Grateful

So, this time last year we were so grateful to have with us a most beloved cousin who had been hit by a car just a few weeks before the holiday (and who had given birth to twins just months before that).  This year, our celebration and gratitude were far less somber and more the ebullient chaos that I have known and treasured lo' these 16 years of wedded bliss.  Everyone was there, everyone in good health, no one unemployed (at least, by choice), everyone with a reason to look forward to tomorrow.

I spent Friday by myself relishing the fortune and bliss that is owning my house and fleece pajamas.

Note that I am wearing pink to match Her Highness

On Saturday, I wrapped myself around a certain puggle and soaked up enough fur therapy to last me until I see my best bud, Souper, next month.

And so it goes...

And so it goes...

GPOYW

Cheers to middle age!

Halloween, Take 1

I regret to inform you that today's trick-or-treating is postponed until Saturday when our municipal services expect to have the roads cleared of debris that may be hazardous to the 4-12 yo set: downed trees, live wires, aluminum siding.  You know, the usual.



We spent yesterday playing Red Cross to several of our neighbors who don't have power by way of providing coffee (thanks to Ace's dad for the french press!), hot chocolate, Toy Story, legos, and running a 200' extension cord across the street so one guy can run his refrigerator and sump pump.  Oh, and then we all spent the later afternoon combing the streets looking for one neighbor's lost dog who decided to show up on his own accord after we had all slunk home in defeat.

It is not very often that we get to tend to the bonds that bind us as a community.  I am grateful for the opportunity to show my gratitude to the families around us for being such good neighbors.  No one has their car up on blocks, posts political signs in their yards (with the exception of that one guy who put up a Steelers banner the day he moved in - blecch!), plays loud music into the wee hours, etc.  I can't say I know any of them very well, being a "bedroom resident" myself, but I can say that they are all good neighbors.

GPOYW

We are sharing a "cardamom and ginger shake", so I will give you only 1 guess where I am in this photo.  But, seriously people, look at how he has his hand over mine...I mean, are you kidding me with this kid?  I am so in love!

Jiggity-Jig

For as much as I love to travel, there's no place like home.  I am of the age when doing laundry is soothing and helps center my internal compass.

After taking the red-eye home from the West, My Beloved met me at the airport with a fistful of daisies (my fav).  I could spot his sexy slouch from hundreds of feet away as I staggered towards the exit (me + less than 5hrs of sleep while at 30K feet = ankles too swollen for walking).  It felt like coming to the surface after the longest attempt to swim the length of the pool underwater.  I was happy I did it, but ooh that oxygen felt so sweet: my lungs instinctively inhaled.  There is nothing, nothing in the world better than being greeted at the end of a long journey by a warm hug from arms that wraps all the way around me.

After almost four days, the swelling in my feet has subsided, but I still can't help breaking into a wide smile when I come into a room and he's there.  I have been looking at public health fellowships and such, some of them with the option for remote-ish travel or that are stationed in nearby states and would require temporary relocation.  It wouldn't be so hard for six weeks or so, I told myself as I daydreamed about developing health education programs in Sudan.  We did it in college, we could do it again.  

Clearly, I am crazy.

Yes, of course we could do it, don't be silly.  But I am also of the age when the "novelty" of sacrifice smacks of ungratefulness.  

GPOYW

Last night, My Beloved was asking if there was anything special I wanted for my birthday.  I asked if we could celebrate it like it was any other year.  And then I dreamt he'd surprised me with a 3-day weekend to Playa del Carmen.

My subconscious knows how to live.

May 2006
Bonefishing (on spinners for cryin' out loud!) in Boca Paila

Raise Your Hand if You Recognize This?

When I was a tween or teen, my mother brought one of these home.  I asked her what is was, and she explained that it was a splatter screen for keeping grease in the cooking pan and off the stove.  I noticed that one edge of the screen was ripped out already, and asked her what happened*.  She got this funny look on her face and explained that my kid sister has asked her what it was, too.  Mom told her it was for spanking little girls and playfully bopped her on the butt, which made it rip. In my memory, Mom kept that same ripped splatter screen for eons.    

There is five years between me and Kid Sister, but my older sister is only so by 18 months.  When my mother speaks of raising my older sister while pregnant with me, and then raising two infants simultaneously, her eyes shutter a little and she is at a loss for language to articulate the complete exhaustion she experienced.   When Kid Sister came along, Older Sister and I were a little more self-sufficient.  Mom got to really enjoy having a baby in a way she missed out on with the first two.  I could tell even then at the tender age of 5, 6, and 7 that she cherished having a baby.  (The fact that Kid Sister is pretty darn adorable didn't hurt either.)

My mother is a world-renowned saver, recycler, and repurpose-er, so it is no surprise she held on to a perfectly functional, although slightly blemished tool.  She is also neat as a pin, and it is possible the funny look on her face was a little regret that her jest ended in breaking a brand new purchase.  Tonight when this memory came flooding back as I spied my own splatter screen tucked in the cabinet, I recognized that look as one of a mix of all these things, but also pride and love.  Pride because she had been so witty on her feet (Dad is usually the jester in the family).  And love because it was a laugh she shared with Kid Sister. 

*Or words to that effect.  I don't recall exactly how old I was when this happened.  If I was closer to the teen end of that age spectrum, it is regrettably more likely that I asked her, with all the haughty disdain and world-weariness of a Superior speaking to an Inferior, if she was aware that she had bought a defective product. 

Be With the One You Love

I'm traveling! Again!  Oh, how I love airports. (<-may read facetious but totally sincere)

I was invited to speak at a conference in SFO this month.  The conference ends on Friday so, since I'll be on the West coast already, I'm hopping a jetliner to PDX to visit my kid sister and her posse.  Giddy doesn't begin to describe me!

My SIL and BIL are on vacation at the same time, which means My Beloved and I are on cat-sitting duty.  They live quite far away, however, so cat-sitting include overnight stays.  It just worked out that between my trip out West and My Beloved's o/n stay with the cats that there will be 6 nights and 7 days when we are apart.

This may be a new record for us.

We fell in love long distance which stoked a craving for each other's company that borders on the unhealthy.  Since we have been married, we have tried to stick to a 2-night rule, meaning we're never apart more than 2 consecutive nights.  Sometimes that turns into 3 or even 4, but this is definitely on the outside of comfortable longing.

My Beloved adores his sister and her cats, and I, of course, bleed for my family, too.  We got the "love the one you're with" part down fine.  It's this "be with the one you love" part that we will struggle with this month.

GPOYW

For my 16th anniversary, My Beloved* gave me 16MB of memories

in the shape of R2D2 and C3PO.

*He so gets me.

It Cannot Be Imagined

I joined a friend for a fundraiser for a program called WISER, which is working to see that girls in Muhuru Bay, Kenya graduate high school.

The PhD who runs the program gave a brilliant PowerPoint presentation which included data proving that educating girls will improve the economy and public health of an entire nation, the impact the WISER school has had within the Muhuru Bay community, and how these young women now have a chance at a real future (i.e., don't have to have sex for money or get married at 12 years old).  I heard two truly remarkable facts in her presentation:

• The average resident of this community consumes about 400 calories a day, mostly from corn.  

For comparison, there are 310 calories in the large Starbuck's chai tea latte made with soy milk that I drink about once every 2-3 months.  This drink would comprise the "beverage" part of my breakfast and be accompanied by a further 300+ calories in baked goods.

• Most girls drop out of school during adolescence when they start menstruation because they don't have sanitary pads.  The blood stains their clothes, they are teased, and attempts to construct homemade pads made from newspaper and grass often leads to infections.  The need for this basic hygiene tool is the #1 reason girls at this age have sex (usually with their teacher, according to the slide show): to get the $3 to buy maxipads.

In five minutes, I can be at no less than 3 stores where I have my choice of brand of maxipads.  During her presentation, the speaker showed this image and asked what woman in the room had ever showed such affection for her 'feminine protection.'  She laughed when recalling the "wings" on the pads were lost, of course, on these girls who had no underwear to protect. 

The principal of the school said a few words, too, and was followed by their top academic student, a 16 year-old girl named Masi (sp?).  This brave young woman spoke about her past and how she came to be a student at WISER.  It was a galling story filled with the kind of discrimination and abuse that leaves me tight-lipped and ill.  I tried to picture the evening from her point of view: a  motherless girl in a foreign country, suffering from jet lag and a dinner of rich, unfamiliar food, trying to convince the 300+ mostly white shiny, staring faces of the endured horrors required just so she could attend high school.  It must be so incredibly daunting.  She choked up a few times, and I wondered if it was from recalling her losses or from the humiliation/frustration that her energy in relating her personal trauma would be wasted on us because we could not relate.

When we returned home from our camping trip last weekend, My Beloved and I expressed to each other our thanks and gratitude for the clean, hot water that pours from no less than 5 spigots on demand for pennies.  I try to be aware and grateful of these miracles, but my imagination of deprivation is not sharp enough to understand Masi's life.  I guess maybe that was the point of her story: to help me realize that an experience like hers cannot be imagined.  

GPOYW

Me and two of my aunts

The one on the left sent me Christmas presents every year until I turned 16, including my favorite pair of gold stud hearts, even though I am one of >20-some nieces and nephews. The one on the right took care of my dying aunt and her family.  Then, she won the lottery.  (I heart karma.)

Seriously, people would pay good money for the kind of family I have!

And Then There Was This...

Sixteen years ago today we said our "I do's".  It was a wonderful day, an amazing party.  Yet that day we felt no different than we had on the day before or on the day before that or on any of the previous two years of days than we did on the one day that started with a sunrise on the Appalachian trail and ended with the gobsmack of certainty in the quickening dawn that our respective compasses had finally found their Norths.

This year, we will honor that special event by heading back into the woods to be alone with that feeling for a few days.  Nothing says "true love" like a man still crazy for me when I'm covered in bug bites and have twigs in my hair!

Free image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

GPOYW

Crazy faces on the merry-go-round!

Surprises

It began on Friday...

Sullen Nephew on California Screamin' about to go into the loop-d-loop

Followed by more on Saturday of the cute and adorable pictures of my nephews and niece and the Disney characters...

(is being a Disney character the best job in the whole wide world?!)

I was missing it all and I couldn't take it.  By Saturday night, I had cashed in 20K frequent flyer points, made my excuses to work, and packed my toothbrush.    

How could I possibly miss out on this hilarity?!

(those ears light up different colors and patterns depending which part of the park you go into)

Or the thrilling rides?!

Bugs Land

Or the opportunity to wrap myself up in Nephew Love?

If ever there was a time to call in sick to work and drop everything, this was it.  I'm so unbelievably lucky.  One of the best decisions of my life, hands down.  

Ride, Sally, Ride

To the never ending amusement of my father, my mother raised 3 fiercely independent and "liberated" women.  I lived much of my life feeling obligated to prove my equality and have relished the opportunity to be one of the few women among a roomful of men.  It was so when I was 10 years old as much as it is today.

In the 5th or 6th grade, I went to sleep-away Girl Scout camp.  Our camp leaders were high school or college aged women who took us hiking, led us in song, and tried their best to discipline unbridled girly giggles.  My favorite counselor was a woman who went by the camp name of "Popcorn." (I don't know that I ever knew her real name.  It strikes me as very odd, now that I think of it, that we all had camp pseudonyms.  Why would we do that?)  Popcorn had a beautiful singing voice and introduced me to Oriental arts: fans, kabuki, geisha, calligraphy.  I have loved these things every since. She also surprised me in the degree of her zealous "liberation."  I had only seen such fierce "girls are better than boys" in my peers and thought it unique.  I didn't know other women, older women, might feel it, too.  In fact, I can recall  a conversation trying to one-up her with the list of accomplishments and occupations that I would hold as the first women ever.

It was that summer that Sally Ride became the first woman astronaut.  (At least it was that same general time.  My memory is not a reliable witness.)  Honestly, I was a little crestfallen.  In my selfish youthfulness, I did not celebrate her accomplishment as a leap forward for all women, but instead saw this as a First that I could no longer be.  I felt this panic that I had to get older, had to start right now to be all those things because there were women older than me, women like Popcorn and Sally, who were going to get to it first and be The First.

I was an idiot.

Tonight I learned that brave Sally died after what I imagine was an excruciating battle with pancreatic cancer.  (Pancreatic cancer, in particular, is seldom otherwise.)  I hope she knew how adored and rivaled she was by little girls like me.  Think of how she would have laughed to have heard my petulance that, thanks to women like her, there would be no Firsts for me left by the time I was a grown woman!  I am [slightly] less of an idiot today, and thank heaven for women like her. Thank heaven for Sally Ride.

GPOYW

Getting to know the North Country and new & old family

Elliot

 From this...

...to this, in less than 4 years.

I'm so excited, too, my friend!

Memorial Day

GOPYW

I get excited about Metro tickets, too :)

There is No Greater Love

My Beloved did two loads of dishes today and cleaned up the homemade pizza explosion in the kitchen so I wouldn't have to face the mess after a 10hr day and round of grocery shopping.

Are you kidding me?  I so got it made, y'all, and forever glad I locked that down.