On Monday, my roommate sent me an article about a matzo shortage in the Bay Area.  Matzo is “unleavened bread” – basically a kosher cracker – that observant Jews are supposed to eat in place of bread for the week of Passover.  Even unobservant Jews, like myself, eat it during the holiday, usually (in my case) during Seders, which are ritual dinners celebrating the holiday.  Matzo is an integral part of the Seder: you eat it, you talk about it, you point to it, you hold it in the air, you hide a piece and make someone find it, and then you buy it back from that person.  

We are giving a Seder tonnight, so the possibility that there might not be any Matzo sent me into a panic.  To steal a phrase from “Little Women” (with slight alterations): a Seder isn’t a Seder without any matzo.

I called supermarkets: all out.  I looked on craigslist: lots of requests for matzo, nobody selling it or giving it away.

I told my aunt and she offered to send me some from Seattle.  This seemed slightly ridiculous, but also like a perfect solution: family coming together to save a thousand-year-old holiday ritual via FedEx.  It’s like a commercial come to life.

Of course, it does raise some issues, starting with: is it really worth $30 to overnight matzo?  If you get past the monetary cost (anything for family and tradition, right?) you are confronted with the less-obvious environmental costs: the gas expended on the airplane used to fly it down, the cardboard used to package it.  It is definitely not eating locally.  Did we really want our Seder to contribute to global warming?  Not to mention the social implications of being able to ship boxes of matzo around when there is a worldwide wheat shortage and people are actually starving in developing countries.

Being terrible at making decisions, I passed this one off to my uncle, who went ahead and FedEx-ed the matzo.  It arrived yesterday, to my office.  The Seder was saved!  Tradition trumped environmental and social guilt!

Of course, a half an hour after I received my FedEx tracking number by email, I got an instant message from my roommate saying that her grandmother (who lives in San Francisco) had gotten some matzo from a friend.  This was followed twenty minutes later by another instant message from a friend who is coming to our Seder saying he has extra matzo he can bring.  Then I went to my brother’s Seder, where they ended up with two leftover boxes of matzo, one of which I took home.  Now, instead of no matzo, we will probably have too much.

To make the whole situation even more ironic, I was asked to drive to Sacramento yesterday for work, so I did not go in to my office.  I asked my brother to pick up the FedEx-ed matzo, but he might not be coming to my Seder, and it is possible it will never arrive.

What is the lesson to take from all of this?  I can think of a few possibilities.

One: Exhaust all local options before turning to outside help.

Two: Murphy’s Law holds – as soon as you don’t need something, it will appear in abundance.  If Doug had never FedEx-ed the matzo, no one would have found any, and we would have been matzo-less.  Since he spent the time and money, we ended up not needing it.

Three: Shop early for dinner parties, especially when they involve unusual foods.

Four: God will bring you matzo one way or another, even if you are not really an observant Jew.

A strange shifting of worlds: last Sunday I woke up in my brother's apartment.  One sister was sleeping beside me.  The other was on the floor beside the bed, looking at a book (she had fallen asleep on the couch so we left her there, but waking in the middle of the night she had apparently decided she would rather sleep on the floor).  I got up, made them breakfast, and took them to the Exploratorium.

Today (Sunday) I woke up in my own bed, squinting at the sunlight, in a house with cupcake-frosting-smeared floors and sixty fading gold balloons.  We had a party last night, and I got around six hours of sleep.  I shuffled into the kitchen, where my roommates and our out-of-town guests were eating leftover M&Ms from the party.  We attempted the Sunday NY Times crossword, cleaned a little, read aloud funny snippets from blogs and from the paper, debriefed on the party and told each other about what had gone on in the rooms we had not been in, and later went out to brunch.

Conclusion: There are different kinds and levels of adulthood.

Second conclusion: I love my sisters, and I want to be a mother someday, but at the moment I am happy that I am 23, and that I stayed up until 3:30 am last night dancing in my kitchen with a bunch of unknown Germans.

The day after a party is always a letdown.  I am groggy and out-of-sorts, even though I had a wonderful time.  My apartment is now a perfect metaphor for my mood.  I went to a movie by myself this afternoon, because I couldn't be bothered to call anyone and make plans, and when I came home, all the balloons had fallen down.  (Backstory: we rented a helium tank yesterday and blew up 75 gold balloons and an assortment of balloons of other colors, some of which have been popped or sent home with party guests or punctured this morning in order to inhale the helium and talk in strange voices for 10-15 seconds a pop.)  Once clustered in two rooms, the balloons have now made their way into every room in the apartment, where they float, discombobulated, between two inches and eight feet off the floor.  As I sit in my bed writing this, a balloon hovers next to me, golden string making a circle on my sheets.  If I touch it it rebounds, bouncing up before settling back just above the bed.  It has a little life left in it, but not much.

My sisters are here.  They came in tonight, and it was such a flashback to the way things used to be, when people were there at the gate to meet you - but this time I was there, watching their faces as they saw me, watching them come running down the corridor (what do you call the thing that connects the plane to the terminal? I want to say gang plank, but I know that is not right). 

Nick and I took them out to pizza, and Vivien said the greasy food made her mouth itch, but all she really needed was to be hugged and jollied out of her attempt to make herself upset.  I said, "Does this ruin EVERYTHING?" and pulled her onto my lap, and she said "No!" and laughed, and we played with her hair and examined the results in the restaurant mirror.

She keeps saying, "I am SO EXCITED to be here!"

When I put them to bed I got in between them and we all snuggled and read a book.  I'm glad they still like to be read to, even though they are both old enough to read chapter books now.  I hope when we are all old they will still let me read to them.

After singing to them, I kissed Vivien goodnight and she said, "Goodnight Mom."  Then she cracked an eye, half-asleep, and giggled, "I mean, Felicity."

The cat does not know what to make of the girls.  He hovered around, anxiously, always just out of reach.  Vivien really wants to make friends with him; Merlyn is a little more wary.  Vivien keeps trying to approach him and play with him, and Merlyn keeps saying, "Leave him alone!  That's not the way to handle it" in her best older sister-ish voice.  Now he is sitting on the pull out sofa bed, having made himself a nest in the covers, looking weary and resigned to his fate, whatever that is.  Poor Simon: so put upon.

A few days ago, one of my roommates sent me this link.  It's a speech that a evolutionary psychologist gave recently entitled, "Is There Anything Good About Men?" (Short answer: yes.)  To give it fair due, I agreed with a lot of things in the speech.  For instance, that men and women (as a hugely generalized whole, and leaving aside the sticky questions of transgender, etc.) are different, but equal, and that many of these differences are attributable to genetic selection and the struggle to survive/reproduce over thousands of years.  The problem with the speech is that it is written in a spirit of intense rancor, and is aimed at disproving the arguments of the "feminist establishment" that have taken over the whole Western world (that women are better, and men have been getting together in little groups to try and keep them down.)  To me, this seems self-evidently ridiculous: no feminists that I know argue that patriarchy is a deliberate movement on the part of individual men, or that women are better.  Moreover, the examples backing up his argument are at many points ridiculous.  If I try to explain I will end up quoting them completely, so I won't try, but I will put a few behind the cut for anyone who is interested.



That is not the point of this entry however.  That is just the beginning to explain what is really bothering me.  So my roommate sent me this link.  I read it, trying to give it the benefit of a doubt, and quickly became appalled by the fact that this man was claiming scientific objectivity and that he wanted a fair, unbiased discussion of gender, when what he was really doing was attacking "feminists."  His examples (under the cut) also made me incredulously annoyed.  I emailed my roommate a few times with particularly choice quotes (and mentioned I wanted to punch the guy, though of course it was all in the spirit of rational criticism).  That evening, my roommate and I discussed the article, and I became incensed, as I am wont to do, and ranted about how stupid and mean it was.  My roommate laughed at my outrage, and egged me on, admitting that she sent me the link hoping that I would get angry and rant, because apparently I'm very amusing when I am outraged.  Last night we were sitting around with friends and the article came up again.  I began to explain how it was ridiculous, which quickly devolved into everyone teasing me about how worked up I got, and calling me "cute." 

They were teasing, but it stung anyway, because it a recurring moment in my life.  I can't count the number of times friends of mine have deliberately provoked me into a moral/political rant, and then sat around laughing at the strength of my reaction.  It occurred to me this morning that it goes back even further than I thought, pre-political outrage, when my brother would say something to me that would make me incredibly angry or upset (I can't even remember the kinds of things he would say - but I think they were generally personal attacks on me) and I would scream and bang things, and hit him, and he would just laugh at me.  Nothing I did ever touched him (or he never showed it if it did), but he could rile me with a sentence, anytime he wanted.  I was a game, a doll; he would wind me up and watch me go.  Now it's not personal, my friends don't attack me, but they say something or point me toward something I find really maddening or offensive, wind me up and watch me go.  I hate this.  Nothing I say in a moment like this matters, rational or irrational.  No one is listening.  The second I show a hint of emotion, I am just a little girl in over her head, boxing with shadows.  The hurtfulness of having friends sit and laugh at me is not as bad as the feeling of helplessness.

Maybe I take things too personally.  Maybe I am too sensitive.  (Both at a political level - caring what someone said in a speech - and the personal level - taking it badly when people tease me.)  But I also think I am justified at both levels.  One of the worst offenders in terms of this riling-me-up-and-laughing phenomenon was a friend of mine freshman year of college.  He would make misogynistic remarks and jokes to get a rise out of me.  I wanted to be cool, and not to make waves, to be one of the boys (and not to be teased) so most of the time I would let it pass.  I regret that now; he would push further and further looking for a reaction, until he got beyond the point of joking, and I would let him.  I wish that I had told him it wasn't okay, and let him laugh.  I wish that I had walked out.  He has since grown up  a lot, and we've had discussions about how much he regrets saying those things; maybe I could have helped him get there sooner if I hadn't kept my mouth shut.  Even if he couldn't have heard it then, I would feel better.  I don't know why I take gender issues so personally, but I do.  Yes, I get upset.  Maybe it's naive and idealistic.  Maybe there is nothing that can be done, maybe the speeches people give, and what they show on TV doesn't matter, doesn't affect anyone's real life.  But I don't believe that; I think it does affect people, women, men, in ways we might not see, and I believe shutting up about it just makes it worse.

On a personal level, I'm sure it goes back to my brother, and feelings of helplessness, and a friend I had in 9th grade who would make fun of me to my face and then tell me she was just teasing.  It's insecurity, I get that.  I know my friends like me, and don't mean any harm by it, probably don't see why it would hurt me, or that it does.  I still think I'm justified feeling hurt though.  The problem is, if I tell them to stop I am just perpetuating the image of myself as a little girl, who can't take a little ribbing, who has no self control.  Maybe that's what I am.  It's amazing how successive friends, who have never met one another, are able to find this same weak spot and return to it, again and again.  Maybe I have a string coming out of my back, and a sign saying, "Pull me and see what I do!" and I just never noticed.

EDIT: To lessen all the bitching in here a little, I came home hungry and tired and ended up telling one of my roommates how upset I was, and she said (while still validating my feelings) from her perspective no one was laughing at me, I make entirely rational arguments and don't react in any crazy or over the top way, and in fact she (she said "they" but I don't want to push it) admires me for my political passion.  So that was nice, and made me feel better about this particular incident, if still frustrated about the lifetime motif.

I am tired, and happy.  Work is busy busy.  I am taking the GREs in less than two weeks.  I am moving on July 1, into a new apartment, as yet hypothetical, with my friends Mel and Alex.  This as-yet-to-be-discovered apartment will be full of people, and food, and NPR, and giggling fits.  So many good things.  I have no idea what I am doing, about work, or how long I am going to stay, or any of that, but I am telling myself it will work out.  I want to be here, I want to live with my friends, and maybe when things calm down I can devote myself to a job search.  Or maybe I will just hold out where I am a couple extra months, and leave a little later to travel.

My mom thinks I should take up Rawaan's offer and move to Dubai, and get a job in journalism, where I can gather experience, and become a Middle East correspondent, and then spend the rest of my life traveling and writing.  Which sounds pretty good to me.  (Though she also wants me to move to Portland, so there's some kind of internal dissonance...or just what she wants for me, and what she wants for herself, which is understandable - and of course I want both too, to be here and gone.)

My weekends are full from now until late July.  With wonderful things, so wonderful (besides the GRE).  Concerts.  Dinners.  The Talent Show (oh oh oh baby).  Travel.  Rawaan.  Many other visitors.  Camping.  Moving.  This summer is going to go so quickly.  It feels almost over already.  If I take a deep breath, it will be September.

As my little sister Vivien sat on my lap Sunday afternoon decorating her birthday card for my mom (which included the words "Sometimes we want to never stop hugging and kiss you" or something to that effect), she said, "I'm learn things very quickly."  She said this matter-of-factly - she wasn't bragging, just stating the truth.  I dread the possibility that this will change someday, that she will blush or deny how smart she is.  When do girls learn that it is uncouth to be confident?  I blushed a little for her, and then stopped myself, and said, "Yes, you do.  You are very, very smart," and I kissed her head, and signed my name to the card.

I'm back in San Francisco now, after a weekend at home with my family.  Life is busy and lovely.  Yesterday it was so hot, I wore a little dress and went to get a drink at a bar with an enormous patio, rows of long wooden picnic tables like an outdoor cafeteria, and everyone buzzing and laughing and drinking too-strong drinks in the sunshine.

Stumbled upon this article today, about what it takes to establish a certain phrase as "characteristic" of a person.  When I was young - maybe eight or nine? - I went through my favorite books at the time, the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, and I counted all the times each character used one of their characteristic sayings.  For instance, the main female character was Princess Eilonwy, who used similes such as "that's like asking someone to dinner and then telling them they have to do the dishes" to illustrate her feelings, and was prone to telling the main male character, Taran, that she was not speaking to him (and then continuing to speak to him).  What I found was that, in the five books, Eilonwy actually told Taran she wasn't speaking to him only three or four times - but it was used in such a way that it was integrally tied to her character, and I would have said it was something she did constantly.  Each of the characters had some sort of phrase or tic, but what I found in my study was that these were actually used quite subtly - sprinkled in frequently enough that the reader felt they defined the characters, but not so often that they couldn't get things done.  Amazing that I could see and understand this at eight or nine, but I still struggle, in my writing, with not making caricatures, with giving characters room to breathe as well as to talk, to be people and not just collections of phrases.

A strange in-between moment at work: I have lots of things looming, and therefore do not want to ask for more work, but at the moment I have nothing at all to do.  I am waiting for other people to accomplish their tasks before I can continue with mine.  Wasting time, in the meantime.

I have been hiding in my room all week, as promised (threatened?)  I want to call all my friends and ask about their weekends, and their weeks, and catch up on gossip, and reconnected, reaffirm our mutual admiration, etc.  But instead I have been hiding, and watching Anne of Green Gables.  It is not any person, in particular, just the general fact of people, so many people, out there.  I have been reestablishing my skin.

On Monday, when I was supposed to fly back from Seattle in the morning, a quick two hour flight and then to work, my flight was canceled.  I was stuck at the airport the whole day; it ended up taking 12.5 hours door to door.  I read all of Atonement, and tried not to cry, exhaustion and helplessness welling up periodically through the long day.  My cell phone battery was dying, and as much as I wanted to be in a private place, so I could collapse without the weight of strangers' eyes, I also wanted to be connected to someone, anyone.  I wanted to call and tell somebody how miserable I was.  (Robin pointed out that I could have used a pay phone for that purpose, which I knew, even thought of once or twice; was my failure to do so because I didn't really want to talk to anyone, or because I am a child of the 21st century and disdain the use of pay phones?)


My little sister Merlyn missed school on Friday, to drive up to Seattle.  She informed me that at recess, two little boys in her class were getting married, and she had missed it.  She was supposed to officiate, but she seemed to think they would find a replacement easily enough.  She admitted that a girl in her class had dared them to, and I imagine there was much teasing, and affectations of disgust all around; nevertheless, the thought makes me ridiculously happy.  Two boys getting married is a possibility to these children.  We move forward, baby steps.


And one final happy note, that overwhelms all else: Rawaan is coming! To San Francisco! In July!

Yesterday I remembered how unbelievably lucky I am, and tiptoed on the edge of happy hysteria, laughing uncontrollably at semi-random intervals.  I picked Mel up in the morning, wearing my enormous sunglasses and purple flowered dress, and we drove across the Bay Bridge, listening to the music that made me happy my sophomore year of college: "Hey Ya" and "Float On" and "Moondance."  A friend, Becca, was having her birthday celebration at the Thai Buddhist Temple in Berkeley, where you buy tokens and barter them for heaping plates of food, and then everyone sits on the lawn, eating and talking, and sun-sleeping.  Last week's cold went away and the sun stayed, so that I sat with only a thin sweater was warm, glowing, and people moved in and out of grass-circles, and Melissa stood atop a fire hydrant talking on the phone, and Erica planned a media strategy for me to combat the Brown Alumni Magazine article (key points of the strategy: me wearing stilettos, and saying something incredibly witty), and we talked about iTunes play counts, and awkward dates, and then played Set, there on the lawn.  

But this was only the beginning!  Followed by an afternoon in a coffee shop on the Berkeley campus, reading, talking, playing more games, and then another shift of locale, and Speed Scrabble, and then deep dish pizza, and trivia, a small group this week, and Mel and I being ridiculous, having "une boum" on the couch.  It was, we decided, like a family, where people came and went, there was no hurry, nowhere to go, we just drifted through the day.  Rather like last Sunday in fact (though it was considerably colder then).  I am the Crazy Grandmother of the family.  This is a life I could enjoy for a while.

Driving across the Bay Bridge, both ways, I was reminded of, astounded by, how beautiful it is here.  In the morning, in bright sun, the Berkeley hills rose from the water, and at night coming home, downtown shone crisp and elegant, framed by the spangled glow of San Francisco hills and the dark sweep of the water.  I am happy.


We were talking about blogging, the purpose of such.  I would like to say that, for me, it is a way to keep track.  Even if I am bad at writing here, I do so more consistently than I do/would write a private journal, if only because I know other people wonder if I don't write here for a long time, and the fact that I do it at all is valuable to me, because, for instance, I will remember yesterday better, given that I just wrote down a slice of it, than if I never recorded it at all.  In which case this is just a diary that other people can read, and which I have more impetus to update.  But that's not it, entirely.  That's a piece.  I use it to communicate, for instance, about my computer.  About where I am, with the moving situation (I think I have a place; knock on wood).  About where I am going.  But I only use it to communicate with certain people, and there's always more to say.  I use it as a forum, occasionally.  A space to draw out thoughts that otherwise knock around in my brain being difficult.  An ego booster.  A place to whine and receive sympathy.  It's very personal; I don't think of it as something anyone who didn't know me would have any interest in reading.  Part of me wishes it was, more of that, that it spoke to greater issues and had a following, or obviously, that my writing is just so excellent and fascinating that people would want to read it all the time.  But then it would be something else.  Not a tool for memory.  I would rather, I think, use it to remember the life that I am out living, than to have it be the life that I am living, inside.

I just saw Children of Men.  I need a little time to process before I comment on the movie, so I think instead I will write a love letter to my little sisters:

Dear, Dearest, Merlyn and Vivien,

I love you.  I love you ridiculously, enormously, overwhelmingly.  I can feel my love for you all over my body.  My toes tingle with it.  My chest aches.  I love how you giggle, and your curiousity, and how quickly you are growing up, even though I often wish you wouldn't.

In the last week when I have been at home, you amazed me every day.

Merlyn, I am not sure how you came out so sweet.  You offer yourself as a willing sacrifice for those you love.  But you're not weak.  You make a very good annoyed face, and you have discovered sarcasm.  And yet.  You tremble like a leaf when other people are unhappy.  You still want to be held; you lean against me, you wrap your arms around my neck and just stay there, connected.  You are very excited about your new chemistry set.  You dance in the kitchen and the living room, and shake about your long princess hair.  You like to sleep late in the morning, and are grumpy when you are woken up, like a teenager - until Vivien suggests you go wake up Nick, and then you bounce out of bed, young enough to find jumping on your big brother endlessly amusing.  You are ridiculously beautiful.  You cry and cry when people go away.

Vivien, what can I say?  You spark to things.  You ask questions I don't know enough to ask.  You told me about a dream you had, in which you could fly, and how sad you were to wake up and find out it wasn't true.  I know the feeling.  You cannot get enough hugs or kisses.  You are a kiss monster.  And a toe tapper.  You are in constant motion, mental or physical.  You like to run and be swept up into the air.  You are still small enough for that kind of flying.  And yet.  You scream.  This cannot be forgotten about you.  You overflow all boundaries, good and bad.  You read enormous words, and want to look at every picture in the book for a long time.  No, not look.  Decode.  You have to find out everything about it.  You color perfectly inside the lines, only sometimes you give kings pink beards and blue hair, and laugh and laugh about it.  You have to have your way.  I'm not sure you understand about other people yet, but you always want me to sit next to you in the car.

I know that other people love their chidren and siblings and grandchildren and nieces and nephews and friends as much as I love you, but I have a hard time believing it sometimes.  If we all love you so much, and you are all so amazing and lovable, how can the world be the way it is?  How can anyone bear to hurt someone like you?  How can we take you for granted?

I promise I won't take you for granted.  Or anyone, if I can help it.

Did I mention I love you?  I do.  Very much.

Your big sister,
Felicity

Happy Solstice everyone.

Merlyn is pretending to have fainted on the couch.  She is rather fidgety for an unconscious person though.

I am home.  Home home.  The living room is clean, and Nick is lying on top of Merlyn, crushing her, and the tree is decorated, and we are going to have a party.  My head hurts, faintly, for no discernable reason.  It was a long week, despite being a short (work) week.  We have a new kitten in my apartment (in San Francisco), named Chloe, who cries when left alone, and sometimes sleeps in my lap, or on my chest. 

I saw Joanna Newsom on Tuesday night.  My first concert totally alone; between acts I stood, awkwardly, and watched the groupings of people: lots of couples, a few larger groups, two or three boys together.  At one point I sat on the floor, resting my feet, and examined shoes and legs clad in skinny jeans, and the ceiling.  Joanna Newsom has a little girl breathy voice and long, straight blond hair.  Her voice quavered and squeaked in strange and marvelous ways when she sang, and her fingers plucked and crab-walked over the harp strings.  She sang older songs at the beginning and end, and in between her entire new album Ys, five songs, the shortest of which is about 8 minutes.  I drifted through these a bit, I admit.  I am growing to love her new album, but it takes time to get to know.

We could stand for a century
Starin'
With our heads cocked
In the broad daylight at this thing
Joy
Landlocked
In bodies that don't keep
Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being
Till we don't be

At the end, during her encore, I held my breath and wished and wished for her to play "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie," my favorite of her songs, and she did, finishing with it, and smiling brilliantly at the end, a little wave as she left the stage.

It is a short day, today, the shortest of the year, but the sun is bright through all the windows of our cosy little house.

And the stirring of wind chimes
In the morning
In the morning
Helps me find my way back in
From the place where I have been

If you want to make the attempt, here is "Emily" (from which the above lyrics come).

My cousin got into Vassar, her first choice college - early decision, so she is committed, she is going, her whole future is before her now.  Congratulations!  I am excited for her, and nostalgic about that feeling of triumph, and possibility.  (Possibility!  As if now I am at The End of Things, and I do not still have my whole life before me.)  I am writing because when I tried to remember the summer of being 17, that summer between high school and college, all I can recall is a part time job doing telephone surveys, which can't have taken too much of my time, really, and... perhaps a visit to my grandmother in Seattle, for a week.  I remember some relationship drama, between friends, and I think a night at the hot springs, during a meteor shower, where we drank wine and watched shooting stars all night.  That must have been that summer.  But these are only moments, and I am grasping for a whole.  I went to look in my old blog, hoping to find some hint, but it turns out I didn't write anything between May and September of that year.  Seeing that, I was inspired to write here, because it is so easy to forget months and years, if you don't write them down.  Or maybe that's just me.  I re-experience through the act of composing, and events are never quite real for me if I haven't put them into words (if only in my mind).

It's Monday.  This morning I went online to look at how much money I have in my retirement account (about $250) and calculated how much I need to save to make 85% of what I make now (before taxes), every month, between the ages of 67 and 94.  Something around $3,000,000.  Even though now, doing a little calculator arithmetic, that seems excessive.  Maybe they were counting in inflation.  Anyway, I would need to be putting in $900 more a month to get there.  This is not going to happen, since I don't have $900 a month, and anyway, the money I do have, I am putting aside for travel and adventure, for next year or the year after and not for year 68.  But then it hit me: I have such a long time.  I am so young, we are all so young, and everything will change a hundred times before I am 67.  I will meet a thousand new people, and love them and hate them and eat with them and talk to them, and I will go so many places, there are so many places to go, and read so many books.  45 years is time for so much, if it is well used.  This month, next month, the days between now and when I walk out of this office building not to return, these are only grains of sand.  Unless I write them down, I probably won't even remember them.  But there are things I will remember, between now and 67.  Things I will remember even if I don't write them down.  There are so many days and nights ahead.  And that is only 45 years!  I have a 25% chance of living to 94, according to Fidelity.  That is 72 years from now!  Maybe America will be in little pieces by then, maybe we will have teleporters and genetically engineered babies.  Maybe we will have made the world into a desert, and we will live in little outposts of struggle, and curse our fathers and forefathers for destroying what was once lush and beautiful.  Maybe we will live on the Moon.  Who knows.  Maybe I will be married, maybe I will be divorced, maybe I will be a widow, and a great-grandmother.  Maybe I will have been married 3 times.  Every one of those people will take up whole years in my life, years still ahead of me now.  It's exhilarating!  I am my own limit.

Funny, how I can be caught up completely by these two feelings at once: sadness, that I will never be 17 and starting college again, and awe and excitement that I am 22 and can do unimaginable things.  And all the time, I am sitting at my desk, eating clementines and trying to hold my eyes open.

I've been reading Wallace Stegner, I think that is why I am thinking about being old, and being young.  A quote (not about age or youth, just a quote that I love, even though it is quite the opposite of how I really interact with the world): "Be open, be available, be exposed, be skinless.  Skinless?  Dance around in your bones."

Home. My roommate is asleep on the couch, with a plastic surgery reality show blaring on the television, I am very tried, and we have ants in the kitchen. However, my comforter is still a lovely color, and warm and fluffy, and Sufjan's Christmas box set came in the mail, complete with stickers, a Rick Moody essay and Christmas stories by Sufjan himself ("Santa Magic Hands" and "Christmas Tube Socks").

( Thanksgiving, home, family, etc. )

( Portland, tea, paper, friends, etc. )

Well I was tagged to post baby pictures of myself, apparently because I have an uncle who is a photographer.  Let me just point out that technically, he became my uncle when I was eight.  So... not that helpful with the baby pictures.

Also, I am not home, and have no access to baby pictures just now.  And any pictures I happen to have, I cannot scan as I have no access to a scanner just now.  So the only pictures I have are ones Eric sent me for a school project, of me as a, somewhat small, child with adult family members.  Here are the youngest of these:




In other news, my wrist hurts, a lot.  This has been coming and going for two months now, and I am definitely going to see a doctor.  After I finish the Food Stamp paper on Wednesday.

I saw a bunch of music writers read today.  Apparently, in the South, the way to get a hip hop hit is to get it played at strip clubs.  Not on the radio, not at dance clubs - strip clubs.  "Because those girls dance all day every day, they know what they like to dance to."  So, just in case you're ever trying to get your hip hop career off the ground in Atlanta, or Miami - take it to the strip club.  You heard it here.

I slept too much last night and now I am awake; tomorrow I will be tired again.  The cycle continues, round and round.

I forgot to call Vivien and say Happy Birthday.  I called last night, and said Happy Early Birthday, but it's not the same.  I am a bad older sister.

Annie is gone.  I left her house with her teapot (which I gave her, I am keeping it warm for her until she comes back from Senegal) and photos and a very sad feeling.  When she drove off down the street, she stopped halfway down the block, reversed, and got out for another hug, all teary eyed.  Two years.  Is not that long a time.  Friday night we watched Notting Hill and Much Ado About Nothing, and sat in her living room instant messaging each other lines from Much Ado, before or after they were said.  "The world must be peopled!" "Get you to heaven!"

I feel like making some sort of sound, as a signal I am not thinking about that anymore.  Hmm, or meh, or something along those lines.  It doesn't work as well in writing though.

I started knitting socks today.  I made the sole of one foot.  The yarn turned my fingertips blue, which is probably a bad sign for when I actually wear the socks.  The two mystery roommates have not moved in yet, and Kate, the one that I know, has not been here all day.  I am living alone in a four bedroom apartment.  I went grocery shopping, and made pasta with butternut squash and rosemary, and ate it too fast.  I am glad the internet is working again.  I should go to sleep.

I'm in San Francisco now.  I realize I haven't been updating much, sorry.  New Jersey, the beach, family - all those things were great.  And now I'm here.

Here is actually my brother Nick's roommate's girlfriend's apartment, where she has never actually slept, not once.  Her roommates are apparently not around much, except, I realized when I woke up, in the morning.  I have only met one of them, who I managed to scare into screaming, by coming out of the bathroom.  I said I'm Rachel's sister.  Now I'm hiding in her room, hoping the noises outside will stop (ie everyone will leave) so I can exit the room without having to explain why I, a complete stranger, am wandering around their apartment.

Anyway, I like San Francisco.

I went and saw my first apartment last night.  It's right across the street from Golden Gate Park, small but very clean and nice.  The room that would be mine is pretty big, with blue walls, and a window onto the park (and the street).  Most importantly, I'd be living with one other person, a 25 year old woman who I really like; we had similar interests, and philosophies and attitudes about preferred living situations, I think we could be friends, which would be great.  I don't want to take it, because it's the first place I've seen.  Also, drawbacks include that it's in a very foggy area (yesterday it was a high of 65 in August), and I couldn't move in until September 15, which means three more weeks of either sleeping on a couch, or hiding in Rachel's room.  Anyway, the other person she's thinking of also wants more time, but I'm on the top of the list, so if I tell her by Wednesday night, it's mine.  Good to know I have one option anyway.

This morning I am going to see an apartment that I am pretty sure I do not want, because the other roommate is out of town and I won't get to meet her, the landlord is showing it.  I refuse to live somewhere without meeting my potential roommate.  However, it seems silly not to look at it, just in case.  Then I have nothing until 6:30.  Maybe I will go downtown.  Explore.  Maybe I will sit on Nick's couch and watch television.

My last night at home.  (Home is a strange word.)  As I tucked Vivien into bed, she said, "Brr," and then, "Will you get under the covers with me?"  I curled up with her, one hand tucked against her cheek, the other resting lightly around her small shoulders.  Her eyes drifted shut and I could count her eyelashes, and I thought I love her so much, despite her tantrums, or because of them, I could not love her more, I am aching with it, and I don't know when I'm going to see her again and then I thought about The Little Princess and how Sara looks at her father for a long time and he asks if she is learning him by heart and she says she already knows him by heart, he's in her heart, which is how Viv is, but I kept looking at her anyway, for a long time, her little open mouth and her round cheeks.  Life feels like a series of goodbyes; I feel defined by what is missing, or rather, who is missing.

But tomorrow there are new friends, and old friends who I have missed, back again, and a new city, and a new job, and a new place to call home, for a little while anyway.  All of these are good and exciting things, which make up a life.  I'm trying to focus on the moment, on the present instead of the absent.  Trying to get enough sleep.

I've settled happily into Oregon middle aged life.  Yesterday I helped Vivien pick out a dress for school, I went to lunch with them, shopped, and attended a cocktail party given by the family who used to live in my parents new house.  Today I made quiche, facilitated children running in and out, watched a video of my sixth birthday party, and had dinner with the neighbors (we split conversation by gender - Eric and the husband talked about philosophy and snakes, and Mom, the wife and I talked about children and our families and personal histories).  It's very hard to judge yourself as a six year old.  I couldn't tell if I was cute or just a little weird.  Vivien was highly amused however.

All my exciting stories are once again related to children.  This is a periodic happening in my life, which I am sure will reoccur at intervals from now until I die.  At the moment, my best one is about getting on the airplane with the girls and having them take out the safety cards and pore over them for about twenty minutes, asking intensely detailed questions about what might happen in different varieties of emergency.  "What if you're holding on to the emergency flotation device, and you go on your back, and your head gets under water?  What would happen then?"

I've been reading Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.  I'm not sure if the main character is involved in a gay love affair or if I've just read too much Oscar Wilde.  Anyway, lots of descriptions of English countryside and non-English food and people being alternately passionate and incredibly snitty to one another.  Yay for English country manor novels.

I am attempting to take things one day at a time.  And not obsess over the people who are not here.

I got a new phone number, if you want it comment with your email address.

My mom wanted to comment on my abortion post, but apparently was unable to, so this is what she wanted to say:

I wanted to jump in on this as someone who has actually had 3 abortions & would have had another - fairly late- if circumstances were different

also as the person (probably) mostly responsible for Felicity's perspective...

None of these abortions was an easy choice; I cried for a week after the first one (literally most of the day for 7 days in a row) because I really wanted children, then & since, - but I was heedless and young & worried that not knowing & the way I was living at the time had already damaged the baby before I even knew there was a baby - to not even get into the issue of whether the father would stay, whether we had any of what (emotional stamina mostly) it took to raise a baby, etc etc, etc (it makes me tear up even now & I think it all came out right)

I carried around the guilt for 8 more months, until a voice spoke to me about the time the birth would have been and said (in essence) "It's alright Mom - I'll see you later" and when my first child was born it felt like the same spirit.

The other two were after I had 2 children and I KNEW what it took/takes to raise a child - a person that's totally dependent on you for everything for quite a while- and also how easy it is for a young woman's body to get in the pattern of making babies. Again I mostly did not know about the fathers and (already being a single mom) I was not willing to potentially damage my much-loved children for the sake of ones I knew were more than I could manage just then. Those were difficult but clear decisions. Should I not have gotten pregnant in the first place? Clearly. But you don't always control everything & life happens to teach you tolerance among other things.

The last times, I very much wanted children, but was again aware of my personal limits, and chose to have genetic testing to see if everything was alright. I am very glad I did not have to then make a choice that I was contemplating. But no one else can even come close to knowing one's inner (or outer) limits & so it seems to me we do need to empathize as much as we can with women in all kinds of circumstances, and avoid judging people whose places we have not been in.

I seriously doubt any woman picks abortion as "easy" birth control. It's a life-changing decision/process any way it comes out & to not acknowledge that is not feeling & thinking hard enough, I think.

I think that says it very well and I am very proud of my mom, and appreciate her input. And love her very, very much.

That's all for now. Gala stories later.

Surprisingly, this was one of my better Valentine's Days. Granted, I have never been in a relationship on Valentine's Day, so as the holiday goes, it's not my top rated, but nevertheless, today was... really quite nice.

I woke up to homemade Valentine's from Rawaan and Annie. One had feathers and a fabulous haiku, and the other has paintings of birds. They both made me extremely happy. Between City Politics and work a new friend bought me a chocolate and strawberry crepe, at work they game be a break and I walked in a circle through the sunny main green and back to the library, and then they sent me down to the basement to have cake for my boss' birthday.

After work I sat on my futon and graded a couple papers and worked on a fellowship application and my thesis, and felt somewhat productive. Turned on the Olympics in time to see Johnny Weir's lovely short skate. Briefly considered the idea of Valentine's Day.

My friend Rachel threw a party, for all her single and semi-single and single-through-distance friends. She baked chocolate lava cakes, which are very close to heaven, and I overate and talked to people I like very much and got a purple carnation from Nayla. And didn't think about boys very much, or what I might be missing, and didn't feel sorry for myself or worry too much about overeating (besides the stomachache). As the party was winding down I got a call from home, and picked it up and said "Hi Mom." It was Merlyn. She said she wanted to sing me a song.

I wish I knew the words of Merlyn's song, but the gist is this: she would like to wrap herself up and put stamps on her and send herself to me, and when she got here I would fill her up with cream soda and give her a bubble bath and snuggle her into bed. It was the best song ever. There were three whole verses, and she sang them perfectly and without hesitation, and I stood in the hall listening and grinning like an idiot to myself, and then got to go back in and brag about my amazing little sister and how loved I feel.

And I've been listening to the Magnetic Fields all day. This week in Seattle a bunch of local bands gathered and had a Valentine's 69 Love Songs show, proving once again that Seattle is a wonderful place.

So in honor of a lovely Valentine's Day:

Love is Like a Bottle of Gin
and, not better but perhaps sweeter...
The Book of Love
both by The Magnetic Fields

My friend boyceterous aka Laura stole a line from one of my essays to use in an awesome song she wrote. So go listen to it! Points if you know which line is mine.

In other news, I went to Merlyn's basketball practice today, and after it was her turn to shoot she skipped to the back of the line. It was pretty damn cute. (She would yell at me for saying damn though, oops. But it was in a good cause.)