost that much, he wants to be a Christmas tree, and I think we already have everything we need in storage.

I just love the Halloween holiday for a lot of reasons, but most of all the dressing up. It is great fun to pull together an outfit, making every detail just right. And you get to pretend to be someone else, it's fun! I already wrote about the ill-fated orange-princess-over-the-winter-jacket fiasco from my childhood (Oh look she's a pumpkin!) but that didn't stop me from trying again every year. In my memory the costume thing was left up to us kids to figure out from what we had around the house, we rarely went out and bought anything. And if you weren't creative the fallback was "bum." Nowadays that would translate to "Homeless Person" and would be extremely politically incorrect.

Another way I know that times have changed is when I look at the flyer for Halloween USA that comes in the mailbox this time of year. It lends credence to the scene in the movie "Mean Girls" where Halloween is a contest for who can look the sluttiest. I know that it wasn't that way when I was that age, at least for me. In those years I made good use of my Grandpa's high quality Knights of Columbus cape and went as a witch.

It's been a while since I've had the occasion to dress up myself. Probably not since last year for Alisa's groovy 60's party. Which was great fun, I found the best miniskirt, and then went and got a lot of mod accessories to go with it. I know I put far more effort into that getup than I would for a similar event wearing "regular clothes." It was a great party, and all of the outfits were hilarious. When I showed my mother the pictures, she gasped. She was horrified that we were wearing things that she used to wear, and now they were silly costumes.

So when do someone's "regular clothes" become a costume? When Elvis Presley pulled on his white jumpsuit could he ever have imagined that 30 years after his death a 9 year old kid would be instantly recognizable as him when dressed that way? I fear that anything we are wearing, at any time could someday be considered a "costume." In a way, everything is. Any time I assemble a special "look" that's really what I'm doing. I'm dressing up like a bike rider, or a wedding guest, or an engineer, witness in a courtroom, stay at home mom going to pick her kid up at the bus stop.

I remember in college the sorority had a special event called "Senior Send Off" where the juniors would make a special breakfast for the graduating seniors, and then perform skits making fun of them. And they would dress up like the person by sneaking into the closets and pulling out someone's signature "look". It was hilarious. And I still remember when a girl named Julie dressed up like me; she put on my ratty old plaid bathrobe and carried an engineering textbook and a pile of junk food.

So maybe that line in between everyday fashions and way out there costumes is actually more of a blur. But if you think about it: if someone went as YOU, what would they have on?

Like lipid pools of nuclear waste

My eyes have been bothering me when I have my contacts in, and I am starting to get that problem of not being able to read things with small print. I did pick up some very cute purple reading glasses with little rhinestones at Target, but they don't really work for me. So I went to the optometrist, it was time for that anyways. When I got there the desk girl showed me a description of a new machine that they have that takes a picture of your retina. It isn't covered by insurance, she said, but it can find serious problems. I agreed and I got to look into this enormous space-age looking contraption. When I went back into the dark eye exam room, the Dr. pulled up a picture on her screen of my eyes. Left eye looked good, right eye has a little white blob on it. She pointed it out and told me that is what something called "mascular degeneration" would look like, but in my case it was probably just a reflection. They we did the "what is the last line that you can read" routine and she gave me a package of new contact lenses to try. We were going to do an experiment of what she called "monovision" where one eye is for close up and the other is for far. Okay. Then I went back to the desk girl and forked over a pile of money for the retina scan and contact lens fitting.

Well by the time I got home my vision was already weird, but she told me it would take a while to get used to it. For the next several days my vision got worse, especially in my right eye. At work it got so bad I could barely read my computer. Good old Bob tried to help, he got a box for me to put my computer on to position it for better viewing. He suggested that sometimes vision problems are caused by diabetes. Another symptom of that is extreme thirst. Hey, I have been feeling thirsty. I also made the mistake of mentioning this to my mother, who totally freaked out and looked up vision problems in "Merck's Manual" and came up with a big list of horrifying things that could be wrong with me, and then kept calling me to ask about it. Finally it got so bad that I just ripped the contacts out and turned to wearing my glasses, which I don't normally do because they make me look like Jimmy Neutron's teacher Mrs. Fowell. And I went back to the optometrist.

I told her about my bad vision, hurting eyes, and sense of terror about the inconclusive retina scan. She re-did the scan, and then checked my eyes another way by putting in florescent yellow eye drops. That allowed her to scan for scratches with a black light. After she put the drops in there was nothing to wipe my eyes with so she went looking for kleenex while I blinked and cried this stuff all over my face. Finally, she was able to determine that there's nothing seriously wrong with my eyes or vision. It was that the contacts I was trying were a smaller diameter than my usual ones and had irritated my eyes. She ordered a different kind and wrote me a prescripton for eye drops.

Since I was nearby I went to Kroger to get the prescription. While I was there I walked around the store looking at things. I like that center aisle called "seasonal." I was looking at the Halloween decorations, there were all kinds of spooky things with fake blood and yellow eyes...YELLOW EYES! I hadn't looked in a mirror since she put the eyedrops in! I was a spooky thing with florescent yellow eyes! I hurried home as quickly as I could, I hope I didn't scare anybody too much.

Get thee to a Monastery

The city that we live in is at the very outer edge of what can be described as a metropolitan area. It is only in recent years that it started to become "suburban" with new construction popping up all around the few structures that were already there. The "country." So we have these recent subdivisions all mixed in with cottages and some formerly secluded properties such as the Dominican Sisters Motherhouse that I have mentioned before. It is actually a campus of buildings that consists of an old mansion facing a small lake with a darling white glassed in gazebo, a daycare/preschool, several structures for retreats and offices, a small cemetery, the giving garden, and a main structure that is newer which is really a nursing home for nuns and a chapel that is open to the public for mass on Sundays. There used to be an old abandoned mental hospital on some property in the back and I when I would ride my bike around there I'd get a creepy feeling. Then they sold that property and ripped it down and built luxury homes where it used to be. (Do they know?) We often attend mass at the chapel and I get to see the nuns. Mainly they are extremely elderly but there are a few "younger" ones (in their 60s) who always impress me as sort of strong yet gentle women in incredibly comfortable looking shoes.


Several miles east down the same road is a Benedictine Monastery. The road is dirt and it goes up a hill where the land is still mainly undeveloped, very beautiful area. On my more ambitious bike rides I used to go past the entrance and wonder about it. You can only see the sign and a driveway through the woods from the road. I always wanted to make a lot of noise when I drove by, break that vow of silence, but I didn't.


Then recently I found out that they have mass there that the public can attend. A chance to satisfy my curiosity! I have this fascination about monks, and it's not from reading The Mermaid Chair in book club. Really. I just wonder what they're all about.





So today we went there and I got to take these pictures so I could share them with you. It would have been a great place for viewing the fall colors except for that the odd weather we've had has made for a dud of a color season so far. The property sits upon the highest point in Oakland county, and the view from the chapel is incredible. It is nothing like I expected. I guess I thought it would be dark and gothic and made of crumbling stone. The architecture is very unusual and it seems relatively new.





The monks were there, there are only about 1/2 dozen of them, and they look like normal men. They were wearing black robes with hoods, but they had normal dress shoes on with them, not ropey sandals. Apparently they spend their time in this beautiful place tending to their large garden, playing with their 2 large dogs, doing art, writing poetry, and praying. It sounds lovely, doesn't it. Oh! And they make jam and salad dressing. I know this because it was there in THE GIFT SHOP!!! Yes, there really is a gift shop there. Now you know too.

High Maintenance

"Did anyone ever tell you you're high maintenance?"

That's what the man who sits across the aisle asked me today. The answer is NO, I have not been told that. The situation at the moment was there were 2 facilities men laying on the floor of my cubicle with flashlights and tools trying to rescue my lunchbag and purse who had somehow gotten themselves trapped inside my desk file drawer. They finally got it open by smashing into the thing with a giant bang and then wrenching it open. Before I called them I had asked Bob to to help to try to get the drawer open and we tried our own series of banging and jimmying and wrenching.

Earlier in the day I had decided that the screen on my laptop was too smeary and asked Bob if he had any cleaner for it, which he did but when we inspected it decided it might not be the right kind and I got the IT guy to give me a special little wipe, like a wet-nap. And I also noticed that my cubicle smelled weird and ended up going to Wal-Mart at lunchtime and buying some citrus scented cleaner, and showing it to Bob. And the day before I had managed to pinch a nerve in my back by sitting down too quickly. When I complained about it to Bob he showed me some stretches that might help and we stood in our cubicles practicing them.

Oh dear. I have become "high maintenance." When did that happen? It must stop.

Note to self: Try not to bother poor old Bob so much.

Tulips

We are having a bout of unusual weather for early October. It is in the 80's, sunny and humid. I am LOVING it. One last blast of the weather I like the best. Today I took a long bike ride where I could see a lot of the lakes around here, and then I planted some tulip bulbs that Jeff and I grabbed last week when we were at the hardware store for something else. They caught my eye because they contained my favorite tulip that I had at our last house, called Shirley. It is an ivory color with a purple edging, almost lacy looking. And I always remembered that name, it reminds me of my best friend's mother. I wonder if she knows she has a flower namesake. I've always liked it that roses and some tulips have names, it adds to the fun. The other ones I put in today are called Demeter, and "Mauve Mix." (boring!) I like planting bulbs in the fall because when they come up in the spring I get to remember what I was doing when I planted them. And they look so great when everything else is still struggling to get going. But then there are those ugly brown stems to look at later. I know that there are ways to hide them but I've never had success at that. If all goes well then sometime in May I will put up pictures of beautiful flowering tulips.

Potential Chaos

There were two big “news items” recently that I found I had a similar reaction to. The first was the national strike at GM last week. I drove to work hearing about how the strike was set to begin at 11:00 am unless an agreement was reached. So at 10:59 I got up and asked people if a bell was going to go off, or what. There wasn’t much activity that I could notice but at the end of the day there were some picketers at the end of the drive into the property. It was nice out so I had my windows down, and when I stopped at the light there was a man standing there with his sign, just a couple of feet away. It was hard not to make eye contact, and he had one of those blue worker shirts on, and reminded me of my Grandpa. I said “Well you got a nice day for this.” He nodded. Light still red, I went on: “I hope it doesn’t have to last too long.” He nodded again. Then the light turned. “I wish you well with it!” I said as I pulled away, and he kind of lifted his sign to me, like a thank-you gesture. The next day at work there were a lot of emails about what to do if strikers tried to block your entrance, and how to avoid altercations with them. There were also emails about how our building would be affected, such as closing down some of the bathrooms, and what to do with your food garbage since building maintenance is union. I was amused to see some ladies in high heels struggling to empty a garbage can into a dumpster. (They had supervisors performing some of their worker’s tasks.) And I wondered whether I as being a SCAB when I walked over to the main garbage area to toss out my apple core, instead of letting it rot in the can at my desk. But then agreement was reached and it was all over. Inventory adjustment? We’ll never know.

The other was the big buildup to the state government shutdown that was going to happen by Sunday night if a budget agreement wasn’t achieved. Since I was up north watching silly movies I was insulated from a lot of that but I still had the sensation of going to bed not knowing if the next morning there would be prisoners out roaming the streets and people not being able to apply for trailering licenses or whatever the impact would be. But agreement was reached and everything went back to normal except for the effects of the new budget on taxes and services.

All of this reminded me of the time we all believed that some BIG thing was going to happen which was Y2K, when all of the computers were going to shut down on New Year’s Day 2000 and so we had to fill our tanks with gas and bathtubs with water and buy cans of SPAM to eat when all of the grocery stores shut down after the looting was over and there would be no food left and giraffes would roam the streets since the gates to the zoo were electronic. I felt a kind of disappointment that I didn’t go to any parties that year because we were sitting at home checking the batteries in our flashlights. And then the next day when Larry said he had to go to the store because we were out of diapers and formula and I had to think what were we doing with SPAM and all this bottled water but not enough supply of the essential things for our baby to last even 2 days? But again, nothing actually happened after all the big buildup.

I am almost ashamed to admit that there is a small part of me in these situations that wants to wish that the BIG THING will happen, and shake everyone up and out of their mundane daily lives and force them to really think about who and what is important, and sort of start over with a fresh perspective, do it all different. This is probably why I even LIKE it where there are disaster drills at work, where everyone has to stop what they are doing and go and stand in the hall, or outside. And there we all are, a big group of carbon-based life forms all equal as we follow the instructions, and no one gets out of it just because they have an office with walls or wear a blue work shirt or have the authority to put a stop to that Engineering Change you were trying to get approved. Just for that moment, we are all just people who just might need each other’s help someday just because they are they ones standing nearby when IT happens.

And of course there have been some actual BIG THINGS that actually have happened such as 9/11 and Katrina that maybe could have resulted in everything changing for the better, but then, sadly, didn’t.

Maybe it’s time I realize that there isn’t going to be some external BIG THING that comes along and rocks my world. But I can rock my own world by making big changes like the ones I have in the last year. And though they don’t affect the collective consciousness of the people around me like I wish something would, I now know that I do have the power within me to shake things up enough to make it all seem different. Even if only just a little.