What DID happen to them?

 

 

This is one of my favorite videos in a long time. 24 minutes and some change, but if you're interested in dogs and history, or the history of dogs, worth every bit of it. Carolinas of course do feature, and in this context pups like my girl are even more interesting.

Catastrophe! Hee.

Holy CATS, it is fascinating when science can tell a novelist their historical fiction may have been fiction in the historical documents themselves. I was happily reading along, this Atlantic piece about Greenland ice core sampling and how it correlates to the Roman economy and conquests ... when it casually BLEW MY WEE AND PALTRY MIND with an aside about the Plague of Justinian. Which just happens to be awfully important to my WIP's action, themes, even those aspects of my work which I literally don't even believe in.

The mention, in the article, of absence of evidence of Justinian's Plague in the ice record does not equate to evidence of absence. (Evidence of exaggeration? Always possible. Discoveries can indicate many things.) I am content to accept Procopius, amongst others. Lucky thing: I am neither scientist nor historian, and as a novelist of historical fiction, I need not dash down the twin rabbit holes of history *nor* science to justify my theories as to how the "Dark Ages" (I don't even believe in) began. Ahh, liberty!



Do you know, I do believe some authorial bits of my brain may be awakening? Well, my my my ...

Almost my birthday, and all I want is death

This post is a barely-edited version of an email I sent this morning. It's funny how trains of thought actually seem to create their own tracks and destinations.



Forwarded message to a best friend TEO...


"When bitching about a sweater gets REALLY dup and profiend.

Sometimes, being a writer is weird."


-----Original Message-----
Original email to Mr. X
Sent: Tue, Feb 6, 2018 8:06 am
Subject: Yep nope

The quest for the right wardrobe never seems to end. I bought a sweater maybe three months ago - it was definitely "recent" - but am deciding today, it has got to go. Which is especially irritating, as it's a GAP and I usually have good luck with GAP. (One red/black damask print v-neck has lasted me like six years now, it's woooooonnnderful.) But this simple blue rib knit: I'm not into that whole Marie Kondo thing, but this sweater is NOT GIVING ME JOY.

Which, ugh. This sweater made me use THAT phrase. This sweater sucks.

The thing is - it's really comfortable, it's the length I like, and the color is great on me. It is also pill--tastick (yes, with a K - like your name, it needs the consonantal emphasis), the "inseam" tag sticks out (and no, I don't cut out care tags because lord knows I'll louse up the laundry at some point), and the front hangs really weird at the bottom. Gah.

So, though I've worn this probably not even half a dozen times: I need to get rid of this thing.

Life is too short to wear unflattering (and prematurely RATTY) sweaters.

It's just a shame I happen to be wearing the thing NOW. On my fake-Friday, and family day. And with good jewelry, too! Blah.


Tonight is steak night at mom and Stepdad's. The filets from Christmas, which we didn't eat because everyone came down with the flu.

This'll be the way to spend some family celebration time with Step, but leave Wednesday free for me and mom. He's been in bed a couple days, and says he might not eat with us (he'll almost certainly eat with us, but how he'll be feeling today overall is up in the air). Sigh. Poor S. He just can't seem to die.

Bro and I were talking about him this weekend. He said it was something of a shame we came to love him after he lost his mind - I think there's a feeling akin to guilt, for Bro - but I feel like it's a blessing. We LOVE him. Neither of us felt like that was a possibility twelve years ago, and okay, it took dementia to loosen S up and give him this sense of humor we treasure. But he's loosened up. He is funny. We love him. That is enough of a blessing, and dementia is enough a part of life, I feel like it's worth just being grateful for the love and the blessing.

This is the power of a sense of humor, really. Laughter is so elementally *human*, I think, that the bonds it creates can't be trivialized. I mean: look at the way I talk about your face, broken up with laughter. It's in no way a small thing, the way that is beautiful to me.

It's in no way a small gift: S's immense grace in his sense of humor.

They always say there's no comedy without pain. I'd have to agree; that's fair. S's wit has come at such a price. Life itself, arguably. But his funny-ness has made all our lives just that much more wonderful. And just saying that squeezes my heart, and all but breaks it.

And as much as I am grateful for the incandescence of S's impishness and his smile, G-d I wish it could be taken from us all. I wish he could die. Because as long as we have his brilliance with us, HE has to endure such hideous, unbreakable pain. It is so unjust - and I know life is not fair. But nobody should ever suffer this. I would not even wish this on a Trump.

And even with all that, to feel *guilty* about loving his humor would be to waste it, and to negate the blessing it is. I just have to pray it is some amount of blessing for S. It looks like it is. It looks like, even if only a moment at a time, it takes him out of the pain. Even as selfish as it is: he takes *us* out of it. He invites us out of the reality he can't escape himself.

I've never seen grace quite like that. S is something so special.

Squees and Thanks

Thanksgiving didn't turn out as planned, but oh I do love the quiet holidays that are just me, mom, and my stepfather. He has been ailing for seven years now, but the point has come where doctors are starting to recommend stopping recurring procedures, and the slowdown he is in now feels somewhat different from previous periods when he has felt low. So, though I'd invited them to my house, at about 1:30 on Thanksgiving day, when I was pulling the turkey breast out to tent it for its final phase, grabbed the broccoli and sweet potato dishes, and went to their house.

When your mom is in tears, the dishes you've twice-washed and spot-inspected lose all significance.

But our day, which is possibly the last quiet-holiday time the three of us will share, was lovely. He was up most of the time I was there, and dressed even. We had a few little laughs; his grace is at times the greatest blessing for others, in the face of his pain. I deeply love my stepfather. Another blessing, and one I did not see coming eleven or twelve years ago.

As much as those I love must endure, my own life is richly blessed and comfortable right now. I still miss Mr. X. But there is someone that remarkable in this world, for me to miss. That is inestimable.

At four years in, my "new" job is now entirely mine. I love the work I do, and I like and respect the people I get to work with. It was scary to leave public service, but I have learned that a form of service that is much more direct has great rewards, and what we do is honorable, sometimes fun, and gives to our community in ways that are new to me and mean so much. All this, and at four years there's a bump in vacation accrual, so woo!

Gossamer and Penelope are still the finest little monsters anyone could ask to live with. Goss is soft and gentle - and preternaturally forgiving of his great lummox of a human. Pum is soulful and warm, both magnificent and insouciant. They make me laugh every day, and then they warm my heart.

Writing ... I'm doing that. Not enough - but is it ever enough, in any writer's mind? What is happening with it is good. That counts.

Christmas: we are looking forward to my brother and BOTH nieces coming for a visit.

And homeownership ... ahhh, homeownership! Here may be the most immediate squee for today. In three days from now, I will have a new run of five kitchen cabinets. One wall has always been the home of every bit of storage in this 67-year-old house - and it's not too bad, actually; lowers, as well as uppers all the way to the ceiling, and I have eleven-foot ceilings, so storage is significant.

So 'long about my birthday (suffice it to say, this was over half a year ago), I went to the Habitat for Humanity Restore a couple or three times, and found a pair of midcentury cabinets which will coordinate nicely with the originals. Since, then, I have poked now and then at all of them - removing the old black hammered hinges from mine, spackling and repainting the uppers (white), throwing around a bad paint job (black) on the lowers, re-hinging all of the uppers including the "new" ones.

Today is the day to remove the lower doors and old hardware, give them a spackle and sanding, and tomorrow paint 'em black.

MONDAY ... comes the handyman. He will cut the crown molding and patch the circa-1950 hole in the wall that was all we had in the kitchen for a vent back then. Install the cabinets, AND the ventless range hood. And all the drawer and cabinet handles. He's even going to tidy up a spot of water damage (long since resolved) that predates my 16 year ownership. The tile I ordered isn't here yet, but we'll call this guy back. Or cross fingers it'll arrive today! :)

Oh my gosh. In three days, I will have new kitchen cabinets. I'll be able to put away my crock pot, cookie jar, lots of things. So exciting!

And on the first day of The Big Holiday Family Visit, I also will have a brand new chair. Mom and I recently went chair (s)hopping at a couple of stores, and on my own time I tried at least one more place, on a quest to find The Chair. The chair you come home to, that will welcome you and take care of you all evening after work. The chair that is kind of foxy, but also comfortable. And one we saw on the day she and I sallied forth was all that, but also had remarkably good BACK SUPPORT. It was the chair that stuck in my head through a few more chairs and another shopping trip. And it will be mine.

This is the kind of chair that makes a big difference in a home. It's the kind of chair that makes a big difference in most days, too. So, with this, and the major changes in the kitchen, some really big improvements for the holidays. After The Great Bookcase Project of the summer of 2017 (three. seven-foot. bookcases, y'all. Don't even tell me you're not jealous), and the final completion of the it-seemed-neverending basement job, this is going to make for one HECK of an organized domicile. And just in time to clutter it all up with Christmas decorations!

Still life with much clutter

Hoping everyone had a splendid, blessed, and joyous Thanksgiving, and that the best is yet to come.

Are you ready ... ???

Flagged

Last Year

I set out my clothes for the next day, after I get home from work every day. The ritual is this: come in, greet Penelope and Gossamer, put down some kibble for them, put my cell phone on the couch so I won't miss important messages from my boss. Check the mail. Pen's done eating by now, or has had enough to start following me around, so she goes in the yard. Goss and I go upstairs. On the best days, he races me, and he ALWAYS wins.

In the bedroom, I put down the things of the day, take off the jewelry - always a nice moment, a physical relaxation - change clothes, check the weather, and decide on what to wear the next day.

I rarely dither, in this wardrobe selection. But last night, instead of weather, that local channel served up two campaign ads in quick succession, so I forwent the forecast. And laid out shoes, pants, and a short-sleeved blouse. It took me a while to pick something, even the purse to carry. But it had to be something with red in it - to remind myself: "tomorrow is election day."

Wearing red/white/and/or blue is rather on the nose, but I am all for obvious symbolism for any occasion. (On 11/9 last year, I wore cream and pale aqua - laid out the night before - meant to be a celebration of our freedom from the long, stressful campaign ... things did not turn out as I had hoped,of course; but I wore the cream and aqua anyway.) (And I wore brown on 11/8; good fall colors - and a locket with my dad's picture.)

So yesterday I had my nod to patriotism ready - but when I came up for bedtime, I saw the weather forecast at last, and found (hurray!) it was not expected to be short-sleeve weather. Time to rethink.

Today I am wearing a soft sweater, light beige.

So far this morning at the office, I have spotted: two red sweaters, and another work pal in royal blue.

Seems I am not the only one who goes in for symbolism - whether they did this consciously or not.

Accessorized to the nines.

How do you observe election day (even if today is not one for you)? Some do it with a memento, I know. We often respond to participating in democracy with something less concrete - prayers, even tears.

Do you carry something with you? Do you find yourself wearing a color or a shirt that gives you confidence, makes you feel bold?

Do you vote?


I voted today. Whatever else comes, that is a magnificent privilege still to treasure. That is a blessing to be thankful for.

Cookbook Memories

Yesterday, I spent a good while looking through old cookbooks - the Betty Crocker, of course, but also the little binder style book my mother-in-law gave me, complete with several of her family recipes and into which I've put decades - generations! - worth of my own grandma's recipe cards, old magazine recipes, a couple sheets of paper with my dad's handwriting; the bread I used to make, but haven't since he died.

Fourteen years goes by ... well. Not fast.

And yet ... there he is. Right there; my dad, his egg salad. His handwriting. His mother's gingerbread; like velvet.

Cookbooks like this, or recipe boxes, are in their way perhaps even more evocative than photo albums. The memory of food is so strong, so meaningful. The fading handwriting. The stains, and the little notes about special tricks with this icing or that casserole.



Wishing you and yours the sweet - and savory - memories of the season. May we all be blessed, and enjoy a time of peace ...

Delta'd

It's one of those "I was/wasn't supposed to be there" moments - like the time my uncle missed the massacre at the Dome of the Rock by hours because of a flight delay, or the eighty-year-old couple who never might have met but for one tripping in the park and the other coming to their aid ...

Originally, I had an American flight, on Sunday.

But American canceled on me, and booked me on the next-best option - which left the gate before I cleared security.

Dang.

They wanted to book me on the next flight, but that would not get me where I needed to be until 11:45 or something the next day! Horrors!

So I resolved to drive - 800+ miles, but I like a nighttime drive, and I'd be in control. Aces.

Along the way out of security, I sat down and called my mom to let her know what was up, then called my boss. "Use your best judgment" he said, but discouraged driving. I booked a 5:30 a.m. on Delta, it'd get me there HOURS before the American flight would! Yay!

And so, I went home to sleep just a few hours. The house fresh and clean so I could come home and not have that to think about, I didn't even sleep in my bed. Pulled up the couch, closed my eyes till 3:00 a.m.

I'd had a BAD night's sleep Saturday, and this was even worse, of course. For some reason, before the first planned trip out, I'd had butterflies constantly - not typical for me, for travel. I don't get *nervous* usually. Just sick.

I didn't wake up until 3:23 a.m. Ugh. Not the worst thing, honestly; my city's airport is much smiled-at for calling itself "international". It's not what you'd call the most challenging to travel through.

Still, I wasted no time. Brush teeth, braid hair, pull on clean shirt, get out. I was back and got a great parking spot before 4:00 a.m. easy.

I did decide to check in, so I could check my suitcase.

It was at this point, heading toward my gate, I realized: I'd left my phone charging at home. Clever girl. Our airport being what it is, I could have gone and gotten it, and I knew that, but ... sometimes, you just have to minimize your stress. How much do I need that phone, really? Not all that desperately. So home it would stay.

Gate. Sit. Relax.

After a while, they told us there was some sort of computer issue - worldwide. Hm. Oh.

... and there it began, fella babies.

I'll be honest, the flight out to Atlanta airport - my first leg - seems such a long time ago, I have no memory of how long it was delayed. Significantly, let's leave it there. But we got to Atlanta.

This was not, and did not feel like, a coup. Atlanta was every bit the cluster-festivity we expected it to be, and more. Everything you could dream of.

Initially, we did go to the assigned gate for the next flight out. Nobody imagined that would be the end of it, and it wasn't. Flight canceled of course, and then it was on ... to The Line.

The Line stretched down one of Atlanta airport's impossibly huge concourses. The Line was so extreme, all afternoon people walking by it offered condolences, were incredulous they'd have to be in it, recorded us on their phones, photographed us. I've seen news stories on airline outages before, and I can tell you, having my sweaty ass broadcast internationally was NOT on my list of things I was pleased to put up with that day.

Throughout our tenure on The Line, most of us made friends, chatted, smilingly rolled our eyes. We were a bit concerned about how fast The Line moved - because, in fact, it actually did. Not as reassuring as it might seem; we fully expected the end of The Line to be someone telling us we were up a certain excremental creek, thank you for playing, we're fresh out of paddles. (One suspects Delta might well have run out of paddles merely in the hopes nobody would turn them on any Deltoid fannies.)

It took about an hour and fifteen minutes or so to clear The Line. Throughout this time, I had my laptop on top of my carryon, kicking the latter along the way when we moved, typing on the former when we didn't. I emailed my boss, my mom, the hotel for our meeting this week, and a certain sports team, 67 of whose tickets I had for safekeeping on my person. "Can the tickets be reprinted?" Yes, for $5 each, but they'd cap that at $40. Whew. Hotel event coordinator was overwhelmingly lovely - she changed our lunch date to "what would you like waiting for you in your room?" and I may or may not have admitted a liking for hard cider.

The Line moved across a wet patch on the floor. My carryon is not wheeled. Ew.

Throughout the day, I reminded myself of two important things: unlike a friend of my family, who's been a part of our lives all of my own, I am not losing a foot today. And I don't work for Delta today.

As baselines for "how bad is  your day?" these things might seem almost extreme for comparison, but remembering our family friend honestly did keep me from turning into a freaking, stress-riding shrew. I prayed for her and meant it. I took NSAIDs for my headache and knew, whatever came, my problems would end - maybe even within just hours.

We came to the end of The Line around 2:30 I think. Maybe. One loses all sense of time, even dates, in an aiport, and that is of course very intentional. Can't have people aware of what's going on about them.

I got to the gate for the 3:32 flight before I really looked at the new boarding pass.

It was for August 9.

I was pretty out of it, but Monday, I was reasonably certain, was in fact August 8.

Two more compatriots from The Line appear. I ask them if they saw the date on their HOORAY, YOU REACHED THE END OF THE LINE release slips. They crumple when the realize our mutual mistake.

There is no going back to The Line and cutting it.

We turn to the nearest gate agent, and wait.

The problem being shared, so too is the solution. A 7:28 p.m. out of gate such-and-such.

We find gate such-and-such and settle in. It is a nice gate. Small, quiet, clean.

It is, naturally, too good to last.

There are three gate changes as the afternoon wears on. Atlanta is, by the way, the largest airport in the world. You need to catch a train to get from one concourse to another. You can, if you are especially sleep-deprived and castaway by Delta airlines (hometown carrier for ATL), miss the right concourse and have to get back ON the train again. These are things that can happen.

At last, I ended up at gate A1. I kept thinking about steak sauce, what it has that Worcestershire sauce doesn't, and that family friend. This gate is large, but crowded, ugly-lit, dirty - and low on seating. By this point in the day, my tailbone is hurting in any case. Air travel is hard on a fat lady's tailbone. Sitting too straight, sitting not straight enough. It's all very trying. Sitting on the ground is no better. I finally capitulate and try to lie down.

In that magical carryon - un-wheeled, as I have mentioned - what I have not mentioned is its very weighty contents. Apart from the laptop, it holds a presentation projector. Tiny, to be sure, but still. I'm hucking *equipment* all over G-d's creation, hung off my shoulder. It also holds my tablet computer.

Battery life still kicking, but sinking, on the laptop, I decide at last to fire up the Galaxy tab. It has updates. I let it update.

This takes roughly sixteen months, and renders everything on the tablet unusable. No email. No KINDLE. I poke at it listlessly less than half an hour, and finally just turn the thing off. I haven't so much as fiddled with it since. Some stress we tend to invite in. I was not feeling hospitable for tech issue frustrations, so. Shut it down.

The gate is moved again, but this time only across the way, to A2.

Right about here, for whatever reason, I indulge in that most heedless rashness: belief that this next flight is Going to Happen. It is from the chairs here, waiting, I say the most coherent prayer for our family friend. It is here I watch the most luminously beautiful lot of students, traveling together, laughing and finding their own flight has been canceled. They thread their way away, and the sun seems to be dipping slightly.

On the plane. It is a miracle.

I email my boss. My hotel. My mom.

And we sit at the gate an hour and a half. Some ticketing issue with a lady and her young son. They get on the plane very late in the game. They get off again. I can't pretend that my feelings at this point were completely charitable; whatever this lady needed to get to, or away from - she kept hundreds of others waiting, as if we hadn't all done enough of that by this time.

But wait. More waiting. Lady and son are long gone off the plane again, and it transpires; our weight paperwork is not right.

I don't know what time the plane pulled away - between time zone shifts and delays, I know it was well past the final delayed takeoff time for our flight. But we lifted away from the tarmac, and flew at long last.

I cannot tell you how good the beds are at the event property where my meeting was held.

I also still cannot tell you how Stella Artois cider tastes. (I most often drink Virginia cider.) There were two Stellas in my fridge; but no bottle opener. And none to be had with room service.

Just as well.



The thing about these massive airline outages is that they are genuine crises for too many passengers. As for me - I was on time for the meeting, it went well. I didn't get to the "rehearsal" session, I didn't get to tour the hotel nor the city, and I didn't get to test that projector I'd been hauling around - which turned out to be not bright enough for the room. So it goes.

But for some, computer outages like this lead to real-world consequences that matter. I'm inevitably reminded of Douglas Adams' character Trillian, who hitches a ride and gets the adventure of her life. But who, in another scenario, misses the flight as it were. This Trillian meets a group of aliens who've lost their brain. Literally - the master mission module for their spaceship is lost in space, and they have no memories, no mission, nothing to do ... but to settle on a distant planet(/oid) and monitor Earth.

I felt a bit like that Monday. After an initial surge of "I want to quit and go home" frustration, I fell into the day and went where it took me. Call that a buffeting - it might have been - or me being flexible - if I was, it was more from exhaustion than Zen-like philosophical limberness ... whatever it was, at some point relatively early on, I abdicated action and succumbed to passivity. There can be ease in that, and I needed all the ease I could get on Monday.

My time card runs from about 3:30 a.m. Eastern time to 11:30 p.m. for Monday. Yes, I am paid hourly. So two hours on Sunday for the aborted American enterprise. Twenty more Monday. Unlike most folks, I will be paid for this debacle. Whatever Delta chooses to do may not be super relevant to me, in time. A $200 voucher for future use - with Delta - is not as attractive as one might like. But they have their own problems.

And, as in politics, so goes travel. We have little choice - Delta will live on.

Pet Post II - The Electric Gossamer Boogaloo

Between the resident fuzzly poobahs, Penelope has historically taken up much of the pixel space around this blog, since she and Gossamer the Editor Cat came along. He came first, but she made her splash, and got me barfing up words in excess from the beginning. Goss has his own fame and fans, of course, but let it not be said I have more attention for one kid over the other.

Still perhaps the nicest cat I ever expect to know in my life, Gossamer’s major claim to drama in his kittenhood was the stupid froth about his name – long since buried by SMART people who appreciate all the cultural resonance of his sobriquet, and who dig the reasons I could not call the boy Velvet, for Maud’s sake. Since then, self-training as cats tend to be, and limited as his trick-doing interests and abilities are by design, he’s more interesting in more low-key ways than Penelope.

But interesting he is; I find myself constantly engaged by the little grey guy. He’s still a forgiving puss; gets stepped on by his lummox/person once or twice every week, but never holds it against me (though his rubbing up against me is often the cause). His eyes, if anything, grow greener and greener as he matures; his own fake-birthday will be May Day, and he will be three too, as is Pen-Pen.

At three, and especially this season, as he sheds and slims down again to his non-winter coat, he’s still the smallest cat I have ever had. Still the nimblest, too – and cats as a genre are not exactly clumsy things (though that one cat of mine sometimes had to pull The Fonz “I meant to do that” after a slip). He’s the lightest thing on his toes I’ve ever seen, and his leaps still look as perfect and smooth as old slow-motion falls filmed then run in reverse.

And, of course, I am obsessed with his toes. His front paws are the cutest I have ever seen (and Smikey Cat had some formidably sweet mitts on him), and that back leg with the lightning bolt on it still has the funniest way of kicking out when he is going at a kitten-trot. He’s the most herd-able cat I’ve ever seen, too; it’s rare he won’t go where I need him to, but he does hate the rare occasions I need to close him behind a door to, say, move furniture or things like that.

The longer we live together, the more he curls up on me physically. With summer, this may change again, but as of now he still likes to climb onto my hip or my back and knead and hang out. This weekend, when my back was bugging me, he somehow knew how to be precisely the right heat, and right weight, and curled up on my tailbone, helping me out with the soreness. And there are times he seems to know JUST where to knead, which is the best thing ever.

It’s impossibly sweet, of course – an animal actually resting on you like that. He does it when Pen is allowed on her corner of the bed on a Saturday or Sunday sometimes, and all I can think is – if this is being a Pathetic Old Pet Lady, I am lucky in my pets. Pen has learned her territory, and Goss cedes his own roaming spots to settle down on mama herself. Or if I have a weekend nap, he tucks in behind my knees, like I’m his fort, hiding and warm and quiet as can be.

Last time I had friends over, he literally walked over them to get to me at one point; when he was a little ‘un he used to do that about as much as he’d be friendly to others, but it had been a while since he so pointedly preferred me in front of others. I didn’t pretend that wasn’t a bit gratifying; but am glad, too, he’s a nice little fellow to my friends and especially my mom and stepfather.

Like most of the cats I’ve had (he’s the fourth), he uses his voice seldom, but it’s a sweet sound when he does, and he still make sleepy-kitten noises if I pick him up from a nap or the like. His purr box is quiet, too, but he uses that frequently. And he drools when he’s getting really good pettin’s or kneading; some things do not change.


His editorial demands have become more sophisticated; as a three year old, of course Gossamer is no longer satisfied with simple ax-wielding, and demands diversity, as well as a wider point of view to buffer against unreliable narration. He’s a benevolent dictator in this, but a great little helper with the keyboard. Indeed, I have to cede the laptop to him from time to time (… if not cede the laptop to neglect, in favor of attention to him).

As Janet has observed, his tolerance for dog stories is constrained, but he doesn’t demand feline characters necessarily. Just a good story; and I try to oblige.

He’s encouraging regarding the work in progress.

But he does say it’s dumb I keep calling it Wippy. He has a thing about stupid names; go figure.

Time for a Penny Post

When Gossamer and Penelope first came into my life, there was a pretty regular stream of posts about their development and ours as a little community, with the occasional nod to making these points relevant to publish, but mostly just the indulgent and frustrated emotional responses of a pet owner and Virginian dealing with that ultimate trial: CHANGE.

“How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb?”

Five. One to actually do the job. Two more to stand off to one side, tut-tutting about how much better the old light bulb was, and fretting with semi-religious fervor about the implications of a new bulb. And two more to write the history of the original bulb with maps and Civil War footnotes.

My dear old Sweet Siddy La was the absolute finest in mellow, sittin’-at-your-feet dogness. She knew my dad a little when she first came around, and he approved of her. He tole me when I got her, “Don’t you feed that dog from the table, don’t you let her get fat.” She got the occasional treat (she loved pizza crust), but I never forgot what he said, and she did eat pretty healthily. To her last months on earth, you could see the shape of the muscles in her legs. And she had beautiful legs.

Lolly was a wonderfully “well behaved” dog, as defined by a bit of fulsomeness in the greeting department and a tuggy deportment on walks, but never causing messes in the house and always calming down fairly readily.

Miss Penelope, by comparison, has always seemed like a handful. For one, she’s still only three; not even the age *yet* that Siddy was when I was blessed to take care of her. For another, she is just a very different dog. Massively energetic, terrifyingly intelligent, skittish where Sid was calm and oblivious to storms (the one area in which Sid would lose composure. aww.). Penelope was untrained when I got her, and fed off the faintest energy from me with exponential emotional results. If I was upset, Pen was beside herself; if I became excited, she was rendered utterly uncontrollable.

And yet, from the beginning, she submitted to me in ways Siddy never did (and never had to). Pen was still juvenile when we came together, with all the dependence and the lack of discipline that comes with. I’d sworn I would not adopt a puppy, knowing the limited time I have to commit to training and so forth – and there she was. My dog. My baby, scared, confused, lunatic dog. And I loved her.

I despaired of time ever passing and her ever Being Like Sid (I never would have admitted it then, least of all on those terms).

But I reveled in her incredible trainability, and especially the fact that she would take command not only from me, but from others who came around; my friends and family.

It wasn’t long before she behaved almost as if she had a button – the alacrity in her obedience is still so speedy and so emphatic it’s as endearing as it is comical. She binds me to her, and I am overjoyed that she and I can communicate. She still thinks, “Oh! Mom told me to sit, so I will do that, then I will lie DOWN, then I will give her BELLY, because that is even more than she asked for, and I want to give my ALL!” – and we’re working on “that’s not sit” in the gentlest way, still. But “back” she has down to a tee, which is unbelievably handy for us both, and “stay” she’s getting better at though still likes boundary testing.

But in non-command behavior is her magic.

Siddy, right out of the box as they say, had some of the subjective behaviors one most wants in a pet. She would no more touch my food even if I weren’t in the room than she would poop in the house. I never had to teach her – and, after perhaps one incident of “HEY THIS DOG IS DIFFERENT” with Penelope getting tentative at my supper, she really didn’t require teaching on the point of food heirarchy either. Siddy was far more aware of her food surroundings, indeed, than Penelope is – a single molecule of anything people-edible going astray was instantly claimed and cleaned up by that Hoover of a Good Girl, but Penelope misses a surprising amount. She’s getting better, but actually drops even her own kibble and forgets about it from time to time. I drop a piece of it and tap my toe to indicate she should pick it up, she’s so het up about feeding time she can miss after three tries. Into each life, a little kibble must fall.

Gossamer’s even worse. But I do get a warm mommy smile at my Pen, when she is oblivious to tiny morsels available for the pickin’.


Penny turned three-ish on her made-up birthday, April Fool’s day. And it’s been during the past month or two I’ve been watching more changes in her, more maturity. She’ll never settle down, quite, but her ability to greet visitors with less wee-ing and tungsten-clawing (all well-intentioned love and submissiveness, but no more appealing to most contemporary humans) has  markedly improved. Though perhaps markedly is the wrong word to use …

In her own space and on her own time, Pen has always been a pretty mellow kid; prone to bursts of energy, and occasionally instigating, or being insitgated into kerfuffles with, Gossamer. But generally a dog – lying around and not being a complete drama queen about every last instant of her existence.

But seeing her regulate herself a bit at social moments is – well, I won’t say exciting. It’s just nice.

One of the best parts is this: Penelope is in her own skin, and she’s comfortable there. Her home, her dogmommy, her semi-pal Gossamer. She’s got this thing, y’all, she doesn’t have to freak about it alla time.

She’s home. It’s a good place for us both.

September Sunday Sunset

The rays stealing across the office are gone, but the kitchen window is filled with the dazzling, long light of late sunshine.  The work of the past several weeks has been good for this home.

My office is wonderful, and my friends helped me to build it, getting the new desk in.  I hung my two prints of Diana the Huntress in there, both of which my mother has given me over the years, and one of which is in a frame which dates back three generations in my dad's family, and my mom restored when I was a kid.

The library is clean and finished and comfortable - the very narrow old desk/vanity/dresser now the sideboard in there, between couch and a long, low bookshelf built by my dad.  (Hidden in the drawers of the old desk, which is facing back-side out, drawers to the wall, are copies of research and early, early, EARLY writing on The Ax and the Vase.  I didn't want to trash or recycle them, but I don't care to see them either!)

The house is clean, much laundry is done, and supper is on the beautiful new stove.

Yet this weekend has been another of those times where I witness myself useless to be of practical use to those I love.  I rage against this impotence, I strategize and bargain and beg G-d *and* those I even theoretically could help - and find myself blessed and inert, comfortably fruitless.

And with a writing desk I may forever associate with the piece of scary family news I got the hour before it came in the house.

Withdrawing From the Moral Bank --- OR --- "I Want the Vaccuum"

The odd thing about this article, and a few others I looked at when I found it, was the repeated idea that transactional rectitude is unconscious.  How many times a day do you witness someone saying, or do the office break room chat-and agree, that “if it’s for someone’s birthday, the cake has no calories” or fill-in-your-equivalency … ?  Or the “I worked out, I can have more – or I’m GOING to work out (I swear!), I can have more”, or what have you.  Not only is this conscious, the joke of it is culturally enshrined by now – that we acknowledge some foible with a laugh, but we foible away nonetheless, even seeking approval for some exchange or other.

It’s most often caloric, in American culture at least, but I’ve certainly seen people explicitly note their moral or social cred before whipping out some racist or privilege-blind remark or other.  The old “but I have (such and such minority) friends” clause seems to go far, for a lot of us, in excusing saying things it would otherwise be unthinkable to voice publicly.  I’ve heard someone describe Blacks as “monkeys”, who then went on to use that old saw.  (Fortunately, not someone I’ve been associated with for decades now.)

As to the gas-guzzling vehicle owner boggling minds by purchasing locally or ecologically, I’m highly amused by the use of Whole Foods as some sort of example of the ultimate in moral retail.  Whole Foods is a wildly cache’ brand, affordable frankly to few, and appealing more for its elitist snootery than for its marvelous righteousness.  I am acquainted with exactly nobody who could ever afford to shop there exclusively for food, and those I know who shop there at all do so precisely to splurge in one way or another.  Splurge.  Not the baseline I would have used, in terms of examining the motivations and/or behavior of the population at large, who would go broke in a week trying to feed a family at their prices.

I drive a Prius, but it is not a motorized reservoir, for me, of opportunities to waste in other areas.  Per the comments at the first link above, I drive it because it reduces my gas consumption – which, while nicely affecting my carbon footprint, is also cheaper in what I hope will be a long run.  I also put out recycling every time they come to pick it up – but produce, as a single-person household, barely enough garbage to fill the extremely huge rollaway bin provided by the county in the space of a *month*.  This isn’t, for me, a matter of morality except insofar as I consider profligacy in any form – drinking, eating, spending, or using the resources of my environment – generally to be avoided.  I like my driver’s license, current wardrobe, credit rating/savings, and planet more than I do the rewards of most behaviors which could, in excess, endanger these things.  It would be a pretty tough row to hoe, at that, destroying any one of these things – for myself OR for anybody else, depending on the scale of my effects in this world.  I like the garden growing as it is, as it were.

Like a lot of women, I certainly enjoy some level of Martyr’s Complex – “ahh, I work so hard, and it’s just never done” – but I keep two things on hand at all times to prevent too much self indulgence.  One is gratitude:  that my life is cram-STUFFED with blessings (and, that thing noted above, with privilege I never did anything to earn nor deserve).  Two, self awareness.  If I let myself believe for one second I ever deserved any of the good I’ve got, I won’t deserve one iota of it.  Ever.

It’s like this, in shorthand:  I live my life striving to be good enough for those who love me.

I used to say “my dog” – but now I have dog and cat, and let it be said, I also understand the enormity of the love of those who’ve proven willing to tolerate me in their lives.  I have a LOT to live up to, if the love in one’s life is any measure, and to deserve it all will take beyond all my life to even hope to attain.

If I dented whatever wee and paltry contributions my life provides in this world, because I believed my contributions were a sort of personal savings account – an annuity of “goodness” I could DRAW from as if there were some right to that – then there is no contribution at all.  And if I make no contribution to the world, attaching the strings of self-indulgence to even the smallest of “good” acts (with, of course, myself as the judge of what may be good), I’m lost to ever being good “enough” for the abundance I have been given.

You never get to be good enough for your dog, being an emotional/moral/righteous accountant.  You can never pay back anyone – if you consider life anything that can be balanced like a checkbook.

Yeah, I’ll eat far too many Chee-tos in one sitting, and I accidentally leave the AC on too cold for too long, when I set it to “hold” while I was sweating and working, and forgot to put it back on schedule.  When it comes to my writing - my unpaid job - I am excuse-maker extraordinaire:  "fallow time" or "my computer is on Safe Mode" or "I've been wiped out from work for three weeks - and I haven't had a vacation in three YEARS now" make it all to easy to do other things than quering or researching.  That desk I was on about this week is in some ways, "I'll start the diet Monday" of my unpaid/unpublished authorial career.  I just failed, for three weeks, to do my little calesthenics at my desk, and don’t think the size of my arms doesn’t reflect the lassitude.

But:  don't think I don't know when I'm bargaining with myself (a.k.a. "the Devil") - and cheating myself, all in the same acts.

But #2):  I also don't exchange eating crap for drinking a diet soda, and I don’t tell myself there’s no sin nor effect, when I push life’s balances out of whack.  I even participate in the “well someone worked so hard to make these brownies, surely I have to have another one” games we all sometimes play.  Frankly, playing games SOMETIMES is a part of the pleasure of life.

Just ask my dog.

Then watch, and see if she cheats on her taxes because she was nice to ME today …

Kitchen Ripping

There are those who might not find the following photos to look much like an "improvement" - but, for me, it's another in a year which so far has been one of outstanding blessings and great thanksgiving.

When I moved into my home, every single inch of the floor, both storeys, was carpeted.  1970s red deep-pile shag in the former-porch/now-office wing room.  Pea green, thick carpeting through the other wing, dining room, foyer, and living room - and on up the steps and into the master bedroom.  In the guest bedroom, faded-lime green deep-pile shag again.

The bathrooms were carpeted.  And my home was previously owned by a widowed 86-year-old man.  With all the best of intentions, over the course of 30-odd years, a man will ... miss.  I will not forget the day I came home from work to find the carpet removed from one of the bathrooms, and a note from my brother (my family used to work on this house even when I wasn't here - wonderful people), saying, "No greater love hath any mother ... than that yours removed your peepee carpet!"

Good times.  Hee.

All these years later, she and I got together yesterday (I took a few hours off work this time), and tore out the kitchen carpet.

Which - given the rather trying training period with Penelope - was itself a bit of a peepee carpet, I can admit.

Anyway - no greater love hath any mother and daughter than when we get to do a grubby job together - every year or two, we find our way to spend a few hours fixing up my yard, cleaning my basement ... tearing up carpet that never should have been in the first place ...  (Yes, the work always tends to be at/on my home.  Mom's home is perfection, you see!)

My dad would love it - well, does, I have little doubt.  He always did like when his girls found some way to work together, figuratively *or* literally.

Beneath the carpet was not, as you might imagine, a simply stunning alternative, pristine and clean and ready for the decorating magazines.  But it's hardwood exactly like the rest of the house.

A lamentable detail is that, in the 1970s when all the carpeting went down, hardwood was so passe' they apparently figured it would never, ever, ever, ever, ever see the light of day again - and so did some painting without benefit of dropcloths, and so on.  The entire house, most of which has had its floors exposed for many years now, needs sanding and refinishing.  The kitchen merely represents the most obvious need - the black glue and partially ossified carpet padding here and there.

But the boards are solid upstairs and down, but for two slender strips in the foyer, which have termite damage at least a generation old which clearly got dealt with in a hurry.  Two little boards, out of an entire house.  And one loose one, at the wall under the refrigerator.  That's the worst of it.

Before
Still Life with Kong Toys

After!

Maybe next time, mom and I rent floor sanders.

Hah!

"It Got Weird, Didn't It?"

I've been mawking on here and there for some time about mysterious stressors and looming things, fear, and all sorts of self-indulgent twaddle used as excuses to basically work through my thoughts as life endured a prolonged period of uncertainty and pain.  Let it be announced:  this will stop.  (And the readers rejoiced.)

Life's greater irritants are a funny thing, though - how they can "be there" for very long periods of time, without quite making themselves comprehensible, and sometimes taking on an unrealness we almost depend on, if the difficulty is particularly long lasting.  So when some fear comes to a head - when it "gets real" - it can be seriously weird.  Your brain has to manage things it's been working its way around for a long time.  Indeed, it has to manage things you've trained it very much not to manage, to put off, to ignore.

Douglas Adams described this in a genius way, describing nothing of the kind of course - but his device fits the situation all too well.  The Somebody Else's Problem (SEP) field.  The SEP field is far easier and cheaper than invisibility, and just as effective.  It is the phenomenon by which we mentally edit out things we can't let ourselves see (or know, or deal with) if the business of daily living is to be done.

Leave an SEP field in place in your mind for too long, and *visibility* may become your problem.  There are those (most of us?) who prefer it that way, but it's no way to get your math homework done.

When the SEP field crumbles, as it so often does (and frequently at inconvenient moments, like a little emotional meltdown at your mater on Mother's Day ...):

It gets weird.

Where, one minute, life's going along swimmingly in the complete absence of water, suddenly the swimming stops, the drought becomes clear, and the swimmer tends to do one of those bits like the coyote when he stops in midair some fifteen feet from the edge of the cliff.  Life goes all "Hey, I can't support myself in this midair" and suddenly you're all worried about a drought that's been on for years.

Ahh, mixed metaphors, how I love you.  (Things can get weird in this way as well.)

I've spent nearly two years with an SEP field which went bad recently (go ahead, guess when), and today - the cartoonist drew a completely unexpected net under my flailing.

And so, here I am, bouncing slightly, very seriously giddy still about how high the net had to be to catch me safely, feeling it magically waft gently to earth with me safely in it, and watching the clouds scud by above.



It's a glorious day, and I am more fortunate than I will ever deserve to be.  Grateful, and thankful (two different things, I have been realizing frequently of late).  And, so far, safe on my way to solid ground.

May your days be as fortunate.

HR

What an odd little day it was in the context of HR.  My new employer has had more than one opening come up since I've been there, which would suit Mr. X remarkably well.  Somewhat as a tease, I've sent him several listings - but I've also been keeping my eyes open for a few others I know.  Today, I reached out to three people I know (other than him!) about different possibilities.

At the same time, I've received a come-on via LinkedIn.  My first instinct was to shut that down flat, but I told them to tell me more; I certainly know enough candidates, obviously.  Even if I'm happy and blessed, that's not enough - I'm like my mom in this; I love to make connections for people.  In a professional context, this is about as rewarding as human activity gets; if I put someone onto a job they actually got - and were happy with? - wow, what a remarkable feeling.  One of the best friends I ever made at a job (five positions ago) is the BEST networker I've ever seen.  She quietly connects people to jobs over and over again - and she herself is one of the best admins I've ever known.  She put me onto my gig at the utility company some years ago, and I've watched her hook people up time and again with various people she knows.  What she's done, and for how many people, who can thank her for their very LIVELIHOODS (I could, for a couple years there myself - and am still grateful).

What a thing that is to put into the world, to give to someone.

If even one of the connections I've thrown out to the winds ever came to that for someone, it would be such a blessing.  If several did ... what gratitude.

Unexpected Gift

2013 has been a rewarding year, but it didn't lack for frustration and stress.  I can't say anything about my life is difficult, but I stress myself out and let things get to me.

Of course, the ultimate outcome of that, this year, has been a fairly storytelling-tidy ending, with the year's worth of concern and fear at my job bringing me to a new one.  Even as much of a drama queen as I am, I hesitate to take writing credit - still, the way my brother described it, I'll take.  I was proactive this year.  Even with my skepticism about the means by which I actually managed it, I did in the end manage to change my situation.  The echoes of poison I've heard since leaving do little to contribute to regretting this, so 2014 will have to start with a healthy consideration of gratitude.

The months spent worrying were also months spent lying to my mom - not because I'm a juvenile incapable of being honest with my mommy, but because she had plentiful concrete worries without my whinging to her about unformed and mercurial ones.  She's since thanked me multiple times, told my brother, my aunts and uncle, and apparently her Sunday school class, how glad she was I never said anything about the situation before I resolved it - and I had a new job to tell her about.

The unlooked-for side effect of a long time lying, and of stress deflected and deferred in a lot of contexts, is that now that it's "over" (hee ... yeah, I know life's not actually as episodic as this tidy little storytellers-delight of an arc has run) the anticlimax has me both numb and massively emotional.  For a week or so now, I've noticed myself overcome at things which, while meaningful, probably aren't of such a proportion they should get me weepy.

It's not a bad thing.  It's letting go after holding on for a long time.  It's a liberty to feel after constraint.  It's the luxury of my gender and my hormones.  It's relief, and it's fear too.  The "what have I done?" factor is fairly small, highly manageable, but it's only reasonable to check yourself even in what looks a bit like success.

One of the completely new things for me in the new job is its culture.  I've been in the financial and IT/tech worlds for so long, to work in operations for a company that sells an actual, concrete product is completely different.  The wardrobe will be both accommodating to my professional style and more liberal in some ways, too, which is an interesting opportunity.  The personalities aren't tech nor Project Management nor securities nor even anything I would label as (typically) "corporate".  It's a corporation, to be sure, but it's not an insurance nor financial concern, and its' unlike any corporate culture I've known, so that's exciting.

Another new thing is being in not just mainstream corporate America, but the commercial sector.  This means that the infrastructure of my job, if you will, is entirely unfamiliar to me in some ways - I have an iPhone, for goodness' sake.  Haven't figured the thing out, nor even finished activating it yet (the infrastructure of firewalls from sites like iTunes hasn't changed ... heh), but it will perforce become necessary to be a smartphone carrier.

In keeping with my luddite-ery and contrarianism, I'll content myself with the fact that this is my "work phone" and not a toy I succumbed to personally.  And, of course, the damnably smug nonconformist's knowledge that (a) millions of people would consider such a stance both inexplicable and idiotic, and (b) it'd piss off just the right people, at that.  Heh.

Having been so sick I missed the marking of the new year coming into 2013, I look forward to finding my way into 2014 on steadier legs.  I look forward to not having the cognitive dissonance both of missing that subjective transition and the sort of inchoate fear of this year.

I hope all of you will find your way - steady legs, fine good fortune, and all.  Let me know how it goes ...

Junkyard Blogging

My Twitter friend Mark continues to be spiritually articulate and wonderful.  "It took cancer for me to believe" and "These are my problems. I like them."

Because he wants to know, I'll say this here and finally, having not wanted to do so before.  This post was hard to read.  It made me feel bad.  It made me think, "My BODY is not your bet with G-d."  It bothered me a little bit, but for a surprisingly long time - like, a couple of weeks, before I put it away and decided to say nothing.  My body is G-d's chief gift to me.  It's not a joke, and it's not a metaphor.  It is mine.  And it is far more than the sum of two of its softer parts.  Those parts come with so much that is not soft.


And Mark, I respect you to pieces for the way you work through your questions, and like you more the longer I "know" you - your honesty is pretty amazing.

Gratitude

One of the people I care about is a woman who lost her livelihood for nearly two years, and finally had to put her home on the market and take a temporary job in another city.  She has been in my prayers all this time, and is a woman of much grace, strength - and, I have just learned, profound gratitude.  She was telling about someone else she knows, who has it even harder than she does, and she said these words:  "I have so much."

Laughter is fine stuff.

But gratitude is the best medicine.  I am in awe of her, she is one of the finest people I know - and STILL very much in my prayers.  And she still feels blessed.

Preying and Hoping - the Difference

When I wrote The Uncensored Post, it had been my intention to follow up pretty quickly with a post about men which would put the negativity and outrage into better perspective, but time and inspiration have gone against my doing so to this point.  For that, my apologies, but now is the time.

Though a feminist and avowedly, publicly so, I have never fit into that half-delirious stereotype so many men *and* women fear, who refuse the label for themselves, or outright revile it for everyone.  I'm not a humorless, man-hating creature, out to set traps so I can consider men to be failures in one context or another.  Indeed, I never quite got over the eager proneness of my innocence, to indulge in crushes, and I was every bit as boy-crazy as any other kid when I was one.  It's just that my ability to find objects to crush on was refines with age, and my ability, too, to stick a landing so to speak - to stick with *one* crush (permanently) - reached an apex and hasn't fallen back down.  It's something of a privilege (and relief) of age.

Fun fact:  my very first crush of any kind, before I even had any idea of romantic interest, was Muhammad Ali.  I was about four or five - and he was right:  he was beautiful.

So on to the point, then.

Just now, in the grocery store (oddly enough - given how I was going on about grocery stores in that first post), I was approached by a guy.  (I say guy rather than man because, as young as he was, I feel almost squicky referring to him as fully mature, because I feel a certain need to repel myself from any hint of cougar-dom.)  He asked me what gym I work out at (I was wearing a knit cami and my "dog-walking" pants).  I laughed I'd been playing with my dog, and moved easily on.

The key to this encounter:  he let me move on, no further interest shown, no question, not even a backward glance.  It was fairly clear he was gauging his own possible level of attraction, but when the message came that there was not prospect, he stopped completely.  Passed him again a few minutes later, and zero "signals" of any kind.

The phrase men need to remember:  NO HARM/NO FOUL.  Now, most of us can live with a guy taking a shot.  As human beings, we'd never procreate at all, if  nobody approached anybody else, ever.  If there were no physical attraction.  It is vital to our humanity to make connections where none existed before.  The only problem is when there is no availability but that is ignored.

Persistence is a virtue - but a woman has an absolute, hermetic right to refuse and even to rebuff overtures.  So do men - and, in full disclosure, I have been rejected myself in making an approach.  Since I was eighteen (I remember the first time), I have been the one who started an approach which resulted in a relationship.  I get hit on, sure - but for pretty much all the significant relationships of my life, I initiated first contact.  That boy I watched Tootsie with.  The one I was sure I'd marry, senior year.  Beloved Ex.  That one with the metrosexual pants, whom a few folks were sure was gay (he was not).  Mr. X, in fact, has told me a hundred times he never would have crossed that room when I smiled at him, because he was sure I must be with somebody.  Shameless flirting is not enough.  So I just get pointblank.  There have been occasions it didn't work for me.  But I've been pretty lucky.

When someone says, though, "I have a girlfriend" or makes some demurring remark - I do precisely what I would expect and require any man to do in kind:  I let the heck go and either depart completely or change the subject.  Flatly.  The idea of pushing through a show of not being wanted is bewildering to me.

But our culture, unfortunately, has this "hard to get" practice, which renders BS in a man's mind any show of reluctance from a woman to his desires.  Even worse, there are women who actually *do* play hard to get.  (I don't mean to presuppose all games are terrible and must be forgone - but this one has created more problems than it can possibly be worth, and there are safer ways to tease someone you wish to keep on a hook; so "worse", above, isn't precisely a moral judgment ... even if I do find that dynamic personally worthless.)  So we've institutionalized the idea that "no" doesn't mean no, and that subtler signals, lord help us, might only be gaming cues.

I am again fortunate in that it is not typical for me to be outright misunderstood by anyone exhibiting interest.  In the past, I have indulged in ostentatious Ice-Queenery to get a point across, and when truly pressed, I've been able to provide acrobatically nimble rejections which leave no doubt and no room for further pressing.

Not all women are fortunate enough to have confidence enough that they're allowed to say no, never mind blessed with a pair of parents who taught them by unwitting but unremitting example just how to do it effectively.  I was given, and understood, boundaries from the earliest age.  It was also demonstrated to me in no uncertain terms that as a human being - as a girl - I had boundaries of my own, which were to be defended.  To some extent, this was a religious imperative imposed on a virgin daughter - but it was also the simple worth and value with which I was treated from the moment of my birth.  I was worth something, and nobody had a right to the core of me in any way, without my consent.  Ever.

Through my life, I have found men who did not plough over that worth, but who admired and valued it too.  That boy, that first love, that Beloved Ex - and Mr. X.  All of them responded to my sense of self with instinctive support, not some adversarial imposition of *their* sense of self as if it were an opposing force.

Not one of these men was in the slightest an emasculated nor submissive person.  As I expect not to be halved nor dominated, I do not reduce nor dominate either.  Beloved Ex and Mr. X, to be sure, are almost stereotypically manly - in all the good ways.  BEx has the warmth and comfort in his own skin I associate with manliness - with, indeed, the very model of manhood in my life, my own dad.  Who, himself, was no milquetoast.  He was passionately in love with my mom from the moment he found her, and was never anything less nor the worse for it.

No man has ever been diminished by emotional commitment to his partner.  Indeed, the measure of a real man (and a real woman) is the person who can give themselves completely and not see it as submission, as any negation of self.  To give fearlessly.

And I like:  real men.

I like them a very great deal indeed.



Edited to add that, ironically, this episode of Voyager happened to come up on my queue just after this post was finished.  Somewhere between Fatal Attraction and Trek, we have another character violating a crew member.  At least it wasn't Deanna getting raped again this time.  Voyager has a way of inverting the explorations of human relationships done on some of the other series.

Thanksgiving

Penelope, lying in the sun, chewing on her own foreleg.

Gossamer in the kitchen, lurking at the stuffing I can't even fit in the fridge.

I have been watching TOS this morning - a nice counterbalancing of "Balance of Terror" and "Shore Leave" - both great episodes, and very nicely different from one another.

It's a dazzlingly lovely day outside, and Pen and I had our walk earlier and practiced some "down" after she was a good girl outside.

My neighbor friend and I will eat in a couple hours and some change, and the dog show will commence recording on the DVR in just a few minutes so we can enjoy that.

Penny is gleaming in the sun, her expression curious and alert, her ears trembling slightly, alert above her head.

House is beautiful and cozy, and the turkey breast will go in shortly.  Two big stuffings (I wasn't sure how many people were going to be here!) and a spicy sweeter-tater-smash to follow it later.  I'm following the vintage Trek with some DS9 (I suppose that's vintage, too, by now ... !) - "Meridian", an episode I don't mind but can easily leave on while I putter around the house not glued to the tube.  It does have the very great advantage of an appearance by Jeffrey Combs, whom I adore to bits in all his insinuating, engaging roles, in one of the most hilarious subplots (well, a fine subplot with an EXCELLENT punchline anyway) DS9 ever did.  I just love Combs' voice, and loved seeing him as an Andorian too, when he showed up on "Enterprise" farther down the line.  (Huh - and I see he also appeared in Steve Martin's "Man With Two Brains", for which I own the DVD - will need to be re-watching that on the double!  It also features Cromwell, whose footprints in the Trekverse may be fewer, but whose position is inestimable, after "First Contact"!)

Aw, and now Gossy is having a sun-kissed little bath on the chaise, while Penelope sits with her chin on the side of the cushion, watching while the little guy licks and stretches.  Her little fu-manchu whiskers on the top of her nose are shiny in the light.  How perfectly, disgustingly cute.

Pet Mood

It is almost astounding the extent to which the dog's house training has affected my mood.  It may be the other issues summer and onward have left mouldering on my plate, and one will continue to loom over me for some time to come, but the literal and figurative tone and position of my life over the past month or two has been "in the toilet" - as, indeed, since adopting Penelope five and a half weeks ago, the house has become.

Of course, I'm not immune to the romantic ideas we're all prone to, and "getting a new dog" was supposed to be a time of unmixed joy perhaps, even as realistic as I try to be about things most of the time.  Or, at least, if the joy had some frustrations mixed in - they were supposed to be *dwarfed* by the extent of gooey love I was supposed to be falling-in with My New Dog.  Frankly, it was rather like that with Gossamer - and it's no coincidence I adopted him two days after a literal car accident - and it's no accident, at that, the two adoptions were timed as they were, with an all-but-unadmitted desire to pack on a sense of blessings and excitement at a time otherwise marred by the loss of my Sweet Siddy La, the accident, the health issues, the overwhelming awareness of being without a partner, the damned inconvenient fallout of life itself.

So the gap between the foster mom's statement that she was "almost there" with house training and the reality, that she could scarcely be persuaded that outdoors even represented an opportunity for eliminating her extras at all ... was, at first, incredibly dismaying.

I've tried to focus on her whip-smart intelligence, though, and her extremely clear desire to please me as her alpha dog.  She learned peeing outdoors fairly well, but the poop issue was beginning, even only last week, to seem to be a vanishing goal I would never reach, with her.  I despaired of learning, myself, how to speak Puppy well enough to get her to understand.

When it became clear she "got" that mom wants no poop in the house, oddly enough, I was gratified.  Even though, at first, her method to meet this goal was ... eating the poop.

Yeah, I know.  But she is a dog, people, and dogs exist outside the human penchant for getting squicked.  I look at animal behavior in my home not as a shocking joke or offense, but as ANIMAL behavior coming from an ANIMAL - and I never forget that I too am an animal, when it comes down to it.

As a wise person I'm fortunate to be acquainted with online put it:  "you speak puppy with such an accent she can't understand you."  Well put, that, and it's not about HER understanding ME - it's about ME making myself coherent to HER.  The mountain goes to Mohammad, when the mountain is made of poop and it's continually rebuilt in the dining room.  (Ugh.)

So she saw what the goal was, and - like a puppy - she dealt with it in a fairly nervous manner which a human observer might find ineffective and nasty, but (I had to focus on this) *she dealt with it*.  That and a hundred other things have shown me - this dog is not stupid.  She is, in fact, probably the smartest dog I've ever had - AND she is the youngest I personally have had responsibility for, of course, which is all to the good - because, untrained as she is, she is *untrained* - so I have a lot of opportunity for communicating with a fresh, nimble, and eager-to-please mind here.

Depressed I may have been, focusing on this to the exclusion of the actual ultimate causes (ahh, humanity - easily squicked, and so eager to glom onto proximate causes rather than ultimate solutions), I've been paying attention, and the saving grace has been not quitting on one strategy.  My accent is bad, but I can modulate my puppy-speak, where Penelope can't really modulate what she's able to "hear".

So after two foolish walks, where she did go poo outside, and I was slathering on all the "GOOD GIRL, GO POOP **OUTSIDE**!!!" I could, I realized - duh - what she needs is immediate reward, and a more potent one than the verbal.  Bring a damn Milk Bone along on the walk, stupid.

She'd HEARD the "good girl, go poop OUTSIDE!" speech, to be sure.  She likes verbal praise.

But damn if the remediation hasn't been pretty much instantaneous, clockwork-schedulable (!!), and almost entirely reformed as long as I keep to the proper behavior.

Penelope finally got me trained.

It's stupid this should make me so happy, but holy hell several days now of NOT fearing the moment I smell dung in my dining room (the entire house, that is) is better than Zoloft, for so MUCH of my general outlook.  I'm actually performing better already at work, seriously.

It all comes down to communication.  And I finally got it right, at last.

Says little Miss PeNED-opy:  "I won't poo in the house if you remember WHEN to walk me and don't forget the Milk Bones - m'kay?"

And, dear readers, Diane is listening ...