Bliss

ob sent me Mark Morford’s SFGate column on Bliss the other day. He would like to start a “Bliss List” in response to the Bush Administrations “Terror List” or whatever it is called. It’s the list that the U.S. government has, and is still, compiling that names people who could have terrorist ties. Of a frightening length now, it targets people seemingly at random and does more for forwarding Naomi Wolfe’s argument that America is well on its way to becoming a totalitarian regime than most people care to think about. Anyway, Morford’s idea was to fight against the “darkness” by creating a list of people who live blissfully. He had a long list of criteria that could qualify a person for this list but the following paragraph caught my attention:

"Is there someone in your life who engages the world and thrives on books
and media, who works to understand the woes of the world and the yank of
politics and the guilty pleasures of pop culture, right along with the
sadness of war and cancer and divorce and yet still, somehow, manages to
wear really cute underwear and shrugs at contradiction and orgasms with
their mouth open?" (M. Morford)

Normally, I wouldn’t consider myself a blissful person, but the cute underwear and the shrugging sound a bit like me. I can’t vouch for the open-mouthed orgasms though only because there would have to be a mirror on the ceiling and that is just creepy. But I like the idea of a anti-list of those of us who are struggling to stay up in a down world. Doing our tiny bits to help ensure that the whole of existence is swamped by those whose sole focus in life is looking for reasons to be fearful and negative and to spread that fear and negativity to others. Which, I suppose, bring me around to attitude and optimism. Blissful people would say that a positive outlook is tremendously important in staying afloat in life. Those opposed would counter that sometimes life deals a hand too crappy for good attitude and rosy-tinted glassed to overcome. And while it is true that there are people who live sad and difficult lives, my experience leads me to conclude that while somethings in life cannot be avoided, many of the awful circumstances people find themselves in can be traced to decisions they made or avoided making at some earlier point in their lives. Much as one would like to say that people are sometimes victims of fate, it’s just not true the vast majority of the time. Using myself as an example, there was no life insurance money when my late husband died. The reason being simply that at the time we looked into it, we were in the midst of fertility treatments and though we could have come up with the extra cash, it would have tightened our budget quite a bit. My late husband talked me into waiting on the life insurance and by giving in I helped create the situation I found myself in when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness not quite two years later. Life insurance premiums are expensive, but probably less per year than what most people spend on their cell phone or cable TV bill. Neither of which is the necessity that life insurance is. Of course I am not an extreme example. As a teacher I saw single mothers who were living those quiet lives of desperation we so often hear about and it wasn’t hard to feel sorry for them. Yet, the majority of them had landed where they were by not finishing high school, for no reason other than they didn’t like school and thought it would be nothing at all to find a husband to support them in the future. Of course, life isn’t like that. Drop outs associate primarily with other drop-outs. They engage in behaviors that usually end up getting them in trouble with their parents, employers and possibly the police. These women ended up pregnant, a lot of times intentionally, thinking that it would net them life-long partners. But it didn’t. They were usually working multiple jobs and on some form of public assistance and wringing their hands trying to figure out why their children weren’t doing well in school and always getting into trouble. Probably an extreme example, but perhaps you see where I am going with this. Our lives are our responsibility. Bad things, and good things, happen throughout but it is our response to them that makes the difference. Optimistic people see where their choices are taking them. They accept that sometimes they will struggle but are confident that struggle is worthwhile and is taking them somewhere better. Pessimistic people see only the past and the now that their past has created.

All my life I have been a dreamer. As Yoda once said of Luke Skywalker “Never his mind on where he was. What he was doing.” That could be said of me. Hopefully I am a bit more mindful of my now than I was twenty or thirty years ago. And hopefully if I keep reading and reaching and dreaming (and wearing really cute underwear), I will one day be worthy of a mention on the Bliss List.

Lost in the Translation

The cat had a follow up appointment with the vet today at the clinic in Uncas, which is not far from where we live. I have been there and wasn’t worried about getting back, but I did clarify directions with my husband this morning, just to make sure we would get there on time.

“So, I take the road just past Carlie’s (our babysitter) and follow it ‘til just past the school and take the first left.”

Having received an affirmative from Rob, that is exactly the way I went. I took the first road past the road where we turn to go to the sitter’s house and followed it. Until I hit the wilderness centre and realized I was not where I should be. Thus the message on Rob’s work voicemail. When I did get a hold of him, he managed to confirm that my guess about where to go to get back on the right road was correct, and when we spoke after the vet appointment, he pointed out that what he had heard me ask was not what I was actually saying. He thought I meant “should I take the road that goes right past Carlie’s actual home”. Funny, because I thought we both spoke English. There are just enough differences in the way we use words whether the meaning or the pronunciation that can still cause miscommunication for time to time.

Rob remarked that my message to him sounded “tense” which is his understated way of saying I was just short of blowing and was fairly pissed off. And I was. I hate to be lost almost as much as I hate being hugged by total strangers or people I dislike or, frankly, anyone if I haven’t made any moves to initiate or reciprocate. I have always been able to find places again once I have been there but I am a landmarks person and honestly, when you live in a rural area landmarks can literally look the same from one range road to the next. I am not an expert on trees and such. One group of them looks pretty much like another. This is where my husband would wax poetically about the supremacy of road signs and maps. He is the ultimate Virgo.

So today’s “let that be a lesson to us all” is not to assume you are understood. And, of course, not to freak out when you are not.

Happy Halloween

It’s been a full day. Katy has been in her Dancing Princess costume since 10AM and as I type this Rob and Katy have been home once to get a bigger bad for her “collection taking” (and to drop off our cat who has followed them up and down the street playfully attacking swinging goody bags and trying to gain entry to our neighbors homes when they open their doors).

Katy’s new school is not like the one she attended back in Des Moines. My old school district was very careful with Halloween, as they were with all holidays. Never acknowledging by name. No parties. No costume parades. In fact, the city of Des Moines and its surrounding suburbs neutered the holiday long ago by refusing to allow it to be held on the 31st and changing its name. They referred to it as Beggar’s Night and with the exception of only one year in the twenty that I lived there, it was always held on the 30th for two hours. This was supposed to cut down on vandalism and maybe take some of the “satanic” taint away from it. I find it ironic that Halloween is thought to be a holiday of evil. It’s druid origins have more to do with acknowledgment of the departed than the calling up of demons, which is actually Christian nonsense anyway.

I volunteered to help out in Katy’s class again today. It was fun. The kids from all the grades gathered in the gym. We sang - okay, they sang - O Canada and then each class got to parade across the stage to show off their costumes. Katy’s teacher had an assortment of party stations waiting for them back in the room, and we helped the kids make Mardi Gras type masks and decorate those tiny “pumpkins” and make tracings of familiar Halloween images like bats and ghosts which they labeled themselves.

Katy was so impatient to get out a trick or treat tonight. She decided that Rob should take her because he couldn’t be trusted at home with the candy. Katy was sure he would eat most of it before anyone could come knocking for it. I don’t think he would have. Eaten all of it that is. Some would be a given though.

After they returned, we set out for the bookmobile as Wednesday night is library night. Rob, me, the little dancing princess and our cat tagging along. We probably made a very heart-warming sight and looked quite the nuclear perfect family. Little would anyone guess where we all were at just a year ago, though I don’t like to make those comparisons. I didn’t decorate this year because Rob isn’t ready for tombstones in the front yard, even if they aren’t real, but I was ready in a way. I listened jealously to my best friend describe the haunted house that our Jaycees friends build every fall to raise money for charities. Will and I fell in love while building one in the fall of 1998 and shared our first kiss in the shower scene I created. There amidst the splayed body in a tub full of blood with spooky music in the background and strobes blinking was were it all began for us. Couldn’t have been anymore romantic. And those memories are good ones. Decorating and remembering creations past feels okay these days. There are things that don’t come back. Priorities change and continue to evolve for some time after the loss of a loved one. It’s inevitable and probably not a bad thing at all. Some people go the whole of their lives without ever given a second thought to how they live their lives and in my opinion that doesn’t make them luckier than I am.

So, Happy Halloween, my friends.

Lost Blog Entries and the Moon at Noon

I had this beautiful piece about Rob written this morning , but for some reason known only to the geeks at Apple Tech, the program “unexpectedly quit” and I hadn’t saved. Let that be a lesson to us all, I suppose. When I told Rob what had happened and that the topic of the day was him, he wondered if I had used the anecdote he told me last evening when we were snuggled up after just getting in bed for the night. He had apparently been 40 minutes late for a site safety meeting he is on the committee to oversee. It’s one of those committees that no one wants to take part in but they do it anyway simply because it’s a good way to rack up brownie points with the powers that be. Anyway, as Rob walked in to the meeting yesterday morning, more than a little late, he observed that nearly everyone in attendance looked as though they were having the mental equivalent of a root canal. Sour and dour and painfully uptight looking. And as he observed the situation and slid into his seat he thought to himself (with not a little bit of Virgo smugness), “Yep, bet none of you got laid this morning.” It’s moments like these - and there are many - that I know my soul is well-mated.

This morning I was so proud of myself for getting the blog entry done early because I wanted to spend the day working on my novel. Yes, I have started the Nonawrimo thing a few days early but I am am justifying this because we are taking a trip to Rob’s mom in the middle of the month and that will be a good five days of getting nothing done as far as writing goes, so I am actually going to end up two days short of the 30 days anyway. In the end all that matters is the novel, and it’s starting to actually take a shape - and not the one I had originally envisioned either.

So, with my best intentions thwarted, I was going to camp at the Starbucks and write for a bit after dropping my little girl at kindergarten. But, it’s lunch hour and the tiny Starbucks resides in the local Safeway where many people visit the store’s deli and then feel free to eat in the Starbucks sitting area. Yeah, I don’t get that either. So, there were no tables, and though I could have taken my chai latte over to the Fort library, I decided to come home and write in the office Rob set up for us a few weeks ago. Yesterday, the cat sat in my lap as I wrote but today she is angry with me for leaving her outdoors while Katy and I went to the gym. As I explained to her when we returned to find her curled up on the welcome mat at the door, this is what happens to little cats who don’t come when they are called (she’s learning but slowly).

On the way into the Fort I noticed the moon was still up. It often is. Not something I ever saw back in Iowa. I still can’t get over the sky here. Rob says it is the same sky but it just looks so different. Perhaps it is the wide openness or the latitude, but the clouds and the moon and the stars even never fail to catch and hold my attention like they were paintings in the Louvre.

What I had wanted to say today was how I love to watch my husband. In the mornings he is so deliberate in his actions as he dresses for the day. He is a powerful looking man and it fascinates me, the way his muscles move under his skin and how the light shades and shadows him. Of course, my first version was far more poetic. Rob wondered if being so often my topic he would lose his Canadian sensibilities. I am not sure that Canadians are anymore sensible than the Iowan’s I lived around all my life, but he is certainly the least affected man I have ever known. Sensible is certainly among his many middle names.

I am sorry I lost that earlier entry but I guess I was supposed to write this piece you are reading instead. Sometimes things work out better than originally planned.