Sunday, August 30, 2009

Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen


This picture is about eight years old. Kiley was one of the first friends I made up here and was later a roommate. When we met (at work where we were hostessing and waiting tables), we both had recently endured a breakup with a long-term love, we both knew the words to "The Vagina Song" by Pig Vomit and we both smoked cigarettes. Soul mates. Also, Kiley had just transferred from Hofstra to UNH and I had dropped out of URI to take classes there as a non-matriculating student, so we both felt a little displaced; a cementing agent for any relationship.

Solid from the start (so rare, this genuine platonic girl-on-girl chemistry) our friendship was built on all-nighters for school, sneaking out for cigarettes at work and even attending employee meetings high together.

Which is why it's so funny that, when we met for drinks the other night (on an outside restaurant deck in New Castle, NH---good bye summer), the conversation centered around dietary supplements and yoga.

"What's happened to us?" one (or both) of us asked.

We both had wine. Her white, me red. Two glasses apiece; any more and we wouldn't be able to drive, we agreed. Never mind the dehydration. (A flashback pops into my head now of Kiley telling me to, "Let it out," as I vomit grape crush shots into a pile of snow outside her car.)

We both had a shrimp cocktail and I also added a salad. She's off meat. I'm off gluten.

We still can talk and talk, that hasn't changed. (And the conversation is still fun. She talked about taking a yoga class with "a farter" and I admitted that that is half the reason that I've never taken one. "I'm way too immature to handle that.")

On parting she sent me off with a package of shelled hemp seeds (a dime bag of another ilk) to experiment with in my cooking.

We decided we are going to start a book club.

"We can read health books together and discuss our findings!" one of us said.

The next morning she sent me a text message regarding a conversation we had about fish oil. According to information she got that morning at the Portsmouth Health Food store, of the two omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil, EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) helps strengthen and protect your heart and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), your brain.

"...we will be experts soon!!" she wrote.

(According to The Instinct to Heal: Curing Depression, Anxiety and Stress Without Drugs and Without Talk Therapy by David Servan-Screiber, M.D., PH.D., "The best products are probably those that have the highest concentration of EPA with respect to DHA." However, Servan-Schreiber is speaking in this context solely of the effects of fish oil in regard to the treatment of depression, which have been proven beneficial.)

P.S. I'm still doing my homework, so didn't listen to anything I say (and I'm not sure about the brain/heart thing Kiley said either).

Hopefully we will be covering this in our book club. Though, not at our first session. The text we chose for our inaugural book club meeting covers an entirely different aspect of physical health: Chelsea Handler's My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands.

I guess we haven't changed completely.

Mo'mega-3 news:

Also from The Instinct to Heal (amazing book I started a while back but took a break from so I could eat cheese-covered potatoes without guilt):

"One key neurological fact is that two-thirds of the brain is composed of fatty acids. These fats are the basic component of nerve cell membranes, the "envelope" through which all the communications with other nerve cells take place, both within the brain and the rest of the body. The food we eat is directly integrated into these membranes and makes up their substance. If we consume large quantities of saturated fats---such as butter or animal fat, which are solid at room temperature--their rigidity is reflected in the rigidity of the brain cells; if, on the other hand, we take in mostly polyunsaturated fats---those which are liquid at room temperature---the nerve cells' sheaths are more fluid and flexible and communication between them is more stable. Especially when those polyunsaturated fats are omega-3 fatty acids."

Fasci-fucking-nating! The actual structure of your nerve cells, the fluidity of their communication, affected by what we eat---incredible to me.

[I was just going to list all the shizzle that Servan-Schreiber cites for this but it's like a page and a half long...my apologies to all the original researchers of this information.]

Later in the chapter, he says, "Some nutritionists have described our brains today as sophisticated race car engines meant to run on highly refined fuel that are instead asked to putter along on diesel."

What could my brain do if it ran on "refined fuel"? (What about yours?) I want to see what this puppy can do!

Even on diesel, this really gets my brain going. What I'm really thinking about lately is how all of this information---all this stuff that is being documented about the prevention and cures of most Western diseases being managed with diet and exercise (and NOT patentable, PROFITABLE, means)---plays into the current health care reform debate.

Somebody should really write an article about that.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Shame, shame, I know your name (and your height, weight, social security number and sign).


I lied to my parents. I can't remember one real lie I ever told as a kid (I even confessed to shoplifting the She-Ra trading cards at age 6 or 7), so why start now? (Author's note: I can't remember lying to my parents or ever having the need to as the leash was loose, but I'm sure at one time or another, a thread of fib seeped out.)

Up to visit for an overnight in NH (all visitors stay at my sister Becky's house---some day I'll make that up to her), I enjoyed a nice summer meal and evening with the 'rents a couple of days ago. I, too, stayed at Bec's house for the night as Dan was away and Molly has been begging me to sleep over there. The next morning I had to take off early for an appointment.

A 50-minute appointment.

The same appointment I have every Wednesday at 11:30am.

With a psychiatric nurse practitioner; my therapist.

I told my parents it was a dentist appointment.

Then I felt like a lying liar. In addition to the guilt (though I know no harm was done), I felt like an idiot.

Really? At age 28, married and 10 years of independence under my belt, I'm lying to my parents about where I'm going?

(Dan's response when I talked to him about it: "Next time you can say, 'I'll be at a sleepover Wednesday at 11:30.'")

On the surface it seems an appropriate lie. It's my business. I have the right to keep such information to myself. Also, it's understandable that I would want to protect my privacy, especially given my dad's position that psychologists are wacky, therapy is futile and nothing short of a "magic wand" can help anybody who is trying to deal with a painful past. (At least part of this stance is based on his experience as a psych resident in medical school. He also actually wears a shirt which says, "You never see a motorcycle parked outside a therapist's office.")

I disagree.

A lot.

(Maybe not on the motorcycle bit---I park at a public garage so I would never know---but about everything else. I'll save for later my laundry list of reasons why I disagree, including the fact that, at least in my experience, therapy has been less about the past than the present; and the fact that I believe that there are many, many things short of a magic wand that can help people; and that to deem an entire profession wacky based on a few bad eggs would be the same as, I don't know, calling ER doctors pompous, money-hungry, elitists based on a handful of bad experiences. But, as I said, I'm saving that for later.)

You could see why I lied though, right? Why open myself to the potential criticism or even the discomfort? I don't have to tell my family everything.

I don't.

Knowing this didn’t settle my feelings of uneasiness though. (My mom not only asked me if I had time to floss---gulp---but she also later asked how the appointment went. Fine, I said. I hate lies. Even tiny ones like this.)

Yes, I am entitled to my privacy. Yes, it would have been perfectly acceptable for me to continue telling this lie for the rest of my life if I felt it was right for me to do so. The thing is, for me, it's not. I’ve learned that if I'm not being honest about something, if I'm holding my tongue when it feels wrong to do so, the reason is usually based in shame. And I am no longer entitled to shame. Shame is perfectly unacceptable.

Being embarrassed about going to therapy isn’t a new concept. Though nobody denies that we are a therapy-heavy culture, it is always regarded with this sort of hands-on-the-hips, eyes-a-rolling, reproachful judgment. Even the term ‘therapy-heavy’ implies excess. While certainly a person could over-therapize (it needs a verb form), as they could over-exercise, over-socialize, over work, etc., I think there’s an argument to be made for worrying about people not looking inward enough, rather than being so concerned with them overdoing it. (Maybe there would be less abuse of drugs, alcohol, sex and gambling if we did. It’s a theory. I’m still up betting the ponies every night with a joint in one hand, a beer in the other and a hooker on my lap, so don’t ask me.)

I understand that the topic is a romping ground for funny (I know a woman who is being treated for anxiety and wants to break up with her therapist but is too anxious to do so---good stuff there) and for self-deprecating humor. Listen, nobody appreciates a little self-deprecation more than I do. But I also know---I know this---that self-deprecation can be used as a tool for apologizing to the world for being oneself. If I make fun of myself enough, if I say what I fear they are thinking, it will ease everyone’s (including my) discomfort with those feelings which oppose or conflict with theirs.

There is a place between taking yourself too seriously and not taking yourself seriously enough; it’s worth looking for, I think. You will probably see me--- on this blog---making fun of myself for going to therapy. (That’s my job.) But this doesn’t mean that I haven’t benefited deeply from going.

I don’t want to feel ashamed of that, still sometimes I do. I can know in my head that this is not rational, but it is so ingrained in me through personal and cultural experience, that it takes real effort to feel otherwise. I don't think everyone's position is as steadfast as my father's but I do think most people could cop to some level of bias, myself included. I have questioned my every motive. I have felt shame and embarrassment. I have felt weak.

But I also know that my therapist was the first person who was finally able to impress upon me the importance of physical health and the connection between mind and body. (Oh my god, remind me to tell you about all this amazing stuff I’ve been reading about omega-3 fatty acids. Perhaps I’ll include it an essay on how I am going to drug Dan in order to get him to eat fish. That’s what she said…sorry.)

I know that what I have learned and experienced in her office has gotten me further down a spiritual path than I might have gone on my own and that the pleasures, benefits and satisfying difficulty of this---it’s like a good workout, this spiritual shit--- have already enriched my life. (She would laugh at the irony of this---she’s an atheist.)

And I also know that she was the only person to whom I could speak openly while I was enduring the pain of a miscarriage.

I am not ashamed that therapy has helped me. I don’t want you to be, either. And I don’t want anyone who is struggling, or needs an outlet, or is simply seeking, adjusting or organizing life’s files, to feel shame either.

That is why lying about it, omitting it from the story of my current life, does not sit right with me regardless of my privacy. (If you’re keeping score, I would be feeling shame for going to therapy, shame for lying about it and then a third helping for not standing up for my beliefs. See why I go?)

So I wish I would have been honest with my parents and a couple of other siblings to whom I have told half-truths when they have happened to ask where I am or where I’m going on a Wednesday at 11:30. (Though the jig is up now, right?)

My dad is entitled to his opinion. (I might feel similarly had my experience been his. I had a thing against dentists for years after being the recipient of an ass-pinching from one when I was in high school.) But I am also entitled to mine and when I am not honest, when I withhold (and we’re not talking little white lies of meals deemed “delicious” when they are not), I feel like I am not stepping up to it. Not stepping up to who I am. I once was a kid who never shied away from fighting for what I thought was right. (Later I chastised myself for never shying away from a fight in general---forgetting that I usually had good reason.) I want to be that kind of adult. Maybe if my dad knew I was in therapy he would think twice about casting it off. Maybe he might become more open-minded about the whole thing. Or maybe he wouldn’t. At least my integrity would be intact.

Strangely enough, I just had a conversation with someone about all this the other day at 11:30am. (We actually never begin at 11:30 because God, in all her divine and bad-ass wonder, gifted me with a therapist who runs later in life than I do. As a result I have never been late to an appointment---can you imagine? I did miss one altogether though because apparently every Wednesday is too complex a schedule for me to follow. And God really knows what She’s doing because it has also been a positive experience for me to see an accomplished, professional woman who is good at her job but who just happens to run late. It doesn't make her a bad person or lazy or incompetent---all thoughts I have had about myself when running late---it just means time management is not her thing. The flip side: she seems utterly capable of staying in the moment.)

I was talking about how there have been a couple of incidents lately where people have said things that I was offended by and rather than saying something, anything, I just let the moment pass silently. I don’t feel good about it. I have been telling myself that the reason I didn’t engage---and haven’t been engaging for some time---is to avoid confrontation; an act of self-preservation. But the fact is, I think my silence served to do the opposite. I am a little less myself every time I withhold the truth or an opinion for the sake of peace or for my own or others’ comfort. I would not be looking for a fight by respecting my own values as much as I respect anyone else’s.

So I need to try harder to not shy away from what’s hard in conversation.

More importantly, I need to do this with my writing. (That’s my job, too.)

And that brings us to this week’s book status. I’m not liking calling it a “book.” It’s not a novel and I don’t think it’s a memoir but book seems so vague and boring and stern. It sounds dusty. Plus, it’s not a book yet. At this point it’s just hopeful, precocious spew. Hence the new name of the segment:

Melliterary Spew

As I got going this week, I kept coming back to this theme of honesty. The work is nonfiction and it’s personal; more personal than this blog has been so far (and that includes the spray tanning entry). The stuff I want to write, that which feels right, is that which is hard to share (should I ever choose to do so instead of just playing a writer on this blog).

Writing from this place feels the most natural. It’s what comes out when I put my pen on the paper or my finger on the keys. I guess it’s the story I want to tell. But, it’s a very different thing to have it be the story that you---friends, family---read. It goes back to that business of what makes other people comfortable, which is an impossible place from which to write if the work is going to be at all genuine.

I don’t know how to be myself, to tell the truth, without telling the whole truth. I struggle with finding the line between being honest and being private; where that line “should” be.

“Should is not a good word to use when making decisions,” my therapist said to me about all this.

She also said that what one is willing to say or not say, share or not share, is personal and the line is different for everyone. I shouldn’t look at yours or his or hers to see where mine is.

For me, there is a nagging voice that tells me that not only is my integrity tied to my honesty, but my creativity is, too. God didn’t make me a science fiction writer or a poet; all I know how to do is write about what I’ve lived and seen and thought (and thought I saw and live to see). Hopefully we’ll have a few laughs together. But it’s not all going to be funny and I want to do that together, too.

You may see me differently. You may judge me. You may not. That’s up to you, though. I can’t be in charge of your reaction. (At least that’s what my therapist tells me.)

It’s a risk. I’m scared. (So hard to write those words.)

“Those who don’t try, never look foolish.”- Wicked soundtrack

Of course, as I’ve mentioned, this blog (this entry is particular) is an exercise in overcoming these fears. There are many entries on here that I felt I “shouldn’t” post. A voice tells me that I “shouldn’t” be telling you about my therapist or even mentioning my miscarriage. It feels like I am oversharing, disclosing too much. It feels wrong, like I should know better, like I should be reprimanded.

Shame.

But it’s the truth. Wouldn’t I rather you know the real me than some false version born out of fear?

I’m tempted to make a joke here; something about narcissism; something to discount everything I’ve written. But I’m going to make a choice to take myself seriously for this one moment. I don’t think I’m a narcissist no matter how many times I’ve called myself that. Thinking that I know better, that out of some misguided sense of honor I should act differently---that fosters much more of a preoccupation with self than simply being who I am.

Writing about my life---with the hope of connecting (as my favorite writers do) but also because, let's be honest, I enjoy doing it---is just how I was made. For better or for worse, writing is also sometimes how I give. Whether it be a card, or a profile of a retiring teacher (my favorite pieces to do when I worked at the newspaper), or even something on this blog, it’s what I have to offer. (I’d paint you a picture if I could.)

There was a time (a couple of weeks ago and probably two weeks from now) when I would have given myself shit for thinking this way.

“Oh, how noble of you,” I would have thought. “You think you’re such a great writer, that it’s a ‘gift you bestow.’”

“But I didn’t say that. I’m not bestowing anything.”

“That’s what you meant.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Being a writer is self-indulgent. You’re selfish.”

And then, utilizing the teachings of my therapist I would then tell the mean voice, “Fuck you. You’re a liar.”

(I swear to God, this is what she told me to say. It’s a match made in therapy heaven. I’m a trucker in there but wouldn’t you know she dropped the first C-bomb.)

I told her how I was thinking about writing about all this, knowing it will be read by those I love (including my dad).

“I’ll let you know if I come out about us,” I said.

Will I wish I didn’t tell? Maybe. Probably. But I usually regret everything I post on here the next day. I lived from that place for a long time. Don’t jump, don’t say anything, don’t risk anything because you’ll regret it later. You could miss your whole life doing that. You could miss your whole self.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Who needs a massage?

Bliss? P.S. This is not my sink.

For all my feminist bravado about my need for solo time and looking forward to Dan's departure, I actually was bummed to see him leave for the game. ("It's a good thing," I told him. "Keep me wanting more!") To make matters worse, I spent the night---my sacred solitary night---cleaning my kitchen. I am woman, hear me roar.

I spent hours and hours in there and my kitchen is smaller than most people's closets. It started off with my making chili for the week, a dish I can actually prepare, clean up, and have on the stove in about 20 minutes. (It's three bean---sometimes four bean---chili with ground turkey and it's fab.) From there, I decided I wanted to wash and cut the $50 worth of produce Dan and I bought earlier in the day at Applecrest Farm Orchards, a spot in Hampton Falls which supposedly was the inspiration for John Irving's Cider House Rules. From random googling I've read that Irving worked there as a kid, employed by the family who still owns the farm today. (Never read the book but it's on my shelf, evidence of that nasty book-buying habit I spoke of in the last post.) In the fall Applecrest is alive with hayrides, face painters and Christmas crafts for sale but we only ever go for the warm cider doughnuts or grilled corn on the cob.

Cutting fruits and vegetables, if I'm not pressed for time or dying of hunger, is a treat. Some times I'll pour a glass of wine, last night I made an ice coffee and put on some good music. (The great kitchen clean-out of '09 soundtrack was "In the Heights" followed by Idina Menzel's "I stand" and a Dixie Chicks "Taking the Long Way" finale.)

After the cutting came a total douching of the cabinets. (It was time to throw out the stale Rice Krispies and the Treacle---bought undoubtedly during a Harry Potter phase----which expired in '08.) Then came a massive reorganization of our baking supplies, spices and canned goods. (It's all very "Sleeping with the Enemy" now with every can facing front.) Next, the filling, emptying and filling again of the dishwasher and the tackling of the countertops and stove. Somehow five hours passed.

I can't pretend I didn't enjoy myself.

"To my mind, the idea that doing the dishes is unpleasant can occur only when you are not doing them. Once you are standing in front of the sink with your sleeves rolled up and your hands in warm water, it really is not so bad. I enjoy taking my time with each dish, being fully aware of the dish, the water, and each movement of my hands. I know that if I hurry in order to go and have a cup of tea, the time will be unpleasant and not worth living. That would be a pity, for each minute, each second of life is a miracle. The dishes themselves and the fact that I am here washing them are miracles! Each bowl I wash, each poem I compose, each time I invite a bell to sound is a miracle, each has exactly the same value. One day, while washing a bowl, I felt that my movements were as sacred and respectful as bathing a newborn Buddha. If he were to read this, that newborn Buddha would certainly be happy for me, and not at all insulted at being compared with a bowl.

Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred. In this light, no boundary exists between the sacred and the profane. I must confess it takes me a bit longer to do the dishes, but I live fully in every moment, and I am happy. Washing the dishes is at the same time a means and an end that is, not only do we do the dishes in order to have clean dishes, we also do the dishes just to do the dishes, to live fully in each moment while washing them.

If I am incapable of washing dishes joyfully, if I want to finish them quickly so I can go and have a cup of tea, I will be equally incapable of drinking the tea joyfully. With the cup in my hands I will be thinking about what to do next, and the fragrance and the flavor of the tea, together with the pleasure of drinking it, will be lost. I will always be dragged into the future, never able to live in the present moment."
-Thich Nhat Hanh

I have come across dish washing as an exercise in staying present in much of what I've read about cultivating mindfulness. It's such a simple thing (from what I can tell, all the big things in life are) but it works if you allow it. One of my favorite recent holiday memories is volunteering to do all the dinner dishes (a job not for the delicate-of-hand) while my sisters sat and talked around the kitchen table. I spent a couple of hours enjoying the tactile mechanics of the job; enjoying the fact that this act was allowing my family members the opportunity to relax; and even enjoying listening---not really participating---in the conversation. I've cleaned hundreds of holiday meal dishes and engaged in hundreds of holiday meal conversations, but it is this time that I remember so vividly and fondly.

So, my night of cleaning, though seemingly an act of duty, was, in many ways, an act of meditation.

This post?

An act of procrastination.

Off to the book...

Saturday, August 22, 2009

December 1, 2009 I'll be calling in sick


Dan just left. He was bummed to be leaving on this beautiful Saturday to spend the day at some dark bar in Portland, ME with a bunch of guys for his fantasy football draft/man date. (Note to self: make fun of Dan's fantasy sports league in future post.) Tomorrow night he's heading to Fenway to watch the Yankees/Red Sox game with his brother and sister.

Though excited for the game, he feels bad about being gone most of the weekend.

I (and you'll forgive me, bud) feel great about it.

Two days to myself? Two?

He's been gone twenty minutes and I am on the couch, blogging on my laptop, listening to Barbra at full-blast (Dan always makes me turn the radio down, prompting me to sing "Ol' Man Lederer, that Ol' Man Lederer"), watching a muted Little League World Series and eating a clementine. If it thunderstorms as the forecast says it will (and as it suddenly looks---and now sounds---like it might), it would be my wet dream. (The Little League World Series is one of my favorite summer events. Today's game is Canada versus Mexico and I don't know who to root for; I feel so stuck in the middle.)

He laughed when I told him not to worry about me. I think the word I used to describe my feelings on the matter was "elated." He knows I need a little alone time. Writing is such a solitary thing by nature, but it's work. I feel like I'm asking for more than my share of quiet time when I then want to take a bath or read a book, but those are two totally different types of alone. Dan gets it and is mostly respectful even though it's something I didn't admit to needing---maybe didn't know I needed---until after we were married. (And he's certainly more respectful of my alone time than than I am about his need to wind down some days with a little TV...especially when I'm feeling chatty or playful.)

(I just ran out to get the mail and literally missed the pouring rain by 30 seconds. Here comes the wind and the rumblings of thunder...Bring it!)

Though I've been reaching for more and more alone time lately for writing, few couples I know do together as well Dan and I do. We just spent four weeks without leaving each other's side for more than a couple of hours and I only wanted to murder him a handful of times. (I'm sure that number is bigger for him.)

(And the lightening and roaring thunder begins! It's coming down so hard I can barely see through the sheets of rain rolling down the windows' glass. My living room is dark except for a small table lamp and the light of my computer screen and TV. More lightening and thunder. I LOVE a summer rain.)

Last night we did the Friday night movie thing and saw Julie and Julia. It's a cooking movie:

Start with a base of Nora Ephron (whom I want to be when I grow up).

Add in the adorable Amy Adams (she's like a friggin' kitten), who plays Julie Powell, a thirty-year-old woman who is feeling lost and unaccomplished so she starts a blog and in doing so "becomes" the writer she always wanted to be.

Sprinkle in a generous and delicious portion of Meryl Streep. (I worship her so fiercely that I would like to wrap my arms around her waist and never let go, just dragging around with her everywhere she went forever and ever.)

Did I mention Amy Adams is a red-head?

Think I liked it?

I believe I may have mentioned something about a wet dream earlier in this post.

It was one of those movies that gives you that feeling. I know you're with me. When it's good, it's something like hurt that seems to inhabit you as you walk from the magic-infused darkness of a movie theater. When it's good, watching movies (reading books, listening to music) is like falling in love. All of a sudden you're inspired to try things, to be someone; the world looks different, more full of possibility; you're envisioning all the exciting scenarios that could be. (And then someone scream, "Stop following me!")

Anyway, that's what Julie and Julia did for me. Admittedly, I am a total sucker for a chick flick. I feel something close to this as soon as I see Bette Midler's name in the beginning credits. But Dan loved it too so it's not just my gender or the fact that it was the day before my period.

(And now it's sunny and gorgeous out again.)

As I wrote to GBFF extraordinaire Mattie (who texted me last week to say I had to see this "Laura Mellow movie"): "A more perfect movie for this moment in life, I couldn't imagine." When Julie (Adams)said that the reason she's never been able to finish anything in her life is because she has ADD, a laugh burst through my lips so loud and hard (in the silent theater) that I worried I might offend someone.

Besides the obvious, there were a few other themes to which I related. Both Julia Child and Julie Powell were women who were looking for someone to be, something to do. And, as noted by Julie, both were women who had these good, kind, supportive husbands. There is also this business about deadlines. (Julie's blog is born from the deadline she gives herself to cook every recipe from Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in one year while documenting the process.) I relate to the idea of deadlines.

I've set many a deadline in my day. I've crossed very few. It's why (besides not having a nose for news) I could never seriously pursue journalism. There's a deadline cemetery somewhere in my brain, I'm sure.

This has not served me well.

I have avoided deadlines with my creative work deliberately, thinking that it would suffocate me or the work. While I know this was a wise choice as I worked to cultivate kindness and patience with myself when it came to writing (I can be harsh and this has halted progress on zillions of projects), it's time to step it up. I can handle it now. Maybe.

So, though it's terrifying to do so (and I've talked myself out of it already a couple of times), I am going to publicly (to my 14-person "public") declare a deadline. Here fucking goes:

By December 1---three months from the start of September---I will have completed a rough draft of, well, a book.

I'm not going to get into details now (the gut is telling me to hold back as things develop), but I've been working on something sort of on and off for a bit now. It is nothing close to book-y at this point. It is a few random sets of pages of spazzy thought, scattered in journals and Microsoft word files and legal pads around the spoffice (spare bedroom + office). It is not organized, there is no outline and I'm still not sure exactly what it's about (which is why I am not going into details yet). Nonetheless, I will have a rough draft of something by December 1. (Who wants to bet November 30th will be a late night?)

(Raining again.)

I have no idea if three months is a reasonable time to accomplish such a feat but I'd hang myself if the rope was any longer. (Can I use that expression in this context? I mean it sort of makes sense but I feel like it pertains to freedom and not time. Anyway, Dan recommended a year but I wouldn't be able to do anything---not even make my bed--- if you gave me a whole year to fuck around with. I'm not grown up enough for long-term goals, we've established this. Plus, it's just a rough draft; it would be okay if it really sucked. (Though this would not be my preference.)

"For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.

The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page. If one of the characters wants to say, “Well, so what, Mr. Poopy Pants?,” you let her. No one is going to see it. If the kid wants to get into really sentimental, weepy, emotional territory, you let him. Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go – but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages."
-Anne Lamott from "Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

So, off we go. My plan is to check in here at least once a week (maybe Fridays?) for a little book update. Think of yourselves as my editor. This will be nothing like that time a while back when I told you I was going to blog from London the whole time and then only posted four times. Updating my status here will keep me on track. Though (and this is the second time Mr. Carroll's class has come up in this blog)I didn't meet even one check-in deadline during the year-long process of writing my 11th grade research paper. The final paper, handed in late---on the last possible day it could even be accepted, in fact---garnered an "F" with a note in red pen that it was "a potentially excellent paper." (GBFFE turned it in the next year without changing a thing and got a "C" as well as some suspicious looks from his teacher.)

So, a little book progress blog segment will start this week. I'll have to come up with a catchy name. (Oh shizzle, maybe this is going to become a blog about writing a book! And then then it will be a made into a movie and I will write a blog about that! It will be a blog about making a movie based on a blog about writing a book.)

So it's out there. This is what I'm doing. No backing down now. The only problem is---what if I lie? I promise I won't. Maybe I'll take pictures along the way. (Here's me crying at the computer. Here's me asleep on my spoffice floor. Here's a big stack of paper that looks something like a manuscript but really I spent these past three months transcribing episodes of The Facts of Life.)

Something will be made, that's for sure. This is one deadline that will be met (probably). It should be noted that during my stint as a reporter for a newspaper(and for every other job I've ever had), I never missed a deadline (or showed up late for that matter). I only come up short when I'm doing something that would benefit me in regards to my hopes and dreams, you see?

Pretty soon I'll be able to say, "I'm working on my book." (And, quite possibly, I'll be saying this for the rest of my life.) Time to get crackin'.

But not today. I'm tiiiiiired. Don't give me that look, this blog doesn't write itself (asshole). I've got the place to myself and have been planning for days to spend the time moving from the couch to the bed to the bath (if the rain sticks around) or the park (if it doesn't) reading Joyce Maynard's just-released novel, Labor Day. This book came into my possession by way of certain good, kind, supportive husband of my own who showed up with it even though I never said out that I wanted it. (I have been anticipating its release for months but was trying to tame some of my junky book-buying habits.) He just knew.

I kinda miss that guy.

Mexico won. It's still raining. I have a feeling the next few months are going to be a mix of sunny calm and thunderous crazy. Perfect timing, I needed something to do.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The worthiest Scrabble opponent I know


My mom is not 42. Today, in fact, she turns 60. (That's her natural hair color! She doesn't dye it, I swear!) But, for whatever reason, 42 is the go-to number my brain spits out when I think of how old she is. I was 10 when she was 42, probably just around when I would have been trying to figure out who my mom was in relation to the world I was beginning to know. And who are we at that age, but our numbers of years on earth?

My context has since grown broader. Rather than being a number whom I compare to others’ numbers, I assess her on a different scale, as I realize now (writing this), I do other women. What is her story? Who was she as a girl? Who is she as a woman? What did she give up? What did she keep? How did the roads of career and motherhood intersect on the map of her life? What has she learned? What can I learn from her?

Mostly, I don’t compare women anymore-- snowflakes and all that. But sometimes, when thinking of my mom, the numbers and the comparisons come back.

How old was she when she married my dad?

22.

How many kids did she have at my age?

3.

How old was she when she had her last child?

32.

Our numbers don’t match up. They never will and that’s okay. There are many things that my mother is that I will never be and vice versa. This is the stuff of individuality and my mom, more than most women I have met to this day, is the embodiment of be yourselfedness. (Perhaps one area where I wish I could measure up…)

I was reading an article recently in which Meryl Streep spoke about how while playing the effervescent Julia Child in this summer’s “Julie & Julia,” she thought more about her own mother than of the cooking icon on which the movie is based.

"...it was a way of paying homage to my mother, who was born with a joie de vivre…I envied my mother that great quality of having a good time in any room she entered. I’m much more of down-head.”

I feel you, Meryl. My mom--whose laugh is inimitable and which has been her defining feature since high school when she was named “girl with the best laugh”--always found a good time wherever one was hiding, and made one where there wasn’t.

I have a friend who once noticed my mom out on her back deck staring off as she often does (you know you were smoking a butt, ma) who said, “Your mom seems to get the big picture about life. Look at her out there, taking in the river and flowers and birds. She doesn’t miss any of it.”

She doesn’t. She’s had it hard enough to know when it’s easy and bad enough to know when it’s good. And she still laughs more than anyone I know.

She draws laughter out of others, too. One time we went to a wedding shower together which was attended by a woman who, though very nice, had always been extremely quiet over the five years in which we had been acquainted. I barely knew the sound of her voice.

Looking around for my mom, I saw her and this woman, whom she had never met before, chatting away in a corner. They talked for most of the party. When I see this woman now, we often talk ourselves. On parting she always says, “Say hi to your mom for me.”

This is my mom.

This past Christmas, per My Oprah’s suggestion, I decided to make my mom a “gratitude box.” The idea came to me less than a week before Christmas day so I scrambled to get an e-mail out to all the women---cousins, friends, aunts---who know and love my mom, asking them to jot down and e-mail me a sentence or two about their feelings for her. I apologized for being so last-minute about this (and noted that I am my mother’s daughter after all) but that I would appreciate any time they could give me.

Despite the fact that this was one week before Christmas---the busiest time I know for any woman---the responses flew in and I was able to fill the box.

In my letter to everyone, I included the following example to give people an idea of what to write:

I’m grateful to Gigi because even though her arms were filled with 50 bags and towels and toys, she always brought enough water to share with everyone at the beach.

The notes I got back included very different sentiments:

“She taught me love.”

“She was the only person I could talk to when my mother died.”

“You always took care of everybody” wrote her brother (whose wife, after writing her own note, had passed the assignment on to him). He also thanked her for buying the family’s first color TV with the money she earned starting off as a nurse. (“The house was always happy when she came home” another sibling wrote of my mom’s visits from nursing school.)

This is my mom.

We gave her a surprise party for her birthday, of course. She was mostly surprised (when none of us called her all week, her suspicions were aroused) and completely delighted. She spent the day chatting and, of course, laughing with her daughters, friends and family at an intimate party (she was glad it was intimate, she said) in my sister’s backyard. Another of her brothers and his family drove up from New York just for the day. When I thanked my aunt for doing so, she said, “I’d do anything for your mom.”

I really get the sense that people mean it when they say that about her.

She, of course, does everything for everyone, too. She’s nursed family members through cancer, got my grandmother through a recent hip replacement surgery, provided steady childcare for two of my sisters’ children, talked the masses through their deepest sorrows, put a roof over the head of many a wayward family friend, stood up for those who needed a voice (in issues of morality, she does not flinch, never mind bend, to social pressure…it’s not in her DNA), doled out medical advice when she could offer an answer, researched the topic when she couldn’t. And she’s a damn fine cook, too.

My mom is a giver. Not all who give are givers, though this doesn’t take away from what they do. (I give when and where I can but I would not characterize myself as a giver.) With my mom, it’s not just something she does, it is part of who she is. (Sometimes I wonder if it makes up more of her being than it should or maybe I just wish she would give to herself as she does others.)

After the party, while on my way out of town, I stopped by my parents’ house to give my mom her birthday gift. Not exactly a new car, I gave her something she’s had for over 50 years; the violin she got when she was eight-years-old. Fixed and playable.

My mom took up the violin in third grade and played all the way through her high school years. Though she never told me so, I hear she was pretty great. She made the All-County Orchestra in Westchester County, NY where she grew up. Westchester County is home to towns and cities such as Scarsdale and Rye just to name a couple of the notably affluent ones. My mom grew up in Pelham, a modest town, the second of eight children. Pelham is no Scarsdale and affluent they were not.

My dad is the one who told me what a big deal it is that she made All-County.

“Some of the best violinists in the world at that time were Jewish kids from Westchester County so it was a really big accomplishment. To make All-County in New York at that time!” he’s said.

(I don’t know much about the musical history of Westchester County, but I do know that Itzhak Perlman is the Artistic Director for The Westchester Philharmonic if that says anything of the caliber of music there today.)

I’ve never heard her play. I’ve always wanted to.

Because she is my mom (a sometimes identity-coating role in a child’s eyes) and because so much of what defines her involves others, I am embarrassed to admit that I didn’t see my mother as a woman---independent of her roles as mother and wife--- until well into my twenties.

Only now do I think about what it must have been like for her to leave home at age 18 for nursing school in New York City. Only now do I think about what in her drew her to my dad. Only now do I think about what it must have been like for her to move to Alabama with one baby and another on the way when my dad was drafted or how it felt to have five children under the age of 10 when she was only 32, with my dad working irregular (sometimes overnight) hospital shifts.

There are so many moments in my mom’s life to which I would journey as a time traveler. This is partly why I want to hear her play the violin. I want to hear my mom, the artist.

Not that this is her only medium.

She would never admit it---and probably doesn’t even know it--- but my mom is a gifted writer and gardener. As far as I know she never allowed herself a long-term journal but the letters she’s written me along the years---from my summer camp days to the present--- are beautiful. She writes to me from her back deck and tells me of the sounds she hears---the wind and water. And then she tells me of the sounds she almost hears---sisters readying for a wedding, little girls running in the sun. (“Mom’s letters always make me cry,” my sisters and I have all said.) But she would never call herself a writer. Instead, when I expressed an interest in writing in elementary school, she set me up at a small wooden table with my own working typewriter and a stack of blank paper.

As a kid whose job it was to water all the plants when my parents went away, I never appreciated my mom’s gift for gardening. A couple of summers ago she and I spent a wonderful few months together, planting and readying the backyard for my wedding. Only then did I realize how each flowerbed, each lovingly tended to hydrangea is a product of her artistic vision. I would see her stare off at a bare area of land like she was waiting for the colors and textures of specific plants and flowers to deliver themselves to her. And then her glazed look would suddenly snap to alertness and she would almost laugh as she said, “I know what we’ll put there!” an image fully formed in her head. I would see her search her brain for a flower the way I sometimes search my brain for a word.

Seeing her innate skills in these areas, I am so curious about this avid violin player. But she doesn’t want to play anymore. At least that’s what she said when I brought the topic up a couple of months ago. (Of course she didn’t know I had already snuck the violin out of her house and had it fixed by this point.)

“Do you ever wish you could play again?” I asked.

“No,” she said flatly.

“Not at all?” I persisted.

“No.”

“But what if your violin was here right now all fixed up, would you play it for us?”

“No,” she said (over the sound of my sinking heart). “I feel like that chapter is closed. It was a special thing then but I wouldn’t want to play anything other than my best and it’s been so long…It’s a chapter closed.”

Who was this woman? I was sure her ever-present sentimentality would make her want to try it, but my mom was revealing to me that not only was her violin a sacred passion, but that she was a perfectionist when it came to her craft. (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to---and have---quit pieces of work, including this one, because I wasn’t meeting my own expectations. Now I know where that comes from.)

So I told her during that conversation about having it fixed. I didn’t want to spring it on her as it was clearly something she held close and had thought about a great deal.

“Maybe Ben (my nephew) will play it,” I said.

“Or Molly,” she added.

So, bringing it over to her house after the party I didn’t feel like I was presenting her with a gift as much as I was dropping something off. This is why I was caught off guard to hear her draw such a large breath upon opening the case at the kitchen table.

“He fixed the bridge,” she said, her face tender as she ran her eyes over her old friend. “And the fingerboard.”

“The guy at the music shop said it was a really nice violin,” I said.

“Did he?”

“Yeah, and he said the bow was fine as it is.”

“Really?” she said with what I heard to be pride in her voice.

She lifted it gently from its case. A violin is precious as a newborn child. It is not stately like a cello or friendly like a guitar. It is delicate and dainty and one almost feels like it needs protecting. Hers is so tiny, a child’s violin. She said it was particularly small, too small for her even.

“I could never give it up,” she said about her choice to stick with her original violin rather than graduating to a larger one as she moved through her school years. “I was so connected to it, to its sound.”

She began taking lessons in third grade and it was at these lessons that she met Leslie, her best friend for all the years that followed.

She put her chin to the instrument’s chin plate like it had never left there; like it hadn’t been 40 years since their faces touched.

“You always rosin your bow first,” she said, taking the rosin from its compartment at the case’s tail end.

(Upon lifting the flap and seeing it she had said, “He left my rosin,” and I realize now that maybe when she heard I had taken it in she worried that her rosin and her pitch pipe---whose presence in the box she also excitedly noted---would be removed from the case. These were the original accessories from her days of playing in high school.)

There was a mixture of confidence and timidness in her as she handled the violin that I had never seen before. A seemingly strange combination of emotions, I can think of only one period of life when one dwells in such a state: childhood. That was what it was. Holding her violin, looking over every piece, my mom seemed young. Like a schoolgirl uncovering a cherished treasure, she wanted to show it off, but she wanted to keep it for herself. She was positively youthful.

Leslie had played next to her in the orchestra from grade school on. The girls had been nicknamed “Double Trouble” after an incidence of scolding from a teacher.

The teacher had asked the small girls, sitting side-by-side in their chairs, “Do you know how much trouble you’re in?”

And one had answered, “Double.”

While the other followed with, “Trouble.”

She ran the wax bar down the long, soft hairs of the bow. With her pitch pipe in her mouth---a small Willy Wonkaesque looking device used for tuning---she blew a note and then (after what I might have noticed as only the slightest of hesitations), she firmly ran the bow across the corresponding string. The note which came out sounded something like truth. It was deliberate and fearless as was she, and just that one note was music.

She blew the pipe again, this time on a different tube. Running her bow across the next string, the sounds matched.

“This one’s good,” she said. “That’s an E.”

She continued to go string by string, teaching me as she went to hear the difference between one that was in tune and one that was not. As she moved through the strings, her familiarity with the instrument and her confidence seemed to grow. I could see her other hand, the one on the finger board, coming alive with the memory of how it used to work---how it used to lift and place its fingertips in a rhythmic dance with the sliding bow.

She started to build and reached for a more complex piece but when it didn’t sound as she wanted it to, she stopped abruptly.

Shaking her head, she said, “I don’t even want to play it like that.”

My mom and Leslie sat next to each other all through their years in the high school orchestra, too. When I was a kid the only story I had ever heard from my mom about playing the violin was how as she grew older she was embarrassed to walk home with the cumbersome case. A pal of hers (was it Hank Schoeller?) had carried it for her, pretending, for the duration of the walk, that it was a machine gun.

Tonight she told us about playing next to Leslie. How sometimes the pieces were so fast that they couldn’t keep up with turning the pages of their sheet music.

“Sometimes one of us would play while the other would change the page and then we switched. There were rips all over our music books,” she said, smiling with the memory.

“Then we got really cocky and we would turn the page, throw our bows up in the air, catch them, and continue playing.”

She was fully laughing now.

“It was so much fun. Can you imagine how much fun it was to play all those years next to your best friend?”

We laughed with her and then were silent.

Leslie and my mom had been friends from the time they were eight-years-old until early adulthood when my mom had two little babies and Leslie, pregnant with her first, was murdered.

I grew up knowing about this murder---the man who had killed both Leslie and her mother had been caught--- but I never really understood anything about my mom’s loss. Sometimes when parents tell stories to a kid, it’s like fiction; the stories of characters, these younger selves of theirs.

But when we talk about it now; when I hear how my mom was questioned by the police, how it changed her, how she always held a piece of herself back in friendships after that, I now see the terrible sadness. The truth of loss---of one of the worst losses a heart can endure. (How did she endure?)

After backing away from the more complex piece, my mom said again that she didn’t want to play unless she could play well.

This time there was determination in her voice, not resignation as there had been during the first conversation months ago.

“This makes me want to work at it,” she said.

Maybe she will. Maybe she won’t. I heard the notes I needed to hear. Even those notes were those of a musician. Of music. Real. Truth. Painful truth.

“So this was the actual violin that you had since you first started playing?” Dan asked.

“This is it,” she said.

Then, tapping its box he said, “This case holds a lot of memories.”

More than I even realized.

Perhaps, more than I’ll ever know.

Even as she turns 60, I’m still meeting my mom. In moments like this, watching how she handles a violin with the same familiarity with which she handles a sauce pan, I know there is another person in there. Maybe by the time she turns 70, I’ll know that person too.

My mom, on every level, is worth knowing.

Happy Birthday, Mama.

Love, Laura

Friday, August 14, 2009

C'mon baby, do the locomotion.


There are moments in your life when you hear something come out of your own mouth and have an intense "what the fuck" moment. (This often occurs when I hear myself sounding like my mom as in, "Dan, grab the extra plastic bags from the hotel bathroom in case we need a barf bag on the train.") Such was the experience when, while recounting our London experience, I heard myself say, "By the end I was really missing my routine."

What.

The.

Fuck.

Even writing this I have this icky "get it off! get it off!" feeling about my seeming admission of adult-iness.

I used to set my alarm for 11 if I had to be at work by noon. I used to laugh in the face of long-term planning. I used to say I never want to live a life where my every day looks exactly like the one before it.

How then, did a routine sneak its way in?

And a routine it is. This is what I was missing while on vacation:

Wake up. (Lately it's been by the sun, just before the alarm goes off at 6am. This varies.)

Go to kitchen, put on kettle.

Go to bathroom and then before flushing (a strange detail I stick to for some reason) I strip down and weigh myself. (Up five pounds...mo fo.) Then I carry on.

Back in kitchen, pour boiling water into prepped French Press for steeping.

Spend the time waiting for coffee---the longest five minutes of the day---opening blinds, turning on lamp, locating journal. (The remaining four minutes and thirty seconds is spent staring at the French Press. Sometimes I look out the kitchen window for Woody.)

Sit at little table by window and spend about 45 minutes to an hour writing morning pages with my coffee.

Go back to kitchen to prepare cereal. I have been eating the same exact bowl of cereal every day for almost three years now: 3/4 cup (measured)Kashi GOLEAN high protein cereal with blueberries, 2 tablespoons of ground flax seed and 1 cup (measured) skim milk. (Before eating and while drinking my unfinished water from the night before I take a multivitamin, a Vitamin D supplement and a fish oil capsule.)

I'll often check e-mail or balance our checkbook while eating but as I've been a little anti-computer lately, this part of the routine is fading out. Balancing my checkbook and the weight that can come from e-mail can't be good for the morning qi or any other creative endeavours.

"If I start my day by paying bills or trying to price out flood insurance, I can ruin my whole writing day..." Joyce Maynard.)

After that, the days vary. However, you can bet there is some combination of exercise, showering, salad, and time with either writing, Molly, or Dan that constitutes my day. Laundry, too. (Sadly, laundry and everything else on the list often get more playtime than writing but I'm working on it...)

I missed this routine. We've not even been home a week and back into things we are a-swinging. Last night on a walk, noting all the same construction projects and the same feelings of a summer evening in Exeter, Dan and I remarked how "It's like London never happened." It's so weird...it's like we were here all along. But if I squint my eyes a little, I have the vaguest sense of a world where Dan and I laughed worrilessly about not knowing how to cross the road and drank beer with every meal.

I would say for the first three weeks of London I was content to just wander out the door and see where the world took us. By the last week---Paris, etc.---my body wanted a calorie cap and to log some sneaker time.

It's not just that.

Since we've been back I have been listening to Suze Orman audiobooks and trying to organize all debts and bills. My inner nomad was searching for an anchor and seems to have found it in the form of an Excel spreadsheet.

I can't make enough lists.

I am excited to develop and stick to a budget again.

I want to set an out-of-debt deadline.

Since we booked London, most of our extra money and time was devoted to getting there. Now that it has passed---this special gift of a trip---it's like my train parts are slowly starting up again, and this locomotive is happy to be back on a track.

I'm so disappointed in myself.

During our trip, whenever Dan wanted his sister to have another drink or stay out a little later he would ask her, "What would 20-year-old MB say about this?"

20-year-old Lola, even 25-year-old Lola, would be shaking her head reproachfully.

"Back to your routine, huh? How very bold of you, (stupid.)" (I even speak to myself in parenthetical asides.)

Oy.

The real downer is asking, what track am I on?

Where is all this routine and ritual and normalcy taking me? Or is it insulating me? Is it an illusion of control?

You know it is.

Flax seeds and fish oil does not a "real adult" make.

There are still the big questions. The big goals. The stuff that rips at the meticulous stitching of a five-year plan.

Of this, Dan and I are mostly sure:

We don't want kids right now.

Though we would eventually like a vegetable garden and maybe a little land of our own to go with it, we don't want all the responsibilities of home-owning just yet. Will I in five years? Who the eff knows? As Biggie said, "Mo money, mo problems."

I suppose I would like to focus on my "career" if career means getting to play on the page as much as possible and maybe earning enough to buy a standing mixer. (After ogling all the pretty colors that this particular kitchen appliance comes in nowadays, I told Dan that this is what I will buy with the first check I get from selling any creative writing. It should be said that in all our culinary endeavours we have never actually needed one.) Does that count as being "career driven?"

While I suppose it would be nice to have the validation and gratification (and ego masturbation) of "being received" on some mass scale, the rule I must most ardently follow in my effort "to be a writer," is to (try my goddamn hardest) not to look for outside validation.

"If you're not enough before the gold medal, you won't be enough with it." Anne Lamott

(I'll save for another entry the question of whether or not I cling to this notion---this, "I don't care if people like what I write or if I'm even 'successful'; What is success anyway?"---as the mother of all cop outs.)

Still, there is this business of connection (particularly woman-to-woman) that has always intrigued and driven me. I can't pretend that's not there. Nirvana to me will be a room full of women being TOTALLY HONEST about our gender's most guarded secrets. (Not that I've done that here yet.) I'm a feminist by birth (ooh---memoir title!) as the youngest of five girls and I've always sort of thought ("sort of thought" read: another effing cop out) this would be a guiding light in whatever work I ended up doing.

So is this what I'm working on? Is that the stuff of five-year plans?

How 'bout this, here's the five-month plan:

Blog more regularly, do less laundry and find the flow. I'll also floss daily, return e-mails and water my plants. Write to and from and for women. Figure stuff out. But I will not, for one second, presume to know what the fuck I am doing no matter how structured my days get.

Ooh, I'd also like to save up and maybe travel somewhere for four weeks.

Okay, maybe three weeks.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

I don't mean to be a downer...

but we have less than a week left. Still, we spent another day at this food market.

Back at Le Pain Quotidien which, apparently, I've been to before in the states. Mattie said we went there and had mint lemonade while I was visiting him in LA last summer. It's actually kind of funny because Dan and I kept thinking we were finding these sweet little one-of-a-kind places, but practically every one has been part of a restaurant chain. Well, I can say this---the London restaurant chain is different than the American restaurant chain. Le Pain Quotidien ain't no Olive Garden. Funny though. Capitalism is alive and well...and London tricked me.

So at this time next week we'll be home and I'm trying not to do that thing. That thing I do. That---oh, this trip is practically over and there are so many irritating realities to return to and it's stressing me out so instead of enjoying this last week in London (and our trip to Paris) I'm going to start worrying now about everything so that I can expend lots of energy, accomplish nothing, and waste our last days here. I'm trying not to do that. Really trying.

Here's the thing: We're out of money. So we're charging. I know...I'm sorry Suze. It's not entirely our fault (though I'm sure Suze wouldn't see it that way). During our first week here I called home to check on my car which I had left with a mechanic to be fixed while we were gone. $2000. It cost fucking $2000 to fix it--- work I might not have done were it just me and not not my favorite six-year-old girl riding around in there. (You may remember that the original mechanic I went to---Sir Isaac Asshole---quoted me $2000 for just a catalytic converter. This guy---a friend of my sister---gave me the catalytic converter, a new muffler and exhaust system, changed all fluids and fixed a few other things---basically gave me at least two more years with the car---for $2000.) So, while the price was steep, it was a good long-term investment. But it took more than we expected it to out of our London fund.

On top of that, the dollar is apparently worth dick over here. The rate we've been getting (at the bank) is about $1.71 to the pound so $330 is getting us 200 pounds. This "Monopoly money," as Dan's been calling it, is killing us. Basically it cut our savings in half and on top of that, London is an expensive place, so we're getting bent over in every possible way.

That said, we figured all this out pretty early and still ate meals out every day and still bought tickets to fabulous shows and even did a little shopping. And I wouldn't change a thing. We made up our minds to enjoy ourselves---even if it meant a little charging---as a four-week trip to London probably won't be something we get to do again. This is why you charge. (Plus, we're only doing it to get through this last week.)

Still, it stresses me out. The last two years of our life (almost exactly as our anniversary is two days away) have been built around principles that absolutely oppose this sort of thinking. No Charging. Ever. I know how it adds up. I've made messes and cleaned them up. I've learned this lesson over and over again and yet here I am.

But what am I to do? Tomorrow we leave for Paris (Paris!)and I'm supposed to start cutting back now? Fortunately most of our pleasure in a new city is derived from wandering around on foot and sitting in cafes and people watching but we'll undoubtedly want to splurge on a dinner out here or there. It is our anniversary. In Paris. We bagged Ireland early on (a decision based more on time---we were loving London too much to want to leave---and not as much about money) but I'm not about to bag on Paris. (All hotels and train tickets are bought and paid for anyway.)

When we're home we live tightly. We rarely eat out and I have about three meals in my back pocket that can get us through a whole week without having to grocery shop. We have a budget and Excel sheets organizing this budget and turn off (and unplug!) as many things as we can to save on utilities. We're returning to that life in six days. Surely the next six should be different.

This is me not worrying? Not stressing?

Sort of. Just laying it out there, figuring it out.

We've gotten most of the big stuff out of the way. We went on a huge theater bender...It started with Billy Elliot and Sister Act and then moved on to Avenue Q, an Open Air Theatre performance of Hello, Dolly! in Regent's Park---Dan and I with a bottle of wine on a park bench before the show and then Hello, Dolly! under the stars---one of my favorite moments of the trip--- and finally The Lion King. So, again, I don't regret a thing. I will only regret wasting time with worry as I have done so many times before.

It's Sunday in London. The plan today is to pack a picnic (a hamper) and lunch at the park (free) or Kew Gardens (13 pounds but something I really want to see). Not exactly "I'll take a bottle of your finest," right? Just a good day spent in the London sun. (Yeah, there's sun!)

Enough with the worry and out with me. That's the only way to ensure that later on, looking at our bills, I'll be able to say it was worth it.