I Resolve to Read the Calendar Better

I'm staying at my parents' house for a couple of weeks. They are off having sun and warmth in Mexico, but Jimmy's mom who is 90 and lives with them had a difficult time recovering from pneumonia recently, so I'm here to call 911 if I need to, to try to force her to accept my help with her breakfast and lunch, and to cook dinner for her and Ann (the other elderly housemate). I'm not used to having such regular meals, and if this weren't the lap of luxury, I'd be feeling all crowded and introverted. Since it's an enormous house, I'm on the third floor alone right now, typing away, while Ann naps and Dorothy knits in the sun room. We each have our own floor.

This morning, I got up early (to train myself for the inevitability of going back to school on Monday), walked the dog in the freezing, freezing cold, and headed off to Uptown to cross off my first New Year's resolution. I was going to my first belly dancing lesson in the dance studio above Birch's Pharmacy. Classes begin at the beginning of January and they are offered almost every day of the week, but I decided that Saturday was best for me. Otherwise it becomes a day of too much thinking, moping, and procrastinating.

Well, I got there only to discover that classes actually begin on Monday, so Saturday's first class isn't until next week. This was all very clearly spelled out on their website, which I checked three times before I headed off to a strange land, but despite my enormous brain, I have all kinds of trouble reading calendars, and so I misread the date.

Anyway, I made the best of it. An outing is never bad when you are younger than your housemates by over 50 years. I bought myself some Yak Tracks so I can walk Buddy through ice and snow. Then I got home, and crossed off another resolution by buying my train ticket to Portland.

Now, I'm at least 90 percent certain that my Portland ticket really does involve travel during the actual dates of my Spring Break, but it was all on a calendar so I can never be 100 percent certain until the date actually comes around.

Love,
Al

Lists

In case you didn't receive this in the mail, here is my resolution list for 2010. Hope you're enjoying the day. Here in MN it's sunny and even colder than the thermometer says.

Dear Friends and Family,

I’ve never written the holiday letter or Christmas card before because I don’t have any cute kids to share with you. Buddy doesn’t like having his picture taken, and although I am pretty vain, I draw the line at sending everyone I know of photo of myself for Christmas. However, I am the number one fan of your holiday cards and photos, and so, to encourage you not to drop me from your list, here is my first annual New Years Resolution letter.

Whereas, I have room to improve and grow in 2010, be it resolved that this year I vow to do the following.

1. Smile more, especially in November and February.
2. Say goodbye to everyone when I leave a party
3. Go to graduate school (finally) starting in March
4. Go to the gym twelve times a month, until such time as it is warm enough to allow my membership to lapse
5. Be less cheap
6. Take the train to Portland, OR for Spring Break
7. Go to my 15-year reunion, and be proud of what I’ve done in the last 15-years, even though I’ve never yet been ambassador to the U.N. Nor have I cured cancer. At least I didn’t join a cult.
8. Run another half marathon and beat my time from last year
9. Have more dinner parties
10. Take myself out to dinner more
11. Finish painting the basement
12. Go to the Dominican Republic in the summer
    
13. Join a running club and go more than twice before I quit
14. Visit the Black Hills
15. Learn to dance or at least take lessons.
16. Go to a weekly exercise class at least four weeks in a row
17. Say yes more
18. Say no more
19. Stop procrastinating
20. Ask for help when I need it
21. Write more
22. Read more books
23. Join a book club that reads books
24. Design knitting patterns and write them down

Furthermore, the following resolutions will happen in 2010, although they will most likely not result in much growth or improvement.

1. Watch the rest of West Wing, even though the walk-and-talk is starting to annoy me
2. Forget to wash the dishes sometimes before I go to bed
3. Hope that Buddy can survive the night without a third walk
4. Laugh with my nephews and nieces and my pseudo nieces and nephews
5. Eat many dinners at Jimmy and Judy’s house
6. Knit in front of the TV
7. Play Wii at Perley and Jill’s
8. Watch So You Think You Can Dance with Sarah
9. Eat at least one Jucy Lucy
10. Eat too many croissants at A Baker’s Wife

Finally, the following resolutions will continue from last year (and the year before).

1. Volunteer every other week at the library
2. Donate blood sporadically
3. Give everything I can to teaching, because it’s a job I love and do well
4. Pay my mortgage close to on time
5. Care deeply for my friends and family and the children of my friends and family.

I am grateful to have you in my life. Have a happy new year. Don’t forget to send any hot single guys you meet my way for a once over.

Love and kisses from Alex and Buddy

The Permanent Collection

The fourth floor of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts is a busy place this time of year. The period rooms are all done up for the holidays, and families and school groups wander through to see the glitter. Anyone who has ever had a doll house knows the fascination of the period rooms. We long to rearrange the furniture, we imagine dramatic domestic scenes around the fireplace, and we picture the people readying themselves for the night in that tiny colonial bed. I have a special fascination for the period rooms, because all the years I was a child I didn't even know they existed (did they exist then?), and it wasn't until one Christmas that my step-mother took me to see them in their full splendor that I discovered a whole wing of the MIA my usual tour guides (Jimmy, Claire, my dad) must have avoided on purpose. Still, as I've gotten older I've realized that the period rooms never change. Even the holiday dazzle is the same year after year. The sameness of the rooms makes them uninteresting. I've seen them. Done that.

Meanwhile, the rest of the art on the fourth floor is the same as it always was, but it just gets better every time I go. There's the stunning one of woman lying in the grass eating an apple with her baby (Cassatt, I think. I'm not very good at remembering to read the tags). There's a nude painted by a man who has never seen a naked woman. There's a baby painted by a man who has never seen a baby. And then stop! Here's that breathtaking scene of Lucretia with the knife. Rooms of angels and religious paintings lull me back into my museum stupor, and then she catches my eye again, the woman with the candle, the flame of it covered by some man's arm, but the glow of it perfectly reflected on each of the faces huddled urgently around her. There's the couple in the moonlight. I'm not sure I love Gauguin, with his bold swatches of color, but used to have a puzzle of one of his paintings, and so I spend some time reuniting with it in the museum. And of course, I have to pause each time at the bust of the Algerian, stark contrast of bronze and stone.

Around me, on the fourth floor of the museum, the ones who make it past the period rooms to look at the permanent collection gasp along with me. I think they must gasp each time at the same place in the room. I know I do. The best paintings are old friends that still catch me by the shirtsleeves each time I see them.

"Look!" says a man to his son, "If you stand close, it's just dots. If you back up you can see the picture. He did it all with dots. Can you believe it? Just dots."

"Oh no!" shouts a woman to her out-of-town companion. "They moved it. Where is it? Oh! Oh! Here it is. Isn't it breathtaking? Isn't it wonderful?"

"It's perfect," says the man of the elderly couple to his wife. She agrees, and they stand silently in front of the Carpet Vendor for a minute, just looking.

I wonder if the way we enjoy art is Minnesotan. If we lived in Manhattan, we'd have so many more paintings to see that it would take longer to make friends with our favorites. We'd have traveling shows come and visit us, and we'd be able to make new acquaintances so easily that we might not cling so steadfastly to what we know and like. We might not notice if they move one of our favorites to a different wall. We might go to the museum not to see the dozen paintings we already love, but to meet new ones and allow them to impress us. We might not spend our entire play-going budget each year on the same old "Christmas Carol" at the Guthrie.

I don't know, but I do know that I can't wait to go back again so I can see Lucretia without the tour of catholic school tenth graders blocking my view.

Those Crazy Japanese

I wasn't blogging, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been any action on this site.

I have mixed feelings about people reading this blog lately. Part of me wants to be famous with legions of fans. I want to use my blog fame to make friends and influence people. I want to flash my fame when I enter a restaurant so I can get a better table. But another, equally real, part of me, feels a little bit naked on the Internet, and I think about closing this site down so that I can get dressed and stop over-sharing with the whole wide world. That part of me kind of hopes that no one is reading these words, and figures that long periods of silence are a good thing because they drive down my readership.

So, I haven't written anything or checked this blog for comments for about a month. But that doesn't mean that there hasn't been any action on this site.

When I logged in recently, I noticed that one of my posts had eighty-four comments! Oh, the mixed feelings began to crowd out all other thoughts when I saw that number. Eighty-four people care what I have to say! I'm famous! Oh, crap. That means that eighty-four people read my post. Damn it. Did my students find me? What did I write? Crap. Crap. Crap.

So, I was filled with eagerness and dread when I clicked on this post to discover that in my absence, it has become some sort of Japanese sex chat room. At least, I assume it's Japanese. I use Firefox, and I've noticed before that Japanese characters display as a block of four numbers for Firefox users who don't bother to get the Japanese plug-in. I assume it's about sex because every once in while, embedded between the non-English characters, are words that hint at sex. Words like "sex", for example.

I deleted a ton of the comments, but there isn't an easy way to delete mass amounts of comments on Blogger, so I got lazy and decided to be content with zapping all of the ones that had English-character email addresses in them. I've also disallowed anonymous comments on this blog.

Anyway, I guess I got exactly what I wanted. I got legions of people to come to my blog. Fans, if you will. Chances are, they don't really read English, though, so I got the other thing I wanted: None of them is reading what I wrote. Perfect.

The One Without a Title

You know what, you guys? I cried. Pretty much all of November, I cried. You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I can make a lot of tears when I get going.

When you start crying like that, you don't really need a reason to keep crying. It just does itself. Tears upon tears. Thinking about all the people who saw you cry, or suspect you cried, or might just think you are crying without having seen you in years can be enough to bring more tears. Writing the words "I cried" was enough to bring some more, even though today's tears are stoppable, which is the difference.

All through November, it was a torrent of heart-crushing grief. There were phone messages from my mother I couldn't play, because they were going to make it start again. There was incredible guilt whenever I did talk to her, because every conversation ended with me unable to speak past the lump in my throat and the ache in my heart, and I know that she worries and it's not fair to still do that to her after thirty-six years. There were car rides to and from the Suburb throughout which I was so wracked by sobs, I could barely see the road.

Some of it was logical. I got dumped in November, twice, including once by a guy so unworthy of me, he ignored me for a week, and then finally (and only after I asked him to explain himself) wrote me an email explaining that he wasn't ready for a relationship. I gave him three months of precious teacher-weekends, and he couldn't take the time to dial the phone to say "no thank you" in person or at least in voice.

You know it's a bad month when you end it by thanking a guy for taking the time to dump you in person. I thought I met someone really, really good in November. His emails said all of the right things. He was charming and cute in person. Our one and only date went so well I felt something I haven't felt in a long time (something like lust. Desire maybe.). Maybe if I weren't so very ready to find someone charming and cute, and if he weren't so very not, this story would have ended happily. It didn't. It ended familiarly, at least. One good date, followed by silence. And then that final conversation.

The problem is that logical or not, crying over break-ups does you no good. No one wants to hear about it when you're 36 anyway. They would have been more sympathetic when you were seventeen (not that you dated, then, because of the whole thing where you never talked in high school). Nowadays, the world likes to tell you that you can be happy by yourself. The world likes to tell you that you'll find your match when you're least looking for it (Is this the advice you give to your unemployed friends? You'll find your job when you stop wanting a job?), and you should get busy living your life alone. I do live alone. Every day. I've lived alone for more years than most of the world ever does.

So, you have a choice, ultimately. You can choose to think about how much you hurt or you can choose to not. It ends when you find the strength to choose the latter. Then the tears stop. You find your humor again. You can talk to your mother and neither of you has to end up in tears. You can go to school and you can even come home and grade homework. It doesn't hurt so very much because you decided not to let it hurt so much.

Thank you, you say, with real grace. Thank you, for taking the time to meet with me in person, to have this real conversation with me. Thank you for saying what you think will help me. Thank you for being my sweet mother who doesn't deserve to have to worry. Thank you for being my friend with an extra N who will feed me soup and listen to me cry. I live alone. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me in person. I'm worth it.

Deciding

When I have a ton of work to do, often I'll get overwhelmed. I'll stew on it, worrying about it. I'll put off friends who want to have fun, because I have all this work to do, and then I'll feel sad about missing the fun that I'll procrastinate for so long that I might as well have just gone out and had the fun.

So, today, I finally just decided. "Crap," I decided. "I have a lot of work to do. I'm going to have to pull an all-dayer." So I got in my car, and I drove to the suburb, and I sat myself down and I graded paper after paper. I didn't let myself relax until I had graded every last test - all 80 of them, two pages, double-sided, crammed with tiny little numbers, written in haste and not-tidily by 80 stressed-out high-school students. "I don't understand how to do any of this," they said on Friday, the first hint of a whine I've had all year (it's been a good year). They had five tests yesterday. I'm thinking they'd know if they hadn't had to study for four different tests (and what are they doing putting other subjects ahead of Calculus, anyway?). Test results do not back up their claims. They know how to do some of it. One of them even knows how to do all of it, plus the bonus.

I still have work to do, but after my all-dayer I know that I can do it in the 24-hours before I have to be back at school. Enough with the whining. Just do it.

Something Small

The reason you haven't heard from me: I was thinking about me and dating, and I decided that I'm not going to let myself think that it's my fault that I'm single, anymore. It's just plain, dumb luck, and while there are lots of ways you make your own luck, there are also lots of ways in which your plain, dumb luck is Not Your Fault.

Like, for example this: You meet a guy. He's attractive and he seems to be into you. You're into him. Then, bam, he stops calling. What happened?

Correct answer: God only knows. Do yourself a favor. Stop thinking about it.

Or this: You meet a guy. You like him. He likes you. Then, bam, everything he does annoys the crap out of you. You can't even stand to be in the same room with him. What happened?

Correct answer: Who cares? Stop thinking about it. Just get out of the room as fast as you can.

Advice by Al. Free. And worth every penny.

Dog Days

Summer is winding down here in Minnesota. We have a law which prevents school from starting before Labor Day, and it means that we're at the end of the longest summer ever. I am not complaining.

I spent a big chunk of the summer making my home more homey. I'm not with-it enough to have before pictures, but here are the after pictures.

I got a new bathroom faucet. This is the kind of thing you use before pictures for, I think, but it makes a big difference to me, and so it makes the photo gallery.

I tried to take a picture that looked daunting, because that's what it felt like to think about the task of replacing the bathtub rubber hose with an actual diverting faucet. I did the plumbing myself, with just a little bit of last minute rescue help from a good friend. This change may have improved my lifestyle the most. I can now bathe, not just shower. I love baths.
The second biggest lifestyle change is hidden in this picture. Can you find it? It's not the beaded unicorn or the spice rack. It's the remote control light switch for my kitchen ceiling fan. Now, instead of groping around in the dark for the pull-chain I get to flip a switch, just like a civilized human being.

The kitchen received the most attention. You can't see them, but I refinished the floors (hired someone to refinish the floors). I sold the World's Heaviest Butcher's Block (good-bye. Don't let the door hit you on the way out) which made room for my great-grandparents' kitchen table.

And I bought the Best Thing Ever on Craigslist. It's called a Hoosier cabinet, and now I finally have more counter space and more storage, and I didn't have to buy crappy Ikea cabinets to do it. Also pictured is a broom that is so attractive I don't have to hide it in a closet. It's called "Sweep Dreams". Are you cracking up?
The Hoosier cabinet gives me room to store my food, and it also helps me answer one of life's most persistent mysteries: "Where are my keys?" I try to hang them on the hook in the cabinet as soon as I come home. I'm not perfect, but I can see perfect from here.
There actually is a before picture for my two-tone cabinet paint job. Painting is a lot of work, but it makes the kitchen feel lighter and airier now that it has mellow green trim. Besides, who am I to complain? I am legally required to stay on vacation for three more days. Oh, and just so you know, I do have dish towels to match my trim. I'm so Martha Stewart. They're just dirty. I think Martha has people to do the wash for her, now that she's out of the Big House.

Here's the dining room, getting all decked out for Tuesday's dinner party for eight people. I can throw dinner parties now that my house doesn't suck anymore.
The book I was following ("The Eight Step Home Cure"), said to put the bed where the king would sleep. I know a certain older brother of mine who would freak out that it's not centered on that window, but I'm willing to trade symmetry for being able to navigate past my dresser. The king has never slept in such tight quarters. It's good for him. It builds character.
My yarn stash gets its own cabinet. The artwork in my bedroom is courtesy of my three-year-old nephew. Nothing like a cheery scribble to greet you first thing in the morning.
Here's my writing corner. Even though I don't use it religiously, it's good to know that it's there for whenever I'm ready to start my novel. And it's labeled with my name, just in case I get confused and think it belongs to someone else who lives here.
New couch, chair, and footstool courtesy of Craigslist. I rented a moving truck and conned my brother into helping me carry it, and then I got it all home and realized that it stunk like someone else's house in such a way that I couldn't even stand to sit in my living room. I spent an entire day throwing as much of it as I could into the washing machine, and then airing it out in the yard. It now smells like me. Thank goodness. I might not always smell great, but at least I always smell familiar.
Yes, that's Buddy sleeping next to his bed.
With my new system, everything has a place. The place for random papers waiting for me to eventually sort them, is here in my sun room/office. Well, at least they aren't all over the house.
The daybed isn't new, but doesn't it look nice? The drawers under it are newly sorted. If you were a small child who visits me, you would know that the one of the far left contains all of my stocking-stuffers from recent years, and it's the one place where Auntie Al has anything fun.


So, that's it, then. My house. I now know what I want my house to look like. I just have to manage to keep it looking good while concurrently working full-time. We'll just see about that.

Just Plain Mean

I just read an article about a survey about sarcasm, and I'm not sure it would have spoken so directly to me, except that I've been reading a few Internet dating profiles recently, and I've noticed that a lot of men describe their sense of humor as sarcastic.

According to the article 55% of respondents to a sarcasm survey, when asked to report a sarcastic comment that they had made, wrote down a comment that contained no sarcasm.

It’s no wonder why sarcasm is so often misused or misunderstood — half of us can’t recognize sarcasm in the first place. Something we may mean in a sarcastic manner may be seen as being just plain mean because it was never actually sarcasm in the first place.

I've stopped scouring the profiles of self-proclaimed sarcastic men for sarcasm. I'm starting to think that most of these "sarcastic" men are really just mean, because well over half of them display not only no sarcasm, but no humor at all in the 1000 words they are allowed to use to describe themselves. Turns out my time would be better spent reading psychology articles than dating profiles.

Tonight, I'm not doing either. I'm biking to the discount theater to watch "Up". I'm hoping for it to be amusing without being mean.

I Ate a Rabbit

Once upon a time, Sarah and Alex joined the liberals from the city in driving their fuel-efficient cars to a farm near Duluth.The chef, Scott, from the Corner Table in Minneapolis, joined forces with the chef, Scott, from the Scenic Cafe in Duluth to cook us all dinner at a big table under the open sky.
The wind blew over our wine glasses, and it threatened to rain, but we held onto our glasses and zipped up our hoodies, and hoped for the best.
The best turned out to be a platter of sausages dipped in fresh mustard to whet our appetites. It was also bowls full of gazpacho eaten too quickly for photographs. It was carrots grown right on the farm marinated in a little bit of vinegar and cornichons and olives paired with a Mesabi Red from the Lake Superior Brewery just down the way.
Then it was time for a Caprese salad paired with beets of all things. Root vegetables do well in the climate of Duluth. Every course came with a matching wine, which I allowed myself the smallest of tastes, for I had to drive home that night.
The dinner was rabbit. The little furry varmint was cooked in duck fat and wrapped in prosciutto, so every bite was delicious. I've never had so many courses (good thing I ran my half-marathon on Saturday), so I was afraid I wouldn't have room for dessert.
But there's always room for goat-cheese cake with fresh berries on top!

The Scotts did themselves proud, the food was delicious, the company was delightful, and after the salads the clouds even blew away and the sun shone down on the table. It was a miracle as big as eating beets and liking them.

P.S. Happy birthday to me!

I Hate Everything About You

Even though I'm trying to be positive, I went back to the periodontist today. He's the man who hacked away at my gums, rearranged them, and then sewed them back in new places. I hate him.

It was the kind of trip where you're walking down the street and you meet Angry Spitting Man, and the way you meet him is he hocks one right at your feet while you're waiting for the light to change. In the block or two before Angry Spitting Man storms out of your eyesight, you see him spit three more times, twice at the feet of well-dressed women and once next to a shiny red bicycle.

Then you show up in the dreaded office, the place that made you weep last time because gum surgery is worse than they say it is, and the receptionist is gone, so you sit down, awkwardly, wondering whether anyone will figure out that you're here. You hope they don't. They do.

The dental technician leans you back in your chair and aims the light in your eyes, just like she did the other two times you were there. The light is blinding. Your regular dentist doesn't do this. She knows how to aim the light at your mouth without hitting your eyes.

"Um," you say, "my tongue turned black. Is that normal?"

"Yeah, it's the rinse," she says.

Nobody mentioned that the rinse would make your tongue turn black when they prescribed it.

"It looks better now," she says.

"Yeah, I stopped using the rinse, because I can brush now." You're proud of this, the brushing of your teeth. The novelty of it. How quickly and well you heal.

She gives you a disapproving glare. "You're not supposed to brush! It's too soon to brush. It won't heal properly if you brush. How long have you been brushing?" She has your lip in her hand when she asks you this question. You don't answer. If she wants you to talk to her, she can take her damn hands out of your mouth. And she can move the light out of your eyes.

Nobody told you how long you weren't allowed to brush your teeth when they hacked away at your gums and rearranged them. The light shining in your eyes for an hour and a half. The sound of slicing. One small red dot of blood on the dentist's hands right in front of your eyes. Awareness of exactly what they were doing, even though you couldn't feel a thing. The way they kept going while tears rolled down your temples and into your ears.

She flips off the light and exits the room, leaving you alone leaning back at that awkward turtle-on-its-back position, worrying that you won't heal properly, and they'll have to do it again, not sure that you'd be strong enough, really, to do it all over again. You, who are usually so quiet and mild, swat the light down, away from your eyes, just in case they come back and turn it on again.

The dentist comes in, reaims the light directly in your eyes, and then realizes he's missing the chart. He leaves you again, a blinded turtle trapped in a chair. You hear him ask for your chart. You hear whispering. She's telling on you, about the brushing. Fine.

Nobody told you when you could brush again.

He says your gums look good. They healed quickly. Then he stops. "Candace tells me that you've been brushing. Just the teeth though? Not the gums?"

"Yes," you say, meekness returning, damn it.

"How long have you been brushing?"

"Just a couple of days," you lie. How long? You don't remember. As soon as it didn't hurt. As soon as you could, because of the black tongue and the grossness of not brushing. And because no one told you how long you couldn't brush.

When he's done giving you more specific brushing instructions, he says, "OK, I'll tell your dentist that you healed nicely," and he walks out of the room.

No one tells you that you can leave. No one guides you through the maze and back to the lobby. You just pick up your bag and go. You are in the elevator before anyone can stop you. You keep thinking about the $800 you will pay these people, and you swear as the elevator takes you back to the street that you will never, ever allow anyone to rearrange your gums again as long as you both shall live.

Oh! And Nieces and Nephews.

I forgot to mention how grateful I am for the nieces and nephews in my life.

Right now, five of them are staying with my parents. I've been over to visit a couple of times this week. If I don't bring Buddy, he is the first topic of conversation.

"Where's Buddy?"
"I left him at home, because I just went running."
"Why?"
"Because I ran ten miles and he can't do that."
"Why?"
"Because he's old."
"Can you go get him?"

So last night, I brought Buddy to a family pizza party, where the two local nephews joined the five out-of-towners to create the annual cacophony of familial joy. Buddy's arrival was heralded by the shouts of seven (well, maybe six, since the baby doesn't care) nieces and nephews. He was, once again, the first topic of conversation.

"Buddy! Buddy's here. And Alex!"
"Buddy! Buddy! Buddy!"
"Did Buddy have a bath?"
"Sit! Buddy! Sit! Sit!"
"Did you bring any treats for Buddy?"
"Buddy! Sit!"
"Can Buddy fly on the airplane?"
"Buddy! Lie down! Play dead! Buddy!"
"Buddy licked me! Why did Buddy lick my leg?"
"Buddy! Shake!"
"Buddy! Stand up! Stand up!"

Did I mention that I'm grateful that Buddy is such a good dog? He doesn't know what all of these children are yelling about (and he only obeys their insistent commands to sit when I'm in the background with a stern look), but he accepts their eager attention with a calm submissive demeanor which endears him to them (and to their parents), even though he obviously doesn't know any tricks.

Gratitude (this one's kind of sappy)

Some things for which I am grateful. In no particular order.

I am grateful that Buddy is a good dog who doesn't bark too much. I am grateful that he needs me to walk him three times a day, and that he forces me out of the house, even when it's cold or rainy.

I am grateful that my family is full of good, loving people. I am grateful that my parents believed in my education enough to pay a lot for it. I am grateful that I never had student loans, even though I don't usually like to admit such a terribly unfair thing out loud.

I am grateful I went to Carleton where I learned to be myself among peers who finally understood my sense of humor. I am grateful for the friends I still have from there, and especially grateful that I've been able to be part of their lives as they've grown and changed since then.

I am grateful for the friends I have who weren't from Carleton, because they remind me how to be myself without the crutch of a shared life in Northfield.

I am grateful that I have known romantic love. I am grateful to the men who loved me even when I didn't love them enough back, and I am grateful to the ones who were gentle when I loved them too much.

I am grateful that I learned how to teach - and grateful that my education was, once again, debt-free, thanks this time to the government and the Minneapolis Public Schools. I am grateful that I've never worked in a school where I had to buy my own paper and that my students each get their own textbooks for the year. I am especially grateful that I found a career that allows me to be creative and active while still doing good in the world. I am grateful for summers off and long days that allow me to create my own projects.

I am grateful for good food, eaten with people I love. I am grateful that I have the kind of body that doesn't put the good food in unsightly places, and I am grateful that I finally learned how to run when I was in my late twenties, and I am most grateful for an injury free running life.

I am grateful to MPR and NPR and podcasts and the sound of Terry Gross's voice when I'm stressed out, and the way the Slate Political Gabfest team bickers, and the stilted way Josh and Chuck from "Stuff You Should Know" speak.

I am grateful for my health and my health insurance, and I wish I lived in a world where no one had to think about whether they could afford an annual exam.

I am grateful to live in a space that is my own and grateful that it is comfortable and fits me so well. I am lucky to be able to afford solitude, and (with apologies to Bev who lives next door and might, possibly be able to see from her living room) every day I am grateful that I don't have to shut the door when I pee.

Off the Grid

When I was a kid, we used to go to the North Shore every summer for my birthday. To celebrate the day, Margot made some kind of a cake in a bundt pan (When I got older, because she hates to bake and I love it, I baked my own cake). My dad made Dutch Babies with lemon juice and powdered sugar for breakfast. I got to bring a friend, who for many years, was Emma, my red-headed friend who lived in Finnlayson, MN. We reconnected every year, city mouse and country mouse, sharing a bed in a cabin, and exploring the rocky shores of Lake Superior together. We even "swam" in the lake, although this activity was reserved for extremely hot days, because the water of Lake Superior never rises above 50 degrees. You lose feeling in your feet before you gain the courage to dunk your head. Once you've gone under, you dash back to shore. If there isn't a warm rock baking in the sun for you to sprawl upon when you get out, it could be days before the blood starts circulating again.

This year, my friend was Buddy, the dog. Emma and I have lost touch, and besides, he needs a dog sitter when I'm gone if he doesn't get to come along. And so we drove up in my dad's car, just like Emma and I used to do. Buddy rode in the back, quietly. Buddy curls up in the car, and only sits up to look around when we slow down. Otherwise, he relaxes and enjoys the ride.

I realized, midway through the trip, as Margot and my dad adopted Buddy into our small family cabin lifestyle, that, really, I have a bit too much love for the beast. I'm a little too worried that he will endear himself to our companions when we travel together. I sleep with one eye open for the dog. Is he sleeping? Is he getting into trouble? Is he worried? Does he need me?

So, then, this is what happens when a single woman gets a dog. He becomes a lover and a child all wrapped up in too much fur. Oh, well, at least he's not a cat. At least (small blessing counted) I haven't become a Cat Lady. No. I've just spent the weekend excusing my dog's farts to two people who were kind enough to allow their love for me to help them decide to let him sleep in their cabin, but at least I haven't become a Cat Lady.

The Perfect Distance

So I'm training for a half-marathon, which will be next Saturday. I use the word "training" lightly. I just run more often, and have increased how far I run. I thought I needed a goal, so on a bit of a whim a month ago, I signed up to run more than twice as far as I had ever run before. It turns out that if you run slowly, as I do, then there is no reason why you can't run twice as far as you normally do. Or, at least, that's what I found out, when I started running farther.

I used to run three miles two or three times a week. Now I run five or six times a week, and I run longer distances. My longest distance to date was about nine and a half miles around the chain of lakes in Minneapolis (and did I feel lucky to be a Minneapolitan when I ran that most beautiful nearly-ten miles in the country? Yes, in fact, I did.).

Still, the chain of lakes run took all morning, and it wiped me out all day. The perfect distance is the one I ran this morning. Six miles. There's a loop along the Mississippi that crosses the river into St. Paul and then crosses back over into Minneapolis. Six miles gives you time to listen to an entire episode of Fresh Air (and, let's be honest, if you run at my pace a little bit of Planet Money, too). It gives you time to be in a rhythm of running that allows all of that other stuff that you always think to get pushed all the way to the back of your brain so that you really hardly hear it any more. It also gives you a pretty good reason to stop by the Baker's Wife for a pastry afterward, and it forces you to leave the aged dog at home. I love six miles.

Now, if only I had signed up for a 10K. That would be perfect.

P.S. If you missed Terry Gross talking to Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno, whose daughter was murdered, and you kind of like a good cry, then here's a link to it. I don't even like poetry and every one of her poems hit me right in the gut.
Note: This link is not here for my mother, so if you carried me in your womb for nine months, do yourself a favor and don't listen to this podcast. And if you know my mother, don't teach her how to listen to this podcast. Give her something fun, instead. Maybe she'd like a little Stuff You Should Know. Josh and Chuck can lighten any mood.

People Think I Exaggerate

Recently, I decided to get more active on the dating frontier. I pulled up some profiles, and emailed a couple of dudes. One of them emailed me back, and it wasn't witty banter that made my brain tingle, but it was all right, and so we corresponded for a while until I suggested that we meet in person, because what's the point of sending emails to strangers, when they might turn out to be the opposite of attractive in real life?

And he said, "I'm too busy right now to meet in person. I'm just here for conversation."

Conversation? It's email, hoser. It's email with a stranger, and as far as I'm concerned email is the tool to get you to the real life. It's not the Thing. It's not the Reason We're Here.

Oh, and lest you think that this was all an elaborate brush-off, because I'm a repulsive email conversationalist, let me tell you that he promptly changed his profile to say that he was too busy to date and was just here to chat. Yep. On a dating site.

What I Wanted and What Really Happened

What I wanted was to go to an open mike night on my own. I wanted to enter a bar where a crowd of people were engrossed in what was going on on stage, where artists shared their talents in the dimly lit room, and everyone drank good beer out of pint glasses. I imagined drinking a couple of pints and then standing up to read my short piece. The crowd of people would be curious about this woman. They would be mildly disappointed that she wasn't here to sing. They would be worried when she began to read. Aren't we always worried by sincere people who try to share their writing on stage? What if it sucks? Then, I would start reading, and my reading would be good, and the silence would grow as would this imaginary crowd's interest me. How could so fascinating a character be here on her own and not surrounded by admiring friends? (Hey. It's my fantasy. Get your own if you want to be admired.) Maybe one of them would buy me a beer.

I couldn't do it.

I parked blocks away from the bar, hoping that the walk would give me courage. I walked up to the bar, feeling the crinkling paper in my back pocket. I opened the door, and through the dark screen of sad, lonely people drinking at the counter I saw a musician with lots of tattoos setting up his equipment in front of the microphone, and I saw no admiring crowd. And I realized that sitting at the bar drinking with the sad, lonely people was the last thing I wanted to do on a Monday, and the thing I was going to read would have been the last thing they would have wanted to hear, and it would have been terrible and dark and depressing. I pretended that I was checking my cell phone, turned on my heel and left before I even sat down.

So, I went home, and tried to watch "Six Feet Under", but it was terrible and dark and depressing, so I stopped the episode and went to bed.

My Bed's Broken

All of those things you just thought. Not true. Damn thing is just an antique.

Tastes a Little Like Car

I found an old transcript of a road trip I took with a friend. It was actually the move back to Minneapolis from Portland. I had a microphone and a mini-disk recorder (in one of my dream jobs, I was a reporter for NPR), and I spent the boring parts of the trip recording our interactions. Mostly we chatted about nothing. My evil cat was ill, so she made the first part of our journey memorably stinky. We had a gift for bringing out the humor in each other, and so we drove across Washington swapping the role of straight-man more times than I can count.

Partway through the journey, we decided to cook a meal by wrapping it in tinfoil, strapping it to some hot part of the moving van's exhaust system, and driving until it was done. My friend had been experimenting with this technique, made famous by the cookbook "Manifold Destiny". Here's what he said about his attempts to cook on his own small car:

I've tried cooking [garlic cloves] on the engine block which was the best deal for me, and that ended up getting it just a little bit warm, but not really cooked at all, and then the other two or three cloves that I've tried have ... either fallen off my car or they've been totally raw, and so I've eaten some raw garlic - really kind of bummed my coworkers out.

So, understandably, we were worried about raw food as a result of this experiment. We started with just one potato, figuring that if a potato came out raw, at least it wouldn't give us Salmonella. It was also a cold, windy day in early May, which brought some complaints from my friend as he crawled under the truck and wired a tinfoil packet of oil, garlic, and potatoes onto the exhaust pipe. Not wanting to eat carbon monoxide, I insisted on four layers of foil.

Here's what happened when we pulled the truck off the highway forty minutes later, and tried to talk into the microphone while struggling with wind and four layers of hot foil while crouched under a moving van in a post office parking lot in the middle of Podunk, Montana.

A: We have dinner. Well, we have something that resembles hot. J is unwrapping our dinner.
J: I still think it's bold to call it dinner.
A: Well, it was definitely just one potato. Whether it's cooked or not, it was still only one potato.
J: We're through the first layer. Looking pretty good. Oh, yeah. This looks good.
A: Smells better and better. It seems to be cooked in just that one spot.
J: Yeah. I wonder why that is. Maybe that's where the oil leaked out. But yeah, you're kind of right. Huh, that's interesting. All right. Here's the first food. It kind of looks cooked. Hey, want some potato? (chews) That's done.
A: We're geniuses!
J: I mean it tastes a little bit like ... car
A: ...carbon
J: Oh, my God, it is burnt. Look at this. It's totally burnt to a crisp. I mean some of these art OK, but most of it is just cooked. Wow. It was like it was on fire in there.

After burning our potato, we did make a second attempt. We wound up successfully cooking a complete chicken, broccoli, and potato meal, and eating it while crouched on my old furniture in the back of the van while the evil cat had the smelly cab to herself. The lengths I'll go to to avoid McDonald's...

Half-way Done

Jobs that are halfway done

1. Bathtub Plumbing
2. Kitchen Door
3. Rearranging Living Room
4. Toilet Plumbing
5. Cleaning

Notice how I didn't say halfway not-done. This is not just because this is a grammatically unnatural construction. It is also because I am an incurable optimist. Yep. That's me. Pollyanna all the time.