CRACKED REAR VIEW

This morning on the way to work, I was thinking about something funny. I was remembering this elaborate prank Jennifer and I had in college that revolved around the punchline of a joke. The joke wasn't even that funny, but was made all the more hilarious to us for that very reason.
The joke was told to me for the first time by Russel John, the improbably redneck I worked with at a summer camp in '96, and I brought it to College Station, after which we worked it into a prank call situation...way past the point of being funny.
So the joke is something like this: This boy goes to the circus, and there is this clown that keeps taunting him. This darn clown just will not leave him alone, calls him names, embarrasses him, teases him mercilessly. It really affected this boy, but he had no idea what to do about it. Every year when the circus comes, this same clown goes after this boy, and he tries all these various things to get the clown to stop, but he can't. He ends up spending years in therapy working on this, and finally perfects his comeback. He goes back to the circus as a man now, and sees that clown, and this time he is ready to show him how all those years of therapy helped him learned the perfect way to deal with him. So when the clown starts messing with him again, he pulls out all the stops, and says....
"Fuck you, clown!"
I was laughing about this in the morning, laughing about an incident involving the punchline and Holly the Ho', laughing about all those college years. I was laughing all day, over other things. Hilarious moments involving me in the parking lot, observed trying not to pee myself with laughter, laughing over lunch, good times in the workplace, smile on my face. At the end of the day, though, there was this conversation, so to speak, that kind of changed my tune. It was a good conversation, but it got my mind rolling as I left work, heading into the traffic and the rain coming down. At first I was fine, playing my favorite tunes and getting deep into Keely Karoake hour like most days drive, but then something broke. And maybe it was just the rain, or maybe it was the deeper damage, but the dam broke and the tears came down.
During this time, there was a missed phone call from Jen, and even though I was on a stretch of road that I don't usually talk, I called her back, because I really needed a girlfriend. I told her what was on my mind, barely able to talk with the emotion of it all. She totally understood where I was coming from, the distorted sense of self that is the remnant of my broken marriage.
"Most people during this time are feeling sad because of what they lost. You're not sad for the loss of your marriage, you're sad for the loss of self you experienced in your marriage. You're sad because you are finally getting away. Thank God you are finally getting you and your children away from that."
We talked about this concept of beauty, the damage to my psyche that was caused by the mental cruelty of this man I lived with for ten years. "All this time, your girlfriends have been trying to tell you how beautiful you are, strange guys in bars were telling you that...I'm sorry it wasn't enough for you. It wasn't enough to overcome the way he treated you."
She told me to go ahead and cry about it, it was part of the healing. As I drove, all I could think about was how I wanted so badly to smash all the mirrors in my house. Hands clenched in fists of rage, wanting to strike out at the memory of him pushing me into those mirrors. "Look at yourself in there. Just look at yourself in the mirror. You're so ugly, how could anyone want you? Just look in there, see it?" And I am mad, not just at him, but at myself for falling into that, for looking in there and seeing what he saw and believing that, for letting that be the image I held in my head as the truth.
And it's all of it that I was crying about, the healing from all of it. During the fall, I was processing this stuff, seeing the sand castles he built in my mind starting to crumble and go back to the sea, the constructs he made to keep me under his control slowly disintegrating under the high tide. I was thinking about San Diego, and an experience that showed me what a liar he was. I was thinking about my parents, and their relationship with me that set me up for later damage. "It's the reason he chose you, honey," the counselor said. "He recognized something in you that was weak and he could prey on."
And prey he did. In some part of my mind, I see that his intention was to make me feel so bad about myself that I would never leave, but that doesn't make sense, in some ways, either, because he placed no value on me. Why would he care if I left, when he didn't care about me when I was there?
That makes me feel like all that time, he wasn't really seeing my true worth, and it makes me angry. It reminds me of the Vanilla Ice Cream guys, and how they saw me the same way - all about what they could get, and nothing about what I could give. In some ways, those Vanilla guys from college had boosted my ego, but they failed to see that there was more to me than this perceived superficial beauty and bedroom skills. None of them ever saw anything I wrote, or engaged me in intelligent conversation, or went riding with me. We never talked about books and ideas and the things that interested me. They never even knew I loved animals. How little they knew me, after all that time of working next to me.
Well, none of them but Ryan. Today I also remembered how I felt when I moved back to Texas, how for some reason coming home made me think about Ryan. In my mind, that was a sad feeling, that coming home emotion, because I thought that no one would ever see me again the way Ryan saw me. Those days were over and done, and I mourned the loss of my beauty, along with all the other pieces of me I left in my past. Over the past months, though, I've started to see that my beauty was simply part of my light that I had been hiding under a bushel all this time. And like Alicia said, it's time to start letting the light back in, and open up the parts of myself that had been closed off from this pain.
When my mom and I were in counseling, we talked about some of these things. She brought up that my sisters had been envious of the way she touted my beauty to them, that they felt insecure because she had been telling them all this time about my "classical features", about my intelligence, and they felt that their worth was unrecognized because of what she was seeing in me. "But don't you think I should have been the one you were telling that, too?" I wanted to ask her, because I never heard a single positive thing from her regarding myself. And it's those broken pieces that upset me today, the fact that those closest around me and who are supposed to love me the best are the ones who destroyed me the most.
This weekend, I was at Jen's house, and there was this man there who knew me during the time I was with him. We talked about beauty, that day, too. I told him how my insecurities, how these sand castles did keep me from leaving, how all I could see about myself was this cracked rear view. I told him how I was scared that man was right about me. Julian looked me up and down, and said, "That's not something you need to be worried about." He told me how hot he thought my pictures on Facebook were, and that made me laugh, the last laugh in fact, because this man I was married to said roughly the same thing. "Funny," he had written, "how that now that we are not together anymore, you look a whole lot better to me."
That makes me want to take some rocks for target practice against the mirrors. It's like we were at the circus, and he took me to the fun house and convinced me those distortion mirrors were my true reflection. It makes me want to come up with a great comeback against it.
Fuck you, clown.

COME ON GET HAPPY

So, the guys I work with like to talk. Occasionally, I hear snatches of rumors regarding myself. Today's rumor made me laugh, as if I wasn't already. My "assistant" told me one of the guys told him I had gone crazy. Crazy, he says, because every time they see me, I am laughing.

And this seems like a departure from the me of the past, the one who they used to occasionally find crying in the back hallway, or with the long face of a sad life. They aren't sure they know this "me", but they like it. "You always look good," says one of them, "but when you smile, you spark. You look much better with a smile on your face."

And I know the reason why I am so happy, and I know I should just let it be, but you know I have to examine it closer. I really search myself to see if I am just acting happy as a way to cover some deeper emotional issues. Really, should I be this happy right now, with what I am "going through", or walking into? I want to make sure this is a real emotion, and not a "masking" emotion. Why do I feel so good? Why am I not hurting more as I walk away from this bad marriage?

The fact is, I was hurting. I hurt for a long time, but the acute pain of letting go already happened for me the past six months or so. I knew it, too, when I was going through it. I could recognize the different stages of grief as they rolled over me, and named them, one by one. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. I think I finally reached that fifth stage, and that is why I can just let it slide right off my shoulders at this point.

I know some of my friends don't understand why I like Dr Phil, but you know, sometimes he says some incredibly wise things. The one thing he said once on his show that I really paid attention to was this: "The time to get divorced is not when you are hurting, and not when you are mad. The time to get divorced is when you feel nothing. That's when you are ready."

I know I held on to this decision for far too long, but the fact is, I really didn't feel nothing until just lately, the past couple of months. I still felt love, I still felt pain, I still felt rejection, anger, sadness and all those miserable emotions that I carried for so long. I still felt the burden and anxiety of trying to hang on to a sinking ship. I know that during the summer I was just trying to stay afloat, so I wouldn't drown. Then, it was time to act, but I couldn't. I was still in the thick of the process, and I still cared about it.

I know there was a point when my Anger began to cease, that I started to head into Bargaining, and I didn't want to. I saw what was happening - I was trying to re-negotiate the terms of affection to be able to stay in it, even though it was so not right for me. During this time, some of my friends became concerned for me, because they have been ready for me to get out for too long. One of them gave me a number of a hotline I could call, to discuss these emotions with someone trained to deal with them.

When I called the hotline, I talked to this woman for about an hour about these complicated emotions. I told her I was ready to start the healing process, and I was wondering how I was going to be able to heal emotionally from the scars I was holding on to. I told her how I kept running to him to be the salve, even though the injuries were his own doing, and it made no sense. "You can't start healing until you get out of it," she told me. "Meanwhile, let's see what we can do to help you feel better about YOU." She gave me some suggestions, and we laughed about them at the time, but you know, it worked. I had to reclaim some parts of myself that I lost to this. And maybe I am still working on that part, but you know, I am closer to "fine" than I have been in a long, long time.

There are no tears about letting go at this point. There is no hurt in my heart, no anxiety about the future. Sometimes, though, there are still tears, not shed of anger or frustration, but of realizations, and expectation of future joy.

Last night, I shed some, unexpectedly. Something magical happened, and I don't know if anyone will really get this, except maybe Jen. I was about to go to bed when it happened. I started chatting on Facebook with an old friend, a former roommate. This roommate and I had gone through some real shit together, and I would say at one point in my life that she was my "frien-emy" (and yes I know you read this, but you have to admit it is true).

She told me to call her, something I would never have done at that hour, but there we were, on the phone, and she cut right to the heart of it. She told me things I never knew, like the true reason she didn't come to my wedding. She told me things we never discussed, like the good she saw in me. She told me how much it bothered her to see me unhappy for so long, and what her perception of my marriage had been, the things she couldn't tell me until I was ready to find my way out. Her words touched me more than my three best girlfriends words ever did, because they were so rare. She and I never really shared those kind of sentiments with each other, but here she was, telling me the value she found in me, and the value he should have seen in me, and what she hopes for me to find out there. I loved her across those phone lines, and I smiled through our conversation, but when I hung up, the tears came hard. How could I have been so blind to have not seen what she saw, in all those years?

But I'm gonna try. My history is my past now, and there's a new future waiting out there. I'm ready for it, and I am not going to look back anymore. So here's to moving on, and here's to letting go, but most of all, here's to being happy.

Come on, get happy....

TAKE MY HAND

A palmist who truly knows how to do a reading will look first at the back of the hands. They will attempt to a get a sense of the person's life by rubbing their palms while inspecting the back of the hands, the nails, the fingers, for signs of who this person really is.

If one did this to my hands, if I sought a palmist who knew their stuff, there would be a pause, and a question, when they got to my thumb.

The thumb, in palm reading, indicates anger. Fierce and terrible anger, if enlarged or disfigured, or other smaller subtler forms of aggression and assertion. Courage and fire, courage and fire.

Across my left thumb, there lies a raised and ugly scar. One almost doesn't want to touch it, and yet the finger falls towards it in the natural slope of the lower knuckle. It lies across the first, bottom half of my finger. What's this from?, one would question.

An image in my mind of the day it happened. I was in the kitchen in our cold and lonesome Northern California ranchhouse. I was looking out the window at the pastures, and thinking hard about my anger. My little baby son was in the playpen in the dining area, and I could hear him playing as I scrubbed and soaked. My hands were pressing hard, too hard, on the fragile glass cups as I raged silently about the fact that my husband was gone. Gone on yet another errand, which was supposed to take a half hour, and now here gone a half day with no phone call, no checking in, no thinking about how I must be wondering what happened to him.

This was before cell phones were common in this rural town where he lived, but he had just gone to pick up a female cousin to bring over to play with me for the weekend. She, too, had a kid, but she, too, liked to get into trouble, like my husband. This naughtiness that ran in the blood, tempting all. The girls loved their cigarettes and booze, and the men favored more reckless pursuits.

And I wondered, fiercely, where he was, and what kind of trouble he might be getting into, and I pressed so hard on the cup that it broke, and yet still I didn't realize it, with my eyes outward on the cold pasture ground in front of me. I just kept washing the broken cup, until I cried out and looked down into the sink and saw blood instead of water in the sink below.

And now no transportation, and no idea where my husband was with our truck. The little one cried and I was trying to comfort him with a towel wrapped around my bloody thumb as I fretted about what to do. I called my husband's uncle, a "first responder" for the local emergency response team. He had an ambulance on stand by as he came out to the house to inspect my wound.

At this time, there was no health insurance. We were barely scraping by in this tiny little town, just inside the county, and the poverty line. There was no extra money for hospital trips and even medicine.

He looked at my hand. "You could just bandage it and let it heal naturally," he said. "Of course, it's gonna leave a scar."

Or, he explained to me, I could ride in the ambulance to the nearest doctor and have them sew it up.

"That'll probably cost you around a thousand dollars, when it is all said and done."

Well, the logical choice in this situation, with no money and no way to get ahead, was to agree to let it heal on its own. And it did scar, a hard and nasty scar, like the one on my heart caused by frequent disappointment in the man I chose to marry.

That one I sought to heal, through counseling and compassion, through exercise and right intent, through eating and reading and all those Lifetime movies of retreat and escape. That one is the scar that never healed properly and so is glaringly visible to those who want to look inside, and so I keep it wrapped up.

Like a present you forgot to give and so keep stashed in a drawer, in a closet, waiting, someday, for the right moment to come again.

BRIEFS OF THE WEEK

I've wanted to write four different in depth stories this week, but I haven't had the time to get them out. Most of the time when I write in here, I am trying to make the story come alive for my readers with vivid detail. Today, I am going to try something different, and try to make each of the stories as brief as possible.

MONDAY

"GEOCACHING? I'M NOT A FAN"

That was going to be my response every time the word "geocaching"was mentioned at the event that evening. I had a bad attitude because I had some bad luck on my geocaching spree on the way from work to the restaurant where we had our event. First, I kinda wandered into a gated complex and was chased off by management. At the next cache, I realized, too late, that I was standing in a bed of fireants while signing the log. I got bitten several times and my shoes and socks became wet and dirty in my frantic attempts to get rid of the pesky things. After the next one, which added to the wet/dirty factor, I couldn't stand wearing them anymore. I changed into these white tennis shoes that are in the truck of my car that everyone claims don't belong to them, and which happened to be about two sizes too big. These "clown shoes" became a problem at the next stop, when I had to walk along a slanted concrete embankment, and I am really lucky I didn't lose my balance. I had to clunk around in the clown shoes all evening because it was preferrable to wearing my other shoes. All this just a day after a caching expedition into the woods where I had come very close to stepping on a large snake and running into the web of a black widow. What other hobby brings you so close to danger on a regular basis?

I never got to bring up my punchline, though, because throughout the entire two hours I was in the restaurant with my friends, no one ever specifically mentioned the word "geocaching", even though that was our common link!

TUESDAY

ALL WE ARE CALLED TO DO

I had heard a rumor that there was a rabid German Sheperd wandering the neighborhood. I doubted the loose dog had rabies, since my experience working in animal health has demonstrated to me that rabies is actually quite rare. However, when I was sitting outside with my show dog and my toddler and the dog came running full tilt towards us, I did have a moment of concern. Scout's offensive body language scared the dog off, though, so I was fairly certain it was neither sick or aggressive. The neighbors confirmed that this was the dog in question, and also told me that the policeman had ran it over with his car, and that the dog had a broken leg. I also noticed that it had significant hair loss and scabs all over its body, an obvious sign of mange. The dog had ran to hide under a nearby truck, and my conscience began working on me.

What kind of dog lover, what kind of veterinary technician, what kind of mother and neighbor would I be if I didn't at least perform a health assessment and find some way to deal with this dog?

From the appearance of the hair loss, I would guess that a skin scrape would show demodectic mange, as opposed to sarcoptic mange, which is the contagious kind. All the same, it would be in our best interest to keep this animal from having close contact with people or other animals. The risks of it getting further injured or dying out in the streets I would rate as fairly high, and if it truly had a broken leg, then I felt it would suffer needlessly without intervention. What was I going to do with the dog though?

In my past, I have learned some hard lessons about bringing home animals that I cannot afford to take proper care of, and swore to myself not to do that again. Unless I have the resources to be able to give the animal all of what it deserves, I can't take it in. However, leaving this one on the streets was a decision I could not live with.

So I put away my dog and my child, and coaxed the dog out from under the truck. My heart broke for it when I saw that it was only a puppy, and its mange was in a very painful stage for it. It was fully weight-bearing, though, and otherwise showed no symptoms of ill health.

I managed to sweet talk it into a kennel, and gave it a good meal. In the morning, I took it to the pound on my way to work. I wrestled with this decision all week. I couldn't keep the dog because of the mange and the risks to my dogs and my children. The particular pound I had to take it to, in the interest of time and availability, was not my first choice.

As it turned out, the kennels that the website stated would be out front at seven in the morning weren't even there, and I had to be resourceful in finding a way to secure the animal there. I ended up opening one of the side compartments to the animal control van and leaving it in a kennel in there, visible to the employees when they would pull up in the morning. It pressed its black nose against the barrier and cried for me when I left it, and I could hear its cries all morning in my mind.

I finally arrived at the conclusion that sometimes we are not called to carry out the full responsibility of rescue. Sometimes we are only called to do a part. I thought of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, for some reason, and how each person along the way did not assume the full responsibility of sheltering those who were making it to freedom, but did what they could along the way. I also thought about the underground railroad we still have in this country, people who take in briefly women and children fleeing from abusive relationships and simply get them to the next step.

With each stage, the people are placing themselves in danger to protect and care for these people, just as keeping that dog would have placed my children, dogs, house, and furniture at risk. Treating the mange would require weekly dips, which I am sure would tax both my wallet and my husband's patience. I took care of the puppy in the only way I could, which may be all I was called to do.

and okay so maybe being brief is difficult for me....

FRIDAY

IT STARTED OUT WITH A KISS

It was the ten year anniversary of our first date, and my husband and I had been planning to go out to celebrate. We were text-flirting during the day, but by the time I got home, he was not in a good mood. By the time we left to drop off the kids, I didn't even want to be around him. At one point I asked him to take us back to the house, and I wish he had, honestly. I think our date will go down as the worst date I have ever been on.

As we sat down to fajitas and margaritas, we began reminscing about our first date, which led to talk about subsequent dates, including one where he almost ended up in a fist fight with a friend I had made over the summer, whom I never saw again after, and also who angrily told me that "your new boyfriend is one cocky m-f-er". My husband thinks I am being sympathetic to my friend's side, even after all this time, and tension starts rising. The conversation slowly disintegrates from this affectionate reminiscing to a complete dissolution, and finally I have had enough of him and walk out of the restaurant, leaving him alone to finish off his drink and pay.

We don't talk on the way to the movie theater until we park, and then only to finish an argument we had started, then stand like strangers near each other in the line to get our tickets for the Dark Knight.

He goes to the bathroom and then apparently wanders into the wrong theater, while I choose a seat and get comfortable. When he comes in, finally, he insists we move to a place he wants to sit. I go, but I am not comfortable there. There is no air flow and sweat is forming on my face, and I can't adjust my legs. I ask him if we can move back to where I was, but he won't go. Finally, I realize I will spend the whole time thinking about how uncomfortable I will be if I stay there, and he still refused to move, so I just went down anyway. We watched the movie from our seperate locations, and filed out of the theater like strangers.

He drives home doing over a hundred miles an hour, ignoring my protests as he pretends to be Batman. We make it home and lie in bed, and he fake-snores as I try to plead reason with him. It's because I was angry at him, he says, that he refuses to reconcile. We turn away from each other, with the familiar distance between us, the distance I have begun to refer to as the "bed-world between us", a space which is only probably three feet but seems like forever.

It started out with a kiss....how did it end up like this?

SATURDAY

LIKE A NAZI ON A POWER TRIP

I hosted my first geocaching event on Saturday, and, well, it didn't go as well as planned. In fact, I think it might gain the reputation of the worst event this year.

For those non-geocachers out there, an event is simply a get-together which counts as a find. The Houston Geocaching Society members had decided we needed more excuses to get together and we decided to start celebrating the birthdays of each month with an event. I offered to host August when another cacher couldn't, and decided to have mine at Mel's Country Cafe, in Tomball.

Mel's is home to the Mega-Mel, a gigantic burger that earns you a spot on their Wall of Fame if you can finish in two hours. I love Mel's and wanted to introduce all my friends to it.

I had called a month beforehand to talk to a manager about hosting a party there, and although he told me he couldn't reserve the whole area, he could accomodate a large crowd during the hours we determined. Three days before the event, only four cachers had RSVPed, so I didn't bother with the followup phone call to the manager with a final head count. I thought we were just going to be twiddling our thumbs and having small conversations.

The morning of, suddenly I had several people left "Will Attend" notes, and called the restaurant to let them know to expect about 15 of us. The manager said he would put together a table big enough for all of us during that time, not a problem.

I arrived fifteen minutes ahead of time, only to walk into a heated debate that three cachers, who had arrived early, where having with the management. They had tried to hold a table for nine and were forced to move, and told by the female manager they could not leave their seats at their table for four. This same manager, whom the cachers began referring to as "Frau Hitler", immediately started antagonizing the other guests who had walked in with me.

She told me that she had called me several times to tell me she could not hold a table for fifteen unless we were all there to be seated at the same time, but I kept hanging up on her. I had never left my number with anyone so I have no idea who she was calling. I showed them my cell phone history to demonstrate it was not, in fact, even my number they were calling.

She insisted that people could only be seated at a table with the number of seats that matching the number of people arriving together, and that once we were seated, we were not to leave our seats. I asked her then, could she please, seat the people in my party near the tables we were already occupying, if possible. She really did her darnest not to make that happen, even when it violated her own matching seat policy. For instance, two people arrived, not with our party, and even though she had three open two-seater tables, she seated them at the four seater table next to us.

In the end, what ended up happening was this: 1) a nasty note was left by the first group, who refused to let me see what they wrote 2) the male manager stopped me to apologize for the female manager 3) about 25 people showed up for the event during the three hours we had arranged 4) most of them stated in their "Attended" log that they had a good time 4) one cacher was completely missed by me because Frau refused to seat him near us and instead he ate a lonely burger in the front part and never talked to any of us and 5) now the 800 members of our Society, plus the local cachers who haven't joined HGCS, can see from the logs and talk what kind of service we would get at Mel's and 6) they'll be lucky if they ever get business again from any of them, even though they probably earned $300 in revenue from those who came.

I can't decide whether to send a letter to the restaurant or not telling them that. When the male manager and I talked, he told me that the first group had set her off, and they had also said we were expecting 80 people (which is not true, but some events have been that large), and he mentioned the phone call issue again. Once I convinced him no one ever called MY number, he admitted a mistake was probably made in which number had gotten written down and that he was very upset with the way Frau had handled our group.

It still doesn't change the fact that it was my first event, and it went terribly wrong.

I guess I will have to host another to redeem myself.

BEST WESTERN ADVENTURES
Series 9

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF IN KLAMATH
When I first met my husband, he told me he was from Northern California. I thought of San Francisco, Sacramento, maybe Redding. I didn't realize he meant "northern" Northern California. He might as well have just said Oregon, since his family homestead is only a half mile from the border.
He told me a story about his ranch. "It's in a valley surrounded by mountains, with a river running through it." He thought it was paradise on earth, and he had me convinced, convinced enough to pack my bags and go with him. Fifty acres of heaven on earth, with a barn and corral for my horse. "You can ride for miles," he said, "and all the grass he can eat!"
I always thought I would make a good pioneer, and longed for wide open spaces. I had dreams of having my own space, of looking out the window and seeing my horse grazing, of being able to ride bareback in the moonlight whenever I wanted. It was a great romantic dream that I bought hook line and sinker.
Trouble was, it was nothing like the picture he painted, and the dream sank away from the reality that living so far away from a town left me lonely and sad. "What are you doing there?" My sister asked me. It was no secret I was unhappy, but I was trying to make the best of it. It was desolate out there in Tulelake, CA.
The nearest city to the ranch in California was Klamath Falls, OR, which lay thirty miles to the northwest. That's where all the jobs, stores, and people were, and so that is where we drove several days a week, sometimes twice a day, when I moved to his hometown with him.
After a year of living on the ranch, I was ready to move closer to work, to his family, to my new friends, and insisted we move into "Klamath".
We moved into the house on Lakeview Avenue in July of 2000, and left Klamath Falls in July of 2002. We moved in around the time our first son started walking, and I left to come back to Texas when he was two and a half year old. My memories of this house are all of my toddler son, who was the same age as my youngest is now. It was with a weird sense of dejavu when we drove past our old house several times while making the rounds in town with little Baby K instead of Baby A. I remember how we used to put the baby gate up on the front of this porch, and how little A would stand, Rascal at his side, against the baby gate, or how they would watch the street from the bottom screen on that door.
This visit, the two days we spent in Klamath, was different from the other visits we have had since leaving. I knew it was going to be different the moment we first came into town, when we met our friends for lunch on the way through the first time.
The difference was something I didn't expect - a complete sense of disconnectiveness. What was I doing here? I thought to myself. I guess enough time had gone by now for my connection to the town to completely dissolve, and for me not to recognize who I was in relation to this place.
I couldn't reconcile the person I was then with the person I am now, only six years later, and I have never had this feeling the other times we have come back. My place in this town had lessened by degrees until now, I wondered how I had known it so.
We spent both nights in town with my husband's aunt, who had been my best friend there in town. She lived around the corner from us and almost every night we would walk around the neighborhood together, pushing babies in strollers, Rascal at my side. Now, she works nights and slept during the day, and with all the catching up with his friends late at night, so was my husband. My oldest was completely satisfied hanging out with his cousins at the house playing video games, so Baby K and I toured the town, using geocaching as a reason to connect with my old town.
When I was leaving Klamath, it was during the time of the Great Sucker Fish Debate. The environmentalists wanted to preserve the habitat of the sucker fish, which lived in the ditchbanks that the farmers used to irrigate their fields. The family farms were going belly up during the drought because the water could not be used for fields and farmland, lest a sucker fish lose its home. This symbolic bucket sits in front of the courthouse as a reminder of that drama, and was dedicated to Klamath Falls from their sister city, Elko, Utah, that dealt with a similiar issue. Elko raised funds for the farmers as part of what was known as "The Bucket Brigade". Oh, and did I mention there is a geocache hidden on it?
When I lived in Klamath, I was really yearning for female companionship. There is not much to do in a small town like this (population 20K) except have home-based business parties, and that is where I met all my friends. There was Dora, whom I met at a Tupperware party; Brandee, whom I met at a CandleLite party; and Kerri, whom I met at a Creative Memories scrapbooking workshop. Kerri's children were the same age as Baby A, and we used to take them to Veterans Park to feed the ducks, near where the top pictures were taken. Those pictures I took while finding a virtual at a birdwatching area; this one to the right is Baby K doing a Baby A and chasing the pigeons at the park. He is the spitting image of his brother at this age.
Kerri moved away not long after I, and we lost touch about a year later. I didn't go looking for Dora or Brandee. So much time had passed by this point that I didn't even try to visit the last two people I might still have a connection with in this town outside family - Claudia the Crazy Cat Lady and ole Doc Goodell, the horse vet I worked with for a spell.
Instead, Baby K and I saw the sights, and I stopped at my perennial favorite west coast fast food joint, Taco Time, only about three times in the two days we were in town. We stopped off at parks and the Klamath County Fairgrounds. The Fairgrounds were the site of the annual Klamath Country Fair, which I took the oldest "baby" to every year. We went to the fairgrounds all the time, for everything, back then: bull riding, dog shows, the horse packing clinic (which draws a crowd every year), rodeos and horsemanship contests, cooking demonstrations. We even saw the world famous Lipizzaner stallions perform there. I never noticed these old tractors, though. Fancy that, there was a geocache in one of them....
So, what was I doing in Klamath? Back then, I was just trying to survive, not trying to build a career like I am now. I was being a first time mom, completely wrapped up in my son. I was leaving pieces of myself at all these places.
In touring the town chasing cache finds (total of eleven finds in our morning ventures), I managed to remember and reclaim some of the pieces of me I left in this town, to find the connection to the places that I thought was lost. Through visiting with family, I revisited the person I used to be, and realized, in many ways, I am still the same, just more myself than I ever was back then.

ROLL WITH THE CHANGES

Walking back to my car, I see the side profile of the man parked in the car next to me and think to myself, oh, he's a hottie. Then he gets out, and I sneak a look over my shoulder, and realize...it's a teenage boy.
Eww! Now I am totally grossed out. Teenage boys have no appeal for me, which is good, really, being as that I am a middle-aged woman (aren't I now? I find that I am referring to myself as such now, and it feels really weird. When do we become middle-aged anyway these days? Since I am approaching the age that Christ was when he was crucified, I feel really I should abandon any notions that I am still a "young woman").
Anyway, I am watching him walk into the store and trying to remember what it is I used to find so attractive about teenage boys when I was their age. Once I hit puberty, I was about as boy-crazy as they come. My junior high journal has a new male name doodled in it for every week, and my daily entries are all about boys, so-n-so is so fine, etc. They were all fine, which seems now like such a lame way to say someone is attractive.
Watching this guy here, the first thing I noticed was that his face was still catching up to him. Razor stubble, like he was attempting to shave with no real need, acne, just this oily unevenness and social awkwardness, was my first tip. His body had no real substance to it, just a light mess of musculature and bone. Then there was that ass, and that is what had me shaking my head and wondering what in the world was I thinking, half a lifetime ago.
I remember one night at scout camp (I know, you guys - my friends - here it comes, a camp story - I know you all think it is really funny to make fun of me for being the "one time at scout camp" girl, like the band camp girl on American Pie, but if you just spent one summer, just one, at one of these places, you could understand how three entire summers, plus change, could make such impressions on me), how my tent-mate and I were sitting outside on a muggy night, talking about boys. She asks me what kind of an ass do I think looks best on a guy, what's my favorite ass-type. I think for a little while, and then my boyfriend of a million years saunters by, same ass he's had since high school, since being a teenage boy, and I point and say, "that one". Oh sure, he was six foot tall and maybe a buck thirty soaking wet, but I still liked the way his ass didn't fill his jeans, how it left that little gap at the bottom.
The bottom-gap, dead give away to teeenage boy butt. This guy I am watching at the neighborhood Citgo has the bottom-gap, and I am remembering this conversation, and how she looked at me with surprise. She was older than me, maybe twenty three to my twenty, and maybe she had already gone through the transformation, when we as women stop lusting after boys and start wanting to make it with real men.
I don't know really when it happened with me. It's not like I just woke up one day and said, "Hey, now I like em with a little more meat on their bones". There was just a time I remember thinking teenage boys were fine, and there is now, where I wonder how I ever felt that way. Now they seem scrawny and a little unsure, and I am sure I would never want that anymore. Which is a good thing, since they are illegal anyway. Just know you will never see my face on the news arrested for indecency with a minor.
But I wonder how that happens, and why. I am not sure from a biological perspective why it would makes sense for women to change their taste as they age. Although grown men seem more virile than those boys, from the number of teenage pregnancies out in the world, it is probably not true physiologically. I am curious, though, about the process itself. When and how do we, as women, start preferring bigger dudes?
I have heard it true that people's taste buds change over time, and from observed experience, it is true that our food preferences do change over time to reflect that. That probably has some basis in nature but I am not sure exactly what it is. From an evolutionary standpoint, I think it probably increases our biological fitness to have these taste changes occur. Age differences and sexual preferences, to me, have more to do with cultural standards than actual biological fitness.
From my individual perspective, I know the change was not sudden. At some point, I just noticed that my eye was much more drawn to men who were thicker, stronger, more well developed, and who filled out their jeans to a larger extent. I started preferring intense passion and sexual proficiency, more than the sweet fumblings of inexperienced boys. Even though I can say on one hand that the failure of my long term relationship with my high school sweetheart had much to do with his accident (see post entitled "Washers"), I cannot deny that my preference changes had almost just as much to do with it, and my love for him wasn't enough to transcend my desire for larger, more powerful, more intense men. It couldn't transcend the change in my tastes. Blame it on the changes, the distance, or his issues, I couldn't stop cheating on him and eventually was drawn to an older, larger man who was able to meet my sexual preferences and provide for my emotional needs as well.
However, there were incompatible belief systems, which is why when I moved away from him and met a man who had the same values and life beliefs plus the physical build and intensity I had begun to prefer, I just had to marry him. I am much more capable of monogamy with this type of physicality.
Thoe boy turned to walk through the doors, and I saw that it was his profile that first had attracted me, and someday, when he grew into those jeans and his face caught up with him, he was going to be a very attractive man. Girls will probably be falling all over him.
Then I took my middle aged self back home to my fajita grilling big ole dude and our two littler dudes, wondering about girls and boys, and how we get from there to here.

BEAUTY IS PAIN?

In one week, I will be on a beach in Florida, soaking up some rays and knowledge. I decided it would be a good time to use the rest of my gift certificate for the nail salon (see previous post - "Just What the Doctor Never Ordered). There is a good likelihood I will be getting some beach time with my friend from another work site that I might want to work with some day, so having professional looking nails seemed like a good idea.

This time the place was dead, so I had two women working on me at once, one at my feet and one working on my hands. They of course went for the upsale at once (see Anjela Johnson's Nail Salon jokes). They tried to sell me the deluxe package, which I declined, but then one looked up and suggested an eyebrow wax. "Show off your eyes, make you look pretty", she says. She then says something in Vietnamese to her coworker, which I think was a comment on my appearance, and the one working on my hands quickly looked at me with pity in her eyes, which guided me to think it was not flattering. I was not really concerned with this, and I mentioned to them that getting my eyebrows done "always hurts a little bit".

"Oh honey, but beauty IS pain."

My immediate thought was, So that's what I've been doing wrong these years! Which was a joke to self, really. In my honest reflections, I know that I am not as pretty as I used to be, and in my darker moments, I mourn the loss of my beauty. When I say things like that, people assume I mean that I don't feel good about my appearance, but it is not that at all. I am comfortable with what I consider as my "reasonably attractive" appearance. Like most people, I have good and bad days. I can put on the shine and look nice, and I can look downright ugly.

However, I can tell that I am not as attractive as I once was because of the way people respond to me. We like to tell ourselves we don't judge people on their appearance, but it does factor in to the way people treat you. People don't treat me the way they used to.

In my younger years, I learned how to use the power of my sexuality to get what I wanted from people. It was a trick in the toolbox of manipulation that I wasn't really aware of how to use until college, but then I perfected it. I would go to bars with no money in my pockets, knowing full well I could get drinks by flirting with men. My attractiveness worked on women as well, helping me to impress during interviews and work the networking ladder. It was especially helpful in getting me out of speeding tickets. I talked my way out of thirteen tickets during the years of my physical prime, but nowadays, the cops take one look and they start writing the ticket before I even start talking.

I know that some of it is age and life experience. I see the biggest differences in my appearance in my face and my weight. I can see it in my face most clearly. When I look at pictures of myself from five to ten years ago, I see how much smoother the skin on my face was. There is an absence of lines and blemishes that seem to appear around the time I had my first child and increase exponentially through the years despite my skin care regime. I am carrying fifty, sixty pounds more than I was back then, which I can blame on having two kids, my metabolism slowing down, the lack of a proper exercise schedule, poor diet, and/or my overriding desires for cheeseburgers. Stress and hormones haven't treated me well.

Even so, though, I don't feel bad about the way I look, I just notice things are different for me. I think there are nice features about myself that still get noticed. When I met Indy's girlffriend for the first time, she slid into the seat next to me and said sweetly, "You're really pretty." I smiled at her and replied, "Thanks, so are you!" I had put on the makeup and the nice dress that night, but most days I don't bother, because I am not that concerned with my physical appearance. I would rather someone find me I was smart or interesting than attractive.

Perhaps, though, these girls in the nail salon are right. I coasted along in my prime years off of what God gave me. I never really had to work at being attractive, and I haven't really ever endured pain for the sake of it. The closest I have come to feeling a true understanding that "beauty IS pain" might be some brutally intense physical workouts. I have an obsessive mind and sometimes it focuses on exercise, and during those times, I lost thirty to forty pounds pounding the streets, treadmills, and stairmasters of various gyms around town for a year or so before losing interest and moving on to the next obssessive behavior (which very possibly could be cheeseburgers again, leading me into some vicious get fit-get fat-and-back-again cycle).

I haven't sacrificed for beauty, and in some way in the back of my mind, I think maybe we shouldn't have to. I mean, what is the function of beauty anyway, as I am fond of asking? At the heart of this is a philosophical debate that I could elaborate on but will choose not to in the interest of brevity (brevity, she says? What does she know about brevity, laughs my inner jokester). In my opinion, the function of beauty is to find a mate. Does it really matter if anyone else finds you attractive other than your mate? Does beauty simply rely on external factors, or is it a combination of a number of features? Does beauty exist in a vacuum?

In thinking about beauty in the terms of relationship with one's mate, let me examine two statements made by my husband regarding beauty. One day we were looking through a tabloid magazine, and there was a page with several fresh-faced Hollywood women. He went through and pointed out which ones he found to be more attractive, who were not the more conventional choices. "You wanna know why I picked these ones?" he said, "It's because these women are smiling. These ones over here look unhappy. To me, what makes a woman beautiful is when they are happy inside, and you can see it on their face. This is a woman you want to be around."

I thought of another time he made a statement about beauty. Those who know our recent history have heard the story about our Great Flood Story, when we had to be rescued by boat when a river flowed into our campsite in the middle of the night. We had only made it to safety by pushing each other through the shoulder-deep water to our vehicle and climbing on top. As the waters raged around us, I held my ten month old baby to my chest, hair dank with river water in the dark of the night, and prayed that God would help us get out safely. My husband said later, "You never looked as beautiful to me as you did at that moment."

Clearly my husband has an unconventional idea of beauty, or perhaps he, as others do, understands that beauty is "more than skin deep", that "beauty is as beauty does", and half a number of the other cliched statements we make but yet have trouble living by. Over the recent years, I have come to see that my husband's attraction for me has less to do with what I look like, and everything to do with how I act. A smile and kind words goes further with him than fresh makeup and a tight sweater.

I went ahead, though, and agreed to a little bit of pain for my beauty today, telling them that since it was my wedding anniversary, I did want to look nice, and so perhaps an eyebrow wax might be beneficial. It does seem rather odd to me, though, that today's standards of beauty involve the removal of hair from places God allowed it to grow. I think if God intended for us to perceive beauty as freshly waxed, shaved, and plucked body parts, then wouldn't He just stop it from growing? Of course I am being facetious, but at the same time don't understand a society that places value on false appearances - fake tans, nails, breasts, hair. Why can't we be happy with the way God made us, individual yet all beautiful in our own natural way?
I could write an entire essay on what I think is wrong with cultural standards of beauty and how it affects women and their self esteem. But not tonight. Tonight I am going to shave my legs. I am going to style my hair, put on my makeup and jewelry, and prepare to go on a romantic date with my husband to celebrate our ninth wedding anniversary. I'm going to put on my cutest outfit and bring out my most beautiful self. Before I walk away from the vanity, though, I going to put on the finishing touch, the one last special touch - a genuine smile. It might be the sexiest thing I'm wearing tonight.

Sylvia, The Movie

Last night I watched this movie on the Ovation channel, where Gwyneth Paltrow plays the famous poetess Sylvia Plath in the story of her life. I kept thinking I was going to turn it off because it was past my bedtime, but between the story of her life and the book I was reading on the commercial breaks, I was completely sucked in.

At first what was intriguing me about the movie was her courtship with fellow poet Ted Hughes, the story of how they fell in love. It was making me think about a blog I read regularly, and a piece this week on whether or not women should settle. In my comment response to the entry, a point I was trying to make is that sometimes it doesn't seem like settling initially, but over time in a relationship people evolve, and a woman might find herself trying to make a decision whether to accept or not certain things that maybe were not present early on but became present during the years.

I had been discussing that idea further over lunch today with a female co-worker. I asked her if when she was walking down the aisle, did she have full belief that she had found Mr Right? Conversely, at this point, I am guessing about twenty years into the marriage, does she still think she has found Mr Right? I am curious about other married women's perspective on this. From my own experience, I know that when I walked down the aisle, I felt like the luckiest woman to be marrying that man. I had never loved someone so completely. Yet at this point in my life, although I still love my husband, I know and have known for years that he is not the best romantic partner I could have chosen.

In that respect, I really related to Sylvia's story. In the early phase of her relationship with Ted Hughes, it was great and golden. The movie shows them cavorting on the beach in the sunshine, taking boat rides, sharing a passion for poetry, supporting each other. Then she has a baby. She struggles with finding time to pursue her dreams in the face of motherhood and household responsibilities. She makes sacrifices for her husband's career. They begin growing apart, there is another child, and then there is an affair, and she kicks him out. I'm not saying I share exactly the same situation she did, but I do understand the disappointment of her relationship.

Gwyneth does an incredible job in this movie portraying the subleties of mental instability on Plath's part. My opinion is that Plath probably suffered from depression or bipolar disorder. She certainly felt things emotionally at a deeper level than most people, which I believe was responsible for her ability as a poet. This undercurrent that drove her literary success probably drove her to make the choice she makes to end her life. I know I am giving a lot of movie spoilers; however, if you know or read at all about Plath's life, you can't avoid learning of her death as well, and that is the part that really impacted me about this movie.

I was really bothered by the fact that her husband had gone to live with his mistress and she was left responsible for the two little children, despite the fact that he was quite aware she was not emotionally stable. I also got upset when I saw her making buttered bread and leaving that and little cups of milk in the room with her sleeping children, then seal the door. I knew what was coming, and I felt for those little kids, who would wake up in the morning with their mother gone from their lives forever. I could not relate. I would never make a decision that would take me away from my children who need me. I've been that depressed, but no matter how unhappy I have been with my life, my children are my anchors that keep me on the shore. I would never leave them, and their happiness, their desires, their needs will always come before mine.

When I finally came to bed, I was sobbing. My heart was breaking for Sylvia, for her children, for the fame she acquired after death, when the her husband published her last manuscript. My husband woke up and I talked with him of all the things I felt about the movie, and finally about my anger in the betrayal I saw in Ted Hughes, how he left her with those little kids knowing how she was, and my anger in general that love never stays golden and true, that most of my married friends struggle with the decision to stay married when love doesn't always match their expectations. Why is there so much sadness in the world? I lamented. Why can't men live up to our dreams? Why why why I asked, as tears streamed down my cheeks.

My husband said I should stop watching those movies because I know they get me worked up, and can't we just go to bed already? I went to sleep dreaming of Sylvia, and poetry, and the dream of the perfect man.

The Million Dollar Question

Last night when we were laying in bed, my husband and I were discussing some of the highlights of our relationship. The point he was making was that we had a "good foundation" based on these experiences we had early on in our relationship, when we lived in Colorado. Although I agree that those months were the best of what we had, I doubt it is enough to base a relationship on. When I think "good foundation", I think of a good friendship compounded by similar moral and philosophical values, not a few months of great passion and mutual enjoyment.

Then he said something like "Every so often, like every five, eight, ten years I'll see something in us that reminds me of that time, of who we used to be, and I hold on to that image as the possibility of what we could be again" and it made me think of an emotion I experienced earlier in the day.

I was walking past a window, and as I turned, I had gotten a glimpse of my reflection turning away, and all of a sudden I was hit with an emotional memory, like a punch in the gut. My single thought was Billy, where are you now? The turning away of my reflection, my walking away, reminded me oddly of my first love, a time in my life I don't think about much anymore. I could almost picture the face of my first lover before me, and longed to stroke his cheek. As I walked away, I was thinking about that long ago relationship, and how it had seemed so vital and powerful. When I remember it now, when I try to picture it, all I can think about is tears in the rain and a powerful sense of betrayal, not just personally but also a betrayal against love.

Why? I asked myself, why is his memory summed up as "betrayal"? There is the obvious answer, that betrayal was the reason the relationship ended, but not specifically on his part. I was betrayed by my best friend at the time, who told him a lie in order to break us up, and he believed it over my defense, and he turned his back on me, which perhaps is the reason I am left with that word to sum us up. Years later, though, on two accounts, he came back into my life all apologies and brimming with the memories of who we were and the possibility of what we could be again. Both times I turned him away. I was unwilling to let go of the committed relationships I was in in order to pursue a future with him, a future that had certain lifestyle implications that I wasn't convinced were in my best interests. So who really betrayed love?

A couple of nights ago, I was briefly obsessed with this show "The Millionaire Matchmaker". I was glued to the TV for about four episodes in a row, and could not tear myself away. It is a good thing the late episode was a repeat of one I had just watched, otherwise I don't think I would have been able to pull myself off the couch and get ready for bed. At one point my husband walked by and said "what are you watching over there with that little girl look in your eyes and goofy grin on your face?" I laughed, for heavens sake why I am watching this in rapture like this, what is it about this show that is making me feel like that?

The answer? It was all about possibilities. It was the first dates where these people were getting to know someone else and wondering, "could I fall in love with this person? This fun we are having now, is this enough to base a relationship on?" It was about the prospect of true love, of the discovery of someone else in the context of your life, or the magic of the first few dates, the first few months of a new relationship with someone you really thought you could build a future with. It was belief in the the power of love to overcome life's obstacles, and it was filling me with hope and promise, and the idea of romance in perpetuating emotional ties. It was reminding me of dates I had, although they were never quite like those, and it was filling me with a desire to go on dates again, to add an element of romance to my relationship to give it some spark.

All this made me think about love, about what seperates the could-have-beens from the now-we-ares, about what aspects of a relationship make it one that goes the distance. My favorite part of the Millionaire Matchmaker show was at the end when they told you the end result: for instance, that the couple shown above, Brendan and Caroline, have gone out on several dates since, but that he returned to his home in New Jersey and she stayed in L.A., and they are trying to figure out how to make that work. I think about the best dates I ever went on, and none of them were with my husband, but I don't wish that I had pursued a future with those men instead. What qualities seperate a relationship from one you glance at in reflection now and then, and the one you stay in and hold on to the best of times to make it through the worst? This is what I have been contemplating this week.

Courtesy

Pass It On

I recently joined this Sunday School class that my friend's mother leads. She impressed upon me that I really to attend regularly because I lower the average age of the class by at least three decades. I find the perspective of these people, who are much older than me, interesting and intriguing.

This week we were discussing a Faithlinks article on "Courtesy". The main idea is that common courtesy is not as common as it used to be. Examples were given that focused on traffic issues (road rage, etc) and cell phone usage, as well as manners and customs. We explored the issue through Biblical references to examples of courtesy in the time of Jesus, what he had to say about it, and how our faith should dictate our actions in terms of common courtesy. As an example of the conclusions we reached, we agreed that when someone makes a bad decision on the road, instead of trying to flip them the bird or give them a dirty look, we should just let it go and realize that God is the one who will do the judging.


As with any group of people in a discussion, we heard a range of ideas, amusing anecdotes, intriguing opinions, and startling statements. I was still thinking about it that afternoon when we were on our way to a Superbowl party, and I wanted to discuss it.

"Today at Sunday School," I started, but my husband interrupted me to ask me if I had the map with me. I told him I didn't need it, I knew where I was going, and that I had begun a story I wanted to tell him. "I know, I know, " he says, "but I just wanted to ask that real quick before we got too far."

"So I've been going to this Sunday School class, you know," I began again. "Today we were talking about courtesy."

"Hold on," he says, "just as a caveat to what I was saying," and begins talking about goals he has just written down on how to improve himself this year. "That's great," I said, "But I was trying to tell you something I learned today. Can we talk about this after I am finished?"

"I thought we were having a conversation!" he says, irritated, then stops real quick to give a woman at a stop sign a dirty look. "Are ya gonna go or not, woman!" he says angrily.

"Yeah," I tried again, "so in Sunday School we were actually talking about road rage, and how to deal with people who are making you mad when you are driving,"
"Uh-huh," he says, as he looks over my shoulder to the person driving next to him in an attempt to pass him.
"Yeah, and we were trying to find a way to approach road rage issues through our faith, like how as a Christian should we deal with people who make us angry when we are on the road."
"Oh, Christians sure like to say things like that," he says, "How about as a person, as a human being on this earth? What makes the Christians think they are special anyway?" he says, as he looks over his left hand shoulder and begins accelerating to try to beat the person next to him to the left hand turn lane.

"Well, it was really interesting to hear these people talk about it, because they are older than me and their perspective is different," I said. "I was sitting between a woman in her nineties and a woman in her sixties," I said, about to make a point about the things they were saying.

"Ah, my ADD is kicking in," my husband says, as he tries to get in front of the person next to us approaching the entrance ramp for the freeway. This is his cue that he doesn't want to listen to me anymore.
So now I am pouting, and he is irritated, and we go back and forth on the long drive to our party, talking, not talking, try to resolve it, forgot it about it, give up, back and forth.
We get to the party and it happens again. I start talking and he cuts me off to ask me random questions.

"So today I was thinking about this book..."

"Hold on. What day does school end this year?"

"I was talking! You've cut me off five times tonight already!"

"By my count, it is seven."

"Can you stop? I really want to have a conversation."

"This is a conversation! You say something, I say something, we're talking!"

"Can you pull your chair over to me and sit down with me? I really want to talk."

"No, because I gotta use the restroom, get another beer. Hold on."

He never comes back. This is an outdoor party with all kinds of entertainment for the children, and I am chasing my toddler all over, making sure he doesn't get hurt or put things in his mouth. After a few hours of this and eating random football snacks, I suddenly don't feel good. I feel dizzy and disoriented. I find myself checking out the ground, thinking, "that looks like a good place to lie down", and I realize if I don't lie down, I am going to fall down.

I find my husband and tell him, "I don't feel good. I have to lay down." The air seems to be moving in and out and people's shapes are contorted, voices too loud.

"You mean to tell me that I am going to miss my game because I have to watch the kids?" he says angrily.

"I can't do it anymore, I have to lay down," ugh, I am about to faint, "remember last week when I canceled my plans with my friend because you didn't feel good?" why are we even having this conversation man what the heck is wrong with me gotta lay down cold clammy forehead pulsating with glistening sweat

"Fine! Go lay down!" he says angrily. I crawl off to lay down in the car, wedging my Bible over the consol so it would stop jutting into my ribs, laying my head on my jacket.A couple minutes later, my husband opens the door."Gotcha a shirt," he says, tossing a t-shirt at me and closing the door again. I stick the t-shirt under my head.

A couple minutes later, the door opens again. It is the host of the party. He says "come on now, come on inside, you don't need to be laying in your car, I have a nice big bed for you to lay in, come get some rest. Are you okay?"The concern in his voice just knocks me away. It feels so merciful, like someone truly cares about me, and tears come to my eyes because it has been so long since I have felt cared for, been shown compassion.

He takes my hand and leads me to the house, where some little girls come up to tell us the baby is crying. My baby is in the bedroom, in the playpen in this strange house, and I think it is most likely because my husband didn't want to watch him. I run to him and pick him up, and for a moment I forget my own concerns as I hold my baby and stroke him, whispering "it's okay, momma's here" in his ear.
Then I tried to lay down in the bed with the baby, who was wiggling and fussing. The wide screen TV on the wall was on, broadcasting Scooby Doo. While we were trying to rest, the commercial posted above came on, brought to you by the Foundation for a Better Life.
Who ever heard of a commercial for courtesy?
Today, of all days.
Is that ironic, or just coincidental?

The Wrong Shoes

Or: The reasons I love geocaching...without my husband

I mentioned in an earlier entry that I wanted to start talking about reasons I love geocaching. I was looking forward to another geocaching adventure last Saturday, but the trip did not go as planned.
It started going downhill during the dressing for the adventure. I originally had on some plain colored tee and workout pants, but I asked my husband if I looked like a Wal-Mart shopper and he said yes (not that there's anything wrong with it). I changed into khaki shorts and a loose scoop necked tee. I had been out earlier and it was actually a pretty warm day, so my new outfit was not only more fashionable, but more weather friendly.
My husband comes out, and he looked like a Wal-Mart shopper for sure. He was wearing black sweat pants and a long sleeved black t-shirt, and was working the flip-flops. I told him he needed to change either the top or the pants and definitely change those shoes.
"We're going geocaching. You'll need your sneakers!"
But he didn't listen to me, didn't want to change his shoes. He wanted to go, insisted we leave in these conditions. I wanted to refuse to go unless he changed, but we were both holding firm, so I decided to cave in and let it go.
I had a list of about eighteen caches I wanted to get, mostly sneaky urban micros which typically don't require much walking. Okay, it was ambitious, but so what? I was prepared to be satisfied with around four or five. Plus, we were talking about getting some food, since we hadn't eaten since brunch. I was in a great mood. I was even wearing my hat, and when I wear my hat, my "fun-lovin'" side comes out. We dropped the kids off at my mom's and prepared to have some fun couple time together.
The first one we get to is in this alley. It has been out for a few weeks and the logs all mention that it is very clever, very smart. I know the cache hiders, and I consider them part of the "geocaching intelligencia". Geocaching appeals to so many different kinds of people and for different reasons. Among those are this intelligencia, smart cachers who place clever hides, or create complex puzzles, or who have themed hides that revolve around some supersmart interest of theirs. These cachers who hid this one pride themselves on hiding great caches in great locations, so I know that even though this is an urban micro, it won't be some simple LPC (light post cache) or LUM (lame urban micro).

I zero out on this door leading to the alley from the inside, maybe the grocery store that used to be there. I am not having good reception, getting close readings all over the area, and I search the obvious places. I looked all around, and then took a deep breath to start over, the next layer of detection. I went back to GZ and started taking a deeper look at everything. I put my hand on the key hole on the door and...it moved slightly. Key holes shouldn't move...and there it is.
And there it is, perhaps, the redemption of this trip: one more reason I love geocaching. Once you get to the area, you use reasons of detection to find out what is below the surface. There are little treasures everwhere, underneath the eye of a casual observer, just like characteristics in people, everyone full of little secret surprises. You just have to keep your eyes open.
So we arrive at the next stop. Here is where we have our first dilemma: this cache is called "Houston Park-N-Grab #3", so naturally I assumed it would be what the term "park n grab" typically means, which is where the cache is so close you can almost drive right up to it, within about 100 ft usually. Evidentically, it was ironically named. When we parked, we were 0.14 mile away and it was showing it to be into this park with great walking trails. I was sooo going, but my husband didn't go to get out. He said he wanted to stay in the car, protesting,
"I've got the wrong shoes on".
So I take off on my own. It was a great day to be enjoying the outdoors. People were everywhere, so much so that searching was hard once I reached within 40 ft. I was checking the area out where I was closest, and suddenly I saw it. It was on the other side of a chain link fence!
I walked further down the exercise path scout for an entrance to that section, and also because if I wasn't going to be able to get that one, I wanted to at least get the other one I hadn't gotten in this park. It was called "Greybeard" and the clue was simply the title. I could see what tree this one must refer to around the corner of the walking path. It was an easy find, and I continued along the circular path back to the car, never finding the exit to the other area.
I felt very lonely out here, thinking about my husband in the car drinking and listening to music, and how we could be out here getting some exercise together. I used to enjoy it when we would go run together at the YMCA. Sure, he left me in the dust at some point, but we would find each other at sections of the trail up ahead and run together a ways. That was fun. This was not as much fun. It was such a nice day and we could be enjoying it together.
When I got back to the car, we tried to find access the trail area, but it became clear we would have to approach it from a different direction. As we drove, I saw, on the opposite side, the park that must be where final was to the puzzle cache that I solved that morning. I told my husband to turn around. This is how it went,
"Now turn in here."
He keeps driving straight. "Turn in where?"
"Here!" I point in the parking lot.
"Where?"
"Here! Now! Turn!"
"Why are you yelling at me?"
Oops. We missed it. So I go on to the next one. This one is in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

This reminds me of a joke. Recently, (this part is true), two hikers that were lost in a whiteout while climbing Mt Hood were found because they stumbled upon a geocache and were able to use that to give their location on the mountain. There was a thread about this in our Houston Geocaching Society forum, making a case that we should make sure the coordinates are written inside the cache. My friend Gary (aka Texas DreamWeaver) says this:
Do you think that we should all return to the practice of including the coordinates with the cache? I can just visualize some Houston mountain climbers, lost and suffering from hypothermia, opening up a 35mm film canister which didn't have the coords listed inside. With out longitude and latitude, how would they know which Walmart parking lot they were in? To think, by simply following the guidelines, a tragedy could be averted.


When I read that, I had just taken a bite of my lunch, and I started laughing so hard I almost choked. This hide we were at, however, is put out by our local urban micro genius, an older man who has unique and clever hides and is meticulous about his coord accuracy. And I have tried to find it twice before to no avail and really needed some help on it.

BUT...we had this little issue over the parking. ("Park here" "Where?" redoux). And we ended up getting into a screaming match. And then neither of us wanted to go caching anymore, or hang out together. We both just wanted to go home. As we drove, one of us would start talking, and it would result in more fighting. I was desperate to try to redeem the afternoon, make it not all bad, find some middle ground. We already agreed the geocaching was out, it was causing us to fight, the mood was broken.

I suggested he take me out for some nachos. Mexican food would be the only thing better than geocaching, and maybe I could be all right with the afternoon after all if I just had some chili con queso and chips.
"Well, maybe," My husband says, "maybe we can put it all behind us, start over again, and just go out to eat. There is just one condition,"
"What's that?"

"We have to go home first. I'm wearing the wrong shoes."

OH GOD Not Again

Geez.
Just the other night, out with my friends, I was talking about how I had been able to make my sin go away just by naming it (see post entitled "Oh God")

Well, guess what? It's ba-ack.
And it's badder than ever.

Of course I am analyzing it. This little crush has to be more than just pure physical attraction. I know it's more. Why is it happening, I want to know. I am trying to find some cosmic significance to it. I am not sure if it is some kind of sign, or if it has some kind of ramifications for my marriage. For instance, what if this is God's way of opening a door? I pray a lot about God's will regarding my marriage, wanting him to make it very clear to me what I am supposed to do about it (e.i. forgive my husband for being...less than perfect...or leave him) and I am still not sure. It would pretty much take a beating over my head to convince me what I was seeing was in fact a sign and not something I imagined into being a sign. I am so confused.

Last time I wrote about my crush, I was writing about the tenderness in his smile and the compassion he shows for his animals, and how that turned me on. This time, it is still those things, but it is more. It is the way he slows down when I address him, and walks shoulder in shoulder with me, turning his head to look me in the eye. It makes me feel like we are partners in caring, like what I am saying is valuable and important, like we are working together on it. It is the way he works close to me when we are in the same room, standing almost more than comfortably close while talking to me while we work on a joint project. We are together. We are working in unison. We are of one mind. We are partners. This is what his body language communicates to me. That is very appealing to me. I am at that age, or maybe I have changed in such a way, that allows me to see that is truly what I am looking for.

He stops what he is doing and asks me questions, tells me his ambitions, and I share mine. We both have some of the same background and desires in our work life, both ambitious and compassionate people. I imagine him and I running off together to start our own animal sanctuary, one that focuses on rehabilitation and humane education. We would fill water buckets and clean cages together, while discussing our behavior management plan and our global presence. It is a nice fantasy, but then I think about his two little girls and my two little boys, and all the people we would hurt on the way out and that pretty much kills the fantasy.

I wonder why I met this man now, this man who seems to share so much of what makes me fundamentally who I am. I wonder if there is a reason that he stops his work and stands there, watching me cross the parking lot and smiling. I wonder why that makes my heart beat faster and I smile back before turning my head.

It is kind of funny to me that in the book I just got finished reading, Night Swimming, the main character goes through something kinda like I went through recently when I put this man out of my head for a while. When I dropped the fantasy of being with him, I was able to just be myself and get to know him. I was more relaxed because I wasn't obsessing, and we reached a place in conversation I had never been with him, one that allowed us to become more friendly. I had forgotten about him (although yeah, I was still watching that ass), but I had put it aside and was working on myself, my projects. By doing so, though, it made our friendship grow.

I wonder what the purpose is of this crush that seems to have nowhere to go, of the meaning of the feelings bubbling up inside me, yearning to escape. It is some kind of fire, maybe my own burning bush.

Get your mind out of the gutter! I didn't mean it like that! Out of the burning bush, there came a message. What is the message this situation is trying to tell me?

I wish I knew.