Alice's Adventures Underground

It's a Beautiful Day

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Sun, 08 Nov 2020 15:02:00 +0000

This morning is a beautiful day.

The sun is shining; leaves are falling gently from the trees in my yard, glinting reds, yellows, oranges, and browns as they turn in the sunlight on their way to earth. Everyone in my house is asleep and it is still and peaceful.

Yesterday, the results of the 2020 election were called, four days after polls closed and a tense week of watching a map with changing colors of blue and red as results rolled in... and then more changing as results of mailed in ballots were also counted and added. There has been despondency in my house. There have been tears. There has been fear. And now there is some relief. Joe Biden has been declared the winner and will be 46^th President of the United States.

Sigh.

But it’s not really over.

There will be court challenges, many of them decided by appointees of the previous administration, appointed because they are sympathetic to the previous administration. This was their plan all along. There are already protests in the streets. Someone will need to respond to and deal with civil unrest and there is little incentive for, or promise, that the incumbent administration will even call for peaceful transition. There is also a continuing pandemic with signs of worsening to consider. I fully expect there to be much more to this story.

And yet…

It’s a beautiful day.

This morning reminds me of a morning that is stuck in my memory from 12 years ago. Over the past 12 years, I’ve thought about this single moment often. I’ve wanted to write about it because it rolls around in my head like a stone that keeps getting more and more polished, but I’ve never found the appropriate moment to do so. And to be honest, I had mixed feelings about even “claiming” that moment by writing about it. It isn’t mine to claim.

The day after that historic day in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected as our nation’s 44^th President, the first person of color to ever hold the office, I went to work. It had been rainy and dreary most of the week but that morning we all woke up to a beautiful, sunny, fall morning just like today. I got up, got the kids off to school, and went to my office. It’s an atypical office, filled with like-minded people and even when we disagree with one another, we have safe and honest political discussions (weird, right?), so we knew where each other stood on the election and how we all hoped it would turn out. We were all very happy about this historic moment. It was the first true example of what was always promised: anyone could be elected to the highest office in the country and all were considered equal regardless of race, creed, color, etc. Eventually, we all settled into our offices and went back to work.

I was heading through to the conference room as the bell to the front door rang and my colleague, a Black woman, got up to answer the door. It was the UPS delivery man, whom we all saw every day and exchanged pleasantries with, but really didn't know that well. A Black man. My colleague opened the door, they met eyes, and both of them stopped for a moment in the doorway and smiled broadly at each other.

“It’s a beautiful day,” she said.

“Yes. Yes it is,” he replied. They just looked at each other for a moment, frozen in the doorway, with volumes communicated yet unspoken. And then he stepped into the office to retrieve the packages and they both went on about their job duties.

That little moment between two strangers was based on hundreds of years of shared knowledge and experience. It was powerful, it was hopeful, it was beautiful… like the day… and at once I felt like I was getting to see and understand something that I - a person who walks through this world appearing to most who see me as a cisgendered, straight, white woman - seldom experience. I was grateful to witness that moment, a little uncomfortable because my presence felt like an intrusion on a private moment that wasn’t mine to share, and to be honest, maybe even a little envious that I didn’t share that moment with them. I wasn’t in the club and that was quite honestly fine; it wasn’t my club to be in.

I was 16 when Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in the 1984 presidential campaign. It was technically historic. No woman had ever been even considered for that United States office before. But what I remember most about that year and that race was how she was talked about in my state and community: with facetious derision, comments about how she was “aggressive,” “serious,” “business like,” when in fact, those qualities are the very qualities that lead any person to seek a position like that and be successful. We just hadn’t ever seen a woman in that office before so it was easy to mark her as something unwonted and atypical. Years later, I would hear the same kinds of things about the first woman to run for President, Hillary Clinton, along with: “I don’t like her pant suits,” “her voice is harsh,” “I think she’s sketchy,” “she’s abrasive and unlikable,” as if those are qualities we concerned ourselves with in male candidates for the office prior to that point in time.

Maybe it was different in other areas of the country, but my experience was that no one took Geraldine Ferraro seriously and everyone believed Mondale would lose because he chose a woman as his running mate, not in spite of the fact. She was a detriment to his chances rather than an asset. I didn’t really understand politics then; maybe there were other, more legitimate, reasons why Mondale lost that race, but Regan-Bush won it and ushered in a long period of favoring money over people and a sliding slope of divisive American politics, widening the divide between the country with each successive election. We wouldn’t see another woman even selected as any kind of serious presidential candidate for another 30 years. For me, as a woman in America, though historic, Geraldine Ferraro’s selection wasn’t that moment.

I love Uncle Joe. He was not my preferred choice as a candidate for a number of reasons, but I have followed his career and find him to be a fair and compassionate man. Not perfect, but one who at least tries to represent those he was elected to serve. He understands hardship and grief and he and I have that in common so I feel a great kinship to him. This election has been so focused on two Presidential candidates and the vast differences between them, that I’ve often forgotten to consider the importance of the Vice Presidential candidates and what this moment says about us (and U.S.).

So watching Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech this morning (I honestly was so exhausted from the week, I went to bed long before it aired last night) was poignant. It’s the first time I’ve felt like I might be in the club just a little bit. Kamala Harris is a person of color. I check the “Caucasian” box on census forms because there is no other box that describes me better, but I have a racial and religious background on both sides of my family that includes hate, discrimination, and persecution... one which complicates how I see myself in the world even if I recognize that it isn’t how others see me. I understand that there is privilege that goes along with that. Many of the things I know about myself to be true aren’t obvious or visible to others. But I am a woman and I have experienced misogyny (both outright and systemic), assault (both overt and subtle) and harassment (both accepted and illegal).

Kamala Harris said last night, “Every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.” This is the first proof in action that that statement might be true and it is important and powerful. I’m so sad Geraldine Ferraro isn’t here now to see the way she started to pave. I now consider her courage and sacrifice in a way I never did when I was 16.

What does all this mean for our future as a nation?

Honestly, very little.

Just like in 2008, when we elected the first person of color as President of our country, that act alone isn’t enough. As we have learned over the past 4 years, a lot of back sliding can happen in a short period of time and uncovering hidden and subtle systemic problems takes more than one result in one election. We still have a divided nation and the most disappointing thing for me this week, as it was 4 years ago, was watching how close this race was after witnessing what this country collectively witnessed from the candidate. There is still much work to do and we must all be a part of it. Character matters. We need to prove that as we move forward together.

Unless we all decide to make a collective effort (not just an ideological judgment) to move forward, make a fair place in the world for our children and future generations, include all people in our considerations for opportunity and fairness, treat others with respect... we will definitely just end up here again. One presidential candidate can’t do it. One vice presidential candidate can’t do it. WE must do it.

For me, this election, like Van Jones said, was a referendum on the idea that character matters. Honesty matters. Respect matters. It is so much easier to be a parent today knowing that. But it isn’t enough. Not enough of the country spoke up to say it. And I am most disappointed in all the people who basically said, “I saw the thousands of lies told, I saw the disrespect to other human beings, I saw the refusal to call out and denounce racism, I saw the attempts to thwart the democratic process and suppress voter will, I saw the sowing seeds of fear, I saw the hypocrisy… and you know what? I’m okay with that.” Because this is their team just like their college football team is their team and they will always root for it no matter how much it sucks. Then they went and cast their votes for more of the same. Like they had to support their team regardless of what that said about the team and themselves.

It’s not over.

It won’t be over for a long time.

But today, for the first time in a long time, I feel hope.... and it's a beautiful day.

To Gillian on her 20th Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 15:34:00 +0000

In a way, you’re the lucky one. You're not around to see this.

The world – or at least our little piece of it – has devolved into an ongoing missive of anger and insults thrown back and forth. Even those who are fighting for the rights of others are unable to have even the smallest of civil discourse about how to make it better. An upcoming election will basically be a major cog in the while of whether this country descends into fascism and benefits for only the most wealthy among us or whether government truly is of the people, for the people. It’s the most hotly-debated and important one in my lifetime and I still don’t know how it will turn out. A global pandemic has shut down much of our normal every day activities, your sisters are attending virtual school, I work from home 99% of the time, your father works outside the home and I worry about that every day, we don’t go out much. Your sister tested positive for the virus and then we quarantined - even more than usual – and didn’t see or come into contact with another human in real life for a month. (So far she, and all the rest of us, are fine, by the way.)

I'm focusing on the fact that we are all together. We have a modest home, but one that I really enjoy just physically being in. We have a menagerie of animals that help us enjoy our time here. And maybe most importantly, I love my family and don't mind spending this much time with them. It's sometimes stressful, but it's also made us closer. And it's also hard to be positive some days.

And yet... I still have hope. In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.

If it’s good enough for Anne Frank, I guess it’s good enough for me.

I miss you.

To Gillian on Her 19th Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 00:37:00 +0000

Space Dust

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 17:36:00 +0000

There comes a time in everyone’s life

when you can’t take a breath without knowing you don’t deserve the air you breathe,

when you feel you are at the lowest you can be,

when you’ve hit rock bottom.

But if you think, for one second,

that life isn’t worth living,

or the universe won’t miss one tiny speck of space dust on a polluted planet,

then you’re wrong.

You can do so much and no matter what you think,

someone, somewhere loves you and will mourn when you’re gone.

This world that is filled with mistakes is just a small fraction of everything

and our knowledge of it is always growing.

In this big… or small… world,

there is no need to hang onto all the mistakes.

Don’t be a loose thread, just waiting to be torn off,

never even wanting to experience the beauty of life.

Some may shed tears because the sky is falling down,

but I’d rather dance and be wet with the wondrous drops of sunshine.

After all, the universe wouldn’t be what it is

without every single speck of space dust in it.

- The Caterpillar, March 2019

To Gillian on her 18th Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 01:09:00 +0000

And then with one thing or another, 18 years went by.

Have you ever been to the batting cages when the pitching machine was set just a little too fast for your abilities but only just a little? You could catch a piece of most of the balls but never have a chance to breath in between or reset yourself to hit a ball the proper way, so mostly you're just madly swatting them all away from your head to avoid a head injury.

Yeah, that's how life feels right now and for the past couple of years.

There is so much going on to tell you. So much in the world. In our home. In my thoughts. And I just keep swatting the pitches away from my head, hoping that one day, some day, I'll have a moment to do it right. And the truth is I don't see that moment coming any time soon because as soon as one ball is out of my periphery, three more are coming at my face. I long for moments to sit and ponder. To meditate. Just to figure stuff out. But they don't come and I just keep swinging, hoping I'm hitting at least some of those parenting fast balls right and fearing that I'm missing them all.

This year, you would be able to vote. Not that there's a lot to be proud of being part of our country's political system these days. I would be telling you what I've already told your sisters: I'm sorry. Sorry to hand this broken machine over to you and sorry that we didn't take care of it better. We tried. Lord, how we tried. And for so many years, it felt like we were actually making progress. But now? Well, let's just say it is extremely difficult to feel hopeful. I don't know how it got so out of control so fast. It's not like I'm giving up, and I would be telling you what I keep telling myself, that I still believe there is more good in the world than bad, but oh how the bad seems to be the only one with the megaphone and the keys to the car right now. It's damned disappointing, honestly. I have faith that your generation can do amazing things and will be better caretakers of our rights and our safety than ours turned out to be.

Your sisters are amazing. Not always easy to parent, but I imagine few strong willed, independent people were. You'd be proud of them, but if their current relationship is any indication, you'd never admit it. They are both capable, brilliant, hilarious, talented humans with endless potential. Oh, they make me crazy, but even more so, I like them each an awful lot. I love talking to them and laughing with them, and hearing their takes on things and I'm so proud of the people they are turning out to be, even if, or maybe especially because, it's not who I expected or would have designed had I had the chance.

Sometimes I wonder about what parenting them would have been like had you been here to go through it with me first. I sometimes imagine that you'd have all kinds of sage wisdom to pass down and then every conversation I have with them would be easier because of it. You would have given me the magic words to say to make everything better for them, and totally have been on my side every time one of them and I have a disagreement, which is, let's face it, all fantasy, because life and people do not work that way, but there are just some days that are so hard and I want a mage on my side to wave a magic wand and make everything right. That's what people who are gone get to do when they die, become saints or superheroes.

These last couple of years have been more about loss than anything else. I lost a good friend and coworker this year. In fact, I just got back from his funeral today. It's why I didn't manage to post this yesterday. He was a good man that I worked with for over 20 years and never for a moment didn't love and admire him. I was not alone. I think as his family goes on without him, his legend will grow as well and maybe he'll become more wise and more kind in their memory. I think this tendency to aggrandize people after they die is just our way of trying to keep our good memories with us.

Grief is the last act of love we can give to those we loved for when there is deep grief, there was deep love.

Messengers of Peace and Love

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 12:33:00 +0000

It's been awhile, poor, neglected blog. This year has seen lots of change and happenings both good and bad. I'd like to wrap it all up at some point with a quick overview of our travels through the world. Maybe I'll get to that before the end of 2017. But today, I am trying to make a Christmas for my family without really having my heart in it, just knowing that we are all safe and together and maybe that's all you get sometimes.

I was asked to give a sermon at church the week before Christmas. Like most of the times I am asked to speak in church, I thought long and hard about the topic assigned to me and then spoke about a completely different thing. But it was an important Thing. And a lot of people have asked me for a copy or to read it if they weren't there. So, while I've never much enjoyed using this format to display to the world things as sacred and personal as my spiritual feelings, I'm going to repost it here because mainly, I want to remember that at one point in my life, I felt like this. And everyone needs a reminder sometimes.

Messengers of Peace and Love

Sacrament Meeting Talk 12/17/2017

In Moses 1:39, God says to Moses:

For behold, this is my work and my glory – to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

I was not asked to talk about this scripture today. I was asked to talk about this one Matthew 10:39:

He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

And I was asked to relate this to how we can be messengers of peace, knowing this.
I’m gonna try to get there, but in a bit of a roundabout way, so bear with me.

In this scripture – the first one about God’s work and glory, not the second one I'm supposed to be talking about – there’s something problematic that’s been rolling around in my head for a while now. The way I understand it, God is not a god on the weekends and a dentist during the week. He does this full time. This is all He does. His “job” is to bring people to Him. So as I have been pondering this verse – exactly one sentence describing God’s entire purpose – I wonder, “How’s that working out for you, God?”

Yes, missionary work spreads the Gospel and there is, of course, much good in the world that we often just choose to overlook because we’re busy fearmongering with the rest of the 24-hour news cycle. But isn’t even the fact that we overlook it problematic? I really do wonder what progress toward that goal humanity has made recently. It seems rather bleak, when you think about it.

Millions in this world are in pain and experiencing difficulty. Many in this very room. Millions deny God or goodness, choose darkness over light, die without ever having had a chance to know more or better. Some do choose the light and are affected by the choices of others through no fault of their own. And still more suffer through no fault of anyone’s – earthquakes, floods, fires – just because that’s the way life is and God doesn’t – or maybe He can’t – step in and alter events that were set in motion millions of years ago.

And then there’s how we as human people react to it.

We have more access to one another than ever before in human history. We can talk to people continents away and hear back in the blink of an eye. We understand diverse languages and places in seconds with the help of a small, excellent rectangle most of us carry around in our pocket. We communicate more than ever… and yet we listen less than ever. The world’s information is literally at our fingertips and instead of using it to come together for good, we very often use it to divide us. In many cases, it seems like it’s two steps forward, two steps back for God’s purpose. How is that working out?

So either God is failing miserably at His purpose, or….

…there is much that we do not understand.

For me, someone who tends be a bit left-brained with this kind of stuff, God, the power of God, the priesthood, the Holy Ghost, all of it… is the power that binds the universe together. Keeps the earth spinning, our hearts beating.

And the conclusion that I’ve come to is that we feel that power – maybe just a tiny bit of it - when we love.

There’s a hymn in our hymnbook that goes like this:

Earth, with her ten thousand flow’rs,
Air, with all its beams and show’rs,
Heaven’s infinite expanse,
Sea’s resplendent countenance—
All around and all above
Bear this record: God is love.

The scripture reference for this hymn is 1 John 4:

7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.

8 He that loveth not… knoweth not God; for God is love.

In that chapter, John goes on to teach us more about the nature of that kind of love.

9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

12 No man hath seen God at any time. [But…] If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

So back to my original assignment:

He that finds his life shall lose it: and he that loses his life - for my sake - shall find it.

But first, a story.

The morning was much like any other red-eye flight for Todd Beamer. An early alarm, a hurried shower, quiet goodbyes to the wife and kids and out the door. His plane was delayed that morning due to traffic and it took off almost an hour behind schedule. I imagine passengers boarded the flight tired and a bit grumpy due to the delay.

Todd’s flight was just getting airborne when the first plane hit the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001.

About 45 minutes into United 93’s flight, terrorists stormed the cockpit and killed the pilot and copilot. They told the passengers they had been hijacked and shuffled them to the back of the plane. Some passengers made calls to loved ones, where they heard the news about planes hitting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Word spread among the passengers.

Todd made a call and was forwarded to an airline supervisor named Lisa. He informed her that the plane had been hijacked. He told her terrorists had knives and a bomb. At one point the plane made a sharp turn and Todd yelled into the phone, “We’re going down!”

It’s impossible to know all the events that transpired on that plane, but you have to believe Todd and the other passengers were connecting the dots at this point. They probably realized the plane was headed toward another important target on the ground. For awhile, the runaway plane was rumored to be headed toward Chicago. It turns out United 93’s intended target that day was Washington D.C., probably either the Capitol building or the White House.

To Todd and the other passengers, I suppose the target hardly mattered. United 93 was going nowhere good, and it was becoming clear this would likely be their final flight. It was also clear that many more would die if they didn’t do something.

The details of exactly what happened next aren’t totally clear, but Todd and a few around him decided to fight back. He and some other ordinary passengers and two ordinary flight attendants planned to force their way into the cockpit and steer the plane into the ground. These ordinary people made an extraordinary choice to sacrifice their lives in an attempt to save the lives of others.

You’ve probably heard that thought experiment about the man standing near the tracks as a train bears down on a group of five people who will surely be killed. He sees a lever that could divert the train to another track, but there is a workman on that track doing maintenance. A single push of the lever would divert the train and, while killing one innocent person, save the lives of five others. Five would die if he does nothing, weighed against the option of one death, but it will be his doing. It’s an ethical dilemma — what should he do?

Todd and the passengers on United Flight 93 chose option C that day. They chose themselves.

Still on the phone with Lisa, Todd recited the Lord’s Prayer and then the words to Psalm 23. He asked Lisa to call his family and let them know that he loved them.

“Are you ready?” Lisa heard Todd ask someone else on the plane.

“Let’s roll.”

United 93 crashed into the ground in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing all of its passengers but sparing hundreds more of the plane’s original intended targets.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)

…and he that loses his life for my sake – meaning for love’s sake because God IS love – shall find it.

Many people have actually, physically, lain down their lives for love of God or friends. Thankfully, very few of us in this room are called to do that. But that doesn’t mean this scripture doesn’t apply to us also. In this context, for me, here is the real meaning of “laying down my life for His sake”: Can I love with a Christlike love?

Am I strong enough to love others, even when it’s hard?

Am I kind enough to allow others to follow their own path without judging what I might have done had I been on it?

Can I become good enough to continue on my own path, even when other paths might look easier or have more company?

Do I respect the agency that God gave me enough to allow others their own?

Can I love myself and my fellow man without reserve, without contingency, without judgment? Just… love.

Look, there are a lot of things about the Gospel and the Church, about God, the Universe and Everything, that I don’t really understand. When I was serving a mission, I actually, physically wrote down a list of questions to ask God next time I see him. Most of those things, I’m still waiting for the answer on. And waiting and waiting. When I was a kid, the older people in my congregation used to bear their testimony and say that they knew the Church or something in it was true “with every fiber of [their] being”. Personally, I’ve never really related to that phrase. I don’t really know anything with every fiber of my being and there have been things that I was pretty darn sure about that turned out to be wrong later, so I don’t tend to like absolutes. But here’s one thing I do know - if not with every fiber of my being, then more so than I know anything else - that everything about the Gospel is, or should be, rooted in love.

Because what you do matters.

The smallest act of kindness… the simplest expression of love… it grows. It reverberates throughout the world, through the universe. And it’s a light that’s more powerful than any force of darkness.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son. (John 3:16)

Brother and sisters, this is the real good news that the angels proclaimed to the shepherds that night so many years ago. That God loves us.

And on earth, peace. Good will toward men. (Luke 2:14)

It is only through knowing that and being on board with not just feeling His love for us, but also sending that love back outward in turn, that we can lay down our lives for His sake. We can be messengers of peace by sharing the LOVE of God and Jesus Christ. And to paraphrase David O. McKay and Jackie Kennedy, if you fail at that, nothing much else matters.

God gave us this amazing world to enjoy and take care of because of His love. Not because we are that lowly and needy of it. Not because we’re sad, pathetic creatures without Him. Not because we’re bad, bad rebels and we’ll never ever be any good without His grace. But because we… are worthy of His grace. Trials that we encounter and overcome strengthen us because of that love. He gave us each other to lean on because of that love. He loves me. He loves you. He loves the person on the street corner and the person in the penthouse apartment. He loves us, not in spite of what we are, but because of it. Each one of us with our strengths and our weaknesses, with our good decisions and bad, each of us, He loves for what we bring to this human existence of a table. We are all needed at the table. And because of that love, Jesus Christ – somehow, in some way I don’t fully comprehend, but I’m okay with saying there is much I don’t understand - opened the door to allow us to progress and enjoy that fountain of love in more ways than we could ever imagine.

And knowing that?

Well, knowing that gives me peace in return.

To Gillian on Her 17th Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 20:57:00 +0000

When I think of death, and of late the idea has come with alarming frequency, I seem at peace with the idea that a day will dawn when I will no longer be among those living in this valley of strange humors. I can accept the idea of my own demise, but I am unable to accept the death of anyone else. I find it impossible to let a friend or relative go into that country of no return. Disbelief becomes my close companion, and anger follows in its wake. I answer the heroic question 'Death, where is thy sting? ' with ' it is here in my heart and mind and memories.'

- Maya Angelou

Angel of Grief is an 1894 sculpture by William Wetmore Story which serves as the grave stone of the artist and his wife at the Protestant Cemetery, Rome

Paint!

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 01:53:00 +0000

Hey, here's my cat, surveying the Christmas aftermath and saying, "Don't look at me, I didn't do it."

I adore this picture.

On to other things.

There was some, shall we say, "overlap" between purchasing the house we are living in now and selling the old house. It was the source of much stress and anxiety for me during an otherwise difficult year of stress and anxiety. We moved out and then did projects on the old house to improve the sale-ability of the house and it was a good idea and all worked out in the end, but oh lordy how I never want to go through that again. By the time we sold it, it was better looking than it ever had been and I learned two things:

The idea of doing all the improvements to the house after you move out and not getting to enjoy any of your investment of money, discomfort and hard work is pretty stupid.
After painting literally every surface of every room in that house, neither of us wanted to pick up another paintbrush for the rest of our natural lives.

So we declared a year-long moratorium on painting in the new house.

That moratorium extended organically to twenty-two months out of a combination of business and laziness... mostly laziness.

We didn't love the Apartment Off-White this entire house had been painted top to bottom, nor the eggshell finish that stains and marks if you so much as look at it cross-eyed, but it sure beat washing out another paintbrush.

But finally in November, I gave it to a deep desire for color and gingerly bought a gallon of turquoise blue paint. I know you're going to say this is nowhere near "turquoise" and I'll probably agree, but I pulled the color from Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin palette and that's what he called it so I'm not gonna mess with the Master.

It actually came out more in between Turquoise and Midnight, but I pretty much love it and I'm not gonna complain.

This was a great way to ease my way back into painting projects because I only had to paint half a wall and it required no taping, no plastic on the floor, no standing on ladders, no cutting in at the ceiling joint, and no painting anything with my arms raised above my head. In fact, the whole thing took me a couple of hours one afternoon and a little less the next. My life was hardly disrupted by it. Woo hoo!

Then I got cocky.

The KoH has recently changed jobs and due to reasons! and use or lose leave, he ended up with a little over week off in between Christmas and New Year. It's actually one of the reasons we had such a nice holiday. In our whole marriage, we've never both had this time off together before.

My favorite color in all the world in Frank Lloyd Wright's Cherokee Red and I've always wanted to do a room in Venetian Plaster that is that color. So, inspired by the vast improvement a little splash of color gave the kitchen, and the vast emptiness of a week without work and work projects and getting up for work and going to work, we made plans to burn a couple of our holiday days with a plaster project in the living room.

And so it begins.

Owing to my little obsession, I've been to a lot of Wright buildings in my time and let me tell you, Cherokee Red is a tricky color. What Frank calls Cherokee Red in one building is vastly different than what he calls Cherokee Red in another building. The FLW signature tiles are supposed to be Cherokee Red, but in person, these always look way too bright red to me to be anything close to Cherokee. The Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust uses Pantone 173 for Cherokee Red. The floor at Taliesin West is also supposed to be Cherokee Red but that's not nearly as orange as Pantone 173. The Cherokee Red at Fallingwater is more brown to than all those things and ultimately I don't think Frank Lloyd Wright even know what he meant when he called something Cherokee Red. But I went to a couple of [insert name of big box hardware stores here], armed with my precious Pantone color swatch book (man, those things have come down in price since I last had to buy one) and a dream.

Eventually, I found a couple of suitable options and settled on one. Then finding tint-able Venetian Plaster was a trick because employees of both large big box hardware store chains tend to look at you like you have grown a third ear in the middle of your forehead when you start talking about anything but satin and semi-gloss.

Paint desk guy: "Venutian what? I do not think that is a Thing."

Me: "I know it's a Thing. And it's Venetian, not Venutian."

"Well, we don't have that Thing."

"Actually, look here on my phone. This is your store's app. It says you have this Thing on aisle 9."

"Hmm. Guess we do. But we can't tint it."

"See here where it says in the description of the Thing You Don't Have in your store's app? It says it's is tintable. That means that Thing You Say You Don't Do To The Thing You Say You Don't Have is possible."

"Well, we can only tint it these three colors."

"The company's website says you can color match it."

"Yes, but we don't have that color in our computer."

"We if you can color match it, can't you just use this swatch from your paint colors rack as the thing to color match it to?"

"I dunnoo......"

"Just give me my Thing."

Eventually, I got my Thing and even after I watched like fifteen videos on how to put it up, I still needed The KoH to help me understand it because when I saw the technique years ago on Trading Spaces, they did it differently and I couldn't wrap my brain around it. It's good to have a partner in crime.

This is not really paint. It's not applied with a paintbrush, but with a trowel or a drywall knife. Which is interesting. Now that I've done it once, I kind of get it, but if I'd known then what I know now, it would go a lot smoother.

Step one:

Once that is done, on to step two:

I know it looks like we could have just covered the entire wall in the first place, but it actually does matter that you do this step a day later than the first step. I would have been just as happy to leave it like this because I think it looks like suede, but the texture of the wall was displeasing.

Step three, not pictured, but it looks a lot like step two because we should have just done step two a lot thicker. Step one also actually.

Step four: sand it all lightly with fine grit sandpaper and then spend two weeks removing red grit and dust form your bookshelves, books, underneath your fingernails, your hair, the corners of your eyes, etc., etc. This step also not pictured because my camera lens seems to have a film of red covering it.

Step five: burnishing.

This involves taking a metal drywall knife and using all your strength to rub a section of the wall until it doesn't feel like old sandpaper and it becomes polished and shiny in spots. From me to you: this part suuuuuucks. You really have to want this if you're going to get through it.

It's also good if you have some indentured servants to help.

The bigger indentured servant was the most helpful of them all, because as it turns out even at my best, I don't really have the strength or weight to put my back into it and do this properly. Also, I was nursing a really awful head cold at this point in time so I would work for about a minute and a half and start to get dizzy and have to sit down with my head between my knees.

Eventually, he took a big, metal cement trowel and rubbed the wall vigorously with it until it responded with gorgeous veins, lines and splotches. I know that sounds a bit sexual and it is. That's right, baby.

He's my hero.

I could not be more pleased with how it turned out.

And now it's probably going to be another six months before I can think of painting anything again.

Totally worth it.

Mrs. Peacock's Piano

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 22:52:00 +0000

Hello, 2017. May you be a damn sight better than the old year. You kind of have to be.

When we first saw this house at the open house weekend, there was an old painted red upright piano in the basement. It was there for inspection and every time we were able to take a look at the house, though other things, like an old church pew in the carport that I desperately hoped they would leave, disappeared. During our settlement, the previous owners, who grew up in the house, said that they would remove the piano if we wanted them to but that they'd prefer to leave it all other things being equal because they had no place for it. They explained that a woman named Mrs. Peacock had given it to their mother and it had been there since they were very young children. I don't know if they painted it or it was always like that but I do know that they'd always just called it, "Mrs. Peacock's Piano."

Between the two of us, The KingofHearts and I have fixed our fair share of things over the years. We dragged home one unplayable piano from some woman's garage/construction site The KoH worked on and for the cost of a $30 bag of plastic piano joints, a bit of wood cleaner and some elbow grease, we turned that thing into a real piano that we used for almost a decade. It was the piano the girls first learned to play on until a few years ago a friend gifted us her father's beautiful spinnet piano when he was moving into a smaller space and didn't play anymore.

So, to say the least, we were pretty confident in our piano-restoring abilities and told the owners we'd be happy for them to leave it for us and we'd try to make it playable again.

However... once we moved in and took a closer look at Mrs. Peacock's piano, it turned out to be in much worse shape than we had originally anticipated. Restoring it would entail way more money and time then we really wanted to put into it and my suspicion was that even then, we would not really end up with a decent sounding instrument anyway. So we decided to get rid of it eventually to free up some space in what was now The KoH's wood shop.

Then it sat there for a long time - over a year.

We talked about putting it outside and making into a planter... or a fountain.

We talked about cutting the legs off of it and using them to prop up a cabinet where the KoH stores his handmade swords and knives.

We talked about letting the kids take a sledge hammer to it and bringing out the pieces one by one for the garbage collectors to take. That one felt unnecessarily mean.

We talked about mailing the pieces one by one to my mother... like Radar did with a Jeep in M*A*S*H. I'm sure she would have appreciated that.

Ultimately, I felt badly about destroying the piano that had been in the house since the 1960s and I decided that Mrs. Peacock's piano - or at least a part of it - belonged with the house. So I pulled off the front panel - which was really quite beautiful - one day last summer and refinished it with antiquing glaze.

Then I hung it on the wall in the stairwell, alongside some antique windows a friend had given us, which we were using for decoration.

(There are several more of these windows decorating our basement.)

I loved it.

Eventually, I secured an antique copy of a song that means a lot to me, one of my all-time favorites: "Without a Song," That music now sits on the desk to the side of the filigree.

That got me thinking. What more could we do with Mrs. Peacock's piano so it can live harmoniously among us?

I didn't like the idea of putting it outdoors, because it'd be only a matter of time before the whole thing was destroyed in the weather. Then one day, The KoH and I hit upon the idea of making it into a desk. One afternoon he and The Caterpillar removed the keys and hammers and most of the other inner workings from the cabinet, cleaned everything up, and replaced the keyboard desk with a plexiglass cover because, as it turned out, you could see the unique serial number and maker stamp inside, which was pretty cool.

Then they added lights for better homework doing-ability.

I think it is beautiful.

In the meantime, I took some of the hammers and dipped them in resin for unique jewelry opportunities.

The latest project was completed over the Christmas vacation when I caught a cold and with it, the inability to sleep past three am. Putting together these piano key sets was actually really fun and done mostly done with leftover materials in The KoH's shop for $0, at least until his router broke in the middle of carving out the edges of the plaques I'd cut and I had to go buy the wood plaques that I glued them to. So like $24. Still not a bad deal.

Funny story. I came up with this idea out of my very own head and thought I was the most unique-thinking individual in the world for it. Originally, I wanted to do this, but too many of the keys were broken and damaged beyond repair or display quality. I had all kinds of ideas about adding some of the hammers and other bits of the piano along with music, all modern art-y style, but in the end, I settled on just putting together a few sets of in-tact keys, cleaning up the old ebony and ivory (Did you know that the best way to clean ivory piano keys from the 1800s is with toothpaste? Let that sink in for a second.), staining the wood, adding a bit of hardware and then mounting them on three separate wood plaques. About halfway through the project, I took a look on the interweb and found that not only am I not the only person who's thought of using piano keys as artwork, but see the first hit in this google search? I'm not even the first person to come up with this particular design and place it in a stairwell. I hate it when other people have my ideas before me.

At any rate, they now live with the face board on the stairwell wall.

I'm still working on a way the ebony from the black keys will become jewelry and The KoH is making the pin board into a jewelry hanger for The Dormouse and there might be a flower bouquet or two to make from the rest of the hammers. We have more ideas than time and effort, it turns out.

And that's how you cannibalize a piano, my friends. And how Mrs. Peacock's piano came to be a permanent fixture in this house. Where it belongs.

I think Mrs. Peacock, where ever she is, would be pleased.

Then Rang the Bells More Loud and Deep

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Sun, 25 Dec 2016 00:47:00 +0000

About five years ago, I purchased a string of these Jonathan Adler ornament/lights to put in a bowl as a Christmas decoration because they each slowly fade and turn colors, but in no particular order so it doesn't look like most "twinkling" tree lights that flash on and off like a great big neon Eat at Joe's sign. They are hella expensive and hard to find, but each year, I've caught a new sale on Amazon and added one or two strings (each string has just six bulbs on it) to my collection until this year when I finally had enough to to our entire giant tree in them. They are one of my favorite Christmas decorations.

I love the way they look and they mesmerize me. Sometimes I just catch myself staring at them for blocks of time that are entirely too embarrassing to mention here.

One of my other favorite decorations is this little Christmas village, which I'm sure has been featured on this blog before, but The KingofHearts bought these little vintage-ish bubble lights this year and we paired them together.

My mother purchased these, I think, in 19mumblesomething and I've always loved them. As a kid, I spent hours arranging the village and moving around the little pine cone people. Now my kids do the same. I was just saying to someone how I'd never seen anything like them before, and then last weekend we were in an antique shop and I looked in a basket to find this:

I called The KoH over to take a look at them and the antique store lady tried to tell me what they were. "Oh, I know," I said and whipped the picture above that was still on my phone out to show her. I thought briefly about buying them all and maybe I should have, but mine were all in much better condition.

The girls' ornaments this year continue to reflect what's going on in their lives. This year, the theme of our lives was leaves. We were inundated with leaves from our little forest and spent most of the year, mowing, raking, and otherwise removing piles of them. We even had a group of people from church come by and remove leaves one weekend. They spent a half a day raking up and carrying bags and bags of them off and just as they were heading off, the wind picked up and dropped every last leaf that was left on a tree over the beautiful clean lawn they had left us. They each drove away from our house with a single tear in their eye, watching a new batch of leaves falling to the ground like snow. By the next morning, the leaves were shin-deep again.

But not to worry, because we then had two days of crazy strong winds and I walked outside the morning after to find the wind had arranged our leaves carefully and thoughtfully:

And then I followed the yellow brick road until I found a wizard and asked him to give me a heart.

Anyhoo...

The girls' ornaments this year are actually leaves. Oak leaves, gilded, made by someone I found on the internet. They're gorgeous. The internet still holds few positives for me - but only a few.

This is the Caterpillar's:

And the Dormouse's:

My favorite story of the month is how much fun it has been watching my girls prepare for Christmas presents for each other this year. The shorter of the Shortlings especially, is taking this gift-giving process very seriously and has been working for weeks to hand make presents for The KoH and me. It's a good thing it's an incredibly sweet gesture or we'd all have become sick of the mechanizations that go on order for these presents to be made and would have lost patience with them long before we did. We have been banned from entire levels of the house. We have each had to go to at least six different stores for special crafting supplies. We have listened to her argue with fabric and thread. We have picked up scissors left on the floor after we stepped on them. And I don't know about my gift, but The KoH's gift was as much a chore for me as it was a project for her. That's another story for another day.

For her sister, however, the perfect gift had to be purchased in a store. And that perfect gift consists of preferred and desired art supplies, which are markers that cost $8+ a piece. I took her shopping for them and patiently explained that for the amount of money these cost, versus the amount of money she had, she should probably just buy less expensive supplies so she could get her sister something more than two markers at best. She selected a paint and colored pencil set and we headed home. Then she immediately regretted it because it wasn't what she had wanted at first. (A good portion of our lives these days is spent dealing with the aftermath when something challenges the world view of The Caterpillar. It's exhausting.) We both assured her that she had made the right decision and The Dormouse would be happy with her gifts, but she still wanted to go back and buy the crazy expensive colored markers with whatever money she had left which was about $3 - not even enough to buy one marker.

Finally, she appealed to the nerd in both of us and presented us with this equation:

Oil pastels + paints = 50% chance for Sister to hug me

Oil pastels + paints + fancy markers = 70% chance for Sister to hug me

With that kind of logic, who can argue? I took her to the store and paid the ungodly amount of $60 for a set of six fancy markers. I AM NOT MADE OF STONE, PEOPLE!

At the store, she told me she didn't have enough money to pay for all the markers (actually she didn't have enough to pay for one - I'd known that at the outset). I told her that I'd cover her but she had to make me a deal, she had to pay it forward and do something nice for someone else. She offered to take over some of my chores around the house, but I told her I didn't want it to be for me; I wanted her to look for nice things to do for other people (I was going for "sister" people, actually, hoping to improve that relationship these days) and to keep doing them until she felt like her debt was paid off. It was up to her to decide when she'd done enough.

As we were walking out of the store on a cold, rainy night, we went down the steps next to a man who was sitting outside on one of the stairs. I greeted him. He said "Merry Christmas" and we both responded in kind. He hesitated and then said, "I'm sorry to ask this, but my ride didn't come and I'm trying to get home, do you happen to have a couple of dollars for the bus?"

I apologized and explained that I had no cash, but I wished him luck and he thanked me anyway. We started to walk away but The Caterpillar yanked on my coat sleeve and turned to go back. She ran back to him and pulled the $3 she had planned on using for... I don't know, half a marker?... and handed it over to him. Then she told him Merry Christmas and ran back and grabbed my hand.

"That's a start," she said.

I don't know about you, but it's been really hard to believe in humanity lately and I needed this. It was one of the sweetest moments I've ever experienced with my children and I nearly burst into tears. But I held it together because I never did get that heart from the wizard.

Then the next night, I took The Dormouse out to shop for a gift for The KoH. She found something appropriate after a long while of looking, but again didn't have enough money to cover it all. I made the same deal with her that I'd made with The Caterpillar the night before; I'd give her the money, but she needed to do something nice for someone else. Something big enough to cover the value of this gift and she had to decide when she'd done enough.

She thought for a moment and sighed heavily.

"Can I just GIVE you the money?"

Well, we're batting .500 at least.

Christmas 2016

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 15:14:00 +0000

Good gravy, will this year never end?

*sigh*

I suppose I should document our Christmas cards this year.

Outside:

Inside:

We had the most fun staging this photo, because it's not often that you get to drop a giant tree on your children and then tell them to move this way and that because they don't look dead enough.

Last year, we bought a tree and argued about the height of it because we always end up getting a tree that's too big for the room once you put it in the tree stand. Now we have "fourteen-foot ceilings," as he keeps putting it, so we got a much bigger tree than prior years, but I still kept saying certain trees were too tall and we should pick a shorter one because The KingofHearts keeps forgetting that the fourteen-foot point of our ceiling has a wall attached to it and the rest slopes downward, so it's not actually fourteen feet. We took the tree home and put it up and I made the mistake of saying out loud that we actually could have gone a little bit bigger with the tree. That was the living end for The KoH and he told that story about the next eleven months about how I was Wrongy Wrongerson from Wrongsville, Wrongington and I said we had to have a shorter tree, but the second we put it up, I totally agreed with him and he was right and he'll never listen to me again.

So this year, I said nothing about height of the tree. No. Thing.

I let them pick the tree they wanted and thought would fit.

Here it is in all its glory:

This was after he cut like three feet off the bottom. If it seems like it's bending to the will of the ceiling, you're right, it is. We cut the tip off [insert circumcision joke here] shortly after the photo was taken.

Because as it turns out, see that sloped ceiling? There's only about ten feet from the ceiling to the floor if you want to actually put the tree in a place where you might actually be able to walk around it or where it's not spreading its branches into the fireplace... which... I'm no fireman, but seems like a bad idea to me.

But either way, it's gorgeous and I love it. Even if the star has to be attached six inches lower than the top of the tree.

We are having a lovely holiday season, despite the fact that 2016 has treated us like a horse that was rode hard and put away wet.

I might have shared this gif sometime last year, because there is no more appropriate image I have yet seen that describes how awful 2015 was for me. If I were to make a gif for 2016, it'd just be me continuing to bounce around at the bottom of the slide some more, and maybe a six year old wanders up and kicks me in the ribs a couple of times.

I'm looking forward to a much better 2017. It has to get better, right?

Please?

Bonus beautiful kids picture that we couldn't quite make work for a Christmas card.

Am I Angry?

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Sat, 12 Nov 2016 16:05:00 +0000

Tuesday's election in the U.S. has devastated me like few other things have.

Am I angry? Yeah, I'm angry.

The night before the election was also the night before I was getting on a plane to go to a week long conference. I participated in early voting so I wouldn't miss my chance. This has been a long and horrible process and we're all ready for it to be over. We have clear and strong opinions about the candidates and issues in our house but just the same, we have tried... very hard... to keep to civil discourse in discussing even those strong opinions in front of our children. We don't keep from talking about our thoughts about the political discourse within their earshot, but we also don't bad mouth opponents of candidates we like. I try to refer to them all by their full names or titles rather than just throwing around last names like they are curse words. But as I was putting my youngest to bed the night before the election, she looked up and said to me, "Mom?"

"Yes?"

"If Mr. Trump wins, are we going to have to move to Cuba?"

I made some joke about trading one fascist dictator for another and assured her that Mr. Trump would not be the President. I reminded her that this is the same country that elected Barack Obama twice. I had faith in us.

I was wrong.

Basically, we have an unqualified, racist, misogynist, homophobe who was endorsed by the Klu Klux Klan getting ready to take White House now. And all because the other candidate, an extremely qualified and competent woman whom we've been brainwashed to hate for the last 30 years, who, despite the fact that large groups of people have spent decades and millions attempting to prove she did something illegal and failing to do so, simply rubs many people the wrong way. Because where was the outrage when the Bush administration "lost" 20 million emails? Were people chanting to lock him up? Why is this only a problem now? Where was the outrage during Iran-Contra, one of the biggest presidential scandals ever? Or in this very election, what about when "he" refused to release the tax records for taxes that he most likely didn't pay for the last 20 years? But you're worried about "her" transparency? What about when "he" encouraged and downright asked for Russian hackers to commit espionage toward the United States in a public forum? What about the bankruptcies, the 3500 lawsuits, the hundreds of defaults on payments for services that he agreed to pay to hardworking service providers? Where was your outrage then? Was that somehow better? You say you don't trust her? Well of the two, whom do you think is more trustworthy? Do you really think that of the two, "she" is the crooked one? No, this is far exceeding that. This is because it's "her." This is because you don't like her pantsuits. This is brainwashed misogyny, pure and simple. Because even if you didn't feel comfortable voting for "him," when you voted against "her" or you didn't vote at all, you basically cast your vote for "him" and for what he stands for.

I had to explain to my youngest daughter what a "pussy" was this month. Hint: not the cat kind. And what it means to grab a woman by hers. Because despite the fact that we watch literally zero news channel television in our house, that horrible tape of the man who will now be the President and will swear to protect the constitution of the United States that my daughters are growing up in was on TV 24 hours a day -- even on channels that have kids' programming.

They heard him say it.

They know what he meant.

They know that "all men" don't talk like that.

No one they know talks like that.

The first time they heard disgusting talk like that -- and I'm not talking just the words, I'm talking about the attitudes that women are objects to be fondled and used -- the first person in their lives that they heard express those sentiments? He was an accepted candidate for the Presidency of the United States they live in.

*sigh*

I was sexually assaulted when I was about the age my older daughter is now. A man literally did "grab me by the pussy."

My friends and I were at a wave pool, boogie boarding. It was crowded. When the wave came, I - along with about a hundred others - flopped onto my board to surf to the beach side and in the commotion, someone I could not see behind me, stuck his hand between my legs and grabbed my genitals. Hard. He (I assume a he because the assumption is probable, but I admit that it could have been anyone) tried to put his finger where he had no right. I kicked and wriggled and managed to get out of the grasp and when the commotion ended and we surfed to the beach and the wave was gone, he was lost in the crowd. I had no idea who it was. I never saw.

I was humiliated. Mortified. I thought it was somehow my fault for prancing around in my modest, one piece bathing suit in public. For even daring to be there in the first place. For not simply staying home and inside. I didn't know what to do about it. I didn't have any tools for doing ANYthing. So I went back to my beach towel on the sand. I never. told. anyone.

The truth is I was not raped. I was not seriously hurt. For that I am grateful. But I was changed that day.

I'd almost stopped thinking about that incident. I pushed it down and put it behind me. Or so I thought... until I heard the man who would eventually become the Republican nominee for President of the United States, along with a cousin of two presidents, egging him on and then doing a little men's elbow-you-in-the-ribs inside joke later, encouraging an innocent bystander woman to give that same man who had denigrated and objectified her not five minutes prior, a hug... and laughing about it like little boys who got away with looking at a naked lady in a National Geographic magazine. It all came rushing back like a bad dream. And it sickened me.

And that sickening feeling was added to the sickening feeling provided by a hundred other things he had said before that and the hundred other things he would continue to say after it.

That man/boy/child/person at the wave pool? The person who did that to me was probably not a monster. He was a regular person, enjoying a day at the fake beach just like me and my friends. It was probably some kid who got a feeling of titillation out of trying something and getting away with it. A regular person who had been sent the message over and over that women and girls are objects to do with as you please. A kid, who wasn't told not to do that shit by his parents, his community... or his President.

And now, maybe that manchild is going to be the President of the United States some day too. Maybe that manchild is the one who will be in January. It could be; I never saw him.

I'm angry because what we all said when we voted for "him" and even those who didn't vote for "him" but chose to vote against "her" because "she" rubs us the wrong way is that we know what "he" said. We know what "he" did. To Jews, to Muslims, to gays, to Mexicans, to women... We know what he thinks because he's told us... over and over. For YEARS. I am waaaay less bothered by the fact that this one man won an election than by the fact that 47.5% of the voters heard these things from that man's own mouth and said, "You know what? I'm okay with that."

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

And the worst part about it is this man, whom you elected, has no intention of representing you either. He will use this position to line his own pockets and feed his own ego - the only two things that truly matter to him. You think he'll find you a job? Doubtful. You think he'll keep your access to healthcare? It's probably already gone. You think he'll work to fix what's wrong in your community? He couldn't care less about your community. Do you think your children will be safer? He has already indicated his intention to remove gun-free school zones. Even if he's not as bad as we all think, do you think he'll work to make the country a better place for your daughters and sons to grow up in and learn to be kind, equitable people in a functioning Democracy next to other people who are kind and equitable? He has proven he has no intention of doing that.

I already am hearing from my fellow therapists - some who provided services to kids after Newtown, after Orlando, after Columbine, and Sandy Hook, - that their clients are afraid because this has emboldened people who think that violence is an acceptable way to solve problems and they are not just afraid for their ease of living in this country; they are afraid for their lives.

This is not the country I want to live in. And that's the most devastating part of an already really devastating year: we are not the people I believed we are.

I called my kids from my conference Wednesday morning, despite the fact that I could barely keep it together enough to keep from crying on the phone.   And I am not a cryer over presidential elections.

They are scared.

Let that sink in. My kids are scared of the person who will be President.

Maybe I could have done a better job as a parent shielding my children from the things this man who will be President says, but to be honest, I don't think I should have to.

They are worried their friends at school will be deported. They are worried that their gay friends' marriages will be dissolved and they will be forced into conversion therapy. They are worried that as Mormons, they will somehow also be identified as "other" someday down the road and have to sign into the same registry that he said he would create for Muslims. They are worried that we'll hate each other even more than we already do.

It was very hard not to agree with every one of those fears. I am worried too.

When I called them, I told them that I knew they were disappointed. I was disappointed too. All because a little less than half the country and a whole lot of political gerrymandering decided to grab at all the power and good people couldn't vote against that because, "I don't like her. I can't explain why. I just don't like her."

I also told them that just like in Orlando, and Newtown, and on September 11, and so many other events we've witnessed together, that there are as many people running toward the flames as away. That people will still be there to keep us safe and work toward equality for everyone. That fortunately our governmental system has other checks and balances and while this man may have a lot of power, he doesn't have all the power. And that people, as we spoke, were donating money in record numbers to organizations that work to protect the vulnerable and at risk from the statements and policies that he supports and that I was doing the same. I told them that we would still stand up for people who are bullied, who are afraid, who are not treated fairly, and that we would work doubly hard to make sure this never happened again. I told them that now more than ever, it's incumbent upon all of us to demonstrate kindness and equity for all... and I expect no less than that of them, of myself, of us all.

I almost believe it.

What I learned from this, is that this country is way more sexist than it is racist... as Patton Oswald said, "...and it's pretty f***ing racist."

So am I angry?

Damn right I am.

I am livid.

To Gillian on Her 16th Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 16:03:00 +0000

I've been taking a break from this blog for a number of reasons. I'm not saying I'm not writing anymore; I'm not promising more regular posts from here on out because both of those things seem cliche to me. It's just that these days, I feel torn in a hundred different ways constantly, and when I do have a moment with my thoughts (which is not often), I honestly don't feel like I have anything new to say. Which might either mean writers' block, or depression, or maybe that I just don't have anything new to say. Anyway, I refuse to force myself to post when I'm not feeling it and I also refuse to admit that this blog has run its course. When I need it, it's there and that's good enough for me for now.

Fall is my favorite season of the year, it's cool and beautiful and welcome respite from the heat of summer. I didn't get to experience fall much because during so much of my childhood I lived in a desert. I always longed for the leaves changing colors and all the other things that come with it. When I was in second grade, my teacher held a drawing contest each month and I drew an old timey red school house with a bell tower and trees around it full of leaves of all different colors which were falling to the ground in mounds. I was contest winner for the month of October. We'd just moved from Colorado, where you see such things, to Arizona where you don't, and many of my peers couldn't wrap their heads around my picture but instead thought it was some sort of fantasy drawing. They simply didn't have a frame of reference for such things. It wasn't very many years there before I was just like them. It's one of the reasons I don't really have a desire to live in a desert again. Seasons are just too amazing.

But Fall also happens to contain maybe the worst of the year for me as well and I often don't really realize it or know why until it blindsides me that there's an anniversary that I dread both remembering (and dread not remembering). September comes and school starts and holidays get closer together and we hit the whirlwind of all our family's birthdays in a four-month period and work gets really busy for me..... and I just begin bouncing down that road of milestones until the end of the year, with no recourse but to simply submit to gravity and let everything shake out where it happens to land - I just have some vague hope that I'll be able to stand without broken bones when it's all over.

There's a new network television show this season and I happened to catch the pilot a couple of weeks back. It's lovely and excellently done so far and I'm a fan. Not the least of the reasons is this scene toward the end of the pilot where a young couple is expecting triplets and one of the three babies dies during delivery. I didn't know this was coming; hadn't heard anything about this show before watching it and I don't really even know how it ended up on my DVR. But there it was. I sat in my basement in the dark at five in the morning - because that's the only time I can watch television and not be interrupted - and this scene happened and I dissolved into great, blubbering tears, shaken with the raw honesty and relevance for me of this scene.

Doctor: "Rebecca's vitals are good. She's going to be asleep for a little while but she's doing fine. We're monitoring her closely. We lost the third baby, Jack. I'm very sorry. The second baby is a girl - very strong. The third baby was a little boy but the umbilical cord was cutting off his oxygen and he was stillborn. Nothing anybody could have done."

Jack: "I'm sorry. I'm not processing anything. My wife...?"

Doctor: "Is fine. And she'll be awake pretty soon. You have two beautiful healthy children, Jack - a boy and a girl... but we did lose the third child. "

Jack: "I need to be with my wife."

Doctor: "You will be. She needs to sleep now but... just... sit down. But soon. Just sit down. Sit. ... Okay if I keep you company a second?"

Jack: "Yeah."

Doctor: "Okay if I try and say something meaningful?"

Jack: "Yeah."

Doctor: "I lost my wife last year to cancer. That's the reason I still work so much at my age... just... trying to pass the time. We were married 53 years. 5 children. 11 grandkids. But we lost our very first child during the delivery. That's the reason I went into this field, truth be told. I have spent five decades delivering babies - more babies than I can count... but there is not a single day that goes by that I don't think of the child I lost. And I'm an old man now. I like to think that because of the child that I lost, because of the path that he sent me on, that I have saved countless other babies. I like to think that maybe one day you'll be an old man like me talking a younger man's ear off, explaining to him how you took the sourest lemon that life has to offer and turned it into something resembling lemonade. If you can do that, then you will still be taking 3 babies home from this hospital... just... maybe not the way you planned. I don't know if that was meaningful or senile but I thought it oughta be said. Your wife will still be asleep for a little while. Go see your babies... they're excited to meet their Father. I think maybe they got a good one."

- Milo Ventimiglia and Gerald McRaney, This Is Us

It's been sixteen years.

I hope I can say that there's been something resembling lemonade to come from this sour lemon for me. I have two other beautiful girls who are amazing in so many ways, I can't list them all here. I have a perspective and an appreciation for the sanctity and preciousness of life that only comes from understanding loss in a very personal way. I have been able to counsel others through some of their dark times with an empathy that I wouldn't have gained through any other experience. Somehow, her father and I have managed to use this to grow closer rather than farther apart, which is so often the case. There are a myriad of wonderful things in my life now because she came to us and changed us before she left. I wouldn't change any of that if I could, I don't think.

But I'd be tempted.

Nature's Way

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 14:44:00 +0000

This morning, when I was taking the Shortlings to camp, I turned the corner in the car and saw a little bunny running down the middle of the road.

“Oh look, girls! Look at that cute little bunny hopping down the road like he thinks he’s a car.”

Normally, The Caterpillar isn’t looking in the right direction and misses such things. Then she pouts the rest of the car ride. But we were fortunate, because the bunny was directly in front of us she actually spotted him for a change. All three of us had a great view actually and there were several seconds while we oooh-ed and aaah-ed over the adorable Peter Cottontail hopping down the bunny trail/road… right up until the adolescent fox in the neighborhood darted out into the road from the bushes, snatched that bunny, and disappeared back into the thicket.

And then we continued on to our destination… older, wiser, and sadder.

Minutiae - Caterpillar edition

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Sun, 19 Jun 2016 12:32:00 +0000

I'm not doing so so hot with the keeping up on the blog thingy this year. It seems every time I get ready to jump back into the regular, some tragedy happens and then I fall off the wagon again. But that doesn't mean I haven't been documenting my children's lives. Just on my phone where no one can see it. With might be better in their eyes. Today is Fathers' Day. I'm sitting on our deck outside listening to the birds sing. Watched a fox and a deer with her two babies run by, and everyone else is in the house asleep and in the fridge there's a Peanut Butter Cookie Lasagna waiting for him for breakfast. It's the best Fathers' Day present I know to give.

In the meantime, I'm clearing stuff off my phone and realized this younger kid he is helping me raise has gotten pretty funny. Here's a minutiae dedicated to her.

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"If I had to write about my dad, I'd probably write... he is fun to be with, he is embarrassing to my older sister, he takes the cake (mostly literally), and he's the best dad in the world."

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Just got accused of suppressing financial information. 8 year old would like to SEE her savings account statements from now on so she knows that nothing sketchy is happening with her $12.

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Parenting protip: Sometimes I buy my kids dumb stuff they want just for a reprieve... so for the next six months, every time they ask me for so much as a stick of gum in a checkout line, I can yell, "FAUX ANIMAL FUR HOODIE VEST!!", and they shut up about the new thing they're about to beg for.

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"She always does that when she gets mad. She flattens her nose."
"You mean, she 'flares her nostrils?'"
"Yeah. It looks like her nose is a tiny devil, spreading its wings."

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Found this after I turned my back on her for five minutes in a toy store. I'd say the Need To Create Order Where There Is None Thing has gotten out of control, but this isn't even the worst I've seen this week.

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First conversation with small child after coming home from an out of town trip fielded this thinker: "I really don't think it's fair that cats don't have a birth certificate."

Ah, crazy right off the bat. It's good to be home.

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"Who's that on the wall?"
"Billy Joel!"
"Go away, you don't belong in this family."

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I showed my kids the Chicken Dance. I have perhaps created a monster.

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"Where's my electrical tape? It keeps disappearing? What is everyone using it for?"

Certainly not to make a kilt to wear to school on St. Patrick's Day. Who would do that?

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I just stuck this one in here because it was sweet. This is the only person he will sit like this without having to stand up, walk around on your face and rub his head on your lips, getting cat hair in your mouth. This cat loves her like no one else.

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It's good to know that if my daughter ever ends up living on the streets, she at least won't go shirtless... as long as there are plastic bags in the world.

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Me: The cold killed all my basil plants last night.
Caterpillar: I'm sorry for your loss.

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Dancing to music on the deck in the rain. I wish I was 8 sometimes.

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We sat through five different performing groups at The Dormouse's Spring Concert. Some of us enjoyed it more than others.

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Required education for Shortlings this weekend was a screening of West Side Story. While The Dormouse's main problem with the movie was incredulity that anyone could fall in love with someone and decide to run off with them after knowing them only two days. The Caterpillar thought the whole thing was particularly ridiculous because you can't really kill someone with a three inch long pocket knife. I'm kinda glad she's on my side, actually.

By the way, both decided West Side Story was "way worse than Romeo and Juliet because at least Shakespeare didn't force Juliet to live at the end of it all." Perhaps my realism genes have run a bit deep here.

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This is exclusively her part every time we take a road trip.

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Asked her to put a pile of underwear away after it came out of the dryer. She took them, disappeared, then came back, somersaulted through the kitchen while singing the theme from Mission: Impossible and yelled, "Mission complete!"

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Caught Caterpillar outside today kissing a toad. KoH's response, "That's the wrong kind of amphibian, you know. You have to kiss a frog to get a handsome prince."

"I know, I just love him."

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Incomprehensible question of the day: "Mom, do camels use bad manners?"

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Apparently, we're still in bed this morning.

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"It's time to leave for school, are you ready?"
"Almost. Let me just get my underwear on."
"Aren't you already dressed?"
"Yes."

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We've been battling mice in the attic lately, so when I found the cats pawing at something under the closet door, I assumed one of the mice leaders had finally gotten the courage to venture into the house and was cornered in the closet. I was half right.

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Went looking for pins in The Caterpillar's room and found this. What the heck, you little maniac?

More Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Tue, 10 May 2016 20:37:00 +0000

I know, I know, "Who cares about your kids' poems? No one, that's who!"

Just the same, I want to keep them and the scraps of paper they get written on aren't really archival material. Hence, poetry entries.

The Dormouse participated in a School-Sponsored Poetry Slam last month, and let me just hold right there for a moment and repeat that: School-Sponsored Poetry Slam.

When I was in the seventh grade if anyone had said the words "poetry slam" in our school, two things would have happened:

All the parents would have called the police because they would have been certain that a large amount of The Reefer would be present at The Poetry Slam.
All the children would have run screaming from the building

And yet, here they were, at a School-Sponored Poetry Slam. I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one. They met in the library after school, turned down the lights and set up battery-powered candles all over the place, then wore berets and black stretch pants and snapped their fingers in appreciation every time someone said something the crowd agreed with... or maybe some of those things came from an Audrey Hepburn movie I saw once.

The Dormouse hadn't written anything for this event, but she had showed her English teacher some of her other work and he encouraged her to attend. So while she was sitting there listening to others' poems, she jotted something down on a piece of paper and then got the encouragement only friends and peers can provide to go up and recite it without edits. Look, I was a pretty gutsy kid when I was her age, but there's no power on earth that would have gotten me to write something on the spot and then get up and recite it in front of everyone.

Here's what she wrote down.

Want

We come far.
We work hard.
We soar.
But even though our wings have reached the sun,
Still, we want.
Want to achieve more,
Want to help more,
Want more happiness
Most wants are for making good.
And what I say to these good-deed thoughts, is keep dreaming.
Keep wanting. So that you can change those "I wants" into "I wills."

And then there's this one, from The Caterpillar, who isn't learning poetry in school, but doesn't like to be outdone, so she just writes this stuff on post-it notes and leaves them around the house.

Under the Piano

Loud, graceful, sweet and sorrow, under the piano.
Soft, presto, neat, and narrow, under the piano.
Staccato with every note, like a woodpecker on a tree, pecking.
A smooth beat floating across the sky like a cloud...
...under the piano.
Beautiful melody, under the piano.

This Could Also Be a Syndrome When You Think About It

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Wed, 04 May 2016 21:20:00 +0000

The Caterpillar came home one day this week, telling me about the different kids in her group at school. One of whom, she says, randomly yells out the word, "vagina" in class sometimes when it's quiet...

"Then he gets in trouble," she says.

"Well, that's not really very appropriate," I say.

She agrees.

"Does he have Tourette's Syndrome or something like that?" I ask.

"No, he's just a jerk."

Alice's Tea Party

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 20:30:00 +0000

dad

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 23:28:00 +0000

No I haven't forgotten about you, blog. Just too much... too many... ugh, just too.

My dad died.

Those have been the words I've avoided writing here for weeks now.

Not that it would be any more real if I wrote it down or any easier, or more difficult for that matter; it's just that I don't know how to talk about it. But the problem is I can't seem to move on in this format without talking about it. So I guess I need to write it out. Here goes.

My dad was a complicated guy and we had a complicated relationship.

There's no question that I loved him. And I don't doubt that he loved me in his own way. It's just that neither of us ever really said it much or knew how to express it.

I remember once when I was a little girl this distressed me quite a bit - probably because I'd heard some church sermon or after school special about telling the people you love that you love them before it's too late or something. All my friends were very demonstrative with their fathers. They didn't seem to have a problem expressing love and affection. We were somehow different. I worried about it for weeks and then one night before I went to bed, finally screwed up my courage and stopped in front of the television, in front of his chip bag and his glass of Coke and whatever ongoing sportsball game was happening at the moment and I just blurted it out: "I'm going to bed. I love you, Dad."

"I love you too," he replied, without thinking, barely looking up from the television.

I was surprised. He didn't refuse to say it back. It hadn't hurt him to say it. He didn't even hesitate. No great truths were exchanged. No tears shed. No earth shattering moment happened.

It was only a moment. Just a moment among so many other moments.

He didn't even know how hard it had been for me to tell him that. And he'd said it back without effort, without marking the moment in any way. That's the first time I realized that my dad loved me, but probably not in any way that I could ever understand -- and maybe in the only way he was capable of, which was different than most other people.

Looking back, this story says more about my relationship with my dad than almost anything else I can think of. Of course he loved me; why would he have stuck around if he didn't? Of course he could say it back. But why would he need to on any regular basis? Of course I didn't know that he'd loved me before that moment. How would I have known? He never said it.

I once was chatting with a friend about difficult family relationships and he was saying how his parents were always there, together, in the picture, but that he didn't really know them because he was the youngest of many and he'd been raised more by his sisters than anyone else. "When you think about it, my dad was really just..." he trailed off.

"...that guy that lived in my house," I finished.

"Yes!! No one's ever got it more right when I've tried to explain it," he exclaimed.

I thought about my dad like that for a long time. But in recent years, I've come to understand that that's not quite right either. Because while overall, I knew very little about him, he was always there. A fixture in my life. Because while I never really felt like I knew him, and I'm quite sure he never really knew me, he was always supportive. He was at every orchestra concert. Every recital. At every show where I played in the pit orchestra and no one even saw my face. At every dumb awards ceremony or school presentation. It was during those long motorcycle rides in the desert when I felt closest to him. Ironically, when neither of us said anything to the other. Deep conversation is not possible with forty-five mile an hour wind rushing into your face and I guess it took the pressure off. We just enjoyed the ride together... or next to each other, I'm not sure which.

I was not really into sports as a kid, which was his great love. And he had little authentic interest in the things that I was into. He went for my sake. During times when I'm sure he would have much rather been doing ANYthing than listening to the latest Beethoven interpretation no matter how good the orchestra (and I know some of mine were not good), or going to some bookish play I wanted to see, he showed up. And honestly? That's a lot more than some people get.

Once when I was a little older, just out of high school, I think, he had to go on a trip to Chicago and he invited me to come along. It was an unprecedented invitation to an outing with just the two of us. I had a great time. We did dumb stuff that only tourists do like river boat tours of the city and double-decker bus tours of the architecture of Chicago. We went to a Cubs game at Wrigley field and took a cab to go to the top of the Sears Tower, looked at all the locations where The Blues Brothers was filmed and the Marina Tower that Steve McQueen drove his car out of in The Hunter, and visited the museum where Ferris Bueller's Day Off kids went, and passed by the bar where Mr. T. worked before he was discovered (and yes, it was like the late 80s if you hadn't already figured that out). I'm convinced that my deep-seated love of Chicago and its architecture started with this trip.

He taught me to work. He taught me to fix things. He taught me if I couldn't at least attempt to fix it, I had no business owning it. He towed my car home from the dozens of places it broke down and taught me how to change the oil and fix a flat tire... how to repair the clutch or replace a fan belt with an old pair of pantyhose so if (and more likely when) a breakdown like that happened again, I would be able to do it myself. It's because of him that I spent most of this week updating and grounding all the outlets in my house and I didn't feel like I had to defer that task to my husband or hire it out.

He taught me to use computers. He made me understand that they were machines like any other machine and they were built to do a Thing That I Wanted and all I needed to know was how to make them bend to my will. In a time before a computer class was even available to me, he had a computer at home and taught me how to use it for fun and profit and not to be afraid of them. Hell, he was the first person to show me the Internet.

All these things are things that I do and use in my life every day now. It's partially because of him that I have the job I have now - and so many jobs before this one. It's partially because of him that I have the life I have now. Because of him I'm somewhat independent and confident and feel like I can tackle tasks I've never encountered before because I'm always ready to learn. He taught me that. Those are things I'll always be grateful to him for leaving me.

He was a father in every sense of the word he understood it to be. He was there for me in every way but the one that counted most to me.

There's no question that he was a good guy. There's no question that I loved him. As enigmatic as he was, I do miss him. Part of my esoteric reaction to his death is that I wish I missed him more. Wish I felt a bigger hole in my life.

Some people don't get half the father I had. I realize that.

The Awakening

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 20:14:00 +0000

One of the first art installations I remember ever seeing in D.C. was the sculpture, The Awakening. We visited long before I moved here - I was a kid - and how my father knew to drive (or did we ride bicycles?) out to Hains Point and look at it is a mystery. But he did, we did, I have pictures of me sitting in that hand to prove it, but you might not believe me if I found them because that was mumblesomething years - and pounds - ago.

After I moved to D.C., I returned to visit him often. I saw him waking up in the Spring, I saw him waking up in the snow, I saw him when Hains Point was under water and I had to wade over to the thumb.

He is no longer at Hains Point. His bed has been moved to the National Harbor. I dislike seeing him here, but he is still fodder for children and adults trying to take these oh, so iconic photos of him, and for those who try - and mostly fail - to climb up that giant arm reaching out toward the sky and back down.

And it makes me happy that generations of kids have enjoyed him.

Snowing... Again

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 22:20:00 +0000

We're on day number ~~five~~, ~~six~~, ~~eight~~, I've totally forgotten, of No School due to "someone saw a snowflake" this year.

I thought we were doing okay until after like the seventh day in a row of kids home from school, I heard screaming from the bathroom and turned the corner to find two children fighting over a spatula. And not just fighting, knock-down, drag-out, one of them dragging the other one across the floor by the spatula they were both clutching and screaming about.

I broke up the fight like Morgan Freeman in Lean On Me. Grabbed the spatula away from both of them and exclaimed, "Now WHAT is so important about this spatula that you two have to act like animals about it?"

They both stared, wide-eyed and then just said small-ly, "Well... I wanted it."

I can barely form a coherent sentence right now, but I have discovered a really cool app based on Deep Dream that I've spent a lot of time playing with this month.

It turns this:

Into this:

And this:

Into this:

If anyone wants me, I'll be in the bathroom with the iPad.

They're Love Balls

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 21:21:00 +0000

We bought these ridiculous Christmas decorations years ago for this project, fully intending to toss them out immediately afterwards, but never got around to that part. They've been kicking around in the attic ever since. This year we moved everything and they got put in with the Christmas decorations, so I put them outside on the Narnia lamp post.

It's February now, and even though it would take almost no effort and less than four minutes, I still haven't gone out there to take them down. I'm like that person who leaves their lights on year round and tries to tell you they're just up early for next year. Perhaps I could leave the pink and red ones and try to convince people it's for Valentine's Day.

Hairy Ice Balls

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 21:08:00 +0000

I know, I know. I'm a 14 year old boy at heart.

Looks like someone stayed out too long in the snow.

Now Are the Foxes

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 19:57:00 +0000

One night when we were coming home in the car late last November, we turned the corner to find a group of three or four deer gamboling through the neighborhood. And when I say "gambol," I use that not to be pretentious, but because that's the only word that effectively describes what they were doing... prancing and jumping about with no clear direction or leader. I'm not one to over-anthropomorphize animals but it's hard to see them as doing anything else besides just "goofing around."

Then we looked a little lower to the ground and realized they weren't alone. They had a small fox companion, who was jumping and running along with them in and out, underneath their feet, probably chasing after whatever small rodents they were kicking up from under the leaves.

We've heard tell of fox in this neighborhood and I saw one a couple of times last year, but much like the coyote I kept seeing last Spring, no one believed me because they didn't actually see it themselves.

This year, the fox is back and he's brought a girlfriend. We've seen them both hunting in our yard in the early mornings. They're gorgeous and fascinating to watch. They'll split up and circle around the house in opposite directions, then meet again around the other side. And we'll "chase" them around the house, try to get a glimpse out of the side window, then the back then the girls' bedrooms, and so on. One morning I saw one trotting off with a squirrel in it's mouth. When they appear, you'll first see all the squirrels go up the trees and then start chittering and shaking and waving their tails wildly in warning. If you notice this happening and keep an eye pealed, then soon will be the foxes!

This morning, I happened to have my camera close enough to grab it before they were gone. They're hard to photograph because they move so fast but I did get one decent picture as proof.

My New Favorite Shakespeare

noreply@blogger.com (NG) — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 15:51:00 +0000

Last month we went to the Folger Shakespeare Library (they do some amazing stuff there, cannot recommend highly enough) and saw Pericles and it was amazing. And not just because The KoH got us seats so close I could put my feet up on the stage and get sweated on by the actors, either.

The show has closed now and they are on to other things, but I need to immortalize this sign for posterity, because while this sign wasn't totally why the play was so amazing, it certainly didn't hurt.


"This production will include a mild strobe effect. This production will also include pirates."