I'M A BULLY

I'm going to eat this.

I’m walking towards to the door to my building with a running commentary going in my head.

“I’m tired.”

“You’re taking the stairs.”

“But I’m tired and there’s a twinge in my low back.”

“You’re taking the stairs, all four flights of them.”

“I’m really not feeling it this morning.”

“You’re taking the stairs, you fat, lazy stupid bitch. You’re marching those feet up all of the stairs because you missed gym time yesterday and you are a fatty fatty worthless bitch.”

I walk up all four flights of stairs to my office. I do it because I’ve guilted myself into doing it. Even though I had to use ugly language to do so. It is two sides of a coin. On one side, I’ve guilted myself into doing something healthy. On the other side, I’m a mean bully who doesn’t think much of herself.

One of my coworkers started a conversation about guilt the other day. He started by asking “is guilt a wasted emotion?” Two men and two women were in on this conversation. Both men agreed that guilt was wasted, that it was an emotion that made them get worked up over things that did not matter. Both women (one of them me) said that guilt was a motivator and therefore not a wasted emotion. Now, I will be the first to admit that my data here is not statistically relevant, but I have a strong feeling that if I expanded this poll we would see that most women see guilt as a motivator. Because guilt has been a tool used to control or motivate women for centuries. Having sex. Not having sex. Having babies. Not having babies. Having a career. Not having a career. Eating that donut. Not eating that donut. Pulling off a piece of fruit from that knowledge tree and taking a big ole bite. Not taking advice from snakes.

Raise your hand if you have lost track of the number of times you were guilted into doing something you didn’t really want to do.

If you love me, you’ll….

I see my coworker’s point. I also allow guilt to work me up into a tight stress ball over something I have no control over. I mean, I can try really hard to tell you that I no longer feel guilty about Chris’s death, but honestly I’m not sure that will ever happen. At least that guilt no longer keeps me up at nights (sort of, mostly) and that is why I totally get the wasted emotion argument. But I will say that a good portion of my daily life is centered around the guilt as a motivator idea. The guilt motivator, even though it is getting me to do something good for me, is at times very ugly. The things I tell myself out of guilt are so awful and uses language I would never tolerate coming out of anyone’s mouth. It is the kind of language that if I heard it being spoken to another person, I would interject and tell that person to shut it. I’m going to eat that donut but then I’m going to spend an extra thirty minutes on the treadmill. If I even for a moment think about not doing the extra time, that awful language picks up inside my head and the next thing I know I’m doing extra extra time on the treadmill.

Some days, guilt is the only reason I get out of bed in the mornings.

I know it doesn’t have to be this way. I know there are better methods of motivation. It’s just that this form of motivation has been with me for a really long time. It’s what I know. It’s habit. It is all that is hard to break. If I wouldn’t let a person talk to someone else that way, why on earth do I talk to myself that way. Do you put question marks at the end of rhetorical questions? Yes, I know I could google that but I don’t really care.

If I love me, I’ll…

What if I just ate the fucking donut; no strings attached?

MY LEFT FOOT

Foot Saga continues. Every thing is fine. Doc said to just keep it wrapped for a bit.

Years and years ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I thought I wanted to be a doctor of medicine. I specify ‘of medicine’ here because you can be a doctor in just about anything. My friend Jeff has his PhD in Chemistry. When his dad was in the hospital, he introduced Jeff to his doctor as “his son Jeff. He’s a doctor.” This is something my dad would have totally done to me if I had continued my education. As it was, Dad treated me like a nurse practitioner, asking me all kinds of “what do you think this is on my arm?” kind of questions. The word ‘science’ is a very giant umbrella term that is confusing to some people. Any way…at one point I did think that I might end up in the medical field. That’s because this what all of my teachers and adults told me to do.

“Oh! You like science!?! You should be a physician.”

“You’ll make loads of money!”

I almost fell for it. I scored well on the MCAT.

If you ask me, one too many children were told to be medical doctors when they grew up because they would make a lot of money. I am so glad I recognized that I wanted nothing to do with potentially causing harm to another human before I waisted all of that time and money on medical school. I mean…I sometimes struggle with teaching yoga because I’m afraid I’m going to break a student. Despite my extensive knowledge in basic anatomy and molecular biology, I cannot read an X-ray of my own body. Case in point, when my GP called me on Monday to tell me my ankle was fractured, I saw that line across my medial malleolus and assumed that was the fracture she was talking about. The good news is that line is not a fracture. Which makes sense because that is not where my ankle hurts at all. The fracture is actually on the lateral malleolus and by fracture, we’re talking about a teeny tiny sliver of bone that was pulled off the tibia by ligaments when I injured my foot. The orthopedic doctor said that if I had come in two days after falling in the hole, he would have put me in a boot. Since it has been almost a month, it doesn’t really matter. He said to just keep it wrapped for a while. Take some Ibuprofen (fun fact: I say “I B profen” when I talk about Ibuprofen because I’m pretty sure that is how I heard it being pronounced for my entire life. My parents are from the south).

Any time I started talking about any part of this story to any one, I became filled with rage. Not the part where the orthopedic doctor told me to keep on keeping on. That’s great. But the part leading up to my orthopedics visit made me want to explode. My appointment with the GP was for 3:00 PM on Friday. I arrived fifteen minutes early. I waited in line at the reception desk for fifteen minutes. After checking in, I waited in the waiting room for an hour. Then I sat in the exam room for another thirty minutes before being sent to X-Ray. X-rays took another hour and I was the only person sitting in the waiting room. It all felt like a bit too much for an ankle that didn’t really hurt all that bad, an ankle I was still walking around on without a limp. Also, the referred orthopedic doctor couldn’t see me until at least sometime next week. The very idea of being hobbled with a boot sent me over the edge. I already feel like a fat cow. I’ve gotten on a doctor’s scale twice in the last three days and every time has been unpleasant. Now I was about to be put into a position where being active was going to be very difficult.

And I think that reason right there was the main source of my rage and frustration.

I listened to a meditation app focused on releasing frustration and anger while finishing up my yoga practice on Monday. The first thing the voice leading the meditation said was to not punish or shame yourself for your frustrations and anger, but look for the source of it. The source of my anger and frustration was not from the hours I sat around waiting to see a doctor or the inadequate healthcare. Though all of that is well worth some wrath. The source of my frustration and anger was from a loss of activity. More accurately, a loss of choice to be active. And you know what? I really like that part about not punishing or shaming myself for being frustrated over a loss of choice because anger and frustration are valid feelings and I allowed myself to be angry over all of it. I yelled and I vented and I declared it all to be so stupid. Then I took some deep breaths and started thinking of ways to move around with a boot on my foot. I started to plan out how to teach a yoga class with a boot on my foot. I mentally practiced what it was going to be like to ride a scooter with a boot on my foot. I thought about solutions for the actual source of my anger.

And in the end, everything turned out to be just fine.

Just for the record, this means that I did 108 Sun Salutations with a fractured ankle. Like a Boss!

HUNGER STRIKE AND BROKEN BONES

Actually...that's a fracture. I can't even play a doctor on TV.

We are not as particular about the cat food we buy for the cat as we are with the dog food. The cat eats other animals. He roams the neighborhood. He’s a wild animal. He does what he wants. We usually just buy him the same brand of stuff we get for Josephine because they sell it all at Waldo Grain. That’s where we buy our chicken food, so it’s one stop shopping for all of the animals. Plus, it is the closest place that sells our chicken food and it is a tiny Mom & Pop kind of place. We want them to stay open. Occasionally though, the cat runs low on food and one of us will pick up a bag of whatever to tide him over until we can get to Waldo Grain. Last time this happened, Michael picked up a bag of cat food from Whole Foods. Nice, fancy, healthy cat food.

The cat refused to eat it.

Michael then picked up a bag of crappy cat food.

The cat takes a few bites and then walks away.

It’s been three weeks since I have put food in his bowl. His bowl is full of food and he comes in daily with his ‘meow, meow, meow, my bowl is empty’ routine. He’s starting to look skinny, but not a good skinny. Finally, I dumped out the bowl of old food and replaced it with his usual food from the feed store. I am happy to report that our dumb cat who ate an entire mouse the other day (I mean the whole damn thing) is now eating his food. Hallelujah!

Right around the time Albus decided to go on his hunger strike, I fell in a hole in the backyard and twisted my ankle. I might have mentioned it in a previous post. Last Saturday, after a day of scooter riding, Michael looked over at my ankle and was all “WHY IS YOUR ANKLE SO SWOLLEN!?!?!” Then he made me make a doctor’s appointment. X-rays were taken. The X-ray tech let me look at the pictures. I couldn’t see anything wrong (because I’m not a doctor) and declared myself totally fine.

I am not totally fine.

My doctor called me this morning to tell me that I have a fracture in my medial malleolus. She then referred me to orthopedics, but they can’t get me in until the 25th. That’s the day before we leave for Boston for conference/vacation. So…I’m just walking around with a broken ankle all this time, still doing what I do. Teaching yoga. Spending time on the elliptical or bike. Standing at my desk. Taking walks. You know, the OPPOSITE of resting. People keep asking me about pain and I shrug and say “it doesn’t really hurt.” Because it doesn’t. It feels like a sore muscle on the left side of my ankle. It does not hurt to walk. When the doctor called and told me about the fracture, I became furious. When I scheduled my appointment with the orthopedic doctor and they couldn’t see me for almost another two weeks, I burst into flames of rage. A broken bone needs about six weeks to heal. I’ve been walking around on it for three weeks. It’s two more weeks until the orthopedic doctor sees me. That’s five weeks.

I don’t even see the point in going.

I’ve got an ace bandage and I know how to use it.

THE IRRITATION OF IT ALL

Storm damage

It’s sometime after lunch and I decide that I need a cup of tea. I think I might as well do a loop outside on my way to get said tea. Get up, move my body around after a few hours of staring at a computer screen exporting data. There is a small parking area on the side of the building and I as reach the area, a man steps out of his Lexus and approaches me. He’s maybe late forties, early fifties, business suit type. He’s holding a sticky note with a name of a building and an address written on it. He asks me if this is the B building. I kindly shake my head and reply “No…this is the S Institute. I think you’re looking for a building across the street.” The man then holds the sticky note out and points. He says “But, the address says it is on Rockhill Road.” It was on the tip of my tongue to say something about how there’s two sides to a road when one of our security guards walks up and takes over.

I step back and continue on my way, but the more I think about it the more irritated I become. I mean, I can see the building the man was looking for right across the street. It has the name of the building written across it in big letters, for gosh sakes. I couldn’t help but believe his doubt in my ability to give him the correct directions had something to do with my gender. He didn’t question our male security guard when he also told the man the building he was looking for was right across the street. Part of me wants to give the man the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he just needed a second opinion. But another part of me is pissed off and sweary over the whole thing. I’ve put this man into the pile of older white privileged males that I’ve been mentally collecting to be pushed over a cliff with a bulldozer. That pile grows larger by the day. It includes all of those old white dudes who vote and make decisions regarding women’s healthcare or think they can grab a woman and do whatever he wants with her.

I’m going to need a bigger bulldozer.

There is another side of this white male privilege that I have been struggling with lately. It is not necessarily a story I can write here, at least not the details of it. It has to do with someone using their privilege to gain access to resources for cancer treatments for a family member that not everyone would have access too. I like this person. I respect this person, but every time he starts talking about next steps and details of it all, I have to get up and leave the room. My emotions range from anger to guilt to shame and doubt. I wonder if I had known to ask for this resource if it would have been available to me. Then I feel stupid that I didn’t even think to ask in the first place. A little bit of rage and jealously settles in because I know that his access to this resource is only possible through his privilege and that if I had asked for it for myself, I would have been told the same thing every doctor told us.

There’s nothing we can do.

Inevitably, after the times I have to leave the room, I end up standing in my favorite bathroom stall, gasping in air between sobs. I stand there, clutching the top of the door, trying to regain control. I tell myself that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. This man is just prolonging the outcome. That’s all I would have been doing. Prolonging Chris’s illness. When I think of it this way, it sounds cruel in my ears. There’s no way I would have prolonged Chris’s suffering. This man is just using his privilege to give his family some hope and I can’t fault him for that. Hope is nice. Also, this man is clueless and naive about his white male privilege. It doesn’t even dawn on him how fortunate he is to have access to this kind of hope. In his world, any one could do what he’s doing. I soothe myself a little bit by letting myself feel sorry for him and his naivety.

But I don’t for a moment forgive him for it.

I pull myself together and tell myself that I am not one of those people. I’m not one of those people who think that if I don’t have something, you can’t have it. I let myself be the naive one for a change and believe that after his experience, maybe he will find a way to share this resource with others. He will find a way for more people to benefit from this. Maybe it’s my job to remind him of this, teach him to use his privilege to help others.

I bet I could do it in such a way that he’d even think it was his own idea.

DAY 9: EDWARD SHARPE AND THE MAGNETIC ZEROS, ALBUM OF THE SAME NAME

Star seeds

I’ve almost been dreading writing about this album for a couple of reasons. My feelings are complicated and hard to put into words. One day, a long time ago, Amy introduced Chris and I to this band and then a few weeks after that, Home started playing on all of the radio stations. Amy is a trendsetter. We’d sing along as we travelled down the road and play the album Up From Below on loop. The band released Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros the year after Chris died. The first song I heard off of it was Better Days.

Try to remember, that you can’t forget
Down with history, up with your head
For sweet tomorrow, she never fell from grace
We might still know sorrow but we got better days

That song along with Life is Hard falls right in place with Chris’s (and mine) life philosophy and because of that, this album became so important to me.

This is also the same year I met Michael.

Life is it, life is it, it's where it's at
It's getting skinny, getting fat
It's falling deep into a love,
It's getting crushed just like about
Life there's no love, its getting beat into the ground

I had already purchased my ticket and camping pass for the Gentlemen of Roads Tour when Michael and I met. I was so excited for this concert because Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros were part of the line up and Talaura was coming down. When I told Michael about it, he wanted to come along too. He bought a ticket and we travelled to Guthrie. On our way to Guthrie I told Michael about this band. I said “I need you to pay attention and really listen to this band. This is important to me.” He said “okay.”

And then he didn’t pay attention or listen to the band.

That was the first time I realized that things that are important to me, won’t always be important to him. That realization was a bit of a blow to my little ego. Sometimes that realization is still a little bit hard to swallow only because sometimes, in a self indulgent way, I think that what I find important he should also find equally important. Because that is what I was used to. This is a different relationship. Michael and I don’t listen to the same kinds of music. We don’t read the same kinds of books. We don’t always agree on what to watch on the television. We find common ground. When I ask Alexa to play music in the mornings, I am sure to pick an artist that I think Michael will also enjoy even if he doesn’t know the artist. We may not read the same kinds of books, but we talk to each other about the stuff we’re reading. We find stuff on the television that we both want to watch. Compromise. That’s how we are making this work.

I feel the love, I feel the love, I feel the power
It's getting weirder by the hour
The world is fucked up but I want to stay
I feel the love, I feel the love, I feel the power

This album is the gospel music in my metaphorical church. It is a church that teaches the lessons of loving kindness and dancing in the streets. It is a church that reminds it’s congregation that life is fucking hard as fuck, so celebrate dammit! We all have sorrow and sadness, but there are better days ahead. It is the bitter, wonderful sweetness of living; this mixture of sorrow and joy.

I told you my feelings were complicated.

DAY 8: NATALIE MERCHANT, LEAVE YOUR SUPPER/LEAVE YOUR SLEEP

Reach

Just before Natalie Merchant released Leave Your Sleep, she did a TED talk about the making of the album. She took poems about childhood from the 19th and 20th century and adapted them to music. The way Natalie spins these poems into tunes is at time sad and melancholy and silly and joyful. The first song from the album, Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience, moved me to tears and I can clearly see the girl in pink riding the white horse as she sings Equestrienne. I imagine that avocado Brussels sprout ice-cream from Bleezer’s Ice-Cream has the most awful smell. The whole album is like the up and down of a carousel horse. Her Ted Talk on the two disc album is one my favorite Ted Talks. It’s a fascinating tale of how she put music to these poems and why she chose this poem or that poem, but it is all sweet because you can tell Natalie Merchant is nervous. You can hear a slight tremor and breathiness in her voice as she talks. She seems to hesitate ever so slightly as she moves around on the stage. Her voice is clear when she’s singing, but when she starts discussing the poem and the process, her demeanor changes. She seems less sure of herself.

I always had this idea of who Natalie Merchant is as a person because of her music. She left the 10,000 Maniacs because she wanted complete control over her music and she was tired of being the only girl in the band. My impression of her paints a strong, independent force of nature. I have seen Natalie Merchant in concert. I think it was the Ophelia tour. She is everything you’d hope for when going to a concert. She sounds amazing, she’s engaging and joyful to watch on stage. Most people left at the end of the concert before she could come out for the encore. Those of us who stayed, moved up to the front of the stage and when Natalie came back out on stage she made a point to great every one us. She shook hands as she moved through our small crowd and sang four more songs. I thought for a moment she was going to hug each and every one of us. The whole experience was so personal and intimate and beautiful. So years later, when I saw her TED Talk, I was surprised by her nervousness.

That’s the main reason why I chose this album as one of my top ten. Because it made her nervous to talk about it.

She had made this album that is different and unique. It is an album of vulnerability. She made herself vulnerable and in doing so, I saw this woman differently. She was proof that you can have all this talent and creativity, but still be a little fearful of what others might think of your art. As she talks, there is something in her voice that says “please like this.” which is something we all want. When you put your heart and soul into your work and then set it out there for all to see, we all want it to be met with admiration. The talk and the album moved Natalie Merchant from status of another musician I wanted to stalk as a groupie to an artist that I whole heartedly admire.

Because we’re the same.

DAY 7: THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS

Shadow selfie

Look, I could have plucked any and all of David Bowie’s albums for this album challenge. In forcing myself to narrow it down, I chose this one because I’m pretty sure this album was my first exposure to David Bowie. At some point while riding around in the back of Randy and Katrina’s van, while staring at the road through the rusted out hole in the floor in the back, Starman, Suffragette City and Lady Stardust floated into my ears. Good Gawd, I miss that raggedy old van and how we’d play a game of Spot and Identify the Road Carcass by sitting around that rusted out hole. Every once in a while, Katrina would look back to check on us and then yell “Scooch back from the hole! You’re too close!” We’d wiggle our little cross legged bodies back and widen our circle around the hole.

I am the kind of music listener who feels like the sound of the music is just as important as the lyrics. In fact, sometimes, the lyrics can be secondary and act as an enhancer to the sound. This is probably because off-key and out of tune notes cause me physical pain. Music makes me feel things inside my body. If the music is good, the feelings are good. I dragged Michael to a Gong Bath once. That’s where you lay on the floor in a dark room while someone plays a series of gongs. You can feel the sound vibrating through the floor. At times, the experience was very relaxing. Michael started snoring at one point. But then the drumming on the gongs grew louder and more intense. I felt my whole body tense up and my breathing became shallow. Tears leaked out my eyes. I was just about to get up and leave when they finally stopped and I breathed a sigh of deep relief. The sound was too much for my body to feel.

David Bowie’s music is enhanced by his lyrics. His music makes me feel, but his lyrics are significant. They are important.

Stone love, she kneels before the grave
A brave son, who gave his life
To save the slogans
That hovers between the headstone and her eyes
For they penetrate her grieving

This country has been involved in war since 2001. Those lyrics from Soul Love are just as relevant today as they were when Bowie recorded this song in 1972. I cannot listen to the beginning of that song without seeing my sister-in-laws face. The other night, Terry practically quoted Rock n Roll Suicide to me.

Oh no, love, you're not alone
You're watching yourself, but you're too unfair
You got your head all tangled up, but if I could only make you care
Oh no, love, you're not alone

David Bowie sang to us songs of self love before we even knew we needed them. He used sound to take us on imaginary journeys into space. Bands like the Flaming Lips and Arcade Fire would not exist as we know them now without the influence of David Bowie. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars became the base line for the music I would gravitate to and seek out.

It is the music I want when I just want to lay on the floor and listen to the sounds and feel the vibrations.

DAY 6: NEKO CASE & HER BOYFRIENDS, FURNACE ROOM LULLABY

Cow

My Dad was a country music listener. When I say ‘country music’, I’m talking about the old time country music. Grand Ole Opry country. Roy Rogers and Dale Evens country. Saturday nights were for Mom’s homemade pizza and Hee-Haw. The day he found the classic country radio station on Sirius XM, he called me to tell me all about it because he was overjoyed that this station existed. Once, well before we knew he was sick, I took Dad to see Riders in the Sky at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. You might recognize their voices from Toy Story 2 where they performed “Woody’s Round-up”. Dad was so happy to be at this concert that it leaked out of his eyes. He was the one that gave me my appreciation for good country music. He taught me all about Patsy and Loretta and Johnny and Willie. He introduced me to Minnie Pearl and cowboy campfire songs. I had an appreciation for Dad’s music, but I did not care to listen to it. It just wasn’t my go-to choice of music, particularly in my youth. There’s nothing more embarrassing or annoying than your parents’ music when you are that age.

I came across Furnace Room Lullaby the year Chris died. It’s an album of Neko Case singing twangy country songs, each one resonating in some way with my state of mind. Every word in South Dakota Way could have been written by me in the days after Chris’s passing. I felt all the aching truth of grief in that song. Then I had to have Hooper put down and Set Out Running moved to the top of my anthem list.

And if I knew heartbreak was coming, I would've set out running. Past the city houses
And the ditches on the highway.

This album stuck with me as I entered the crazy world of online dating (Guided by Wire) and into the early days of my relationship with Michael (Twist the Knife). And I am always in the Mood to Burn Bridges.

So if you have moral advice, I suggest you just tuck it all away

This album didn’t just open me up to all things Neko Case, it opened my ears to that music my Dad loved so much. My appreciation for that genre has moved beyond mere appreciation. I now tuck a few songs into a playlist and seek out new artists with that old sound, artists like Margo Price and Yola and even Kacey Musgraves. I listen to this music and I think about my Dad’s western style shirts with the pearl snaps and his bolo ties. I think about how Dad had cowboy boots that he called “work boots” and a fancy pair of cowboy boots that he called his “dress boots”. The same was true for his cowboy hats. He had one for riding his tractor and one for fancy occasions. He had a way of getting as close as he could to things he wanted to do in life. He wanted to be a pilot and when he failed the physical to become one, he became an airplane mechanic. Those cowboy clothes and his music and his red tractor were Dad’s way of being the cowboy.

And I feel like I finally understand that.

RETURN

There's a story here.

We’d planned to take a bunch of stuff out to Michael’s Mom’s for the neighborhood garage sale on Saturday. The two of us spent the week sorting through the remaining collectables in the basement. Michael sorted through boxes and boxes of baseball cards. But when Friday morning rolled around, the weather report was predicting rain for all of Saturday. Michael called his Mom and cancelled. He went ahead and did the grocery shopping on his way home from work on Friday. So Saturday turned into one of those days where we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves. Saturday was our usual day for errands and now we had no errands to run.

We went and got pedicures.

We headed over to the Westside neighborhood for lunch at a place we’d never been to before. Then we dashed across the street to a little shop selling Kansas City made t-shirts and antique jewelry. From there, we made our way over to the crepe place for dessert and ran into Kelli and her Groove Crew. As we sat, sharing a dessert crepe, we discussed what to do next. I said “why don’t we go down to the River Market Antique?” We hadn’t been down there in ages. In fact, I’m pretty sure I hadn’t been back there since the last time Michael took me there about six years ago. Michael agreed that four stories of antique perusing was a great way to spend a rainy Saturday.

Michael doesn’t remember this, but this is where he took me at the end of our second date. The night before, we had had dinner at nice little farm to table place and then ice cream in Westport. Afterward, Michael took me to the observatory that sits on top of the Physics building at UMKC. He took me to see the stars. Then we laid on a blanket in my backyard, drinking wine and talking until two in the morning. He stayed the night and the next morning, he followed me around on my errands. Then he took me to River Market. That’s where I was when Chad called me to ask how my date with Michael had gone. I remember pulling the phone away from my ear as he laughed after I said “we’re still on the date.” Michael bought a giant wall map that day and I left with two prints, one a map of New York City and the other a map of the U.S. Those prints are framed and hanging in my bedroom. I sometimes look for my favorite spots in New York City and trace the length of Broadway as far up as I can. The map stops before I can get to Talaura’s house.

There is a booth at the antique market filled with bins of things like name patches pulled from uniform shirts and California Raisin figures. One bin is filled with scrabble letters and another filled with random game pieces. For a minute, I got lost going through the bin of name patches. I found a ‘Mike’ and a ‘Randy’ and a ‘Stephanie’. I put them all back in the bin and moved on but not before noticing that someone had taken game pieces and spelled out ‘2nd DATE’ and left it on a shelf in the booth. I smiled and thought briefly that maybe Michael had left that there. I asked him about it later and he confessed to not remembering that we’d gone to the River Market Antique that time. The message had been left by someone else. Someone on their second date. I guess rummaging around through booths of antiques and collectibles is a second date kind of thing to do.

I hope their second date was nice.

DAY 5: BELLY, STAR

Instagram post by Cindy Maddera * May 15, 2019 at 4:32pm UTC

The truth is, I could write and write about albums that influenced me or that are linked to my memories. Soundtracks to life. Chris and I would spend hours listening to one CD on repeat. A few months would go by before we’d change it and move onto something new and different. I think there was a good solid three months where we listened to the soundtrack to Chess. I sang along with Elaine Page with a dream of maybe, just maybe, getting the chance to play the part of Florence. Chris and I would discuss set designs and lighting. We’d break down the production of this musical as if we were actually going to be a part of putting it all together for the public. Other times, we’d lay spooning while listening to Les Miserables, weeping together at the beautiful sadness of it all.

For a while we were obsessed with Mercury Falling, an album released by Sting our junior year in college. Our copy of In My Tribe by the Ten Thousand Maniacs was the rare copy that included their remake of Cat Stevens’ Peace Train and Chris and I both would ooh-awe-ee with Natalie as we drove down country lanes. We were constantly latching on to musical artists. While Chris was introducing me to artists like Pink Floyd, I was introducing him to the Flaming Lips. I would discover a new artist and write it down on a sticky note for Chris to find. Months later he’d start playing a CD and say “hey, I found this new band I thought you’d like.” I’d punch him the arm and tell him that I pointed that band out to him months ago. Then we’d laugh. Chris was the one to introduce me to Belly. He had their album, Star. I ended up finding every one of their albums in the used CD bin at Hasting’s. But Chris just didn’t give me this band, he gave me a key.

Chris and Traci were best friends. Best. Friends. I came along and I was an outsider. Though Traci never ever treated me like an outsider, I still felt like I was intruding on that relationship. I doubt to this day that Traci had any idea how intimidated I was by her. I thought she was so cool. I still think that. Her relationship with Chris was so important and vital for the two of them. I didn’t want to mess it up. I didn’t want to be the girlfriend that Chris would bring over that would make Traci roll her eyes in annoyance. Knowing and loving all the songs from that band was my in with Traci. I remember one time the four of us, Chris, me, Traci and her boyfriend Chris (now husband), drove to Dallas for a concert. Traci and I were in the backseat and the guys were in the front, flipping through radio stations. The radio tuned into a station that was playing Feed the Tree by Belly. Traci and I screamed from the back seat “LEAVE IT THERE!” and then proceeded to sing along and bounce around in the backseat of the car. Traci would end up being my concert buddy for concerts when Chris wasn’t interested in going. Belly was the band that started that.

At least it was for me.

DAY 4: DORIS DAY AND HOWARD KEEL, CALAMITY JANE

Day four of the album challenge coincided with the passing of Doris Day at the age of 97. I was bound to pick something by Doris Day and Calamity Jane trumped the soundtrack to Please Don’t Eat the Daisies. It was a close call. I went with Calamity Jane because it has one of my favorite actresses playing one of my favorite Historical women in a musical. It’s a trifecta of greatness.

In the summer, you're the winter, In the finger, you're the splinter. In the banquet, you're the stew, Say, I c'n do without you!

I mean, seriously.

My mom was the person to introduce me to the wonderful world of musicals. I don’t know if it was PBS or some other random channel, but Saturday and Sunday afternoons they would play old movies and musicals and I would soak them up. It was not uncommon to hear Mom belt out some random line from a musical or have the dial set in her car radio to the station that played classics. I had a very diverse musical education. This is one of the reasons why you can flip to just about any station and I will be able to sing along to the song. It’s a weird trick. Stephanie, my best friend from high school, said once that I was basically a radio.

I didn’t have access to cable channels until college, unless I was at my brothers. At his house, it was MTV all the time. Once I had my own TV with cable, I flipped between Turner Classics and AMC. Sometimes one channel would do movies with one certain actor all day. There’d be Carrie Grant day or Rock Hudson or Betty Davis movies playing all freaking day. It was awesome. My favorite days were when they played Doris Day movies all day long. I would watch them all from Lullaby of Broadway to April in Paris to The Man Who Knew Too Much to Please Don’t Eat The Daisies. She was simply lovely. She was pretty, but attainable. Serious, yet funny. Doris Day was just a joy to see on screen. I wanted to sing like Doris Day. I wanted to be as charming and graceful as Doris Day. Then you have Doris Day as Calamity Jane. I know the musical is not a true representation of history. It is historical fiction. Calamity Jane doesn’t fit the gender norms of that time. She dresses like a man, drinks and swears like a man. She shoots a gun better than most men. Calamity Jane is a feminist! She’s a woman living her life on her terms. At the same time, she just wants want we all want. She wants to be desired. She wants to be loved. She wants to be loved and desired for who she is. We’re all a little bit Calamity Jane.

To say that Doris Day will be missed is incorrect. The truth is, Mrs. Day has been out of the public eye for quite some time, well before her passing. We’ve been missing Doris Day for a while. Hearing the news of her passing at age 97 just makes me marvel at a life well-lived. She lived her life on her terms. Just like Calamity Jane.

DAY 3: STING, FIELDS OF GOLD

I was almost twenty years old when I finally lost my virginity. ‘Lost’ is a funny way to phrase that. Gave away, willingly let go of, out grew, donated. Let’s go with willingly and enthusiastically let go of my virginity. Letting go of my virginity in the back of a car with some high school boy just wasn’t an option for me. I was not desirable to high school boys. Mom brought some of my senior year pictures on her last visit. Michael was looking through them and said “Oh…you’d have been in trouble if we’d gone to the same school. I’d be all over this.” I just quietly nodded my head, but what I wanted to say was “not true.” I knew guys like him in high school and they’d be interested for about two minutes until I opened my mouth and said something truthful and honest. So while all my high school girlfriends were having sex or had had sex, I was reading books about sex.

And promoting condom use.

Then in college, I met Chris. Five years older and experienced. He’d lived a life before committing to college. And he was not enthused about being my first sexual partner. Virgins are work. There’s all these preconceived notions of what that first time will be like. Will it hurt? Will I get pregnant? Should it be super special with roses and candles and a fancy hotel room? Chris was unwilling to cause me any pain. So I willingly gave away my virginity in stages until one day, it just happened. In every one of those stages, Sting’s Fields of Gold was playing in the background. I hear any song from that album and I’m immediately transported to Chris’s dorm room. We’re laying on his twin bed, made up with his original Star Wars sheets The room is dark with just the tiniest amount of light peeking in through the window blinds. Sometimes we’re talking. Sometimes we’re silent. Sometimes we’re even laughing. That album would be playing the first time we said “I love you” to each other.

I remember one evening around the fire pit at Misti’s old house. Losing virginity stories were going around the campfire. When I told my story everyone just sort of shook their heads and Misti said something like “well done, Chris.” I recognize that my first time was not a typical first time experience for most women. I recognize that the relationship I had in general with Chris was not typical. Fortunate. I have been fortunate.

I never made promises lightly and there have been some that I've broken
But I swear in the days still left we'll walk in fields of gold
We'll walk in fields of gold

For a while, not long enough, but for longer than I should hope for, we walked in fields of gold.

DAY 2: NEIL DIAMOND, THE JAZZ SINGER

Prairie flowers

Erica Mullin was probably one of my best friends when I was in elementary school. Her grandparents were close family friends. I suppose these people were my parents’ version of framily. Rena and Don helped take care of me when I was a super tiny baby. Don worked for Meadow Gold Dairy and brought us milk and ice cream all the time. My Mom likes to tell a story about when she was in the hospital, recovering after my traumatic entry to this world. She received a huge, beautiful bouquet of flowers. All of the nurses oohed and awed. When my mom read the card she laughed and said “it’s from my milk man.” Which every one thought was funny. Rena and Don were like surrogate grandparents. Erica, their granddaughter, was the closest thing to a cousin that I had nearby.

For a while, Rena and Don’s daughter and granddaughter lived in a house on the hill just above Rena and Don. Erica practically lived at our house because my mom would end up taking care of all of us during the day while Erica’s mom was at work. We went every where together. Roller skating, movies, bike rides. Erica had the best toys. She had the Darth Vader case holding all of the Star Wars figures and Hungry Hippo. We traded plastic charms and played dress up with Katrina’s old disco clothes. Our families camped together on what seemed like every weekend. We would take over the RV section of Walnut Grove campground on Keystone Lake with potluck meals and hikes down to the lake to swim. We would spend forever watching a giant ant colony near the playground and hours swinging as high as we possibly could go on the playground swings. That playground had a great big metal swing set. I can still hear Rena warning me that I’d gone high enough and to take it down a notch.

Sometimes we’d all ride to the lake in Erica’s mom’s car. Me, Erica, and Janel, all crammed into the front seat of her mom’s El Camino. At least, I think it was an El Camino. Was there another model of car that looked like an El Camino? I don’t know, but we’d pack ourselves into that car with the windows rolled down because the air conditioning didn’t work and the radio blaring. The air conditioning may have been on the fritz, but the eight track worked just fine. I remember flying down back country roads with the wind blowing our hair all around and all of us singing at the top of our lungs to Neil Diamond’s Coming to America. We were practically glued together from heat and sweat. I can still feel Janel’s prickly leg hairs scratching the side of my right leg. I’ve memorized the motion of pulling hair free from my face as the wind forever twisted my long hair across my cheeks and eyes and mouth. “TODAY!” we’d all shout together.

Erica and her mom moved to Tulsa while I was still in elementary school. Tulsa wasn’t really that far away but the distance and her being a year older changed us from best friends to acquaintances. We drifted apart. Don retired from Meadow Gold and he and Rena upgraded their camper. They spent the rest of his life traveling south during the winter and when Rena settled down in Oklahoma City after Don passed away, the distance changed her relationship with my mom. They sort of drifted apart as well. Any time I hear Neil Diamond singing though, I remember that space in our time line when we were all together, before the great drift.

DAY 1: THE CURE, DISINTEGRATION

Curtsy

Somewhere around my sophomore/ junior year in high school, I discovered the band The Cure. They released the album in 1989, but it would take two years for any of it to reach my ears. That was the way of small towns. We were always behind. Movies hit the one-screen theater on Main street about a year after release. The latest fashion and trends hit us two or three years later than they did in big city areas. Music was no different. It didn’t help that I lived in a radio void. None of the local stations played the music I wanted to listen too. Late on Saturday nights, if the skies were clear and the wind was blowing at just the right speeds, I could pick up an hour or two of a college station that would play indie/alternative music. In those brief two hours, I learned about punk bands like the Police and the Ramones. I learned about another famous Elvis and the Flaming Lips. The Talking Heads and the Pixies and Echo and Bunnymen were frequently played and I soaked it all up.

A friend introduced me to the Cure. She handed me Disintegration and I took it home and copied it. God, remember coping tapes and CDs? Or recording radio stations? I did all of those things. I played that album over and over and over. I listened to that album so much that I was able to mimic a British accent. That new trick got me an important role in a short play we were doing that year. If you were to ask me now why on earth this was the only album I listened too for months and months, I could not really tell you why. Something about that music just hit a target with my teenage soul. The music alone just felt big to me, meaningful, important. It was that time in my life when I was young and ridiculous and believed I could be just like Molly Ringwald in any John Hughes movie. I wanted to be cool and wise and different, but I wanted to be just like everyone else too. If I’m honest? I still want all of those things. Pictures of You can still feel like tiny needles poking my heart, more so now then in my youth. Funny how the songs we love morph in meaning as we age.

Steven tagged me in a Facebook game to post a top ten album for ten days. When I posted my choice for Day 1, my friend Sarah commented on how she wished these games came with an explanation. Why this album, Cindy? This game isn’t easy for me. I don’t listen to music this way, albums at a time. Usually I listen to an artist, not a particular album. My current addictions are Lizzo, Yola, and Neko Case because we just saw her in concert and it was the best show I’ve seen in ages. I can’t get enough of her music right now. Andrew Bird has been playing frequently in my playlist, along with Father John Misty and Arcade Fire. The National. The soundtrack to Hamilton because I’m resigned to the fact that I will probably never get a chance to see this musical. Morrissey. Courtney Barnett. The First Aid Kit. My music is all over the place. My musical taste is undefinable. So when asked to pick my top ten albums, I struggle. I started choosing albums for their nostalgic value. Specific memories are tied to these albums and this album triggers memories of me driving along back roads to get to this or that. It reminds me of those times I felt lonely and isolated.

It was the album of my teenage angst.

THAT TIME I GOT REALLY HIGH AND TOLD THE TRUTH

Instagram post by Cindy Maddera * May 8, 2019 at 1:25pm UTC

My friend Michelle, who is also childless, asked me what it was like to be a step-mom. She posed this question after I’d eaten a quarter of the most potent marijuana laced cookie. That one cookie ruined four adults. I was trying to keep up with our game of Exploding Kittens while trying to focus on the words Michelle was saying to me. I don’t know what I said but I have a sinking suspicion that I told her the truth about my role as a step-mom. I’m not so certain that my truth about my role is all that flattering or positive and I feel a little embarrassed for what may or may not have fallen out of my mouth that evening.

I think there is some illusion that I am doing any actual parenting now that there is a child in my life. I’m sure that this might be true for other step-parents, that they take an active role in parenting, but that is not how it works in this relationship. The term ‘step-mom’ is purely a descriptive term that the Cabbage uses to explain who this woman is that her dad lives with. I do not discipline. I do not shop for. I do not attend PTA meetings. I do not stay home for sick days. I do not make her lunches. She comes over, plays with her toys or watches YouTube and sometimes we all go to Science City or something. I might suggest a book or a piece of fruit but only rarely because 99% of all of my suggestions are met with disdain and skepticism. I am the person to whom the Cabbage asks “where’s my dad?” when she walks out of her room wanting something. Occasionally she will ask me for something, but then she always waits to ask her dad the same question because she never likes the answer I give her. Her dad most of the time will give her the opposite answer to what I gave her. So, yeah, she’s eating candy at 9 PM.

And I don’t care.

When Michael told me that he had a three year old daughter on our first date, I didn’t think “Oh sweet! I finally get a chance to ‘play mommy’!” What I did do was nod my head and say “that’s nice.” without any thought about what that would mean for me or us as a couple. I did not enter the relationship with any idea of being a pretend weekend parent or finally getting a chance at motherhood even if that was a part time opportunity. Outside forces might want to contradict me here and push for that parental connection, but it just does not exist. At least not in this relationship. I know many a blended family where all four parents actually do the parenting. I’m just saying that it does not apply here. Maybe because I never had any delusions of motherhood. In fact, I am almost resentful when I am given a knowing look that comes with a nod followed up with words that refer to some inferred motherly instinct on my part. Particularly when I have just done something that any adult would do for a small child. Like grab that thing down from a tall shelf or open that packet of crackers. I’m never opening packages for others because I can barely open them for myself, but you get the idea.

This Mother’s Day, I will send out cards to the women in my life who raised me. They did actual parenting and chose to be mothers. I am awed by any woman that chooses to be a mother, but I’m impressed by any woman who chooses not to be a mother. Mostly because society just doesn’t understand this choice. We’ve been programmed to think that having babies is the thing we’re supposed to do and stepping away from that programming can be isolating and cruel. Those who are fully devoted to the programming may think that I will regret not having children or experiencing parenthood. Maybe I will; I don’t know. I know that I don’t have any regrets right now. I also know that if I do have regrets later on, that it’s nobody’s problem but my own.

You do you.

GOOD RELATIONSHIPS

Cow

Nine hundred and ninety eight miles. That’s the number of miles to get from Kansas City, MO to Oklahoma City, OK and then to Weatherford, OK and then to Duncan, OK and then to Norman, OK and then back to Kansas City, MO. And it was miles worth traveled. So much of my drive took me down two-lane highways with little signs of civilization for miles and miles. There was very little traffic and often, it seemed like it was just me, the prairie and the cows. If I felt like pulling off the road to take a picture, I just did it. I didn’t let myself worry about the delay it might cause and since I was all alone, I didn’t think about inconveniencing the driver with my request to stop. When I wasn’t stopping to take pictures of the vast landscape of nothing, I was building stories in my head. At one point I even thought up my own stand-up comedy act.

I met Stephanie for breakfast one morning and got all caught up on her life. I got to squeeze Robin’s new grand baby. I soaked in a hot tub. I ate hipster street tacos with Traci, Chris and Quinn (who is more obnoxious now than ever) and we laughed and laughed. I attended a college graduation at a small rural Oklahoma College where I listened to a speech that both surprised me and gave me hope. The young man spoke about his white male privilege and how he intends to use that privilege for social justice. He told his fellow graduates that it was not enough to have conversations on race, but to be active in the fight against racism. No one booed him off the stage, but applauded and cheered and I thought “maybe we’re going to be okay.” Maybe. I sat on the couch in Amy’s library office while she spilled her guts on the last few months of her crazy busy stressful life. I drank too much wine while sitting on Misti’s porch talking about ways to help college graduates prepare for all the possibilities available to them after undergrad. I told Mark something that I have not told anyone. He’s the only person right now who can hold me accountable.

As I made the long drive home on Sunday, I caught the tale end of the TED Radio Hour on NPR. Dr. Robert Waldinger was talking about what makes a meaningful life. Dr. Waldinger is the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. His team and his predecessors have been tracking the health and lives of 724 men for 75 years. Actually the study has now moved on to the children of these men. It is the longest running study of its kind. One thing that has been made very clear from this study is the answer to the question of what makes a meaningful life and the answer is simple: “good relationships keep us happy and healthy.” Those relationships are not confined to marital relationships. Just having people in your life who you could count on in times of need, laugh with, cry with, is enough. These relationships keep us happy and healthy. It’s been proven by science that we need each other.

Yet, relationships for me can be difficult. I have always spent so much time alone, as a child, as a teen, in my adult life. I have to push myself to be in the presence of people, but I have never once regretted that push. Mostly because I feel like I’ve nurtured the best relationships with the best people. I am happier and healthier today for the weekend spent listening and laughing and commiserating and just being present in the company of all of them. Maybe Michael’s right about me and his prediction that I’m going to live to well past 100. Those good relationships will hopefully out weigh the bad genes and I’ll be the 90something old lady, doing yoga and zipping around town on a Vespa.

CRAVINGS

Love

I woke with a start in the early morning hours to the loud crackling booms of thunder and listened for the rain. I don’t know if I will ever get used to it, the way the thunder crackles, like breaking wooden bats. Thirty something years of hearing the thunder roll in over the prairies and pastures tuned my ears like tuning forks. It became a lullaby even though I knew that thunderstorms could change quickly into a tornado. There were no flashes of light to warn of this cracking thunder. That’s different too. Spring thunderstorms are usually accompanied with fantastical displays of electricity. Here, not so much. The lightening is subtle. I closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep only to jolt awake at the next crack of thunder. This is how I would spend the next few hours before sunrise, sleeping fitfully between breaking baseball bats.

Sometimes I get cravings. Not for food. Though I do think fondly about Indian tacos on occasion. It’s just a very rare moment when I think obsessively about a certain food and think “I HAVE TO HAVE some cheese!” I tend to crave moments and landscapes. I want to be in other places, fully immersed. It could be standing on a thick bed of pine needles in the middle of a forest, surrounded by pine trees so tall that it makes me dizzy to look up. Sometimes I think that if I don’t feel sand squishing between my toes and the crisp damp wind hitting me from the ocean that I will shrivel up and disappear into nothing. Sometimes I am surprised how much I crave open rolling fields with tall prairie grass bent from the wind. I think about all of those times I carved out a shelter in the tall grass and would spend the day huddled there sitting on an old quilt. I would have a stack of books, a jar of water and a kite that I would get going so high up in the sky, I was almost certain it was in danger of colliding with an airplane.

I never expected to crave the landscape of the places where I grew up, where I lived for thirty five years. The monotony of prairie and urban sprawl and trees that lean to the east sounds like something I have seen enough of. Except, there is something to that not quite flat land that sort of slows the beating of my heart. I feel my thoughts roll out and float away on the winds. Traveling down the highway, there will be nothing but the land stretched out for miles and for a moment you can pretend to be the only person on the planet. I crave these moments of isolation and solitude provided by the vastness of this landscape. Right now, I’m craving warmth and sunshine. Dry cracked red dirt. Bare feet on a warm back patio. Tracing lines of condensation running down a cold beer bottle. A thunderstorm I can see coming from miles away.

Right now, I am craving a road trip.

NO DOGS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS MOVIE

When you lose your shit at the vet clinic, they hand you the whole box of tissues. Josephine is getting X-Rayed. Waiting on some news.

When I got home from work on Friday, Josephine was still not better. She’d had diarrhea all over my bed. Michael said that she drank a bunch of water and the puked it back up on the rug. She was still lethargic. So I called the veterinarian’s office and they told me to bring her back in. I explained to the vet how Josephine seemed to get worse after her visit on Thursday. She stopped drinking water and she would bury herself in leaves next to the fence outside. She behaved like a dog that was holing up to die. Even Michael was worried. As I talked to the vet, I had to pause and say “I’m sorry, but I’m barely keeping my shit together right now.” Then I started crying. The veterinarian and the technician did their best to comfort me, but they were concerned too. The medicine they gave Josephine on Thursday was supposed to last twenty four hours and was known to be the best anti-nausea medication on the market. The next step was X-rays and blood work and fluids.

The veterinarian went over Josephine’s X-rays with me. I got to see Josephine’s insides, which looked good except for the empty stomach and her tiny irritated colon. Blood work came back with flying colors. My puppy was really dehydrated and tired from not getting any rest from all the up and down to the backyard to use the bathroom. They gave her fluids and medication for her colon and sent us home. Michael and I forced her meds down and then I made her some chicken and rice. She still was not interested in it, but she did drink some water. At around three the next morning, she woke me up to go outside and walked right over to her food bowl. It was the moment I knew she was going to be okay. We had one more incident of upchucked water all over my bed (I have done so much laundry since Thursday) and that was it. She’s still not 100%, but she’s definitely feeling better and Michael and I have sighed with relief.

Part of me wants to say that I was slightly over reacting to Josephine’s illness, like maybe I was panicking. The more rational side of myself knows that I behaved appropriately in the given situation. Trust me when I say that if you could have seen Josephine, you might have panicked too. The last dog I took to the vet who was behaving as sickly as Josephine, was Hooper. Hooper ended up being full of tumors and had to be put to forever sleep. That was the icing on the shit cake of that year. 2012 was the year I became a true country western song. I lost my husband and my dog. I did my fair share of crying and drowning sorrows in wine. I guess I’m just lucky I didn’t lose my house. That’s usually how those songs go. This scene with Josephine was just way to familiar to a tragic scene I’ve been a part of before. It was stressful and scary and all of that has to leave the body in some shape or form. This time around those wonder twins took on the form of ugly crying in the veterinarian’s office.

We’re starting this week on the upswing. And as long as I can ignore this patch of poison ivy on my wrist, we plan to end the week on a high note. Go Monday!

HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED

Good morning

Early Friday morning, I finished up my yoga practice by settling down for ten minutes of my version of a meditation. My version of meditation looks something like this. I sit on the floor cross legged, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders and a dog in my lap. The dog is situated so that I have full access to her belly, which I rub with one hand. The other hand holds a hot cup of water with lemon and honey. I sip the hot liquid while I scratch the dog’s belly. I believe this is the fastest and best method for reaching enlightenment. So, this is where Josephine and I are when then cat saunters in. He looks at us and says “meow” in his quiet cat voice. The translation is “what are you guys doing? I want in on that.”

I know. The word ‘meow’ says a lot.

Albus strolls over and rubs his head on the back of my hand, the one holding the mug. I set the mug aside and then rub his head while scratching Josephine’s belly. It’s just like patting your head with one hand while rubbing your belly in circles with the other. The meditation timer goes off and we get up, slightly groggy from our brief encounter with enlightenment. I roll up my mat and then head to the shower. I notice the cat is still in the house as I step out of the shower. He slides his body on the door way leading out to the living room. I think he’s trying to get Josephine’s attention. The cat doesn’t eat unless Josephine is standing nearby to pick up the food pieces he slings to the floor. I listen to the sound of Josephine’s nails as she scrambles under a cart in the kitchen in an attempt to reach a morsel of cat food. I finish my bathroom routine and go to my room to get dressed. I pause before putting on my socks and shoes to make sure Michael is moving.

Once I’m dressed, I go to the kitchen to make breakfast. Avocado, homemade sausage patty and an egg for him. A pancake for me. I set Michael’s plate of food on the kitchen table and I’m fishing out our daily dose of supplements when I hear the cat come in through the dog door. I can tell instantly that he’s not alone. I can hear a shrieking sound and a thump thump of flapping. Then Albus walks into my view and I see he’s got a live bird in his mouth. I freeze and then say “no. Take it outside.” But the cat is a jerk and wants to argue about it. He opens his mouth to reply and the bird takes his moment to save his own life. He flies frantically around the dining room and kitchen, banging into walls and cabinet doors. I duck and crouch over Michael’s breakfast to protect it. Feathers are flying everywhere before the bird finally settles himself on one of the blades to the ceiling fan. 

 I hear Michael from the other room say “let me get some pants on.” He said this without having witnessed the bird drop or me saying anything. He just knows there’s a live wild animal loose somewhere in the house and the reality is this has become our norm. Michael comes out and put the dog in her crate. Then he kicks the cat out. I cover food to keep feathers out of our breakfast while Michael props open the front door. It takes three attempts but that bird finally flies out the front door to freedom. I let the dog out of her crate and we sit down to breakfast as if nothing has happened. Later, what even seemed like days later but in actuality was just later that same day, Michael commented about the picture I had posted of the bird sitting on the ceiling fan. “The picture isn’t great, not one of your best. I mean there was no way to take it without the ceiling fan light getting in the way. But this picture is what makes you a photographer and not just someone with a camera. In that moment your thought was not ‘oh my god there’s a bird in the house.’ Your thought was ‘oh my god there’s a bird in the house and I have to take a picture of it!’”

 I am not convinced I’m not just a product of a share everything generation. 

SURVEY SAYS

Gardening

Every once in a while, Anthropologie wants me to tell them what I think about stuff. I just have to say that I was never really super interested in clothes until I learned about Anthro. Now, I’m a fucking addict. I also have very bipolar feelings about that place mostly because everything is SO EXPENSIVE! I love the clothes and vehemently hate the prices. My shopping strategy is to wait until there’s at least a 40% extra off of already sale items. Most of the time I don’t even walk around the store. I head straight on back to the clearance racks. I also try every single item on to make sure it fits properly or if it is something I am actually going to wear. Of course I am an Anthro member which means I get 20% off of a full price item during the month of my birth. It also means I get notified early about sales and sometimes I get an extra something percent off when I do the occasional survey.

In this latest Anthro survey, they wanted to know how I felt about different months of the year. The very first question was: “What are the first three words or phrases that come to mind when you think about the month of January?” Then they wanted to know the same thing about February and March. This was the first page of the survey. I sat there, staring at the screen with my head tilted to one side wondering if I should tell the truth or put in sugar coated lies. I told them the truth. I didn’t know what else to do, honestly. I couldn’t think of one sugar coated lie to fill in those blanks. I did type ‘birthday’ as one of my answers for January which could be taken a number of different ways. Some people love their birthday months. So I thought that was actually something nice to put down for January. It’s something a stranger can interpret as ‘joyful’. The rest of it all included words such as ‘cold’ and ‘sad’ and ‘bittersweet’. Then I decided that Anthro didn’t really want to know how I felt about those months and closed the survey without finishing it.

And this is why I do not try to do sponsored blog entries or develop a brand or make money from this blog.

I’m a terrible liar but my honesty can be sharp and painful. If I have to choose between my pointy, stabby honesty and faking something, I tend to choose neither. The inside of my brain is a constant swirl of conversations of what I would say if I was bolder, did not care about the impact of my words on others, or had any kind of backbone for standing up for myself. It’s really hard to have good posture when you have an actual pasta noodle for a spine. I do a lot of core exercises. There was a time when I could always just say what I meant or wanted to say or at least there was a person I could say all of that too, but that time doesn’t exist anymore. I have to be on guard about what I say and how I say it and if I say it. It gets pretty exhausting and some times it gets pretty frustrating because I don’t think I get the same sort of consideration. At least it doesn’t feel like as much thought is going into it as I’m putting out. I’m tired of having these conversations in my head. It’s too much chatter.

I went back to that survey and I finished it. I told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. January makes me feel a little bit happy that I’m a year older, but cautious because this is when disasters strike. February makes me feel cold and sad. March is only marginally better. There’s a turn around in April when I start to feel like skipping and things progressively just get better as the months move forward. We are so close to that turn around month; I can almost taste it. I can definitely smell it. The air no longer smells of cold. It still feels chilly in the mornings, but the air smells greener. I look around me and think I just might actually make it. I also think I can start choosing differently and start having those conversations outside of my brain. Maybe be more mindful in my honesty, but still tell the whole truth.

I mean…really what’s the worst thing that could happen?