Feb20

Flashback Friday: Rip Van Winkle & the Gastritis Queen

Posted on 20 February 2015 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

[We return here to a recently reunited, fresh-in-love, Z & Beth. Sadly, things are not going well.]

3 January 2007

I made it to Seattle before the clock struck 12. Just barely. Z and my luggage were both waiting on me, so I felt welcomed. We took a taxi back to his flat, where he had New Year’s champagne waiting as well as those little confetti bottle poppers. By the time we got back there was precious little time to get anywhere fun for midnight, so we watched the Space Needle fireworks display on television. It’s weird to be one of the last places on the planet to experience the New Year. I kept waiting to see Dick Clark, but he’d been in bed for three hours—2007 was already old news by the time it hit the Pacific Northwest.Don’t judge me harshly, but I’m a little superstitious. It’s haphazard superstition. I’d walk under a ladder, but I don’t like a candle in my house with an unburned wick. The whole black cat thing annoys me because it smacks of feline racism. One of my superstitions is that however you spend New Year’s Day will pretty much determine the shape of your year. It’s not looking good for us. Z was still horribly jetlagged, so he slept until 6 p.m. on January 1st. [It is worth admitting here, that I went mentally ill for a few hours and convinced myself that he was pretending to be asleep because he realized he didn’t want to spend any time with me, so there was some cabinet door slamming and a pouty walk up to McDonald’s where I ate alone and wondered if I should book an early ticket back home. I hadn’t yet flown to Zimbabwe and didn’t know about jetlag of this magnitude.–RGS] Once he was up, we walked to his office so he could take care of some things before classes started and then decided to eat at our (formerly) favorite Mexican place. It was not so good as we remembered, and by 3 a.m. I was awake with “gastrointestinal distress.” By the time I woke up the next morning, I was achy and still making regular trips to the bathroom. Between my marathon bathroom visits, we lounged in bed watching Gerald Ford’s funeral. Not really the honeymoon-ette I was planning.

Also, my hair has gone from Meredith Grey to Slobodan Milosevic. Who knew it could get worse?

Z went to work and left me alone with my ailments. He called and suggested I go to the ER around the corner if I felt too bad. I laughed at this. It’s just the flu. We hung up. And then I started thinking about all the symptoms of toxic shock syndrome and how my recently purchased contraceptive sponges could cause said syndrome, read up on it on the internet and discovered I had every symptom except a sunburn-like rash. Hmmm. Intuition told me this was an unlikely diagnosis, but the big warning at the bottom of the box saying “Seek medical attention immediately” scared me. I weighed the evidence. These really were the worst flu-like symptoms I’d ever felt. And would I be achy if it was Mexican food poisoning? I walked across the street to the ER.

If you ever have to go to an emergency room, try to go to one in Seattle. I’m not a regular ER visitor, but based on my experience at my local one in August, I can see a vast difference. Here, I was treated kindly, I was given warm blankets, I was clucked at and reassured. No one made me feel as if I had no business being there. The doctor looked like someone who would turn the heads of both McDreamy and McSteamy’s. She was kind. Kind and beautiful and smart. It was like night and day when I think about the shark-tooth wearing doctor I had to see in the fall and how I felt like I was wasting everyone’s time.

Z came and entertained me, though I kept dozing off from the IV they’d given me for dehydration. The blood work indicated that it was “just” gastritis, so they gave me some drugs, some instructions, and sent me on my way. One of the drugs to stop nausea I vowed not to take: a suppository that Z and I immediately referred to as a “spy pill” like the cyanide capsules that are last resort for secret agents.

So it definitely isn’t the start of 2007 with Z that I was anticipating. He’s been a wonderful care-giver though. I awoke this morning to Post-it notes all over the apartment with well-wishes and numbers where he can be reached and two cans of chicken noodle soup that he had gone out last night in the rain to buy for me. I feel better. The sun is out. My fingers are crossed that he won’t get sick and that the rest of my stay will be good. And also, that my hair will start looking more like mine and less like Meredith Grey’s and now-dead foreign leaders.

Feb17

Our Fake Life

Posted on 17 February 2015 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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A week ago, Z and I embarked on a road trip from hell to get to southern Oregon to celebrate the 90^th birthday party of a family friend of his. Forty-five minutes in, I had a skinned knee, we’d had to return one rental car in need of engine maintenance for another, and we’d been in a high-speed fender bender on I-5 that could have been deadly but instead was just nerve-wracking. It was pouring with rain and while a shaky Z pointed the car to downtown Tacoma so we could grab lunch and collect ourselves after the incident, we considered the possibility that we weren’t meant to make the journey. We both wanted to go home and pull a blanket over our heads and send our apologies to the Birthday Girl.

I’d been looking forward to the trip ever since we’d made plans, but after this start, I’m honestly not sure what made us climb back in the car and keep driving south other than a shared belief that you need to get back on the horse that threw you. Well, that and a desire to fulfill some fantasies.

Though I grew up content to be the only child in our little apartment, I was fascinated by larger families and some of my favorite TV viewing included families where there were more than the American Dream recommended 2.5 children: “The Brady Bunch,” “The Waltons,” and “Eight is Enough.” There was something about all that noise and hubbub and ability to disappear in a crowd of siblings that intrigued me. Because it was just Mom and me coasting our way through the 1970s, we often found ourselves staying with friends and living on the periphery of other people’s lives. While I was never disappointed to return back to our quieter, more peaceful existence, when we were staying with family friends, I loved observing what life in a larger sort of family might be like. One of the more fascinating qualities to me was that the larger the family the more able it seemed to incorporate additional honorary members. In our little apartment of two, if we had a guest, it was an Event. But we once spent an entire summer with family friends and while we were staying with them, two other people were also summer guests and seemed to barely affect the functioning of the family other than the number of chairs that had to be pulled up around the table. I consider these expeditions into a larger tribe to be a highlight of my solitary childhood.

When I married Z and moved to Seattle into another apartment of just two, I wasn’t thrilled about the loss of easy access to “my people”—my cousins, my friends, and those above-mentioned family friends. I did, however, inherit family friends of Z’s who at the time were living near Seattle. A few decades earlier, the Birthday Girl and her husband had been staying in Z’s hometown as part of a service group—think Doctors Without Borders—for retired professionals, where her husband was offering his knowledge to the local paper mill. Z was soon to leave for college in America, so when Z-ma found herself playing bridge with this American woman, she had a lot of questions for her. A friendship was forged and the Birthday Girl and her family provided Z with the sheets and towels he didn’t have room to bring in his suitcase. Later, they hosted young Z on his first trip to the Pacific Northwest, where he met the family. It seemed fortuitous a few years ago that Z got a job in Seattle that put him in close proximity to these family friends.

My first Thanksgiving away from Indiana—when I was weepy because I missed home but insisted it was only because I couldn’t find the box-mix of gingerbread I’d been eating since I had teeth—was spent with the Birthday Girl and part of her family. I was happy to feel connected to someone out here. We all sat around a huge round table with a large Lazy Susan in the middle of it, spinning helpings of food around to each other. I looked at the members present and imagined the life they’d had together and apart in this other hunk of the country, and because I was on the outside looking in, all I could envision was something akin to a more contemporary Norman Rockwell.

When we would visit the Birthday Girl, I’d ask her about her life as a young woman, a young mother, a grandmother. I was itching to hear her stories about going to work at Oak Ridge when the US government was piecing together the atomic bomb, how they’d lived in Mexico for a time, how she, who had done a lot of volunteer work for Planned Parenthood, had ended up with an astounding number of grandchildren and great grandchildren. I’d study the artist’s renderings of the various houses the family had lived in that hung along her stairwell and look fondly at the wedding photos of all her children that hung above the piano. I loved her house and the way I felt cared for there while looking out at Puget Sound. I even loved the spread of magazines on her coffee table: National Geographic, The Atlantic, and Smithsonian that made me feel better informed just by being near them.

A few years later after her husband had died, she relocated to Oregon to be nearer her daughter. Z and I felt a little bereft. It’s not that we saw her daily or weekly, it’s not that we talked to her with any regularity, but knowing that she was nearby made us feel connected to something beyond our small city life. Not long after she left we found ourselves driving near her house and it was almost more than we could bear to know she wasn’t inside, having a cocktail and reading those magazines.

I-5 South thru Oregon

So, despite the accident, we headed south and both of us had some mini-version of PTSD wherein we felt certain that every car and big rig was about to careen into our lane and sideswipe us. The traffic was slow. The rain never let up. Fog set in, and though we should have been at our destination before the sun went down, the trip took two hours longer than it should have, so I was steering the dented car up and down mountains in the dark. It wasn’t “unsafe” in that the traffic by then had thinned out, but it was unnerving because the wipers were sub par and the unfamiliar road with twists and turns offered no view into the distance so we could anticipate where the road was taking us.

Eventually, we reached the Birthday Girl and her family, where we were greeted as if we were part of the clan instead of interlopers. We caught up with various family members, watched its newest members tumble around on the floor, talked to the most recent crop of young adults about their plans for the future. It was chaotic and loud and fun. We stole a couple of hours with the Birthday Girl herself and were happy to see her looking healthy and willing to talk about the books she’s reading and her bridge games and specific memories we asked about. It might not be our family, but it felt like a real gift to be included in this one’s big milestone celebration. Our only regret was that Z-ma wasn’t able to be with us so the pair of them could see each other again.

TouVelle House, Jacksonville, OR

We were the only residents our first night in the TouVelle House B&B, a gorgeous Arts & Crafts mansion decorated with period furniture and trimmings. Normally, wherever I stay, I feel like my room is “mine” and the only time I’m in a lobby or shared living space is when I check in or check out or, if in Ireland, someone is feeding me a big Irish breakfast. But this place was too beautiful to go scurrying up the steps to our suite. Z and I came in from the rain, shook off our raincoats in the huge entry hall, made hot drinks for ourselves in the darkly paneled dining room, and then settled down on the Stickley-esque furniture next to the fire in the expansive living room. I’ve always admired Arts & Crafts houses but felt it would be too difficult to live a modern life in one while making it look the way it was meant to. But this night was our chance to try it on for size. The fire crackled while we talked about politics and world events and the annoyance of the drive down. Neither of us were making a mad dash upstairs to our screens… in fact, it was as if we were living in a pre-screen era. We refilled our mugs and talked some more. In the flickering light, it was easy enough to pretend it was our house and this was any ordinary Friday night for our more sophisticated alter egos.

The next morning, we shuffled downstairs to the gourmet breakfast and chatted with the owner, who looked entirely too young to own a house so grand. I peppered her with questions so I could better understand what a day in the life of an innkeeper is like, and because I’m always curious about how people ended up where they are. She was friendly and we felt well cared for as she made suggestions for the day’s activities and offered to make us a to-go breakfast for the next morning since we hoped to be headed home before the regular breakfast would be served.

TouVelle House, Jacksonville, OR

Other than the potential nightmare at the beginning of the trip, the weekend was a dream. A sort of fantasy. Because the TouVelle House was not ours, I didn’t have to think about how the property taxes would get paid or how much it cost to heat such a big space or whether any of the beautiful artwork might “accidentally” end up in a guest’s suitcase. (There was a clock there I really wanted to bring home!) I only had to sit by the fire and slide into the 400 count sheets and pretend it was mine. I could pretend the owner was our friend who was feeding us not because we paid her but because she wanted us well-fed and happy. I could pretend that big, unwieldy family a few blocks away was my own without having to jockey for time to myself or ferry someone to a doctor’s appointment or look at the breadth and depth of the family history and wonder what my place in it was. I could just let it all wash over me and for a minute try on a different sort of life.

When we come back to Seattle, I’m always a little indifferent. If I’m with Z, then that is home, but there are other places that call to me and so I don’t often walk into the door of our little apartment with the same exhalation of relief that I do when I return to my folks’ place in Indiana, for example. Even though the drive back was kinder than the trip down to Oregon, when we crested the hill on I-5 and saw Seattle splayed out before us, I felt a little flutter beneath my ribs.

The spell was broken, but I didn’t mind.

TouVelle House, Jacksonville, OR

Feb2

Lament of a Fair Weather Fan

Posted on 2 February 2015 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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Seattle Times headline today.

Z and I were downtown this morning, and the city is subdued after yesterday’s Super Bowl loss. For two weeks, the mood here has been like two clicks better than Christmas—the buildings were lit up with blue and green, the “12” flags were flapping like mad…even on windless days, and almost everyone was friendly and feeling like an “us” which doesn’t happen often. The rest of the country arguably finds the Seahawks insufferable, though the perspective here in the upper northwestern corner of the country is that they’re mostly just quirky and misunderstood.

But today? The mood was the exact opposite. It’s been a sunny, warm winter, but today it was gray and rainy, and everyone downtown looked downtrodden and as if they each had their own personal rain cloud right above their heads while depressing Charlie Brown music played. If it hadn’t been so glum, it would have been hilarious.

I don’t like football. The Sundays my father had me were spent largely in front of a televised game—the Bengals being his team, but really, any team, so long as a game was on. (The only thing worse than football season from my perspective was not-football-season when golf was on TV. I’m convinced that the background noise in Hell is that of 24-7 golf commentary.) I didn’t like football’s loudness. I didn’t like what looked to me like meanness. And frankly, I couldn’t for the life of me understand why watching a bunch of grown men play a game on TV was more fun than playing Klomp-It or Sorry! with me during our visits with each other.

Football became briefly tolerable while I was in high school and was dating a fullback, whose rudely numbered jersey I got to wear. I went to every game and worried that he’d be hurt and couldn’t wait for the season to be over so his practices would no longer interfere with my own plans for him. Like a good football player’s girlfriend, I played “Powder Puff” the one week—homecoming—when girls were mysteriously declared eligible to play, though the truth is I didn’t know a second down from a second inning and the more athletic girls were mostly annoyed with me and both my ignorance and lack of skill.

I did love that jersey though.

As an adult, I’ve hated football for a variety of reasons in addition to the sound of it in my living room. As a reader and lover of the arts, I hate the way sports takes precedent over things I care about; I hate that the players and coaches and the industry can generate huge amounts of money for pummeling each other into concussions for fun while people teaching tiny kids or college kids, and people providing real services like secretaries and garbage collectors, are sometimes working for peanuts; I hate the above-the-law lifestyle some of the players live; I hate the games’ violence and the violence off the field, sometimes directed at loved ones; I hate the way normally decent people can turn into real jerks based on team allegiance. It’s an ugly, ugly sport.

But then two things happened:

1) I married Z

2) I moved to Seattle.

Because I met Z a few years after his rugby days were over, I don’t think of him as particularly sporty, but he is. It’s taken some years with him illustrating how sports can enhance a life for me to understand that my anti-organized sports stance was no different than those people who thought I was a loser for constantly having my nose in a book. I have come to see that while I’m sure those athletic girls in high school thought of me as a “waste of space” standing there, mouth agape, while the football was in play, I was just as bad for pigeonholing them because I thought of them as dumb jocks. Maybe they were; maybe they weren’t, but my assumption was if they had athletic prowess, they probably weren’t so bright. Z, the Renaissance Man, has shown me the error of my ways.

And then there is Seattle. A city that is not really all that sporty. We have some teams, sure, but mostly the people here are all about reading some books and screwing around with their computers and drinking some coffee. Maybe hiking somewhere on a sunny weekend. Which somehow makes their love of the Seahawks more tolerable to me because I know it is not the sum-total of their thoughts.

Because of these two elements in my life and the Seahawks’ return to the Super Bowl, I got a little football crazy. I started seeing the beauty in a particular players moves and the remarkable skill involved in hurling a ball somewhere it needs to be or catching a ball that wasn’t meant to be caught. In the last three weeks or so, I’ve read more sports columns and watched more football clips than I have in my entire life. (The only reason I don’t have stats memorized is because I’m notoriously bad with numbers.) I started following Richard Sherman and his girlfriend on Twitter. I read every thing I could on Marshawn Lynch to better understand his reluctance to speak to the press and began to feel like I was channeling Chris Crocker, the “Leave Britney alone!” guy because I felt so defensive of Lynch. I tried to figure out ways to work “I’m just about that action Boss” into daily conversation. I worried about the injuries sustained by Seahawks in the playoffs. And I wondered what kind of gum coach Pete Carroll chews so vigorously.

Two weeks ago for the division championship, Z and I had friends over, whose 14 month old—the tiny Pippi Longstocking—we terrified with our screaming and hopping. They returned for the Super Bowl and it should have been fun watching the game with them and doing our best to convince Pippi that our cheers were all about whatever adorable thing she’d just done instead of a good play or a call in our favor, but for the most part, it was in agony—at least for me. I was a nervous wreck. I felt feverish and twitchy. What if we lost? It’s been such a fun year in a city with Super Bowl champs—I didn’t want to turn into Super Bowl losers.

It turns out, I’d invested so much time in learning to love the Seahawks and hate the Patriots, that I’d actually begun to think the game’s outcome was important to my life. I was elated when we were ahead, depressed when we were down, and absolutely gobsmacked at the end when a game that could have been the Seahawks’ suddenly wasn’t because of the most head-scratchingly bad play imaginable. The air was sucked right out of the room when Russell Wilson’s pass was intercepted and we all knew the game was over. Pippi started to cry, and though it was her bedtime, I can’t help but feel she was just expressing what all of us were feeling. Then punches started flying on the field and it all just felt so sad and, well, stupid.

The day before the Super Bowl, Z and I were tooling around in a rental car, musing about the NFL and the brain injury issues and some of the other disturbing elements tied to football, and he said, “You know, we talk about the Romans at the Colosseum like it was barbaric, but we really aren’t as far removed from it as we think we are.” Instantly, I got sucked back ten years, standing in the Colosseum with my cousin G, praying the tour would end soon because the place gave me the heebie-jeebies and I wanted to escape it. Some might argue it was all in my mind (though this was before I saw Gladiator or HBO’s “Rome” so there wasn’t really much in my mind other than a childhood image of a Christian being treated like a human cat toy), but I think there are vibes there—not just of terrified people being torn apart by gladiators or wild animals but of frenzied crowds cheering to see the spectacle, wanting to align themselves with the victors instead of the losers.

It’s a dark, dark place, the Colosseum.

When the game was over yesterday, I told Z that was it. I’m done. Football is over for me. I can’t do this to myself next year, this getting my life all tangled up with the performance of a bunch of men I don’t know, many of whom are only as loyal to the team as their next contract negotiation. Watching a sporting event should not require benzodiazepines. It’s a game. And even if the Seahawks had won yesterday? I’m not getting a Super Bowl ring for all my attention and cheering. So, I’m hanging up my “12” hat and going back to the books and the “30 Rock” binge watching on Netflix.

Except today, when I read that Vegas is already saying Seattle is the favorite to win Super Bowl 50 next year? My heart did the tiniest of flutters.

Jan16

Flashback Friday: Ring Out the Old

Posted on 16 January 2015 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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(In this flashback, I’m making my first trip back to see Z since we’ve become a couple. It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m desperate to get to him before the clock strikes twelve.)

I’ve already failed the first test of a long distance relationship. I had a little, almost tearful, freak-out. United had a bit of a problem, so I was late landing in Chicago and missed my connecting flight to Seattle. As did, apparently, everyone else in a 500 mile radius. I had been assured that United really takes good care of their people and that they’d have it all sorted for me and have me on the next flight by the time we landed at O’Hare.

Hardy har har.

Once in O’Hare, I stood in line for a half hour and then gave up because it was clear that if I continued to wait, all flights to Seattle would have departed. Then I waited on the customer service line for 40 minutes, and the situation got more and more desperate. Finally, the customer service representative told me that she could get me out in TWO DAYS. She said this cheerfully, as if this is all just part of their friendly service. As if I would like the whole Tom Hanks “The Terminal” experience for myself. Because it was weather related (rumor has it that it wasn’t technically weather but that United had run out of de-icer), there would be no compensation, no nice hotel. Just me, wandering around O’Hare for two days, buying travel pillows at Brookstone and covering myself with McDonald’s sacks.

So I did what any normal girl does. I called my boyfriend and almost, but not quite, cried. You would have thought I’d just missed the last helicopter out of Saigon in 1975. It was as if this meant I would NEVER see him again. The end.

He is a world traveler and thus was not as disturbed and had a variety of suggestions, all of which meant me standing in long lines, talking on a crappy cell connection to strangers, and, as he put it, “being firm.” What I could see that he could not was that this was hopeless. There were 60 people ahead of me for a flight out the next day.

“You must be firm,” he said. “That’s the only way to get anything done.”

This is one of our bigger differences, Z and me. In the world of Fight and Flight, he is the Fighter and I am the Flighter. (Only today my wings were clipped by de-icer.) What I wanted to do was quick book another ticket on Alaska Air for a thousand bucks and run away to him. Do I have a thousand bucks? Uh, no. But I do have plastic and this seemed like an emergency. I told him I had to go because I feared the crying and I’d like to save tears for something really important.

I wandered around, stood in line, felt hopeless, called my cousin in South Bend to see if perhaps I could spend two days with her. (She wasn’t home.) And then Z called. He’d found a flight out of Midway if I wanted to book it. “It’s pricey,” he said. How much? Half the cost of what I secretly paid to get to him on New Year’s Eve so we could start the year right. I told him I was being punished for greed and he laughed when he found out how much I paid because of my own impatience, and that made it all okay. Z’s laugh should be made a ringtone.

I had time to kill in the Loop so I made my way downtown on the El with all the TSA workers whose shift had ended, so I felt very safe and very much like I was just one of them. Someone asked for directions, and I was pleased that I could (sort of) answer them. Chicago always comes back to me like, well, what? Riding a bicycle?

It’s still Christmassy and Chicago is a great city for Christmas. I went to the former Marshall Field and was disturbed by how Macy’s has made it, somehow, more tacky, less grand, and just like every other store at the holiday. The Christmas windows were still good with animatronic Mary Poppinses, but the inside decorations could have been JC Penny. Carson, Pirie, Scott, the other former staple of downtown Chicago shopping,it turns out is going out of business. In the past, their window displays have rivaled (and frequently surpassed) Marshall Field’s, but this year the displays were just of things you could get inside for 40% off. I decided to run over to the Midwestern-Sized Woman Store on Wabash to buy something to sleep in in case my suitcase doesn’t catch up with me tonight. (It supposedly caught the next flight to Seattle—the one I wasn’t allowed to catch!) Only there is just a shell of a building where it used to be, and next to it at the Champlaign Building where I spent many hours lurking in the lounges of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, is also a shell. The sign proclaimed that a new skyscraper will be built there that will change the skyline.

I can hardly wait. Don’t people know the world as I knew and loved it is meant to be laminated?

So I bought some haircare products (Meredith Grey hair has begun in anticipation of Seattle, it would seem), gave money to some homeless people because they were full of New Year spirit, and I marveled at how I must have lost a lot of weight in the last two months with all of my difficult gym work because my pants were really bagging in the seat. Some more people asked for directions. I cruised around my favorite streets. Then I hopped the Orange Line to Midway, checked in, bought an oversized Chicago T-shirt just in case my suitcase never shows up, and then went thru security. The TSA officers suggested I should have a happy new year, but also, perhaps I should zip my fly. My pants felt huge because they were unzipped and my giant turquoise underwear was greeting tourist and native a like.

Now I am at the gate, waiting for the plane to get here to whisk me off (please God) and as I look around at my fellow travelers I wonder how many of them saw my underwear earlier.

To recap, 2006 has ended with flight woes, flat hair, and underpants flashing. Here’s hoping for a brighter, “fuller bodied,” well-zipped new year.

Jan12

A 2015 Blurry Bluebird of Happiness to You

Posted on 12 January 2015 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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Bluebird considering a move to East Central Indiana.

So, here we are, nearly two full weeks into 2015. What do you think of it so far? Because of a tiny win at the casino and a melancholy-free birthday last week (very unusual for me), I was liking the new year a lot until things got hateful in Paris, and now I just don’t know. But still, it seems way too early to be pessimistic, doesn’t it? Maybe this is the year the world will get its act together.

For years, my mom and stepfather have wanted bluebirds to move into one of the birdhouses that litter their two acres, to no avail. So I took it as a good sign for the new year while I was in Indiana that a family of bluebirds momentarily poked their heads into the See Rock City birdhouse hanging on branch in the front yard. They usually snub us, but these seemed like they were ready to make a down payment. Then something spooked them off. The result is the same: no bluebirds, but I’m opting to see it as a positive sign that Mom was “this” close to bluebird neighbors.

My friend Jane and I were talking about how to us it feels like 2014 never happened. It was just 365 days of blur. Basically, I made a list of resolutions last year on December 31^st, posted them to the blog, and then woke up and it was a whole year later with nothing of consequence achieved. I vaguely remember a stretch of several months where I made my bed every day and that felt like a real accomplishment, but beyond that? How did I spend those days? I didn’t change the world or even myself very much. Though I did discover Gilmore Girls.

* * * * *

One of my resolutions this year is to take advantage of this city I live in. In Seattle, I squander opportunities that I would have killed for when I was living in Richmond. Not a day goes by when there aren’t at least five good things I could do here. In Richmond, if there had been an author reading or Warhol exhibit or a chance for a ferry ride anywhere, I would have been over the moon. But here, I too often think I’ll do those things “next time.” So last Wednesday, in an effort to put one of my resolutions in action, I went to a neighborhood meeting around the corner at Town Hall which focused on what the city is planning to do to create more green space/park space on First Hill, where I’ve been living now for five years.

Full confession: because of the recent Gilmore Girls binge-watch, I was hoping that going to a community meeting for our little “downtown adjacent” neighborhood would make me feel like I was at one of the town meetings in Gilmore Girls’ Stars Hollow led by the insufferable Taylor Doose. I was looking forward to seeing Miss Patty, Sookie, Babette and Kirk, while tolerantly listening to some blowhard talk about his plans for our little patch of the city. I’d like to say it’s because I woke up on January 1^st feeling more civically engaged, but there you have it: I went to feel like a character on a fictional show set in New England that aired a decade ago.

Sadly, Miss Patty, Sookie, Babette, and Kirk were not in attendance. Furthermore, despite my very middle-agedness, I brought down the average age at Town Hall by about twenty-five years, so there was a certain air of crankiness about change in the air.

We watched a Powerpoint presentation about possible plans for First Hill, and then we got to use clickers to give feedback on what was most important to us. Some of the oldest, crankiest citizens in attendance weren’t happy because only a little more than half of the clickers were working. The outrage expressed made it seem like a hanging-chad situation in a general election instead of an information gathering forum. Another, crankier attendee wasn’t happy with the plan to do the clicking before the different plans had been fully discussed by the masses. Her tch-tching was audible. One man was concerned that new park space would end up like current park space, which is to say a place that is overrun by junkies and pooping dogs and vagrants, while a younger man was concerned that the homeless would be further disenfranchised if the future parks were over-policed. Who knew there would be so many concerns about something as awesome as parks? Though admittedly, I felt a little twitchy when the presenter suggested they’d be removing a few parking spots from our street in order to extend the park frontage of a current park. We may not have a car here, but when we rent one, we like to be able to park within a three-block radius of our place.

A man came in late and sat two rows over from me reeking of garlic and—though I like garlic, it only really smells good on food you are about to eat yourself and not so much on humans—I found it hard to concentrate on which action plan should be acted upon first because I was trying to position myself so my nose was pointed away from him without seeming rude. It began to dawn on me that when the meeting was over, I wouldn’t be able to saunter over to Luke’s Diner and get a burger and a Coke with Loralei and Rory Gilmore. Plus, my friend Leibovitz had texted just as the meeting started and wanted to have a phone conversation, and I couldn’t help but feel my time might have been better spent talking to her since these parks won’t appear for several years if they appear at all, but a chat with her would have made me feel all warm and homey inside.

But hey, for an hour and 45 minutes there, I was an engaged citizen, and I was hopeful about the future.

* * * * *

Frankly, I was a little horrified when I read last year’s blog post and saw that I’d made a promise to myself, and you as my witnesses, that I was going to read something like 70 books and clear off the shelf behind the sofa that has my stacks and stacks of “what I’m reading next” books. It was a lovely post with photos as proof of how out of hand my book obsession is as well as my belief that shaming myself might make me more committed to meeting my goals. But apparently I forgot about my promise as soon as I hit publish. I read about five of the shelf books and everything else I read last year—which didn’t come close to 70 books because I was so busy reading Jezebel (and watching Gilmore Girls)—came from the library or off some other shelf of mine that is tidier with titles that were less pressing.

I believe I’ve mentioned the time-space vacuum I live in, in which I firmly believe that Future Beth will be a better, more accomplished person than Present Beth. Future Beth is like a superhero who not only gets things done, is more perfect, and better organized than I am, but who is also an extroverted humanitarian with networking skills as well being handy with household tools. Future Beth is my idol, but she just doesn’t come round often enough. She’s as elusive as Bigfoot.

I wish I could adopt Jane’s relationship to time, in which she has no faith that Future Jane will do anything but sit around flipping through magazines and eating bonbons, so she in her present state does everything immediately. Jane gets a lot more done than I do because she’s worried that her future, lazy, slug-a-bed self will bring the whole house of cards tumbling down.

But alas, Jane’s way is not my way. Doing something ahead of time is as foreign and awkward to me as when I try to use chopsticks or attempt to network at a conference. Future Beth’s failure to arrive is one of the reasons I didn’t get married until I was a Woman of a Certain Age (though I’m grateful for her delay since it resulted in Z instead of some of the less desirable options I might have ended up with). The fact that she is so often AWOL is also how I forgot to have children, buy a house, send out my manuscripts to publishers until I wore one of them down, or “Lean In” to a career at a Fortune 500 company. Strangely enough, I still have faith that Future Beth will take care of all of that—one day. Later. (Except maybe the kid thing. I think Future Beth knows I’m too tired for kids and possibly always was.)

Since you know my success rate with resolutions, it seems a little pointless to tell you about the reading pledge I made on Good Reads of 50 books in 2015, or the number of essays I’ll be submitting to various publications around the globe, or how clean my house is going to be at year’s end because of my commitment to Apartment Therapy’s January Cure. Why would I waste your time telling you all the ways I’m going to “show up” to my dirty dishes, my writing desk, my walks-to-better-health, my yoga mat, my meditation corner, or anything else, since there’s a good chance Future Beth is never going to arrive to make these things happen.

Still, I am nothing if not full of hope. Future Beth might show up. The lottery might really pay out. The inhabitants of the planet might wake up tomorrow and decide not to be such jerks to each other. And bluebirds, like the blurry ones up above, might decide not to just check out the available real estate at my parents’ house but actually take the plunge and move right on in.

Next week on my Resolution 2015 to-do list: give up my Indiana driver’s license for a Washington one, even though an Indiana license is much more attractive, makes an excellent conversation starter (you’d be surprised how many people out here have Hoosier connections), and contributes to my general sense of never having left home. I’ve lived here almost five years now. It’s probably time.

Dec18

A Tale of Two (or more) Christmases

Posted on 18 December 2014 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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It’s that time of year when I drag out all the Christmas videos that put me in a happy, Christmas space, and force Z to watch them. I don’t always watch all of them—Little Women often gets a miss because I end up in tears when Beth dies—but, like clockwork, there will be a viewing of Christmas in Connecticut, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, A Holiday Affair, While You Were Sleeping, A Christmas Story, and eventually, my favorite, Moonstruck, which, honestly, I sometimes forget is set at Christmas because it’s also one of my favorite non-holiday movies. The script is great, the writing is tight, the scenery is wonderful, and the acting really was worthy of those Oscars back in 1988. The main thing all of these movies have in common though is the promise of a two-hour block of time when Christmas is exactly how you imagine it should be.

As you may be aware, I do my fair share of complaining about city life, but this is the time of year that while I miss home—the city…any city really—comes alive for me.

I first discovered this love for city-life-at-the-holidays in Chicago in the mid 1990s when I’d stand for an hour studying the window displays at Marshall Field’s and Carson Pirie Scott. The displays at Field’s were themed and you’d wait anxiously to see what would be revealed each year: Cinderella, Pinocchio, Wizard of Oz? I could easily get teary-eyed talking about Macy’s take-over of the main Marshall Field’s on State Street and subsequent refusal to retain the historical name and traditions and the bland, seen-it-before holiday decorations that are the new normal, or the Target logo that now hovers over the beautiful ironwork on the Carson Pirie Scott building. So don’t mention those stores to me please. Seriously. Can we just pretend it’s still 1997 and all is as it should be on State Street?

When I was in Chicago, I somehow didn’t mind the cold. I’d stand outside, purposeless, watching the ice skaters, guessing what might be in the bags and stacks of boxes people were carrying around on the Magnificent Mile as horns honked in what seemed like a less aggressive, more festive way than at other times of the year. I’d make time to go to one of the free weekly concerts at Fourth Presbyterian, staring up at the decorated sanctuary that was meant to look like the hull of a Viking ship, and listen with pleasure to carols and concertos. Then I’d get cocoa on the second floor of the now defunct Borders bookstore and stare down at the historic Water Tower and watch the carriages there, carting tourists around with horses sporting Santa hats. I was meant to be in the city for a man, but he was often at work or disinclined to venture out of his Bat Cave, so my time there was solitary and oddly delightful. I didn’t need to be doing the carriage riding or the ice skating; I was content to observe it, to walk amongst the revelers, to soak it in. There was nothing about Christmas in that snowy, blustery city that I didn’t love; even the labored breathing from the icy temperatures and difficulty walking on the snow-packed side streets seemed magical.

Rockefeller Center, 2010

Chicago set the bar high. Four years ago, Z and I had a blizzard-induced flight delay when we were headed to Zimbabwe, and thus we ended up spending a few nights in New York City. For the first time ever, I finally got to see—in the flesh and electric lights—those famous windows at Macy’s, the tree at Rockefeller Center, wreaths on St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It made our interrupted—and thus shortened—trip to Africa almost worth it. Christmas in New York certainly rivals that of Chicago, but for me, it doesn’t quite win. Maybe a tie. I’ve seen Dublin, Galway, Rome, New Orleans, Harare, Seattle and the closer, Midwestern cities of my youth decorated for the holidays, but Chicago will always be the city that lives inside the flurry-filled snow globe in my brain. I try not to hold that against Seattle, which even managed to produce a few tiny patches of snow this year and get cold enough to keep little driftlets at the bases of about three trees.

But it’s no Chicago.

December hasn’t impressed me much this year. It’s my favorite month usually, but it seems like the whole world is coming unhinged. Normally, it’s the time of year when you can safely insulate yourself from the ugliness out there so long as you toss some money in the Salvation Army pot outside the door at the grocery and feel grateful for your own bounty. But it’s harder this year. People are mad and unhappy and in pain. There have been nightly protests in downtown Seattle to remind us of this. On the one hand, I want to be annoyed that the protestors made a bunch of kids at a choral concert at the tree-lighting ceremony cry at the beginning of the month, but on the other hand, I am sympathetic to the frustration of a faulty system. I am in awe of people who are inclined to let their voices be heard en masse. When I get outraged about something, I send an email and write in my journal or whine to Z, so this level of commitment and the possibility of being on the receiving end of violence—or at least pepper spray and handcuffs—is something to behold. Certainly, it’s making for a different sort of holiday season.

At the beginning of the month, Z and I made our first trip to Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony, to hear the Pacific Lutheran University choir and orchestra perform a Christmas concert. We were excited to finally get into the building that for the last eight years has only served as backdrop while we wait for the #12 bus to pick up our tired backsides and cart us up the hill. I admit that I even had some Moonstruck fantasies that I was Cher and Rick was the (pre-crazy) Nicolas Cage, decked out in our finery, going to see La Bohème at the New York Metropolitan Opera, never mind Z’s lack of tux and my clomping around in Danskos and slacks instead of high heels and red velvet dress. We had box seats which we’d been assured were “awesome” by Hudge, and we were imagining something similar to the seats Princess Di used to sit in, looking down on everyone with a clear view of the stage. The view was good, though not Royal-Family private, but my seat was not befitting a princess or any other human. Possibly a potted plant would have found reasonable purchase there. For the duration of the concert my knees were pressed against the banister, my feet had to be tucked far beneath my chair, and during the portions where the audience had to stand up to sing carols, Z had to help me over to one side so I could stand without toppling over, which made me feel even less like Cher (or Princess Diana) and more like someone’s clumsy, ancient, slightly drunk aunt.

No Leg Room for a Princess

Still, the music drifted up to the rafters and the choir members sang their way out of the auditorium while holding electric candles, and we were both feeling extra Christmassy as we walked home. The flashing lights of cop cars monitoring another night’s protest were at the periphery, blending in with the other twinkling lights of the city. Everything appeared peaceable even if discontent.

The following night we went downtown with Hudge and friends of hers to experience the Figgy Pudding Caroling Competition, a yearly event in Seattle, wherein a variety of groups sing for donations that support a food bank and a senior center, and at the end of the evening the loot in the pots is counted and the “winner” determined. Though it is just a few blocks from our apartment, the streets were packed with, according to some accounts, 10,000 or more people. It was fun, in that it was nice to see so many denizens of Seattle happily bumping against each other in Santa hats, happily dropping money into buckets for a worthy cause. But it was overwhelming to my highly sensitive self. All those people! All those sounds clashing somewhere just above my ears so nothing sounded particularly melodious but more like an aural war being waged, or at least a border skirmish. The police were in full force for crowd control and also because there were rumored to be more protests (later, we learned the protestors and organizers worked out a deal since the event was for a charitable cause, so the protest happened later), but it was jarring to see so many cops at such a happy occasion. And then other little wars started happening inside of me, wherein I wanted to tell them to be safe and that I respected how hard their jobs must be while at the same time I wanted to give little smacks to the ones I thought looked most likely to be trigger-happy racial profilers. (Granted, I had no real data to determine who were the good cops and who were the potentially bad cops, but still, my brain raged to various choruses of “Angels We Have Heard on High” and I came to no solution other than to smile at anyone who made eye contact with me.)

Figgy Pudding crowd, 2014

The following day, Z and I had rented a car and found ourselves with some leftover Christmas spirit that we were uncertain how to expend. We tried eating pie, but that wasn’t enough to sate us, so at the last minute, we drove onto a ferry destined for the Kitsap Peninsula for an ill-planned visit to Poulsbo’s tree-lighting ceremony. It was so ill-planned we weren’t sure we would even make it as it was meant to happen as soon as the sun went down, and the sun was sinking rapidly as we dozed in our car, bobbing across across Puget Sound. (Ferry sleep is the best sleep you will ever have, fyi).

You may remember my earlier description of Poulsbo, the little Viking-inspired village that was founded by Scandinavians who arrived in the late 19^th century for the fishing. It sits right on the Sound and has a quaint downtown with Viking murals and Scandinavian building facades and signs that are in Norse (or an English version of Norse). Z and I arrived just in time, and as we were racing down the hill to the city park by the waterfront, we saw a group of people in a wooded lot, standing around a fire in Viking headdress and furs, making plans for the ceremony. Though we knew during the day they were probably computer programmers or carpenters, it was easy enough to pretend we’d happened upon an encampment of soon-to-be marauding Vikings.

We left them where they were and continued down the hill and got to the city park, just in time to see Miss Poulsbo light the village tree. We were imagining some massive fir tree, because the trees grow big and plentiful in western Washington, but no, the tree in question was only about a foot taller than Miss Poulsbo herself, who Z briefly mistook for a snowman because she was wrapped so tightly in a white cape. We’d been imagining something much grander and briefly considered we’d made an error in choosing our evening’s destination. But there was a huge stack of wood in front of us that was intriguing and talk of Vikings escorting Saint Lucia in to light it, so we stood around with the townsfolk waiting. Compared to the night before in downtown Seattle, this group was much smaller, maybe 200 or so people, and many seemed to know each other. Some little boys dressed in skins raced around the wood and a young bulldog made friends with everyone who walked past. We’d recently binged on all seven seasons of “Gilmore Girls” on Netflix, and frankly, Poulsbo felt very Stars Hollow-esque. (Even the emcee was reminding us a little of the insufferable Taylor Doose.)

Z and I stood by the waterfront looking at the lighted houses across the Sound. And then, off in the distance, we saw flames coming towards us as the Vikings approached on the river walk, brandishing torches. (A kid behind us thought they were bringing us all giant, roasted marshmallows to help celebrate.)

Saint Lucia? Is that you?

The anticipation grew as they got closer and people made way for them to get to the wood that would become a proper big bonfire. As they arrived, in their midst were a variety of girls and young women, and we’d be hard pressed to tell you which one was St. Lucia, but my money is on the one with candles on her head because she looked the most regal. (The crowd surged towards the wood and we couldn’t see if Candle Head did the actual bonfire lighting, so I’m still none the wiser.)

Vikings lighting the jule fire, Poulsbo, WA

Before the torches came down in unison to light the bonfire, one of the Vikings spoke about the meaning of the celebration, the importance of light reaching out in the darkness at a time of the year when the darkness is so vast. Even though it was a fun, silly sort of activity akin to going to a Renaissance Festival, I felt tears threaten because it seemed like the most apt of metaphors this dark, dark year when the world seems to be extra violent and angry and brokenhearted. Maybe this is why it is my favorite time of year despite the crowds and the way my eye starts twitching because I let myself get stressed about buying subpar presents or the guilt I feel that while I’m having a perfectly lovely Christmas, a score of people are depressed or hungry or victimized or not able to be with their families. Z, for instance, will be with me this year instead of in Zimbabwe with his family, and while I’m thrilled that we are together and thrilled that I’m destined for an Indiana Christmas, there is still a certain sadness that we are not with his people too.

But as the bonfire got higher and higher, illuminating the darkness around us (and some of the ash threatening to set those of us in nylon jackets ablaze), I was able to push those trickier aspects of the holiday season out of my mind and focus instead on the light, on the freshness of the impending new year and the possibility of the world getting brighter and kinder.

It was the best kind of holiday night. Maybe even better than a mid-December on Chicago’s wintry streets.

Viking winter bonfire, Poulsbo, WA

Nov21

On Surprises, Big and Small

Posted on 21 November 2014 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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Z is a master of surprise. He’s thoughtful and listens when I say off the cuff that I like something, and then at Christmas or a birthday, voila! He’s like one of those 1930s movie heartthrobs who is always at the ready to light your cigarette (even though you don’t smoke) because he anticipates other people’s desires. It’s like his super power.

While I wouldn’t classify it as a super power, one of the things I delight in is getting the “right” gift for someone, and I really like to find things a person doesn’t even know he or she needs until I offer it up, tied with a bow. Z is very problematic for me in this regard. He’s one of two people I know most well in the world, yet every year for his birthday or Christmas I find myself wandering around stores trying to find a gift that I think he might like or need and it’s as if I don’t know the man at all. Like maybe he’s a new co-worker instead of my husband. Last year for his birthday I made the completely arbitrary and now embarrassing decision to buy him a honey dripper because, well… I don’t even know why. He looked at it and said, “What is it?” and now it lives in the back of a drawer and occasionally we’ll joke about it. It’s not like we’ve got pots of honey sitting around that require a dripper. We pretty much squirt the honey right out of the plastic bear bottle and cut out the need for any utensil at all, so I’m not sure what I was thinking.

So this year, I’ve been trying to stealthily compile a list of non-embarrassing presents I could get him, and the only thing I lighted on a few weeks ago was his very own bottle of Aveda Blue Oil so he doesn’t have to rifle through my purse every time he has a sinus headache. We’re both plagued with sinus issues in Seattle because of the frequently and rapidly changing pressure systems here, and though we have a whole list of treatments we use ranging from pills to hot compresses, Aveda Blue Oil is a favorite.

Oh, I was pleased with myself for thinking this up. The very next day after I had this idea, he said, “I wouldn’t mind having my own bottle of Blue Oil.” So much for the surprise.

Fortunately, Z is sometimes forgetful after he says he wants something and it’s been a good three weeks, so it didn’t dissuade me from getting the concoction for him yesterday when I stopped at the Aveda store to replace the bottle of hair gel I accidentally flushed down the toilet a few weeks ago. The clerk asked if I’d like a complimentary neck massage while I was there, so by the time I met up with Z at Barnes & Noble, my hair was pinned back and I was smelling all peppermint-y and I was sure I’d given myself away. I told him about getting the hair gel and the complimentary massage, and he acted none the wiser about his future present. Mission accomplished! Oh, I was pleased with myself.

Z and I have a glut of celebrations in the fall. First, there is his birthday, then there is the anniversary of “our love” when we first became a real couple and not just movie-watching, food-eating buddies—which this year I re-discovered in an old journal coincides exactly with the anniversary of my First Deception for Love.

And then there is today, which is the sixth anniversary of our engagement. Aside from deciding to confess his love two years before, “engaging” me was perhaps his best ever surprise. Later today, I will be forcing Z to look at photos and listen to our engagement song and admire my engagement ring and re-live the day, moment by moment: his surprise present of a trip to Las Vegas, a private-non-public-y proposal, phone calls to friends and family, walking outside into all the blindingly tacky electric hope that is Las Vegas, feeling weirdly insulated in a love bubble and thus not bothered or thrown into a feminist rage at the the dudes handing out flyers for mostly naked female escorts, going to Tiffany to look at rings and realizing that I am not a diamond girl, standing in front of the Bellagio fountain and listening to Andrea Bocelli and Sara Brightman sing “Time to Say Goodbye” (“Con te partirò”), and realizing for the first time ever that it is a love song and not the world’s loveliest sad song, and how it and Z and our new engagement made me feel completely full up with love, not just for Z but for the whole world, tawdry as so much of it was, displaying itself there beside us in rhinestones and neon.

Today, we walked to the Corner Café, and on the way, Z told me how nice my hair looked, and I told him it was because I’d finally replaced my Aveda hair product, and then he said—just like a detective—“Aha! You got that neck massage yesterday because you bought my Blue Oil for Christmas! I tried to convince him that I’d completely forgotten he wanted Blue Oil and that the massage had nothing to do with a Blue Oil purchase, but I am the world’s worst liar. Like really, criminally bad at it. Oh, I was annoyed. Surprise presents for Z: zero (again).

We eat at the Corner Café so much now that the servers there don’t even ask for our orders. We show up, and our drinks magically appear on the table. Minutes later, our meals appear. We’re predictable, some would say boring. Today while we ate, we laughed and whooped because of Z guessing his present and because we discovered that for my entire adult life I’ve thought “milieu” meant “expertise” and I stubbornly refused to believe Z’s definition until I’d Googled it. (And then I spent the next five minutes saying “milieu” over and over again, dragging the last syllable out like a French-speaking cat, and making us laugh some more.) We aren’t what you’d call high-context humorists.

After lunch, we went to the drugstore to pick up some odds and ends. We had to have some photos made, so I left him to it while I did the rest of the shopping and then met him back at the cash register. The clerk briefly held up one of the photos—one that appeared to be of the two of us—and told us that while he didn’t usually look at guest photos, that one caught his eye because it was so sweet. (Aside: we know his statement isn’t altogether true, because he once gushed excessively about how handsome Rick’s father was when we had a family photo enlarged. It made us a little uncomfortable.) I didn’t think anything about it other than Z must have made some photos of us to send to Z-ma. Then, as the cashier handed us our bags, he said something that sounded vaguely like “Congratulations on your years together.” Weird, I thought.

We slogged out of the shop into a downpour, me trailing behind Z like a baby duck trying to keep up with its mother, haranguing him all the way: What did that guy say? And finally Z growled back at me, That silly man! It was supposed to be a surprise. He’s ruined it!

When we got home, Z presented me with a photo that Mom took of Z and me this fall, looking out over Lake Washington and holding hands. He’d printed a happy engagement message above it, as a sort of sweet, personalized card to commemorate the day. It’s sitting next to the bulldogs-at-the-movie anniversary card I got him, which was also not really a surprise because I had to dig it out of my underwear drawer and sign it in the bedroom like an after thought because I forgot to get it ready yesterday while he was out of the house. I briefly considered giving him the Blue Oil as an engagement anniversary present, but then I thought, December 25^th is a ways off—there’s still a chance he’ll forget what’s coming to him.

There’s also a good chance that after we run down the litany of engagement memories we’ll end up watching West Wing on Netflix tonight and eating the remains of a decapitated Gingerbread Man, which isn’t quite as glamorous or exciting as life this time six years ago, but I don’t think I’d get in my time machine for do-overs if you paid me. I like our little rut. Our (non)surprises. Us.

Nov5

Reading Between the Lines

Posted on 5 November 2014 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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Today, my only job in the whole world is to make edits to an essay I wrote on Joan Didion’s “Goodbye to All That” so I can resubmit it to a nice editor at a new journal on the study of creative nonfiction.

My. Only. Job.

I do not have to do dishes. Laundry can wait. I have no tiny noses or bottoms to wipe, and Z will not be expecting a four-course meal when he gets home from work (mainly because he knows I can’t cook). My editing projects are either done or not ready to be started.

No one is expecting me to finish a TPS report at the office. There is no office.

More specifically, this job is not even a complete overhaul of an essay. The editor said after the first five pages that my essay “roars.” I don’t exactly know what that means except “to roar” sounds like the opposite of “to suck” so apparently most of the essay is on the right track, which means 13 pages of it are okay. Maybe even good. But those first five pages? Meh. I’m not bitter about this criticism. I’m a big fan of revision. But I’m clueless as to how to fix these pages, never mind on any given day I write five page emails to Jane before my eyes are fully open. (Tuesday two weeks ago was extra easy because we had a lot to say about Reneé Zellweger’s surprising new face).

Also, I’m sitting in the café at the Elliott Bay Book Co., a place I normally delight in. Everywhere I look there is someone on a laptop that looks like mine, though with cool ironic stickers that I’m too chicken to put on my own MacBook, and none of these people appear to be blocked. In fact, right this minute, I’m just paranoid enough to believe that every one of them to a person is also writing about Joan Didion and doing it far better than I ever could.

I’m realizing now that writing in a bookstore is not good for my psyche. I can see all those books on the shelves, with all their perfectly published words, taunting me. What’s your problem? they seem to be saying. Just get it done.

But I can see this writing day for what it is: over. Instead, I’ll tell you about other words on a page that came somewhat easier and had recent fruition.

Back when I was just giving up on my quest to earn all the Girl Scout badges ever, I started reading teen magazines. My favorite was ‘Teen, which had very informative columns that offered advice on love and friendship and sex. I also read Seventeen, though I found its fashion advice dubious because it was too avant-garde for Richmond, Indiana. (Sweatshirts paired with skirts weren’t happening yet, and I could never believe that red and pink should be worn together—colors should be complements and shouldn’t be reminiscent of Valentine’s Day.) In one of these magazines, you could send in your name and address and be paired up with a pen pal.

It wouldn’t be my first pen pal. Mom had carefully arranged for me to have a Swedish one because she had had a Swedish pen pal when she was my age and she felt they were superior (and there was a lovely array of Swedish candies and doo-dads that got sent my way on the holidays from Cecelia—so, good choice there Mom)! Through a Trixie Belden fan club, I’d acquired a fun-loving girl from Colorado whose dachshund Barney I was jealous of (I lived in a “no pets” apartment with a “no pets but fish” mother). Through school, I acquired a West Indian, and two Canadians, one of whom seemed to delight in copying out sexy passages from trashy novels I wasn’t yet cleared to read and another who sent me a photo of herself with a goat. The most exotic was Glenda from Zambia, who came via the TV show, Big Blue Marble. I loved getting her thin, light blue airmail envelopes and reading about a world so different from mine that it could hardly be imagined. With Glenda, I was concerned that she was in danger of being murdered by Idi Amin because I didn’t fully understand the vastness of Africa (or even that Africa wasn’t a single country). After a few months or a few years, all of these pen pals and I developed differing interests and the letters got fewer and further between until they disappeared completely. I tried reconnecting with Cecilia a decade ago and managed to find her, but she admitted her English was not what it used to be and since I had not learned Swedish, there was nowhere to go with the old friendship except fond memories of her colorfully decorated envelopes and the Carl Larson inspired life I had imagined her living.

But my teen magazine pen pal, C., from a province in Canada that was roughly above my head (how I thought about geography in 1980, sadly no joke), was something different. We were a good pairing: both introverted, goodish girls, book-inclined, and studious. We wrote each other dutifully about the classes we were taking, the books we’d read, the music we were listening to, and for some reason a tradition that has stuck ‘lo these many decades, a list of Christmas presents received. Our letters might have become less frequent as we got older, but we both made an effort to write at least at Christmas to check-in. In retrospect, I think it was my first experience with what would later become a weird sort of computer-age norm: talking to a total stranger about your life and developing this odd sense of knowing them even though you’d never really met them.

Five years ago when Z and I were compiling our wedding guest list, I have no idea what made me ballsy enough to send an invitation to someone I’d never actually met. Who does that? But it seemed weird not to send C. an invitation when technically, she’d been my (pen) friend longer than any of my real life friends who would be there. I never imagined that she and her husband would brave the winter roads to come to our December wedding, but they did. I’d like to say that as soon as we saw each other it was like we were reunited long-lost friends, but the truth is, there were a lot of people at the wedding, my tiara was cutting off my circulation, and I’d had too much to drink to be a proper good hostess. I did, however, feel honored that they’d come, and because I am the sort of person who is often in awe of other people, during a few of my more “aware” wedding moments, I was envious of her sophisticated dress and the ease with which she and her husband glided around the ballroom. (Z and I had exactly one dance move that we put on repeat for the duration of our first dance.)

Last week, C. and her husband incorporated a visit with us into their travel plans to the Pacific Northwest. She texted me updates as they—more adventurous than we have ever been—hiked Mt. Rainier and through the Olympic National Park and ate meals that my bland, 4-year-old-inspired palate would not even consider. We met them for dinner in Belltown on the first night, and I admit while I was excited at the prospect of actually getting to spend time with the real person, I was also wishing there were some sort of pill I could take that would give me an evening’s worth of extroversion and gregariousness. C. and I are clever introverted women, however, who married men with communication skills, so they got things rolling for us, and soon it did not feel at all like strangers meeting for dinner. This night turned into two more meals together during their time in Seattle and some good conversation.

The thing that most struck me after we’d said goodbye on the last day of their visit was that I was saying goodbye not to a new acquaintance but to an old friend. C. was exactly how I’d imagined her for all these years, not because I’m wickedly intuitive but because she’d represented herself so well in the letters she’d written over three and a half decades. I knew what she looked like from photos and our brief interactions during our wedding weekend, but I wasn’t at all surprised by those things you shouldn’t be able to tell about someone you’ve only ever corresponded with: how she carried herself, how she spoke, her quiet but quick wit, the way she and her husband interacted. I felt what can only be described as deep affection for the pair of them–these “strangers”–as they walked down our steep hill towards the lightrail that would carry them to the airport and then back home to Canada.

If you ask me, telling yourself true is the best writing any of us can do.

Oct17

Flashback Friday: Skintuition

Posted on 17 October 2014 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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Sunday, January 28, 2007

One advantage to having a boyfriend, it turns out, is that they can see things you cannot. For instance, your back.

One night while I was in Seattle, Z was rubbing my back and discovered this bump that he thought I should have checked by a dermatologist. He didn’t technically discover it as I had already made an appointment to have it removed, and maybe I sounded a little defensive when I told him this because the next deformity he discovered on my back he kept to himself for several days. One night he couldn’t stand it any longer, abruptly stopped the back rub, and said, “What IS that?” He peeled up my shirt and discovered a price tag for $19.99 plastered between my shoulder blades. For days, he’d thought I’d had some deformity about which I might be self-conscious. My face was red, but despite being mortified that the evidence pointed to bad hygiene on my part, I laughed with him about it and felt a little warm that he cared enough not to verbally note my every flaw.

My dermatologist, on the other hand, has no problem pointing out the flaws. She’s a bit flakey on a good day; she’s my age or older but wears her hair in these high partial pony-tails cinched back with little girl barrettes. When I had the non-price tag flaw removed she was in rare form. I hadn’t seen her for two years at which time I’d had a little thing sliced off of the side of my nose, so it struck me as odd that she shuffled in flipping her half pony-tails, looked at my face and said, ‘Oh, it looks good!’ Only what she was examining was not the two-year-old healed place but instead a chickenpox scar I’ve had since 1974. She complimented her own handiwork and then suggested that I let their new cosmotologist micro-dermabrase my face to smooth out the remnants of what she thought was her scar. She went on to tell me how this amazing cosmotologist would fix all manner of problems and could even wax eyebrows.

When she saw I wasn’t signing up for a makeover, she went on to announce that she was trying to drum up business for the woman because nobody in my town seems interested in spending money to look better. I suspect it’s just that people here are accustomed to having their eyebrows done at a salon and not at a doctor’s office. Isn’t it a bit like going to the dentist and having her try to sell you lipstick? I suppose I’d appreciate it if my hair stylist noticed something on my head (a price tag perhaps) and suggested I go to the doctor to have it removed, but somehow when a doctor does it, it smacks of a snake oil selling. Do I NEED microdermabrasion for some medical reason? Are my eyebrows going to cause me long-term health problems if not cosmotologically altered? I think we all know the answers to these questions.

And now, on to a skin of a different color.

I’m a fairly intuitive person, so why does it surprise me that when I do some dumb thing that an inner voice has told me not to do, it doesn’t turn out well? More importantly, why don’t I just listen to myself? I’ve come to the conclusion that either I am slightly mentally handicapped or I have a dual personality: one of a benevolent, intuitive parent and the other of a petulant, rebellious child.

I’ll spare you the details, but bottom line, despite a niggling voice telling me I was about to make a mistake, I violated my pricey iSkin—a Shrek-green condom that protects my iPod from all manner of bumps and spills—in the interest of its fitting into a stereo dock more efficiently. It didn’t work, and furthermore, within 60 seconds of making the last snip, I discovered another way to attach the iPod to the stereo that won’t affect the skin at all.

Because I do not like to cry over spilled beverages, I opted to fix the situation by gluing the silicon sheath back together with nail glue. On any other day, nail glue could be used to reattach previously conjoined twins. I have frequently glued my fingers together when using it, so when the little niggling voice told me this experiment would also fail, I told it to hush because I know all about nail glue.

Maybe they taught this kind of helpful stuff in high school science classes on a day I was absent, but it turns out that quick-drying nail glue does not dry so quickly when applied to silicon. Instead, it makes a sticky mess and never dries. Despite both my intuition’s best attempt to save me from myself and despite my own resolution to be more frugal in 2007, there is now another Shrek-green iSkin on my Visa. I considered not buying a replacement, but the niggling voice said, “Your iPod needs to be protected from people like you.” This time I listened.

With Z and my intuition watching out for me, all I have to fear is, um, myself.

Oct3

Betty MacDonald Had a Farm, E-I-E-I-O

Posted on 3 October 2014 by The Reluctant Girl Scout

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Mom is visiting us for three weeks, and to celebrate her birthday, Z and I decided to treat her to an overnight on the farm of one of her favorite authors. Betty MacDonald wrote The Egg & I, her memoir of time spent on the Olympic Peninsula raising chickens, in 1945. A movie was made from the book and starred Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert and was followed by a string of “Ma and Pa Kettle” movies that were based on back woods characters Betty described in her book. (She was later sued by people who believed she had based the unflattering but beloved Ma and Pa on them). Though I’ve never actually read this particular book, I grew up feeling like I knew the author. Mom was often reading passages from one of the books and telling me anecdotes from Betty’s life as if they were old friends. (The author died in 1958.) I did, however, read her series of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books, which I was convinced were the American answer to Mary Poppins, so I had my own “Betty love” going on.

When Z and I stay somewhere, we study the descriptions and photos on VRBO and airbnb as if we are buying the property instead of just staying there for a night or two. I’m pickier than he is and because I’m what they call a “Highly Sensitive Person” I’m affected negatively by ugly things or dirty things or even spaces that seem too much to belong to someone else. My ideal spot to stay is one that looks like one of those little IKEA display rooms, where you can imagine living your life without having to think about how anyone else has maybe trimmed his toenails on the sofa.

So when we’re looking for a weekend getaway, Z will often find a spot he thinks looks perfect, but I’ll see a throw pillow with a color scheme that makes my skin crawl or a poster of an eagle on a back wall, and I’ll insist we keep looking. I can’t express this enough: I am not a princess. Really, I’m not. But I have a lot of feelings and other people’s things affect how I feel and when I’m on a little vacation, I don’t want to have to deal with turmoil inside of me just because a chair is scratchy or there is bad lighting. I had to quit going into antique stores a few years ago when I realized I always left depressed and a little obsessed about how wasteful and tacky we are as a people. So online photos of potential digs have to give me a good vibe before I’ll send the payment information.

The Betty MacDonald Farm Bed and Breakfast website has a few beautiful photos, but it’s a little short on specifics. So when Mom and I arrived after a twenty-minute ferry ride from West Seattle, we didn’t know what to expect. Finding it felt like an adventure in itself because we weren’t exactly sure where we were going and other than a very generic “LODGING” sign on the main road with an arrow, Vashon is not a neon-light or billboard sort of place that will direct you anywhere. You “discover” things on the island, which is part of its charm. Other things you will discover: quiet and an easy slowness that would be honked out of existence in Seattle.

We were greeted by the owner, Judith, who gave us brief directions up to the third story of the barn and a warning to shut all the doors to keep the animals out, particularly a mother raccoon and her babies who had been trying to find some indoor accommodations. Mom and I hauled our bags up the multiple stairs, and as I was dragging my stuff up, I was thinking, “Oh, geeze. We’re staying in a barn.” Now, it was clear from the website that we’d be staying in a barn, I had specifically made a reservation and paid to stay in a barn, but somehow in Seattle I was imagining something less barn-y. No spiders, no feeling of the hundreds of chickens that used to live there, something in the shape of a barn but with dry-wall and track lighting to illuminate my way. (Before you judge me, please re-familiarize yourself with my camping adventures through the ages here and here.)

And then we popped up into the loft and we instantly moved from “barn” to “antique store.” The loft was vast as it was literally the barn loft that went from one end of the three-story barn to the other in a big open space. It held a full kitchen, an antique bed, various gorgeous bits of tables and chests and bookcases, this giant dual-couch construction made out of wood and covered with woolen carpets that looked like it belonged in a bunk house on the range, a wood stove, and a table laid out with Spode for our meals. There was not a horizontal surface that wasn’t covered with books, and the bookcases were all full as well. Good books. Books you wanted to lose yourself in, or at the very least flip through and then order a copy for yourself. The couches faced the wall of windows, which overlooked the six-acre farm, Puget Sound, and the idea of Mt. Rainier that was out there under the cloud cover.

Initially, I sat on the sofa staring at the view with my lips pursed, uncertain if I should be pleased or disappointed. The bunk house couch was surprisingly comfortable. The view couldn’t have been better and I loved being in this “writerly” space, but there was absolutely no way for my highly sensitive brain to pretend that this place was the blank canvas of a slicker vacation rental cottage. There was absolutely no way to imagine that it was my personal living space because it was so filled with the owner’s belongings. So I kept sitting there, thinking.

Mom was excited, soaking up the view from the balcony, as well as a good bit of weather since it was misting a little bit. When she finally had to come in because it got too wet and cold to reasonably sit outside, she started foraging for books, creating a huge stack in front of herself, and then curled up on her section of the bunkhouse sofa and started reading.

Imagine Mt. Rainier in the distance. We did.

The books were too hard to resist. My lips un-pursed a little. I got my own stack, and we spent the night reading and talking, and never did get around to watching The Egg & I video that the owner had at the ready should we want to steep ourselves in Betty MacDonald’s life a little more.

I’m not sure when exactly the scales in my brain tipped towards “pleased.” The quiet and view certainly worked some magic on me. And the sheets in the little bedroom helped because I’ve never felt anything so soft and crisp (except for the impossibly fluffy towels that were waiting for us in the bathroom, along with robes and African baskets filled with everything we could need to pamper ourselves). Possibly the fact that Mom, who was on the other side of the door sleeping in the main loft got momentarily freaked out because something was on the roof, and then we fell into hysterics like we were at a slumber party when we realized the sound she heard was not the mother raccoon trying to break in but was really just me turning the pages of a Country Living article about Corbin Bernsen’s house.

No, I think it happened well before that, when I was looking at all the stacks of books, and all the little nooks and crannies where you could cozy up with a book or a writing pad. It is hard not to hanker for a good reading and writing space, and this one was the best. The place is too unique to turn your nose up at it. Plus, it was clean and our every need was anticipated. By the time I fell asleep I felt like I was spending the night at my grandmother’s house, cozy and well-cared for. And when I woke up the next morning after a perfect night’s sleep on a very comfortable bed, I felt sad that we’d only booked the single night.

Mom and I sat on the porch the next morning so entranced with the view and the books we wanted to skim before leaving that we failed to shower and make ourselves breakfast. Showering and eating could happen after check-out time when we’d made our way back to the grit of the city. (Z would be none the wiser about our slovenly choices because he’d still be at work.) We begrudgingly packed up our things, tidied up after ourselves, and trudged down the stairs to the car.

The Betty MacDonald Farm B & B

I made my way over to say hello to the adorable Irish terrier who lives on the property and ran into Judith. I asked her a few questions about the farm and the island, and she started what turned into a fascinating history and horticulture lesson. Mom joined us, and an hour later we knew how to get a start of hydrangea, more about Betty MacDonald’s life, more about the history of the island, the personality of Irish terriers, and the property itself. We even got a peek of the cottage on the ground floor so we could see if we’d like to stay there in the future. (It was cozy too and called to us, including a beautiful old claw-foot tub, perfect for reading that was situated in the bathroom surrounded by windows so you could read, sip some wine, and stare at the Sound and Mt. Rainier. If we ever tried to book a weekend there and couldn’t get the loft, we’d be perfectly happy in the house.) It was the perfect ending to a delightful 24 hours.

By the time we climbed into the car and made our way back to the ferry, I was solidly in love with the place and wondering when we could come back. I’ve no doubt that there are people who arrive on the farm and don’t adjust to its quirky self and wish they’d stayed in one of those IKEA-furnished cottages where everything is new and personality-neutral. But for me, I was glad I was able to hit the pause button on my own peculiarities and enjoy the gorgeous peculiarities of the Betty MacDonald Farm B & B. I sincerely doubt that I’ll ever find another place like it, and isn’t that what we should be out here doing? Acquiring unique experiences instead of the cookie-cutter ones?

Betty MacDonald’s Underwood