Alecto's Ophelia

What it is

I will fix this. You can't see the level to the right but you always have to make a choice in this house: level to the ceiling or level from the floor. I have no excuse other than bad math for the spacing. 

Pushing Toward the Light of Day

1. Holland, MI: I was born. My parents were married; April 1964 and August 1963, respectively. We were there for a while.
   1. on a side note, I know what my father was doing at a small, private, christian, liberal arts school of Dutch origin, but for the life of me, I can't figure out how the hell my mother, from the Calvin plains west of Kirkwood, Muhszurra (say it with me, say it right, don't be an asshole), the foothills of the Ozarks, a natural born daughter of the revolution, and one generation off the farm, landed herself in Holland, MI. In retrospect, my parents left out a serious chunk of their lives before each other. Makes you wonder. 
      
      
2. Somewhere in between the undergraduate work at Hope, the post grad study at Michigan State (the public one, not that other business), and the first step up to the lectern, we must have lived somewhere. The words, Cherry Street strike a chord but I can't really place it. I would put Cherry Street in Holland followed by North Kalamazoo. Had to be late '66 or early '67. The only picture of Jack, which is in my mind and not a photograph, is a fat baby dipping his hand into a bucket of interior, institutional, white paint. So maybe we were one and three, and there was a big boxer dog named Bill, an igloo in the back yard come out of a hard winter, the gun on the television and the rat poison in the basement I was certain would come up those stairs after ME. Personally. 
   
   
3. North Kalamazoo, MI: As described above, but throw in the red kitchen table and matching chairs which most likely came from the Salvation Army, and from the stories we're told, my parents weren't quite ready to be parents. Everybody made it out alive, except for Dr. King. He did not and I was a week and a day shy of four years old. We had to move a bit south to the Co-op in Kalamazoo proper and I couldn't tell you exactly when.
   
   
4. Kalamazoo, MI: After we left the the big white house on Whatever Street, the process of 'socializing the kids' began. It wasn't a smooth ride. I was picked up from the community sandbox and dragged home to my mother for the crime of respectfully addressing her daughter as 'nigger'. That may have been the single-most shock in my early childhood development; the beginning of the age of discovery coming to an abrupt and very near end followed very quickly by the somewhat disembodied understanding that I was the most protected species in the country, maybe the world even: 
   
   1. I am a girl. I can choose to work or I can take the easy way out and find a man to take care of me (yup, early thoughts including the concept of 'easy way out')
   2. I am white. White and untouchable (an ocean of guilt and shame followed by a deep breath of relief)
   3. I am of the educated class. I have much opportunity (whatever the hell that looked like)
   4. I was an early beneficiary of the Head Start program, launched one year after my birth and 'designed to help break the cycle of poverty by providing preschool children of low-income families with a comprehensive program to meet their emotional, social, health, nutritional, and psychological needs'. Refer to bullet 3, above. We moved east. Our parents couldn't afford to teach.
      
      
5. Manchester, CT: A long drive from the place of Great Lakes in a 1964 Rambler. My father lived in the men's dorm in Hartford; otherwise known as the YMCA. My mother talked about the color of the leaves in New England. From an apartment in an almost racially mixed co-op to an apartment in a complex where the families were either on their way up, or on the way down but pretty much lily white. It was a stopping point. My parents had friends next door and I did too. Her name was Meg. We kept in touch long enough for one year younger Meg, to obtain the no longer at her parents' home address and send one final letter. In retrospect, I believe she was still looking for approval. Her parents remained academics, Meg graduated at the very tippy top of her most likely very large class and I walked out of high school in April of my senior year. I went to first and most of second grade before we bought the house in Moodus.
   
   
6. Moodus: New England Red Neck Rural. Rural and all the things that come with it. In retrospect, we were probably there too long. I learned some things I probably shouldn't have. On the other hand, I learned some things early which turned out to be instrumental in some of the not so poor choices I made moving forward. I learned the phrase 'accessory to a crime' when the neighbor boy burned down the field behind our three home neighborhood, and we, my brother and I, being fully aware of what Rodney was doing with those matches when we took ourselves out of the game, were held equally responsible by my father. Not particularly relevant that the gloating Rodney was running outside our bedroom windows while we sat inside for a bit (maybe a week, maybe three days) contemplating the final actions, results, and possible disaster (burn down three houses, much?) that came out of us keeping our mouths shut. Later, a tandem life lesson occurred when my brother got caught with my water pipe in the Glastonbury Middle school gym and instantly said: but it's my sister's! My father's judgement: disappointment and shame. We do not commit a crime and lay the blame at someone else's feet. ESPECIALLY since you took it without her knowledge or consent. It was confiscated, I was unscathed. I've jumped ahead.
   
   
7. Glastonbury: We left Moodus in the fall of 1975 and planted ourselves in the contemporary ranch at 1982 Hebron Avenue where we stayed until Thanksgiving weekend, 1980. In as much trouble as we found ourselves periodically given the very long leash of benign and not so benign parental neglect, no one was arrested, no one died, and no one disgraced themselves too terribly. The upshot of living in one place from September, 1975 - November, 1980 was that we adjusted, settled down, and belonged, were an actual part of, an actual community. We each had our places, my brother and me. 
   
   and then our parents hung the pictures on the walls and that was the end of that.
   
   
8. The End of Glastonbury: To be fair, my mother left/lost her job in Hartford and the next job she found was just outside Bryant Park. Do the math:
   1. I91 from Glastonbury to Union Station in New Haven; the terminus of Metro North - :45 without traffic - with traffic doesn't bear thinking. Add parking to butt in train seat and you have a full 1:00
   2. Metro North to GCT - (today's schedule): The 6:24 through train pulls into GCT at 8:15 - 1:51
   3. GCT to Bryant Park - walking is still faster than public transit from A - B. Six minutes, sayeth the map but double that and then some to get out of the station and land your butt in your seat. Call it :15 on a good day.
   4. :45 + 1:00 + 1:51 + :15 --> 3 hours and 6 minutes if everything is on fucking time. Turn it around at the end of the day. I figure she had to get up at 4:45 just to make sure she didn't miss that train. Best guess, she got home sometime between 8 and 8:30. At best, that leaves just about 8 hours of sleep, assuming she can drop face down on the sheets within a few minutes of walking in the door. I don't know how long that lasted but I was painfully aware of my parents shopping for houses in Fairfield County the summer of 1980 when the interest rates were at 18%. 
      
      
9. Fairfield: In 1981 the shit hit the fan; the bits and pieces that were the shell of our family shoved through the meat grinder in the 19 months that I remained under the family roof. Banished for the crime of coming apart at the seams, I walked away in June of 1982 followed shortly thereafter by my father sometime in 1983. Yes. He actually did spend a bit of time under our roof, the collective student body made up of Industrial Design students from the University of Bridgeport and the unidentified contingent from Fairfield University.
   
   
10. Weston/Zephyr Hills: And in December of 1984 I moved with Joe to the forest and my brother headed out for the territories and never looked back. 
    
    
11. Oxford: A six acre farm for the horses we kept in the woods in Weston and a place I tentatively called home; moved in with my pregnant belly and husband over Father's Day weekend in 1986. Moved out for nine months between the end of December 1993 and the start of September, 1994. So we'll count that:
    
    
12. Ansonia: Crowley Street. Left some things to be desired but it was mine and only mine. Back to Oxford.
    
    
13. Stamford: April 1997, marriage long over but cohabitating reasonably well until I found the job at The Castle, saved up for rent times three and found the apartment on Colonial Road. Married Elizabeth's dad in May of '99.
    
    
14. Stamford: 16 weeks pregnant at 35, after a day of being still which follows on the tail of an amnio, we looked at houses to buy and at the fifth house of the day, I sat down in the backyard of the house with the red door and barbie pink kitchen (huh?), looked at my husband in tears and said, jeeze, Pat, please? I wrote a binding check for $3,000 and I was still pregnant when we moved in, in the fall, I think, of the year 2000. Elizabeth was born in December.
    
    
15. Weston Redux: August, 2005. I left with my baby boy just out of high school, Lucia entering grade 8, and the scary little girl called Elizabeth beginning Kindergarten at 4 years, 8.5 months. I had with me a man who stayed until the bitter end of 2008.  We were divorced nearly four years to the day of our anniversary. I stayed. And stayed. And stayed. And stayed until I found myself on a four inch ledge with a thousand foot drop. My doctor abandoned me. I found another who led me to Adam and I'm getting a bit off track.
    
    
16. Chappaqua, NY: In January of this year, 2019, I took my little girl and we crossed the state line and here is the crux of all this documentation. Most recently I hung every framed photograph I had for hanging, straightened out the art work on the walls, and found frames without glass for a few more. I'll replace the glass. 

I find myself so frightened at the thought of having to leave this place it's hard to breathe some days. Why would I have to leave? I don't know. So many possibilities and just as many that would make it easy enough to stay. There are days I want to shove Elizabeth out a first story window with her bags packed. Just now she's been locked in her room for a bit more than two hours. This is not unusual in general but it is unusual for us. Doesn't bear examining at the moment. 

The thing of it is this: There are 16 locations up there and I am 55 years old. I feel battered by it mostly. As human beings, a good part of our identity is informed by the communities in which we are raised, or not raised. Somebody's wisdom states that the act of frequently moving children teaches them to adapt to different worlds, teaches them to blend, teaches them how to be and remain invisible. OK, that last part is me. 

Yesterday, a man stopped me in the street coming out of Starbucks on the way home from the farmers's market. By name. He stopped me by name. I'm trying to think of a time when that last happened.

On Thursday, I think, at or about dusk, I pulled into my driveway and got out of my car. I turned my back on the cottage and stalked out into my neighborhood - I really do think I blend most times. I wasn't a quarter mile down Prospect when a large SUV pulled out of the very long, very flat, very full of children street to my left. She slowed down in the dusk, lowered her window and asked: Alecto? 

Yes?

Are you OK?

Yes, approaching the vehicle, crossing without bothering to look because for the most part we can, why?

Well...

Oh. My hair?

Yeah, I didn't want to say.

It was a rough day at work and I know I look like I've been rolled but I'll be ok with a mile or two under my feet.

We should get together soon. You know, lunch?

Yes. Yes we should. 

I love her just because of how she is and also how she is not. It isn't her I don't want to leave so much as the environment which has nurtured her, her marriage, her family for the ten years she's lived here, coming out from the city with the rest. 

I was so scared the other day I dialed the just in case the shit hits the fan number of the youngest son of my landlords.

Kyle? It's Alecto...

...conversation which is beating around the bush, actually and finally

Kyle, I don't really know how this is done but if I don't get a lease renewal I'm going to be devastated. Can you help me? I don't know how to do this and your parents seriously can't hear anyone on the phone.

The end result is we're not going anywhere. I guess I knew that but I'm scared all the same.

Because the art and the photographs. They are on the wall.

And also, I have a choice in the matter. 

This is where Elizabeth goes to school. It has its own stop and in all these years, I never noticed. Elizabeth at a highly competitive academic CUNY school, finding as she always has, that she is the central point of a group of disparate people who would never have come together otherwise. She is never alone. She's just afraid she might be. Also a totally other subject - and yet, here she is. 

This: the year she was born, heard on repeat with the rest of Sailing to Philadelphia as I paced the 600 square foot living room alone by choice, counting the minutes between contractions, singing to us both as she pushed toward the light of day.  

What Color is Your Parachute? It's an anthem, probably not what you think

Enough with the generation definitions. Like New England: If you don't like the weather, wait a minute. Generational definitions, don't get too attached; they're being rewritten as I type. 

From The Wire via The Atlantic, the article titled Here is When Each Generation Begins and Ends, According to Facts, published March 25, 2014, I just read that 'Tom DiPrete, a sociology professor at Columbia University, agreed with the Census Bureau.' "I think the boundaries end up getting drawn to some extent by the media," DiPrete said, "and the extent to which people accept them or not varies by the generation." DiPrete explained that there was a good sociological reason for identifying the Baby Boom as a discrete generation. It "had specific characteristics," and occurred within an observable timeframe. World War II ended. You had the post-war rise in standard of living and the rise of the nuclear family. Then societal changes disrupted those patterns, and the generation, for academic purposes, was over. His main point: "History isn't always so punctuated."

I concur. Once upon a time The Baby Boom Generation was defined as Americans born from 1944 - 1964 and the next generation, yet unnamed, was defined as Americans born from 1964 - uhhhh... the end was not defined.

In the United States, depending on the State in which you lived, the children born in the year 1964 specifically, might have been lumped into a single generation called, let me see, The Flip Flop Generation. Even my brother, born in 1966 belonged in an entirely other, as of yet undefined category. I recall the explanation for the overlap going something like this: To qualify for the status of Baby Boomer (coined well after that generation bumped gracelessly or otherwise into adulthood), you had to be the product of Post War parents; you know, that thing called The Baby Boom which occurred immediately after WWII and also, because we don't care to notice, the children born in the middle of the war.

My mother was one such baby. My grandfather on leave, looked at the son conceived prior to departure and decided, why not leave her with another? My Uncle Kent was born five years after my mother probably due to a slip on my grandmother's part in terms of allowing my grandfather back into her bed. 

My father was born in 1939. What the hell does that make him? See the problem?  He is definitively a pre-war baby, the first born of older parents and followed seven years later by his sister. My father was radical and my aunt was just trying to be good. 

The term 'Yuppie' first appeared in 1982 and in print, by Bob Greene, the same year, immediately followed by The Official Preppy Handbook in January 1983. It was supposed to be a joke. It became a bible instead.

Yuppie: Young Urban Professional or Young Upwardly-mobile Professional. My parents slotted right into that category except for a few idiosyncrasies like where they were and what they did in the sixties and later the seventies, the reason they moved halfway across the country, from Michigan to Connecticut, trading academia for the corporate world. They were tired of living paycheck to paycheck and using up half the food budget every time one of the kids got sick and needed a doctor. Insurance, anyone? Take that and shove it into your suitcase of woes, generations 3, 2, and 1. 

They'd made all the difference they were ever going to make in the war of the races.

Also, they jumped out of perfectly good (no such thing) airplanes on weekends. Every weekend, weather permitting and when not permitting they mostly stood on the ground waiting for the low cover or rain to clear. 

They don't fit in the box. Not well, anyway. I think about Joseph Epstein, who coined the word Virtucrat (and possibly Yuppie but we really can't tell for sure) which was anyone who was absolutely certain that their political, moral, religious, and whatever else beliefs were the absolute black and white truth. Where are you now, Mr. Epstein, born in 1939 to chronicle a specific subset of the American population. He's out there somewhere and I wonder what he thinks of all this, this, Virtucracity. Today.

Back to the Flip Flop generation. If you were born in 1964, you could fit into the Baby Boom box if you were the youngest of siblings belonging to a family which began immediately or shortly after the war ended. That's easy to understand, right? Much of what you experience, know, and believe is informed by your parents and siblings. If you were born in 1964 to parents who were born sometime during the war years, then there was no possible way your could fit into that box. To begin, you would have been the oldest child because your parents would have been in their early to mid-twenties. You would have ridden out the sixties at their heels regardless of what they did and or believed. You were the first of a generation born into The New World. You were born just before Roe v Wade but you remember and in your mind it would never be any other way again. You thought you, or your female friends were safe, you thought the world was going to hell in a hand basket. Either way. 

And less funny than anything, the drinking age went from 18 back to 21 just as you were taking your first legal sips of beer. What the fuck, voters older than me? The drinking age went up and we were reminded that we still had to register for the draft. 

By 1966 there was another shift but nobody defined that generation; not for a very long time. I don't think Gen X was coined until after my son was born, which was 1986 and is no longer considered part of Gen X. I don't think you can define a generation in they begin to come of age because they have yet to define themselves. This is where the media comes in. By the way, Gen X is currently being blamed for fucking everything up as well as being our last hope. I can't wait to tell Mike that 1. Neither of us are part of that generation anymore and 2. that he is currently officially a Millennial. I'll come back to this. 

If you were born between 1965 and 1979, you are going to have to take care of this (whatever this actually is). You are Gen X. If you were born between 1980 and 1994, you are pretty much fucked. Also, you are a Millenial; that's a very narrow generation. Isn't a generation defined as one set of humans and then the next? Like every 20 years or so. I know when I go back down my family tree there is absolutely overlap but there are also clear lines of demarcation. 

My older two children refuse the label. I don't blame them. 

If you are born in 1995 and now, you are something else entirely and I have to say, you are obnoxious motherfuckers. You make an awful lot of noise, have a sense of entitlement that is absolutely unprecedented, and haven't done enough of anything to even earn a label. So shut it. Get a job. Do something relevant.

Lucia was horrified that I might make Elizabeth get a job while she was in school.

I choked on my coffee.

Elizabeth is terrified she won't have enough money for eyebrow threading, clothes, makeup (OMG there's so much!), gas, and odd food. Also, not enough time for a social life.

I choked on my coffee.

I am aware that this is partially my responsibility, these beliefs. I am horrified. Can't fix it, but I surely can find ways to stop contributing.

Makes me nervous. Elizabeth, I do not have to live in this state or this cottage to make it easier for you to go to school. I am choosing this, but Elizabeth, if you continue to behave like a brat then I'm not going to stay here. I'm going to move to a studio apartment in a less expensive state and you will have to work it out on your own. Your dad is in the woods in Easton and your sister is in Hamden.

Foot stomps. FINE! I'll take my tuition and go elsewhere.

I have to be able to say, OK. Off you go. 

I can see it now. This is all my fault. No. It can't be. I'm an irresponsible mother because my parents didn't pay enough attention to me... AND we're back!

It's the Baby Boomer's fault. 

can someone remind me who they are, at the moment?

also, to be clear, my parents are sick of my shit too.

Woody's Great Grandchildren

It felt like a scene right out of All in the Family, circa 1970-something; Meathead, stage left, Gloria in those platform shoes and big blond hair, and Edith in the kitchen, fussing in and out, in and out.

Please, folks, a little less angst in the room, yeah? Arrrchhiiieee! It's dinnah time! Arrrrcchiiiee? Flush.

I've had a hard time wrapping my head around the intent/purpose, purpose/intent of large gatherings, like the Climate Strike, for example. 

A show of strength, no? Followed by? Followed by what? What is the followup exactly? What is the action fueled by the catalyst of a show of strength in numbers? In other words, so 400,000 people gather in Manhattan (also around the world), march down to Battery Park and then what happens? I realize this occurred three days prior to the UN Climate Action Summit and perhaps out global constituency has made a point. 

Two things my daughter mentioned in the course of an on again off again conversation which started out breathless and ended with my silence as she spewed the collective vitriol of her generation all the way up King Street.

Two things:

1. And it was amazing to see a couple of old people out there with us also!
2. I acknowledge that the number one problem my generation faces is that we have the lowest voter turnout of any current demographic (I simply cannot imagine why)

Those statements are only related by the thinnest of threads and yet...

Here is what I took away from the Climate Strike (what, exactly, are we striking? who left work? why?):

• All white men in suits are bad (how's that student debt feeling lately, sweetness? found a job that will pay more than $13 an hour yet? No? Try a suit)
• Generation Y (why must we do this?) and the Millennials have inherited a terrible world and it is ALL. YOUR. FAULT!
• Huh.
• We, the collective we meaning those of us who are 37 and up, have literally destroyed the world and left it ALL ON THEM!
• Who knew? And give me back that iPhone XR, ya little fuck! I'd happily blow us all back into the pre-internet dark ages if it would shut you up and get you to focus on what you might do

what you might do to change the world. 

It's always been a grass root movement. All change comes from a grass roots movement and if you can prove otherwise, that it came from the top without a peep of action from the bottom I'll research every viable link you give me and still not buy it. Human nature from the bottom of the world.

There is a statement made by a revolutionary in The Hotel New Hampshire and I sure do wish I could do more than paraphrase it. She, I think it was a she, said in response to why must there be violence? She said, the revolution is blood and foam (whatever the word was for the top of hot chocolate) because that is the only way things actually change - which is why I'm willing to blow up myself and half of Vienna.

Now THERE is committed action. I'm not sure the result is what was originally the intent but it sure will change things if the explosion knocks out light, food, water, blah blah blah. 

Grass roots movements really shouldn't be covered in the shroud of violence, although the shroud of violence often descends upon the era because who, really, wants to change the status quo? Who in a position of comfort and or power? Who wants to change it enough to act?

I look at my daughter, waiting for our pizza in a noisy room (not such a great idea), so, let me get this straight, you'll appropriate the shit out of our music but you've declared the lot of us irrelevant? At best.

Snarl. 

You fucked this world up and left it to us!

We said that to our parents last time. Just sayin.

You ALL fucked it up.

Fair point. And where is your point in this, age 0 through 37?

We were children, you raised us this way, we aren't to blame (I think that's almost directly lifted from a Jack Johnson song)

Things I did not say:

You may not appropriate Woody's This Land is My Land. You may not sing that song out of his intended context and the context of his children's generation. Woody's Children. Who are they? They are not quite my parents and just a little older than me. The youngest of the Baby Boomers. Us? We? We are Woody's grandchildren, and those under 37 are his great grandchildren.

I think that.

I think these things also:

We cleaned the Hudson, we got pop tops off aluminum cans, we got balloons out of the ocean, and we got an entire generation of women through school and into the workplace and out of the typing pool. We cleaned the waterways, we got rid of aerosol cans (sorta), we changed whatever we changed from the ground up.

We lobbied congress, we pulled ducks out of water one duck rescuer after another from the ground up. We planted food.

Also, we gave you technology. We gave you a world you simply cannot imagine prior to...

We also took history, art, literature, and the ability to write in a complete and coherent sentence in the interest of the gods of Science and Math because we wanted you to have a fighting chance. We introduced the most heinous poison of all, predatory student debt. While we were doing this to you, we were also buying more house than we could afford and crashing into the underbrush. You worried that you might be responsible for our debt when we died. We also failed to point you toward any sort of working knowledge of the law. 

I'm at that point with regard to the anti-abortion movement that I've given up trying to ask someone so convinced they're right to leave my fucking body alone. I've turned to face the wave of terror and started asking, one body or collective body at a time:

So, she is going to have this baby and she either will not or cannot take care of him. Please, ma'am, sir, take this child and find it a home. Educate it, care for it, do more than stick it into the foster system we have today. Please, sir, and ma'am, please, here is an ocean of children as well as their medical debt; we are leaving them collectively in a basket on your collective doorstep. 

Not enough, I know, but the best I can do right now.

Christian men and ladies: In your time of service to the weak and poor, in your time to do good, in country or out, turn to these children for they are legion. And they are yours. 

I want my daughter to speak with her vote. I do not want her to bring photographs home of a crowd of young people throwing shit and screaming at the row of white men in suits several stories up. The white men in suits aren't reacting, they're just looking.

Later

Elizabeth, do you know how the row of white men felt? Just asking. 

Elizabeth, do they have a right to their points of view?

NO. They do not.

OK, you little fascist, good luck with all that. For they are powerful, breathe fire, and think you are tasty when served with ketchup.

This is disorganized but I have to get to the chiropractor and then to a party of 250 which is so out of my realm of comprehension that I can't even be frightened of it. 

I want to tell her though, Elizabeth, this exactly is why you are not old enough to be my plus one at this thing.

But I don't. Not helpful in the moment. 

 

 

 

It smells like wet dog. Probably.

OKJimm sent me an existential crisis candle by FB messenger the other night. I was delighted and immediately shared on the Refrigerator Door. 

Wait. Have I explained The Refrigerator Door? Possibly not. This is important. The Refrigerator Door is a SECRET Facebook Group with just seven members, eight if you count the other me. I had to stop using the other me so much because the flipping back and forth was causing an existential crisis. 

The purpose of The Refrigerator Door is to allow seven family members and one made up person to post at will. These days it's mostly me posting and I have to give my kids a kick in the ass. Elizabeth's Dad posts randomly, Elizabeth almost never unless it involves Robert Paulson, and has only recently learned it's OK to click the 'like' button; no one will stalk her after the fact. Except her family members. S lurks for the most part but I'm awfully glad she's there. I think we all are. 

On Tuesdays we are meant to post poems or in Mike's case, stuff he wrote for when he wants to sing something other than Warren Zevon to a bunch of mostly drunk people in a bar. Lucia's Man and I might actually be the only Poetry Tuesday posters AND the posting is sort of random but called Poetry Tuesday even if it's Saturday. I think Elizabeth's Dad has posted once or twice. I am limited to very short poems that I can copy and paste on my phone. Mostly.

My favorite part of The Refrigerator Door is the actual refrigerator door. Here, this should explain everything:

Posted on this wall cover are objects which have already been posted on the wall. They are in carefully handmade by me with the horrible Mac default editor, traditional refrigerator photo magnets. In the upper left corner are body parts from Lucia's 12 month BSN program. That is not a vagina. To the right is something either Mike or I posted when it popped up last October. It is true, also. Continuing to the right is Elizabeth's high school graduation photo, followed by the Job Ninja, the Bucky calendar day which has been with us, from one house to the next, since right about the inception of Elizabeth.

The last is a dead chipmunk Mike photographed for me when he was dog sitting and I was hotel sleeping. Apparently the dog was using it as a chew toy, or at least enough to get it wet, and there it was in the middle of the floor. Organic & GMO Chew Toys! (that works, right?)

I wasn't as happy with the next one but I really wanted to use that damn cat.

You gotta pay attention to the nuances in this one. I am not so happy with how the cat parts and refrigerator handle worked out but it was honestly the best I could do with the Mac editor and PowerPoint. You'd be shocked at how much manipulation can be managed with PowerPoint. Anyway, it was Christmas, it was the lunatic cat and it was freaking Charles Barkley and Godzilla. It just doesn't get better than this. OK, yes it does.

I had no idea Elizabeth carried a torch for Robert Paulson. I had no idea she was a Fight Club fan, much less that she'd actually seen it. This all started with the Nutcracker which she posted and when asked, confessed that his name was Robert Paulson and he'd lived in her dorm all semester. People: I give you The Actual Realtime Robert Paulson not so far away from getting his ass kicked righteously. Also, this is Meatloaf, and also Eddie, who is consumed during the feast scene in Rocky Horror. I still can't get past the exposed lower intestine (I think they just opened him right up).

In any event. Robert Paulson

His Name Is Robert Paulson
(I recommend stopping about 00:15 in)

 

Things you find out about your children.

This woman graduated on August 2 from a 12 month accelerated BSN program. Out of 500 applicants, 30 were selected. Apparently it's one of the top nursing schools in the country. It may be a mediocre State school in terms of undergrad work, but, based on results it's accelerated nursing program is stellar.

She got her ass kicked for an entire year and proceeded to graduate at the top of her class (first or second? I'm still not clear and she doesn't actually care anymore - she just wants to sleep). Right, so a BSN is a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. A BSN is a 4 year Nursing Program. Doing the math... doing the math... doing the math... non-accelerated programs take 3 - 4 years to complete so I'm not sure what the undergrad degree gives them in terms of a head start other than the prereqs involve a 3.0 or better. To apply. 

Yah. I'm damned impressed. 

She did her internship in a Burn Unit which was the one place she really didn't want to be, which made it absolutely the right place to be. In the end she got a job at a close enough hospital on the lockdown psych ward and has come full circle. 

Let me repeat that: She graduated on August 2 and begins her new job (NOT a Nanny anymore!) in a week? Something like that. 

Those were the early days of The Refrigerator Door. It's nice and cozy in there now and often the only place I'll visit if I open the app. 

Back to What the Actual Fuck?!

Daily. 

At some point probably twenty years ago, or fifteen, S went back to work in VT and there isn't much call for a Super Power CPA in small VT towns, much less in VT itself. I don't recall where she went to work but it was damn funny (for me, probably not so much for S).

Here is what I remember:

• Shocked and Amazed. Every day I am Shocked and Amazed
• Women wear makeup for other women. 
• A room full of hot flashes

Every day I am Shocked and Amazed. Every day. Sometimes I worry that the top of my head might actually pop off but mostly I watch it from 30 feet up (oh how I wish for 500 feet). Also, I walk a lot. What is a lot? Think. OK, pencils down.

To be fair, that was excessive and July 19 was a Friday which means I walked several miles before work and several immediately after with a good bit in the middle. I think the calorie burn was over 2700 when the thing reset itself at midnight. What you need to know about calorie burn, for me, is that I'd burn no more than 1200 if I were completely sedentary. It takes at least 20,000 steps and 8.5 miles to make the default goal of 2139 and if I don't start early, I'm fucked. Those early metabolism kicks are a requirement. 

I think my average is between 9 and 10 miles and I haven't been out in the early morning in a few weeks. This is because the thought of driving 11 miles to a building with a toxic department on the third floor is enough to put my body into a coma. Today I woke up at 5 AM, laid there for 30 minutes, gave up and staggered down to the kitchen where the cat, from the living space sofa looked up and muttered What the Actual Fuck? OK fine, where's breakfast. 

When my head is going to pop off I leave the building. To avoid head popage I have four scheduled 'Outs':

1. Mid morning - 25 minutes which is a lot of steps given the speed I'm moving.
2. Lunch - 35-45 minutes - I can do a 14:14 minute mile in trail shoes and an 18-20 minute mile in flats. I did a 15 minute mile in flats once and had blisters at the shoe line just above the heels for two weeks.
3. Mid afternoon - 25 minutes - I always say I'll be back in 12 and Dan always says, you're not capable of stopping at 12... (he's right).
4. After hours - depends how disgusting the day has been. I was stopped once by a guy who looked like a Man in Black in a big black suburban and definitely not one of my security guys. He asked if I was alright. Of course I'm alright, why do you ask? Because you've been walking in circles for 90 minutes and you're soaked (saturated was more accurate). Where is your car? Over there? Time to go home. OK. He waited until I'd driven out of the parking lot and off prem. I could see his vehicle sitting there. It was 8:30. Most times it's 50-70 even if I SWEAR to Elizabeth I'll stop at 35 and come home. Elizabeth says, you're not capable of stopping at 35 minutes after work. Accurate.

Elizabeth and I want to make candles for Christmas gifts but we still aren't sure about the small of existential angst. Some of the suggestions from Google were:

• man (for real? ok, I can see that)
• leather (uh?)
• wet dog

Right now we're going with wet dog except I'm not exactly sure where one can acquire wet dog essential oil. Workin' on it though. 

Time to move.

Intersections of the Human Heart

I was afraid I was going to have to do this myself, picking them out, one by one from a disturbing number of Facebook photo albums. I was afraid I was going to spend the entire day stalking the photos of friends and friends of friends just to find that one memory, which may or may not exist only in my head. Probably not. Em has a way of ending up in photographs. And Em collects people. These people came together in the spring of 1995. For 90 days they lived, breathed, and ate together. At least it felt that way. It always feels that way even if you're living in another state or living on the road. When I did mine in 1994 I did live on the road and I did move mountains to accomplish most of what I declared as possible and to show up as often as possible.

You can indeed get from Phoenix, Az to NYC in time for a Central Park 6 AM. This assumes you can get that last flight out the night before, make your connection in Pittsburg, touch down on time at LaGuardia, locate your vehicle (assuming its where you left it), drive like a lunatic, and actually find a parking space on the street, at or near 72nd and fifth by 5:45 AM. 

You can. You can do these things. You can drive from Oxford, CT to 72nd and fifth (78 miles) and then turn around and arrive at the office in CT on time. The people living in the city, we discovered, whined more about the hour and the distance. This made us feel powerful and distinct. 

It wasn't all about 6 AMs at the Bethesda Fountain. Those were called spontaneously the night before by our coaches or the director. They were called to motivate us, get our collective heads out of our asses, remind us that unprecedented results were most often accomplished by unreasonable behavior, subjectively speaking. I already understood. Unreasonable behavior was a survival requirement the moment being invisible lost its effectiveness. I had different things to learn in my 90 days, and then again as a coach for 90 days, and another 90 days, and another 90 days (not concurrent, good lord) eight years after, followed by 45 days and out in 2004 when I learned that getting up and walking away from unacceptable behavior (subjective) is a powerful and often very effective message. I also learned that sometimes you have to get up and walk away to get your own self out of the way. 

In 90 days there were three weekends, the final being away, and one ropes weekend. During one of my 90 days the ropes weekend almost didn't happen because of a blizzard and you just don't reschedule that kind of thing in a limited window. My team surrendered. That's an easy thing if you've not been on a high ropes course, especially with a group of people who have bonded in a way we do not, as adults bond. 

I stood in the lobby of the center in professional dress (I think this was after an event) which, at that time in my life meant the grownup version of a Peter Pan blouse, pleated skirts barely making the 'no more than four inches above the knee' rule and two and a quarter inch heels. 

I was crying. 

Farhad! You can't let this happen to these people! It's not right! It's not fair! They'll be missing a cornerstone of the entire process! Farhad! Please!

Alecto. This is not my 90 days, it's yours. So what are you going to do about this? 

I wish I could quote exactly how he said it because it was terribly eloquent. Yes, Florkow, THAT Farhad, no shit. It's amazing how we can be one way in one context and then disappoint the shit out of people when we turn out to be another way in a context we might not actually belong.

Paraphrased from the wide open staircase, one and a half flights above me:

Alecto, who you are can and will change the world. The world asks greatness of you. 

Farhad. 

Alecto. 

OK, let me speak with the director. The director came down to me.

He was thinking reasonably. I don't think it was his job to be unreasonable just then. I thought it was. I was furious. I remember standing nose to nose with him.

This will happen. It is not OK to blow this off. I'm not going to let this happen to my team.

Alecto. You can't make three feet of snow just disappear overnight. 

I know that. I'm saying we're going to do this anyway. In three feet of snow.

......

......

OK, I'll allow this but YOU are responsible for YOUR team meeting the following criteria:

• Every single one of you will be in snow pants with waterproof winter boots and gators. Do you understand me? With GATORS.
• Every single one of you will have the appropriate winter parka and gloves. No one leaves here tomorrow morning without a hat and as you know, you go as a team or you don't go at all. 
• You will have at least six snow shovels and one shovel for deep digging.
• Your entire team will completely understand and accept the risks involved in making your way through that much snow. You are aware that at least 50 percent of your team are native New Yorkers and have never seen that much snow outside the city.
• You will have to leave one hour earlier than originally scheduled because every one of you will be back in the van before the sun goes down.
• You, personally, are responsible for making this happen.

OK. I can do this. 

OK. I'll call Steve back and tell him it's a go.

In retrospect, I realize he never once blinked, suggested I could not do this, or even look remotely dubious. He was just clear and when he was clear I was clear, the light turned green again.

I called my team into the lobby that suddenly felt cavernous, its floor wet with snow and sand and the double doors leading out to the terrace and then the street propped open maybe one inch. Farhad did this, I think, to remind us of the cold and damp. This decision wasn't made in a cozy, warm room with big soft chairs and a roaring fire (we had warm but not the other stuff).

I spoke the requirements and my team looked dubious. I looked at the strongest person in the room. The strongest person in the room with no idea he had it in him. Later he became a great man but I think he still does not know these things; only that the world asks it of him. He also had significant experience in winter hiking. I'm not stupid.

Paul. Are we going on ropes?

Uh, I want to. 

Paul. Are we going on ropes tomorrow morning?

Dead silence in the room.

He turned to his team and with a great roar: HELL YES, WE'RE GOING ON ROPES TOMORROW MORNING! ARE WE GOING ON ROPES TOMORROW MORNING? ARE WE?

In unison: HELL YES! WE'RE GOING ON ROPES TOMORROW MORNING.

And they made it happen. I remember, just out of the van we had to pass Steve's inspection. One city woman carried enough weight to really struggle through the snow. We'd managed to find her boots, gloves, and snow pants, but no gators. Paul pulled a plastic garbage bag and duct tape out of his pack and gatored her up. Steve said, Go. 

To get to Steve on time, we left at 47th and 6th at 5 AM. I don't remember which course we used but it wasn't the one in Buck's County. I don't know we would have made it down the Jersey Pike even leaving at 5. I know we had to pull in at 7 and we did.

I am a high ropes course junkie. I've maybe done a dozen of them with my own teams and piggybacking with others. I even managed to bring Mike once despite fact that he met none of the criteria and certainly wasn't in a program. I'm not even sure he was eighteen yet. High ropes is something I believe every person on the planet should go through at least one time. I believe that if you think you're going to pee yourself four feet up the telephone pole and fall backwards, belayed by literally eight people (two at each point) before you get to the tenth rung because you're shaking so hard you can't hold on anymore, that you MUST do this at least one time, if only to know that you CAN climb those rungs and you WILL be caught by the people holding the ropes. 

There is a reason that the ropes course is scheduled at day sixty. More or less. These people know each other as intimately as a group of people, even a family unit, will ever know. They know the strengths and vulnerabilities of each member, as well as the strengths and vulnerability of the team as a whole. That's some powerful stuff. 

There is a reason that on the final weekend, which is a retreat, the trainer will say, at least one time toward the very end:

You are a group of people who otherwise would never have come together. When we get back to New York and you pass the torch at Bethesda Fountain and the first of you walks away, you will never again all be together in the same place.

No one believes this. To the best of my knowledge, it is true to this day.

Look around at each other. After this weekend you may never see the face of the person sitting next to you again. Look around and take it in.  

And in the end, this, which is the crux of this post:

Where else could a group of people, who's lives would otherwise never intersect, come together and achieve so much?

That's the part we miss our first time around. We have forgotten how different we are because we are focused (hopefully) on the same things, on each other, on the impact we make as a team in the world. This is the time and place where, in my first 90 days, we collected winter coats and sleeping bags and did 'drive by coatings' when the number of people sleeping in doorways in the winter was at a peak. We bought ten to twenty large cheese pizzas at a time, and with cases of bottled water, stacks of paper plates and rolls of paper towels we drove through the city and did 'drive by foodings' until the pizza and water were gone.

Most of us don't live in the sort of vulnerability that allows us to cough up the pain; holding it in our mouths, rolling it around until we understand to some extent the pain held by the world. Some of us go home after a night of that, joyful, and alive. Some of us go home and cry until we sick up what's caught in our throats. Some of us are just numb but I don't believe anyone forgets that sort of thing. You'll have that the rest of your life.

Facebook brings people together. People from high school, college, work, old neighborhoods, other countries. Facebook also brings out the very worst in us. A very high percentage of us are thoughtless and downright reckless in our posting. Thoughtless and reckless in comment strings on other people's walls. Just last night I typed the words Fuck You to someone I've never met. I did this in a knee jerk response to a statement made about Sandy Hook in terms of firearms and Sandy Hook milking the hell out of what happened in 2012. It wasn't my post. It wasn't my wall. I don't even know the man and I might have misunderstood. It was the last six comments on the interaction that I did understand and after that, all I could hear was an assault. I recall the words 'baby murderer' or something like that, showing up on one of my posts and I came to a screeching halt. 

He was a boy when I knew him, eighteen years old. I was his surrogate older sister instantly and we soared like great birds around the ballroom sized training room. We instantly understood each other. Later I knew his mother very well. Zeno the witch, she called herself. There was a night when we bent time, retrieving standing fans from the training center and standing them upright in the training room at her son's third weekend in minutes, not hours. In the morning we stopped the rain. Periodically I am reminded because someone on that weekend will say... do you remember when you and Zeno...

Jeeze, I do. And I remember Ben had to sleep on a mattress in the hall because the bunks couldn't provide the support his back needed. Ben is super sized. I think his feet are size twenty and I don't want to guess on his height. One time I remember he had to sleep in his car but that might have been because there wasn't anywhere else to sleep. I spent the night in a sleeping bag in the pasture behind the building. Me and Pat, Elizabeth's dad, when we only barely knew each other.

Ben is gentle and angry about the state of the world all at the same time. Ben rages against the machine but he always has to some extent. Ben has always been aware which is probably what drove him to cook for so many people on countless weekends. Ben is a chef and feeding people is how he gives the greatest part of himself.

Facebook. Brings out the worst in us. We hurt each other so badly. There was a time when the boy in the suit in the middle photograph on the last row would NEVER have said the things he says today. There was a time when Zeno, on his right, listened more and talked less. I do remember his irritation at having to pay the turnpike and bridge tolls. I recognize part of this came from not having a lot of money and paying a shit ton of money to come in and out of the city. But there was a conversation that did not end in anger or tears, I just walked away thinking, ok, he'll grow up in a bit.

Robbie, why do you think you shouldn't pay tolls?

Because it's unconstitutional. 

What? How is it unconstitutional?

The government cannot make me pay to drive on my own roads.

I don't think the government is making you pay tolls. You have every right to avoid the bridges and the turnpike. You can take the path train into the city.

I don't want to pay for that either. It's wrong.

Robbie, do you pay for gas? Do you pay for the insurance required to drive your car legally?

Of course I do.

How is that any different?

Well, the road and the bridges are already there. I paid for them with my tax dollars.

Robbie. You make minimum wage.

Well, my mother pays taxes.

Robbie, if we didn't pay tolls our taxes would go up.

That's unconstitutional...

Well alrighty then.

I still don't argue with him; I don't interact at all. I don't argue with Zeno although I do interact about other things. When she makes broad stroke statements that are absolutely untrue, I just let it go. I also don't unfriend him.

Zeno, there is a protest scheduled on the West Bank just to the right of Route 1. It's an anti-american protest because of what our president is doing in Bahrain just now. The US Embassy has alerted Americans traveling in Israel just now to avoid Route 1. That's why Pat and I are worried about Elizabeth's travel plans.

Alecto, lies, all lies. This is not happening in Israel (one second later, a call for dead muslims everywhere).

Zeno, you live in Israel right now. You know it and I know it and also two days later there was madness in Tel Aviv. I'm glad Elizabeth had gone in the weekend prior. 

.....

Sometimes I engage and I don't honestly know why because I would never have behaved that way in the fishbowl of humanity where our lives intersected and we made miracles happen. The fishbowl of humanity where we saw the very best of each other rising up out of the lifetime of pain, scars, and just plain baggage that every human being on the planet collects; the things that make us ugly. 

Em is in almost every photograph up there. That's because the montage came from the photographs she'd collected. The one photograph I wanted is nowhere to be found but that's OK. To the right of Zeno and Robbie is Pat and Em. He was her coach. They are so beautiful in that moment. That is without a doubt one of the best photographs of my second husband ever taken. It is one of the best of Em.

Here is what I remember late morning on the Sunday of their weekend. Maybe Em did get it. Em's life is about creating change, about civil and human rights. Em collects people and Em doesn't forget her people. She finds us and visits from Ohio as often as possible.

Here is what I remember late morning on the Sunday of their weekend. Em, in the middle of the room where they are just hanging out. Em on her feet in the middle of her room. Em puts a CD in the boom box (remember those) and this comes on and Em is dancing and she sings with Natalie Merchant and Em is always this person in my mind. All of those people in the photographs above are always those people in my mind.

 

Bethesda Fountain just after daybreak

Two people who loved me enough to grab me by the shoulders and turn me around every single time I tried to run

Two of the most loving people I have ever known

They are so beautiful. I don't believe he would ever have gotten his heart open enough to love his daughter the way every child deserves to be loved, without Em being Em and Pat being responsible for Em for 90 days.

And that, Jules, is the story of Zeno and Robbie within the context of who they really are.

but I can still smack him silly, right? 

What hurts you clings like a weighted barnacle

What hurts you clings like a weighted barnacle, a bad relationship. It sticks to the bottom of your foot like a photograph that has lost its pixels, grainy, hard to see. But you remember and so it stays, like all the other markers of time. 

Let it go.

Periodically I wonder why this is so difficult and then I remind myself that most adults don't downsize to by 75% when there are still children in the house and also, no children at a place in their lives ready to take on the things you have to discard. 

These are the CDs that get to stay. There are four or five too many. The measuring tape is to be sure I only have 23 linear inches because that is what I believed I had to work with. That took literally four rounds before I got it down to 114 plus what's on top. I think I've figured out how to effectively store 120 in their cases such that they are easily accessible, take up very little space, don't create negative space (black hole syndrome), and look more or less not heinous. See the two small stacks behind the two short rows? I'm pretending those don't exist. For now.

Here is most of the discard:

When I say, most, I am lying. At least lying to myself. The pile to the left, also not real. You can't see the entire travesty but there are approximately 40. All around the living space I find piles, stacks of CDs that were played and not re-shelved. Also not real. 

All around the discard are the not discard, the things that will be able to breathe again. Except the books. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with the books. 

Yesterday, at the transfer station (a MIRACULOUS discovery), I tossed the 1994 Denon tape deck along with approximately 60 no longer playable actual, vinyl records. I have another 60 at least that I love madly. The sound of vinyl in the evening...

Until yesterday afternoon, there was a black hole that started behind the lamp base, nearly reached the edge of the couch and climbed the wall a third of the way up the painting to the right. On top of that negative space there lived most of what you see on the couch, although a pile of children's books and a large family photograph lived on top of the marble lamp base which sort of destroyed the point of that particular lamp. 

On Tuesday, according to Amazon, a 23 inch glass monitor stand will arrive. It's not very deep and the legs are only 3 inches but sometimes that makes all the difference. On top of the stand there will be four stackable acrylic CD racks? stacks? containers? Think of a tall acrylic CD tower but make it short. A 2x2 that will hold exactly 120 CDs in their jewel cases. I'm kind of hoping that space on top will take the double CD cases which would be good because I have at least four of those. 

So, 17 inches high (stacked) plus the 3 inch lift, plus another half just because of glass and plastic puts me at 20.5 inches total height and 10.5 x 2 plus .5 for plastic and such is exactly square. No more, no less. I forget the depth of the monitor stand but I fear it may be quite enough to stack the excess. They can't stack on top, the damn thing will tip over plus I'll run into my height limitation which is 24 inches. 

Given what's not available for CD storage for small spaces, I think this is a damn fine solution, even if I have to anchor the fuckers to the wall and the stand. 

I wish I had pictures of the transfer station. I haven't seen anything like this since I was very small and it wasn't so busy at the time. Online, the only recognizable photographs of the truth are very small. I didn't find a single photograph of the actual process of hauling, weighing in, tossing, and weighing out. 

This:

This bear greets you at the entrance. A reclaimed, upcycled bear with signs from what was probably once very nice furniture. I'm thinking the bear hands didn't start their life that way. 

You drive your very full vehicle onto the weighing station. You only stop for a minute before the woman waves you on and you wonder how she captured your plate or if it was only the vehicle. 

This was happening inside and the cars and trucks back up to the bays or close enough and a man in protective gear that must be so damn hot meets you at your car. You haul and toss as fast as you can because there's a long line today. The man helps. You don't question why. 

When it's over and the car is empty, you wonder if you should feel some pang of regret, but as you drive back to the scale with the woman in the trailer (in protective gear), what you feel is as if an albatross has dropped from your neck and you can breathe a little. You're already planning the next load and pack the car as tight as if safe for next Saturday's haul. 

Half of haul number three is already on the porch, watching the clock. 

Yes, SM, there *is* a Santa Claus

SM suggested I might have dropped off the face of the earth; Not her words, exactly, but more or less a possibility when I go a month without a post. 

Truth.

And since some of you see my attitudinal behavior on Facebook, you know perfectly well I'm at least upright and hissing.

Oddly enough, the last post was about adulting, as in, I'm not doing this anymore. That post brought to mind a post I wrote not all that long ago about being fed up, disillusioned, and livid. I scrolled down a bit and didn't see it at the June 30 post which suggests I've been openly mad as hell for a while now.

I have no idea if this has anything to do with the blog having gone momentarily dark and, what my first husband would say about my overall communication, it's like I'm spitting up beets. Think about the visual and you'll get it.

What I do know is that I spend approximately 2.5 recorded hours a day walking which amounts to closer to 3 because the fitbit drops the first to minutes of recorded activity and anything less than 12 (which is 10) is unrecorded except in the steps and miles.

Here is evidence of my lunacy:

On July 19, the goals were altered by me as such:

• Steps                             15,000
• Floors                            40,000 (this formatting/indent business is as bad as Outlook)
• Miles                              7
• Calories                          2200
• Active Minutes                90
• Steps per tracked hour    250 in 10 tracked hours
• Number of Active days    6 of 7 but I almost never miss 7

This was a Friday, which means I did most of it in the parking lot at work. Not during the workday, just maybe an hour total, after work. In the parking lot. 

I started at 6 and stopped at 7:30 when a man in a large black SUV stopped to ask if I was alright. 

Of course, why do you ask?

Well, you've been walking in circles for 90 minutes and it's hot as hell out here.

~I resisted the urge to tell him this was a deterrent to becoming homicidal. I said I just needed to blow off some steam and was heading to my car right now. Pointing in the general direction of the red RAV4 about 250 steps away (I can gauge these things now).

I watched me get into the car and he watched me start the engine and drive out of the lot.

To be clear, the parking lot is enormous. It's actually four connected parking lots for four buildings. There is also the road that goes up the hill to the Japanese American school and the back entrance to Manhattanville College and the same road going the other direction, both of which are significant hills.

And somehow he knows I've been walking in circles. Like the CIA of Office Park Security. 

I stopped doing that. Now I limit my Polar Bear at the Central Park Zoo behavior after work to no more than 40 Active Minutes. I reset the a few of the goals to 12,000, 6, 2139 (the original), and 60. It seems to be helping.

In the meantime, I've been discovering my neighborhoods, or at least the neighborhoods directly adjacent to mine. 

I nearly had heart failure the first time I saw one. This isn't the first. The first is a lousy shot. I'm not comfortable photographing other people's homes. I find it intrusive and a bit stalker-ish. This is actually 6 of 6. The last one on my way home. I cropped the shit out. I don't want any confusion. I also don't know if it's better that the faces and hands have been painted white or worse. Leave the face and hands dark is at least honest. 

If you don't know what this is, look it up. It's called a lawn jockey.

If you don't see a problem with it, don't ever talk to me. Ever. Overt, oh hell, even subvert, is not negotiable. 

There are 6 within a mile of my home in one of the bluest towns I've ever lived in. A town so blue its Republican candidates are centrists. 

Except I think back to the protesters at the Memorial Day fair and the one man holding the anti-abortion poster with graphic images of mutilated fetuses These are very effective; designed to get him pummeled and tossed under the firetrucks in the parade or effective enough to rile up the sheep. Sheep don't research anything other than what supports existing beliefs. 

I told myself he wasn't from here. 

So that's the update. Way too short but I'm just about late for the shit show called my job. 

This post has not been edited in any way.

 

I'm Tired. You do the Adulting.

When the alarm went off at 2:30 AM very early Saturday morning, I was OK with that. I mean, I knew why it went off and I understood my job. No questions here.

Get the fuck out of bed, Woman. Go downstairs, make some coffee because you forgot to set it up last night, put some clothes on. Any clothes. No, not those clothes. She doesn't think you should leave the yard in those clothes. Fuck it. Who the hell is going to be looking at who's wearing what at 4 AM in Newark? Seriously. ANYWHERE in Newark.

Dump the rest of the coffee into the travel thingie with a bunch of ice and milk and sugar because that's as close to a milkshake as I'm going to get for at least... doesn't bear thinking about

And out the door...Testicles Spectacles Wallet and Watch. Check.

Seatbelt. hnnnnnnnnnn white noise. WAKE UP AND DRIVE THE CAR!

I don't actually remember how to get to the airport from here, I only did it that one time three weeks ago to drop her off and she was navigating. Waze? I've had trouble with Waze and that airport before but it had to be done.

I guess the best way I can explain or evaluate my condition was compromised. Drunk (I wasn't but I might as well have been). I'm too old for 2.5 hours of sleep. I was meant to have more but I had it out with the cat between 1 and and 2:15. See the problem? I must have finished whooping the cat's butt and then gone straight into a coma.

The good news: I only jumped the median once (this time) and me and medians in Jersey have history. Also, I did not blow out the back right tire although I had it coming.

I allowed Waze to take me through the long term economy parking entrance which was lunacy. I KNOW how to get into an airport, especially this one. 

I was panicked because she was due in at 4:30 but then at 3:50 and I just can't drive that fast in a coma. 

I was in time. I received a few text messages and then radio silence. Eventually people start coming out. Some of them look a little disheveled but that's a long ass flight. But not my kid. My kid did not come out.

I was thinking, you know, she waltzed right through El Al security like it was nothing both incoming and outgoing and now this? But there she was, so happy to see me, so happy to be home but more or less wanting to get back on UA 91 and see you in another couple weeks, Mom!

She was chatty the whole way home. At the very end of the drive she said, oh, you know, that was special?

What?

Um, the interrogation.

Sweetie, that's immigration. You pass through immigration, get your passport stamped, get glared at in the process and then you go to customs.

No. The interrogation.

What?

I was interrogated.

Are you OK?!!!

Oh, yeah, I'm fine. I mean, if you want to put me in a room and do a VERY thorough search (could be worse), take both backpacks apart completely and then send them through the thingie again while you're asking me to explain one more time exactly what I found in the dirt. I FOUND A SHIT TON OF BONES BUT ASHLYN GOT THE TOOTH!

Whoa. 

So then they let me pack my shit back up and I came out. Big grin.

It's congenital. At least 75% of us have been strip searched, 25% of us put in holding cells, one for 24 hours on his birthday and ours is the luggage that gets sniffed first. I looked at my kid. 

You know, you do sort of look like a boarding school mule. 

No shit! You know what they said the first freaking week of the dig? 

No... what did they say?

That I was with the Hotchkiss kids, WHICH, by the way was a travesty.

What was a travesty?

The fact that the Hotchkiss kids were there at all. It was this four week tour of Israel, two weeks being tourists and two weeks being pack mules like the rest of us. But some of them were as young as fourteen and there is NO supervision there! Mom, seriously!!!

Elizabeth. We talked about this before you left. You were adulting, remember? Like for real?

I know. But still. Actually, I was babysitting. 

Yeah. I know.

She does look a bit like a Hotchkiss Mule. 

Fast forward to Sunday. There was a Saturday. We did shit. We got stuck in the rain and walked an entire half mile up hill in a river. We had lunch and dinner and she did a load of laundry and then packed in the big girl corporate backpack to be an intern for a week (we don't know what that means, we just know she's at a STEM conference and somebody slipped her in). 

It was that fast. We got out of the car, did shit, and went to bed. 

26 hours after the fight with the cat, this noise starts up next to my head.

Oof. I made a mistake. Turn that off. Wha? Why is this thing going off at 4:30? Definitely a mistake.

Uh, Mom? 

What?

You should get up.

Hell no.

Mom. You said you'd drive me back to the airport.

FUCK!

I was pretty good on the way and pretty good until she said goodbye at the beginning of the line and promptly vanished because...

... when I had to replace half of her ticket (long effing story) because she booked two one ways instead of a round trip (I guess that was the short version) and the first half was fubar because she had to be there at 6. Right? I bought her a last minute one way seat on the 7:30 United flight heading to Orlando. I bought the cheapest one way seat available. 

No joke. I bought seat 1B.

There were a mess of economy plus and coach but that one first class seat about fifty percent lower than all the rest. I snapped that thing up so fast my head spun. If there was a person watching this shit, this shit would never happen. If there was an algorithm that talked to the other algorithm, but no, lucky for her. So she vanished through the short line and that was the end of her.

I started on the way to the parking lot. I stopped and looked around. Security asked if I was alright.

Um. Probably. I should just go home (before I'm arrested). 

I was asked two more times before I got to my car. Where I sat for fifteen minutes.

On the way down the spiral thing I just stopped. I wanted to make sure I knew EXACTLY where I put my bank card and parking ticket. Yay! They were exactly where I put them when I got in the car. Joy.

By the time I got on the Turnpike I just gave up and turned Waze back on. I just don't know how to cut through Westchester yet. See, there's a part where you get off and you drive about a mile and you take this hidden little left turn into the bushes and then there's another scary entrance ramp and I'm just not sure yet. 

Waze said, Stay left! Toward the Lincoln Tunnel!

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? I AM NOT GOING THROUGH THE LINCOLN TUNNEL.

I yelled at Waze all the way home. When I got home I parked nose in which is a very bad thing in our driveway. I left it that way.

I am still not right. I don't expect to be right until morning.

Elizabeth's flight gets in at 10 or 11 AM on Friday.

It's really easy, you take the bus to GCT and the train to Chappaqua and then you walk half a mile home with that backpack on your back and here's the $27. Call me when you get home. Love you! 

I agree to go to work and you agree to keep taking care of yourself. :)

It's about how it FEELS

sort of like this...

Sometime around the middle of June I started walking significant miles. The Fitbit tracker wanted me to do this in a 24 hour period:

• Steps:                    10,000
• Floors:                   10 (it's all about the altitude, you can use a standard staircase or you can use hills. As Stairmaster sort of thing won't cut it)
• Miles:                     5 (you really can't do this in 10k steps unless you have a REALLY long stride)
• Calories burned:     2139
• Active Minutes        30 (under 15 minutes won't register, I changed it to 10 because that was all I had time for in quick sprints)
• 250 steps/hr          Get up and move 250 steps every 60 minutes from 9 to 5. This can be tricked. Walk 500 steps at the end of an hour into the beginning of the next. Sometimes you have to, you look really stupid getting up in a meeting and pacing the room until the buzzer on your wrist goes off.

If I burn 2139 (which was a serious struggle last year) then I could only consume 1389 calories if I even hoped to lose 1.5 pounds a week. Mostly I got to 1958 and that included walking multiple steps in my hotel room just to get anywhere near 2000. That leaves 1208. Should I decide I REALLY want an adult beverage at the end of the day, a single 8 ounce (seriously, who the hell actually consumes just 6?) that drops my calorie allowance down to just over 1,000. That's not recommended, apparently. My body did that thing called starvation mode and my metabolism took a dive. I just kept walking but there were a lot of Saturday morning weigh-ins that left me in tears. I kept walking. Eventually I got close enough but had literally two weeks to purchase a mother of the bride dress and it was NO LONGER DRESS SEASON. So that was last year.

I took the fitbit off my wrist in September and stopped counting steps. I did pay attention to calorie consumption but I added alcohol and sugar back into my diet. I put the tracker back on at the end of October, grateful the thing still took and held a charge. I didn't pay a lot of attention to it. It still thought I weighed 134 pounds.

At the end of November I started job that had me nearly sedentary for an average of 10 hours a day and left me feeling like road kill at the end of every single day. Weekends were for recovery. Period. I put my next size up business wardrobe back to the front of the closet.

By April those dresses were getting a little snug and I wouldn't take my sweaters off because I was convinced I looked pregnant. My NY driver's license photo is the worst I've ever had. Who is that moon faced woman? 

I looked at the tracker, I looked at the statistics and I decided to make the goal every single day even if I didn't make the nine hour increments.

On Saturday morning, June 1st, I pulled out the scale. Exactly what I expected. June 1 was the first day I met my Steps, Floors, and Calorie goals. I blew the calorie goal out of the water at 2228 but not the Active Minutes and not the miles. I have no idea how I burned those calories except maybe my body was in shock.

The week of June 17 I started tracking calorie intake. On June 23 I set a weight loss goal and blew every single stat out of the water. On the 25th I raised the stats because I realized in one day, without intention, I'd walked 8.66 miles. Holy crap!

New stats:

• Steps:                   15,000 (but in my head it was 20,000)
• Floors:                   40 (all those hills around here) 
• Miles:                     7 
• Calories burned:     2200 (but in my head it was 2400)
• Active Minutes        90 
• 250 steps/hr          Get them all, no matter what you have to do short of screwing up back to back meetings

Today I generally reach or break 100 collective minutes but I haven't hit 200 yet. I'm close though. If I don't break 20,000 steps, it's an oddity. 9 miles is my average. I don't always make 2400 but there's a trick to this. Start early. If you don't get those active minutes in before you leave for work, it's going to be a lot harder to do it as the hours progress. Metabolism. Most days I have a 1,000 calorie deficit. I've never missed the 750. 

I told someone I walked anywhere from 8.5 to 10 miles a day and got a jaw drop. I do it in flip flops in the evening, I said. I do that to force myself to walk slower because my morning sprints average a 14.3 minute mile.

Who the hell walks a 14.3 minute mile? Up hills!! Steep fucking hills.

It is no longer about weight although I actually step on the scale every morning (naked, after a pee, don't we all?) and I'm often shocked. It takes a 3500 calorie deficit to burn away a pound. 

It's not about weight, it's about how I actually feel. Day in, day out, in the rain, in the blistering sun, my body is in constant motion. 

And it feels GOOD.

Also, I've given up shorts and t-shirts with my flops. Lightweight sundresses are a hell of a lot more comfortable. Almost nothing is on your skin. Wear panties though; when you've soaked that dress and it's starting to stick, this is far worse than a wet t-shirt. 

Time to walk. I'm sort of late. And also, Elizabeth plane lands at 4:45 AM tomorrow morning which means I exit the house at 3:30. 

I can FIX THIS, DAMMIT!

he is not taking a selfie, people. he is desperately trying to get a signal...

You know who REALLY gets freaked out about their kids overseas? The parents who actually know what to freak out about. The neurotic parents think of literally all the wrong things to think about and work themselves into a froth, meanwhile, Little Pun'kin has got himself arrested in the Red Light District. It could surely be a lot worse. Trust me. It would be a lot worse. 

And god forbid Little Pun'kin so much as sniffles on the daily call home. 

I think this is probably for the best.

It's the parents who have joined the million mile club, or come close enough to be living the dream (no! no! nooooooooo!!!! you did NOT just drop that suitcase on my head and I swear to god, one more case of foot fungus in flip flops and I'm tossing somebody down the ramp), the parents who have lost passports in Geneva (yeah, that's pretty much ok), and parents who have lost it in Romania, maybe not so OK. There are parents who have checked into hotels in Kissimmee, FL at midnight with no idea how or where to find the client for an 8:30 meeting and noticed the bullet hole in the door on the way back from the front desk for a towel run.

The parents who have been stranded in the Pittsburg airport because their connecting flights to NY pulled back from the gate a couple minutes early and the flight out of Arizona got in thirty minutes late. There will be no joy in Mudville that night.

You can identify these people, parents or otherwise, as they bodily shove their way toward the front of the plane after a seven hour wait in the world's most exciting (that's a word) lightening storm ON THE TARMAC with food and water to last three of those seven hours. You can actually identify the parents if you're careful. They are the people vibrating so badly you think their heads might pop off (because they can see what's coming) but when the mother with the screaming infant just won't stop, they are the ones who reach out and say, here, let me hold her for a bit. 

The million mile lunatics are shoving their way to the front of the plane because they know what most of the herd does not know: There are exactly six open hotel rooms in the city. Everyone else is going on the floor at C3. The six lucky travelers who's calls make it through first band together and hire a van which drops them at the Marriott just off airport property. When all six arrive at the front desk, one man asks if room service is still available (the kitchen is clearly closed, it is 1 AM). The man behind the counter looks heartbroken. He's seen this over and over again and no matter how many times he tells himself, at least they got beds, it still hurts.

However, there are sandwiches in the kitchen, will that be ok? Six people say in unison: Any calories count! It's all about the calories, hand 'em over. And that is the truth. When you have been stuck somewhere, longer than seven hours, without food or water you learn to take it as it is, in the event that it might be a food sort of substances. The sandwiches were consumed before the travelers got to their rooms. 

You know a road warrior when you see them standing at the front of first class and begging for a seat. Just one seat, they say. Useless Air WILL give you a voucher for this airfare plus $200 cash. Please. I just have to go home.

It always works, but honestly, who else would even think to do that? It takes a certain level of desperation.

You know a road warrior when you see one. All hell has just broken loose in a strange city and the traveler walks calmly for cover and then calls their spouse. Over the screaming, they say, it's just tourists, it's perfectly fine. 

The road warrior just sighs and hands over their cash when the person sitting next to them on the train very calmly puts a knife to their throat. 

The road warrior might not have seen everything, but the road warrior has seen a lot; especially when they have left American soil and all bets are off.

These are the parents who come completely unhinged when their children have a flight out of Tel Aviv that really can't be missed because these children have another flight to catch 36 hours later which means home is just a layover. The parent is online immediately. No no no, you cannot take the 5 PM train, you will have no way to get from the city to the airport. I don't CARE what that guy told you, you have a problem.

Dude, you fly out on Shabbat. EVERYTHING stops on Shabbat. There are shuttles every hour on the :45 until 2:45, which is the last for the day. When the kid isn't buying it, the parent is online looking for one way flights out of Ben Gurion to any airport within a 200 mile radius that will get this child stateside fast enough to get on the next flight which has just been rebooked because this child booked a flight that would put it at it's final destination three hours after the required check-in time to a STEM conference that requires punctuality of its interns. The parent thinks, you cannot make this shit up.

The child thinks, what the fuck has happened to my parent? This is not my parent! This is a shrieking through text nightmare. 

Mom. I am not going to miss my flight.

Elizabeth, will you please just click the link I sent you? It's the actual rail and shuttle schedule for Shabbat. Please.

Mom. I just need to get this handled, OK?

Elizabeth. Trust me. You cannot take a 5 PM train. Well, you can but you'll spend the night on the airport floor or worse, have to find a place to sleep because I think they actually close that airport. 

Mom! Stop it.

OK, fine. I will stop. But here is the link and here is the link to flights you'll need to book as SOON as you realize you've missed your flight because THERE ARE ALSO NO TAXIS OR UBERS AVAILABLE. You can book a one way flight for about $800. Just use your debit card and it will come right out of my account. Or, if you call me and wake me up, I'll book it for you. I should just do it anyway. i can cancel within 24 hours and I think I need to find you a hostel just in case...

MOM! SHUT THE FUCK UP!

.......

Later: I'm going to bed now. I'll be on the 1:45 shuttle.

OK

I'm going to bed now.

Good night

Don't do it don't do it do NOT do it. Do not tell you're child you were right. Just shut up, Mother.

Elizabeth, take food with you, nothing will be open at the airport. Shabbat.

Mom.

Right, no problem. Eleven hour flight...

MOM!

You're right. I'm sorry. Good night.

Thirty minutes later the phone rang. A crying child on the end of a surprisingly good connection.

I'm sorry, Mom, you were right. I'm sorry. I miss you so much.

It's OK Little Pum'kin. Momma loves you and I'll see you at 4:45 AM Saturday. 

That was far from me at my worst as a parent but it was complete lunacy. I mean, the riots in the street were pretty much over and nobody actually got dead, ok maybe one, and it wasn't like it was an anti-American protest this time. Just a community that got a little PO'd when some off duty cop shot a 19 year old so they turned over a couple of cars, lit them on fire and sent approximately eighty wounded to some sort of care. Only six or seven of those eighty were actually civilians and they just happened to get in the way.

This is the thing normal parents are freaking out over.

And I never once thought about that. She'll be fiiiiiiine. But for the love of god, do NOT miss your flight. 

You'll be hungry and absurdly thirsty and stranded with no place to go. You will be willing to hand over every last Shekel in your possession for a 16 ounce bottle of water. You will sip it slowly, all night long. You will not sleep.