Here They Come Again

Every year on the day before Thanksgiving I begin to feel as though I'm coming undone. And every year I wonder why. Most years it's taken until the second week in January for me to put it together, that it's the holidays and that it's practically hardwired into my person to "BELIEVE" and be let down, but this year I actually woke up and knew right away - shit, here it comes again. While this early realization and awareness may mean I could be getting "better" it doesn't make it feel less real.

I awoke every hour on the hour last night to my new cat sitting on my head, mewing for reassurance, and next to my daughter, who sleeps as though she's a practicing Olympic gymnast, her flying elbow jabbing the insecure kitty in the face. We're all sleeping in my bed these past few days because we still don't have a working furnace, thus we live in two and a half rooms of our house while the freak-to-Seattle-snow swirls about outside. And all I could think was, "jeez, no wonder people drink."

And then, "maybe if I just smoked pot..." After that it was, "If I could just dig my car out and make it to the bus station, I'd head for Tennessee or Kentucky, change my name to Pearl and become a waitress at a truck stop." And finally, knowing that I could never get away with any of it, I come to the big one, "My gravestone will read simply, "'She Endured.'"

My question to myself today is, why can't I just let myself be? Why can't I just clean the house and read a book and knit a scarf like the rest of my neighborhood? I just feel like I've got so much work to do before I can even begin to catch up on being normal - so I don't know where to start to get it together at all.

So this is what I've come up with for this morning - ten things to be grateful for:

Sasha, sobriety, warmth, Diva, coffee, income, friends...come on Nanc...health, my computer...books. Antidepressants, when they work.

That's eleven. I'm going back to bed.

Polly Who?

My Last Date - by Nancy Jordet

I met this guy a while ago, at a party of a friend of mine. We connected in a very big way, talked for a couple of hours straight that night, went out a few times, had deep talks and light conversations, had fun. By last night I was anxiously giddy about what was going to happen next, but willing to take it however it presented itself.

Right.

He comes to pick me up at a meeting, where I am secretarying in front of a group of about 80. He walks in and brushes the back of my neck lightly with his fingertips, a slight blush to his face, sits in the back and smiles my way often through the next hour. It's sweet, and publicly so. So much so that a friend of mine sitting close to me leans over and says, "Nancy, I don't know who the guy in the back is, but he looks like he's really into you." Awwwwww....

After the meeting he comes up and hugs me, strong and close, whispering lightly in my ear how happy he is to see me again - let's get out of here.

We leave, sit in the car catching up on what's happened in our lives since last we spoke, taking our time, deciding to see a late movie at the Crest. The American with George Clooney. Of course the movie opens post-coitally, with a nude woman kissing Geo's ear. My guy, let's call him something...how about Bark? Okay, Bark leans his fabulously large and very male shoulder in toward mine and we rest side-by-side against each other through the movie, both laughing at the same inappropriate times, making fun in all the right spots of this supposedly Euro-noir film. A good one to be sure, but really contrived in parts. During the sex scenes, Bark's leg approaches mine and, looking down, I swear you can actually see the heat waves coming off us as off asphalt in the desert sun...

Okay, not really. Nonetheless.

It's....hot. We stay after the movie, through the credits, after the lights come up, after the theatre's empty, after the last employee comes in and stares us down - just whispering and laughing and having a easy, playful time with each other.

Til it's time to go. Oooooo, I'm thinking. I haven't felt this good with a guy in many, many years. So myself, so real, so female. Wow. I SO deserve this.

We get outside and he checks his phone. He's got a text.

He drops his head and shakes it. It's my roommate, he says. She's not coming home again tonight.

Oh? I say absent-mindedly, half-skipping through the parking lot.

Yeah, I asked her to let me know if she's not coming home from now on because last week we were going to stay home and watch a movie together but she didn't show up and apparently she spent the night with her boyfriend. I was so disappointed.

Oh? I say, paying a bit more attention, slowing down to a walk.

Yeah, he says. We haven't even lived together that long and I want all of her attention. It's crazy. I'm so into her, I've got such a mad crush on her I can barely stand it.

First I say nothing. Then I hear myself say, like in a bit of a squeak, Oh?....and stand still.

Does he catch himself and stop talking? Does he possibly think that perhaps he should be sharing this with another guy friend of his and not with his date? No. He continues on using her name and shares a few other tidbits about her that I don't hear because I feel as though I've been belted in the solar plexus and I am trying as best I can not to lose my so far successfully expressionless face.

We get in the car and for the love of god he won't stop. And what do I do? What codependence has trained me to do - I listen. Then I comment. Poor Bark, I say, it's hard to be lonely, isn't it?

!!??!!

Yes, it is. And this is why he thinks that perhaps the solution for him lies in what she has told him about her own lifestyle - polyamory.

Okay, what? Polly who?

She's polyamorous. She believes the solution to living a life possessed of intimate relationships is in plurality - she has more than one boyfriend and they have more than one girlfriend and they all have more than one boyfriend who have more than one girlfriend....

Polly what? I say. Polymorphous, polycystic, polyurethane? I guess I'm not hip, I have not heard this term yet.

We used to refer to it as free love, yes? Why don't you just drop acid and move into a commune, mofo. But do I say this? No. I still don't know what's just hit me. For I was just a minute ago on the verge of getting what I thought I deserved.

But do I deserve this? No. So after a short schpiel I deliver on the merits of true intimacy, from which I am completely detached as though I am walking through jello and wondering why I am talking at all, I just stop and say - hey, look, I could never do that. I can barely deal with one man at a time - good luck with that. Just don't drink.

We are outside my house at this point and all I want to do is run screaming into the night. But he then hangs his head in apparent angst and says, jeez, he really doesn't know what he wants and something about he doesn't really feel very good about where this is going - when his phone rings.

It's his drunken ex-wife and she's upset.

What planet have I landed on? Has it really only been half an hour since I was so over-the-moon happy?

I've got to go, thanks, it was a good movie, best of luck with your complexities. He leans over to hug me big and it actually looks as though there is possibly a kiss headed my way. Duck!! Done, and I slip out of the embrace and say adios.

Why was I so nice? Why am I always so nice when some guy decides to dis me?

Because my knee-jerk reaction to what I perceive as rejection still lies in wondering what is wrong with me. Unfortunate but true. But the key words are "knee-jerk." Because on reflection, and with a lot of input from loving friends, I can clearly see that it's not something I misread or deserved. It's someone else's mess.

So why am I still so sadly disappointed?

Too Quiet

I'd like to just go to sleep for a week. My reset button feels like it needs that much down time.

A couple of years ago, amidst a flurry of bad life-weather, I became convinced that getting a dog was the answer. Fixated, actually. And I began my search, through private agencies, kennels, online pet sites and finally craigslist. Where I found Gus. He was staring up at me in the picture, this little mutt that looked a bit like a newborn calf, all orange and white with a little pink freckled nose and amber eyes. He was just a couple of weeks old, living right outside of Issaquah on a small "farm." His mom was a breeding greyhound that had had an illicit affair with an unknown neighbor dog and created six pups that didn't really look like any breed you could quite put your finger on. We later guessed some kind of retriever/bully mix.

So we drove out, my friend Dave and I, and met Gus. He was so excited to meet me that he peed all over the place. I knew right away he was mine. Terrified but thrilled, he rode home with me and my friend Dave, laying next to me on the front seat whimpering and shaking. But once he got here, that was it - he had found his people and his home and he settled right in like one of the family.

And that's what we were: a family - me, Sasha and Gus. And we hung out like a family and we ate like a family and we snuggled on the couch and watched TV and read like a family and we sometimes slept in a Gus sandwich. We had group hugs every day. When Gus broke his leg and was in a cast we moved our mattresses onto the floor so he could still sleep with us.

He followed me absolutely everywhere - when I paced, which I do when I write or think, he paced right next to me with his nose stuck in my hand. He did the laundry with me and cooked with me and surfed the web with me. He was always here and almost always looking right at me with them sweet amber eyes.

After Gus turned one and we had a little birthday party at the dog park, he almost immediately began having seizures - the first one, freaky as hell, was to become a regular thing - stiffen, fall down, eyes ablaze and frozen, body clenched and paddling, foam spewing from the mouth, bodily fluids let go, all...until he'd get up, blind and frightened, and pace, walking into walls and furniture, wailing for me to comfort him until it all passed. Which I did.

We went to the vet, who told me it was epilepsy, put him on phenobarbitol and they seemed to stop. Until they didn't again. Then he would have two, three, four in one day. Then more phenobarbitol, now twice a day. Then later up to the highest dose without it becoming toxic. Then adding potassium bromide from the compounding pharmacy. Meds, meds, meds. Three times a day, and if you're a couple hours late, you know it's going to mean another seizure. Or two. Or three. But then you get it down, get into the rhythm and it becomes normal and every day you do it right. But finally, in the end, it doesn't matter anymore if you do it right, the seizures break through it all anyway.

The day before the last day I came home from work and found evidence of at least three grand mal seizures, one big enough to have moved chairs across the floor and leaving a large bruise on Gus's leg. He was frantic, jumping all over me and finally calming enough to conk out. Only to wake up while I was writing that night to have another grand mal seizure next to my chair. And this time he couldn't seem to shake it; he'd walk around and stare at things, his water dish, like he'd forgotten why he was there. We slept with the light on because I was afraid he wasn't done yet.

The next day when I brought him to the vet I was beside myself. Without being able to think about it clearly or articulate it to myself, I knew what had to happen. They said they would keep him there and take blood levels to see if they needed to add a third medication. I went home. They called me and said they couldn't keep Gus there, he was too upset and agitated. When I went to get him, I told them to hold off on the tests, they were very expensive and I knew I had some searching to do on my own. I brought Gus home, where he continued to flop down and sigh and tremor with his head. My baby boy was very sick.

The vet called me back and we talked. Gus's future was not going to be bright. He may look like the beautiful puppy he still was, but he was not going to get better. They could possibly find a combination of medication to hold off most of the seizures, the vet didn't really know, but it would be extremely costly and he would be maxed out, drugged up, most of the time. She said she would be willing to do that, but that she also thought that she wanted to give me permission to think about something else: humane euthanasia. O God.

And so it went. I called Sasha in a haze and we talked about it and she wanted to come home and say goodbye to Gusgus, which she did. Then my lovely friend Michelle came over and said she was coming with me and we went. And they shot him full of valium and it didn't slow down his anxiety and they shot him full again and finally it did and he lay down next to me and put his head on my lap. And then they gave him an overdose of anesthesia. And the vet looked at me with the stethescope to his chest and nodded and I knew it was over. He was so soft and so light and so beautiful and he sailed away.

It's been hard to forgive myself for what seemed like my snap decision that day, but you know, I think that's more about trying to feel some kind of personal control rather than actual guilt or maybe the unrelenting pain that goes with losing your best friend. I tried for almost a year after he got sick to find a happy medium - one where he could still be the goofy pup he was and where I could keep up with taking care of him - but in the end I was told that he was too substantially sick to hope for that. He was not wired well, he was beginning to become brain damaged, it wasn't going to get any better and it would only get worse. I know I spared him having to live through worse, but I also spared myself watching it, and that's where the guilt steps in. But guilt is only a feeling, it's not a fact.

I come from a family that thinks it's stupid to have pets and that if you do, to give and receive affection from them is silly and ridiculous. But I don't. I loved Gussie with all my heart and he knew that. He loved me with all his and I knew that too. Many people never get the chance to have that sacred bond with their pet and I feel bad for them. The love we have for our animals is what makes us even more human than before and to receive it from them? Unconditional love is never something to turn your back on. Never.

And so it's two days later and I'm having trouble eating and I sleep with his collar wrapped around my wrist and the clothes that I was wearing as he drifted out of this world and I think I'm going to lose it regularly. I cry and I walk the streets Gus and I walked together and I'm so, incredibly, profoundly lonely. I'm going to feel better some day soon, I'm sure of it, and I'm going to be able to forgive myself too.

But for right now, it's much, much too quiet here.

Not Even An Astronaut

This morning I sat a stop sign and watched people board a city bus, most of them dressed for work. And I thought, "Wow, I bet they have no idea how big and valuable their day is." I drove on and saw many more, walking toward cars and bus stops, doing "the trudge." I know it well. I used to be employed.

Three and a half years now, I can't find a job. Not as a grocery packer, a baker, a candlestick maker, an astronaut. Nada. I apply and apply and hear nothing most of the time. Every once in awhile I hear something, every once in awhile I get an interview. But nothing has come of it. For three and a half years.

It's said that the only way to really get a job these days is through someone you know. I know a lot of people. They do the best they can for me too. Alas...

Yesterday I asked for a job that I knew was opening up in the company I work for part-time and got a no. They don't have it to give. Gads.

So on the way home from taking Sasha to the hospital this morning I thought, "Well, this could well be it. This could be all I'm going to get, this part-time job and social security and food stamps." Although soon my food stamps will cease too. I guess my next job is to find a way to live within what I already have. Which would mean abandoning my house. Again. Everything else is really quite gone.

It's looking like a tiny future. I'm gonna have to make it work.

I Would Hum For You If I Could

Last Wednesday, my friend and co-worker, Casey, disappeared. She was last seen leaving Barnes & Noble at 10:30pm in her white Outback wagon. Over the week following she was in the newspapers, on the television news, had her own website built to help find her. They showed pictures of her, of her car, of her two little sons. Please come home... We waited. We prayed - and we hoped for the best.

This morning her body was found outside of Lake Tahoe. They say, "no foul play was suspected." Well, I beg to differ.

Suicide or not, it's foul play. No one should ever feel that alone. Ever. And if they do, we're not doing our job as fellow travelers on this planet. There are two little boys without a mother, not to mention a husband without a wife. Seriously, not to mention him, but that's a story that I am not qualified to tell.

We all drop the ball somewhere. It's hard to keep track of all the balls in one's life, truly it is. But for the sake of our fellows, we must try to stay mindful. The world, particularly right now, seems mad enough as it is without remembering to care about our friends and families. Or even making a small, little effort every day; to smile at a stranger on the elevator who looks down, or to tell a co-worker that they're doing a good job, or maybe even tell a barista that you appreciate what they do for you every morning. The will to go on should never be taken for granted, but it is - it probably has to be or we'd all be living a bit too close to doom for comfort.

Too close for comfort: It was three years ago when the man I was just about to leave, my husband and the father of my child, became catastrophically ill and lay in a coma for four months with no skin, no ability to breathe, eat, pee or think on his own. Our daughter, who was almost phobic about illness already, was only 10 and in need of a lot of extra care. We had a new puppy that I couldn't bring myself to let go, as it would further traumatize our child. I showed up at the Burn ICU every single morning, washed and sterilized my hands and arms, put on a robe and some days a mask and went in to sit with him for hours on end, mesmerized and dumbfounded, just listening to the 13 machines he had in him whir and beep and alarm and hiss - only to leave and pick our daughter up from school and go back home to try to provide some semblance of "normal" life for us. Make dinner? Train the puppy? Then I'd wake up the next morning and do it all again. It was a sick time, and I was sick, and every morning I would wake up and stare at the ceiling, listening to the blood pump loudly in my ears and feeling my heavy chest swirl in what felt like impending insanity, beginning to sweat - my anxiety about simply existing through another day at a fever pitch. How on earth was I going to stay alive, much less function, for another day? Much less be a mom, or a friend, or a health advocate, or a collector of the social services I now needed as our income had ceased, or on and on and on. The buzz of insanity almost, ALMOST, outweighed the hum of the will to live. Many times.

Why did I survive and Casey did not? Crap. I don't know!! I just don't know. I would've hummed for her if I knew.

What I do know is that I'm sad, so heartbroken for her, for what must have been her last hours, feeling alone and choiceless, knowing that buzz and that hum, and how each works and works harder, crashing up against each other, only one to win out.

Sweet, beautiful Casey. I'm so, so sorry. We will miss you.

Please. Practice kindness.

Desiderata

-- written by Max Ehrmann in the 1920s --

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Insufficient Funds

I continue to be astounded by how underdeveloped the financial lobe of my brain is. I wonder if it just didn't get enough oxygen during childbirth.

Oh, wait, I was a C-section...

Regardless, one would think that with as many times as I've heard the term "insufficient funds" said to me I would find a way that would work for me to keep track of what I spend. I mean, I'm on welfare, it's not like there's a lot to keep track of. It used to be that I'd $10 myself here and there into insufficient funds. What with inflation it appears that I $50 myself there even faster. But that's what things cost, dammit!

No matter what I've earned, I've always gotten lost down the road of solvency. I've even been a member of Debtor's Anonymous, which was a valuable experience and got me out of credit card and IRS debt and on the way to learning how to be an adult with money. But even that didn't close up the windtunnel in my brain through which tumbleweeds of money blow and never stick to anything. I can write down every penny I spend and it still doesn't mean anything to me. It's like a foreign language - why?

Today I went to the mechanics to pick up my car, the 22 year old Mercedes with 197,000 miles on it. I had to throw in the Mercedes part, right? I thought it was dead, unresuscitatable, right? But no! YAY! He saved it with a distributor cap and a couple of rotors! YAY! It cost under $400 and the average car repair is $750! YAY! And yesterday I had $700 in the bank. YAY! Or was that Saturday...?

There was PCC and PetSmart, then the compounding pharmacy and the fixing of the dishwasher...the gas station...the cable... aaaaaaannnnnnddddd - it's gone!

Seriously, this is nuts! They say food is mommy and money is daddy. And both those substances baffle the hell out of me, as did both of those people.

I guess here I need another Higher Power, right? Does God deal in cash?

Help!!

Cherish Is A Word

Here it is: Yesterday I ran out of the gas at the end of the freeway ramp. What am I, 15? What adult do you know who doesn't go to the gas station when their "empty" light goes on? Well, I don't. I reset my mileage and wait until it reaches 31, because that's the proven mileage I can get on an empty tank. Please.

Today I get up late. There are signs in the kitchen that my thirteen year old, Sasha, has made a balanced breakfast for herself and gone to school. I eat the first thing I see - Wheat Thins, and heat up old coffee. Please.

I walk about the house and wonder who the hell got it so messy. Of course, it's the dog's fault, he's like living with a goat - my world is covered in Gus, be it his hair or the crap he's dragged out of the garbage can, which I haven't bothered to find the top to since it disappeared. Please.

I go into the bathroom and the plants are dead, and have been for several weeks. I take a shower and just how many bottles of empty shampoo did I try before I found one with actual product in it? Three. Please.

I get out and there are no towels - where are they? Downstairs in the laundry pile. All of them? Please.

Where are my clean clothes? Why is there no toilet paper on the roll? Where are my keys? When did my bangs start blocking my sight line? Why don't I have any cash? Why am I wading through grass to get to my car? Do I still only have a cup and a half of gas? Is that going to get me to the grocery store? Why is my bill so high? Why did I run out of absolutely everything at once? Or did I...

I get home and I prepare to sit. I'm going to meditate but I can't because I'm not in the right chair. So I sit in the rocker. Wrong. I sit in the leather chair and it's too close to the computer and I can still hear the hum. I sit on the couch and Gus jumps up and wants to sit on me. I sit in the red chair. Okay.

Here it is today: mucho grande chatter, chatter, chatter, relax my feet, calves, shins, knees, thighs, etc., etc. hit the third eye, really bright. Blinding. Chatter, chatter, less, less, okay now there's my breath finally, steady, steady -

I'm sitting cross-legged and cross-armed, pouting, in my extremely messy bedroom back on Mumford Road and I'm in gradeschool. My mom is already flying on her speed - excuse me, diet pills - and cleaning the bathroom as though there is going to be a performance of major surgery in it forthwith. Singing loudly. She has just chastised me for my messy room, but done it in a passive way, as though it's not really part of her house - and, to me, as though I'm not really part of her family.

I've seen this scene before. But today there's something new. There's my thoughts added. And they are: "I wish she'd just ask me if I needed help. But she won't so I'm not participating. Period."

There's me in my pajamas, heading for bed. I'm in junior high. "Good night, mom." She looks up from her gimlet and waves little wavies at me - "Toodles." And here are my thoughts again, "I wish she'd just say goodnight and maybe even...I love you...? I could sleep forever."

I'm in the airport, about to head back to New York from a visit to see my mom. There's a lot of people about and a lot of hugs and kisses goodbye. My mom looks around, taking it all in and here I say, "Bye mom. Thanks for everything." She looks at me, but this time I see it. She looks like she's five and scared to death. She grabs me like I think she's going to hit me, but instead pulls me in close to her - too close and way, way too tight, almost violent. "I love you, dammit," she says. Then walks away.

And now I'm an adult, 53 actually, and I've run out of gas and eaten crap for breakfast in a messy house where I can't find anything, with no groceries in it and where the lawn hasn't been mown for a couple of weeks. And finally, finally I wonder: why don't I love myself anymore?

I've been waiting. Waiting for things to straighten out. But the problem is, I've been waiting for that "thing" to straighten itself out and make itself known for 53 years. But she's gone and she's not coming back. And she did love me...as best an addict could.

She should have cherished me. But she didn't. She couldn't.

A lot of people love me today. A lot. But I'm still waiting to be cherished.

How much love can a person miss out on? A lot. How much would I love to stop missing out on what's already in front of me? A lot.

It's becoming clear to me that perhaps in all this waiting - this time for a job or for enough money or for some "right" man - I could actually take care of myself and my surroundings. And love myself again. Maybe then I'd stop missing out on what I already have.

Please.

Never Forget

Nine years ago this morning, I was driving to work in the dark with the radio on, thinking that the morning drive shock jocks have gone too far this time with their joking around: planes have flown into the WTCs. Not possible. But - I did feel a panic in my chest and flew the rest of the way to work.

When I got there, I found out it was true. I stood and watched the towers burn on TV, speechless, while those around me ran commentaries of their own - some between each other, others aloud and to themselves. How can this happen?

The minute I knew it was for real, I knew it was no mistake. Having lived in New York City for 25 years and flown in and out of it numerous times, I knew that the airspace above the island of Manhattan was tightly controlled and tuned to a fine art. That this could be no accident.

And then they fell...and were no more. I unknowingly sat down on the floor and prayed like I had never before prayed.

And I knew that any chance that anyone had of getting out was gone. Having previously worked in WTC Two, above the crash site, I wondered how many of my former mates had fatefully had the misfortune of showing up for work early, or even on time, that morning. I was later to find out that it was many. Too many to bear.

At work, we watched with the sound off, thank god, because I was to later go home and stun myself into trauma with the playing and replaying and replaying of the entire catastrophe - like many, I couldn't tear myself away.

Sitting here with my candle burning next to me, I feel the shock and extraordinary sadness of that morning again. I hope that, out of respect for those fallen, they're not replaying it over and over again today.

But most of all, as I get ready to do my daily sit, I pray that the world has not gone mad - what with all the blind belief in the shallowness of FOX soundbites and ignorant religious hatred. Those who downed the Twin Towers represented madness, not Islam, and their insanity should have gone down with them. It only lives on through Qu'ran-burning fanatics and bigoted persons who show they don't really believe in the freedoms we've fought so vehemently for by denying a simple community center within blocks of Ground Zero.

In the soft light of today, remembering 9/11, I have to say that I am so profoundly grateful for the luxury of my sophisticated problems. My gorgeous and talented daughter. My devoted and sometimes pain-in-the-ass dog. And in the simple yet profound idea that I have the ability to hope for a future. Any kind of future.

Another Word For Rebuffal

Today’s assignment: write about one that got away:

His name was Jim. And first he was one of my very best friends.

I met him in a meeting, along with his friend, Freddy, the guy who shook, nonstop for four years straight. Jim was tall and articulate, funny and somewhat attractive. He fancied himself a raconteur. Please. He was from Troy, New York. Nothing eloquent or savvy about hanging your socks on the hot water pipe to dry in a studio apartment in Troy. But in the big city, Jim had a way of attracting the soon-to-be and already famous right from the start.

He called me almost every single morning for my whole first year in recovery and read from the 24-hour-a-day book because I couldn’t read for that long. We went to dinner, often with friends, and then as time went on and I got better, alone. We became best friends and stayed that way for years. While we were dating other people we used to get together and dish about our respective lovers and what was up with them and us and laugh and laugh and feel not so alone in the scary world of impending intimacy. Which neither of us ever actually reached, mainly because our choices made that impossible. We chose people for their looks or their money or where they had a summer house. Jim liked women who knew a lot of words, or women who knew very few words with big tits. I liked men who were "deep" (aka depressed) who wanted to save me. A mixed bag of nuts, yes?

One night we had gone out to eat with friends and later it was just us walking home, late, down 14th Street in the East Village. We had stopped for Jim to get an ice cream cone at some all night ice cream shop (remember, this is New York City) and were strolling down the street, nearing the corner. Jim asked me if I wanted a taste of his ice cream and I said yes and leaned in to lick when, all of a sudden, he pulled the cone away and leaned in and kissed me. It was a big, very big, very wonderful kiss. I was stunned.

There was a garbage truck on the corner, and the guy leaned out to shout, “Man, you sure took her by surprise! Right on!” and honked the truck’s horn. Which made me jump all the higher.

“Wow…” I said.

“It’s been Wow for me for quite a long time, Nancy” said Jim.

And that’s how it started.

And it all made sense, you know, we hung out all the time anyway. The only one surprised I guess was me and everyone we knew seemed to take it in stride. What a change for me, though, how easy this all seemed to be. We still did much together and talked every day, several times a day. But things were a little more tense, as things can be when you’re getting to know someone AND sleeping with them at the same time. But we really had a lot of fun.

Everyone I knew just assumed that this was it, that we would probably just be together from then on, get married. Including me.

On Memorial Day weekend I was trying to decide whether or not to go out to Southampton for the weekend and Jim had said, yeah, go out, I think I’m going to go Upstate and see my son. Okay. Simple enough. I spent the long weekend with friends and this was pre-cell phone era, so we didn’t talk at all that weekend. I got home and left a message on his answering machine Monday evening. Tuesday goes by, Wednesday, Thursday…that afternoon he called and said we should meet for dinner. Cool.

We met on the East Side at a little bistro. We ordered dinner and Jim seemed really giddy and smiley and stuff and I think he’s going to maybe ask me to move in or make some kind of more solid commitment when he started laughing and bursts out, loudly, “Nancy, I think I’m in love!!”

I laugh back and say, “Wow, Jim, me too!”

And he says, “Oh my god, did you meet someone too?”

Wha…? “What are you talking about?”

And he starts talking loud and fast, without stopping, in a way that would make me and anyone else listening think we had never started an affair and that we were still just friends:

“Oh, my god, she’s beautiful, she’s perfect and I’m so in love, I can’t believe it. I met her on the train, I never made it to Rochester, she was going to go on to Martha’s Vineyard alone, but I decided halfway up there that I was going to go with her and we made love on the train and then spent all weekend in each other’s arms and I am just so in love I can hardly sit still!”


What? What the fuck! I stand up at the table and knock over the water glasses. I am furious and beyond hurt and I simply can’t believe the manic state he’s in. He’s completely negated the last six months, hell , the last five years, as though they never happened and treated me like one of the guys!

“Oh, god, Nancy, wait” he comes out of his reverie.

But I'm up and running out of the restaurant and down toward the East River walkway. He catches up and says wait, wait and I finally run out of breath at the railing. He falls to his knees, grabbing my hand and says, “Is it possible to be in love with two people at the same time?”

And I say, “Not when one of them is me!”

And he says, “Wait, please, you have to wait for me. I don’t know what’s going on or what I feel. I feel sick, really I do, but feel so in love with her I’m sick, really I’m sick. Can’t you just wait for me to sort this out, just give me a week, Nancy, just a week. I love you.”

This is so freaking dramatic. But I can’t stand the tight knot in my chest that feels like it’s going to bust up through my throat and so I just walk away. “Don’t follow me. Please.” I just walk all the way home alone.

A week later Jim calls and wants to meet for dinner. I say yes and meet up with him. He tells me her name is Carly Simon. You must be kidding, right? No, it’s really her. And she’s been in town and he’s seen her all week. “And I think I’m going to marry her.”

Did I mention this was a week later?

And he did. He married her less than a month later.

Refractory Adjustments

Does anyone know who the god of jobs would be? I'd like to set up an audience with this diety, please. Ahem AHEM!

Today I had a great interview. It was for a job that, in its description both written and delivered in the interview, could not have been tailored any closer to my person if it was sewn directly onto my body. Confident, perceptive, people-person who can talk - I could stop right there, right? - to and/or train retailers about environmentally positive merchandise and knows how to structure well their own time and environment. With energy.

And it pays more than minimum wage.

Tonight, post-interview and pre-dinner, I am wondering what it would be like to not have to wonder where I'm going to get the money or the ooompf to continue in our sweet yet meager little life, me and the Sash. Life used to be so much "bigger" - me, an upper middle class wife and mom who may have been unhappy, yes, but used to just living however the moment flung her - now a single welfare mother, comparison shopping for toilet paper, calculator in hand for the shampoo aisle, feeling the devil-may-care thrill of buying a quadruple Americano, yes, a fourple, at Diva. No more fighting and fighting and fighting for a new mortgage, to keep the electricity on, to get a scholarship to Hebrew school, to land a job? Wow, it's been a long haul, yes?

However, I think what the fight has been most accurately about is to find a new way of looking at the world. What I've most needed a is new pair of glasses. (Again!)

Picture this...a photo of myself with a caption below - "Self-supporting through her own contributions." WOOT!

I know DSHS would be thrilled to kiss my patoot goodbye. It says a lot about where my life in this economy has taken me, both fiscally and spiritually, when my wants would be pretty much taken care of with simply getting a job that could get me off the dole. And that would be nice.

But with some new glasses, I can see that while this job could mean that, it has the potential to mean much more for me - I couldn't have even dreamed up money AND something I'm already good at AND feeling good about what I'm doing. And I hope I get it.

But if I don't, I've earned these new specs. And through them I already see that there are more things out there than silver and gold. That there are things that fit my new vision of what I really need, and maybe even what I really want.

So, for right now I have to let go and let the next right move make itself known. And we know how good at that I can be. Riiiiiight......?

Joan Crawford's Eyebrows

Today I sat. Like I've committed to myself to try to do daily, if only for 10 minutes. I must sit and I must continue to go within or I will "dry up like an old fuckin' Thanksgiving turkey breastbone," as my friend Tim so eloquently put it. Today I am on the dry side of sober.

Unresolved discontent has gotten me re-interested in seeking an inner life, the same inner life I was seeking before my outer life went to hell in a handbasket. That was three years ago, and as life has moved on since, I feel as though I personally haven't moved an inch.

So I go searching. For people who have what I want, classes that teach what I want, a book to read with something I haven't heard before in quite the same way...? For a new job.

At present I'm a shelver in the mornings at a bookstore, same company where I used to be a manager, but again, when my external life went kablooey so did my work status. Anyway, I'm shelving during this time of impending crisis and I'm in the Christian section, shoving every incarnation of the Bible known to humankind onto the shelf without regard to arrangement, just get the freaking things off the cart and onto the freaking shelf. And this is not just because I'm jewish and the Bible's not my thing, but they can be so cumbersome and all look the same unless you pay close attention. And attention is not what I've got today. I am not in a good space. I want to be somewhere else.

I move on to the little, bitty inspirational books and feel as though I'm going to bolt from my body. My friend Andrea quoted Pema Chodron today, "Never underestimate the urge to bolt." I feel like bolting - urgently - but I've got to get this shelving done so I can afford to eat dinner tonight. A particular book with a van Gogh painting on it has fallen off the shelf. Oy. I put it back and move on down the line and, what the hell, the same book has hit the floor again. Ugh. Did I mention that I hate shelving? But I go back and put it back on the freaking shelf, anywhere for god's sake, just get back on the shelf little Christian book! I move on down the shelves again and for the love of god, the book has fallen off again!

All right, already!!

It is Henri J.M. Nouwen's "Life of the Beloved." What do I want with a book by a catholic priest? However, the subtitle is "Spiritual Living in a Secular World." This catches my attention because, although I'm "jewish" I'm also a little bit of everything else. And I open it:

"I have called you by name, from the very beginning. You are mine and I am yours. You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests. I have molded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you together in your mother's womb. I have carved you in the palms of my hands and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace. I look at you with infinite tenderness and care for you with a care more intimate than that of a mother for her child. I have counted every hair on your head and guided you at every step. Wherever you go, I go with you, and wherever you rest, I keep watch. I will give you food that will satisfy all your hunger and drink that will quench all your thirst. I will not hide my face from you. You know me as your own as I know you as my own. You belong to me. I am your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your lover and your spouse...yes, even your child...wherever you are I will be. Nothing will ever separate us. We are one."

Oh my. I'm not going to get all swoopy at work. So I buy it.

I bring it home with me, it reverberates in my purse, in the seat next to me, in my car on the road. In my hands while I'm reading it. It's 149 pages that read so smoothly it's more like 5. It is where I am.

Or shall I say, where I'd like to be. Because regardless of how elevated I feel when I sit to close my eyes today, up comes the "crowd at the mall," as I call them. Jeez, there's an awful lot of chatter in there. Always has been. But seemingly more than there used to be. Hence the peeling of the onion effect: the closer I get to me, the deeper, more ancient the chatter. My sponsor used to say, "Stop distracting yourself from yourself." Twenty-five years later, with many, many periods spent in meditation, I think I'm just starting to understand what she means.

And what comes into focus in the crowded mall of my psyche today are Joan Crawford's eyebrows. Everywhere. They're thick, like fuzzy worms and everybody's got 'em. My mother used to draw them on every morning. "Never leave the house, never be caught dead without your eyebrows!" One of my mother's tenets. Even at the end - in the hospital she actually crawled out of bed to draw on her eyebrows, only to break her arm when she fell. A couple of days later she died. I forgot to ask my brother if she had her brows on.

Even when I tried to focus on the Serenity Prayer today, all I ended up with were the brows. Many a shrink has had a heyday with me.

Today I'm grateful for Henri Nouwen, for the chatter, for the brows, for my mom - and for the willingness to keep trying to find my truth - that I am, we are, the Beloved.

Stairway to Here

Twenty-five years ago tonight I stood at the bottom of what appeared to be a very, very long staircase - an impossible-to-navigate staircase, like through wacky glasses in length - wondering what the fungula I was up to this time. I had run through quite a few bright ideas in my extremely long and exhausting 28 years, and this was just another to me - but was it? I had to admit, I did have a feeling in the pit of my stomach that wasn't my usual dread, and it also wasn't anything I could remember feeling before, but COME ON, AA? Wow. How dramatic. I mean, really, I wasn't THAT bad.

Not that I knew anything about how bad you had to be. Or what bad even was.

I figured I was like heading upstairs into a room filled with unshaven, slovenly older men, some in trench coats with few teeth, some in plaid flannel, most former working-class heroes, all divorced and depressed. Wow. But I knew I was in trouble and I knew I didn't know what to do and I remembered being told years before by an old drinking pal, Jack, who went from wearing hand-made Italian suits and working with the Rockefellers to...an unshaven slovenly old man...telling me about the program and how he thought it was where I'd end up eventually. I hated him at the time and conveniently forgot about all he said for a few years until the night before my pausing at the bottom of the very, very long staircase.

The night before: by far, not the worst night of my drinking/drugging career, but it was what it was. I came out of a blackout in a bar that I'm pretty sure was Elaine's because it was around the corner from my house. The last thing I remembered on coming out of the blackout was it had just been about 8:00, and I was pushing a large, heavy piece of furniture in front of my apartment door in the hope that it would deter me from leaving home once I cracked open the last of the brandy I had left in the house. I had become...discouraged...by my blackouts as they weren't fun stories to tell my friends anymore, like when I woke up in [famous person name]'s bed or once in another country. Gives a new meaning to forgetting where you parked the car when you wake up in a completely different country and makes for a pretty funny story when you've still got wit - oh, yeah, and friends to tell it to. But of late, most of my friends were gone and I was coming to in places that weren't very funny with people that were very, very scary. Like people who hung out in burnt-out buildings in Spanish Harlem, only had first names and didn't necessarily speak English.

Alas, that night, furniture or no, I must have gotten out and been who-knows-where again, landing my ass on a barstool near home as the sun was coming up through the barroom window. I came up talking to a group of hookers about the perils of being a working girl, as if I had any idea what I was talking about, being a one-track, non-stop, where's-the-drugs-minded girl. And I looked down to find yet another unexplainable gash, this time in my knee, complete with half-dried blood running down my leg and in need of stitches. And this time, finally, I had the thought form itself in whole - WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO ME!! I looked up and caught my face in the mirror behind the bottles - WHY?!?! WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME?!?! is my thought when - BAM!

A tiny little voice that has not made it's way to the surface before, maybe ever, says, "It's you, Nancy. It's the booze. It's the drugs. It's the end. It has to be..." I didn't hear the rest, because I couldn't, not then, but I heard it the next night. The end of that sentence was "...or you're dead."

And the next day I find myself at the bottom of that very, very long staircase after making a phone call to a number from the yellow pages and talking to some stranger who I think I told something about my needing to do research (riiiight, never heard that one before).

And I did NOT feel well, no. I could not get up them stairs above the Hungarian Literary Society on 79th Street and Lexington in New York City, no way. I did not have enough breath nor life left in me to make it that far that day alone.

But the door opens and in walks a biker dude, who takes one look at me and offers me his arm. Not a word, just his arm and a smile, maybe a half-laugh, and up the staircase he helps me. It turns out there are actually two flights and by the top of the second I'm weeping with impossible weariness, sick and shaking. He never said a word to me, just led me to the door, smiled, bowed, then worked his way into the crowd.

What? A crowd? Of normal looking people who are loud and laughing and have all their teeth. Someone calls the meeting to order and I take a seat across the room in the back row. As I sit, I am aware that I better sit on my ever-shaking hands to make them stop, or someone might notice and think I'm an alcoholic.

The meeting starts and the guy says his name and they all say "Hi Irwin" in unison and I think, WTF, get me out of this room of cult zombies, but I don't move and not because I don't want to - because I've looked down and realized that my dress is on inside out and I'm afraid someone might notice. And Irwin starts to tell his story and I don't really hear anything until he says that he's from Minnesota and I'm from Minnesota too and this tiny, beensy little connection is the biggest connection I've had to another human being in a very, very, very long time and it makes me start to cry big time and now I don't want to go and I don't. I don't leave and I talk to women and they tell me to do 90 meetings in 90 days and don't drink or drug, even if your ass falls off, and I believe them (a miracle in itself) and I don't drink and I don't drug, even when my ass is falling off and then they tell me a lotta, lotta, lotta, lotta other things and I believe (most) of them too. And I haven't had a drink or a drug from that day until this.



July 17, 1985 to July 17, 2010. The longest I've ever done anything other than breathe in my entire life. So far, so good.

My pal Jack wasn't so fortunate. I saw him in meetings off and on over the years, but he never got it and he died a drunk. Most of us actually do.

But he's the one who turned me onto the Stairway to Here. And for that I am forever grateful.

Another Reason I Hate Mail

Apparently my dog Gus believes that the mailman is here to kill us. Daily. Can you imagine having that blinding anxiety arrive every single day at 4:00 p.m.?

Yesterday, in his usual late afternoon frenzy, Gus actually crashed through my glass front door with a head butt, followed by what he must have been thinking was the lead-off for a triple lutz, but actually resulted in a lacerated artery and a torn leg tendon. The bathroom, after a vain attempt at stopping the bleeding in the bathtub, looked like a Hitchcockian murder scene.

And so we loaded up the Cedes and took Gussie to the Animal ER. (Have I mentioned that my car is white? Well, not anymore.) The animal hospital on Lake City Way is open 24 hours and filled with human and animal loving people - once you get past the shape-shifting bull terrier receptionist, who shouts out well-rehearsed questions with hostile indifference and appears unhappy with the answers to all. She obviously doesn't want you there and certainly doesn't want you bleeding on her linoleum.

Can I just stop here for a minute and say that I really wanted her to like me. WTF? I actually worked at it, compliments and all, and finally pulled back with the thought occurring that perhaps I need to step up my AlAnon meetings.

Anyway, all she said specific to our situation was, "Well he sure did a number on that flipping leg!" and hauled him off to the back room. Needless to say, I did not find any comfort in this opening number to the Summertime For Gusgus musical and asked her meekly several times if I could go back and check on my dog. "No Civilians Allowed" was barked back at me and I took this sitting down for a couple of hours, until I finally got my New York back up and demanded to see the doctor.

I finally got to see the vet and immediately regretted it, as he had me sign $1,200 dollars worth of papers and leave Gus overnight for surgery. Upsetting to say the least, first because Gus is my nearest and dearest dogpal and second because they don't take foodstamps and that's all I have.

So I had to leave him there in the care of the lycanthrope and her band of happy vets and hope for the best. It was hard to sleep without Gus's snoring, but I did it, and got up early to pick him up. Apparently last night after surgery, he came up out of the anesthesia so quickly that he began to kick out and now, of course, he has stitches and a cast on his back leg too. His whole right side, back and front, is wrapped in really fun, neon-colored doggy cast material, and the front one has a waterproof stump cover on it for rainy day potty breaks. Wow. That was an extra $46. Plus the supply of four medications and the overnight boarding.


Now I just have to feed him pills and keep him "quiet" for six weeks. Riiiiiiight.

Today I am grateful to still have a sense of humor.

This Time Next Year

Today I found myself walking down Greenwood, catching glimpses of myself in the shop windows along the avenue and wondering what life will be like a year from now. And then I thought about how many times I’ve wondered that throughout my life.

The first and most poignant time I remember was one Christmas at my mother’s. I must have been about 27 years old. I had brought my 5 year live-in boyfriend home to Minnesota from New York City for the holidays again, and he was out shoveling the newly fallen snow off my mother’s driveway. A novel exercise for him. I sat inside and stared at him out the window, complete with the new shiner, yes, black eye, he had given me less than a week before. Not novel for me anymore. He hadn’t started to hit me until we were together 5 years, and as with most newly abused women, it simply did not compute with me. What was happening? Why had I become so abusable?

I watched him out there shoveling and sadly wondered aloud, “I wonder what life will be like a year from now.”

My mother pulled up in her car, thrilled to be surprised by our early arrival, and by his “generosity,” as being originally from the Middle East, he had certainly never shoveled snow before. She jumped out of her car, threw her arms around him in a big hug as he lifted her tiny little person off the ground in an exuberant greeting. This my brother caught on camera – I still have the photo. They had a great, shallow flirtation going on since they first met. That was my mother, and that certainly was Robert. Big flirts.

My mother came in and found me sitting by the window, gave me a big hug from behind, then turned and took me by the chin to look at my face. Honestly, I was so tired that I just didn’t even bother to say anything, much less to recite the complicated story I had concocted to cover the telltale signs of a smack to the face.

She stepped back, looked to the floor and shook her head. When she finally looked back at me she said, “He’d make a terrible husband…” then looked back out the window at him said, “…but he’d make a great son-in-law!”

Merry Christmas, right? (See many former posts on my mother.)

A year later, Robert and I were through and I was newly clean and sober.

This is also one of the most poignant reminders I have that life changes. It always changes and, if nothing else, on that I can rely.

Today’s wondering was triggered by my attempt to pay my bills. An avid, on-time bill payer, I’ve learned quite a bit of humility in the last few years since the humongous downturn of my economic standing from married middle class professional to single welfare mom. The truth today is that I’m not going to pay the full amounts and they’re not always going to be on time. And while that may not be the truth a year from now, it was much, much worse and year ago.

What’s different today than a year ago? I know that I still have my house and I have my new Making Home Affordable mortgage in place. Last year I was in foreclosure. I have a job, albeit a part-time one, but I didn’t have a job a year ago. My daughter is able to collect SSDI from my ex’s catastrophe, whereas we had no income at this time last year. My ex-husband was going blind and still fed by a stomach tube a year ago. Today he is a seeing man who chews and swallows almost as good as the next fellow. I could stop and smell the roses today on my walk home from the post office. A year ago I didn’t even know there were roses in the neighborhood. A year ago I found laughter painful, even when I felt it to be true. Today I think I easily laugh more than I ever have.

I must take this time regularly to compare myself to myself, as I’m the only one I can truly compete with fairly. Life has not been easy, definitely not, and sometimes I think that if karma is real, then in my last life I must have been Henry VIII or someone else who lacked any kind of humility and broke hearts regularly. These appear to be my lessons this life: humility and how to live through heartbreak.

I’m doing okay today, and for that I’m grateful. But it will be interesting to see where I am this time next year, yes?

Day of the Odd Bod

Two days ago was Norwegian Independence Day here in the Great Pacific Northwest, complete with a parade and those zany little Shriner guys in their fez's and little cars zooming about throwing them orange candy peanuts at all the little tootsies. Happy Lutefisk to you and yours.

Before that was Cinco de Mayo, more candy - and Mother's Day, more candy - and before that Easter, where that bunny that looks like Jesus rises from the cave and brings baskets of CANDY to one and all who shall not die but have everlasting life... ? And before that the celebration of the cocoa plant, St. Valentine's Day (see former post ).

Well I'm here to inform you that today has been newly dubbed as Day of the Odd Bod on the planet where I live. It's filled with fun house mirrors and bad posture, anything, ANYTHING to accentuate what we do to ourselves with all that flippin candy. This holiday was created on the day of New Releases at the bookstore where I work when the book entitled "Big Belly Fat Cure" hit the bestseller tables - and every kind of bod known to mankind hit the bookstore in search of this miraculous tome. I couldn't keep enough copies on the floor. It has a lot of pages and a special coating on the cover, along with a spiral bound spine so you can easily fold back the pages if you so happen to find a before and after picture that "does it" for you. And the basic premise of this cure is?:

KNOCK OFF THE SUGAR!!!!

In about 150 stunning pages.

Ugh. What a nightmare. I really couldn't live with myself if I went into detail on who came out of the woodwork in search of this cure, it would just sound too wicked and the karma fairies might come back at me with something unspeakable. Suffice it to say that I felt like Twiggy standing there by my little counter, and I'm up about 12 pounds right now myself.

No body wants to take responsibility for what they put in their mouths, myself included. We just want a free ticket to chomp with abandon, having no price to pay in the end. But there is a price indeed, and it's usually in that gut that we look down at in shock and awe, like, "where did that come from?" Well, it wasn't that bunny or Cupid's fault, right? I mean, would Jesus hold a gun to your head and make you eat? Surely not, I say unto thee.

Tomorrow, I'm going to take a hard look at this candy nest I've been digging for myself and see if perhaps there's another, less destructive way to find my comfort. I'd like to feel a bit healthier and more streamlined next year on Day of the Odd Bod.

But tonight I'm grateful that I still have Willy Wonka's Runts to finish off. Sigh...

Seemingly Slim Pickins

If fear burned calories I'd be anorexic.

Last two weeks condensed: Broke, stunningly bored and bewildered with idleness, after reaching out again to friends and former co-workers I finally landed a job. Back with my former employer of the retail nature, I find that not only are things there not the same, but I am not at all the same either. The last time I worked full-time retail I had a husband and another income coming in - and an overflow of coping juice in my lifetime supply pool to wash over me should I find myself in any situation that called for it. My pool ranneth over.

Today my little puddle be cracked and dry, and I pray daily not to have to cope with anything bigger than a bad hair day until the coping rains come back and fill my reservoir again. Instead I got a retail schedule that would leave me home only when Sasha's not here and at work when she is. Thirteen is hard enough, but 13 and still in the throes of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is monstrous. Take that and add in the absence of any parental unit for over a week and what do you get? The emergency room on the evening of the fifth day in a row that mommy doesn't come home until after dark.

Poor Sasha was so agitated and desperate that I barely recognized her and I found myself in a fear that I have never experienced before. Kind of like the opposite of the day she was born, when I found myself in love in a way I had never before experienced. Holy crap, I have proven to myself that I can take just about anything, but when it comes to my kid - I become frightened and lost. No messing with my kid, Universe, I can't take it.

So she's been home for a week, flat on the sofa and I have attempted to show up for my job until today. This is simply not going to work.

If I could get away with drinking, believe that I would be wasted in a heartbeat. For certain.

But - I am 24 years clean and sober and supposedly have my wits about me, so I know that of all the choices out there for me, that is not one of them. Crazy, right? All that time and all I still want is my bottle to comfort me? And that freaking bottle is singing so rowdy right now that it's awfully hard to get around it to find whatever else my choices may be.

So what now? Hell if I know.

Today I'm grateful that it's Friday and I get to go to my home group and simply sit and take in other people's sprinklings of sanity. It may seem like a small thing, but it's the biggest and the best I got.

American Idle

I'm the new American Idle. And I've hit rock bottom in my esteemed position.

Princeton defines "idle" as "not in action or at work." Well, duh. Then I get to yourdictionary.com and there you have it: "having no value, use or significance; worthless; useless idle talk; vain; futile; pointless an idle wish." Oh - why go on?

I haven't posted for lack of anything to say. I have been thoroughly idle. Until today. I got a job - yes, after three years of holding the crown, I am about to relinquish it to the lowliest of bidders - would you like that with or without thorns?

Funny, when you're a kid you think, "I can't wait to be an adult and not have to go to school and take all this crap from people and make my own decisions." Then you get to be an adult and think, "God, I wish I didn't have to go to work and take all this shit from people and let someone else make all the decisions."

And so you lose your job. At first it's kind of cool. You get unemployment, and then you extend unemployment and then you start in on your savings, knowing that's not going to go down too far because, hey, you'll get a job. And you sleep in every morning and then go for a walk with the dog to get your coffee and wave at all the neighbors pulling out of their driveways for their various employments and think how lucky you are to have your "freedom" and not have to take any shit from anybody or be strapped into a cubicle somewhere downtown or make any stupid decisions. Like what to do about nuclear disarmament or what font to use for the Earth Day bus poster.

And time goes on and you've read several books and taken a couple of day trips and cleaned out the closets and done some landscaping. Because you have an adult conscience, you think maybe you should start checking out craigslist or the Times for jobs. And you warily apply for a couple because you don't really want to go back too fast, just stretch your search muscle a little and no one replies. So you go to LinkedIn and Monster.com and a couple of other networking sites and enter some information and then lie back and read another book. And no one replies.

Hmmm. Savings is going down. So you make a few phone calls to friends in "the biz" and ask what's up and who's where and find out that there's layoffs going on everywhere - Liz from PR had her hours cut in half and even had to get a job at CostCo bakery starting at minimum wage and 4 o'clock in morning just to pay for her heating bills. Joe Schmo from Research got cut totally and just started auto mechanic school because he couldn't find a job anywhere.

Okay, never mind, don't stress, what have you always done before? Hit the streets, shake some hands, sell yourself and get a job. I mean, it's always worked before and I really don't want to have to cut into my 401K or sell my car...

There's nothing in your field. And there's nothing in anyone else's field either. And you find yourself hitting the pavement with your resume - but no one wants to see it. Because they're all hiring "online" now - "No, I'm sorry, you can't speak with a manager. We only take applications online." And you get all kinds of emails saying you're overqualified or that they thank you for your information but they are going "in another direction" this time.

So you go to temp agencies and register and they have no work at this time. Geophysicists are now becoming temporary typists and PhD-holding teachers are receptionists. Call again tomorrow. And then next week. And then next month.

And your savings is gone and now you have to sell the car and cash out your 401ks and there goes your kid's college fund and the tiny inheritance (it seemed big once) from Uncle Bob. Sell a few pieces of gold maybe, an old 50s designer chair? Now you find yourself standing on line at the Washington Department of Social and Health Services, the only one with all their teeth, waiting to take a number to talk to someone about food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Your grandfather would roll in his grave! And your daughter asks you, "Mom, are we poor?"

Past due notices, pre-existing-conditions-not-covered issuances, disconnections, foreclosure and a $10 check from great-aunt Lena are the only things you get in the mail anymore. Forget about the root canal, baby, you got to eat!

And so on and so on. Not to mention that subtle attitude from certain "friends" who aren't really certain you've made a true enough effort.

So what DO you do with your days now? Well, how much can you clean? And then how much can you maintain? How many walks can you take? How much does a class cost, how much can you read, how many weeds can you pull - where are your friends?

At work.

And so, after three years of widdling your life down to within a two block radius and a spot you've been staring at incessantly on the bedroom ceiling - you find a job. And where will you be next week?

At work.

Welcome to America Today.



I'm massively grateful for my new job.

Blind Along The Walls

Here's my day. I awake to the sound of my dog having yet another grand mal seizure. It's 5:00am and Gus has not emptied his bladder since 9 last night - until now. All over the kitchen floor (at least this time it's on the tile floor instead of the silk Persian rug) and then, if you've ever seen a dog seize you know this answer, he commences to drag himself through it over and over again. Complete with mucho frothing from the mouth.

Can you tell I'm getting used to this? I've documented his seizures and apparently this is going to happen every 2-3 weeks, ad nauseum or ad infinitum, whichever comes first. Because if nauseum comes first, I'm not sure what my decisions will boil down to. But I'm not there yet. So be it.

I clean up Gus and the kitchen for about an hour and then attempt to calm Gusgus, who is blind for about 1/2 hour, hence he paces along the walls, until he drops from exhaustion and then I try to fall back to sleep on the sofa. But Gus insists whining and licking my face at the same time with his pewy mug. This is not working.

Sasha, my absolutely NOT morning-oriented teenager, gets up for school and whines and badmouths the state of...everything, then paces along the walls until she leaves for the bus (okay, not really the "along the walls" part.)

I'm tired and I have no coffee. I must have coffee. I harness up Gus and ride him to Diva, where he proceeds to raise the hair on his back and snap at two small children, well-dressed in their regulation plaid Catholic school uniforms. Their well-coiffed Catholic mother flits about along the walls and tells me in so many words to train my dog. Okay, not along the walls here either, but she does flit and spit Catholically-correct fire at me.

I get home and have to get the papers together to meet my ex-husband for our next, most current notarization experience - we have yet another mortgage offer from Bank of America, this time at a lower price and as a result of the intervention of Senator Patty Murray. This should be a red-letter day for me, no?

And yet I find it necessary to pace along the walls, yes, along the walls because I want to be as blind as Gus is after a seizure and even more desensitized because I have to "see" my ex and endure what I know will be the regular recitation of the reasons I'm going to, in his weekly words, BURN IN HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY. Sometimes I can actually find it funny now, because it's become absurd in its roteness, but many times I cannot control how I will feel because I don't have control over all 54 people who live inside me, particularly the ones who remember what it's like to be put down regularly, both in childhood and other past "relationships," for various pathological reasons, several from people who threatened my BURNING IN HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY. Please see former post , among others.

But I do meet him at Bank of America and the receptionist signs us up for the next available bank exec and then makes the mistake of having us take a seat in the same waiting room as several other innocent bystanders. He sits across from me and begins his regular recitation of my failings, complete with names and dates and other assorted details and I grunt an answer rotely on occasion just to see if this time he will stop (what's that definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results? Yep.) and finally I cut him off, giggling somewhat hysterically to the semi-horror of the innocent bystanders who have been listening, and I say, "Jesus, man, wouldn't this make a great scene in a really shitty play? Like Mamet, you are!" To which, again to the horror of the innocent ears not three inches away, he shouts, "Fuck no! Too wordy!! Mamet would cut to the chase!" To which we both laugh and then are totally silent. The room feels blown away by the insanity, like the persons sitting with us appear to want to get up and pace along the walls.

It is all executed and done in perfect silence, at least on the part of him - he signs in front of the notary, he flips the papers back in my direction, he leaves. It is sufficiently dramatic to win at least a Drama Desk, with maybe even a nod from the Obie's and I should feel thrilled to have had my mortgage cut in half, yes?

But no, I cry on the walk home because as he has pointed out I'm a loser who still does not have a job to pay for this and I never will since I am about to BURN IN HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY, only about half of which I really believe, but since I can't pace along the walls I have to at least cry to relieve the tension. I can pace when I get home right?

No. I get home and it seems Gus has gotten up all the way up to the middle of the dining room table and snagged Sasha's Easter basket, which was filled with chocolate. And its contents? All gone. Anyone know what 25-30 pieces of chocolate do to a dog? Generally speaking, it throws them into a seizure. But we've already had one of those today, you say? Yes, but I don't think Saint Gustavo, Patron Saint of Mutt Seizures keeps count nor shows mercy.

I call the vet who, of all things, laughs, and says I'll have to stay close to Gus FOR THE REST OF THE DAY. But I have appointments and errands? Gus will have to go with me FOR THE REST OF THE DAY. There shall be no escape nor respite.

I take Sasha (and Gus) to drop her at her first appointment across town and I think, jeez, it's nice out, maybe we'll go to Magnuson dog park close by and I'll let Gus out for a little spin. It's nice out today, sun shining, birds singing.

We get to the park and the first person we run into is...my ex with his dog. He's also there with his dogwalker "friend" who's 20 years younger and 20 pounds lighter than I am. "Tee hee," she says. Joy. Five minutes later, the heavens open up and we are drenched, me and Gus, while the ex, his stick girl and his designer dog drive off in heated-leather-seat comfort. Me and Gus pad back through the monsoon, slide back into my 21 year old vehicle with the door that won't shut all the way and the window that won't completely close and we head off to pick up Sasha. But not before I slam back into the bumper of a brand new Toyota. And I think, great, let's call the police now that it reeks of wet-dog-who-has-peed-all-over-himself in here.

But we all get out and and - Aha - made of rubber! I get my 13th dirty look of the day, smile back and thank the Patron Saint of Bumper Makers, St. Come-On-An-Hit-Me-Sucka. I pick up Sasha, who immediately points out that she is thoroughly disturbed by it reeking of wet-dog-who-has-peed-all-over-himself in here. Perhaps her father should have picked her up? Ah, the beautiful silence.

I'm tired. There have been no further seizures. I have not had any demonic spirit show up to DRAG ME TO HELL yet. Is there a conclusionary lesson to this essay today? No. I'm just grateful it's all over.

Greetings From The Empty Vessel

It's three years ago this week that life as I knew it completely fell apart.

I walked into the extra bedroom where my then-husband was "sleeping" and found him in a state that no human should ever have to experience, either as a condition themselves or as a witness to such condition. He had a fever of 107, was yellow-ish green, his neck was swelled out to his shoulders, he could not open his crusty, puffed up eyes and when he tried to answer my question, "can you stand up?" he just blew sheets of the inside lining of his mouth out in large bubbles.

That's as much as I will graphically describe - except to say that when he finally did answer me, he reached in and pulled his lip off, taking his earlobe with it as he tried to move his hand from his face.

This was a catastrophic, toxic response to a prescription medication that years later a court would find both the prescribing doctor and the drug company NOT RESPONSIBLE for. I am attempting to write a book about the whole experience, but as one can imagine, I do get stalled out and stare at the wall for hours at a time without realizing time has passed at all.

But for this post I'm going to stick to what happened to me. This was my life three years ago this week: I was a wife and mother living in a home that we had just paid top dollar for in a great neighborhood. Our combined income was up to a couple hundred thousand a year and rising. We had two luxury cars, 3 401k's, a substantial savings, even moreso because my mother had left me a small inheritance. I had a career that I loved - other than being a writer myself, I managed the 3rd largest grossing Barnes & Noble in the country, and had for about 8-9 years. I was up for promotion. My then-husband's career was skyrocketing, selling land to builders and buildings from the land. Our daughter was a straight-A student who was one belt away from a black belt in karate, something she had worked toward for about 6 years. We had just bought a French bulldog and she was a little tiny expensive bundle of energy. I was clean and sober 20+ years.

David was in the hospital in a coma for almost four months. Despite the odds he lived. But one must remember that there are states that are worse than death, and he was definitely in one of those for a long, long, long time. Sometimes I don't think he's passed through it completely even now.

Our marriage was precarious to say the least – hence the aforestated finding him in the EXTRA bedroom, i.e. HIS bedroom. But I would have stayed that way indefinitely I think rather than face change because: we had a child together; we made a lot of money together; nobody has a perfect marriage, so said my mother (yeah, a future post on the Relationship Theories of Marge to come); I was too lazy to do anything about my unhappiness and; blah, blah, blah fear of the unknown.

As one can imagine, and I will not go into it here, our already broken marriage could not withstand the rigors of the attempts to heal from a state worse than death and we split.

So – over the last three years I have basically lost everything that I could possibly use to naturally describe myself – except that I am still a recovering alcoholic and a mother. I can’t even say that I’m still blonde, because stress turned me grey and I pay a high price for that blonde now.

I lost my marriage, I lost my job and my career, I lost the income from my husband’s lost career, I lost my mortgage, I lost my healthcare coverage, I sold my cars, I cashed in the 401k’s, I spent the inheritance and the savings. I lost belief in a god of my then-choosing, I lost quite a few friends (future post on Are People Afraid That Tragedy Is Contagious?), I lost my dog to my ex-husband, I lost my concentration, I lost my mind. But not really, because when you’re a mother you don’t have the luxury of insanity.

No more wife of an rising star, no more wife, no more manager, no more future district manager, no more homeowner, no more free-to-get-sick person, no more safe driver, no more financial security, no more credit rating, no more writing person, no more Scary-Ass God believer.

Three years now I’ve been a single, sober, unemployed welfare mom.

Whatever It Is That Runs The Universe has seen fit to make me an empty vessel.

And that includes ridding me of the voice of that Scary-Ass God.

You live through enough, and there's not much left to be scared of. And for that I'm grateful.

NOW

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick

"How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." Abraham Lincoln


Okay, first of all, can I just say that if your last name, or first for that matter, was "Dick," wouldn't you change it as soon as you could? Can you imagine having the name Dick in middle school? Ay, the horrors! Okay, I'm done.

Almost 25 years ago I made a commitment to reality, whatever that turned out to be, by getting and staying clean and sober. And I have done the best I can...or HAVE I?

It's all relative. First it was booze. Then it was drugs. Take them away and it was anorexia and food obsession, which, by the way, will never be perfected as I have to form SOME kind of relationship with food to continue to exist, said relationship also striving toward a healthy reality. Face that, then it's "romance" or as some would say sex, again, not total abstinence but...sane or "healthy"? Face that, then it's money and finances. Again, more of the same.

So let's see now, we've got AA, OA, AlAnon, DA. Oh, and I quit smoking. Without an A.

Now, there have been many, many other sometimes mucho fun and, alternately, somewhat destructive things I have put in the place of these obstacles to the facing of reality, but most of them wouldn't kill me eventually. The one I'm bumping up against most right now is fantasy land. Again, something that won't kill me and doesn't need to go away completely, but right now it's got my laundry piling up and the cupboards bare.

How did I become unpleasantly aware of this? Last night I was with a group that was talking about "self-care" and I could feel myself get really twisted and annoyed. I thought, "I don't relate to this namby-pamby crap anymore, this kindergarten of the basic spiritual search, and I don't feel like sitting through my ABC's again. I know how to take care of myself and I do and blah, blah, blah, hmmmmmm...I'd like to lose some weight [because I've noticed all day that my waistband has been cutting off my circulation] and I wonder if that guy [I was thinking about all day] will call [and we can do what I was imagining] and I wish my hair would grow out longer [like I pictured it looked all day] and I think ...." Non-stop.

Somewhere in the speaking going on around me [while I was thinking], interrupting the busy signal I was creating by chronic self-absorption, a guy I know said the words "self-indulgent" and "alienation." Wham! Back in the NOW.

Here I am again, in the running for another overhaul of my spiritual ABC's. There is such a world of difference between self-care and self-absorption, and I've been living pretty much in the latter. How do I know? I look in between those brackets and see what I've really been up to [all day] versus what's on my to-do (self care) list!! I got a lot done on the Planet Nancy this week, but here on Earth I still need to do laundry, go grocery shopping, get dog food, make a doctor's appointment, set up a dentist appointment, fill out a camp scholarship form and job hunt. Take a shower, read a book, play a game, write a story, make a phone call, have coffee with a friend. All self-care. None done.

I believe in fantasy and I think there's definitely a time and place for it in everyone's life, even daily. But like the definition I found of self-indulgence: "to yield to desires and whims of, especially to an excessive degree, to allow unrestrained gratification (i.e., indulged herself with idle daydreams) - if I can put it into practice in between big chunks of actually living my life it might add to instead of take away. I think it's called pulling oneself back into "living in the NOW."

I am a compulsive thinker by nature. Always have been. Much of the time I know I'm doing it and I'll indulge, even when the phone rings or the doorbell sounds. It doesn't do much for my real world, at least the way I practice it thus far. But wouldn't it be great if I were a compulsive writer-downer of my compulsive thinking and then a compulsive promoter of my compulsive writing down of my compulsive thoughts? Would I need yet another program, I mean other than Quick Books, to add up all the revenue to be made?

Today I'm grateful that learning, particularly learning to be me, is a lifelong process.