Leaping in

"Everybody's smiling," noted the man in the elevator. "Must be Friday."

"Friday afternoon… and my elementary school gym teacher's birthday."

Mr. Eckerd must be turning something close to 15 or 60, depending on how one counted. Of course, I could be completely wrong. When I was seven, he seemed a million years old in his gray, poly gym shorts, his short-sleeved shirt and a whistle. I think he might have been in his mid-30s. I seem to recall his "ninth" birthday on a leap day years ago, but I could be wrong.

For the most part, he escapes my memory even if my mom's favorite story of Kristin, age 8, included the man.

"Just say 'no,'" she taught me. "If somebody wants you to do something you don't want to do, say 'no.'"

The next week, when I forgot to wear sneakers on a Tuesday despite the fact that Tuesdays were always gym days, I said "no." I refused to participate. I sat down in the gym in my patent leather Mary Janes and crossed my arms over my chest. I staged my own sit-in.*

Apparently, Mr. Eckerd was not amused. My mom found it hilarious. As for me, I don't remember it. I do remember the man, though, every four years.

"I have one friend who always celebrates on March 1," the woman in the elevator, one of the smilers, said. "Another who celebrates on February 28. She says her birthday's in February, not March."

"And nobody wants to wait for her birthday."

"Especially not four years!"

Nevertheless, it was a memorable, if somewhat troublesome date.

I wondered if I just donated an extra day of work to the company. A lifetime ago, I would have gotten paid for every hour worked – not so much as a salaried employee, but we would probably bill the client for my hours. The whole issue made my head spin, though not nearly as much as the week leading up to the leap. Maybe it would go into the bonus pool at the end of the year. The extra money. Not my head.

The morning news show [read: fluff for the barely awake] stuck in my head as it spun. Apparently, it's also is also St Oswald’s Day, which makes me wish that my gym teacher wore the name of the saint instead of his profession. Jim. Oswald Eckerd sounded much more memorable. And as a day of Ayyám-i-Há (in the Bahá'í calendar) I might dedicate myself to fasting preparations, charity, hospitality and gift-giving.

Bring on the leap gifts.

My favorite little nugget, though, was the tradition for untraditional relationships. Since leap day existed to fix a problem in the calendar, it could also be used to fix an old and unjust custom that only let men propose marriage. I could ask a man to marry me. I should ask a man to marry me. I would have to find a man to marry, but older traditions gave me the whole year.

Better yet, a man was expected to pay a penalty, such as a gown, money or 12 pairs of gloves, if he refused a marriage offer from a woman. Cold hands, warm heart. Warm hands, no husband?

Bring on the gloves.

I've got all night to test the tradition at a friend's un-birthday party.


*In my defense, I did have asthma, triggered by running, which nobody bothered to address until I was well into my 20s, but I probably would have done it anyway.


Tag: Calendar

My day

It was less than perfect, as so many of them are. Wonky or pear shaped. I tried to think of a word that made it sound better than "horrible."

I almost tore off someone's head at work, leaving a blood-spurting stump that might accomplish as much as, if not more than, the body would with the head attached.

It wasn't the stump's fault. Not entirely. A project spun out of control, forcing me to don several hats. Given that I had just one spinning little head, they teetered precariously and threatened to fall, taking me with them, burying me under a pile of millinery, feathers and fruit. The 11th hour stomping of a well-shod foot shook the load, made my head spin faster and inspired thoughts of arterial blood on ecru office walls.

Nevertheless, other than a couple of meetings that I pushed off 'til Friday, I actually managed to keep everything straight and to ship off a much-anticipated report. After a dozen hours at work, I made my escape. Sweet freedom: A stop-and-go Metro ride taking most of the next hour and I found myself somewhere close to home.

I thought about hitting the Organic Market for dinner; I would have eaten a cold, pre-packaged burrito or a can of bean soup. I thought about hitting the closest bar for grilled cheese and beer. I thought about crawling into bed, burying my head under a pile of pillows and staying there until my first meeting. My last meeting. Until I could no longer stand the smell of myself and the fur on my teeth.

Instead, I made my way home to finish my book and clean my kitchen. I made a wrap of spinach, goat cheese and hummus and collapsed on the couch, ready to fall asleep.

But the grilled cheese beckoned. As did the beer. I wasn't satisfied with the spinach, with the day, but I didn't want to leave the house.

Now, cheese is something I almost always have on hand in my eternal quest to create the perfect grilled cheese. Goat cheese and feta. Cheddar and jack. Pepper jack. Brie. Munster and manchego. Good old-fashioned, frighteningly orange American.

It just didn't work.

I layered manchego and cheddar on buttered seven grain and tried to find a balance of crispy bread and melted cheese. A little too buttery on one side, not buttery enough of the other. A decent cheese combination but not terribly high on my list. The diagonal cut helped - triangle halves always made things taste better.

I curled up under the blanket with my sandwich. Jane Austen. A bottle of cheap champagne. I worried that bubbles would go to my head, that I would envision my own life blood going Jackson Pollock on those ecru walls. But for the moment, I was happy. The day was almost over.


Tag: Stress

My own 25 cents

Breaking news: The US Mint doesn't like the District of Columbia's proposal for our state quarter. Apparently the slogan "Taxation without Representation" is a little too controversial for currency.

"Changing how the District of Columbia (the Seat of Government of the United States) is represented in Congress is a contemporary political issue on which there presently is no national consensus and over which reasonable minds differ," the Mint wrote, as reported by the Washington Post.

"Although the United States Mint expresses no position on the merits of this issue, we have determined that the proposed inscription is clearly controversial and, therefore, inappropriate as an element of design for United States coinage."

Honestly, it's a little too controversial for some of us who live in the District, too. Not the slogan – I'll gladly wear it on my sleeve, in my purse, or on my car, as the case may be - but the practice.

Taxation. Without representation.

Nobody is about to dump a case of Celestial Seasonings Raspberry Zinger® into the Potomac, but it's an interesting concept. I am an American citizen. I pay (a lot of money in) taxes. My voice in Congress consists of a single, non-voting member.

Of course, I am not alone in the District – representatives from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the United States Virgin Islands don't have voting rights, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands doesn't have representation at all.

Of course, they don't have quarters either. Not yet. We will all get them in 2009. Maybe we should just take the shiny new quarters and thank the Mint for including us. Maybe we should just pay our 2008 taxes in newly-minted, non-controversial coins.

Thousands of dollars multiplied four quarters per dollar multiplied by 5.670 grams per quarter... We're going to need a bigger box.



Tag: Money

Buttons

The time had come to retire my coat. To wish it a fond farewell, hold a luncheon, give it a cheap gold watch and send it on its way. Tell the kids that it had found a happy little farm in the country where coats ran free.

I bought it three seasons ago - long by some standards and short by others. I wore it religiously, taking it with me to places far and wide. In a café in Istanbul, close to the spice market in a mid-afternoon lull, a girl called to me, "Did you get that at Target?"

I did.

"I almost got the same one!" she exclaimed.

It wasn't the most expensive of coats. Basic and cheap, it filled a need when I retired the pea coat of six seasons past. Something simple to wear with trousers or jeans. Something warm.

Early on, I realized it shed. Friends and former friends and Metro bus cleaners lamented the fine layer of red fuzz that I left all over their seats. Strands made their way under clear packing tape on my boxes at Christmas. All over my sweaters, shirts and skirts. Into my hair. Into my bed.

I found red fuzz pretty much anywhere one might imagine and quite a few places one wouldn't, but it wasn't enough to retire the coat. After one disastrous turn with a lint brush, I took to cutting off loose strands and ignoring the halo of fuzz that surrounded me.

A couple of months ago, at the start of winter, a broken seam in the pocket stretched into a hole as loose strands wrapped themselves around my key ring. I lost a tube or two of lip gloss into the lining of my coat. Eventually, an entire cell phone disappeared only to be discovered somewhere along a seam at the side.

Then, the buttons started to drop. I sewed them back into place and new ones fell. I found one in my car, under the gas pedal. Another I found on the floor of my bedroom. I put them both – the car button and the bedroom button – into an inside pocket of my work bag. They disappeared for a while, reappeared, and I moved them to another pocket.

All the while, red fuzz continued to fall and I wondered if enough thread remained to hold together a coat, much less keep me warm.

At some point, I decided to look for another coat. I courted a couple at various stores. I trawled all the websites and showed pictures to family and friends, unsure and unwilling to commit. I found a button in the lining of my coat.

I considered sweaters and bulk. Coats that were just coats and coats that were something more. I thought about colors and lines, shapes and sizes.

Eventually, I found one I liked. It cost a little more than a basic black coat, but it was cute. After a couple of dates, of courting and clicking and looking longingly at the website, I ordered the coat. I waited to retire the red jacket, unbuttoned and unsewed, to the back of a dining room chair.

Finally it arrived. Velvety, plush and warm. A little too big. I considered sending it back but decided to wear it to work, tearing off the tags and committing to a somewhat pricey purchase.

I lost two buttons on that first tagless day, another fell three days later and a fourth in the elevator at work. Key buttons. Vital buttons. Buttons required to keep out the cold as the winter wind whistled.

Back to the red fuzz until I figured something out.


Tag: Clothes

Boogie woogie, woogie

Yesterday, I received an email from the electric company. Today, I got the bill. For the second February in a row, I owe about $250 for 28 days of warmth. That's 297 lira, 9,972 rupees, or 26,835 yen sputtering away in my 650-square foot, 60-degree subterranean apartment.

I share walls with people. Shouldn't that provide some sort of insulation?

I can only imagine what might happen if I raised the temperature to something approximating tepid, if I tried to sleep without the flannel sheets, thick blanket, heavy quilt and down comforter in my fleece pants and baggy college sweatshirt.

Spelunking in West Virginia's Organ Cave wasn't much colder with year-round temps between 52- and 55-degrees Fahrenheit. Of course, spelunking in West Virginia's Organ Cave also required hiking boots, a head lamp and far too much crawling on my stomach in the dark.

The past couple of years have been much better than the first couple of years when the company mixed up our boxes. I paid for my neighbors and nobody paid for me. Not only did they have double the space, but the girl upstairs spent the better part of two years pregnant, running the air conditioner non-stop in DC heat and the furnace plus space heaters to keep the babies warm on cold winter nights.

Once I figured out that I was paying for the wrong meter, once I sorted out the cutoff notices and technician visits, I flipped the switch on my low-energy bulbs and shed a little light on my living situation. I started matching my shirt to my trousers and looking a little less like a harlequin or a harlot. Marginally. Maybe. Unintentionally, at least.

Winters still cut like a knife, though, a big, vibrating, cutting into the turkey at a family Thanksgiving, electric sort of knife.

I would swallow my pride and little else, cutting into the food budget and choosing to stay in on cold, February nights. I would try to find a way to balance the $22 summer payments with the $250 winter fare. I had little choice but to pay the bills and figure out creative ways to stay warm on winter nights.

Come let me take you on a party ride, and I'll teach you, teach you, teach you. I'll teach you the electric slide.


Tag: Bills

Winners

I stayed up late to watch the Oscars, to see who won, to ruin my week with too little sleep between weekend and weekday. By the time Daniel Day-Lewis took the stage or the Coen brothers for the second or third time, I had forgotten who won as lead actress.

It took me a while to remember Marion Cotillard, and honestly, I'd been rooting for her as much as anybody else. She did a fabulous job as Edith Piaf in "La Vie en Rose." It just didn't matter. None of it did. I watched for the pretty dresses and funny commentary, for excited, speechless thanks, for Jon Stewart. I wanted Day-Lewis to win or I knew he would. The line blurred long ago.

Once upon a time or sometime last fall, a friend sent me a chain letter, one of those email messages that clutter the inbox and make recipients groan with the weight of wondering, "Will I really get my wishes if I send it to my friends?"

3 PEOPLE - YOUR WISH WILL COME TRUE EVENTUALLY
5 PEOPLE - YOUR WISH WILL COME TRUE IN 3 MONTHS
10 PEOPLE - YOUR WISH WILL COME TRUE IN 5 WEEKS
15 PEOPLE - YOUR WISH WILL COME TRUE IN 1 WEEK

CAN'T WAIT A WEEK???

22 PEOPLE - YOUR WISH WILL COME TRUE IN 1 DAY!!!!!

All mismatched and unformatted with broken words and spaces in between.

The very few times I felt the need to send on the wish, I reformatted the message and dropped the header and footer, dropped the obligation. I BCC'd my friends. I ran a spellcheck. For the most part, I archived the messages and the sentiments behind them.

As I watched the Academy Awards, though, I remembered the message from a lifetime ago or sometime last fall, as the case may be. I searched through my messages, sure that I had it still somewhere. After a day of half-hearted looking, I found the right combination of culprits and comments to find it buried beneath my word of the day, next to poorly penned poems.

The header bore the subject "FW: Fwd: FW: Charles Schultz Philosophy" and far too many email addresses. Under a couple dozen headings, I found a quiz.

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.
3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America Contest.
4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.
5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.
6. Name the last decade's worth of World Series winners.

Some text in the middle, between cartoons, reminded me that the answers didn't matter.

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. They are not second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

It followed with another quiz.

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.
5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

I could name every one of my teachers between Kindergarten and sixth grade and most of those from the 10 years that followed, until I earned a Bachelor of Science. Three friends. Five people who taught me something worthwhile. It was easy. It was cheesy, but I appreciated the reminder, even if I didn't send it to 22 friends within the hour.


Tag: Awards Influence

The Last Season

Side-splitting, eye watering, snorting gulps of laughter filled the night. I couldn't help myself, eventually choking on a mouthful of Dom Perignon, champagne burning my throat as I gasped for breath.

"Dinner or hotel? Hotel? Dinner?"

I probably shouldn't have mentioned that dating disaster.

Then, again, it made for entertaining dinner conversation at an otherwise somber event, a last supper of sorts. The honorees wouldn't be crucified in the morning, but within days, a truck would head west with all of their earthly belongings. Not long after that, they'd follow by plane, leaving DC and our group behind.

We talked about webcams and recipes, keeping each other posted on upcoming books and dates, dinners and conversations, but things would change. They had to change with two of the founding members living in Seattle. We had yet to figure out a bicoastal book club.

Even the ongoing discussion of Kristin and the Albanian couldn't keep tears from our eyes as we raised our glasses in a toast to the club and the couple who had helped form it. With a quote from the Wizard of Oz, the man who brought the bubbly stated, "As Dorothy said to the Scarecrow, 'I think I'm going to miss you most of all.'"

Eyes shone brightly as flutes clinked around the table. El Presidente, with tears of his own, presented the couple with a gift of his own – a framed collage of every book cover from the past 10 years. Groans and laughs accompanied each one with broken off bits of "that was my first book" and "remember when" and "who suggested?"

I hadn't been with the club long. At least two of the books in the print were mine. Another couple of dozen I had read and others I had in my library at home. Two of years, at best. Long enough to feel comfortable sharing a dating disaster or two, dinner once a month, my outspoken views on everything from literature to lingerie with a heavy dose of political parrying with the group. I was still officially the newest member, despite everyone's best intentions.

We expected a new member last night. He was supposed to bring the dessert. Instead, we shared a pint of sorbet bought for the vegan, eight or nine of us dipping into the cardboard cup and passing it. Nobody seemed to mind the lack of sweets as we laughed and talked, dancing in our seats, jumping around to a story about remote controls and DVDs, remember carbon copies and typewriters, life without remotes, books.

Eventually, we talked about the book, too, The Last Season, by Eric Blehm. The biography told the true story of the life and disappearance of National Park Service ranger Randy Morgenson who disappeared in the back country after 28 seasons on the job.

We all had thoughts on the way it was written and what might have happened out there in the woods. As for me, it was a "miss your stop on the Metro" kind of book.

"That's how I lost my wallet," said our host, so engrossed in the story that he missed his stop and fell prey to a pickpocket on his return trip.

I missed a stop or three while reading the book and everyone else seemed to like it. We returned to its pages, the glossy ones in the middle, trying to place the stories we read, the discussion we had, with the faces we saw in fading black and white.

We took our own pictures over the course of the night. Some candids. Some group shots, posed around the love seat as someone called out, "Say cheese."

"Hotel or dinner?"

The photos should be filled with laughter.


Tag: Books

Penelope

I love fairy tales. I grew up in the age Disney, of princesses and happily ever after. Something, somewhere deep inside, wants to believe that everything will be all right. It might have been the mouse. It might have been old blue eyes crooning.

Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you
If you're young at heart
For it's hard, you will find, to be narrow of mind
If you're young at heart

Either way, I believed. I clapped my hands. Somewhere, fairies thrived.

A little later in life, I read tales from the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson. I discovered the "real" story of the little mermaid and she morphed into sea foam, awaiting her entrance to heaven. In 300 years. Her sentence was extended a day for every child's bad deed, reduced a year for every good. (Though, I remembered it the other way around and thought she'd never get there.) The message overpowered the sweetness.

When I heard about a modern day fairy tale staring Christina Ricci and James McAvoy, Catherine O'Hara and Reese Witherspoon, my interest was piqued. Not only did the little girl inside want a sweet story but the grown up me really respected the cast.

Penelope (Ricci) is a lovely young woman cursed with a pig's snout for a nose. Potential suitors would often take the shortest route out of her house after seeing her nose, which often means through the second story window.

The lovely young McAvoy (The Last King of Scotland, Atonement) stole my heart as well as that of the young heiress (Ricci) while O'Hara and Academy Award-winning Witherspoon added comic relief to the simple story of beauty and a beast.

Ricci made it difficult to accept the girl, the woman, as anything but a beauty, but fairy tales aren't meant to be believable. They're meant to be tasty little stories wrapped around a nougat of truth, and in that vein, Penelope delivered. All of it. Message-laden. Sweet. Pretty.

The clothes alone made it worth watching, and I wanted to move to Scotland to find the scruffy leading man. Eye candy. Brain candy. Lovely.

Theatrical Release: Feb 29, 2008


Tag: Movies

Lunacy

If it hadn't been on my homepage, I wouldn't have known a thing about it. Strike that. If there hadn't been a big, colorful picture on my homepage, I wouldn't have known a thing about it.

"Pretty."

I searched NASA's website and found the Lunar Eclipse Page with all sorts of information like important times and the fact that there wouldn't be another until 2010, not a Total Eclipse of the Moon.

The name threw me and I started singing.

Turn around, Bright Eyes.
Every now and then I fall apart.
And I need you now tonight.
And I need you more than ever.

The song drove all logic from my mind, and then I saw a horror flick. By the time I left the movie, I'd completely forgotten both total eclipses of the heart and the moon as I waited for a bus on a street corner in Georgetown. The snow had stopped. The wind hadn't and my skirt flapped around my thighs.

By the time I made it to Eastern Market, I just wanted to be home. A noisy bus ride. Stop and go traffic. Crippling hunger from a too-small lunch and too-nonexistent supper. I practically ran from the bus through the cold, clear night. Suddenly, for no reason at all, I looked up and saw the moon, a bright, beautiful moon, covered in part by a shadow. Our shadow. The earth.

I kept going outside, cold and coatless half the time with my dinner in the microwave. I wanted to see the eclipse. On the second or third trip I took my camera. On the fourth or fifth, I took my tripod. My batteries died and I alternated between an almost dead set and a barely charged set for an hour or so, hoping to get a picture, any picture, that captured the coolest thing I'd seen all week.

People stopped to talk as I stood on the sidewalk, watching the moon disappear. They looked at me when they asked if I could see it.

"It's right there," I replied, pointing.

"You can see it," they noted with awe.

A long shutter time. Wind. Dying batteries. I didn't think I'd get anything. I don't know why I tried. I think I wanted to keep busy, to distract myself from the cold, almost as much as I wanted the picture. I had trouble focusing under the street lights of Capitol Hill, trouble seeing a moon that appeared so big to my wondering eye and so small through my camera's display, but I kept trying.



Tag: Astronomy Photography Wednesday nights

The Signal

"What kind of crazy am I?" I wondered as the story unfolded.

I feared I'd turn into "rabid movie fan," a supporting character in somebody else's drama, ready to scream, as the woman behind me talked through the opening credits and well into the start of the film, stopping to slurp her soda, to swallow, to cough. I bit my tongue and focused on The Signal.

I didn't know much about it going into the film. A mid-afternoon message of a screening in Georgetown. A Q&A session with the film’s three directors (David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush) and lead actor Justin Welborn. A brief synopsis.

It’s New Year’s Eve in the city of Terminus and chaos is this year’s resolution. All forms of communication have been jammed by an enigmatic transmission that preys on fear and desire driving everyone in the city to murder and madness. In a place once marked by conformity but now sent into complete anarchy, the rebellious Ben must save the woman he loves from the bedlam in the streets as well as her crazed sadistic husband. But the only way he can tell who to trust or who has given in to violence is by uncovering the true nature of The Signal.

In the mood for something other than an evening at home, I walked through Arlington under falling flakes to see a movie about which I knew next to nothing. I regretted the lack of a hat as wind whipped my hair when I crossed the Potomac. A scarf might have been nice, or pants, but I enjoyed the walk, arriving with a dripping nose to join a line at the theater.

The Q&A session didn't happen; though, three men who might have been the directors introduced it and told the meager crowd to enjoy the show. They thanked us for braving the inclement weather and without further ado, the movie started. Stopped. Started again with a 70s horror feel, and I didn't know what to expect. Slowly, the movie fell into place.

"I like this," the girl behind me stage whispered to her date. "It scares me. Movies don't normally do that."

I wasn't exactly scared but I enjoyed the horrific aspects of it (when I didn't desperately want the characters to shower, covered with dried blood as they were). I wondered if I imagined social commentary in there with the homicidal maniacs, corpses and humor.

"Does anybody want a cocktail?"

The film took itself seriously enough but not too much so, balancing the fine line between horror and cheese, with plenty of random bodies, men with hammers and chainsaw men to go around. And I might not have imagined the social commentary.

I thought of the film as I waited for a bus on the cold February night, of the signals preying on our fears and desires. I looked up to see the moon changing shape in a clear winter sky. I came home and set up my tripod and a camera.

"You think you're going to see the eclipse, don't you?" a neighbor asked, looking at me instead of the sky.

"It's almost there," I said, pointing.

He looked up in surprise.

"I figured it was either that or watch TV," I explained, thinking of signals, of the movie, of letting someone else tell me what to think and the irony of getting the message from a film.

"This is better," he said before going inside. "It's live."

I stayed on the sidewalk and watched the moon disappear.


Tag: Movies

Frustrated

The woman beside me screamed with laughter.

"No, don't tell me that!" she guffawed, hands over her ears when I asked how long I would have to use my paper cards. "You shouldn't have them."

She said that we'd have "ample time" to use any remaining checks before transitioning fully to an automated system, to permanent cards and limited benefits.

Apparently, walking to work, working more than bankers' hours and traveling outside of rush hour meant that I should get less. Other people could have full benefits. Extra benefits, if they chose to add pretax dollars, but tax benefits for employers meant I couldn't have the travel money. I couldn't have a parking space either or cash reimbursement. I could only get what I used and I didn't use much.

I was not amused.

I glared at her as she rocked back in her seat, covering her ears and shrieking. A soft knock sounded at the door, and my glare melted into confused wonder as a man I had never seen entered the conference room from the meeting next door.

"I'm sorry," he started, only to be cut off by half the meeting with "oh, we're done" and "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry," he reiterated, "but..."

"Oh, I'm leaving," the shrieker said. "And I'm the loud one."

She packed up her belongings and prepared to leave. I swiveled between her and the man who continued to advance into our meeting.

"It's not us... We don't mind... It's just the speakers. On the speaker phone? They pick up everything."

"We're done."

"Oh... OK..." he backed out of the room and back into his meeting.

The woman who laughed packed up and left without answering my question. I had no idea how long I'd have to use my cards. From the gales of laughter, I knew it wasn't long, and I knew she didn't care.

I would have to stay an extra hour to make up time for the meeting. It wasn't billable.

I shrugged out of the coat I'd worn since walking in late from meetings downtown, meeting after meeting after meeting with work piling precariously on my tired shoulders. I pulled a quart of soup from my bag and headed toward the kitchen to heat up my lunch. Midafternoon snack. Breakfast. Whatever.

"Troublemakers," whispered a coworker coming from the "other" conference room for coffee.

"I'm sorry."

"We weren't even on the phone," he said, pouring a cup. "I didn't know what he was doing."

I went back to my office and booked a ticket to Buenos Aires.

"Any place but here," I thought.


Tag: Work Offices Meetings

600 pages

In the fugue of early morning, dreamy light, I flipped on the TV and slipped back to sleep, unwilling to shed the warmth, the peace, the solitude of a long weekend at home for another week at work.

I dreamt of dinner out with friends. Eight of us crammed around a small table near the kitchen yet next to the door in some unknown, middle American restaurant. My brother, his friends from the Peace Corps, sitting around, talking while waiting for a table big enough for all of us. As we crowded, sharing seats, listening and joking, some of us talked of books. Others of politics. Conversations overlapped with voices rising and falling into laughter.

The waitress came out and explained that the restaurant was full. We couldn't sit together; though, we could have two tables of four in different parts of the restaurant. Then, she turned to me and said that we had to change our conversation. The kitchen could hear it and they didn't like what we had to say. I think she might have said we were over-privileged kids without any experience or real world knowledge.

She definitely said, "I don't have time to read a 600-page book."

I think that's when I knew it was a dream, but strangely enough, the whole lecture threw me. I started spouting about first amendment rights, restaurants and overworking. I awoke with my heart racing, for no reason at all, and found Matt Lauer hosting a discussion on the (potential) dumbing down of America, of technology, of reading, a conversation that melted into my dreams.

In reviewing a clip, I realized that Noah Oppenheim had said, "People don't have the time to read 600-page books."

The conversation touched on lifestyle and choices, of being too busy to read, of choosing a more technologically-driven approach to learning and understanding, of gaining information. My heart continued to race as author Susan Jacoby talked of pride in ignorance.

"We're too busy to read," Lauer cited as a common excuse while Oppenheim debated that people who surfed the Net preferred lowbrow entertainment and would never read Proust.

In my dream, as we sat around the table, I pulled a book from my bag, which included Swann's Way by Marcel Proust as well as a couple of others that I actually bought Saturday afternoon. My dream preceded the conversation, or so I thought in the hazy disorder of dreams, where everything happens at once and nothing happens at all, of leaps from politics and dinner with friends to first amendment rights and long days at work.

As I walked to the Metro with two books in my bag – my current bookclub read and something for fun – I thought about time.

"I'd love to cook," a friend told me two weeks ago, "but I just don't have time. I work 14-hour days."

I couldn't quite believe it then: 14-hour days. I don't quite believe it now but I do understand long workdays. Impossible deadlines. Losing evenings and weekends to work.

I also understand "not having enough time" to work out, to cook, to read, and I realize that for most of us working one job, it's not about time at all. It's about priorities. Choosing what we want to do and making time for it.

Days haven't gotten shorter. They are the same length they have always been and lives have gotten longer. Life expectancy, anyway. It's just up to us to figure out how we want to fill them. The days. The lives. With books or TV, with friends, family or work, with homemade food or restaurant fare, with travel, with reading, with knitting, with sports.

Anybody can read a 600-page book. Not everybody wants to do it. To each his own, but don't blame time.


Tag: Reading Dreams

Grounded

I meant to leave town, to take advantage of a three-day weekend, a day off with pay, a chance to travel, but I couldn't get it together enough to figure out where I wanted to go. And so BBC America provided most of my international exposure. Two Days in Paris made up the rest.

I cleaned a little and made more of a mess as I cooked the contents of our weekly crate. Soup and roasted vegetables. Risotto and slaw. The house filled with the scents of winter fare as I listened to "You Are What You Eat," a man who ate only red meat, a woman who filled herself with pastries meal after meal, day after day. I tried to ignore talk about poo and to push back the memories of a man in Starbucks who kept pushing against my arm as he laid out his newspaper.

"It smells," my friend said.

"It smells like..."

"Poop, I say. Poop."

"That's so Midnight Cowboy," I said as we stood to leave, turning to try to find a fresh breath of air in the unbearable stench. "Did that man just lean on me and soil himself?"

It brought a new sense to our Sunday routine. Coffee and conversation, a stroll through the farmers' market. The day felt so much more relaxed with another day of freedom from work, from routine, from early mornings.

We'd meet for a matinee – Definitely, Maybe. A chick flick for a group of girl friends. The Metro filled with families, children heading to Disney on Ice. One of our friends couldn't find parking. Another found herself stuck on the Red Line due to a holiday schedule, single tracking and scheduled platform rehabilitation.

"I even planned for this," she wrote in a text message, frustrated and foregoing the film, seeing more of the 70-degree day than those of us in a darkened theater.

I would have to buy an umbrella when we left before my sweater suffered from the downpour.

"You're going to start smelling soon," a friend observed.

"Mmmm... Wet wool."

Overdressed for the warm day, I left my coat at home and wore cords and a sweater into the warm day. I'd be wrongly dressed when the rain came, too. Wet wool. Damp boots. Foggy glasses. I would dry out soon enough before the stove, the oven, in my tiny kitchen.

The day passed too quickly. The weekend. The everything. It seemed a lifetime since I left the office Friday afternoon, but a lifetime of little nothings, a lifetime of bonding with the sofa and catching up with friends, of drinking too much and sleeping too little, of grounding myself, and then it was gone.


Tag: Home Holidays

Shots

I scooped the tumbler that slid across the tiled counter and looked up at the bartender who winked at me.

"Cheers."

We clinked glasses – the two girls who ordered shots, the bartenders and I. Tapped the top of the bar. Slammed the shot. Mine was the first on the bar, glass on ceramic tile tinkling softly.

"What was that?"

"I have no idea."

"Nice."

Sweet. Like pineapple and cherries. There must have been some alcohol in there, a lot of it, given the way the bartender poured. He seemed flirty at first. By the end of the night, he just seemed drunk.

"You're awfully slutty tonight," my friend observed.

"Did everyone hear that?" he asked the bar, but nobody paid attention. "You can all leave now."

We did leave shortly thereafter, as soon as we could, but he wouldn't quite look in our direction as I leaned across the bar, trying to catch his eye and my credit card. The other, less intoxicated, bartender helped and we made our way into the night, to find a cab home.

I didn't intend to go out. Friends of a friend were coming to town and she had invited me out for something local. The Rock and Roll Hotel. The Red and the Black. The Palace of Wonders. Something on H Street, not too far away.

Hours would pass before I figured out before I was and where I wanted to be. I wasn't sure of either.

"I think you should do a shot."

"I already did."

"Where was I? The bathroom?"

"No... You were here."

She didn't remember. I barely remembered Then, again, I wasn't exactly sure how I got there in the first place. All I wanted to do was climb into bed. I was halfway there when I got the text message. Sweatpants and bra. I was just pulling on the sweatshirt from my freshman year in college when I checked my phone. A night out. With friends. I groaned and changed back into jeans.

"I'll be right there," I typed into the phone and pulled on my boots.

The night just went from there. A man with a tractor logo tattooed into his forearm another on the crown of his head and lines tracing absolutely nothing in between. Music. Tattoos. Boys. Friends. Drinks. I might have slipped under a fleece blanket on my couch, between flannel sheets.

I tugged at my shirt, trying to get it to cover more than it might.

"If it's uncomfortable, just take it off," the bartender shouted. "If you want, I can help."

He pointed a nozzle at me and threatened me with water or soda, something soaking. That was in the flirty stage, not the "I don't want to look at you even though you want your tab" phase of the night.

It went in phases. The night. The bartender. The friends were the best part of the night, even better than pineapple. Unplanned shots. Flannel and sweats.


Tag: Drinking Friends

Pain in my leg

In December, I hurt myself. I'm not sure what happened but an ache in my shin turned into an unbearable lump of fiery hot, moan-inducing pain, so I hobbled onto the Metro and to the hospital, to the emergency room, to figure out what was wrong.

The experience was what it was. A little poking, a little prodding and a whole lot of waiting. I unzipped my boot and read my book for an hour or two as doctors came and asked me what was wrong. The hot, pulsating pain radiated from a lump on my leg and covered most of my shin in throbbing shades of pink.

"What happened?"

"I don't know," I replied. I had fallen a few days earlier but the pain preceded the fall. The swelling and heat seemed to have a life of its own.

"Are you pregnant?" a nurse asked.

"I don't think so," I replied, wondering how that applied to my leg, but when she wheeled me to another room, I understood. An X-ray ruled out a fracture. Someone else drew a line around the swelling (covering most of my leg) and told me to return in a couple of days to rule out an infection. They told me to keep doing what I was doing.

"But that's what led to the hospital," I thought. "I can no longer walk."

I called my brother to pick me up and that was that. In a couple of days, I went back as ordered. The pain had eased, the swelling subsided, and they told me I was fine. I still had a lump but I could walk.

Two months later, I still have a bump. It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't go away. Neither does the hospital visit, apparently, as I keep receiving inquiries about my "accident."

Once a week, I find a letter in the mail, asking for details. Did it happen at work? As the result of a car accident? On someone else's property?

The forms keep getting longer as the insurance company tries to get someone else to pay for the visit. I keep replying "My injury was NOT the result of an accident" (plus details) because my injury was not the result of an accident. Plus details.

The hospital sent a letter saying that I needed to call them and my insurance company to sort out the details. I had already responded once, twice, a half dozen times.

I received the most recent form yesterday. I completed it and mailed it back. I wait with bated breath for the next. I only wonder which will disappear first – the questions or the inexplicable lump on my leg.


Tag: Doctors Health Insurance

Delirium tremens

Which book is it? The Dharma Bums? Big Sur?

At some point, he describes the waves bouncing. I think that might have been the moment I fell in love with him. Then, again, I was probably already there. That might have been the moment that I realized I was in love with Jack Kerouac.

The way that man used words...

I think I read them all. They overlap in my mind, the words cramming together, reaching, stretching, trying to find space in my cluttered mind.

It seems like it should be Big Sur. Delirium tremens. Madness. In the book in my mind, tension mounts. Life spins out of control until, looking at the sea, the waves, it just... breaks. The spinning stops. The shaking stops and everything will be all right.

Maybe that's how it works sometimes. Life. Madness. Peace. It just... breaks. The spinning stops. The shaking stops and everything will be all right.



Tag: Books
Stress

Lonely London

"What am I doing?" I asked myself for the 107th time.

Silently, I counted the number of people standing in front of me, doubled the number and calmed my nerves for a minute or two. I checked my watch and watched the queue behind me grow.

I had flown to London to see a play (in two parts) based on Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials." Both segments would be performed on Saturday, February 14. Valentine's Day. Presidents' Day gave me an extra day to travel and the friend who introduced me to works lived in London. I would have a place to stay and a friend for the show. It seemed like a perfect plan, except for one little thing.

I didn't have tickets.

By the time I read about the play in The Economist, the show had long since sold out. I checked the theatre's site. I checked eBay. The only way to get tickets was to stand in line on the day of the performance and hope to get day seats, one (or two) of 50 last-row seats sold on the day of the performance. I prayed for Valentine's Day breakups, returned tickets, extra seats.

I flew Thursday night, arriving groggy and grainy-eyed to find my friend at Heathrow. After a quick hug, he pulled me to the car and dropped me at his apartment before work Friday morning.

"You remember how to get in, right? I'll be back around six for dinner. Is that good?"

I nodded dumbly, unsure which question I answered. I unlocked and relocked the gate, unlocked and relocked the door, and dragged my bag up the stairs to his apartment. I crawled into his bed, changed my mind and crawled into the shower.

Blindly, I dressed and headed back down the stairs with his iPod and his London A-Z in my bag, unlocking and locking, unlocking and locking. I found my way to the Tube and timed myself, tracking how long it took to get to London's South Bank from somewhere close to the airport, to Waterloo, to the theatre.

Mission accomplished, I walked along the Thames, past the Oxo Tower, to the Tate. I walked the Millennium Bridge to St. Paul's, my camera poised, unfamiliar music providing a soundtrack to the surrealism of being so tired in a city I almost knew. I walked all day and caught the Tube back to the Osterly station, cold, tired and happy.

He was there when I got home, playing a game, starving. We walked to a restaurant where everything fell apart. I was tired; he was mean. We weren't dating. We weren't anything more or less than friends and that seemed to be the root of our issue, but neither of us spoke the words.

Valentine's Day dawned earlier than either of us would have liked. We walked in silence to a train station and rode wordlessly to Waterloo.

"Which way do we go?" he asked.

"I don't know. I took the Tube. I'm not really sure where we are. I can tell you from the Tube part of the station," I offered. He grunted. I led us into the dawning February morning.

"We could have gone out the other door," he snapped.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know."

I pointed the way to the theatre where we both sank gracelessly, silently to the ground. He listened to music. I read, talked to strangers, counted the people before me in line. An hour passed. Two. In silence but for the occasional criticism. I shivered and pretended I didn't notice; I wasn't that good.

Eventually, people started to move. To stand. The doors opened and our tension faded. We found ourselves at the counter, asking for tickets.

"I have day seats for the first show and returns for the second," the agents said or something like that. Only British. She told us the price. I looked at my friend and he nodded.

"We'll take them."

He walked away from the desk, leaving me to pay for all four. We whiled away the hours at the Tate before taking our last row seats for the matinee. Later, after an early dinner, we found our way back to the theatre for the second part. We took the train home.

Sunday dawned gray and drizzly. I walked through Covent Garden by myself. Soho. From a fast food restaurant overlooking Leicester Square, I would watch actors stroll the red carpet, heading into the BAFTAs.

On Monday, I would leave. I would return to London but not to see him. I don't think we ever talked again.

On Valentine's Day, though, February 14, 2004, I flew to London to see a play for which I didn't have tickets, and I found myself at the Royal National Theatre, watching a play in two parts. The first from the last row, the second from the first. Close enough to smell the makeup. I had banked on returned tickets from the lovers' holiday. I was right.


Tag: Friends Valentine's Day

On the phone

"Do you want to know what I've been watching?"

Cupid's Funniest Moments?

"No. I've been watching... What?"

Cupid's Funniest Moments? It's on channel 20. What is that channel now? The one that used to be UPN.

"No... Listen. I've watched Bridget Jones' Diary. Twice in a row."

No wonder you hate Valentine's Day.

"Four Weddings and a Funeral. Twice in a row."

Christ.

"And every Lifetime movie ever made."

Shoot me now.

"I don't want to go downstairs, so I've just been watching whatever comes on my 9-inch TV."

I've got the Mr. Men Show because my nieces recommended it.

"Mr. What?"

Mr. Men. Little Miss and Mr. Men?

"I don't know what that is."

A cartoon? With Little Miss Helpful and Mr. Nosey and Mr. Happy. They're adjectives, anthropomorphized.

"It sounds like kindergarten."

My nieces are six and seven... I've got In Treatment (about a clinical psychologist) and a couple documentaries about AIDS and South Africa and Hutu soldier trying to help his family escape from Rwandan genocide.

"Don't you have anything light?"

Basketball Diaries?

"Let's drink."


Tag: Telephone Conversations

Grace

"Please stop," I whispered, unable to swallow the words. "Please stop. Please stop. Please stop."

At the bottom of the hill, I saw a Red Top cab through the rain-speckled windshield. Beside me. Behind. A car idling on the side of the street. Beside me. In front. Beside.

I waited for impacted as I spun slowly. Gracefully. Images of Fantasia's hippos flitted across my mind. Later, I would wonder why it was the hippos and not my life flashing before me. At the time, though, I could only stand on the brakes and whisper.

Please stop.

Idiotically, I pushed harder on the pedal under my feet. It held firm, would go no farther.

"Antilock brakes," I thought. "Don't pump," which made me want to flutter the pedal. Instead, I eased my footing and waited.

Beside me. Behind. Beside. In front of me. The world spun out of control. Hands at 10 and two. Please stop.

Toward the bottom of the hill, the spinning, the sliding slowed and my Jeep skidded to a stop, perpendicular to the street, next to the idling car.

"I didn’t roll," I thought with relief. "I didn't roll. I didn't hit anyone. I didn't hit anything."

Hands at 10 and two, I shook silently in the seat as Jenny Lewis sang, "But you can wake up younger under the knife; and you can wake up sounder if you get analyzed. And I'd better wake up. There but for the grace of god go I."

I considered pulling into a (legal) spot and crying. Instead, I restarted the engine, slipped my Wrangler into 4-wheel drive and pulled forward. I drove down the hill toward the waiting taxi. The driver had rolled down his window. He stared at me with eyes wide open, wagging his head when I (somewhat lamely) advised caution. He turned his car around and followed me to the light.

It would take over an hour to get into the District. The ramp to Route 50 was closed. Parts of 395. The CD found its way back to Lewis and I switched to the radio.

"There are too many accidents to note them all," the announcer chirped in an inappropriately cheerful voice. "Take care out there. Slow down. Take your time."

Slow down. I looked out into a sea of red taillights and unmoving cars. I pressed play and listened to Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins. "What are you changing? Who do you think you're changing? You can't change things. We're all stuck in our ways."

I started shaking again. Later, after thoughts of the hippos and my life, after an hour and a half of standstill traffic, I would stand in front of a woman, spelling my name over and over until she could find me in her book. The tears started to well. I took my ballot and voted, connecting one little line. One voice. One vote. I went home before I could cry.

I started the day with thoughts of a cancer that might someday strike, an offhand remark from a doctor about cutting off my breasts as a preventative measure. I ended it with a vote and a beer. The Mr. Men Show. Email. In the middle, I could have died.

There but for the grace of god go I.

Tag: Driving Accidents

High risk

The rest of the story...

When the first alarm sounded at six, I groaned. Turned it off. Went back to sleep. The second sounded at seven with "the local noise source" blanketing a barely distinguishable buzz. I flew to the windowsill and slammed snooze before climbing back between the sheets, the warm flannel sheets, a soft blanket, a heavy quilt, a down duvet.

The alarm sounded again.

And again.

And again.

Window, snooze, bed. Lather, rinse, repeat.

"I don't need an hour an a half to get to the doctor's. An hour and 15 minutes should work."

Fifteen minutes later, I revised my opinion to an hour. Eventually, I would turn on the TV, squinting to see the screen without corrective eyewear. I recognized the familiar banner under the screen as school cancellations. I turned a blurry eye to the door but couldn't see a thing.

"A wintry mix spreading from Kentucky to New England," said a newscaster, breaking to a reporter somewhere in Ohio. Marysville.

"Did my freshman roommate come from Marysville?" I wondered. "St Marys. I think she was from St Marys. Where is Marysville?"

The wondering, the school cancellations, the wintry mix, the location, pulled me from bed and I resigned myself to getting ready, to checking my email, to leaving.

It seemed warmer than Monday morning. Not as bracing. Not as blustery. No sight of snow. I couldn't understand the cancellations; though, I did curse my luck – driving on day with anticipated ice. Salt trucks waited by Rock Creek Parkway, plows with drivers at the helm, waiting for snow.

I made it to the office in less than a half hour.

"I didn't want to be late," I offered lamely as I registered at the desk. "And I wasn't sure about the traffic."

"It was light today."

"School cancellations? That always seems to make traffic light."

We talked about snow, sleet and ice, the women behind the desk and I, while I waited in the empty room, but I didn't wait long. I followed the same woman from Thursday into an exam room.

"You haven't had imaging since July?"

"I had an ultrasound last week."

Blood pressure (high) and temperature (low)

"You know what to do," she said leaving me with the thin cotton gown.

Undress from the waist up. Put this on, open in the front. The doctor will be in, in a minute.

I knew the drill. I undressed, pulled on the gown and tied it uselessly at my side. It still gaped. I still struggled to keep it closed, to maintain a sense of dignity, alone on a paper-covered table in an exam room.

"It's definitely a lump," the doctor told me, pressing on the X I'd drawn on my breast in ballpoint pen, scared I would freeze under pressure and fail to find it, as if she couldn't. But the screens were clear and I'd had a biopsy in August. She suggested a baseline mammogram at 35. Another a couple of years after that.

"Do you have a family history?" she asked, looking at my file. "Your maternal grandmother and a paternal aunt?"

"Two. Two paternal aunts. And my paternal grandmother."

I didn't know at the last appointment. My dad never said, "Hey. You might want to keep an eye on your breasts" and we weren't close. I had asked my sister who had been through something similar a couple of years earlier.

"Both of my dad's sisters and his mom."

That apparently changed everything. Talk of genetic testing. Of MRIs. Of biannual exams. Annual mammograms. The words "bilateral mastectomy" surfaced, hanging over my head as I focused on her braces.

Bilateral.

Mastectomy.

Complete removal of both breasts.

"What's the next step?" I asked. "Do I ask them to get genetic testing?"

One aunt lived (without a car or driver's license) in rural North Dakota, the other in Norway. I didn't really talk to either. I could ask. I could go from there.

In the meantime, we decided to leave it at annual imaging. Exams twice a year for the rest of my life. Strangers poking at my breasts, trying to find lumps that I couldn't detect in monthly checks. And monthly checks. An appointment, if anything changed. At all. Ever.

Apparently, I'm high risk.


Tag: Health

Afraid not

A piece of rope hops into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender shakes his head and points to a sign: No ropes allowed. The rope leaves the bar, ducks into an alley and beats himself against a wall. He twists himself like a pretzel and hops back into the bar and onto a stool.

The bartender squints, spits and drawls, "Hey, you. I told you. No ropes allowed! You are a rope, aren't you?"

"No," replies the rope. "I'm a frayed knot."

A frayed knot. Afraid not. Gales of laughter ensue.

I'm not sure why a rope hopped into a bar, what it planned to do with a drink or how it spoke. I'm not sure why the bar banned ropes, but I thought it utterly hilarious and infinitely clever when I learned it at the age of 11.

A couple of decades later, I feel like a little like the rope: Fraying at the ends, knotted in the middle and (almost) in need of a drink.


Tag: Stress

Farm fresh goodness

When a friend forwarded info for a CSA, I deliberated, weighing the pros and cons.

I'd heard about it before - Community Supported Agriculture. A crate of produce from a local farm (or farms) on a regular basis. Going straight to the source, eliminating both packaging and the middle man for farm fresh goodness.

Of course, I'd also heard of the difficulty of keeping up with a new crate every week, of a little too much freshness, of limited selection – or no selection at all. By paying up front, shareholders shared the farmer's costs and a little of his fate. Bad weather, pests, bad growing season could mean slim pickings for those who bought in.

The cost wasn't that much and going through a restaurant increased the variety (and the number of suppliers). But it was the quantity that scared me. A crate of produce a week. Most of a crate, anyway. I feared I would find myself slinking about the apartment, shying away from the kitchen as the stench of rotting produce permeated the air. I'd be that girl who smelled of putrid parsnips, rotting rutabaga, spoiled spinach.

My friend offered a solution – the one who sent the info. We would share the share. Split the bounty and the responsibility. Take on the produce as a team. We'd also start in winter and ramp up to abundance.

Fortunately, over the past couple of years, with a deep-rooted love my neighborhood farmers' market and sheer inability to make it to an actual store for groceries more than once a month or three, I started cooking more and getting a little experimental. Finding recipes that matched the stuff in season.

Sometimes, it didn't work out so well, like the time I made a peach/strawberry cobbler for book club. I don't like peaches. Or strawberries. Or cobbler. But the club seemed to like it. For the most part, though, it seemed to work. I didn't starve.

On Saturday, we picked up the first crate. Part of a crate. Winter produce. Cabbage and turnips, fingerling potatoes. Swiss chard. Beets. Butternut squash. A couple of rutabaga. Not much but enough, especially given the fact that my friend with a cold offered me the whole box. She'd forgotten already and gone to the grocery store. I came home with my box full of food and wondered what I had done. And then I decided to use it all.

For the next two days, I cooked. With the ingredients I had on hand and a trip to the Eastern Market for an onion, some celery and a couple of peppers, to Yes! for a tablespoon of caraway seeds, I cooked. Roasted root vegetables. Millet with squash and cranberries. Cabbage and beet slaw. Two types of soup.

By Sunday afternoon, I sank on the couch, tired and hungry. I'd chopped for two days. Stirred. Whisked. Mixed. All under a cloud of fragrant, winter vegetables. I used everything in the box and had made enough for food for the week. More than enough.

I could never eat that much.

"Did we just form a commune?" I asked, trading food for cookies and feeding a sick friend.

Only time would tell if we'd continue to trade. Take turns cooking. Split the box. First week in – so far, so good.

Though, I smelled a little like somebody's grandmother, all homemade goodness and domesticity. Not exactly the smell I wanted but better than putrid parsnips.


Tag: Food

Signs

Political posters. I came home last night to find a political poster in my (minuscule) front yard, right outside my window. I juggled my work bag and my book club bag to unlock the door and fish my mail from the box, mentally composing a diatribe.

I knew how it got there. My neighbors upstairs. They put a political poster in our front yard, right outside my window, without talking to me.

Honestly, I liked the candidate. That wasn't the issue.

They didn't know anything about me other than the magazines to which I subscribed, misdirected mail, and a handful of email messages about trash and firewood. I baked them bread when they moved into the house as a way of welcoming them to the neighborhood. I baked them cookies at Christmas. But for all intents and purposes, I tended to avoid them. They didn't know me. They didn't know my political affiliation. And they put a sign in our front yard.

I pay a third of the rent on the house. I don't live in their basement. We share a house, a house that I've lived in for three and a half years, and they didn't bother to say anything to me before wooing candidates from our front yard.

I never really got farther than that in the mental diatribe. I couldn't quite figure out what to say. I couldn't make them appreciate that it was my house, too, that they should have talked to me before placing the sign. Or moving the shovel. Or using my firewood. Or dripping paint on my front walk.

I appreciated the fact that I somewhat supported the candidate. But I never would have put a sign in my front yard.


Tag: Neighbors

Shivering

"I talked to radiology. It will be an hour."

"Another hour?"

"Yes."

"But I've been here an hour already."

"Do you want to reschedule?"

"I can't," I moaned, looking at the clock over her head.

I had driven to work and paid for parking. At the office. At the hospital. I would pay at the office again and drive home to drop off my car and take the metro to dinner or drinks or both with a friend after work, and I would feel guilty about leaving the office when I did. I had work to do. Deadlines. Major deadlines. Projects to coordinate.

In a couple of days, I had an appointment with a surgeon that relied on the results of the imaging. A follow up on tests from six months earlier, which was a follow up on tests from a year and a half before that. Almost two years of vague worry and looming dread, of questions and unease.

I couldn't reschedule.

With a book in hand, I tried to concentrate on the printed word. I didn't understand the woman when she called my name, the syllables taking a strange sound on her lips. She repeated and I followed her into the dressing room.

"Undress from the waist up. Put this on, open in the front and take a seat out there."

Knee socks and skirt, thin cotton gown. I tucked my sweater in my bag. My bra. In the frigid waiting area, another woman juggled her clothes, a breast slipping from her gown.

"We drove two hours for this," she said in a soft, Southern accent. "My sister has another appointment at 12:30."

Her sister, half-naked in another room somewhere through the maze of corridors, would have to leave without her.

Funny smells. Lunch gone awry? The mass of undeodorized armpits?

Breasts hung from the gaping fronts of ill-fitting gowns. Some were on backwards. Gowns, not breasts. Text messaging gave way to resigned waiting while those of us with books read. An older woman with short gray hair and pearls played a handheld game. We all shivered in the frigid, smelly waiting area.

I recognized the mispronunciation, my name falling gracelessly in the tense, crowded room and followed a woman to another dimly-lit room with a sink, a chair, an exam table. A computer monitor. An ultrasound machine.

"You can put your stuff on the chair and lie down on the table. This is for your right breast?"

"Left."

"Left?" she looked at the screen. "Slip your left arm from the gown. The radiologist will be here in a minute."

She covered my chest with a towel and left the room. I stared up at the ceiling, at a dirt mark on the wall, and waited. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, I sat up to look at the monitor next to my head. Twenty-five minutes had passed. Two and a half hours of waiting, more than half of that shivering and half-naked.

A man entered the room and followed by the woman who'd brought me to the room. He introduced himself, his name sliding easily from my mind as he told me to lie on my side with my arm over my head. He squeezed gel from a tube onto my exposed breast and started a conversation.

"So, you felt something?"

"It's not so much that I felt something as my doctor did. It's been two years of this."

"Right, your doctor... Can you find the lump for me."

Performance anxiety. Poking at my breast, trying to find a moving lump under a watchful stare.

"I have trouble with this."

I found one. He found another later, to the touch, but nothing on the screen. He left and returned with a more senior radiologist who repeated the screen. The ultrasound.

"It all looks good," she said. "Can you find the lump?"

Once again holding my breast in my left hand and poking with my right while strangers stared at me. I pointed futilely and she laughed dismissively.

"That's just normal breast tissue. Your doctor might want to stick a needle in it, but…" she shrugged.

"It's been two years of this."

Still laughing, she walked out of the room with the male doctor, leaving me alone to gather my things. To dress there if I wanted or to return to the dressing room. The man knocked, entered, handed me a checked form.

Normal Ultrasound. Follow up with my doctor.

I dressed and left, crying angry tears in my car. I felt so helpless. I wondered how I might have felt if I were the one who'd brought it to my doctor's attention, but I wasn't. A doctor, a doctor focused on women's health, sent me for imaging, for a consultation. A surgeon instructed me to return for the check.

Two years of mammograms and ultrasounds, a failed aspiration, a biopsy. Consultations. Following up. Two years of vague worry and unanswered questions. The screens always came back clean but the lumps remained, worrying my doctor, sending me through endless rounds of testing. I didn't even want to be there.

And the radiologist laughed.


Tag: Health

We all fall down

"Remember that you are ashes and unto ashes you shall return." With a shaky hand, she traced the sign of the cross on my forehead slowly, deliberately.

When she finished, she placed her hand on my head for a blessing. I raised my eyes to meet those of the young vicar with spiky blond hair and multiple nose rings, trendy glasses and the trembling hand. The prayers, the meditation, the waiting and the thinking between bread and wine and the ashes that followed seemed to fade.

I never was one for meditation. As I knelt at the rail, I inspected the floor and noted the scars from flower pots and blooming plants, years of shuffling feet at the communion rail. The scuffs and scrapes that marred the hardwood floors made me smile.

I thought of repentance, of the "journey" of penitence, of saying "I'm sorry" or not saying it at all. Apparently the word, repentance, had two separate meanings – feeling regret and doing something about it. As I knelt, inspecting the floor, I supposed the journey to be the latter.

Carvings on the pulpit grabbed my attention for a minute or three as I worked my fingers, tugging at the cuffs of my shirt. A man, the man in the suit next to me, knelt so quietly, so contemplatively that I felt guilty.

I told myself to let go, thinking more of Frou Frou than anything resembling "let go and let God."

So, let go, so let go
Jump in
Oh well, what you waiting for?
It's alright
'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown

I thought of the bastards, the 17 Aurelianos, in One Hundred Years of Solitude, marked forever by the ashes and dying by vengeful hands, identified by the marks they bore. I wondered if I believed in anything enough to care its sign to my grave, to die for it.

A million images swirled through my head. Mardi Gras and pancakes, Ethan Hawke's book and nursery rhymes. A pocketful of posies.

As sirens wailed in the distance, swelling and fading, I wondered as I so often did, what would happen if I just stood up, pushed away and walked out. No ashes. No dismissal or blessing or leave to take. Just. Leaving. And I waited, fidgeting quietly next to the man in the suit until the young vicar in ballet slippers stepped before me.

"Remember that you are ashes and unto ashes you shall return."



Tag: Chur