Posts filed under 'Just Life'
It’s today. By which I mean it’s Tuesday. Not just any Tuesday. It’s that Tuesday.
Are you nervous? Are you excited? I feel it in my toes, the sense that we’re participating in history. That years from now, we’ll be able to tell people exactly where we were the night America finally elected its first African-American president, the night the tides changed. Or, perhaps, where we were the night the evil powers that be stole the biggest election in history and people took to the streets rioting.
I’m just that cynical.
My husband keeps walking around with a wee bit of a swagger, the walk of a man who got in and out of the booth at the elementary school nice and early. He keeps saying things like, “It’s in the bag.” While I have to admit that I have hope — especially since I read this morning that Karl Rove, Republican evil incarnate, has predicted an Obama landslide — I also fear the power of jinx.
How’s a girl supposed to get anything done today, I ask you?
November 4th, 2008
It’s less than a week away.
Can you stand it? Can you even stand it?
October 29th, 2008
Next month, the weekend after Thanksgiving, my 20 year high school reunion is slated to take place in Louisville. Let me repeat that so that shock can sink in: twenty years. Consequently, there has been a flurry of recent activity via email and, of all places, Facebook as members of my high school class seek out one another and send missives and messages about The Big Event.
If you know me at all, you can probably safely guess that I’m not going. Logistics aside — it’s a long trip and we have family slated to come here to Michigan for turkey day and blah blah blah — I’m just not the reunion-y type. I don’t even watch TV shows where people reunite. Truth be told, I didn’t love high school and I’m wildly suspicious of anyone who did. I mean, you meet those people for whom high school was the best years of their lives and I can’t help but think they’ve done something wrong since then. At the very least, college should have been way better if for no other reason than lack of parental supervision and access to greater quantity and/or quality of drugs.
As much as I like to play that tiny violin, high school probably wasn’t as torturous and lonely and miserable as I like to make it out. It’s possible — nay, probable — that I had some fun, I had some friends. How bad can the years be when you first get high, smoke menthol cigarettes until you vomit or drink Bacardi 151 until you pass out? Good times.
In fact, I’m finding that I probably had more friends than I remember or maybe than I realized at the time. (Although I think time blurs all that and when you can’t really remember people from high school, you all just act like you were friends even if they kicked your head in and stuffed you in a locker every afternoon.) I do think that there is a necessary and natural selection process that occurs post-graduation. You stay in touch with the people who meant the most to you or, if nothing else, with whom you spent the greatest number of Friday nights, and if you fade out of each other’s lives, then Darwin would approve. After all, the odds that we as under-developed teen social blobs would know enough about ourselves and the world, let alone those around us, to form life long friendships are pretty slim.
That’s not to say that I’m absent any curiosity about what happened to this person or that. But technology has changed the stakes in that game. If you really want to know what happened to a classmate, a quick Google search can often answer your question and, if you’re so inclined, put you in touch. And the brilliant part is you never actually have to talk to them if you don’t want to. So you can find out if that asshole from home room was nailed for insider trading but you don’t have to feign civility over coffee. That’s brilliant!
Now Facebook — which I am sheepish to admit I enjoy immensely — has added a whole new dimension. You can easily find classmates, “friend” them and sort of keep tabs on them without actually having in-depth conversations. It’s deeply impersonal and completely superficial in the best way possible. It’s often just the right amount of curiosity-quenching contact you want with someone you haven’t seen in a coupla decades.
I’ve enjoyed exchanging messages with a few folk on Facebook, people I hadn’t talked to since graduation. But it seems to me that we’re sort of all caught up now, aren’t we? I mean, we know where we are, what we’re doing, all the major facts, etc. Which strikes me as the right level of information for relationships that exist squarely in the past. I’m not sure I see the point in taking it a step further. Yeah, yeah. I’m a curmudgeon.
I wonder sometimes if I’d had a happier high school experience, would I be more gung-ho about attending reunions like these? Maybe. All I know is that I’m finding ways to satisfy my curiosity without getting up fromm my desk. I’m not too crazy about that part of my past anyway and I really, really like my present. So I figure I’ll just hang out here for now.
October 23rd, 2008
I just have to say how thrilled at and proud of St. Louis I am right now, after an estimated 100,000 Obama supporters turned out for a rally downtown Saturday. (Check out the photograph in this Post-Dispatch story — the sea of people with the court house in the background is truly breathtaking.) It’s said to be his biggest crowd in the midwest to date.
What a lovely thing.
And while we’re on the topic, I’m still blown away by Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama yesterday blew me away. This is Bush’s former secretary of state, people. A vocal and staunch Republican. If he’s willing to publicly acknowledge just how bad McCain would be for this nation, then I remain perplexed and stunned that anyone is still considering voting for that scary, sickly, cranky old man and his folksy frightening cohort.
October 20th, 2008
Yeah, maybe not that big a deal to you, but it is my First Pie Ever. (Actually, my first two pies ever, as I doubled up on the recipe.)
That’s right.
Made them — with help from my faithful assistant Sarah — using the Ida Reds we picked yesterday at the fruit farm. I used Martha Stewart’s pate brisee recipe for the crust and it turns out pie crust is pretty easy to make, so I don’t know what everyone’s always belly-achin’ about. I used Martha’s old fashioned apple pie recipe too, only I went Euro and left out the cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves and relied on just sugar and some lemon for flavor.
I forgot to take a pic before people dug in, so the shot above is what was left at evening’s end. Still pretty, no? And tasted pretty good, too. Not too tart and not too sweet, not laden with cloying spices. And I don’t know that I’ll become a piemaker or anything, but if anyone has tips for a pie crust that’s just a tad flakier, I’d be willing to listen.
October 13th, 2008
Blogging
I’ve been struggling with Wordpress, my blogging software, as of late. Seems whenever there’s an upgrade — or just randomly — I lose the ability to log in and write blog entries. Seems renaming the old plug ins folder (through FTP access to the server) and creating a new, empty plug ins folder does the trick. I mention it here on the off chance any of you have encountered the same problem and are ready to pull your hair out.
Reading
I rarely read Maureen Dowd, but I have to say that her October 4 column in the New York Times hits on two things I despise passionately: Sarah Palin and bad grammar.
On the book front, I’m digging into author Jennifer Traig’s second memoir of sorts, “Well Enough Alone.” It’s an often very funny glimpse at hyponchondria as a historical phenomenon and its impact on her own life. (In a strange, small-world turn of events, it seems Traig is married to an acquaintance of mine and has recently moved to Ann Arbor. Hoping I’ll get to meet her soon.)
Skipping
Yesterday, I had the opportunity — and free tickets — to see Bruce Springsteen perform a live acoustic set at an Obama rally at Eastern Michigan University. While I thought it would be a cool thing to witness, the truth is — as much as it borders on blasphemy among many of my pals — I’m just not that into Springsteen. I appreciate the dude as a member of the prole. I admire his unabashed use of politics in his music, including the oft misunderstood and misappropriated “Born in the USA.” (Why do both parties use this song at their conventions without listening to the lyrics and realizing it’s ironic?)
However, I had much on my plate and the chilly, grey day didn’t help convince me to trek over and brave the crowds in the middle of a work day to see him. Will I regret it? Maybe. But I got my work done and slept fine last night, so really, it can’t have been that erroneous a choice.
Watching
We just got in the first DVD of the last season of Slings & Arrows, which we’ve been enjoying for the past few months. It’s still sitting in its Netflix wrapper, unopened, as we’re painfully aware we’re about to embark on the last six episodes of the show. Then it’s over. Done. We’ll have to move on. And I’ll miss it. Good stuff.
Fortunately, I have everything else to distract me. And I do mean everything else. Over the summer, we bit the bullet and got satellite cable, which came with DVR. Which — will all due respect to electricity and penecillin and the like — is the best thing every invented. Or, if you’re keeping track of how much TV it means I’m watching, perhaps the worst.
The new seasons of shows are starting and that means the episodes are lining up in my DVR like good little soldiers, waiting until I feel like watching them. And fast-forwarding over the commercials. Oh, Dr. House and your ridiculously improbable cases, how good it is to have you back! Californication and Dexter, yay! Boston Legal, Law & Order SVU, Dirty Sexy Money, The Office, Ugly Betty, Pushing Daisies, how I’ve missed you! And while I’d never confess in a public forum to watching such ludicrous brain-cell-stealers as Gossip Girl and the new 90210, well, I’m not saying I’m not watching them either.
In fact, what am I doing typing this when I could be watching TV?
October 7th, 2008
1. Leaves. Orangey and red and crunchy and on the ground waiting for you to shuffle through them. There’s a school down the block from us and when the kids get out at 3 o’clock I can hear them shuffling through leaves just outside my office window. So even if I’m inside, I can HEAR fall.
2. Bright sunny days with a crisp chill in the air. Turns out Michigan excels at this. (It puts on a good spring, too, but this is it’s time to shine.)
3. Sweaters and general bundling-up-ness. The aforementioned should be worn, preferably, with your comfiest jeans and maybe some old boots you’ve been dying to drag out of storage.
4. Soups and stews. I’m not the world’s best cook, but it’s hard to go wrong tossing a hodge-podge of produce together and making something warm and hearty. It impresses people disproportionately.
5. Knitting. Sure, I dabble a little in knitting all year round, but fall’s when the weight and texture of the yarns really catch my eye again and the idea of hauling around a big, wooly project doesn’t seem like insanity.
6. Taking pictures. I enjoy it year-round, but trying to capture the brilliant hues of autumn is one of my very favorite things. Even if all my shots come out looking like Audobon Society calendars. Whatever.
*In case you were wondering.
October 2nd, 2008
Assuming it isn’t too late, that is. Assuming you haven’t abandoned ship given the eons since the last post. An explanation may be in order with a content warning for those who are tired of hearing me belly-aching about health problems.
I’ve spent the past 7 weeks or so undergoing a battery of tests — from EKGs to blood work, etc. — to try to figure out what the hell is wrong with me. Why I’ve been exhausted all the time, with little no energy for anything, including writing (which includes, of course, this blog.) Why my heart’s been doing some wonky antics. Why my metabolism seems to have ground to a halt, causing me to gain weight even when doing everything in my power to achieve the opposite effect. And why I have this baffling, first-time painful cystic acne on my chin, which will simply not go away.
What my doc has settled on is polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is a metabolic disorder that can account for all my symptoms. That means I’ve started new meds which will hopefully help resolve all those symptoms and, at the very least, will regulate my metabolism.
I’ve only been on the meds a few days so my upswing in mood and energy is likely not attributable to that. Part of it is probably the relief in feeling like I have an answer and a course of treatment. But the other part is a factor in my health that I keep trying to ignore: sugar.
I’ve blogged about my struggles with sugar in the past. I love it. I have what can only be described as an addictive relationship to it. And it makes me feel like crap. It affects my mood, my concentration, my energy level, my sleeping patterns. But I keep going back to the trough and trying it again.
The truth is that I really don’t want to refined sugar to be the answer to my problems. I’m being a bit of a toddler about it, stamping my feet and crossing my arms. But I guess I needed to feel as bad and frustrated as I did the past month or so in order to try to make a change again. And it helps. I don’t feel 100% by any means just by cutting out added sugar in my diet, but I feel a lot less despondent, I have some energy — enough to get back to the gym (albeit to work out very lamely) and to other things like, well, writing and blogging.
So I guess we’ll see how long it takes for me to forget about it again. In the meantime, I’m blogging! I’m blogging!
September 29th, 2008
Today, I received a catalog called — I kid you not — “Pecans, Plain & Fancy.”
Is that not the funniest thing you’ve ever heard? No. Must be me. Been laughing for hours over it. This one’s a keeper.
September 11th, 2008
So here was our logic: given the small turnout Obama got in Toledo yesterday, and given the fact that it was Labor Day weekend, and the fact that the gates opened at 8:30, we figured we’d be okay arriving in downtown Detroit around 7:45 or 8 am. We were wrong. Sure, there were complicating factors that may have swelled the crowd — the annual Labor Day Parade, the last day of the Detroit International Jazz Festival and a Tigers game.
But still.
At no point did we imagine that we — me, Chris, our friend Maggie and her friend Sarah — would take our places in line at 8:30 and would patiently snake our way around downtown buildings in the beating sun until nearly 11 am only to get nowhere near the entrance gates. And only to experience the entire breakdown of the crowd system after a volunteer told us that they simply didn’t have enough volunteers to control the crowd anymore.
The mood, at first, was pretty exhilirating. It’s an exciting time, obviously, in politics and we were buoyed by the notion of getting to see Barack Obama in person, if he only seemed a speck in the distance. The crowd was enormous and the mood pretty good, overall. But the whole thing seemed strangely uncoordinated. Given how many people were lining up and given how the line was looping around downtown, we commented repeatedly that it was a miracle that people were behaving in such an orderly fashion.
However, by nearly 11 am — the time at which Obama was scheduled to speak — we were nowhere near the front of the line and it was pretty evident that we weren’t going to get inside. It was as though most of the crowd realized it at the same time and there was a pretty big rush to volley for positions in front of a big screen and that was as good as it got for us.
We were hot, tired and thirsty and we waited until nearly 11:30 for Obama to take the stage following brief introductory comments by local labor leaders. It was still thrilling to see him on the screen and to know that he was somewhere, you know, over there. Obviously, today’s speech was supposed to focus on labor and unions and Obama did make a few remarks about supporting the American worker. Then he said that while he had planned a political speech, today was not the day for political speeches, given Hurrican Gustav’s approach to the Gulf Coast. Instead, he asked us to share a moment of silence and to remember the spirit of giving and togetherness and all that good stuff.
The AP says it was a ten minute speech, but only if you count the pauses for applause, some intro banter and the moment of silence. I think it was closer to five. Which, if you had rolled out of bed at 7, as I did, and waited for three and a half hours, could be a bit of a disappointment. Or if you had been in line since 5 am, which many of those who did get into Hart Plaza did.
And it was over. Just like that. The majority of the crowd seemed to be pushing their way over to the Jazz Festival. Some were headed to the Tigers game. Others, like us, were done for and just wanted to get home and hydrated. Am I glad I went? I suppose I am. It’s just not what I thought it was going to be. Maybe I was ridiculously naive in thinking I’d catch a glimpse of the man I believe will be our next president.
I will say that it was a particular kind of thrill to be among those throngs of people of all different ethnicities, ages, etc. And there was a lot of — dare I say it — hope floating around the joint. If those people are willing to come out and shuffle along in line for hours on end, then surely they’ll all make it to the polls to vote. In which case, I guess we’ll be seeing a whole lot of change, which will more than make up for not seeing Obama in person.
September 1st, 2008
Next Posts
Previous Posts