Before and After, Part II

So, three years later, I am writing this blog post. It's about the before's and the after's. That would be a great band name: Befores and Afters.

So...either I'm really not blog savvy or google's restrictions or dumb, or a combination of both, but the captions wouldn't work on all of them, blah blah blah...SO FRUSTRATING. *pants* Okay. Sorry for yelling.
Here we go:

David Bowie: The far right is what we captured. But when I saw the one on the left I couldn't resist putting it in. Look at that hair!

Left: Eric Clapton. Though I think I will always think of him as he appears on the cover of the Cream of Clapton CD. First run-through.

Sonny & Cher: It's a long way from "I've got you, Babe" to "Do you believe in life after love?" (and apparently plastic surgery...)

Left: Warren Zevon. Whoever that is.

Middle: Gordon Lightfoot! I am going to see him next month. I am so excited; if you could read my mind, love, you'd know this concert is not going to be like the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Left: Ian Anderson, Jethro Tull. Bungle in the jungle.

Billy Joel

Michael Jackson

Elton John

Perhaps the most drastic is MJ. I couldn't bear to put the King of Pop's face up how it was right before he died. Interestingly enough, I will never forget the day he died because I was taking an accounting final that day and I was so worried I was going to fail it.

What will you look like, before and after?

the scream

by Edvard Munch                                                                  by emmello

in honor of Halloween. Or creative genius. Or random paintings. Take your pick.

by the numbers

Okay. I had some random thoughts.

1. I thought about Lamb Chop. You know, that character that the ventriloquist, whose name I think is Sherri, but actually isn't - the one with the bright copper hair - and I was marveling that these days one could never have a show with the main character called Lamb Chop. It's violent. It's meaty. It's discriminatory. It could promote gang violence. (Eh?) There's no way that in this current PC world a kid's show could do that. What is the world coming to? I mean, clearly it was in trouble, that producers got so desperate as to have a Lamb Chop in the first place....

*groans and hides my face in my hands* Oh my. The things I think of.

2. I am losing my touch. I made a resolution to go online and do at least one algebra problem a day...just so I don't forget how. I think if I had to take the ACT again tomorrow I would probably get a 12. I got out my pencil and paper at work today and started jotting down during my lunch hour. I had forgotten the satisfaction of working the numbers by hand, of the aha! when you solve for x. Or y. Or both. I am by no means to quadratic equations yet (I just started out with 3x + y = 8 or something like that), but I plan to do it. You just never know when you will have to whip out those skillz.

3. I have a song of the week. It really does last about a week. I listen to it an insane amount of times for seven days. Often it's the first thing I put on when I get up, and the last thing I hear before I go to bed. It runs through my head over and over. I nod my head at work and deconstruct rhythm in my head.

I remember entire sequences of events by weeks. It's why I have a SOTW calendar. Like, this week it's the Beatles' "I'm Looking Through You" - but this is the version you should listen to. Not the other, slower one. Bleh. It's the week of bbq @ conference and the $15MM water fund line of credit I've been trying to underwrite. Last week, it was this. It ran through my head, loop after loop, like a complicated puzzle, while I sat and decoded budgets. The week before, it was this one. This last one reminds me of R for some reason. Can't say why. Maybe it's the "alabama, Arkansas" part...

Before and After...Part I

So. I went to get my hair cut a couple weeks ago. It was atrocious. I panicked - and I didn't even have my glasses on yet. She (the stylist) stopped before she got to the end and said, "I'm sorry. I have no idea what happened." I'm sure it didn't look as horrible as I thought it looked, but I was not happy. So I went to get it cut...again...later...by a different person. Here's what it looked like after the second person was done:

And then, there was three weeks later, after the blowdryer:

From my Front Porch

Today, I was in a hot place. There is nothing like a summer morning in the desert. The air is just...there's an indefinable quality to it that is unlike any other.

I was sitting on the porch, watching the sun set over the lake, as I have many times, and hope to do many more times. I was sitting by myself, as usual. I can't even tell you how many times when I was a teenager in angst I sat on that porch and waited for [insert boy-of-the-month's name here] to call, or stop by, or for a boy to magically appear and sweep me off my feet...or how many times I sat and picked the dead heads off the petunias in anger or self-pity. (My excuse is that I was a teenager. Please, give me some slack.)

Today I was also waiting. Waiting for something...this time, I wasn't sure what. Now that I'm inside, I'm still not sure. But I had, just a few hours earlier, received life-altering news of the negative sort: one of my best friends - a person who I loved well, who was the kind of person who made a difference to other people - has passed from this earth and is on his journey back to God. I had made a  few phone calls to a few friends, letting them know the news, still numb, still in shock.

It almost felt like I was waiting for a friend to call me, as I sat there, phone in hand, watching the green meld with the orange as the sun melted behind the island. It's one of those moments when you feel sad but you're not going to cry - when you're not quite sure what to feel, but whatever it is you're feeling, it's intense and it's not going to go away.

Life will never be the same. But there's still the porch. And the lake. And the summer nights in the darkness. And the waiting. Maybe soon, I will find what I am looking for, and I won't be waiting any more. Or maybe I'll always be waiting for something. I kind of hope not, as to me that means I will never be satisfied with what I have - never content or even happy to be on the stretch of road that I'm at - always wishing I was further ahead or in a place lagging behind. There's an art to living in the moment that I just haven't mastered yet. But I'll get there. Even if it's the last thing I do.

Cheers, R. I love you. May you finally be granted peace after your long, painful journey.

No One Is To Blame

PS, I like that Howard Jones song. :) Reminds me of mah li'l sis, V.

I've been noticing a few things lately:
1. How come gnats always seem to congregate at eye/face level, in the middle of the sidewalk?

I know there are a lot of gnats. But seriously, they are always at face level. Does anybody who's not 5'6" have this problem?!?!?!

2. My brain seems to be full of useless information.
How come I can't tell you certain aspects of my job that I clearly should know, and know well, and be able to explain to a complete stranger/novice, but I can describe the latest happenings of several celebrities? It just seems unfair. I don't even want to know what endorsements the famous have or where they went last week or who they are currently with, and yet my poor brain records every fact and retains it. How come I can't retain the meaningful stuff?!?! ARGH.

3. How is it that being irritated is so easy, especially over little things, and being happy, even over big things, seems to be a much greater challenge for many of the people I know?

4. Some girls do all the dating. Some people always reach out to the other person in the 'relationship.' Some people have no-touchy bubbles at least a yard wide. We're just different. There's no getting around it, even if we want to.

5. Why is it that when you drink several kinds of alcoholic beverages in a night that your hangover is worse the next day than it would be if you just drank vodka?

6. I seem to be one of the dwindling few who  the who hopes Facebook perishes soon.

7.  I prefer green grapes to red ones. Oh, the horrors. when did this happen?

8. Grouchy really does not wear well.

Hold On

I love many people in my life. Thank you, all of you, who love me back, who provide me support when I'm weak, help me laugh when I'm strong, and carry me when I feel like I can't go another emotional step on my journey.

One of my favorite people on the earth is gravely ill. I feel helpless, like one grain of sand being tossed about in the ocean, and yet I have hope that I and my loved ones will make it to the shore and will be made into a beautiful sandcastle someday, all living together.

One of my other favorite people on earth is a brave warrior, learning vast amounts of knowledge, making critical decisions daily, staying strong for her greatest love. Caregiving is hard. So hard. I only have a taste of it, and I am not sure I could carry myself forward with the fortitude and determination she carries with every step she takes. Then again, our minds, bodies, and spirits are resilient things. God made us so we could adapt, and I know He is helping her to be strong in the face of the leech/storm that is cancer. 

Heaven seems so far from hospitals. It's hard to feel God's love in a such a sterile, beeping, somehow toxic environment. I walked by several rooms yesterday and saw no loving hands holding, no soft love whispers, no person attentively listening to a treatment plan. It made me feel sad to think of all these people in the ICU who had no one to come visit them. At all. And more grateful that I have people who will come - running, or flying - when I call for help.

Hope and peace is what we need. That, and a miracle. It's hard sometimes to say "whatever will be will be" or "it is what it is" or "It's in God's hands now." We always have been in God's hands. It's just that sometimes we are more aware that he could squeeze a little, molding us in not-so-subtle ways.And that's not always easy to accept. Right now I'm not liking being squeezed so much.

R, I love you. J, I love you. Stay strong. Hold on.

Crow vs Robin

On my way home from work today, I was a little startled when a large crow swerved and did a tight coil and landed about eight feet in front of me - in the road. (Those of you who know me know how much I dislike birds, but that is another post.) The point of this post is to document what happened next: a very skinny robin,** cheeping loudly, dive-bombed the crow. The crow, not having any of this insurgent behavior, immediately took off after the robin.

The robin alighted on the branch of a tree, unseen, and the crow landed on the grass, walking cockily up and down. There were several quail nearby, as well. The robin continued to cheep angrily, while the crow pretended not to listen (reminds me of some past interactions with some sisters of mine, but that is also for another post). The crow proceeded to bully a nearby pigeon, causing it to fly away, across the street, by where I was. By now I had stopped and was just watching, carefully. The crow gave the air of not being ruffled, but it really was, and walked over to bully a few more pigeons.

One pigeon, who had just decided to fly from a (safe) branch to the ground, decided it didn't want to be too close to the crow, but was too close to the ground before it could make up its mind and ended up doing a belly flop. I seriously have never seen a bird belly flop, but it did. Rather ungainly looking; I hope I never have occasion to see it happen again. 

The robin dive-bombed again. And again. The crow was clearly getting annoyed and was taking it out on the pigeons, snapping at them. The robin decided to give it one more try, squawking madly the entire time, but the crow had had enough, and went aloft, the robin in hot pursuit. Only the crow, being more wily, took a sharp turn and the robin missed and went to hang out on a branch, clearly aiming to do better next time.

Meanwhile, the crow ruffled itself and went back to terrorizing the pigeons. I left with the robin circling, still making noise, and the crow still trying to assert dominance. I wonder what the robin was so hot and bothered about.

Oh birdbrains, how I love you. You provide such entertainment.


**Perhaps in an effort to go 'green' it had given up on worms - I am used to ugly fat robins, so this one practically looked emaciated, but was really just on the slim side...

For the First Time

Things I've done for the first time in 2010:
1. Gone on a 3 day road trip. 1200 miles, all told.
2. Ridden the train for my commute
3. Worked more than 30 stories up
4. Recorded a song on video
5. Gone serious apartment hunting
6. Consistently walked to the grocery store as my main means of shopping
7. Bought a coscto membership
8. Gone mattress shopping
9. Bought a vacuum
10. Eaten crab legs
11. Eaten Indian takeout
12. Paid for parking downtown for a night event
13. Gotten a free couch
14. Hung over my deck
15. Had an appointment with the cable guy


Mostly fairly mundane "firsts." I'm sure the rest will bring a whole lot more.

Random pics: Out with the old, in with the (new) view!

Sad Songs and Waltzes [Are] Selling This Year

And every other year, apparently. Last night I was with R and J and we were singing traditional Irish folk songs. It occurred to me that besides "All for me Grog" they were, uniformly, beautiful and sad. (I don't count the sea chanties....sorry.)

And then came a litany of sad songs. Think about it. Most really really popular bands, they have one sad song. Probably if you know at least one song of the band's, it's a sad song. Every big name has at least one trademark sad song. Here are a few of my selected examples, combined with a couple of exceptions to the list.

Notice, there is no one "new" in this list. That's because you have to be a time-tested, enduring musical presence in order to be counted on this list. Not everybody has to like what you do, but anything post-80s doesn't count at all.

Sad Songs by Big Names
1. Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin
2. Imagine, John Lennon
3. Leavin' on a Jetplane, John Denver
4. Puff the Magic Dragon, Peter Paul & Mary
5. So Far Away, Carole King
6. Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Gordon Lightfoot
7. Billie Jean, Michael Jackson
8. Major Tom, David Bowie
9. My Heart will go on, Celine Dion (this breaks the 80s rule but dang, she's been singing for a LONG TIME)
10. Howard Jones - No One Is to Blame (though I'd rather listen to Everlasting Love)
11. Poison - Every Rose Has its Thorn (though I really don't think Poison merits being on the "great" list, this is their one song everyone knows, and it is sad)
12. Simon & Garfunkel - The Boxer (and most of their other songs)
13. Fleetwood Mac - Landslide
14. Tiny Dancer/Candle In the Wind, Elton John
15. She's Always A Woman, Billy Joel. There are a lot of other ones from him that are really well-known, too...like Piano Man, anyone?
16. You're So Vain, Carly Simon
17. Faithfully - Journey (being faithful isn't sad, but all the words are sad, as is the general feeling of the song)
18. Hotel California - Eagles
19. Horse With No Name - America




Exceptions to the Rule
1. Beach Boys (Surfin' and Barbara Ann don't count, though "Help me Rhonda" does nearly get on the Pathetic list. Don't get me wrong, I love that song as much as anyone else as far as its singing in the car qualities go, but Rhonda is just a fool if she falls for that line....)
2. ABBA (Dancing Queen is their #1, which isn't sad, but Fernando is fairly well known, and it definitely is - so are a lot of their other hits)

I know I left out a great many. And of course, my point was to prove that sad songs really do sell, so admittedly, my exceptions list is a little small. But seriously, name me some big names that are always happy!! Let's make a whole list.

Atlas Shrugged/Manic Monday

Last night, I was doing laundry. Yay for laundry!
Not yay for what happened next. I was in the midst of ordering a down blanket for myself, on an awesome deal, when I heard something rattle. I didn't think much of it. Then I heard the dryer buzz. I did think something of that, and went to change it. Only when I opened the door, I was greeted by a gargantuan puddle of blue. Yep, that's right, the detergent bottle fell from its (I thought it was) secure location, and the top shattered, spraying it everywhere, and seeping all over the bathroom/laundry room floor.

I tried my best to clean it up. It took forever. I kept wishing that I was Atlas, or Samson, or even Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, and that I could leverage the w/d up. But then I thought, Atlas couldn't hold the world up AND clean up under; that takes too much coordination. So then I wished I had a personal Atlas to shrug so I could clean underneath it anyway. When I got the mess down to mostly a thin soap veneer on the floor, and had tried as many tricks with paper towels as I knew to get what was under up, I went back to finish ordering my blanket. Only the offer of the super great deal expired at midnight in another time zone, and it was now nine minutes too late, no ifs, ands, or buts. No laundry disasters accepted as excuses.

So now my bathroom smells like fresh laundry...that's good. What's not so good is the aftermath. *Sigh*
Yep. Yesterday was definitely a Monday.

The Merit of Bad Chocolate

Sitting here, eating dinner (my usual, only sans spinach), I look at the ornate glass bowl I inherited from my neighbor-for-a-day, which has chocolate eggs wrapped in those foil colors that look garish at any other time of year. Perhaps in our minds we suspect that, in October, if we purchased them, they would be [stale/old/moldy/dessicated] unfit for human consumption, seeing as how in our minds we associate these chocolates with Eastertide.

To give some background, I bought them for 50% off the Monday after Easter in an ill-advised shopping trip at 7 pm before having dinner. Grocery shopping without having eaten complex carbohydrates (a phrase I used to hate, it having been used too many times to count to lecture/educate me on the needs of my body, when all I wanted to eat was candy, back in the day) in the last 30 minutes before departure is definitely not something I should ever do, and yet I still do it at least bimonthly. I was trying to decide which ones to get, and someone who was probably around my dad's age looked at me and said, "oh, so you're the 50% off after easter chocolate lady," to which I arched an eyebrow and gave a somewhat sardonic smile back and said, "Clearly, that I am." Which I think kind of boggled his mind, as I looked less than respectable (I believe I wasn't even matching) and he was taken aback that someone actually /admitted/ being a 50% off chocolate lady.

 I decided it would be nice to fill my bowl, anyway, after I got them and it was too late to take them back. So I dumped them out and they have been sitting there ever since. I admit I've eaten perhaps a handful since then. But to get to the main point: the merits of bad chocolate are:

1. It's sweet. When you have a craving, it will likely satisfy it.
2. It's slightly sickening. You can taste the wax. Even if it's sitting there, seemingly temptingly winking with those jewel/pastel colored wrappers, you can sniff haughtily and think, "I'm too good for that chocolate. It's not worth the {insert 'calories' or 'sugar crash' here, depending on your preference - I prefer the latter}. I don't need it.
3. It gives people who come over something to do. In absence of a good coffee table book, bad chocolate is nearly always tempting enough to get visitors to have a piece, or two, or three or five, depending on (a) how well they know you; (b) how hungry they are; (c) how their mothers raised them; and (d) how much they like bad chocolate. Absent better conversation, any visitor can always unwrap one, pop it in his/her mouth, and thereby (hopefully politely - smacking lip chocolate eaters are frowned upon by Miss Manners, I'm sure) refrain from carrying on verbally.

Or, if it gets to be October, it can be an instrument of ridicule: When did you buy this chocolate? It's so old! Throw it out already! {Then why did you just have a piece?}

Having pointed out its virtues, I am still going to steadfastly refuse to give in to the siren call of bad (seasonal, which makes it even worse) chocolate.

*Update. My sister W came to visit in July. She said, "Are those from Easter." I said, "Yes, they are." By the end of her visit, they were gone. So! Bad chocolate really DOES have merit!!

If You Could Read My Mind - or - Why I Do Not Read Sad Books

"when you reach the part where the hero comes, the hero would be me / but heroes often fail / and you won't read that book again because the ending's just too hard to take"

(See? Gordon Lightfoot really /is/ the best. See yesterday's post.)

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
I close the book, tears streaming down my face, then reopen it, vision blurred, sniffling slightly.
There are a few pages left of torture, of unrelenting sadness, left to consume.

Somehow, I cannot pull myself away, and the sadness envelops me; and I, enthralled, flail helplessly in the grip of emotion, compelled to finish, to read the last bit in the futile saga.

Part of me, the Romantic part, clings to some futile hope that somehow "things" - meaning, the universe - will be all right, and that a happy ending is imminent, and is going to write itself in indelible ink in the few remaining pages.

But it is not to be, and when I am through, and the sadness has been recorded, and I have been unable to stop the tide of words, I close the book, a keening desolation engulfing my being, and I sob quietly, my body wracked with grief. I sob, and it seems that with each gasp of air what was a tiny rip becomes a tear in the fabric of my soul. This continues for a few minutes, as I try to control my body, while my mind replays the climax over and over again.

Then reality intrudes as  I become in desperate need of something to blow my nose with. I ignore my growing discomfort  and I stroke the cover of the book longingly, still caught in the web of sorrow that was captured on the pages. But no! The web is of my own weaving, the manifestation of my own reaction to mere words on a page.

Sighing, I get up and pad to the Kleenex, and think to myself, "It's just a book. Why are you crying?" I can't explain it. I return to my chair, sit down, and run my fingers over the spine and think, "I don't want my story to end like that one." And I turn my head into the cushion and feel the dampness from where my reaction to some ink and paper and glue, bound into a story, seeped from my eyes, and I wait to be released from the spell of sadness. I wonder, "Why does anyone even LIKE that book?" and scrunch my face and hug myself.

I know I'll never read it again - its poignancy is too vivid to endure more than once. And then I look in the mirror and see my red-rimmed eyes and inflamed nose and wonder, "Was it worth it?" And part of me thinks, "Yes. You are more of a person now - you have embraced an aspect of humanity, and uncovered a facet of yourself that you never knew about before, and it  has altered your world view slightly, yet permanently."

And the rest of me thinks, "No. You have enough sadness in your life without inviting more through works of fiction. This work is too close to home. It makes you remember things you want to forget, and reading things like this only causes you to regurgitate the actual unpleasantness in your life, and compare it with the events you just read about."

I vacillate between my two opinions for a moment, then shrug and decide I don't want to scrutinize my emotions anymore - they need no enhanced clarity: I am sad. I was crying. The book affected me.
This, I decide, is all I need to know.

So I put the book down on the floor and huddle into the chair and pull the blanket up to my chin and wait, rocking, for the inexplicable uprising of emotion to subside, and for life to return to "normal," knowing I will never be the same.