Has it really been six years?

I don't remember exactly why I stopped writing. It may have been that the compounded effects of one bad thing after the other—deaths, teenagers, deployments, workplace fuckery, health care and a partridge in a pear tree—rendered my fingers inoperable. I think the technical term is "shitshow" (otherwise known as "middle age.")

I think I may come back. All the social media platforms out there make blogging seem almost quaint. I kind of like that.

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Stop wanging my girly thoughts

News flash for the dudes out there, at least the straight ones: Your significant other is a girl. That means that, no matter how good she is with a chainsaw or a sewing machine, a front-end loader or a Kitchen-Aid, chances are she has girly thoughts. And because she likes you, she probably has some of these girly thoughts about you.

Because visual aids are so useful, I will offer an infographic of what girly thoughts look like:

That's right: hearts, rainbows, unicorns, glitter. You name it. A woman's girly thoughts are often accompanied by sighs and sweet, fluffy daydreams about holding hands, soft kisses and cuddling. Norah Jones is optional background music.

Guys, we throw out clues that we are having these thoughts. Phrases like, "I was thinking about you," or "I want to feel you close to me" are dead giveaways. If accompanied by a shy smile, pay attention. And do not, I repeat, DO NOT, wang our girly thoughts.

What do I mean, you ask? Let me demonstrate with a simple phone conversation in which a woman calls her beloved in the afternoon:

Man: Hey, what's up?
Woman: Not much, just wanted to say, "hi."
Man: Hi
Woman: I was thinking about you today.
Man (Beavis and/or Butthead start laughing in his head "huhuhuhuhuhuh."): Oh you WERE, were you? What were you thinking?
Woman (still oblivious due to pink fluffy thoughts): I was just thinking about you, and about how much I like being near you.
Man (Beavis screeching in his head "We're gonna SCORE!"): Huh-huh-huhuhuhuh. You wanna have sex tonight, don't you?

That boys, is wanging our girly thoughts. It's taking our pink fluffy, sigh-laden romantic thoughts and blowing them into oblivion with your heat-seeking missiles. Not OK.

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The flip side of being prepared

I took actions today that I had prepared myself for, at least as much as one can prepare oneself for something so gut-wrenching. And when I took those steps I had practiced until they were rote, I did so with a calm that comes from such preparation. Still, as I sit here on the other side, perhaps the numbness is the most disconcerting of all. It seems like it should feel differently, like I should be doing something. It's odd, like someone grabbed ahold of reality and bent it slightly. I am conflicted. Perhaps practice isn't everything.

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Sticky snow

My friend and I were bemoaning the difficulties of life earlier today, commenting that 2011 has already shaped up to be one that tops the previous year in the "suck" department. Though the scenarios are different, the common theme seems to be that the waves just keep crashing down upon our heads, often just as we feel we have regained a toehold in the sand. She pointed out, rightly, that both she and I have experienced some great victories in the last few months as well. Yet it still seems difficult to find something approaching "smooth."

Here's where I start mixing metaphors, folks. Brace yourself. We're going from sand to snow.

In the springtime on the ski trails, sometimes the snow gets so wet that it becomes like glue to the bottoms of my skis. Even an application of Maxi-glide doesn't correct it. And the miles of trails become this disjointed experience: I glide smoothly, quietly for a few strides, calm with the hush of the forest around me. Then the snow grabs my skis, trips me, turning my glide into this stuttered struggle to remove the impediment to forward motion.

That seems to be both my experience and hers as of late. I think we both would appreciate it if things would cool off enough to bring back the glide. Miles of sticky snow is no way to ski.




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Anticipation

It feels like something is about to happen. Perhaps it is just the changing seasons. I have always been prone to hypersensitivity to such things. I can't quite identify when: a couple of days ago, a week, maybe. Something flipped, an internal switch. So I'm waiting with a touch of existential breathlessness ... and smiling.

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Please leave a message

I realized somewhere around the third or fourth "call me back" that, for me, relying on a telephone as a primary means of communication is akin to rubbing sticks together to build a fire. It might work eventually, but it will take twice as long as it needs to.

I got my first cell phone six years ago. I got a Gmail account about four years ago and have been on Facebook and Twitter for less than three years. I finally broke down and bought a smartphone a little over a year ago. And with all of these things at hand, when I am limited to the telephone, I feel a bit like I am using the Pony Express. Call. Leave message. Miss returned call. Listen to message. Call. Leave message. Two days later, "let's go have a drink" is relayed.

Not really sure whether it's a good or bad thing, really, but this exercise in telephone-only communication has proved that I am not so good at waiting, either to relay or respond to information. Curious, that.

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Disappointing

I made the mistake of visiting my Gmail archives tonight. And one set, in particular, was akin to a visit with a ghost: hundreds and hundreds of conversations, laden with obvious affection and affinity. As a whole, they are the chronicle of a valued friendship, the words of someone I love. And they are all that's left.

I feel sad tonight, for in its absense from my day-to-day life, I had forgotten how much I loved this friendship, this person. I should not have read them. They are too much a reminder of that empty disappointment of someone who was supposed to be here.

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Disconnect

Last week, my teenage son broke up with his girlfriend. Apparently, at one point, the process involved her calling the house over and over and over and my son telling his sisters to tell her he isn't home.  Half of me was saying, "Good lord, honey, put a damper on the crazy behavior, you are making yourself look foolish and reinforcing the hysterical stereotype of women." The other half of me was saying, "Oh hell, what did he DO? Women don't go nuts like that unless men have pulled some sort of noncommunicative, game-playing bullshit. Tell me my son isn't one of THOSE guys."

As in all things, it's probably a little from column A and a little from column B, especially given the lovely combination of general clulessness and raging hormones that comes with the teen years.

Still, I figured it was a teachable moment that I ought to seize. I struggled for a moment with what to say, though, with how to explain to my son something I've found beyond the grasp—purely innocently in most cases—of most of the men in my life, friends and lovers. Call it Mars-Venus or whatever, but it just doesn't seem to compute.

I hemmed and hawed and stumbled about the conversation for a moment until I remembered the many protective comments my son has made in reference to his younger sisters. Epiphany. It could be summed up in a short statement: "I don't know exactly what happened here, but I want you to consider, in any interaction with the young women you date, whether your behavior toward her would be something that you would be OK with if a boy acted in a similar fashion toward your sister. If not, then you should probably adjust your actions."

He seemed to get it. Later that evening, I was thinking about our conversation in the context of my own experiences. I hope my son gets it, but I have my doubts. Most men don't seem to. They are fathers and brothers and sons and demand the highest level of consideration for those women from other men and, in most cases, from themselves. Yet in their romantic relationships, they do the very things that they have deemed "not good enough" for their sisters and daughters and mothers. I wonder why. I wonder if women do the same thing. Does sex really change things that much?

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Snapshots

The lights were back the other night for the first time this season and, as always, you were on my mind. I wrote this a while back; I don't remember why or what prompted it. It's how I remember that last week, though. Apropos, I guess, given what you loved most.

Snapshots

Flash

Late night, tired eyes, brains spent
Baby sleeping in his stroller
Another deadline, pages in paste-up, backlit
Glance down, our arms entwined on blueline

Flash

Morning light, cool table against my back
Quiet with my girlish thoughts
Why are you late?
Will you think me beautiful here waiting for you?

Flash

Ringing phone, dinner cooking
A familiar voice, broken
Words spilling from a yawning tunnel
Fall back
Wall stops
Sliding down
Why?

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What's in a name?

10-year-old: We had the meanest substitute teacher EVER today. All she did was yell at use for like two hours.
Mom: What is her name?
10-year-old: Miss Flunk.
Mom: Miss Flunk? Seriously?
14-year-old: I guess we know why she's not a REAL teacher.

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The virtual I, at the I

Now available LIVE from the Big I (starting at about 9 p.m.)

Cocktails

Looking for results? Visit the Alaska Division of Elections online.

Grab a beer, sit down and join us:




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Worth it

It was truly hell getting here. Days that stretched to weeks to months, past a year and nearly a second. Still nothing. Only wondering and waiting and struggling to keep that toehold on my own humanity, my eyes fixed steadfastly on that one thing, "it will be worth it." Until that wasn't there either. My tenacity and faith had no direction and they fell. It was dark, for as long again as before, my eyes unable to see even inches before my own face. I don't exactly remember how it became light again or why.

Sitting on the other side, I've found that the thing that made it "worth it" has nothing to do with the thing I was fighting for in the first place. The insight I gained and the people it brought into my life are for more precious than that thing I was so desperately trying to hold on to. That was not worth it. This is.

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Insight?

Somehow my son and I got into a discussion about grandchildren this evening. He declared he had no interest in having children: "They would have my genes, and thus your genes, and would be a neurotic mess."

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Why?

You asked me why I like that photo so much, why, of the scores of shots of your face, I love that one above all others. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, when you asked me, because it's not like you look any more beautiful than normal or that the photo is remarkably well-composed.

No, I love it because it is simply you, without pretense and unguarded. The smile on your face matches that in your eyes. Even your posture, soft and unposed, speaks to who you really are. Precious few shots have come close to that one. And they grow rarer with the passage of time. You, like all of us, have aged, but it isn't the lines on your face. No, in most of the pictures, the hardness in your eyes tells far more than the grin that belies contentment.

I love that one because it's real, because it's you, happy.

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The king of ...

I consider myself to be pretty open-minded about a lot of things and people, or at the very least it is something I admire in others and strive for myself. I try not to judge. However, I have a confession to make. I seriously look at someone differently if I find out they idolize Michael Jackson. A part of me doubts their grounding in reality and their ability to evaluate ... everything, really. OK, now once the laughing has died down, I'll continue.

I should note that gushing over celebrities is already something I just don't understand. But Michael Jackson gushers take things to a whole new level of absurdity. They go on and on about his talent and sexiness and loving nature and how misunderstood and giving he is. They name their dogs after him. Or their kids. Seriously? Can you imagine? "Honey, I named you after my favorite person in the whole world, a wonderful man, the king of pedophi ... I mean pop."

Perhaps fanatics just make me nervous. Still, I can get my mind around putting all sorts of people and things on a pedestal, and feeling irrationally passionate about those things. But a man who, while talented musically, was so disturbed as to do the sorts of things he did, to himself and to others? If you don't have the wherewithal to look at that scenario, at that person, and not see it for what it is, a part of me seriously doubts your ability to make ANY rational decision.

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Not meant to be landlocked

It's after midnight and the sounds of the city are background noise to the Atlantic rolling ashore. I'm restless and melancholy, knowing that tomorrow I'll return to places surrounded by little but land. I was born landlocked, but the few years I spent living by the sea defined where I belong. Every time I venture there, I am reminded. It's painful to leave. It always is. I'll sit here a while longer, enveloped in its sound, and try not to think about how long it might be before I find my way back home.

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Needed respite

Tonight, my friend's 2-year-old daughter spent several hours at my house while her mom worked. After I put my kids to bed, I put her into my bed in an attempt to get her to sleep. I slipped her little diaper-clad body between the sheets, pulled up the duvet and reclined beside her. I watched as she wiggled about, giggling to herself, rolling over and over, obviously delighted by the way the soft cotton felt against her bare skin. She was the personification of joyful sensation. She paused and turned her sweet face toward me, grinning and wiggling her fingers in front of her, that squeaky voice making some approximation of the word "spider." Five rounds of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" later, her mom came to pick her up.

In a week that has been, at times, blackened by some of the worst humanity has to offer, she was a beautiful, simple and welcome reminder of the best.

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The way it is

Overheard (and inspired):

"Yes, I am a person who is petty enough to look at people I don't really care for and think 'Oh, honey, you may not have the years, but you sure show the miles.'"

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Why I can fix that

Most people who know me would agree that I'm not very good at the word "can't." If something is broken or needs work, whether it be a relationship or a project or a light fixture, my first inclination is to break out the tools, roll up my sleeves and get started.

That I might fail, or not be up to the task at hand, rarely even occurs to me.

When I was younger, I chalked this up to being one of two daughters of a man who had no sons. We learned to shoot before we learned long division. We did yard work. We went fishing. We cut firewood. We helped build things. Now don't get me wrong, we were not complete tomboys. We took ballet lessons and learned to cook and sew too, but our experiences were certainly not limited to those reserved for the fairer sex.

As a young woman, I credited my father's influence almost exclusively for my willingness to charge forth when faced with a new situation or task. As I grow older, I recognize that while some of the technical ability came from my father, the mentality is one most accurately attributed to my mother.

She grew up in the midwest, one of 10 kids in a Catholic farm family. Her brothers and sisters all still live within about 20 miles of the farm. So do their children. So do their grandchildren. But she left, and she didn't stop at the next state. Not too long after high school, she packed up and first headed south, but found that not quite the right fit. She went, of all places, to Fairbanks, Alaska. I wonder if she was scared. Perhaps she just figured she would make it work.

Through the years I have watched my mother employ that technique in almost everything, from raising us to starting a business to running a household to home improvement. She just seems to step up and figure it out. And most times, it turns out OK.

When my chainsaw won't start or my water pump starts sucking air, I roll my eyes, curse a little, then pick out the right tools and figure out a way to fix it. My father taught me which tools too use. My mother taught me to have the courage to pick up the tools in the first place.

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Afternoon anthem

Sunshine streaming and sleepy eyes on a Saturday afternoon: It's perfect for drifting.

Come Away with Me

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