Randomness

"We demand that big business give the people a square deal...

2008-10-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

...in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal." - Theodore Roosevelt

"We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers. Wherever in any business the prosperity of the businessman is obtained by lowering the wages of his workmen and charging an excessive price to the consumers we wish to interfere and stop such practices. We will not submit to that kind of prosperity any more than we will submit to prosperity obtained by swindling investors or getting unfair advantages over business rivals." - Theodore Roosevelt

I love Teddy Roosevelt. He was a Republican, and I very much admire him. He was a conservationist. He broke up large corporate monopolies. He was also a bonafide racist. Of course, Teddy Roosevelt would be the first person to honor that I believe that. He believed that it was treason to speak anything but the truth about the president, good, bad or indifferent. So when did this all change?

You see, I have been hearing some very disturbing things lately, and I can no longer keep quiet. It started in the irrational ravings of one Ms. Ann Coulter. Rumblings from disgruntled right-wingers trying desperately to salvage their party views on deregulation and make them sound sane in the face of overwhelming evidence that a market run amok will eventually collapse in on itself. Ms. Coulter attempted to carve her own twisted world view into a valid point - the housing crisis, credit crunch and subsequent market collapse you see, have nothing to do with the industry and everything to do with affirmative action.

Now, if you are a thinking person, you are as confused as I was when I started reading the article. I have to confess here that I do read the occasional Ann Coulter lunacy and intermittently turn away from rational television to listen to the mouth-foaming, kool-aid drinking dogma of Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity. I like to know what the other side is thinking. Sometimes, I even find things I agree with (which I am sure would surprise the right as well as the left.) I also have to confess that I sometimes find myself disagreeing with the far left and have to turn off Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann and seek out the quiet serenity of a good book. Political pundits from either side will wear on most of us after a while. But I digress...

Ann Coulter's point was that the good people at the well meaning mortgage companies and investment banks had been duped by left-wing extremists into giving good solid mortgages to "less qualified minorities" and that they had been encouraged to use non-traditional means of approving these mortgages "such as having a good jump shot". The hateful assertion that only minorities are poor or unqualified for mortgages, or that political correctness has already "ruined education, sports, science and entertainment" aside, where does this woman get her facts? I had initially dismissed this article as the frenzied gibbering of an angry right-wing neo-con with a racist belief system. She obviously is mentally unbalanced and belongs under observation at a mental institution, preferably heavily sedated. Then I heard these assertions repeated by another pundit. And another. And another...

What is going on?

First of all - FACT (These, contrary to what Ann Coulter thinks are things that can be backed up and proven...) People of all races, colors and income levels are loosing their homes in this foreclosure crisis. It does not discriminate.

FACT - The "affirmative action" legislation that Ms. Coulter is referring to is the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 "intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safe and sound operations."- That was 30 years ago. Most of the first mortgages offered under the guise of this act ARE PAID OFF. 30 years is a long time. 30 years ago, someone bought a house at a standard fixed rate, paid their mortgages and lived in their homes with no problems (otherwise this melt down would have occurred decades ago... Seriously. Decades.)

FACT - People of all races colors and income levels were sold ARMS. I know a few. A few middle class white people with good jobs and great credit. They were sold the ARM with the line that it would be in their best interest, because one couple in particular had planned to move after a few years, before the ARM hit. These friends had asked about a fixed rate mortgage and had been sold (by a mortgage broker on a commission) an ARM with the rationale that it will save you money. Of course, they had planned to move for a job, that didn't materialize because the big company this young man worked for decided that their programming jobs would be better served overseas. So his work went away. He found a job that paid him a third of what he had originally made. They were still making their payments. They were doing fine.

Then their Adjustable Rate Mortgage rate adjusted. Their previously affordable house payment doubled. I don't know about you, but if my mortgage payment doubled, I would loose my home too.

I know another couple (again, they are white middle class two income household - registered and proud Republicans) sold an ARM so that they could "flip" the house they were buying. They bought one house, worked on it and sold it at a profit after a year. They bought a second house and did the same. The third time, they bought the house, the property values started to drop and the market slowed. They couldn't sell and lowered the price. Then the young man got really sick (cancer is a bitch). He couldn't work. He was on chemo therapy. They started eating into their savings and all of the profits from previous "flips". His medical bills piled up. His wife lost her job (again due to outsourcing) and they lost their insurance. She took the first thing she could find. They were going to be stuck in the house for a bit longer than they had planned, but, they reasoned, they could always re-finance. That is what their mortgage broker had told them.

Only they couldn't re-finance because by this time, their credit was shot. Mounting medical bills and lowered incomes were taking a toll. Then their ARM hit and their mortgage went through the roof. They lost their house. Then my friend lost her husband. She moved back to Indiana to live with her mother. I don't hear much from her these days.

These are two of the stories from people that I PERSONALLY KNOW. I am just one person. How many more of these tales are there? The race of my friends had nothing (absolutely nothing, Ann Coulter, you coward) to do with them loosing their homes. Circumstances changed and they could no longer afford the mortgages they had been sold. Both couples would have been able to afford the initial mortgage payments for a long time. Both couples would have been able to afford a regular rate 30 year fixed mortgage. The ARM killed them. The funny thing is that both middle class white couples would have been able to afford the ARM rate before loosing their income to illness and outsourcing. Life is funny that way.

If the problem had really been dead-beat minorities as so many on the right-wing espouse, then why were these people able to make their initial payments? Then when the ARMs adjusted, they still struggled to make their growing mortgage payments. These are not deadbeats. I will say this once, and I mean it: BROWN SKIN DOES NOT EQUAL DEADBEAT. BROWN SKIN DOES NOT EQUAL BAD CREDIT. Anyone and I mean anyone who ascertains that it does is a racist. That is all. If you, Ann Coulter, and your mealy-mouthed band of followers continue to preach that brown people are bad people, then get a hood and join the Klan, but stop trying to pass yourself off as a decent human being.

I wish I could get paid as much as that woman does to state my opinion and pass it off as fact. But I can't be that mean. I can't be that hateful. I would like to sleep at night and be able to look myself in the mirror in the morning. I have MORALS. (Yes, those of us on the left have morals. We love our spouses. We love our children. We believe in God and Jesus. We go to church. We pray. We do all of the same things in the same communities as the far right, but our voices get drowned out by the constant temper tantrum throwing right wing. For all of the talk about the liberal media, I would like to know where to find it. I can count ONE radio station and ONE television station that cater to the left wing view point. The others are centrist or so far to the right that there is nothing even slightly moderate about them. Thank you Fox News.)

FACT - Let's do some math. The average price of a single family home in Denver, CO was $279,000.00 before this melt down began. However, the average wage for a family of four in Denver, CO was $37,000.00 You are only supposed to spend 3 times your annual income on a house. Three times $37K is $111,000.00 You cannot purchase a house in Denver for $111,000.00 any more. Not even in a ghetto (trust me I looked high and low... this is why I am still renting.) Soooo... the average family cannot afford the average home. That is unsettling to say the least. Home prices have skyrocketed (along with the prices of everything else from gas to milk) and wages have remained stagnant.

How can these families afford these homes? Enter the ARM. Slick mortgage brokers on heavy commissions come in and tell the hopeful families (of ALL races and colors and income levels) that they too can afford their dream home. All they have to do is sign the Adjustable Rate Morgtage. It starts at a ridiculously low APR and will adjust after a set period of time. Sure, the broker tells them, that will raise the payments, but not until after a set period of time. They can re-finance before that ever becomes an issue, right?

He offers them a deal. A $279,000.00 home at a ridiculously low interest rate - say 3.5%... let's see... that makes their house payments roughly $1250 a month. That's reasonable! Right? After all, under a standard mortgage payment, we would be looking closer to $1600 a month. After 5 years we can re-finance before that arm hits. Of course, they don't really understand that re-financing is a lot easier said than done, and any change in their credit status can affect their ability to refinance.

And $1250 may look reasonable on paper... after all, at $37K a year, they get roughly $3000 each month - that leaves plenty left over for food and gas and bills and car payments and pediatrician visits and a family vacation... right?

Wrong. Most people (for whatever reason) don't really think about TAXES. This family is actually taking home about $2400 a month - which means that they are spending HALF on their housing. That same family would never qualify for $1200 in rent. They could manage $800 or $900 tops. This family will barely be scraping by once their mortgage is covered. Most people turn to credit cards for everything else. Now their debt to income ratio is way too high to re-finance.

It's a struggle, but they cover that mortgage payment. Until that ARM hits. Suddenly they are facing a 10% mortgage with a payment of $2450... that is almost double. Some people face almost triple the costs. If this family was taking home $2400 before and scraping by with a $1200 mortgage, now they are falling behind. Now they are in the hole. Now they can't even afford simple things like electricity or enough food. Now they are in the position where they are going to loose that house.

This is the scenario that is playing out all across the country. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with greedy bankers. The first mortgage payment was netting the bank roughly $800 a month in interest alone. Of course once the ARM hit, the bank earned four times that amount. No wonder everyone wanted to get in on the mortgage act.

These products were sold indiscriminately to home buyers, with the knowledge that no one will read the lengthy mortgage documents when they are closing on their homes. If you are reading this blog and you did, pat yourself on the back for your intelligence and your diligence. You are part of about 2% if the population. Should people better understand their own mortgages before signing the paperwork - absolutely. I am one liberal who also believes that there is personal responsibility in this mess, and if you loose a house that you probably shouldn't have bought in the first place, well, maybe next time you will think things through.

However, I still believe it is wrong to trick people into products that they cannot afford. Housing prices skyrocketed because all of the sudden thanks to the ARM, people began to believe that they could afford a huge luxury home rather than a modest starter house. In our instant download society no one wants to wait for anything. People leapt without looking and without realizing that the only parachute around was attached to the back of the CEO of their bank and it was made of solid gold.

The rest of us paupers were expected to feed their gluttony, and god help us, we did. And we continue to. We turn to each other and point the fingers at those like us who made mistakes - either through our own hubris or because they were flat out conned. Instead we should turn and look at the people who control the banks and Wall Street and the major corporations. To the people who own so many houses they loose track. Those are the real culprits. Those are the people who deserve the finger pointing and the burden of this responsibility. Of course, they will never get it. They will send out their trained dogs to tell us that brown people caused this mess and that we should hate each other. Pay no attention, they say, to the man behind the curtain. It is a cheap ploy beneath the dignity of any thinking American. It is a ploy designed to incite blind hatred of brown and black people. And right now, I can think of one very prominent black person that the right wing is (rightfully) terrified of. This was a ploy that worked very well for Hitler when he chose to blame the German economic crisis on the Jewish people. Of course, far be it from me to actually compare Ann Coulter to Adolph Hitler. She just uses the same tired tactics.

Despite our political differences, I believe that we are more alike than we are different. I believe that Ann Coulter and those like her represent a diminishing fanatical fringe who have had their day, fouled in our collective nest, and now we have to clean it up in spite of their incessant squawking. And we will, because we are Americans: left, right, and center.

And we deserve better than that kind of messy backward ideaology.

The best way to appreciate your job…

2008-09-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

...is to imagine yourself without one. – Oscar Wilde.

This morning on the way to work, my husband was lamenting about his job. He said that he didn’t particularly like the uncertainty of not knowing precisely what his bosses really wanted. He doesn’t appreciate being made to feel that his job is in jeopardy every time one of his bosses chooses to “talk to” him, and feels unsteady and unstable. My response to him was “Welcome to the working world.”

After all, just yesterday I was pulled aside by my bosses for a minor transgression. They told me that while I am a valuable member of the team... yadda yadda yadda. I have to admit, when I got the email requesting the meeting – at the end of the work day – I had convinced myself that my desk would be boxed up when it was done and security would be waiting to escort me out of the building. Of course this didn’t happen. Instead, I spent a very unproductive half hour discussing insignificant bullshit with my two bosses. But before the meeting, I had almost worked myself into a blind panic. What if I lost my job?

Huh? I HATE this job. You don’t understand the vehemence with which I pronounce my revulsion. I have been close to walking off several dozen times in the past few months. Sometimes I have to swallow an enormous amount of pride to go back in the next day. I fight this feeling every morning. It gives me heartburn. If I could, I would scribble a short resignation (something along the lines of “I quit effective now.”) and walk out. It would feel good. No, scratch that… it would feel incredible.

For a little while… After the initial euphoria of “I don’t have to work” wore off, the blind panic of “I don’t have a job” would set in. I know me. I would hyperventilate and more than likely vomit. I would start to shake and I would go cold all over. No job means no money means no cable, no power, no car, no gas, no rent, no food. Sure my husband is working, but he doesn’t earn nearly enough to support us. We would end up living in the car, or worse, in a box on the street! I wouldn’t be able to see past that horrifying image. I would feel responsible for our dire circumstances. I would be crippled by the guilt. I would require medication and hospitalization, neither of which we could afford. Oh, God… we wouldn’t have health insurance! My migraines will return! My husband’s diabetes will run amok! There will be great pain and suffering!

Breathe, Dawn. Just breathe for a moment. All is well. You are still gainfully employed. You still have health insurance, and money for food and gas and bills and the car. All is well. All is well. All is well.

The above scenario plays itself out in my head and keeps me in line (most of the time…) I would bet that I am not alone. (Holla at me if you have ever panicked at the thought of being let go and being out of work). I go through most days blissfully unaware that the headsman’s axe could fall at any moment and cut me from the dubious comfort of my work-womb and send me screaming into the world blindly unprepared. I would recover (as would any of us) but it would take some time and it would take a toll. Every now and then I feel the full force of that uncertainty that sits in the back of my mind. Most of the time I can ignore it, but every now and then I feel it.

And, the shit rolls down hill. My boss hears something from her boss who heard something from her boss who heard something from her boss who heard something from the CEO. I am at the very bottom rung of that ladder. The CEO has a bad day and I end up envisioning pink slips and unemployment lines. That is no way to live.

I am convinced that we prepare for this from infancy. Think of the words to that most famous lullaby:

Rock-a-bye baby
On the tree top
When the wind blows
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks
The cradle will fall
And down will come baby
Cradle and all.

What kind of terrifying image is that for a sweet innocent baby? What else could we be saying other than the world is an uncertain place and so is your place in it? Aren’t we all sitting out on a limb someplace, where even a gentle wind can send us tumbling back down to earth? Financially speaking, I know that most of us are living paycheck to paycheck. We don’t save much if anything, and we wind up working for pennies on the dollar compared to what we are worth.

Welcome to the working world.

As I told my husband that we all go through his uncertainty at some point, it dawned on me…

Why?

Why am I doing this? Why is he? The steady paycheck? They can take that away at a moment’s notice. We are at-will employees. I have to tell you, I don’t like being at someone else’s will. If my life here is uncertain, wouldn’t I be just as well off being my own boss? Don’t I have the ability to do that? Don’t we all have the innate ability to follow our own creativity and desires down a more logical path? Wouldn’t we be better off if we did, or at least tried?

Wouldn’t we?

My cat!!

2008-09-18T20:01:00.002-07:00

I swear this is a study of our furry feline Alpha....

I swear it is.

Ha ha ha ha ha HA!

2008-09-18T18:34:00.000-07:00

Sorry - been a little busy... I will resume regular postings next week. In the meantime, enjoy. I laugh every time I watch this. (Especially when Amy Poehler breaks off a piece of the podium...)

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

2008-08-28T11:43:00.000-07:00

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Dr. King would be proud today.

We should all be proud today.

Today, in Denver, history is being made. 45 years to the day after Dr. King delivered the immortal “I have a dream” speech, for the first time in our nation’s history, a black man will be accepting his party’s nomination to run for the office of President of the United States.

Almost 400 years since the first slave ships landed in the Americas, 145 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and only a generation removed from segregation, we are finally starting progress toward a future forged in hope.

It is no secret that I am a big fan of Barack Obama. It is no secret that I am liberal in my leanings. It is no secret that I am a life long Democrat, and proud of that fact. However, I think that all of us need to take a few moments, regardless of our personal political leanings, to recognize the significance of this day. Take a few moments to appreciate the history that was made yesterday as the Democratic Party voted to nominate the nations first black Presidential nominee. Take a few moments to recognize the absolute significance of Barack Obama accepting the nomination 45 years to the day after Dr. King delivered his famous speech. Take a few moments, my fellow Americans, and feel proud.

Today I am truly proud.

I am proud that this history is being made by my political party (hey – at least I am honest about it!). I am proud that this history is being made in my home town of Denver. I am proud of the speeches that were made this week. I am proud of my country and my countrymen. I am proud that I have gotten to witness this day with my husband who was moved to tears by the events of the week.

I can get cynical sometimes, when I see thoughtlessness and when I see ignorance. I tend to throw up my arms in frustration, and can at times feel indignation and anger toward people who want to judge me or my husband by our skin color rather than by who we are and what we have accomplished. It can make a nice girl turn militant and can leave me looking for La Raza so that I can be with La Gente until it’s time for La Revolucion.

But today, I have hope. Today I have pride. Today, I think we are closer to realizing Dr. King’s dream than we have ever been in our history. Maybe one day we truly will be a nation that is able to judge people by the content of our character rather than something as superficial as skin color.

It is my dream too. I have the same dream because the great Dr. King dreamed it for all of us. He spoke about it with such passion that we all know those words. They resonate to the very core of who we are as a nation, stripping us bare to the harsh reality of who we were, and showing us the dream of who we might one day become.

So today, as we reflect on the dream in light of the events of the day, remember how far we’ve come.

And how far we still have to go.

The full text of Dr. King’s speech is available here.

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.

2008-08-14T12:17:00.000-07:00

Big Brother is watching you.

Do you ever feel like you have to look over your shoulder constantly because you are being watched? I’m not talking about a conspiracy theory Orwellian kind of being watched (although that would certainly make an interesting topic for discussion… maybe later). What I am referring to is the kind of watched where some nosey character actually physically watches you. This person watches your every move: what you do, where you go, who you talk to, what you talk about, what web sites you visit, what kind of work you do, how often you pee. Almost like a stalker, only this person watches you in plain sight.

Shit! Hold on….

I had to go because she was watching me again, and I am sick and tired of it.

I have an at-work stalker.

Well, not a “stalker”, really. “Stalker” gives this particular moron too much credit. She is more of an at-work “teacher’s pet” only the “teacher” doesn’t really like her, so doesn’t pay attention to what she does or says. So no matter how much she tattles, no matter what kind of tantrum she throws, it falls on deaf ears. I continue to do what I do, because my manager trusts my own work ethic more than she trusts the word of a loud-mouthed busybody.
Only the whole thing makes me rather uncomfortable.

I feel like I have no privacy. Really, how much privacy should we expect at work? Certainly the company can confront me at any moment about how I spend my time. They can pull internet records, phone logs, emails, documents, etc at any moment. And what would they find out, you may ask? That I do more than my fair share of work, that I am efficient, that I help out where I am needed, and that when I have down time I read the news on CNN and check my hotmail. I sometimes update my blog during lunch when I feel like sitting at my desk. I come in on time, stay late when it is needed and am not adverse to coming in on a Saturday or Holiday when necessary. I only take the allotted lunch time and take one 15 minute break every morning. I hardly ever take an afternoon break. I rarely make mistakes in my work, and if I do make an occasional error, I learn from it and never make the same mistake again. That is what the company would learn from me.

If the company watched me as closely as my new best friend seems to, it would also learn the following things: I drink 2 cups of coffee and a bottle of water every day. Or a soda and a water, or tea… I drink something caffeinated and water every day. Sometimes I stare into space when I feel fried. I take vitamins every morning. I listen to my headphones while I work and tap my feet to the music. I am a sucker for Peanut M&Ms and arrange them into color groups on my desk before eating them. I talk to my husband once a day and clean my desk once a week. I bite my bottom lip when I am trying to figure out a problem. I talk to my brother over the cubicle wall. I put lotion on my hands every time I come back from the bathroom which is approximately twice. I play with my earrings and twist my hair. I chew my nails. I keep my supplies in the middle drawer of my desk rather than the top drawer. I put my pens back in the cup every night.

What does she gain by watching me?

Every week in our meeting, she sits in her chair, smug as can be and starts out her list of grievances the same way.

“Some people seem to have too much free time…”

In case you were wondering, I am “some people”. She has decided that because I have time to get water and pee, I have time to take on more of her work. She feels that it is dreadfully unfair that I should get to take a lunch and a morning break. After all, she is the only one entitled to such frivolity. Also, she feels that “some people” are making mistakes (that aren’t being made), “some people” take too much time off (forgive me for getting married in April), “some people”, “some people”, “some people.”

Blah Blah Blah.

My first thought is that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. After all, I don’t really care if she comes in late (she does), if she takes a lot of time off (she does) takes long lunches (she does) or if she often needs help getting her own meager work done (she does.) I notice, but I don’t say squat, because it isn’t my place, my business or my concern. I go to work, do my work, collect my pay and go home. I don’t need to “one-up” anyone. Maybe this makes me a bit too arrogant, but I know in my heart that I am better than this place and better than my co-worker. As my brother counseled, you do kind of have to feel a bit sorry for her. A very little bit. After all, if taking me down is really all she has to look forward to, her life must be quite small.

Of course, my second thought is, “Butt the hell out, lady”. The thing that threw me over the edge was being accused of not spending enough time at my desk. Then, the other day, she started making derogatory comments about me. Nice. Really freaking nice.

To answer the unasked question – I already discussed the matter with my manager. She assured me that the problem wasn’t mine, but the young lady in question. She told me not to worry, that she will handle it. I have yet to see evidence that it is being handled.

I mentally gave her until the end of the week. Tomorrow is Friday. (Thank GOD!). We’ll see.

Perhaps all of this is just a sign that I am long overdue to seek greener pastures.

Happy Wednesday.

2008-07-30T17:08:00.000-07:00

I do not fear computers...

2008-07-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

I fear the lack of them.
-Isaac Asimov

I have been unfaithful, and now I am in love with another. It is strange how quickly the bond formed, and just like all new love, I was ill prepared for the shock of it. I didn't plan this. No one ever plans this. Now, I am sitting here at my desk dreaming of going home to that smooth caress. I feel like a school girl, giddy and unsure. My new love is better, faster and sleeker. Some might say handsome. To me the beauty is inconstant and fleeting. I much prefer what is inside to the shell outside. But that's just me. It was the same way with every one I have ever had before. And when this love is worn and old, when it no longer responds in the same way, I know I will be drawn to the new again, forsaking the old loyalties in favor of what seems shiny and new. This love is fickle, but then I can be as well. Right now, the very newness has me doe-eyed with admiration. I am in love.

I just bought a new laptop. It is so much faster and newer than anything I have had in a long time. My old laptop was a trusty companion, but as all old laptops tend to do, he left me high and dry when one day he refused to power on, taking a large chunk of work with him. The bastard. So, I, Dawn the Technologically Challenged, found myself embarking on a journey to find a new computer.

I had no idea what I needed, so I started doing all sorts of research on line to determine what I really did need. I read reviews, but they seemed to scare me more than help. I even asked the salesmen at one local computer store. Imagine my surprise when they tried to steer me away from the affordable model I was looking at and into something more than twice my price range. They told me that the less expensive computers don't actually compute, and if you wanted to do any kind of gaming or programming, they would not work. Apparently the cheaper models are good as very expensive paperweights. They couldn't understand why anyone would want one of those.

I am not a gamer, and the thought of me programming anything should send shivers down your spine, or at the very least make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Breathe a sigh of relief kiddos, that I have never attempted to program a thing. I imagine myself as a mad scientist screaming "Live! Live!!" at the top of my lungs as my program powers on, a tesla coil inexplicably in the background. My creature would probably cause more havoc than Frakenstein's monster. I also can't really get into the RPGs that many can't live without. I don't know why, but my own imaginings tend more toward the literary and the cinematic. I can't really get into World of Warcraft or anything like it. It looks like a lark, but it's not really for me. I would be the character stuck in the corner because I couldn't figure out that Alt Ctrl Shift F7 Backspace is the secret command code to spin around. All in all it doesn't make for a good time.

So I left the computer store with my money and decided to go to a Big Electronics Giant. The only things I normally buy from these super stores are DVDs. But the other day, I waltzed right on into the superstore and walked out with a reasonably priced laptop that was on sale.

My new toy is red and shiny. It has a big bright screen with better definition than our TV. It has a dual core processer, 3GB RAM, Superdrive that writes DVDs as well as CDs, 160 GB hard drive, Wireless, memory card reader, 3 usb ports, and came pre-installed with MS Office a ton of "Dawn Friendly" games (Solitare, Minesweeper, Chuzzle, Bejeweled, MahJong), and has a built in webcam.

I spent the first evening navigating the unfamiliar waters of Windows Vista (someone please enlighten me about why Vista is such a big freaking deal? I can't seem to figure out why it is so "superior" or even "inferior" depending on who you talk to... It just seems like windows to my untrained eye...) I installed my photoshop, Mozilla, and iTunes. Then I started playing Chuzzle and MahJong. I fell asleep on the couch.

Sunday I played with my new photoshop (fun as hell), then played more Chuzzle and MahJong.

Last night, I surfed the web, tried playing minesweeper until I blew myself to bits, then played more MahJong. I fell asleep trying to defeat Dragon.

It seems to me that I could have spent a lot less for a box of MahJong tiles and gotten just as much satisfaction. I have no idea what draws me into games like that, but inevitably I am drawn in and before I know it, midnight has arrived, and I am leaning on the couch, a line of drool starting to form on my chin, my finger resting on the click pad, my computer beeping at me for trying to make an illegal move. Maybe I should move on to ChessMaster... It might take a bit more intellect and might keep me from sleeping in the upright position with my chin on my chest. At least I haven't started in on solitare. Computer solitare is one of my weaknesses. I can't help it. I get bored, and start up the computer, and there it is, calling to me. I can start out with the best intentions, and end up spending hours being completely non-productive, except that I have great solitare statistics.

At least I did before my old computer died. Maybe now is the chance to start anew. I can beat this terrible addiction. I can sit down and write and get things done. I can put together my web site and perfect my photoshop technique. I can adjust my playlists on iTunes once and for all. I can do it if I just try. I know I can. And I will.

Just as soon as I beat Dragon on MahJong.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

2008-07-17T13:53:00.000-07:00

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare, "Macbeth", Act 5 scene 5

Every now and then, I find myself complaining about my job. Nothing new, nothing serious, just a general feeling of "why the hell am I here?"

Were I to explain what I do in any amount of detail, it would put you to sleep in very short order. As a matter of fact, not a day goes by that I don't find myself nodding off at my desk or drifting off into a daydream. Simply put, I am a low level accountant for a mortgage servicing company.

Zzzzzzzzz.....

Yeah. It's about that interesting. I spend my days elbow deep in HELOCs and Bank In-Clearing Files and Checks and Reconciliations and Reports and Logs and...

Zzzzzzzzz.....

Every time I think about it, I get a little sick. What am I doing here? Why do I put up with the idiotic people all around me? This job does little to stimulate my intellect or my creativity. Not to toot my own horn, but I believe I have both in spades. I work around idiots and I do idiot's work. I need a change desperately. I need to break out and be free.

The thought of finding another cookie-cutter job has crossed my mind, but in the end, what is the real point of that? You see, my current displeasure with my job is deep-seeded and stems from my general dislike of offices and corporate culture. Every job I have ever had in an office elicits the same response. I go in, do what needs to be done, and leave. I don't fit in and I don't really want to fit in. Not here. The places where I fit in tend to be populated by societal misfits. Artists, musicians, actors, geeks, intellectuals... These are my kindred spirits. I do not fit with the ass-kissing, self-promoting, unintelligent air-heads that surround me. I listen to them, and I just feel sorry for them. For these people, the low level accounting job is all they have. They have to be king here because everywhere else, they are peasants. They have no ambition greater than to get to the bar for happy hour. I don't fit here. I don't belong here.

Me= Square Peg. This Place = Round Hole

So, what do I do? I want to find a way to really be an artist. Not just as a hobby either. I just don't know how to make that transition. I know that there are people who use their art to make their livings. I know that they are not all famous. I know that the world needs photographers, writers, jewelers, painters, sculpters and poets. I know that there are happy people every day who do what really pleases them. I know it. I just need to find them and ask their secrets.

Sometimes I realize that what I do is done out of necessity. We need a roof and electricity and food. We need transportation and medicine. I am not comfortable trying to live hand to mouth. I tried that once. I nearly drove everyone around me mad with my constant worrying and complaining. But at some point, I need to be able to step up and do something that will not only provide food and shelter, but will nuture my soul. It feels so poorly malnourished right now. I feel a shadow of my former self. I was a musician once. I wasn't bad. I didn't get any really high-paying gigs. I was turned down more than once for groups I felt equal to. I taught small children how to play the violin to the detriment of my hearing. I took a customer-service job to make ends meet. I was always broke and never more than a paycheck from eviction. I drove a broken down car, and when it didn't work, I took the bus. I wasn't rich, but I wasn't unhappy either. I felt good about what I was doing. I felt good about the pursuit. I felt proud of the performances I gave and proud of the way I was scraping by.

Then I took better and better jobs and had less and less time to pursue music. In the end I had to decide whether or not I was really cut out to be a professional musician. But sometimes I wonder if I did it to placate those around me. Did I fall on my back-up plan because it was expected? What on earth am I doing here?

The funniest part is - music was itself a back-up plan. When I had initially told my parents that I wanted to be an artist, they responded less than favorably. Artists, you see, starve to death. They never make money and die broke and desperately unhappy. This is not a good idea. I knew I didn't want to study business, so I fell back to music. I was, after all, a good musician.

I keep coming back to that thought. I have spent the past ten years working with my back-up plan, and every year I feel a bit worse about it. What good is the back-up plan really doing me? Am I going to go through life regretting that I never really followed my dreams? Is it even possible to photograph (not weddings, not portraits, but things that I find interesting...) or paint or sculpt and make money? Am I deluding myself into another ten years of meaningless jobs that will end up going nowhere? Shouldn't I just find a nice stable career where I can earn what I am worth, move up in the company and have some clout? Do I need clout?

I don't feel like I do. And maybe that's part of the problem. I base too much of my life on a feeling. Right now I am feeling inconsequential and I would be right. If I quit today, Chim-Chim the monkey could move on in and do my job. It takes no talent and no intelligence and no charm. I want to do something that does. I want to think and react and create. I want to break out, kick down the doors to convention and shout "Here I am! Take me or leave me!" I want to love what I do and love who I am. I want to have pride in what I do every day of my life. I don't want to mumble incoherently when someone asks "What do you do?" I want to proudly point to my studio and say "I'm an artist. I create beauty."

Does that make me crazy?

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

2008-07-15T15:26:00.000-07:00

Not really. I have always depended on myself and my wits. I have always trusted that for the most part people are kind, but in no way have a grown a dependence on that belief. It is just one of the many ways Blanche DuBois and I are different.

However, I am happy to report that my trust in the kindness of strangers is stronger than ever.

If you read my previous post you will be aware that Michael has had some problems with the state as far as getting help with his work situation. Some of you have heard me rant endlessly about the ineptitude of state employees or the uncaring bureaucracy we found ourselves entangled in. You may have seen me whip out my soap box and proselytize that change needs to occur in the system, screaming that the system is broken and finding no answer other than “well, fix it then.” It got to the point that even I have grown tired of wanting to fight all the time. It was stripping me of my faith and the constant derision was giving me a nice little ulcer for my trouble.

You may also know that I had come to the decision that we were going to have to find another way to get Michael the (very expensive) equipment he needs – the JORDY. JORDY, for those not in the know, stands for Joint Optical Reflective Display. It was inspired by Geordi LaForge (the blind chief engineer on Star Trek: The Next Generation) and is based on NASA technology. I started (where else) on my trusty friend eBay. There are, strangely, JORDY’s listed for sale. What I discovered is that yes, you can find a Jordy, but everyone and his uncle is also looking for a Jordy. I was quickly out-bid. I started then looking for a used system through nationwide classified ads. Some of the used systems are affordable, but they were no longer available by the time I got to them, or they were available, but no longer working, or they were available, worked, but they were almost as expensive as a new unit.

I didn’t know where else to turn. The state was still giving Michael the run-around which did not change his need. The week before he started work, they told him they would order his JORDY. That Friday, they emailed and said, in essence, “no deal.” I was furious, but decided to put my angry energy to good work. I started really looking and contacting people. I contacted a couple of low-vision specialty stores and then I sent an email to the manufacturer (Enhanced Vision Systems of Huntington Beach, CA). In the letter, I let them know about Michael, how wonderful he is, how long he has been bounced around the state system, how he had been promised one thing and then delivered another (if anything at all), and then I let them know that I wanted to purchase a used, demo or refurbished Jordy. I explained that our budget was tight, but we were willing to work it out. I asked, simply, if they could point me in a good direction for a used Jordy that we could purchase.

Immediately I received a response from a wonderful lady named Janice at Enhanced Vision who said that she was working on my request and would get back to me as soon as she could. Then Michael received a call from Justin and one from Michelle both from Enhanced Vision. They asked him some questions about his specific visual needs and about his contact with the state.

Today, they called and told him that they would be sending him a Jordy as their gift to him, completely free of charge.

When Michael called to tell me, I nearly fell off my chair. I told him I had to go, and then I went to my car, shut the door and wept tears of real gratitude.

I don’t know if you have ever been in a position where you feel really helpless. I was there. I wanted so badly to be able to whip out my checkbook and pay for the damned thing. I wanted to be able to provide my husband with everything he needed to live his life, to do his job and to fulfill his dreams. I fell short. Money, while not everything, certainly would have helped in this situation. If I had the money available, I wouldn’t have bothered with the state. I would have gone on line, ordered what he needed and waited for the delivery to arrive. If we had the money. We didn’t and we fell through the cracks of a system that is quite definitely broken. I was really struggling, not knowing where to turn. I started to pray.

I don’t pray very often. When I need solace, I fall back on my Catholic upbringing and say a few Hail Mary’s. They tend to calm me down. This time, however, I really sat down and prayed. I asked God to give me strength and guidance. I invoked the spirit of my beloved Grandmother and Aunt hoping that all the faith I had as a child in heaven and angels was real. For a moment, it felt tangible. For a moment, I felt as though I wasn’t speaking to a great nothingness, but instead I felt like I was imploring my Grandmother and my Aunt to help Michael and to help me have the strength to fight through this. I was asking for a light to illuminate the path I was supposed to follow.
Instead, I got an angel.

I am not a religious nut. My view of God and the universe are very different from any semblance of organized religion. I don’t tend to spout my own religious dogma, and as a result very few people have tried to bible beat me. (A word of advice – never try to bible beat anyone who went to Catholic School for their formative education. We are knowledgeable and many of us are jaded. Trust me, it is a fight you won’t win.) I don’t go to church, and I don’t wear a cross around my neck. I am completely mystified by the religious nuts and fanatics in this country, especially Christian fundamentalists. I find their beliefs very un-Christian, and am absolutely dying to take one of them on face to face. I believe that everyone has to come to their own faith in their own way, and believe that everyone’s faith is valid and personal. My own included. (My mother can stop lighting candles for my soul at any time, but she refuses. One day, maybe she will learn…)

Having said all of that, I am floored and awed by the events that unfolded this week. We received real kindness from strangers. I touched base with God and I got an answer. It isn’t often that a cynic can espouse the power of faith. But here I am.

What’s the moral of the story, boys and girls? To me, it is that we are all lost at some point, and at some point we will all have the answer to someone else’s prayer in our hands. It is up to us to choose how we react to people, to choose what path we take and to choose whether or not to help. If I am presented with an opportunity to help, I hope I can remember this lesson and sweep in to help someone else who has felt hopeless or helpless. Where I have the power to help, I hope I can be someone’s angel of mercy. Pay it forward, right?

Have faith.

Something is rotten in the state of Colorado…

2008-07-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

The Department of Vocational Rehab to be specific…

Let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time, there was a young blind man, who moved a thousand miles from his home to Denver, CO. Who knows what strange fate brought him here? It is something that I will not question and something for which I will remain forever grateful. You see, this young man is my husband. He is legally blind, but he has never let that stop him from doing what he wanted to do and doing what needed to be done.

Now, our hero, Michael, decided that he needed to find a job, but he was having a hard time finding work. Perhaps it was the soft economy, perhaps the simple fact of his blindness kept him from finding full time employment. Whatever the reason, and the reason is not at issue, he needed assistance. Enter the Colorado Department of Vocational Rehabilitation. For those gentle readers not familiar with this particular state agency, allow me to explain: The entire reason for the existence of these state employees is to help people like Michael find work. They are supposed to make sure that those who have a physical (or mental) handicap, who want to work, are able to. They help people figure out transportation issues, figure out living arrangements, and most of all, figure out how to earn a living. (Vocational, is after all, in their title.) Each person needing the help of this agency is assigned a counselor, who takes on the responsibility of helping that person become a productive member of society.

So Michael contacts the state and explains that he is blind and needs their assistance to locate work. The department assigns him to counselor #1 – who doesn’t seem as interested in helping her new charge as one would hope. Michael tells this person several things about himself. First, he explains that he has been a writer for several years, and would, ideally, like to find a job writing (freelance or otherwise) for a local publication. He is also interested in a career in radio. Both are noble professions, though hard to break into, as Michael understands. The counselor suggests other employment. Michael has no objection. He mentions that he might like to start his own business. He also mentions that he might like to go back to school. The counselor balks at the school idea. (After all, who needs an education these days? This move confused and confounded me. I was a touch angry, but eventually let it go in the interest of domestic harmony…) The counselor suggests customer service and explains that the state will get him any equipment he needs to do the job. She has Michael fill out a form stating that he would like to find work doing customer service (not what he had intended, but work is work…) he fills out his form, and waits for the next step.

And waits…

And waits…

He calls back and is told that he needs to fill out a form. So the counselor faxes the same form back and he dutifully fills it out again, sends it back and waits.

And waits…

And waits…

Eventually, Michael requests a new counselor. He explains that the counselor originally assigned to him has been less than helpful, and he really does need assistance finding work. The state happily assigns counselor #2 – who I shall call Dumb-Dumb – to protect the ignorant. Now, Dumb-Dumb starts out on the right foot. She explains that there is a program designed to help people start a business. You can run a concession at a government facility – not exactly what Michael had in mind, but he would still be in charge. She explains the program and gets him some information. The program was not a good fit. So Michael explains that he would still prefer work. She tells him that they no longer help people find work, but they do outsource this task to other employment agencies… She gives him a list of numbers and helpfully tells him to call them himself.

Now I am confused… The Department of VOCATIONAL Rehab is no longer in the business of helping people find a VOCATION? What the hell? I should mention here that I knew all about Voc Rehab before meeting Michael. You see, my father worked as a Voc Rehab counselor for years when I was a child. I remember him helping clients find work – not just a job, but a career where they could progress and be happy. I remember him helping them get equipment and transportation. I remember him visiting them in their homes when something made it prohibitive for them to come to his office – something like – I don’t know – a blind man who can’t drive…. Michael’s counselor is not interested in coming to him. She is not interested in helping him find work. She has done nothing to earn her state paycheck as far as I can see. But I digress. This will all become clear in a moment.

Michael calls the “employment agencies” which it turns out aren’t agencies at all, but people who work part time from their homes. The lady he settled on (because he can only use one according to the state…) looks at his resume and asks him if he thought about writing or media. Well, now it seems like we are getting someplace. Michael feels energized and immediately begins sending out his resume again. (As instructed….) He gets some bites. He has some interviews. He gets nowhere.

One thing that has bothered me from the beginning of this whole saga is the lack of understanding of employers in their dealings with the blind. Many of the interviews expressed concern that he would be able to physically meet the demands of the job (seeing things). Michael explained that the State will help him get equipment he needs to do whatever job he is hired for. The state should be there advocating for him. They are not. Michael, at one interview for BY JEEVES, was flat out told that he couldn’t interview because he is blind and couldn’t fill out the application. They knew going in that he was blind. His counselor knew he was going in for the interview. When he left, disgusted, he called his counselor, who told him that he should go back when someone could go with him to fill out the application. (By the way – I am boycotting By Jeeves, and ask everyone else to join me… They behaved in a manner that is immoral and illegal. Michael has chosen to not pursue the matter with a lawyer, but that doesn’t mean that I will be giving them any kind of business ever again.) As his state advocate, his counselor should have been down there that day advocating for him, explaining the Equal Employment laws as they pertain to the handicapped, and helping him file a formal complaint, if that is what he wanted. Instead Dumb-Dumb took a very hands-off approach, choosing instead to tell her client, “Sorry, can’t help you.”

This scene played itself over and over and over until Michael started to sink into a depression that I was afraid he would not come out of.

The counselor one day tells Michael that there is another program designed to help the blind start a business of their choosing. Now why didn’t anyone mention this before? He was confused, but excited, and started to do the research that was required for him to get into this program. Michael wants to DJ and have a company that will encompass anyone’s media needs, from music to video to photography. A great way to make some money – and not a lot of start up costs involved for a person with an enormous music collection, great taste, and a knowledge of how to work various types of equipment. He begins his research and starts to fill out the forms required. The state will pay $5,000 of the start up costs. Unless, he already has $5,000, in which case, the state will pay an additional $10K. Michael doesn’t have $5K, and neither do I, but we reason that he can start with $5K and build from there.

Except the state will only pay for certain business ventures. His counselor is not sure if a DJ business will do. She also tells him that if he has a blemish on his credit, they will not help and that the state will retain control for 3 years and then they will decide if he should remain in business. Now it looks less attractive. First of all, Michael has a blemish on his credit. If it was a case of an unblemished credit record, we could have gone to a bank for the start up costs. Secondly, why is a DJ business any different from, oh say a haberdashery or a butcher shop or a shoe store? People get married and have parties and need the services of a DJ. He can get references and he can advertise with some of that money. Except he can’t as his counselor explains – because the $5K is to pay for equipment which the state will purchase through a vendor and they will decide what he needs and why he needs it – advertising costs are not part of the package.

I tried to start a business without proper advertising built in. Ask me where I am now…. Go on ask. I have had to return to the working world, a valuable lesson in business learned. You have to advertise.

The business is not looking like a good idea after all, at which point, Michael once again tells his counselor that he would just like to find work – and no not in customer service. That wasn’t his idea in the first place. He needs work, because he needs to make money because he needs to pay rent and power and bills. (It could just be me, but maybe having been out of work for so long, contributed to his credit issues….) Michael is again told about the “agencies” that help.

Then one day, I am driving to work down Broadway in Denver. I pass Goodwill as I always do, and outside is a sign “Goodwill Job Fair, Saturday 1-4PM”. A light goes off in my head. OF COURSE! Who else but Goodwill to hire the handicapped? I call Michael, excited and explain about the sign. We go down Saturday; he is offered a job on the spot. He will be working in a back room sorting books. It’s not glamorous, but it is work. And it is not customer service, which is something that he really didn’t want to do. It will leave him free to start his business on his own, and will provide him with the ability to save for it. He will still be able to write because he will not be mentally exhausted at the end of the day. They provide benefits and vacation time. Michael is excited. They set his start date. He goes home and emails his counselor.

And waits…

And waits…

And calls her and leaves a message…

And waits…

And waits…

Finally she calls back. He tells her about the job and tells her what equipment he needs to do the job (after all, the agency will provide equipment….) The counselor says that only the “tech guys” can recommend the equipment and they are recommending hand held magnifiers rather than the type worn on his head. Michael explains that since he will be sorting books and shelving books, he will need his hands free and will need the type worn on his head despite what the “tech guys” tell her. She says she will get back to him.

He waits…

And waits…

We fill out his paperwork at Goodwill and they move the start date back to the 14th. This is good, because as of 7/5 we were still waiting for the counselor. He calls and emails again. Finally, she tells him (Tuesday 7/8) that the once her supervisor signs off on the equipment request, the Jordy will be ordered. (Jordy is extraordinary (think Geordi LaForge and you get the basic idea. It is life changing – and expensive. If I could afford one, I would have bought one when we first met… of course, as I have come to find out, even the hand held equipment is expensive. I thought I might try to buy him one of those, but they are still prohibitively expensive….) Michael is ecstatic, and so am I. We celebrate. His new job is about to start. After being in the state system for more than 3 years, he will finally be able to work and achieve some bit of independence. Finally, everything is coming up Michael…

Then he gets an email from Dumb-Dumb:

“Upon my supervisor's review, I was informed yesterday that only low vision specialists can recommend head-borne equipment, such as a Jordy.
At our center, we only have VRT's who are not allowed by our policy to recommend/prescribe such equipment (their limitations are CCTV's, portable CCTV's, etc). In order to authorize purchase for a Jordy, I need the recommendation to come from the low vision specialist. I have left a voicemail with a few of our low vision vendors to see who would be able to get you in the soonest. Unfortunately, this may be another few weeks.”

This comes in on Friday 7/11. He was supposed to start 7/14. Now, because of the complete incompetence of the state agency designed to help him, he is in danger of loosing the opportunity to work. The opportunity he worked so hard for.

I am angry. No, strike that. I am well beyond angry. I was furious to the point of tears on Friday. Now I am determined to help Michael get his Jordy, and I am determined to help anyone else I can. Friday, I placed a few couple of bids on broken Jordy’s on eBay, but lost both. Then I sent an email to the company that makes this product, in the hopes that they would be able to point me in a direction where I can get a used Jordy or a refurbished first generation model. They responded immediately and said that they will try to help in any way they can. Enhanced Vision. Good people there. I don’t know if they can help, but at least they are responding.

I called my father and explained the scenario to him. He suggested calling the client advocate, and then the director or Voc Rehab and then the media. Believe you me, if Michael gets no response from the state today, we will be on the news tomorrow. I am through messing around with these incompetent assholes. I am tired of state employees passing their job off on other people, not responding to emails or phone calls from clients, and then acting as though it is no big deal if they cannot help, when help was promised, when help was needed, and when help was required of their position. No wonder people hate the government. I always had faith. I remember my father and how hard he worked for his clients. I remember his friends doing the same. I have never met such a group of incompetent fools as work at the Colorado Department of Vocational Rehab. Feel free to tell them I said so.

So, I don’t know where this story will end. I am hoping that some angel will intervene and help Michael get the equipment he needs to do a job that he really wants so that he can have the one thing that all of us deserve – a bit of dignity. We all take for granted that we can see. I know I did. I took for granted my sight, my ability to walk down the street and see the sights and potential hazards. I took for granted my ability to walk into an office, fill out an application and get a job. I took for granted my ability to get in a car and drive someplace, or barring that, to find a bus stop in a strange part of town. I took for granted the fact that I don’t need to wear a specialized camera on my head to read the title of a book. I can just do it. Michael can’t. I never really thought about what it would be like if I couldn’t see. It never crossed my mind.

I have learned so much from Michael. He has patience when I couldn’t possibly. He has tolerance when I am loosing my mind an want to ring someone’s neck. He has a gentleness about him that I love and very much admire. He is a nice man. He is an honest man. He is a funny man. He is the most wonderful man you would ever want to meet. He asks for nothing, and gives everything. He seriously would give someone what was left of his vision if it would help them. I know he would. All he needs is a little help. It breaks my heart that I cannot afford one simple piece of equipment that would help him work and change his life. It kills me that we have to ask the state for help. It brings me to my knees, in front of God, asking for clarity and strength and patience. It is deeply ironic that my passion is photography and everything in my life is visual, where my husband can’t see the hand in front of his face (unless he holds it very very close…)

There are thousands of people like Michael, whose lives would be profoundly changed with the help of a small, albeit expensive, piece of equipment. I have been blessed so far in my life. I don’t want to see this happen to anyone else. When a parent cries themselves to sleep every night because they cannot afford to help their child see, I want to help. When a husband or wife sees their spouse struggling with little or no help from the state, I want to be there. When a teacher knows that a student would excel if only they had a bit of technology, I want to be there. I don’t want anyone else to be as angry or as frustrated as I have been over the ineptitude of the state.

I swear to each of you reading this now, as long as I have breath, I will find a way to make this happen. I want to be able to help change the life of a child or two or ten or a thousand. I want people to have the independence that they deserve and the ability to lead full and fully independent lives.

We all deserve at least that much.

Cellophane, Mrs. Cellophane…

2008-07-09T15:29:00.001-07:00

Shoulda been my name
Mrs. Cellophane…
‘Cause people walk right by me
Look right through me
And never know I’m there…

Sometimes I feel invisible.

Sometimes, I feel like even my very best friends forget I exist and unless I scream at the top of my lungs, waving my arms madly to draw their attention, they would go through the rest of their lives never remembering that they once new a girl named Dawn.

It is hard for me to admit to this. I like to be thought of as the strong willed, funny type. I tend to be boisterous in a group setting, sometimes so much so that I make an ass out of myself. I tend to laugh loudly and interject my opinion. Sometimes I laugh too loudly or give an opinion that wasn’t asked for. I wear bright colors and unique clothing and jewelry. I tell jokes. I act the fool. When you are in a room with me, it isn’t hard to notice me.

I don’t want to be unseen. One of my biggest fears is to fade quietly away and be forgotten.

I was a shy child. Grown ups would talk and I would sit quietly and listen. They rarely noticed me. In new situations and settings, I clung to one of my parents or my brother. Strangers didn’t see me. I didn’t easily make friends, because I wasn’t the first person on the playground anyone would ever notice. It was hard for me to meet new people. I felt out of place in my own skin, and didn’t want to draw any attention to myself. My first day of High School, I remember not talking to anyone. This weird girl came up to me and said “Hi! I’m Robin. Do you want to be my friend?” That is pretty much a direct quote. At the end of the first day of High School, we were sitting in the gym, and she was sitting next to me. She stood up, stuck her hand out to shake mine, and pretty much sealed the deal. We became fast friends.

With Robin’s help, I learned new ways to break out of my shell. I learned that it’s OK to ask a question when you don’t know the answer. I learned that meeting new people can be scary, but it can be fun too. I learned that if you are comfortable with who you are no one can really make you feel bad.

I try, I really do. For a while, I was an open book and I met tons of people. I had friends from all parts of the world and all walks of life. I was able to strike up a conversation at the drop of a hat with anyone about anything. (And I mean anyone… I once had a 45 minute conversation with a bum on the bus while on my way from school back home. We discussed the Vietnam War and the political discord of the sixties. It was a very interesting discussion we had from three rows away.) However, no matter how open I was, I never stopped feeling insignificant. Like I was inadequate somehow…

And then the shyness returned.

I didn’t mean for it to happen. If there was a magic pill that would kill shyness forever, I would take it. If there was a secret spell or ritual that would keep me from these feelings of self-doubt, I would start a cult. If anyone would follow me, that is. I start to feel shy, then I start to feel doubt, then I start to notice a thousand slights – some intentional, some not – and I begin to once again feel myself loosing substance and opacity until air and light flow through me… Until I can feel people actually looking past me as though I was a slightly stained window. My voice gets quiet, as though it lack the physical power to project beyond a whisper. My eyes stop meeting the eyes of people on the street and in the hall. My smile becomes smaller, my posture suffers. It’s as though I am starting to shrink.

Today, I feel quite invisible.

I wish I could explain what brought this on. A dozen little things all at once coalesce and start to erase me. I can handle one, maybe two hurts without starting to collapse in on myself, but when things keep piling on top of things, it gets so I can’t see over the pile, until it topples on me and I am buried beneath it. I start to feel like I could cry at any minute and worse than that, no one would notice if I did. I start to notice – really notice – every hurt I have. I start to notice that I never get invited to lunch, that I never get invited to a movie, and that I’ve stopped receiving personal emails all together and that no one ever calls to talk to me, or asks me out for coffee or asks how my day is going. I start to notice that I live a life that is very isolated. I start to notice that even my husband seems too busy to notice that I have begun to shrink and fade away. I start to realize that I am writing a blog that probably never gets read by eyes other than my own. All of these things become more apparent and I start to feel less so.

I’ve tried to explain this feeling to all those who care about me at some point or another in the hazy past, and every last one of them has given me the same disgusted “Oh come on,” or “Get over it”. They tell me to lighten up or stop imagining things. They tell me that I am acting childishly or selfishly and that I need to grow up. They remind me that I wasn’t overlooked on purpose and that I am making too much of it. No one ever seems to think it important that the fact remains that I was indeed overlooked.

I suppose, if I am invisible, so then, is my pain.

I guess that all I can really do is try to hold on to the strong-willed boisterous woman inside until I become less transparent and I can re-solidify my presence.

If music be the food of love…

2008-07-02T14:46:00.000-07:00

Play on.

I can’t live without my iPod.

I know that seems like an extreme statement, but at this point in my life, I don’t think I can. I use my iPod every single day. I listen to it on the way to work, at my desk and on the way home. Sometimes at home, I turn it on and listen while I do my homework or write or draw or just sitting around with a beer and a cigarette. If something ever happened to this little four inch device, I would be lost. Absolutely lost.

First of all it saves my life at work. You see, I have a very annoying co-worker who doesn’t seem to take a breath while letting loose her tongue. It doesn’t help that to me her voice is akin to nails scraping across a black-board. All day, every day those of us around her are forced to suffer a barrage of complaints ranging from her unfaithful boyfriend to how unfair the banking system is to the state of her mental health. All day. I wish I was exaggerating.

Luckily, though, I have my trusty iPod. When the grating sound of her voice hitting the upper registers of human hearing gets to be too much for me, I slip on my ear buds and escape into a world of my own making. Normally, I put on some loud metal or nasty hip hop, just to drown her out. Sometimes, I need to calm down, so I opt for something with a more calming quality. Ah, Debussy. I can listen to La Mer and imagine that I am sitting on a moonlit beach someplace, watching the waves come in. Believe me this is preferable to the reality of sitting at my desk.

The beautiful part is, I don’t need to flip through a box of cassettes (how old am I?) or a book of CDs looking for the perfect song. All I have to do is locate the right play list, and voila! Heaven.

In the car, I have found that my iPod saves me from the radio. I used to be the biggest fan of morning drive radio and the afternoon shows on our local stations. In the morning, I would listen to either Hip Hop or Indie Rock, and in the afternoon, I usually felt like Pop. I knew the DJs and their styles, and I actually found myself looking forward to the five o’clock question on my ride home. Then I noticed something start to change. It seemed like my Indie rock station was more closely mirroring the pop station which was starting to meld into the hip-hop station. Before I knew it, no matter what station I turned to, I was guaranteed to hear at least two songs twice in my commute, and at least one Beyonce number. I have nothing against Beyonce, I even have a few of her hits on my iPod, but I seriously don’t need to hear her every day at precisely 7:14am and the same song again at 5:07. It got to the point that I could time which song would play at which time and on which station. Then I noticed that they let the DJs talk less and less. What used to be twenty minutes worth of Joking around followed by a couple of songs followed by a commercial break has some how turned into five minutes of hilarity followed by seven songs from play list number 2 followed by ten to fifteen minutes of commercials and back to more songs from that same play list. The songs never change. Every morning they are the exact same – unless someone is promoting a new album, in which case you might get one new song. And the commercial breaks? Forget about it. I can’t stand radio commercials. They are loud, obnoxious, and never seem to advertise a product that one could actually use in traffic (like a cup of coffee). Instead, they give you WAAAAY too much information regarding how to get your gutters cleaned and then follow up with a phone number that some really loud individual repeats five hundred times.

“CALL STEVE’S SUPER GUTTER BUSTERS! ONE EIGHT HUNDRED GUTTER ONE! THAT”S ONE EIGHT HUNDRED FOUR EIGHT EIGHT EIGHT THREE SEVEN ONE! ONE EIGHT HUNDRED FOUR EIGHT EIGHT EIGHT THREE SEVEN ONE! ONE EIGHT HUNDRED FOUR EIGHT EIGHT EIGHT THREE SEVEN ONE! Call NOW! ONE EIGHT HUNDRED FOUR EIGHT EIGHT EIGHT THREE SEVEN ONE! ONE EIGHT HUNDRED FOUR EIGHT EIGHT EIGHT THREE SEVEN ONE!”

Not only do I have no desire to call, but by the end of the commercial, I actually want to go looking for Steve and everyone affiliated with Steve’s Super Gutter Busters and beat them about the head until I have exacted revenge for me and every other annoyed commuter.

And they are all the same. Every single radio commercial. They repeat the number ad nauseam (pun intended) because they know you aren’t going to write it down, because they know you are driving. I can’t remember the last time I was driving down the road and thought to myself: Gee, if only I knew where to go and get my blinds cleaned – wait a sec! A commercial for Bonnie’s Blindingly Clean Blind Service! Too bad I am driving and cannot get the number. Oh! Excellent! Apparently someone very excited for Bonnie is going to shout the number seventeen times so that I take it with me to my grave. What great luck!

I hate these fucking commercials.

Only slightly less annoying are the “fake interview” commercials. You know the ones where your favorite DJ or talk show host is trying very hard to sound like they are actually interviewing some minor celebrity who is really excited about a new “resort” and wants to give you a free vacation… as long as you listen to the time share presentation that should only last 70 of your 72 hours in Hawaii or Vegas or Tahiti or Pigs Knuckle. Hurry and call now! Then you change the station, and enter the twilight zone because another DJ is conducting the exact same interview! Heavens and ministers of grace defend us! What is going on???

So, I got tired of that barrage of useless information and the no-variety of music that is left to the average radio consumer. Now, I just plug in my iPod and I have thousands of songs at my finger tips. I can move my songs into play lists based on genre, length, artist, or mood. I can listen to angry music, happy music, sad music, intense music and light-hearted music in the course of an afternoon without doing a darned thing. I can listen alphabetically by song title, artist or album. If I am in the mood, I can listen to all of The White Album from start to finish without interruption. If I feel like following up the Fab Four with Kanye West and then move into some Dean Martin, I am free to do so. If I want my Bach to play right before I hear Ludacris, no one can stop me. The world is my musical oyster, and I couldn’t be happier.

I have music, Photos, Games and Movies on my iPod. I have every episode of Robot Chicken, most of my favorite South Parks, Star Trek, Battle Star Gallactica, Looney Tunes, and various Movies. Sometimes, when I want to escape completely, I sit in my car at lunch and watch cartoons. How cool is that?

My iPod is well loved and well worn. It looks like a group of angry cats got together and had a wild orgy on my screen. There are tiny scratches and it always seems to be smudged. Sometimes, the little click-wheel gets stuck. The original ear-buds died a horrible death and I have gone through seven pairs since. Compared to the new models it is big and bulky. Now, the battery is slowly dying. I know that soon, I will have to say good bye to my old friend and though it will be hard, I will have to replace her.

Now they have iPods that have touch screens – although given the wear on mine, I am hesitant to purchase something that requires constant touching and smudging. There are also iPods that have enough memory to hold half a million songs. Think about that for a minute. 500,000 songs at an average of 4 minutes a song is two million minutes of music – that’s about 33,333 hours, a little less than 1,389 days, and almost four years if you did nothing but listen to music 24-7. Four years worth of music in your back pocket. By the time you got back around to the number one hit you downloaded when you bought the iPod, it will be obsolete. And that band? They might have been a one hit wonder. And you have their only hit on your trusty iPod. Along with 499,999 other songs that you never get to hear because you always come back around to listen to your favorites. You have heard “Paint It Black” nine thousand times, but you never got a chance to really listen to that new Panic! At the Disco CD that you painstaking ripped months ago.

And of course, it took hours to fill the iPod, because I don’t know about you, but my computer is no where near as fast as my iPod is. It takes me 10 – 15 minutes per CD on my ancient computer. Average of 14 tracks per disc, that’s 35,714 CDs worth of music on the new behemoths. Forget that I don’t have quite that much music (and we have a ton of music, Michael and I). If I had to rip 35,000 CDs, at ten minutes each, it would take about 5800 hours or almost a year if I did nothing but rip music into my computer. Let’s assume that I only need to do half of that and that I already have the other half on my hard drive in the form of previously ripped music, MP3s etc… that would be 6 months. Let’s say I bought a new computer that can rip the disc in half of that time – or even in a minute. One minute a disc is still 35,000 minutes, 583 hours, 24 days of non-stop ripping. And how much of that music is really great music? How much would I really want to carry around with me day and night? Of course, you could purchase each song from iTunes or a similar site at a buck a song – half a million dollars worth of music? No way. I don’t earn enough to spend that kind of money. Even if I won the lottery, I wouldn’t spend that much.

And then there is the issue of finding the song. I have about 4,000 songs right now on my iPod. It is ridiculously hard to search for one specific track. Either I scroll too fast, or it takes too long. I always miss it and have to scroll back, only to miss it the other way. I can’t even begin to imagine trying to locate one tiny song in a sea of half a million of them. Talk about a needle in a haystack. I can imagine myself breaking into tears because all I wanted to hear was something by The Roots before I got home, and couldn’t find it. Building a play list would be hard too. To do that, you need to highlight each track and drag it to your play list. I have a dozen incomplete play lists that I keep meaning to fix, but never get around to because inevitably I have something more productive to do with my time. And there is a danger of building too many play lists. If you build too many, you can’t find the one you want. Too few and you don’t have enough variety. Then there are the duplicates… Sometimes you end up with the same song on four different discs. You have the original recording, the definitive collection, the best of and the live album. Do you really need to go through and delete the duplicates, or should you leave them there taking up precious space. How many duplicates could you really have? 1%? 2%? When you are talking about a few songs, that’s not much. One percent of half a million is five thousand songs. Do you mean I could have five thousand duplicates? That’s more songs than I currently have on my iPod now. Is it then possible that on shuffle, you could conceivably hear the same ten songs duplicated several times? How annoying would that be?

Of course, then there’s the cost. A new iPod can be really pricey for most people. Five hundred smackeroos. That’s a lot of smackeroos. Then I would definitely need a faster computer. Another thousand – then a new hard drive to store all of this music – another couple hundred. By the time I am done, I could spend two grand just to have all of my music at my fingertips.

Hmmm….

Is it possible that there really can be too much of a good thing?

Collin and Esther wedding

2008-06-21T09:48:00.001-07:00

Recently I had the honor of photographing one of my best friends' weddings. Esther was a beautiful bride, and Colling is a lucky man. I am lucky enough to count them both as friends, and they were luck enough to have found each other. Ah... l'amour... Love, she is sweet, yes? Congratulations to the Becks. May both of you find all the happiness in the world.

Picture it, Sicily 1922

2008-05-11T20:04:00.000-07:00

There are more things in heaven and earth...

2008-05-05T15:05:00.000-07:00

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

I have been riding a euphoric wave the entire week following my wedding. I would call it strange, since it is unlike any feeling I have ever really known, however, others who have married have assured me that the feeling is natural, normal and should be enjoyed.

So I will.

However, I have been feeling one thing that seems to be more than normal wedded bliss - perhaps extraordinarily so. I feel as though my soul was cleansed, almost like a cosmic re-boot of the spirit. I feel renewed and free, like I have never felt before. I would be tempted to attribute this feeling to my new marriage, but it seems somehow more than that.

I should mention that it is not like me to view the world through rose colored lenses. I am a natural cynic, raised to question everything, taught to not trust the motives of others. I look at life through the eyes of a skeptic, disguised as a realist, and more often than not, I find myself following pessimists down their dark and dour paths. It is not that I choose realism or pessimism, but in the past I have been so deeply hurt by supposed friends, or betrayed by those calling themselves my allies, that somewhere in my subconscious mind I have learned not to trust, and to question everyone and everything.

But lately that just doesn't seem right.

I have to start by stating the obvious: Love is strange. It certainly took me by surprise. To say I wasn't looking for love is a lie; I believe that on some level we all look for love every moment of every day. However, I never really expected to find it. When I did, I didn't expect the enormity of my feelings. I thought this depth of feeling was myth. I was wrong. I am glad I was wrong. Then I didn't think I could feel any more ...love. But I do. It seems an unending supply of happiness and emotional connection. It seems like it will overwhelm me at any moment, but it doesn't. I just keep finding new ways to express it.

Perhaps it was that monumental step of committing my life completely to another person, or perhaps realizing that someone wanted to commit his life to mine started this flood of joy. Perhaps I just need to be committed. Whatever it is, it seems like I see love wherever I look now. I felt so much love for my husband that day. I felt so much love surrounding me. I felt love from my family and from my friends. I felt joy from people I had just met and from those I had known a lifetime. I wish I could find a way to bottle this feeling and share it. Or keep it stored away for those cold nights where loneliness seems overwhelming. The best I can do is to try to express it with prose: and if prose is too limiting, with poetry; and if that becomes too small, with song or dance or art. I feel a poor vessel for such beauty.

I had a chance to make some new friends and to renew old friendships over that weekend. Maybe my eyes were opened because of love, maybe because I grew tired of being such a cynic. Whatever the reason, I was able to see and recognize love from others for what felt like the first time in a decade. Did you know that joy can manifest itself physically? It can. I learned that aura is not just something for the new age crowd and can be viewed by anyone whose heart and eyes are open to it. I learned that you can see a bond between two people and recognize its significance. I saw soul mates holding hands, brothers embracing, parents holding children, and friends affirming their friendships with each other. I saw new bonds forming among strangers. I built new connections and strengthened old connections, which, by virtue of my new love, felt reborn.

Sadly, I have learned that there is also a converse to this renewed vision. As obvious as the love between two people can be, it can be as blatantly apparent when there is nothing holding people together. I witnessed that as well. I saw people throw up walls to separate themselves from the joy present that day. I saw people try to force happiness that didn't exist. It made me feel sad for those people. It made me realize that while for me the feelings were overwhelming and cleansing, to some present that day, those feelings were non-existent. I saw people try to force a levity they did not feel. I saw people close themselves off and shut themselves down. As a result they seemed distant and angry and strangely empty.

I try to think back to other moments in time I have witnessed. I have gone to countless weddings of family, friends, and clients. I have always tried to open myself up to share in the joy that these others were feeling. I always thought of it as "borrowed" or somehow "stolen". I never considered that what I was feeling was my own joy, amplified by the moment. I understand that better now. Joy and happiness cannot be borrowed, they have to be in you all along. Perhaps the small romantic part of my soul that refused to give in to the cynic kept that joy alive. Perhaps I was not so pessimistic as I had thought.

In any case, I am beginning to understand that those who so often seem cold or unhappy are so within themselves only. I am beginning to realize that I cannot feel anger toward people who seem unwilling to be happy. It is truly their loss that they could not share in the outpouring of love and surrender themselves completely to it. I have stopped feeling angry and begun to feel sorrow for those seemingly lost souls who felt more empowered by bitterness than by love. I truly hope that they can find some happiness in the weeks and months to come. I hope that they evaluate who they are and where they are in their lives and find something to be thankful for. I hope that they can, each one of them, learn to be happy with themselves. I hope that they find their soul mates, if they haven't already. I hope they find forgiveness if they hold animosity. I hope they find peace, and joy and love in abundance.

I hope they can find their way as I did, and I feel I finally have.

And Another One's Gone And Another One's Gone...

2008-05-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

Another one bites the dust...

Ha.

I had always joked that I would play Another One Bites the Dust at my wedding. Now I have to play it at my funeral instead. You see, my wedding featured more traditional wedding music instead... More traditional wedding music, a little chapel,an ivory dress, flowers...

A klingon...

You thought I was kidding didn't you? Of course I would have a Klingon at my wedding. A Klingon and a Ferengi. A Klingon, a Ferengi, and a Borg... And the reception was at a star port... and my cake featured a Star Trek logo... And the night before I drank something called a "Warp Core Breach" and the rest of the night is a foggy blur, except that I ended up wearing a tiara...

But it was fun.

Of course it was. It was my wedding, and it was everything I had ever wanted a wedding to be. My family was there. Friends were there. Michael's friends were there. Michael's mother still played the marytr and stayed away, but I didn't let that ruin the day. It was touching and memorable and sentimental, and I am deeply deeply in love with my husband. And I have been exceedingly cute about calling him my husband for the past week. I have to assume that eventually this state of newlywed euphoria will wear off, but for the time being it is nice to be cute. And I am not cute.

I originally set out to write about some truly tacky people who decided that our bachelor/bachelorette party wasn't crazy enough for them so they left (after about 20 minutes) to find strippers of their own and have the party the way they felt it should be... Without the bride or groom to be, and acted like we were the bad ones because my BLIND husband didn't want a stipper he couldn't see or that his gay best man couldn't enjoy... and because I don't want some strange man's sweaty balls shoved in my face... Because of that we weren't having a real party, so it was OK to leave. Even though these were my so-called friends and my brother/man of honor... although later on he did apologize and I was able to forgive him.. which is good, because I hate being mad at my brother. The rest of the tacky crowd, however, really hurt my feelings, and had it not been for a few key people, would have completely ruined my night. I have decided, after much soul searching and discussion both with my new husband and others, that they were tacky, that they were wrong, and that I shouldn't waste any more energy on them. Consider the matter dropped.

In fact, it was dropped earlier in the week. I decided that my time was better spent with better people. The only reason I mention the others in this post at all is to better highlight how truly awesome the others at the party and at the wedding were.

So the stripper-seekers (male and female) will remain nameless. (Except my brother, but he did, again, apologize sincerely... So he's OK.) The other's however, deserve mentioning.

First of all, I got to meet Michael's best friend, John, for the very first time in my life. John was an awesome man. I knew I would love him when he knocked on the door to our room, and after Micheal opened it, I didn't hear anything for a few minutes. When I peeked over, they were hugging like long lost brothers. Then John hugged me, and I have to tell you, I immediately trusted him and felt like I had known him forever. He was so warm and open and wonderful. I have never met anyone as honest as he was, right off the bat. He was also protective of Michael, which I loved immediately, because I feel protective of Michael as well. He was so open, infact, that everyone else loved him immediately too. John is going to go down as one of my favorite people ever.

Another one of my favorite people is Amy. Again, Amy is a friend of Michael's from Boulder. She wore a Star Trek Jersey to the wedding which I loved. She engaged everyone in conversation, regardless of who they were. And best of all, she came to my room a couple of hours before the wedding to help me get ready and to help me calm down. She even pressed my dress, helped me put on my shoes when I was shaking so badly I couldn't keep the buckle in my hand, and told me that I was beautiful after my dress was on, and the make up was done and my hair was combed out. Those were all things that my mother should have done, but didn't. These were all things that my brother, god bless him, tried to do, but really couldn't. These were things that I really needed a woman for, and because of Amy, I had one. I told Michael after the wedding was over, that I was going to steal her as my friend now. She was awesome. I hope she reads this and knows it. She saved the day in more ways than she could possibly know.

And then there was Jamie and Bob. Two more of Michael's friends. He refers to Jamie as his adopted little sister, and until I met her, I didn't really understand what he meant. Jamie and her husband Bob were great. Without ever having met me, she was willing to photograph the wedding. And I am a picky beeatch when photos are concerned (especially photos of me... witness my photo to the right. Self-portrait). The few that she has had a chance to send are awesome. I couldn't have done a better job myself. And she worked HARD. I know. I have photographed a number of weddings on my own. She worked hard for no pay and didn't complain. And got along with everyone. And Bob was too cool. I have never really met people like them before. I am glad I got to meet them now. I hope we can keep in touch.

Then there were the Bramlets. Heidi, one of my best friends from High School, and her husband Henry, someone I have known since High School... We had lost touch. Things happen, some good, some bad, mostly indifferent, and we lost touch. Aside from the occasional email, and a once a year (maybe) brief contact at a party, we never really talked. Then when I got engaged, my brother spilled the beans before I had a chance to announce it myself and I got a call from a very excited Heidi. So, I invited her and Henry to the wedding. I am so glad that I did. When they got to the bar at the hotel, it was immediately apparent that they were not only happy for us, but that the whole reason they came to Las Vegas was to celebrate with us. They came in, connected with Michael's friends, opened themselves up and were universally loved by everyone there. In fact, I think they may have made friends on their own that weekend. Heidi and I talked almost all night and cried and laughed and talked. They bought me a tiara. They picked up the tab (even for the deadbeats who left the party early two nights in a row)... They showed support. They showed love. They showed a decency that few possess. Getting a chance to reconnect with them made the weekend that much more special.

And then there was Kramies and Rene. Kramies is a musician friend of Michael's. I have to be honest. When I first saw them at the chapel, I didn't think that they could possibly be with our group. They were too cool... When I said that Kramies is a musician, I meant it. He looks like he belongs on an album cover, and Rene looked like a model. And they were the coolest people I had ever met. And some of the nicest. And for a talented guy, Kramies is very modest. Which I found refreshing.

And Christina - another one of my very best friends - came out, despite the fact that she may or may not have a ride back to LA... she came anyway. And Esther and Collin came, even though they are preparing for their own wedding in June, and Esther is trying to finish up Med School. They could only stay for the day, but seeing them was awesome. And they were genuinely happy to be there.

Heck, even my 82 year old grandmother seemed happy for us. And I have seen this woman four times in my life...

So, after a lot of thinking, and a fair amount of talking, and a lot of questioning, I have decided that I don't need to waste my time on dour, depressed people who want to make others as miserable as they clearly are. Some people really needed to grow up, and realize that the point of the weekend was celebration. I found the love of my life, which I never thought would happen. I am happier than I have ever been. I wanted everyone to have a great time and to celebrate that feeling of love and togetherness with us. Most people got into the spirit. A few bad eggs could not. They are the ones who missed out.

Henry said one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard on Saturday after the wedding as Michael and I were saying our good-byes... He said (paraphrased, but the sentiment is the same...)"The greatest gift we give is the friendship we bring to the table." That is so true. New friendships were forged that weekend. Michael and I said our vows infront of a room full of people who love us. I sometimes get this dark feeling that no one is there for me. This weekend proved me so very wrong. I am so blessed to have friends like I have, to have Michael, and to have gotten to know his friends. I would like to expand on Henry's thought. The greatest gift we give is not only the friendship we bring, but the openness of our hearts to our friends both new and old. The greatest gift is the ability to love and recognize that love in others.

I hope everyone keeps in touch. I hope I can hold on to this feeling forever. I hope the sour-puss crowd who couldn't join the fun at our wedding finally do grow up and realize that we should turn our attention toward a future forged in hope and we should not dwell on negativity.

So, from a newly married woman, to those friends I have had for a lifetime, and to the friends I made this last weekend and to the friends I haven't met yet, have a wonderful night. Dream pleasant dreams, and may you wake up with hope in the morning that carries you through to the night.

Call me Mrs....

2008-05-01T21:09:00.000-07:00

Married at last.

More to come.

Angels and ministers of grace defend us

2008-03-20T20:27:00.000-07:00

Dawn is writing again.

I sure would appreciate any thoughts or opinions on the following. Just the start of something I began a couple of months ago. I want to develop it further, but want some opinions first. Enjoy:

************************************************************************************

I always seem to find myself in the same sorts of places. No matter what I try or what I do, I always end up back in a world of gray boxes. It seems a futile effort to fight against the turning tide of my life. I should just settle back and let the currents carry me out to sea on a raft of memos and reports.

I think sometimes, as someone once told me, that I might be afraid of what happens when you leave these short dull walls. Maybe I have become institutionalized to the point that I couldn't function on the outside. Maybe that’s true. There is a certain type of security that comes from the highly structured world within these cozy confines. I will admit to getting small thrills from things like potlucks, or slice of birthday cake from an aging colleague. I always assumed that this was a coping mechanism, designed to make these chains bearable. Maybe, just maybe, it is all a part of larger series of lies I have been telling myself for years.

There could be something to the theory that I am here because on some baser level, I deserve to be. That no matter how smart or funny I think I am, my psyche, fragile thing that it is, has contrived a way to stay locked inside of the pseudo cell of the cube world. Perhaps, I fight because I don’t want to be completely lost to this place and disappear into the miasma of the work-a-day world. I look around me at my desk, a place I once vowed to keep clear of personal knick-knacks so that I could affect an escape with no more than a moments notice. Now, I am forced to take inventory of a dozen little mementos and realize that I am solidifying my presence here, so that it becomes more and more difficult to extract myself.

But then, there are times when I look around me and I think only: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

There is certainly a separate culture at work here. It took a couple of years, but I have become fully fluent in the secret language of the cube dweller. I understand the gestures, the jokes, and the helpless laughter when a superior tries management rule number fifteen: Tell jokes to lighten the mood. There are customs that must be observed, laws that must be obeyed, and courtesies that must be met. There is a neighborly infrastructure that is at play in these mini-homes away from home. There are covenants and blocks and even neighborhoods in your larger offices. There is leadership, sometimes elected democratically, sometimes installed by a tyrannical despot to terrorize and control the peasant class.

If I am a stranger in a strange land, my little mementos take on a new significance. Perhaps my treasures are anchors to the outside world, small reminders of a place of free thinkers and artists. They remind me of those deep hidden parts of myself that I keep shackled and hidden away during the nine to five rushes. In truth, I have a more intimate relationship with the stained ceiling tile above my seat than I do with my neighbor on the other side of the wall. I spend more time staring into space than practicing the art of small talk. In the world of my mind, I am free. I am happy, and I am in control. Sometimes I win the lottery, and sometimes I win a Pulitzer Prize. Every imagined situation is different, but the result is still the same. I escape from here, as secure in my freedom as I ever was in my cubicle and bi-weekly paycheck.

That I long to break out of this mold is not in doubt. The thing that stalls even my best laid plans is how to engineer that escape. How do I transition from a gray world of certainty to a world swirling as much with color as doubt?

Mondays are the worst for me. Every one of them blends into every other, until they become an entire year of Mondays, each as pointless and hopeless as the last 32 years ago on a Monday my mother was in the hospital laboring to give birth to her first child. I’m sure that in the weeks and months leading up to, what for her was a momentous occasion, she was filled with a million thoughts, not the least of which were the hopes and dreams that she had for her little girl.

Somewhere, along the long and winding road, those hopes and dreams faded with age until I’m sure my mother put them aside entirely. Whatever they were, I am sure that they didn’t include a dead-end existence in a pointless corporate situation. There are those here, as at all companies, who have the desire to move up, gobbling promotions like they were candy. Those who have perfected the art of kissing up so well that it has become purely instinctual. In a weird way, I admire them; or at least their spirit. Then there are also those who will move up through no thought or conscious effort of their own, and who fall ass backward into better pay and situations, and yet believe that they are owed what ever little they are able to scrape together. They go out and buy mediocre houses in cookie-cutter communities, promptly purchase an SUV, and start to have babies to increase the world’s population. They pass along to their children the same sense of entitlement that they inherited from their parents.

Then there are those like me. I work because I have to, period. There is no reward for me greater than my paycheck. I do just enough to keep it and keep from getting fired. It is true that once, when I was fresh from college, I too was bright eyed and bushy tailed, and weirdly optimistic. I believed that hard work and intelligence would open doors for me. I believed that I could do anything, and that I would show my worth and be duly rewarded. I’m not sure if it was foolishness or naivete or a strange mixture of both, but after my first year in the workforce, I was jaded and forever altered. I haven’t been able to get my drive back since, and really, I don’t want it back. I think of places like this as nothing more than the waiting room of death. Maybe my mother is right. Maybe I need more optimism.

My mother is too smart for her own good and too good for the world in which we live. She has worked harder than anyone I have ever known at one of the most thankless jobs on the planet: she is a nurse. My mother spends her days elbow deep in puss and shit, and receives as her reward, less than half of the pay of the doctors who spend as much time on the golf course as she spends on the ward. She has always worked the worst shifts in places I can’t even walk into without feeling the cold grip of death slither up my spine. I don’t know how she goes back day after night after day, and always with a smile on her face. She is either an angel of mercy sent to comfort the dying, or she has long since made peace with her station in life, counting the much shorter days until retirement on pension and social security.

As I sit here, staring at a blank spreadsheet, willing it to complete itself, and trying to look busier than I am, I wonder about the earliest expectations she had of me. I watch her now as she looks at me, and I can see the resignation on her face. I can hear in her voice that I am doing less than was expected. I wonder if she can pinpoint a place in my life where it all went wrong, or if she thinks that I have given up prematurely. I am sure that she is tired of hearing my plans and dreams. Every six months or so, I have a new idea for escaping the doldrums of this life and become that which I have always dreamed: a self-sufficient woman who depends only on herself for her living. Every six months, a new plan, and I excitedly tell my mother all about it. A few months later, when my plans have fallen apart and I start to sink into a depression brought on by my withering enthusiasm, I feel myself getting far more bitter than my still tender years should allow.

There but for the grace of God…

2008-03-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

Last night I stopped at 7-Eleven. I stop at 7-Eleven all the time: for lotto tickets, soda, ice, something to satisfy my sweet tooth in the middle of the night, the occasional guilty cigarette when stress seems overwhelming. Last night, however, my trip to the corner store changed my outlook, and may well have changed my life for good.

I pulled in, as I always do, frustrated to death with the traffic, people loitering in the parking lot, the woman blindly opening her door into my car. I took a few minutes to count the bills I had left in my wallet to make sure I would have enough to purchase soda and a couple of lottery tickets, grabbed my purse, and pushed my way inside.

The first thing I noticed is that they didn’t have the kind of pop I like. So I grabbed an alternative, mumbling under my breath how this was just one more thing I was going to have to deal with today. (Can I bring the melodrama, or can I bring it?) Walked past a couple of loud teenagers, and got in line behind a dozen people, all with special issues. I always seem to find myself in line behind every Tom, Dick and Harriet trying to buy a money order with pennies from their change jar. (Have you ever seen someone count out more than $2 in pennies????) It didn’t help that the person at the head of the line had a combination of coins and was apparently mathematically challenged. There was, as always, one girl working the register. She looked like she was having a day worse than mine. I half expected her to grab change-man by his scruffy hair and start shoving nickels down his throat. We were going to be there for a while.

At one point the line actually started moving backwards, as some kids up front decided to let all of their friends cut in front. Aside from the assortment of groans and mumbles, and a quiet “oh no you didn’t” from the woman behind me, no one confronted these kids. At the end of a long day, it hardly seemed worth the effort.

Eventually I got to the register. The exasperated cashier behind the counter had already sullenly rung up my soda, and gave me a total when I remembered my lottery tickets. I thought her head might explode from the look she gave me. I’ve had her job (or one very similar) and I hated every minute of it. I pushed my own grumpiness aside and joked that if I won millions, I would buy her a new tattoo. She gave me a “yeah, right” look, printed out my tickets and gave me my change. I had just enough left over for a cup of coffee in the morning to help make my long commute bearable.

A side note on the lottery; normally I am not a gambler. Ok, I will indulge in a nickel slot or two when I am in Las Vegas, and I have been known to play a hand of poker when the opportunity arises, however, I have never really gone out of my way to seek out gambling as a form of entertainment. I will, however, drop a dollar on a lotto ticket, especially when there is a huge jackpot. I, like most of us, want to believe that some day the gods of good fortune will smile down upon me and allow me to hit all five numbers, plus the power ball. I want to believe that some instant jackpot will take me away from my working world (cube-hell), away from my sub-suburban apartment (ghetto), away from my car payment (Compact PT Cruiser with no frills), away from everything that causes stress in my life. I want to believe that I deserve to run away to an island in the South Pacific and lay on a beach all day. I want to dream of a life where making the bills isn’t an issue, credit isn’t an issue, and rent is but a distant memory. When I buy that quick-pick ticket, I am putting down a dollar that allows me to dream of a better life. I never win, of course, but as my mother always says, it never hurts to try.

So these are the thoughts that are running through my head as I walk out of the door, glancing down at the lucky numbers in my hand, vainly looking for some pattern that will tell me if these are the lucky tickets that will change my life. I was lost in my own musings when I heard the door of the 7-Eleven give its tell-tale chime, and collided with him.

I looked up, annoyed, and came face to face with a grungy fellow, who smelled to high heaven, and looked like he hadn’t bathed in months, if ever. I stepped around him and walked back toward my car. I really just wanted to go home.

As I was getting in, I looked back at the man, just standing in front of the 7-Eleven. As I watched him, I noticed that he didn’t stop a single person to ask for money, didn’t shove, and didn’t bother to go in, didn’t harass or otherwise harangue any of the patrons of the convenience store. He just stood there in the growing shadow of night, silent.

And he was watching me back.

I looked directly into this man’s eyes and I saw something I have never seen before. I saw a man haunted, whether by demons real or imaginary, I couldn’t venture to guess. I saw a man hungry, for food yes, but also for human contact. I saw a man totally isolated and alone. I saw a man drained and devastated. I don’t know what brought him to that place, but he was there, watching me with his quiet eyes.

For the briefest of moments, I stood there looking over the top of my car door at that man. For a miniscule time, we were the only two people in that parking lot. I heard nothing but the distant roar of traffic from the highway in the distance. I felt nothing but the cool feel of my car door in my hand. I saw nothing but the deep pools of his eyes. It seemed to me, for that moment, that whatever was left of him was trapped and scared. I saw straight into the heart of that man’s soul.

A car horn snapped me back into time, and the moment was lost. The man put his head down and slowly walked away. I reached into my pocket and felt the two dollars I had left. The two dollars that would buy me a cup of coffee that I thought would make my drive in to work tolerable. Suddenly, a cup of coffee seemed such a small thing. I rushed up to the man who was walking away. He stopped before I reached him and turned, his sad eyes locked with mine one final moment. I took the two dollars out of my pocket, opened his hand and put them in. I didn’t say a word, but turned around, walked back to my car, went home, and hugged my fiancé with every ounce of strength I had left.

I saw something inside those eyes that will remain with me for the rest of my life. I don’t know what circumstances lead that man to be so utterly lost and completely alone. I don’t know why I noticed him when everyone else seemed able to ignore him completely. I don’t know why, during a busy moment, when I felt rushed all day, I stopped to watch him. I don’t know why but I do know that something in his eyes resonated in the core of my being – something so deep and profound that I am still struggling to find the words to match the feeling. That man was so lost, it brought me up short. I realized that when I say “I feel lost” or “I feel hopeless” or “I feel sad” that I don’t understand the true meaning or depths of those words. No matter how lost or hopeless or sad I may feel, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. What I saw in that man was someone for whom the light long since went out.

Even now, as I think about him, I wonder about the person he was before the darkness took him. I wonder about his childhood and his mother and his life before. I wonder what path he took that lead him to that place. I wonder if he will ever find his way out of the depths of despair and back into the realm of hope. I wonder if anyone will ever be able to comfort his soul again.

I hope so.

I dream of cicadas

2008-03-12T15:28:00.000-07:00

I dream sometimes of the sound cicadas make in the summer. In moments of deepest sleep, I can feel a warm breeze in my hair, and smell the dusty smell of the New Mexican desert. When I wake up, I know I will be at peace.

I am drawn in my dreams to the desert. When we were children, we would go south to Santa Fe, always at the tail end of summer to spend time with my Grandmother’s relatives. My brother and I relegated to sleep on the uncomfortable pull-out couch, my aunt snoring between us. The window would be left open, and in the middle of the night, a warm desert wind would always wake me from my sleep. I could hear the sound of cicadas in the night air, and the stars were bright and clear. During the day, the visits were hectic, filled with cousins and noise, but at night, in those brief moments when I would drift out of sleep, I felt calm. There was a sense of peace that would wash over me and the sound of cicadas would lull me back to sleep.

Since I can remember, I have dreamt about the sounds of cicadas, the warm desert air, and the clear night sky. Sometimes I will go years without dreaming it, but then it reappears, quiet and welcome. There have been times in my life when darkness threatened to overwhelm me, but then at night, I would find comfort in the dream. When I woke, I would feel renewed and knew that all darkness passes. I had cried myself to sleep, and then the cicadas came and everything seemed all right.

It has been years since I dreamt of the New Mexican night, the desert wind and the song of the cicada, but last night I felt it. This morning when I woke, I felt safe and calm and assured. I curled against Michael, and knew that this was the place I was supposed to be.

Sometimes, I have found that the demands of life can intrude on our peace of mind and threaten the strength of soul. Lately I have been feeling pressure from all angles: pressure from work, from family, from school. I have felt lost and have had a hard time letting go of anger. I feel frustration curling around my heart and I want to claw at it and pry it off.

But last night as I went to sleep, I asked for a moment of quiet. Then the cicadas came to sing their song, the night breeze stirred in my hair, and I could smell the dusty desert.

Peace.

A little more than kin...

2008-03-07T14:47:00.000-08:00

…A hell of a lot less than kind.

My future Mother-in-law does not want to attend our wedding. It’s not that she can’t afford to come. It’s not that she has some other plans. It’s that she doesn’t want to because she hasn’t seen her son (her only child) for four years. Of course this makes sense… in her weird medicated world. You see, if she comes for the wedding, he will be “too busy with his wife” to spend all his time with her. So she has decided it’s best to not come at all.

Nice.

My fiancé expected this. I half did too. She has not shown herself to be entirely stable in the almost three years I have known (about) her. I’ve never met her. Probably never will at this rate. She missed a scheduled trip out here last year. She said that my fiancé should come visit her instead. Alone. For a month or two. I shrugged it off as one of the weird things that mothers do. After all, my own mother is crazy in her own right. She has made planning this wedding miserable at best. But at least I know she will be there.

But not my new mother in law. She can’t be bothered to get on a plane to go to Las Vegas even for a day. She has decided that her own wants and needs outweigh those of her son. What a nice lady. I can’t wait to meet her and tell her how wonderful she really is. I have been practicing a little speech. It’s beautiful. Very emotional. I tried to keep it simple, keep the words short… There aren’t very many over four letters long.

Maybe I’ll write a letter instead. Dear Bitch, I’ll lovingly begin. Bitch can be a term of endearment, you know.

Really, I should let it go. I am just angry: angrier than I have ever been at another person for any reason, angrier than I have been at my own mother, angrier than I have been at my own father. They just hurt me. She, on the other hand, has hurt and continues to hurt my fiancé. And that is something I am not prepared to let go so easily.

The thing that broke my heart was when he called me to tell me that he just realized that now, he won’t have even one blood relative at our wedding.

I almost wept.

We were keeping our guest list small. My blood relatives were limited to my parents and my brothers. He was inviting only his mother and his young cousin. Now, my mother has commandeered my guest list and invited all of her brothers and sisters. My father invited at least one (possibly two) cousins of his, and a family friend. And my fiancé will not have one representative from his family anyplace in attendance.

Perhaps we should just consider them “possible organ or bone marrow donors” and leave it at that.

The bright spot in all of this has been our friends. In a lot of ways, I have always considered my closest friends more family than most of the people I share DNA with. We have more in common. I have been through thick and thin with them. Some of them have shown an infinite capacity for forgiveness. Some I have in turn had to forgive. We have laughed, wept, argued, and loved together. We have been through break-ups, divorces, messy divorces, deaths, births, triumph and tragedy together. We have cheered each other on as we succeed and hold each other up as we fail. And I got to pick each and every one of them. I have known some of my friends for more than half of my life. Others, I have met more recently. My life would lack some of its depth without them.

And I have watched my fiancé with his friends. These are the people who care about him. They want to know what he is doing, and what’s more, how they can help. They know that he will do anything he can for them, and they return the sentiment. I have seen him argue with them, then, when the dust has settled, make amends. I have seen him show an incredible tenderness with them when they are going through pain, and I know that when he most needed someone he could count on, they were there. I know he was in the hospital before we met, and I know that his friends nursed him. I know when he needed a place to stay, they were there. I know if one of them needed the same, he wouldn’t hesitate to provide it. My fiancé is a generous man who would give someone his good eye if he thought it would help them. His friends recognize this in him, and most of them, as far as I can tell, are the same kind of gentle souls.

And they are all coming to our wedding with just a couple of exceptions. The friends who couldn’t come either couldn’t afford the trip (layoffs, students, and living in Europe) or couldn’t get out of work (residents… the remains of the mighty medical students, now worked to death, or at least until they dismount their high-horse). Each one who couldn’t make it, however, expressed genuine regret… Something my fiancé’s mother couldn’t be bothered to do. Not one of our friends invited extra people without asking, unlike my own mother. Not one of our friends tried to guilt us into inviting someone we didn’t like, unlike my father. They have been wonderful, supportive, and they will make sure that we take our vows in front of people who cherish everything we are, good and bad, who we love, and who genuinely love us back.

And isn’t that what family is supposed to do?

An open letter to my fellow cube-ites

2008-03-05T14:24:00.000-08:00

Dear cubicle dwellers, (specifically those who dwell with me on the third floor finance in the hell that is this company)

I have been holding my tongue a lot lately, and now I have to finally speak or I will go quite mad. You see, there are several things that you do that are driving me nuts. I don’t know what else to do except to beg you to stop. Please, for the love of all that is good in this world, please listen.

To the woman around the corner, I can hear you music. First of all, disco sucked the first time around. It doesn’t improve when it is being strained through your headphones so that it drowns out the music in my own. And why is it still playing after you leave for lunch, or sometimes for the day? Do you think that you are contributing to the overall ambience of the office with the dulcet tones of the Bee Gees? I beg you reconsider. If you insist on playing your music at this level, I will be forced to take matters into my own hands and super-glue the headphone jack on your computer shut.

To the young woman over the wall in anaylitics, not everything that comes out of your mouth is hilarious. Honestly, when I first heard you laugh, I thought you were hurt. I had dialed 9-1 before I realized that I didn’t need to dial the other 1 because you weren’t injured. You sound like a dying hyena, and it is disturbing. I have had nightmares about your laugh that wake me from a dead sleep. It is a sound that you would normally hear in a horror movie coming from the mouth of the killer. It is not a normal people laugh. You need to go to laugh therapy and revise how you do it. How about a good natured chuckle or a girlish giggle? How about a guffaw? Honesty, any sound of mirth would be preferable to the ear bleeding screech that passes as amusement to you. Please, please for the love of God, have yourself checked.

To the management team over by the windows, don’t you work? In the current environment we are in, I would think that management would want to set an example by working hard and showing those of us lackeys below you that everyone is having to struggle to get things done. It really doesn’t do anything to boost morale when the bosses spend forty five minutes having an extended coffee break while they block access to the copier. If you need something to do, how about trying to fix said copier? It spends more time jammed than working, and if I get one more printout that is nothing but globs of toner, that is how you are going to receive your next reports. If you feel you need to leave early every Friday for a round of golf, have the decency to lie to us. Tell us that you have some urgent business that needs to be attended to. Don’t walk through a group of employees who have been working late and through lunch while wearing your golf hat, announcing your tee time to anyone who will listen. If you want to keep the little people from a mass walk-out, keep your playtime on the down low.

To the obscenely happy manager from down the hall, not everyone is a morning person. Your sing-song-y voice is not charming or cheerful at seven am. It is sickeningly annoying. Most of us need at least one cup of coffee before we really get going – at least I do. When you stand at my desk or see me in the hall, have the courtesy to ignore me until at least 9. If you have legitimate business to attend to, drop your voice a full octave or send an email. On that note, not every email needs a little smiley face. I would prefer that some of them were all business. I don’t have time to learn how to make an emoticon for every emotion. I refuse to devote the brainpower to learning it. Don’t take it personally if I don’t sent the same expressive punctuation when I email you back.

To the IT department – I don’t know squat about how to fix my own computer. If I did, then I would be in the IT department and not in accounting. When I call you with a problem, it is a legitimate problem. I call you when my computer ceases functioning because I DON”T KNOW HOW TO FIX IT. The only trick I know is to re-boot. If that fails to work, I am out of ideas. This does not make me an inferior being; it just means that I don’t know how to do your job. The same way you don’t know how to do mine. Don’t talk down to me, and don’t act like I am wasting your time with my issue. Part of your job description is to “Solve internal technology issues for associates.” I know. I looked it up.

To cell-phone girl, turn off your freaking phone. Or at least have the decency to turn the ringer off. Haven’t you ever heard of vibrate? Your ringtone is not cute. It ceased being cute the first time I heard it, and now I get to hear it five times a day every day. And when you answer it (which I have noticed is quite the rare event) you do not have to shout. If I can hear you three rows over, you are talking too loudly. Pipe down unless you want everyone around you to know your business. I already know far too much about your husband’s prostate. Turn your phone off or give it a nice normal ringer for when you are in the office out of respect for the sanity of the rest of us.

To the drama queen, your life is not that interesting. Not everything is a dramatic event worthy of a lengthy narrative. Sometimes a drive to work is just a drive to work. If you fought traffic, the rest of us probably did as well, since no one that I know actually lives at the office, the traffic gods did not purposefully delay your trip. The snow isn't falling just around you, the sun wasn't in your eyes alone. You are not the only person to have ever gotten a cold, a sunburn, a rash. You aren't the only one in history to have had a fight at home. You might be surprised to learn that the lines at the post office are long for everyone. If you could shut your pie-hole for a few moments, you might learn that most of us face the same issues day in and day out without all of the drama. Your daily boring diatribes regarding the general state of your life are beginning to wear me out. If you want to bother people with the minutiae of your life, start a blog. That way, if someone doesn’t want to read, they don’t have to.

I know that if we can all take our time and spare some consideration to those around us (me in particular), we can get through our days here without losing our sanity.

Sincerely,
Dawn the Annoyed

ERRRRRRRRRRRRR

2008-02-27T15:19:00.000-08:00

Recently I spent some time in the local E.R. (That’s Emergency Room for those who don’t watch the NBC drama that is inexplicably in its hundredth season…) Of course, like most people, I would have rather been anyplace else in the known (or unknown) universe. No one wants to have to go to the hospital, unless you are insane. If you are, I mean no disrespect, I just happen to be one of the sane masses who spend time and energy to avoid the emergency room.

Allow me to set the scene… It’s Sunday night. I have just lost our group Oscar pool for the first time ever. The taste of defeat is bitter in my mouth. (Not really – I actually only saw two of the Oscar nominated films this year: Ratatouille and Sicko – but I still hate to loose.) My fiancé and I walk in the door. I sit down at the computer to attempt to get motivated enough to finish a tiny bit of homework when I hear him say “Huh.” It was the most matter-of-fact sound anyone could make. Simple, sincere, confused. “Huh.” When I asked what was wrong, my fiancé showed me his middle finger.

Normally, I would respond in kind… however, it didn’t take an idiot to realize that he wasn’t making an obscene gesture. His middle finger was swollen to roughly two times its normal size. That, believe it or not, was one of the more terrifying things I have ever seen. My reaction was instantaneous. “Why the hell didn’t you mention this when we were at the party?”

Aren’t I the most nurturing soul?

Actually, I was scared. And, we had just left a party attended by a good friend of mine who happens to be a doctor. I was sure that he could calm my nerves and tell me something I wanted to hear. Something like, “Actually, this is a good thing.” Of course, we weren’t at the party any more, so I did what any sane rational person would do at 11pm. I called my mother, the nurse to get her advice. Her groggy advice was to go to the hospital, immediately.

You see, it’s not that I won’t seek emergency care when it is necessary. It’s just that I have this insane fear of all things hospital or emergency related. Bad things happen at hospitals. People die there, sometimes while waiting for care. Of course people also get well there, but my rational mind ceases to function when it is scared. Seeing an appendage of a loved one swell for no apparent reason will scare the best of us.

So we went to the hospital. After I had sufficiently armed myself with knowledge gleaned from Web MD. OK, armed, alarmed, what’s the difference?

When we arrived, a very nice woman told us to sit down and someone would be right with us. I have discovered that “be right with you” is a relative term. For the person waiting, you might expect someone to come out to help you in a few minutes. To the person helping, “right with you” means that they will add you to the bottom of their growing list of things to do and people to see. In our case, I was shocked that we were called back to the triage unit relatively quickly (about 20 minutes after our arrival.)

My fiancé was checked in and the nurse examined him, taking his blood pressure, temperature and whatnot. After poking and prodding at his poor swollen digit, she instructed us to go back to the waiting room. Someone else would presumably be right with us, just as soon as a room opened up. This time the wait was longer. I started watching the movie playing on the 19” TV bolted to the wall. I still don’t know how the unnamed David Spade movie ends, but to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have watched it at all if we hadn’t been in a hospital waiting room. At one point during our wait, I looked over and saw someone mopping the ceiling on the other side of the glass partition. I have to tell you, that added just a touch to my anxiety. What could have gotten on the ceiling? How could anything have gotten on a 12’ ceiling? What could it have been? Did a giant come through with a massive head wound? What could have happened?

I was so engrossed in my contemplation of the mysterious ceiling stain, that I missed several apparently key moments in the David Spade film, because it stopped making any kind of sense when I turned my attention back to it.

Finally, they called us back. We were lead through a maze like mice to a corner. I was wondering which of the numerous empty rooms would be ours. Imagine my surprise when we were told to “sit here” and the nurse pointed to a gurney in the corner of the hallway. That’s right, the hallway. Hallway H, actually. Our hallway had a name. The nurse left, saying that the doctor would be right with us. Awkwardly we both sat down and waited again. No TV this time, and reading my book seemed quite rude to my fiancé who sat staring silently forward, cradling his finger to his chest.

Now, I have to tell you, this isn’t the first time I have been in a hallway at a hospital. I was involved in an auto accident a few years back, and when they decided to take an x-ray of my neck and head to determine the extent of my injuries, they left me in a neck brace on a gurney in an abandoned hallway by the x-ray room. I laid there in an incredible amount of pain for more than an hour before a janitor found me and alerted someone that I had apparently been forgotten.

Of course, keeping that in mind, I was a little apprehensive about our odds of someone getting right with us right there in that hallway, but I kept faith and tried to keep my fiancé calm. If anyone is less suited for a trip to the hospital than I am, it is him. We are quite the pair.
After some time, a nurse came by and took his blood pressure. It was, for some reason, higher than it had been before. Maybe sitting in a hospital hallway in pain was doing something to him. Someone would probably be right with us to find out.

When the nurse left, she assured us that the doctor would be right with us. How unexpected.

Eventually, after time had lost a certain amount of meaning, the doctor came to see us. He poked around, asked a couple of questions and told my fiancé that he had an infection. Antibiotics and pain pills were his suggestion. Fabulous, now I can just collect the prescription and we can get the bleep out of this place, right? Right? Hello? Why am I still sitting here in this hallway? The doctor told us that the nurse would be right with us. Of course she would.

Oh, have I mentioned that I have been removed from the relative comfort of the gurney to a non-padded chair? Michael is now laying on the gurney, his middle finger comically in the air. It looked like he was expressing his opinion on hospitals and the idea that someone would be right with us. I would have laughed if he hadn’t been in so much pain.

Another undetermined amount of time went by. I amused myself by watching the corner of a television in a nearby room and describing the scenes to my poor battered fiancé. He has had his blood pressure checked and rechecked, but still nothing for the pain or swelling of his finger.

During this time, you can hear screaming from one room, arguing from a drunk in the corner, silent sobbing, and the laughter of distant nurses. Somewhere a heart rate monitor was keeping its beeping time. The earth cooled, the dinosaurs came. A meteor struck. Mammalian life evolved. Monkeys began walking upright and using tools. Ancient Rome fell.
And the nurse eventually came back.

This time she put my love on an antibiotic drip and gave him a couple of Percocet. She would be right back with us to check on us. Call me a cynic, but I was beginning to doubt that she would be right back. We were destined to live out our lives here in Hallway H, grow old and gray. Our children and grandchildren could play on the IV stand as a makeshift jungle gym. We could put up a fence and get to know our neighbors. Cook-outs in the nurses’ station would be a blast. Race you to the watering hole – or as the locals call it, the puddle in Hallway I.

Just before I started picking out drapes, the nurse did come back. Michael’s IV was just about done, and we were free to go home. She bandaged him up, put a splint on his finger, and gave us the prescription from the doctor. In just under 5 hours, we were able to secure antibiotics for the infection. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Then the nurse asked me the most ridiculous question I have ever been asked:

“Do you know how to get out?”

What? Five hours ago I was lead through a maze of hallways looking for a room. After spending a small eternity in the warm cocoon of Hallway H, I have no idea that an outside world exists. Of course, if she put a small block of cheese at the end of the line, I might be able to sniff my way out. I have become aware of a gnawing hunger in our time here. Seeing the look of utter disbelief on my face, the nice lady takes pity on us and leads us down the hall, around a series of corners, and out into the waiting area from whence we came.

Hallelujah! We are free. My stomach hurts, my butt is numb, my back is stiff, and my eyes are having a hard time re-adjusting to the blinding light of the exterior waiting room from the dim hallway, but we are free. My fiancé smiles at me and starts to sing… I think the goofballs finally kicked in. I doubt he feels the pain in his finger. I could probably kick him in the face and he wouldn’t feel it. Instead, I think about how wonderful it is to be in the fresh, albeit freezing, air of a Colorado February night. I can worry about food later. Right now I am just happy that Hallway H is a memory, and that the initial scare turned out to be minor. Michael was holding his hand up, his middle finger sticking up thanks to the splint. I turned and mimicked his one fingered salute of the Aurora Medical Center before getting in my car and driving away.

Now I have to go to the pharmacy. Don’t worry, someone will be right with me.

If it’s not one thing…

2008-02-21T15:30:00.000-08:00

It’s my mother…

I have been dealing with a lot of emotions lately. First of all, I am getting married. There is a lot of joy involved in that. The planning is all but done, the dress purchased, we have the rings… I am deeply in love with my fiancé.

But for some reason I don’t feel special.

Isn’t that the line? All brides are supposed to feel special? Well, I don’t. I don’t know how to describe the feeling, except to say that I feel largely inconsequential and I know that shouldn’t be.

Before anyone laughs me off as a Bridezilla (ever seen that show? Fascinating…) let me assure you that I am not. I did not demand anything, and I still don’t. I found a dress that makes me happy, but it will not break my heart if I don’t wear it. I made my own invitations and asked for no help (and didn’t complain – except once when my dear fiancé accidentally spilled soda on one exterior envelope…) I browse the web when I have time, have idly made a list of songs I want to put on my iPod for the day (no DJ here…). My maid of honor is actually my brother (probably shouldn’t call him a maid…), and I have told him he can wear whatever makes him comfortable. I will walk down the aisle to whatever the chapel plays, carrying the bouquet that they provide. I am getting married in Las Vegas, because I want people to have a blast and a mini break. I am about as easy going as any bride has ever been.

And I would know. You see, aside from an avid fan of shows like “Bridezillas”, “Who’s wedding is it, anyway?”, and “Platinum Brides” (I am, after all, fairly girly) I also spent several years as a wedding photographer. I have seen what becomes of seemingly normal women as their wedding day approaches. I have been yelled at, chastised, cried on, and laughed with, all by the same woman on the same day. This woman will sit with a pretty little smile on as I take here photo and two seconds later starts screaming at her best friend about an imaginary spot on her dress. I have learned to avoid these women.

I have seen it with my own friends too. Self-possessed women suddenly become wedding-headed when a diamond ring is slipped on their finger. One girl I knew in college, who had good taste up until she became a bride-to-be, actually dressed me in a pepto-bismol pink sheath skirt and strapless corseted top. There was a giant bow across my ass, which emphasized its enormity in the grand scheme. Her own dress, by contrast to her columned bridesmaids was comprised of all the tulle that was in existence at the time. It had to be, because this girl (big to start with, big-birds of a feather flock together?) appeared to be twice the size of a city bus. I could have made a fortune selling advertising space on her dress. (I’m not kidding, it was so big, that her tiny father was almost covered from the waist down in his daughter’s skirts as they walked down the aisle. The result from the altar was a strange two headed creature approaching to the strains of Handel, one head dressed in a tux, the other in the rest of the dress.) She went nuts when she became engaged. It’s as though something inside her snapped when she realized that she got to plan a wedding. She should have been stopped. Of course, we didn’t say a word. She was the bride, and this was her moment.

I’ve lost track of her over the years. But I know that on that day and the days leading up to that day, she glowed. She was special. She was The Bride.

So why, now that I am The Bride, do I not feel special?

You might think I exaggerate, and part of me agrees. The larger part of me, however, realizes that perhaps I don’t feel special because no one else in my life seems to recognize that (for a little while at least) I am supposed to BE special.

To be fair, most of this feeling has come from my dealings with my mother, ever since I got engaged.

I want my mother to be a part of this process with me. I almost need it on a base level of my being. I value my relationship with her, but lately I’ve started to question it. She doesn’t want to be involved at all, and when I have finally been able to get her to take a day to go, oh, dress shopping, she finds ways to sabotage it. She denies this vehemently, and tells me that it is all in my mind. But I can’t shake the feeling that she is actively trying not to spend time with me.

For example, dress shopping. I asked for weeks for my mother to come dress shopping with me, finally getting her to agree to come one Saturday a few months back. We started out at a coffee shop. I wanted to bond with her. As soon as we sat down, my mother launched into a monologue about a woman connected to my family. (It’s actually a messy story that I don’t want to get involved in here. I don’t like this woman at all, and prefer that she not be mentioned, much less discussed around me. She is an awful human being who has done nothing but bad things for and to my family. ‘Nuff said.) My mother knows that I won’t talk about this woman, and knows that I prefer not to. I have told her as much, and she respected that right up until dress shopping day. For three hours, I listened, disgusted as my mother dwelt on every aspect of this woman’s life. My coffee cup was empty, my stomach had started to growl, and I was really wanting to hit at least one shop before they closed. When I finally started to say, “Let’s go,” her phone rang. It was my father wanting lunch. My mother rushed home (or more precisely had me rush her home) to fix him lunch. I sat in my parents apartment for another two hours before finally realizing that shopping that day was a lost cause.

Take shopping attempt number 2. After a couple of weeks, I got her to agree to go again on a Saturday. I keep picking Saturdays because 1) my mother goes to church on Sundays and 2) Many of the shops I wanted to check were high end consignment stores, closed on Sundays. I called to verify what time I should pick her up the night before, and she informed me that we were supposed to go shopping on Sunday. You understand, she had made plans to go visit my brother on Saturday. She couldn’t possibly go shopping with me that day. Later that afternoon (much later – shops would have been closed later) she called and said that she was now ready to go shopping. I told her we would reschedule.

Attempt # 3 was called off because she forgot we were supposed to go that weekend and went RV shopping with my father instead.

Attempt # 4 was ruined because she wanted to bring my 9 year old half-brother and didn’t see a problem with that. We didn’t get past the book store at the coffee shop.
Attempt # 5 didn’t happen because she “couldn’t leave her roast”.
I didn’t try for #6.

Do you want to know what the loneliest experience in the world is? Shopping alone in the mall for your wedding dress. I have never felt so out of place and so abandoned in my entire life. I actually had to get a pretzel to keep myself from bursting into tears.
I decided to buy a gown on line. At least then I could shop from the comfort of my own home.

It isn’t all about shopping for the dress either. Originally, we were planning a wedding here in my home town of Denver. I wanted her to go with us to look at some of the sites. She put us off or refused or said “I’ll see it another time.” Like when? The wedding day? I wanted to get her opinion on flowers. “Whatever you pick will be fine.”

Finally, we decided to move the wedding to Las Vegas. My mother despised this idea and wasn’t shy about expressing it. Of course, when the wedding was in town she couldn’t be bothered. Move it to Vegas and suddenly it cheapens a sacred moment. Everyone else was on board, so my Mother was out-voted. My father actually reminded her that when they got married, she wanted to elope to Las Vegas.

The other weekend, after asking if she could help me put together my wedding invitations, I brought the materials over to her place. She took the one I had addressed to her and put it aside. No exclamation can sufficiently express how disappointed I was. I was proud of my work. I made a beautiful, professional-looking invitation, and she didn’t even want to open it. When I pointed this out to her, she did open it, but tossed the insert aside with the garbage. I had to point this out to her too. When we sat down to actually do the assembly, she kept getting up and wandering into her kitchen. Ostensibly, she was checking on her menudo, but I will tell you as someone who cooks a hell of a pot of menudo – no checking is necessary until the tripe cooks. You can’t taste the broth until then anyway, so why worry. And it takes hours to do so. I could tell by the smell she had just put it on. She knows this. She’s the one who taught me to cook it.

She couldn’t care less. And that frustrated me and angered me and hurt me. The only time she perked up was when I finally gave in and told her that even though the guest list was small, she could invite her brothers and sisters. (For those who think me callus, allow me to explain. I don’t know my mother’s brothers and sisters, because they never visit or call or sent letters. I grew up in Denver, they lived in Boston, and if my mother had never brought us across country to see her family, I might have never known about them at all.) We were supposed to keep the guest list to under 30 people to keep costs down. My mother is the youngest of 7 that means that half of the entire guest list would be my mother’s relatives that I do not know… who never called me to say happy birthday, merry Christmas, feel better after your auto accident, or congratulations on your impending marriage. Who was my fiancé supposed to invite – no one? Are we supposed to tell our friends, sorry –we’ll send you a post card? What about my father’s even larger family that he insisted we NOT invite so as to have room for our closest friends???…. As soon as it was something she wanted to do, she became excited and animated. I have never seen this side of her.

Then the final straw. I brought my wedding dress out for her and my brother (of honor) to see. Remember, I picked it out all alone… I changed my mind about what to wear at least a dozen times, but now that I have my dress, I love it and any one who doesn’t can kiss my grits.

I put on my beautiful ivory gown, complete with necklace and earrings hand crafted especially for the occasion, and stepped into view. While my brother said “very nice, Dawn,” all I received from my mother was a disinterested “oh.”

Oh. That’s it. Her only daughter is getting married and all I get is “Oh.” Not hmmm, not OK, just Oh. One lousy syllable that spoke volumes about her indifference to my wedding, my dress, and my life. I went back in to change, heartbroken, and came out, only to hear my mother discussing that same woman whose conversation ruined my first dress shopping trip.
Well, that’s appropriate, I suppose – full circle. I can’t fault her consistency.

When I finally was able to get more than a monosyllabic response out of her, nothing nice was said. The color (ivory) wasn’t appropriate for my wedding. She thought I was going to wear green. The shape did nothing for me. I need something to cover my arms (I know that, at least. I stepped out of my brother’s bedroom with the explicit instructions to ignore my arms which will be encased in shawl). She kept dwelling on the color green (looks awful on my btw) and basically told me that I looked awful. She asked if I could have the dress dyed or otherwise altered. I made her get out of the car at the book store.

I called my fiancé and cried. We were supposed to go shopping for shoes. I was looking forward to having my mother involved in this one aspect of my life, but she has made it abundantly clear that she doesn’t want that at all. As a result I feel lower than low, and depressed. I even started smoking again, briefly, but starting is starting all the same.

My fiancé thinks I should uninvite her, but I just can’t. I still want her to feel that this day is special.

I am probably, to quote my father, farting in the wind on this one.

But it doesn’t stop me from wanting to try.

If I had a million dollars… it wouldn’t be enough.

2008-02-20T22:12:00.000-08:00

Allow me to explain.

A very sweet girl I know just found out that she is losing her job at the end of the school year. She teaches the third grade. She is good at what she does. The world, and this town especially, needs good teachers. But she is still losing her job. This frustrates me to no end.

Then I think about my fiance’s best friend. He just lost his job too. The company eliminated his position, gave him a pittance of a severance, and sent him on his way. The economy is down, you understand, they didn’t have a choice.

Sure, he worked for a big giant corporation whose CEO probably earns seven or eight figures. Probably has one of those golden parachutes. Probably has a company car to boot. But that small job, that is the one that needs to be downsized. Good bye, and thanks for your loyal service. Here’s an extra paycheck just to show that we are good people. See?

My company is also in the process of downsizing. The best part about this is that I have lost count of the number of overpaid executives here. They don’t get the axe, or even get asked to take a pay cut. No, it is much better to lay off the little guy who makes the company run, thus destroying the morale of anyone left and ensuring that your underpaid rank and file staff are over worked.

Yeah, Capitalism! Give me a C! Give me an E! Give me an O!

Give me a break.

At this point, I have literally lost count of the number of people I know who have lost jobs or homes, or, God forbid, both. These are good, solid, hard working people. They aren’t evil. They aren’t lazy. They aren’t anything other than ordinary citizens struggling to make ends meet, then falling flat on their faces when the ends get moved, or taken away entirely. Why? Why do we have to face joblessness and homelessness in this country? Aren't we the richest, the biggest, the most compassionate land on earth?

Most of us.

You see, I have been doing a great deal of research on the subject as of late. My own impending lay off notwithstanding, I believe that there is one thing, one cause that we can point to in this ever changing world that remains constant. There is one condition that deserves, I believe, the blame for most of the problems we find ourselves facing today, and throughout history: Greed.

That's right.

Good old fashioned greed is to blame. Power corrupts. Greed is corruption. Greed is sin and vice and folly all rolled into one hungry little monster. Greed is a deadly sin by his other name, Envy. Greed changes people. It infests them. It poisons the mind and soul. Greed damns us and all around us to suffer in its wake. Even if you aren't the greedy one, your boss, your parents, your neighbor may be. Greed covets. Greed destroys. Greed thrives in the worst of us. Greed dwells, hidden in the rest. That's the worst part.

Here goes Dawn the Liberal again. Another rant against capitalism. Au contraire, mon amis. I am an entreprenuer at heart. I need capitalism and a free market. I am an American, I believe in those things very deeply. They drive this great land, and each of us in turn to be smarter and better. With competition we thrive. It's when Greed rears his ugly green head that we suffer.

Allow me to elaborate.

In 2004, the average CEO earned 240 times more than the compensation earned by the average worker. That's in America. In other industrialized countries, CEOs earned about a third of that amount. CEO pay increased by 14% average between 2003 and 2004. The average worker's pay increased by just over 2%. If inflation is taken into account, real spending power acutally fell by just under 1%. We are earning less, things are costing more, and the leaders of our corporations are getting fatter and richer. (By the way, all of these figures are available on the web. I checked the Wallstreet Journal, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics)

I wish I had a 14% raise last year. Of course, I actually earn less because of the job I am in, but that's no big deal, right? Because surely my company loyalty will be rewarded. Right? Right? Anyone?

Why are you laughing?

Perhaps it is because you and I both know that at the end of the day, profits and shareholders hold all the cards (forget if some companies actually lay off shareholder employees... they don't mean that much to begin with...) When it comes time to figuring out how to save a buck, you and I are the first people on the chopping block. Imagine you, typical Joe earn $35,000.00, living paycheck to paycheck. You don't have a savings, you are lucky to have your health plan(which you pay for), you have a modest home, a running car (thank goodness) and your health. Imagine the CEO earns 240 times that number in total compensation - That's 8.4 million roughly. That's a lot of dough. He probably lives in a slightly larger home (mansion) in a slightly more prosperous neighborhood. He drives a new Mercedes (or BMW or Hummer - let your imagination soar). His health plan is 100% company covered. He has a hell of a savings, an IRA, Stocks, Bonds, CDs, and a Swiss Bank Account. He takes a vacation to Europe once a year. You saved up for three years to drive across country with your kids in your car and go to Disneyland for a couple of days. You stayed at the Holiday Inn, which you consider a splurge. Going out to eat, he is 5 star, and you are value meal. You exist in different worlds. Nothing wrong with that. You work hard, and you just know that your bosses know that. You are honest as the day is long. You pay your taxes. You don't speed. You only drink socially. You love your wife.

Let's say now that the company has hit some hard times as has been known to happen. Now the company starts loosing money. They need to save 2 million right away, every year. Where should they look to get that money? Most companies, unfortunately, decide to cut jobs. Not upper level management jobs. No, Mid management and below. The first people on the chopping block are those at your level. You can save them $35,000 a year. You and 59 of your closest buddies will be out the door. Just to prove that the company isn't all bad, they are going to give you one extra paycheck. They don't have to give you anything. You take it and leave.

Now, if you are like me, and millions of others like us, you start to panic. I don't know about you, but my paycheck is 100% accounted for before I even get it. I know where every penny has to go. I have rent to make. I have bills to pay. I have to have power and food and shelter. That extra paycheck will keep you in your house for another month. You had better find something by then.

On your way home, you notice that gas is ten cents more a gallon than it was when you left. Should have topped off the tank. But you didn't know. It was an ordinary Friday, just like any other.

Did you know that most companies lay people off on Friday? That's so you have the whole weekend to stew about it. Great. Sure, by taking a pay cut in his ridiculous pay (say he now only earns 6 million, poor baby) he could save those 60 jobs. Save 60 more heads on the unemployment line. Save 60 more families from desperate times. From losing their homes. From losing their hope. But why would he want to do that. Afterall, he deserves it. Serves the rest of us right for being workers instead of queen bee.

Now, I have been told that I am being ridiculous. That these CEOs deserve their millions of dollars and stock options and golden parachutes. The shareholders, afterall, are willing to pay for it. The CEOs aren't really taking advantage of the system.

Bullshit. I'm sorry, but the more I think about it, the more angry I get. Minimum wage hasn't gone up in years. Most employees are making LESS in real dollars than in previous years. People are loosing their jobs because of downsizing or sending jobs to third world countries where labor is cheap and exploitable (hard facts, sorry). Many companies no longer provide health insurance. Some reduce vacation and holidays to the bear minimum. We are told that the company wants to help us. Then it lays us off. And the CEOs and the shareholders and the board of directors get rich in the process. On the backs of the worker.

I am not trying to incite a worker's revolution here. That is not my point. I am just frustrated by the lack of equity. I had a wholly frustrating discussion on this topic earlier today. I don't believe that we are all worth the same compensation, but COME ON! You cannot tell me that a CEO who leaves his company on the verge of bankrupcy after making BAD decisions is worth 240 times more than the hard working schmoe on the front lines who does his freaking job well. (Merrill Lynch, for example). If a ship starts to drift off course, do you toss the crew overboard, or do you demand answers and performance from the captain. Incidentally, just because some boards are willing to pay ridiculous salaries to these men (and they are largely men - white men at that - I am not talking all, just majority) doesn't mean that they are actually worth that. It doesn't make it right, or just, or moral.

And afterall, are we not a moral and just society?

So you see, I cannot possibly accept as little as a million dollars. I am worth way way way more than that. Hell, I am worth more than I am getting paid now, but I am at least smart enough to realize that it could end at any minute. They could find someone in Timbuktu who is willing to do my job for a nickle a week. That is net gain of a few hundred dollars to my company. Problem solved. Here's a lovely pink slip, and as your parting gift, a loss of dignity and security. WalMart is hiring. I believe they pay minimum wage.

Until something changes within the mindset of the American people, it will go on like this. I will continue to feel anger and shake my fist into the sky demanding answers of a system that seems capable of robbing most people of their sense of self and worth. A system that throws away people because they weren't lucky enough to be CEO material. Sure, we can improve ourselves, but there are always going to be people at the bottom rung of the ladder. Society cannot stand without them. And I have always believed that you can judge a society by how she treats the lowest of her citizens. I don't want to be rich, I just want to be comfortable and not be afraid that someone is going to decide that I am worth more as an erased expense than I contribute to the company. Like it or not, I depend on money to survive. Survival, at its heart is the most basic right I know.

Of course, I could be wrong. Survival could be a privledge reserved for the rich, we just don't know it yet.

Find the Band

2008-02-19T07:40:00.001-08:00

This is fun.

Go through the picture and find as many names of bands as you can. I will post answers as soon as I find them all. (Click on the photo for a larger image)

Have fun.

For what I'm worth...

2008-02-18T13:56:00.001-08:00

Ah self esteem…

On fragile wings of gossamer toward the light
Love, youth, and beauty gave us fair flight.
From a quiver of words, his aim is true
Doubt intrudes, his dark shadow blue
Down we fall towards the sea of sorrow
Hope leaves us cold until the morrow.
-Dawn the Sad

What a load of crap. Forgive my language, but it’s true. All the flowery speech in the world can’t help when we fall victim to the worst kind of fiend – self-doubt. Oh, what an evil character this creature is. He dwells in shadows and waits for the perfect opportunity to strike. Do you know how he finds us? He listens and waits for the right words, then as if magic, he appears.

“Is that what you decided to wear?” Poof! You can’t dress.
“You’ve looked better, you know.” Poof! You look like shit.
“I wouldn’t have chosen that particular color.” Poof! You don’t know how to dress yourself.
“Didn’t you wear any makeup today?” Poof! You look old.

We are supposed to be able to build up an immunity to such cheap shots, but as I have learned (over and over and over again), you are never really immune to nasty words and self-doubt.

Ego is such a fragile creature, that when we do meet those who appear to have it in spades, we label them vain and continue on our dour but merry way. We act as though it is virtue to feel down about ourselves: our physical appearance, our accomplishments, our lives. Bullshit. The virtue is being able to accept a compliment, or being able to feel good about yourself no matter what anyone else says to you or about you or around you.

This weekend, I suffered a wound to my own esteem, and I find that I am still trying to recover from it. I have been trying to figure out why. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I ignore comments meant to put me down? Why am I hung up on what someone else thinks of me? I have never really been one to let outsiders dictate who I believe I am or what I believe I am capable of. Why now, does one comment throw me into a tail spin and send me crashing down from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows?

Does the fact that the words came from my mother’s lips have anything to do with it?

Partially, but first, I think I need to see what else caused me to be susceptible to a single comment in an otherwise good week.

Let’s start with the media.

“Oh, of course. Another feminist rant about media and negative stereotypes of women,” you’re thinking. Well, yes and no. Yes, I will rant about the media, but no... I don’t think that a group of magazine photos, no matter how provocative, can truly shape our idea of self-worth. Bear with me.

The media (movies, magazines, and television) make their money selling ideals of youth and beauty. Super-skinny women with amazing bone structure, taller than most men, who wear a size 0 - size 2-4 if they are on the *larger* side - pose with their pouty lips in shadows for high fashion magazines. Hollywood women are valued for their beauty to the point that if one of them takes off the makeup for a role, her “versatility” is praised. Tabloids profit from showing celebs in the raw: no air-brush, no stylist, no makeup and hair, just people out on the town. We as consumers eat these things up. “Look at the beautiful people,” we say. “They look just like us.”
Well, duh. Isn’t it amazing how people all look like people when the glam factor is turned off?

So why do we buy this media-fed idea of beauty? Do we really want to look like the model on the cover of Cosmo? The average American woman is a 5’5” and a size 14. I am slightly shorter and heavier than average. Shouldn’t I want to see women who look like me in the magazine? Wouldn’t that boost my ego?

Maybe. The media is pushing its current standard for perfection. This idea is fluid and changes over time. Have you ever seen a painting by Peter Paul Rubens? The women portrayed in his art would be scoffed at today. They would be going to Weight Watchers meetings, hiding their bodies under mounds of fabric. However, to Rubens and his contemporaries, these women portrayed the very ideal of feminine beauty. What about the Venus di Milo? Her athletic form might find its way onto the cover of Shape, but she will never grace the cover of a high fashion rag like Cosmo. She is too meaty, too short, and too shaped. The women who are “beautiful” by the media’s standards today would have themselves been chastised in another society for being too thin, wasted, alien, too tall, now the shoe is on the other foot.

This must have formed a sub-conscious foundation in my mind. Mabye my value system has been skewed by these images without my knowledge. Maybe I am weaker willed than I had thought. Maybe I have bought into these physical ideals and maybe, just maybe I berate myself for not being the tall skinny version of perfection that is paraded about on glossy pages or red carpets.

Or then again maybe not. I don’t really read many fashion magazines. As for red carpets, I love watching pretty gowns and sparkly jewels. (I’m a girl, so sue me…) I don’t really judge myself based on what these other women look like. So what is it?

What about the double standard? Male versus female? Do you remember the movie “About Schmidt”? There is a very memorable scene where Jack Nicholson is in a Hot Tub and Kathy Bates decides to join him au natural. For months after that movie opened, I kept hearing about how Kathy Bates was naked. I kept hearing that she was brave from one camp and stupid from the other. People commented on her body, her shape, her weight. People were kind and ruthless with equal veracity. During the whole incident, I never heard one comment about Jack Nicholson. Kathy Bates is an older woman with the body of an older woman. There is no escaping that fact. Jack Nicholson is an older man. His body is in no better shape than Kathy Bates, however not one media personality or fashionista or celeb crazy reporter mentioned his flabby frame. (Sorry, Jack.) Why was Kathy Bates the subject of such scrutiny, and Jack Nicholson escaped it entirely? Why as women do we have to maintain “perfection” even resorting to surgical alterations in some cases, while our male counterparts do not? Women grow old and men grow distinguished. True, the gap is narrowing. I can imagine that a whole lot of Metro-Sexuals will be seeking the botox clinic at first sign of forehead creases, but on the whole, women still out-number men nearly 8 to 1 when seeking to maintain the body and face of their youth. Are we really such fragile creatures that we are willing to go under the knife to maintain youth? Do we fear age and mortality, or do we fear rejection?

Am I more susceptible to wounds of the ego because I am a woman?

I thought about that long and hard. I am an emotional being, sometimes overly so. I can (and have) take a comment and dwell on it. I examine innocent (seeming) remarks for hidden agenda or meaning. I have a hard time taking a compliment. Maybe I was so wounded this weekend because I am a woman and thus more susceptible toward cutting remarks.

Then I remembered my brother.

My brother is a sweet boy (man) who is about a year younger than I am. We grew up close, and are to this day, good friends. That is not to say that sometimes he doesn’t piss me off, because he does. I am sure that I make him mad too. That is the nature of siblings. It is a love-hate-love relationship.

The reason I mention him now is because he can help me illustrate the difference between male (his) and female (mine) perspectives on beauty and body image. Surely he as a man will have a stronger ego. Surely he will be able to objectively view himself in the mirror without all of the baggage that comes with being a woman. Surely, he can help me out. I went out to talk to him, specifically to find out how it is that I can be so wounded by mere words. I wanted him to teach me his ways.

What I learned from this conversation was that my brother is as susceptible to self doubt as I am. I never even got to ask my question. He launched into a litany of complaints about his own body image, how he was too this or too that. How he needed to loose weight or gain muscle or somehow improve himself so he didn’t feel so bad about himself. He actually was a little harder on himself than I am. So much for the idea of male vs female.

Well that didn’t exactly do what I had expected, but it did bring something to light. We were both raised by the same mother. My mother is perhaps the most self-abasing person I know. I don’t mean that in a good way. I went out with her this weekend to go shopping for shoes to go with my new wedding dress. She repeatedly apologized for not having on any makeup. (Neither did I.) And repeatedly apologized for not having done her hair (neither did I). And repeatedly pointed out her own flawed body shape as a reason why she could never wear this outfit or that shoe. (Let she who is without flab cast the first rice cake…) I didn’t really pay attention to it, because that is just how she is. She has her issues, but my mother is a kind sweet lady, most of the time.

Most of the time.

She made a comment that hurt me, regarding how I looked in my wedding dress. Immediately I went from feeling like a princess to feeling like a toad. I felt fatter, plainer, and shorter. I went from elated to deflated in .07 seconds. It was amazing how quickly I could be brought from smiles to tears. I found out later that she didn’t mean what she said, but I still feel that same doubt. I have driven my fiancé crazy by repeatedly seeking reassurance that I am pretty enough to get married. How crazy is that?

So now I understand a little more about why I am the way I am. My ego (and my brother’s) is so fragile because it was installed by a fragile woman. I don’t know if media affected her, but if I had to guess, I would say that my grandmother did the damage to Mom (after all, I do know both of them.) Does this cycle have to be self-perpetuating? Can one generation learn the signs and break out of it? If I have a daughter will I instill in her the self-same doubt and fragility? Will I teach her to love or loathe who she is and what she looks like? God, I hope not.

For the time being, I suppose it is good that I can recognize the symptoms and fight for my own self worth.

For what it’s worth.

Mr Visa and Mrs Citibank request the honor of your presence...

2008-02-12T14:17:00.000-08:00

I am getting married, and I will admit that I have gotten swept away with the planning on more than one occasion. There seem to be a million details, not the least of which is what will I wear? Finally yesterday, the perfect dress arrived, after months of searching. I was so happy I wanted to wear it for hours. The best part was how much of a bargain I got. What I didn’t know was that my bargain (great for any outfit, trust me) was way more than I had imagined.

You see, I learned something new today: The average cost of a wedding in the United States is $27,000, with the average bride spending just under $4,000 on her outfit.

That will stop any would be bride in her tracks. Four thousand American Dollars. That is roughly eight times the cost of my first car, and a little less than a third of what I paid for the car I am currently driving. $4,000 is a fifth of a down payment on a house. (And if you really think about it, $27,000 would be a heck of a down payment for the couple’s first home…). $4000 is $3,900 more than I have ever paid for any outfit for any occasion for any reason, and way way way more than I paid for my own humble dress. Upon reading that statistic, my jaw dropped and I was literally at a loss for words. Me! Unable to think of anything to say.

Then it hit me… Our priorities are screwed up. Capital Screwed.

Why on earth is every young woman hell bent on having a blow-out wedding that literally breaks the bank? How smart is it to start of your married life deep in debt, or to put your aging parents deeper into debt for one day? This is a fabricated desire bred in the wedding industry, and fed at the teat of the media. Glossy books called “Bride”, “Modern Bride”, “InStyle Weddings” and “The Knot” beckon the weak with full color spreads of shiny things and too-thin brides smiling beatifically as if to say, “Don’t you want to be as happy as me?” This is one of the symptoms of our growing materialism. It used to be that weddings were about the love, now they're about the couture, haute or otherwise.

Don’t get me wrong… if you can afford (easily) a lavish wedding, then by all means, flaunt it. Do it, and enjoy. Perhaps think of us little people and save me a slice of designer cake. The rest of us, however, need to take a big fat step back and re-evaluate every aspect of getting married and get to the base of what we really want or need.

Let’s start with the ring.

You found him: The One. You are head over heels in love. You know it, he knows it. You have discussed the big “M”, it’s only a matter of time before a question gets “popped”. One day, you go out, everything is perfect. Your man gets down on one knee. Your heart is in your throat, because you know what’s coming. He waxes poetic about your beauty and your life, and opens a tiny box… Magic, right?

Apparently not for everyone. Apparently that magical moment that every little girl has dreamed about can be ruined by one thing… The RING! Who knew?

My fiancé proposed without a ring. He was very cute and romantic. I am so in love with him, that saying yes was never a question. I didn’t even ask for a ring. I just wanted the question. Silly me. Naïve girl that I am, I thought that the question was the whole point.

That’s not to say that I didn’t get a ring, I did. My soul mate said that he wanted us to pick the ring out together. That was one of the best shopping trips of all time. I immediately went out showing everyone who would look my new beautiful sapphire ring. Some of my friends were shocked. Where was my diamond? Isn’t it a little small? Do you think I could exchange it?

What? First of all, let’s ignore the fact that I actually got to pick out my ring and it is perfect. It even has a hidden heart that you have to look for, which, in my humble opinion, adds to the overall romanticism of my ring. Say that my fiancé had taken himself to the jewelry store, had looked at all the rings and picked out one all by himself just for me, would I scoff? Would I nit-pick over every detail? Would I ask him to return it for something bigger, smaller, more or less traditional? No! I would not. He loves me, and the ring is just a symbol of that love. I found out that a lot of women are unhappy with the initial ring that they get and insist on a trade in. The number one complaint is that the diamond is too small and the setting “looks too cheap”.

My question is, who are these women and why are these men still marrying them? Hello, matieralism? Phone call line one! I want to find one of these “diamond-too-small” girls and tell her: “Hey! Just because J-Lo has a diamond the size of her fist, that doesn’t mean you should too.” Some of these girls see their Hollywood heroes with big stones and think that this is the only way to be, that somehow it means you are more loved. Remember people, the folks in Hollywood are rich rich rich, and chances are, you are not not not. All political unrest and speculation about the diamond industry aside (because I do like shiny things – remember my sapphire?) bigger is not necessarily better. The size of the rock doesn’t equate to the size of his love. Or yours. If in your mind it does, please put getting married on hold and get thee to a psychiatrist.

This need for a large, expensive diamond ring as the only acceptable symbol of love does not bode well for budgetary concerns for a future life together, much less for the wedding itself. How haywire can the wedding plans go? Remember the $27,000 figure?

Yup.

Now you have the ring (assuming that the one he gave you was acceptable – or you have traded it in for some baffling reason), you’ve set the date, you need a dress. This is where Big Bridal comes in. They have years of experience duping young girls into spending thousands more than they have on a dress that they will wear once – and not even for a full day. You want to look like a princess, don’t you? Remember Princess Grace? Remember Princess Diana? Remember their gowns?

Well, yes, but these women were ACTUAL princesses, not just brides. They were supposed to look like princesses because they were. Now, using their images, gown designers and magazine publishers hope to convince all women that you have to look just like that. Royal and rich.

Except that most of us are neither. I want to look beautiful on my wedding day. I would be a filthy liar if I said that I didn’t, because I do. I want my dress to be special, and it is. I want my new husband to see me at my best, and he will. I don’t want to bankrupt myself in the process.

I started like all young women – looking through bridal magazines and on the internet for the perfect gown. For the most part, these are very ordinary dresses with a few sparkly beads thrown on to confuse already overwhelmed women. Most of them, let’s be frank, 99% of the population would look horrific in. Strapless? Honestly, unless you are a buff bride, hitting the gym and hard, you should probably cover up. Ball Gown style skirts? Crinolines? HOOP SKIRTS!? You have got to be kidding. On more than one occasion I found myself thinking, “Fiddle-dee-dee, Miss Scarlet will be angry that they took her gown.” The other extreme is the pencil silhouette which leaves one to wonder why Morticia Adams would allow someone to bleach her dress. How are you supposed to walk in those? How do you fit in a car with the other kind? No wonder we need limos to get around. Our dresses are three times our normal size. Is that flattering to the average American ass? Really?

So I looked, and I found one or two that would be acceptable for me and my own understated style. Then I researched the price. The cheapest dress I had liked was $800.00, without alterations or undergarments or shoes or veil. Total cost of the ensemble with everything attached = $1200.00. Good Golly Miss Molly, that sure cost a lot.

My entire budget for this affair is around $3k (you heard me... 3K, not a penny more...) I cannot justify spending almost half of my budget on a dress.

The other dresses I had picked out just went up from there. The most expensive award belongs to my favorite dress – it was ivory satin empire waist, rouching in the bust, fully lined, $2300. Yes, two thousand three hundred dollars. For twenty-three hundred dollars, I could repurchase both computers and my TV. I could go to Europe or Hawaii for a honeymoon. I could buy a large plasma TV for my fiancé and a sound system to boot. For twenty-three hundred dollars, I could buy an entire wardrobe and get clothes a lot nicer than I have now. No way was I going to spend this on a dress.

When I called salons in my area, they scoffed at me. That, you understand is what dresses cost. After all, this is the most important day of my life. Didn’t I want to look like a princess? The most reasonably priced dresses I found were at David’s Bridal, which seems to be the discount superstore of the industry (WalBride). There, I found a dress for $400.00 on their website. (By the way, the $99 dollar sale doesn’t apply to their plus size gowns, I checked, being a plus sized woman. That means that since the average American woman is a size 14, and wedding dresses run small, the average American woman will NOT be able to find a dress at David’s Bridal on sale in her size…) I called to make an appointment and was treated so rudely that I decided it would be better not to go at all. After researching this bridal chop-shop on the web, I am glad I didn’t. I had a really bad experience there once before when getting dresses for my friend’s wedding, so I was tempting fate with my own… But I digress…

I looked everywhere for a reasonably priced dress, finally turning to my old pal, eBay. What I found there was a virtual Mecca of bridal supplies. Dresses, under-things, shoes, veils, tiaras- all at super cheap prices. The only problem is sorting through hundreds of knock-off listings from Chinese manufacturers… (Not that I don’t trust the Chinese, but buying my dress directly from the sweatshop seems somehow less honest…) I found that a lot of women, probably desperate to recover some of the small fortunes spent on their weddings, are willing to sell their dresses (I guess daughters don’t wear their mother’s dress any more…) as well as a bunch of bridal shops selling samples and overstock. Cheap dresses abound. The world was my e-Oyster. All hail competition and the online marketplace! The gown of my dreams was at my fingertips. The daughters of these women were going to miss out, and I was going to cash in. (Cue evil laugh…)

Then I thought of my mother. She got married in 1970 in what I like to call the world’s smallest wedding ceremony. She, her mother, my father, his mother, My uncle Ralph, and two friends. My mother wore a short white dress with bell sleeves that she got from Penny’s, my father wore his blue suit. They were married without all of the pomp and circumstance that most people assume is necessary. They said their vows quietly in a church, had a piece of cake and took their wedding party out to dinner afterwards. My mother didn’t get an engagement ring. They had simple gold bands. They have been married for 38 years.

That was the deciding factor in the rest of my planning. The wedding is just a ceremony that legally binds two people together. Our life is where the value is. Forget the wedding. Forget the dress. Forget the blasted ring. If you love your partner, that is all that matters. The wedding and reception are a way to celebrate that love with your nearest and dearest. Period. I have a handful of people who will be sharing our day with us in fabulous Las Vegas Nevada. We are having a reception, because I want to party for a while in a place that doesn’t have slot machines… but other than that, I just want my friends and family around me to share my joy. After all, that is what it is supposed to be about.

My dress? It arrived yesterday. I found a closeout from one of my favorite brick and mortar stores listed at no reserve on eBay. The brand new lovely ivory satin empire waisted number (fully lined) cost me less than $100 with undergarments and shipping – they even threw in a veil. I will look pretty because of it.

I will feel beautiful because of the love surrounding me on that day.

Since politics makes for strange bedfellows, how about a little romance first?

2008-02-04T14:10:00.001-08:00

I read an article regarding the upcoming US elections here:
http://www.robhyndman.com/2008/02/04/we-wont-get-fooled-again/

My fiancé sent this to me as he received it from a friend of his. He wasn't angry about the content so much as he was angry that the writer was a Canadian. Even more disturbing to the love of my life was the fact that the writer failed to mention even one time that his interest in the presidntial elections is purely academic, and wrote his article as though he was himself an American citizen. I read the article, keeping an open mind, and finally felt compelled to reply. I post my response for your reading enjoyment.

QUOTE
Rob-
I believe you make some valid points. I feel that the US has indeed fallen prey to big corporations and their unique vision of what the world is. I agree that people are under educated and most do not believe that we have to maintain constant vigilance against any sweet talking politician who wants nothing more than the power of the office. The old adage is true – power absolutely corrupts.

Having said that, however, I have a real problem with what in the end turned into an anti-Obama rant. What makes Barack Obama more of an issue than Senators Hillary Clinton or John McCain? Each of them tells us what they want us to hear. I have come to expect that from any politician. As an American, there are several things that I worry about with each of them. John McCain is just the old guard dressed in new clothing. What about the completely distasteful idea of dynasty that seems, at least on it’s surface, to spell the beginning of the end for a free society? In my lifetime, there has been exactly one administration that didn’t have a Bush or a Clinton on the ticket – and I was far too young to remember anything about Jimmy Carter. These are all things that we have to be mindful of when selecting our leaders.

Do politicians lie to obtain office – most assuredly. I expect it, as do most people I know. We will never be able to have someone in office who didn’t lie through his teeth to get there, of this I am convinced. Something in the nature of the beast precludes it. One of my favorite quotes about the matter comes from Mark Twain – I will paraphrase – No one capable of getting elected to the office of president should ever be given the job. I find politicians distasteful, but necessary, and I am willing to throw my hat in with the one who seems to me the most capable of steering this great nation toward a bright future. Having said that, I was never fooled by the likes of George W Bush, I spent hours knocking on doors and calling voters to keep that man out of office only to see that hope hang by a chad in Florida. I watched Bill Clinton before him with a certain amount of bemusement, because I couldn’t figure out the people who didn’t see the womanizer in his slick politician’s smile. I voted for him all the same, because his plans more closely fit with my own world view. Sometimes we are forced to choose the lesser of two evils.

So I read your blog, and I was confused and confounded regarding why Senator Obama was in effect demonized for being the more romantic of the choices for office. He is, as you pointed out, a brilliant speaker, and as I watched his speech at the 2004 convention, I felt moved. I haven’t felt that in a while, especially from a politician. I come from a generation jaded by political scandal, who has spent most of her adult life watching political opponents spend more time trying to bring down one another than actually doing anything for the country. Part of me thinks that a slightly rosier view of our politicians might not be such a bad thing after all.

Then I realized that you were Canadian.

Please forgive me a moment of American indignation. I certainly have been accused in the past of having a slightly Amerocentric view of the world, especially from my Canadian friends. I have been repeatedly told that we here in the US tend to focus too much on our own issues and seem to think that everyone else in the world should be concerned with our politics when the truth is that not everyone cares about the US’s views. I suppose on one hand, the title of your article is accurate – you won’t be fooled again because presumably you weren’t fooled the first time. Unless, of course, you watched with glee as the second Bush took over the nation and thought, “Gee this sure will be good for Canada”. Or, there is always the possibility that you run across the border to vote on the first Tuesday in November every four years for president. Or perhaps you are an American expatriate living abroad who is watching this latest election with a bit of trepidation, unsure of whether to come home – though I didn’t see where you eluded to that possibility anyplace on your site.

This leads me to the conclusion that you are simply put, a Canadian citizen, interested in the election in the US in a neighborly way. Which is fine, to a certain extent, I do believe in freedom of speech after all. However, your article gave the impression that you were a fellow American concerned with the election of how our country is shaping up.

Well, sir, I am an American, and though we are often thought of as brash or uneducated, we are thoroughly proud. We have a foreign policy right now that needs fixing, but I will tell you this. Most of the issues we are concerned with have to do with our unemployment rate, our border security, our involvement in an ill-though-out campaign in the middle east, our lack of a health care system, and the overall health of our nation. I understand wanting to know what happens with a neighbor nation, I watch with interest what goes on politically in both Canada and Mexico, but I have never passed myself off as a concerned Canadian or Mexican citizen when speaking of or writing about the happenings in a neighbor country. I found it irresponsible and questionable at the very least.

You may be uncomfortable with the idea of Senator Barack Obama taking office here in the USA, but as a Canadian, you don’t have a say in that. I do, as do my compatriots. We here in the US have the chance and the right to vote. I may want a little romance in my candidate and back in my president. I want my leaders to have passion and be self possessed and to be able to formulate a coherent thought. I want to cast my vote for the man or woman who best fits my own passions about my own country. That is the power of citizenship and that is how we as Americans maintain our vigilance. We have to hold our leaders accountable and watch their every move. We have been far too lax about that with the current administration, I will admit, but as an American, that is my responsibility, my duty and my right. I will go out tomorrow and caucus for the best candidate in my opinion and take part in the great system that was put in place by the forefathers of this nation, and come this November, I will once again wait out in the cold for my right to help choose my leader. I hope that as you watch the returns, you realize that for better or for worse, we make our choices in this nation based on the freedom to do so as Americans.
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