Twisted family plots

Almost a decade ago, I was asked to judge a Mormon fiction contest. Slogging through some very terrible novels, I came upon a mystery with a family plot--I can’t remember the details of the book, but I’m sure it was about a mother or a father, a daughter or son, murdering or sleeping with a family member. And the setting was Victorian England (I was working on a ph.d. in nineteenth century British fiction). I voted for this book, and that year the book won. The Mormon author of note for the Association of Mormon Letters, Anne Perry.

A Mormon author unlike the others. I discovered that she was already a best-selling novelist, and a Mormon convert. Talking to a friend, I learned that Anne Perry also was one of the girls depicted in the troubling movie “Heavenly Creatures”--the friend who helped the daughter murder her parents. (The movie was also an intro to Kate Winslet, actress, and Peter Jackson, director). Anne Perry the pseudonym she took when she came out of prison.

Since then I’ve mostly read the Monk series of detective fiction. The policeman whose memory has been lost. The nurse from the Crimean war, Hester. The two eventually marry. Always, those twisted family plots.

I took the opportunity in Menlo Park to go to a reading by Anne Perry. Heard her talk about a regular writing schedule and teaching Sunday school.

I won’tjudge this woman’s fiction. I just read it with continued fascination. I would like to be as spunky, brave, outspoken as Hester. Right now I’m listening to a Pitt mystery--Charlotte and her husband. She’s also spunky, brave, outspoken. And her husband, like Monk, is an outsider, odd, but a good man and underneath a kind and sensitive husband, lover. Also a good policemant, who can always use his wife’s help. Who wouldn’t want such a man.

Still I continue to be fascinated by those plots, given this complicated history. The current book--two baby bodies unearthed in a public garden square. Abortion, murder, sex. Anne Perry at her best. My beloved Mormon author.

Reading out loud

I am an audiobook addict.

I love being read to. I love going word by word through a book, listening, paying attention. Doing the different voices.This is the closest I come to meditation. In blessed moments, listening to a book takes me out of myself, stops the restless play of my mind.

I’m not so good at reading out loud to myself. I’ve been experimenting with this over the past week. Reading Hardy poems out loud. And today, I may have been lucky. The rain drove Bevin and me back to our rooms earlier than I planned. I wanted to read, so I read out loud to her.

We’ve had a good afternoon. Only the charming Bevin this afternoon. Perhaps we have found something new to share, riding, walking, reading. I hope so.

Detox

I’m trying to ween Bev from the anti-depressant. I want to figure out what her baseline is. I just haven’t had enough continuing time with her over the past five years to know what makes sense. I took her to a doctor last week, and he agreed this makes sense.

So for this week, I’m halving her perscription--1/2 tablet, rather than 1 tablet each night. For the past couple of days, she’s been mostly half and half. I’m trying not to reward “bad” behavior. That means, when she’s really out of control, I’m trying to find a safe, time-out place for her to calm down. I don’t want to take her driving or take her walking (both things she really enjoys) when she acts out. I’m harkening back to early training. Bore the nasty behavor. Find a quiet, dark, boring place where she can stay until she finds her calmer, more charming sense. I’ve created a place like that in my house.

For the detox phase, I’m cheating a bit. I’ve been taking her driving. Though I let her in the car only when she’s got herself more or less together. Yesterday, we did a ride to Concrete and then to one of the islands and on the ferry. Now I’m spending two days on the Olympic Penninsula at Rialto Beach--one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, I think. I’ve found a great little place to stay here on a river about 5 miles or so from the beach. I want her to have it easy not going psycho while we detox. I believe in contributing to her success. So far we’ve done pretty goo. Though she did spend a little time in the closet here tonight (bored finally) until she decided the bed sounded better. She’s now bored, sleepy, in bed. . . . . . . .

Two weeks at 1/2 says the doctor, and then take her off for a couple of weeks. We’ll see where that leaves her and whether I have the patience.

I like the happy Bevin better than the psycho Bevin. . . . .

Sleepless in Salt Lake City

I was concerned back in January after talking to one of Bevin’s caretakers in Salt Lake City. She told me that Bevin had been having trouble sleeping. She got up in the night and wandered through the home, slamming doors, stashing things in closets. One night she had even managed to go outside and set off the alarm. I had always thought of Bevin as a girl with an infinite capacity to sleep, so this development surprised me, alarmed me. To me it was a sign of Bevin’s underlying anxiety. And also probably related to the fact that she was always in a group situation, really didn’t have down time. The caretaker told me that she had never seen her in “veg” mode--resting with a blanket over her head. This is often what Bev does when she’s in group situations and gets overwhelmed. That made me think that she really didn’t have a chance to be in quiet places or alone where she was living. I wondered whether her increasing anxiety, that had to be the cause of her sleeplessness, was related to this.

I heard from Pam, her stepmom, that East Side had put Bevin on something to help her sleep. When I picked her up in Salt Lake City last week, I was given a bottle of her “sleeping” medication. I decided to give her the pills--until I figured out more about what is going on with her. I can’t remember whether I gave her the medication the first night, but I know that I did the other evenings until Saturday night. I decided not to give her the pill but gave her a Benadryl instead. I only had four or five pills left, so I thought I would just stop giving them to her and see whether she could sleep without them.

Bevin’s behavior can be alarming when she has what I think of as an anxiety fit. For some reason, sometimes related to something that has happened but often pretty mysterious as to origin. her emotions run out of control. She begins running around, slamming doors, throwing things off surfaces, flushing the toilet, and making a peculiar “puffing” face. It’s amazing how quickly she can move and how little she responds to any verbal cautions. When she was smaller, she could be restrained when she acted out. But now that she’s older, that’s harder to do. Often I take her walking or driving in the car to help her calm down. Because that’s what needs to happen, she has to somehow get out of the rage of anxiety and back to quieter, calmer place. Bevin’s “normal” self is cheerful and rather cooperative.

Over the past six months or so when I’ve spent time with Bevin, her anxiety fits have been the exception rather than the rule. Occasionally they happen when she is getting ready for bed. She is most vulnerable to losing her cool at times of transition or at those moments of chaos that happen from time to time in a group or family situation.

Bevin woke up last Sunday morning, after her night without the “sleep” medication in a vulnerable mood. She lost her calm by the time she got out of the bathtub--usually a relaxing experience for her. I had a difficult time getting clothes on her. I let her go out and get in the car without getting shoes on her. I was just glad she wasn’t naked. We drove around for a little while, and then I brought her back and gave her breakfast. But I could tell she was still anxious. So I spent the day driving. We drove from 10:00 or so until 5:00. She is always pretty calm when we drive. She loves to drive, and I do too. So we’re a great pair. We drove to Whitbey Island via La conner, took the ferry to Port Townsend, drove back via the Tacoma Narrows. I could tell when we got back she was still on the edge. And she lost it when I tried to get her ready for bed. She started running around, pretty much naked, and I couldn’t calm her down. I also wasn’t inclined to go driving again. I knew that I had to get her calmed down in the house. I herded her downstairs where there were fewer things to throw and clear from surfaces. I finally cleared out the bathroom and blocked the door until she sat down. Finally she let me sing to her, rug her back, and finally put her nightgown on. Eventually I coaxed her into bed.

I had given her the “sleeping” pill before I tried to get her ready for bed, beginning to wonder whether the behavior was related to not taking the pill.

She woke up the next morning a different person. She was cheerful, funny, cooperative. And remained so for the whole day. We drove a little, but mostly we worked around the house, went for a walk. And she watched Barney, an old favorite from childhood, on the TV. I gave her the pill again last night, and she’s been Bevin the charmer all day again today.

Obviously I also began researching her “sleeping” medicine--trazodone. It turns out that it’s an anti-depressant, in particular used for anxiety and prescribed some times for sleep problems. It is one of the drugs that has been noted as problematic in teens--causing sometimes thoughts of suicide etc. Obviously taking her off the medicine quickly is a problem at this point. I’m left wondering about next steps here. Maybe this is just the thing to help her manage anxiety. But I also wonder how much of the anxiety is biological and how much contextual. I’m thinking that I somehow need to get to ground zero with Bevin, to figure out where she is, before I can begin making good decisions about her future. I can’t imagine putting her into another group situation until I have a sense of just what her emotional, physical situation is.

I did refill the medicine and found a doctor to see her this Friday. I want to begin working on a plan to figure out who and how Bevin is at this point in her life. That has to be the first step here.

Will she also be sleepless in Seattle? Or can she find her way to a calmer self? I just don’t know.

An inappropriate friendship?

I’ve been going through Bevin’s discharge paper. Interested to learn just a little bit more about her “inappropriate” friendship with a girl at her group home. Bevin has always been one to form friendships--her ability to do that has often left me meditating on the nature of friendship. But that’s another story.

Here’s what was “inappropriate” about her relationship with her most recent friend--according to her discharge papers. They were cuddling and, I take it, touching each other. Though who knows what that means. Given the structure of their lives, I suspect that it was mostly cuddling, holding--a head on a shoulder. . . . .

Now Bevin doesn’t have any ability to contemplate her life. So I’ve been thinking about what she knows about friendship, love. I’m not sure of the total range of her patterns for friendship, love. That’s how she lives her life--according to patterns. And my concern about this has a good deal to do with why I am bringing her to Seattle. I don’t know, can’t know, that much about the details of her life in Utah, the patterns of her existence there.

Here’s what i do when we’re together, my pattern of interaction. I cuddle with her. I hold her in my arms. I stroke her back, her hair, her hands. And I have this strong sense of how she takes to this touching. She opens herself. I know she hasn’t had much of such physical comfort in the pattern of her life. A person should have this. The luxury of touch from one who loves you.

I’ve often worried about her sexual vulnerability. To those men/boys in her environment who don’t understand, but could still hurt her. To those who do understand, and would still hurt her.

I hadn’t thought about a friendship such as the one i read between the lines in her discharge papers. How would she know this was “inappropriate”? Was it? In the world she was in, where did she find the touch that she longs for. How do we decide what “should” be?

I find myself with more sympathy, than judgment.

Home

Bevin and I arrived in Seattle this afternoon. Settling in. . . . . . .

The adventure begins

Friday was my last day at work until May 21. I leave tomorrow to drive to Utah. I'll pick Bevin up at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Burn her bridges.

And then the adventure begins. I am so looking forward to bringing Bevin to Seattle.

My eddy in the global economy

Recently I’ve been attending to my own eddy into the global economy. I was given the job at my work of “mentoring” a new doc team in India, charged with supporting and documenting Adobe products that are being engineered there. Unfortunately we didn’t have a stellar beginning. Too late. Every decision tactical--and a bit late at that. Never quite got ahead of the curve. . .

For the past week (and this continues next week), we’re hosting our new writing manager (pretty much “all” of the doc team in India) from Bangalore. Welcome to Adobe, our group, corporate America.

I just did a google search on Bangalore. I’ve been hearing all week from Guru of the virtues of Bangalore. He’s definitely a home boy. Grew up there. Proud. Silicon Valley of India. Educaton. English spoken in the home (an important point for a writer writing in English for an American audience. Interestingly, he couldn’t tell me the population of Bangalore. The internet tells me it’s somewhere between 5 and 6 million--a pretty big city by American standards. Certainly he finds our mild 50 degrees of the past week cold. He did let me know that my love of driving would be difficult to maintain in India.

I’ve been putting off making a judgment about Guru. He arrived in the middest--never a comfortable moment. A minor crisis on his first day. Perhaps his name is a harbinger?

It’s an interesting puzzle to put together a picture of a person conjured up from a time zone discrepancy of 13.5 hours. I’ve learned that folks in Bangalore work late. That means that if I’m on e-mail by 7 in the morning, I have perhaps 30 minutes of real-time e-mail with my colleagues in India. If I send an e-mail at 7:00 a.m., they’re answering my message at 8:30 p.m. These global conversations demand patience. I send a message in the morning. I get my answer (if my friends in India are attentive) 24 hours later. In this world of instant messaging, an abberration, a frustration, a chance to contemplate.

I have been working with two folks in India--I realized with chagrin today that I’m not even sure both work in Bangalore. Does one work in Noida? A female project manager who knows almost nothing about writing. But she’s clearly competent, proactive, fearless. She is always pressing at the edges, moving folks forward, forging into a space with a meeting, a suggestion, an action item. Since she knows nothing about docs, I’m as often dismayed by what i face when i fire up my e-mail in the morning as I cheer. But I do cheer. She is smart, active, accessible, flexible. No matter how often I have to pull her back, press her in another direction, I find her a pleasure to work with.

And then there’s Guru. After a week, I’m left cautious in my estimation of his prospects in the company, and a bit sad. I like him. He’s clearly accomplished in the world he inhabitants. I’ve learned that competent tech writers are far scarcer in India than engineers (and pretty much all competent tech writers, and even more editors, aspire to management). He has some six years of experience with such tech companies as HP. I do believe, after a week in discussion with him, that he is well informed, competent in his sphere. But I fear he is too accommodating, too deferential, too cautious to succeed in the situation he’s in.

And I’m left contemplating questions I can’t answer. How much of this is Guru? Why do I respond to Bhavna, despite her innocence of my profession? Why do I worry about him? How much of this is cultural? How much of this has to do with gender? How much is simply transactional, tactical?

I’m far too tired this Friday night to answer this question. But these are clearly questions that are in the center of my work life going forward. Do I have the tools to do a good job here? I am an Idaho girl after all? How did I end up here on this frontier? Never knew this is what I was preparing for. . . .

The aging of ordinary

I just finished reading a blog posted by someone I knew at a distance during my college years. This person went on to become a professor, the professor of my son, and in the end his friend. He now blogs at the same site as Nathan. Jim posted a fine blog on the ordinary.

Here’s a passage from the post that arrested my attention:


                Much about the ordinary world has changed in my life time, though I am not yet sixty. I was born in rural Missouri, and when I was born rural telephone systems were mostly party-lines, phones were hand-cranked, electricity was a relatively new arrival (within 30 years, and often much less), and for many people water pumped by hand and out house toilets were ordinary. Before my children were all born, that had all changed. The order of the world in rural Missouri was very different than it had been. And, as an expatriate of Missouri, I have changed even more than has my birthplace. Today I seldom think about what it takes to get water, and I use my Trio for phone calls, e-mail, and my calendar, wishing at the same time that I’d perhaps waited and bought an IPhone. Though I come from a long line of people who did what they called “honest work,” day-laboring, small-scale farming, blacksmithing, and machine work, I make my living as a bourgeois professor of philosophy.
                Nevertheless, though the ordinary is common, customary, and usual, it is also not something to be ignored. Indeed, we ought to celebrate that things such as vaccination, full supermarkets, city sewage systems, treatments for cancer and epilepsy, public transportation, private cars, mobile phones, cable television, literacy and education are all now ordinary, and all deserve our praise. Our lives are what they are because so much has become ordinary, and we ought to labor and pray that what is ordinary for us becomes ordinary for many more. We live longer and more comfortably because of many extraordinary things that have become ordinary. We know more and have access to more because of other extraordinary things turned ordinary. What was outside of the ordinary has become part of it and is no longer much noticed or noted.

Reading this, I’m left contemplating aging. I remember a childhood ordinary very similar to Jim’s. Setting aside the whole Mormon thing--rural Missouri in the 50s was much like rural Idaho. Jim is describing my experience too. I grew up in a rural town of 350 inhabitants, six miles from the big city of 3000 (doctor, bank, grocery store, library, drug store, Penney’s). If anything, my adult life has pushed to the edge of the new ordinary even more aggressively than Jim’s. I work for a software company, live in a large city. It’s part of my job to play with, and document, changing technology-- Web 2.0, tag clouds, social bookmarks, blogs, flickr, podcasts, WIKIs, and so on. I have a cell phone, a laptop, an IPOD, a Trio is one click away. . .

Over time, this is what I came to resist about growing older: getting frozen at some moment in time, losing vulnerability to the unknown and to change. I knew what middle-aged women looked like and did with their time as I grew up. Once you married and joined the group: you had shorter hair and had it done at Marion’s on the edge of town. You left behind young clothes, young things. Whenever I’ve started to feel stuck, frozen, in my life. I’ve tended to make what I’ve come to think of as a “leap”--and started a new version of my life. I never became the young married woman my mother raised me to be.

In the language of Jim’s post today, a series of ordinaries have been my life. I still resist getting frozen in time. But I do find that I increasingly survey the past with indulgence, fondness, sometimes a sense of loss and regret. I’m thinking more and more that I want to approach life as I’ve always, through this life of change, approached my books. Books are the one continuing thread of continuity in my life. Reading, especially novels, narratives, stories. I have expanded my sense of books. I now listen to as many books (I love my iPOD), perhaps more, than I read with my eyes (which like everything else age).

I’ve always collected books. I keep them around after I’ve read them. I buy more than I’ll every read, keep them on my shelves, hopefully look forward to reading them some day. Love living in their company.

I’ve been contemplating the changes I want to make to my house. And I’ve decided that I’ll build book cases, in the study, in the basement, maybe even in the bedroom. I love to collect. Look back as well as forward. I love the old ordinary, the aging ordinary. I don’t want to lose it. But I hope that I’ll always be open to something new. Looking for a way to build just a few more shelves. Though I do reserve the right to throw some things out.

Middle management

Between my early twenties and my early fifties, I never held a full-time job. To be honest, I generally held multiple jobs. Part-time jobs when my children were younger. Multiple jobs, at the same time, as they grew--graduate student, teacher, editor, writer, single mother. But 40 hours a week at one job never.

In my early fifties, I was hired as an editor in the documentation group at Adobe, a software company in Silicon Valley. To tell the truth, this was my first “company.” And, to my knowledge, the first I had ever had a “manager.”

During my first months on the job I used to laugh with friends that folks at my new job were gullable enough to think of my ignorance as “fresh perspective.” I had a very good gig. Within the first few months, my boss asked if I wanted a permanent job. I said yes. And then a couple of months later, she asked whether I wanted to be promoted to manager. Since each “yes” on my part meant more money, I began my trip up the corporate ladder. I was a bit chagrined to learn that, as a manager, I was expected to lead and manage entire projects. Still I coped. And within three years I had been promoted to the position of Director.

At which point I began to contemplate in a more organized way what this meant. I was sent to a year-long set of classes for “Women Unlimited”--women, as I was led to believe, on their way up. I spent one full day a month for an entire year attending these classes. I play acted, talked, listened, met with my mentor, listened to our coaches, contemplated what it mean to be a woman on her way up. Contemplated ultimately my own misery. On the final day, each of us graduates stood and told what we had learned, what we planned to do with our future. I stood, admitted my sense of being misplaced--and described my plan to get out of my job. I was lucky to talk my boss into cutting my job in half, hiring a new director, and demoting me to exalted editor and middle manager. And I took the opportunity to move from the center office to Seattle.

Where I have been for five or six years--coming on my 10th year anniversary with the company, a very good company. An ethical company, a humane company full of smart, creative people.

But ultimately the job of a middle manager is a thankless one. I’m not a particularly social person. I prefer solitude, books, walking, driving, writing. I hate parties. It takes a good deal of energy to expend myself in minor social situations. And I spend most of my time in rooms with people listening to their problems, trying to find solutions, making tough decisions that never make anyone happy. Today I came face to face with my continuing sense of misplacement , alienation, as I listened to a writer, strung out at the end of a project, unhappy with his manager, tell me what a mess our group is, of the miasma of fear and distrust, and so on and so on. When I contemplate my work, I can feel pride at progress, change. I have a modest sense of what one should expect of a job, of a company.

But I’m wondering again. Why?

Dear reader

My son, it turns out, discovered this blog and has visited it from time to time. He was left scratching his head about the question of audience.

Do I imagine an audience? Is this really public discourse? Not sure I have a good answer for a good question. Certainly what I have been writing is personal, random, modest, no obvious thread of continuity. I’ve been happy to think I have no readers. Though the gesture to publish rather than leave this on my desktop must be significant. Why have I been doing this?

Mostly the gesture comes from a lifetime of journal writing. I’m tired, bored, disgusted with what I have made of the journal. I have some random scribblings that go back to grade school. But I have journals, not daily, but consistent, since I went off to college. I have boxes of these things. And mostly I find it difficult to read them. I write when I’m frustrated. I use these journals as personal therapy. So they are full, mostly of the miseries of my life. Daily miseries are repetitious--and boring. For the most part, I don’t particularly like the person who emerges in these journals.

And I’ve had a fair amount of experience with journals. I have worked as a historian for significant periods in my life. In particular I spent a huge stretch of my middle life working daily on an amazing journal--that of Wilford Woodruff, which begins in the 1830s and continues into the 1890s. He was dedicated enough in his journaling that if he didn’t write he accounted for his lapses when he returned. On more than one occasion he wrote of his own illnesses, stopping only when he lapsed into unconsciousness. That happened with his final illness. He details this illness until days before his death.

I started by indexing the nine volumes of Wilford’s journals that had already been published. And then I excerpted from the 900 plus pages to create a one-volume version, published as “Waiting for World’s End.” This was rarely an introspective journal but always a descriptive one. And that description makes it core in plotting the story of Mormonism in its first century and the story of Utah in its first decades as well. A journal to come to again and again. It stands up.

I’ve always been entranced by those literary journals, where great writers captured glowing words that found their way into poems and novels. But that’s not what I wrote. For the most part, I fear, my journal deserves a fire, not a reader.

I realize that mostly I’ve found myself exhausted by my own journal. So this blog began as an attempt to bring discipline to my personal writing--or more precisely my writing about the personal. I would be embarrassed to publish my journal. This exercise forces me to reflect on my experience, shape it a bit.

So perhaps, I’m mostly still the reader. But I want to find a way to find some pleasure myself in what I write. Maybe that will help me find a public voice and even confidence to search more aggressively for a dear reader.

The latest on my idiot girl

Things are progressing.

My application at work has been approved. With luck, my family leave will begin on February 19.

I’ve heard that Bevin qualifies in Washington. When she moves here, the application can go in? What does that mean? I admit I’m feeling major anxiety. I will bring Bevin to Washington. But I don’t know what that will mean for my life.

Something that really hit me. I just realized that Bevin has spent more time in her life in group homes than with me, at home. How could that be? I just want to make sure that she has a good life. I’m not sure that has been the case over the past few years. i can’t continue to prioritize her life over mine. What makes her happy is very different from what makes me happy. I want to be realistic about that. I am so blessed that she is easily pleased. But I can’t take advantage of that. And I do want to make sure that her life is good. Thought I want my life to be good too.

Thomas Hardy: Things to write and think about

I’m currently reading a biography of Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomlin. I think it’s a very good book. Here’s what it’s made me think about in my own life. I want to write about both.

--Hardy at the death of his first wife wrote an incredible cycle of poems. Some of my favorite in his oevre. Her death, the end of the story, helped him to look back to the beginning. And those poems are about the beginning. I’ve been thinking that I need to write in a sympathetic vein about Richard, my first husband, the father of my children. It was good that I left him.But I wouldn’t be the person I am without him. So I need to make that clear, to myself, to my children.

--Hardy because of education and personal impulse left behind his roots. Much of the insight and energy and brilliance in his work came from a sense of being alone, finding no home, alienation from his roots--and yet love and yearning after what he’s lost. I identify here. And I want to write about that experience in my own life.Come to some kind of understanding, reconciliation, foregiveness.

I’m very much enjoying this book. I am downloading “Return of the Native.” I’ll be listening to that book again soon, returning myself.

A miracle

That saves me from my moral dilemma.

Someone at work told me to freeze my cell phone to help it dry out. So I did. After a couple of days, I extracted it from the freezer. Before I went to bed last night, I plugged it into the charger. It lit up to tell me it was charging. I woke up this morning to a helpful message that it was charged. So I took the obvious next step. I turned it on.

Voila! It started. No fanfare. No problems. Picture of my daughter still on the desktop. All my phone numbers stored. Message about voice mail (5 or so from my husband frustrated that I wouldn’t pick up).

At a meeting today, I exclaimed, "It’s a miracle."

And my co-worker quipped, "You’re pregnant?"

" No, I laundered my cell phone. I froze it. And now it works."

“Now, that’s the miracle,” he agreed.

Dodged that one. . . . .

A Moral Dilemma

Over the holidays, my husband and I changed our cell service. And as a result got new cell phones. Cool razor phones--is that the term? Fit easily in the pocket. Easy text messaging, pictures, and so on. Great fun.

Well, that was the problem. Easily fits in the pocket. A couple of nights ago I managed to launder my new cell phone. Went through the entire cycle.Found it the next morning. Very wet and very dead.

So here is my husband’s solution--after giving me a predictable little lecture on how I’m always the one to do this kind of thing. That’s another story. But I digress. . . . . His solution: take it back to Costco, play dumb. It quit. Need a new one. You should give me one.

My husband has proved over time that Costco has an amazingly liberal return policy. He has used items for years (I don’t think I exaggerate) and then returned them. Now for me this seems suspect. I don’t believe I can do this. I don’t think I can return my cell phone and maintain my cool. I will cave. I will tell them that I laundered it. I will tell the truth.

The dilemma? Two-fold. There’s the part where my dear husband continues to lecture me on my incompetence. I think that returning the phone partially redeems me in his view. I don’t like to be criticized. I’m a great avoider. So do I go against my moral, my commitment to truth telling, in order to avoid the struggle with him. But at a deep level, this little description is a blind to hide the deeper issue. Whatever brave face I put on this, I’m thinking about sending the phone to him (he lives in another state--yes, yet another story). He can return the phone. That way, I won’t have to. I won’t have to lie. But I won’t have to buy another phone.

Now this gets to the real moral dilemma. Exposes the real weakness of my position--and my character. I don’t want to do the dirty work. But I’m pretty sure I would be willing to reap the rewards. I’d be happy to have a new cell phone, a free one. This wouldn’t be the first time I’d be willing to reap the rewards of my husband’s willingness to push at the limits. He downloads music. He downloads movies. He downloads TV shows. I buy them. I work for a software company and have a lofty view of intellectual property. Still in the end, I copy his music, his movies, his TV shows to my computer, and to my ipod. I enjoy the fruits that drop from the tree of his view on what is fair and proper.

And there in is the dilemma. Or perhaps, to be blunt, my failure. I’m simply weak. I don’t have the courage of my convictions--or perhaps, to get to the point, my lack thereof.

Dumbo

I watched Dumbo this weekend with my 5-year-old granddaughter and my 2.5 year-old grandson (one of two). I can’t remember when I last watched Dumbo. But it was at least as interesting to watch my grandchildren watch Dumbo as it was to watch the distantly remembered movie from my own childhood.. The granddaughter loved it. Watched every minute. That was Clara. The grandson was a bit more on the edge. That was Sam.

Admittedly the sound was just a wee bit muddled. This was on my iPOD (I bought it from Apple site), played through the TV. (Another story, just far have we come since I last watched Dumbo. I’m not sure I even took my own children to Dumbo. Maybe the last time I saw this movie, I was a child. That is like the plot of a science fiction movie, at least one I would have watched when I was a child.)

Sam fidgeted. I had to do a running commentary of excited interest to keep him at the show (also pausing for the cookies). He did manage the movie all the way to the end, if just barely. What struck me about the movie was just how little story there was. How much was eddy, song, dance, laid-back singing and story telling. The birds in the tree, the pink elephants. No driving toward a powerful ending. No whamb, bang. It seemed so sweet and meandering. Even I was having a little problem with the pace. Get to bed, get the kids in bed, get the treats done. Get to my own book. . . . . . . .

I had thought something of the same thing the weekend before when we played part of Bambi. The first part of that movie, at least, has no plot beyond growing up, making friends. Compare this to 24 (not a children’s show I would admit). But that story takes the drive toward plot to the edge of the ridiculous and beyond. How many plots, sub-plots, dead ends, can you pack into, of all things, 24 hours. Compare the opening gambit of 24 last week (nuclear holocaust as a teaser, left behind in the end as the central plot??).

This has left me pondering patience. Meandering. Taking time. Not a skill the kids have (but should they yet?). Not a skill I may have any more. How sad. I’m the one who should know how to find a moment, savor, take my time.

Library Thing

I just found a really wonderful site called Library Thing. I had experimented with ReaderWare--cataloguing books that I buy and writing short summaries of books as I encounter them. Help the old failing memory. This site allows this online. I always like web sites--not the need to have local software. You can access the site from multiple locations. Also, it is more easily available to others. I could, if I wanted, shared with my kids or friends. Also, I like the possibility of tags, surrounding chat.

All of this is what we’ve been talking about at work. Thinking of ways to do this with software documentation. So I’m always glad to experiment online. So here’s what I’ve done over the past few days:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=idiotgirl

(And I’m also experimenting with posting this from a desktop journaling program. I write lots of pathetic stuff I’d never post. Even to this very private public space that no one reads. At least the possibility of the public makes me think twice about “bellyaching.”)

Snow

Snow in Seattle amuses me. The city shuts down and waits for the snow to melt. Schools shut down. The roads gridloack. Businesses don't open. No one talks about anything else.

I grew up in southeastern Idaho. Snow in the winter, lots of wind, and below zero temperatures. I walked to school through the eighth grade. Walked to a bus stop and waited for the bus outside until I graduated from high school--and left Idaho. We certainly never had snow days. It never even occurred to my parents to drive me to school. I can remember a few "blizzard" days--snow blowing so there's no visibility, the roads are blown shut with drifts that mount up the side of a house.

We've had some snow days for the past couple of weeks. And I've taken advantage. Stayed home. Worked "remotely." That means that if i send a lot of e-mail I can watch a little TV and walk around Green Lake (if I take my cell phone).

It does make me realize how much the world has changed, or at least my world, since I was a child. Children were pretty much on their own in southeastern Idaho. Get to school. Get home. Entertain yourself. Don't cause trouble (my dad's major advice in life, "don't bellyache. And in my family, your were expected to get good grades. But if you obeyed the rules (dealt with the snow), you were left alone, had your independence.

Probably not bad lessons in life. Not sure if snow in Seattle contributes to the betterment of humanity the way snow in Idaho did.

My new hybrid

I started talking about buying a new car last fall. I had a 2000 Volvo S40 that I loved. Few problems. Driving is my hobby. I love to explore the area, listening to an audio book. My commute is under 3 miles (and alas I drive rather than hop the bus at the corner). Most of my miles come because I love to drive. It goes back to Sunday drives with my family. Or weekend drives. To Yellowstone. To Teton--Jenny's Lake. I lived within a day's drive of those beautiful places. We used to take a day's drive with a picnic to such places. I think that set my pattern for driving. I love to drive. And since I discovered audiobooks this is a perfect experience. As close as I come to meditation. I love to read. I love to drive. I can do them at the same time. And the lure is hard to resist.

So I love to drive. And I loved my car. But I was concerned that my luck would give out. Seven years with virtually no problems for a Volvo. Everyone seemed to tell me that this couldn't last. So I started to look. Research. Do web searches. Watch cars I saw on the road.

A couple of month's back, I called my husband (he lives in Sacraento, I live in Seattle, that's another story) and started talking about car. "I just saw a Civic Hybrid on the road. Thought it looked interesting. Not so ugly as the Prius. Thought I'd do some research." And my dear husband said, "If you buy a hybrid, I will never ride in your car again." And he hung up.

I wasn't quite sure where to go from there. Who wants a husband who won't ride in your car. But who wants to fall into such a threat. I did what I'm good at--and this time around this was the best I could have done. I just didn't think about it much.
A dilemma. I was clear about that. I didn't want to fight with him. But I didn't want to fold. So I just waited. Continued to look at cars.

Why was he so against hybrids? Mostly the Prius. Someone here in Seattle put it in words for me. The smug factor. Don couldn't deal with the smug factor floating around the Prius. And I had to admit the Prius is ugly. And i've met the smug before. A waste of money. He spent 20 plus years dealing with car dealers and car credit. It will take, and I'm convinced, 5-7 years to regain the extra cost of the hybrid. You don't save money. It's a waste of money.

Which set me to thinking about why I would want a hybrid. The same reason I recycle. I want to be responsible. That's what I decided. I love to drive. And on one level that may not be a responsible hobby. I want to be responsible as I can. i want to be as little tied to the gas pump as possible. That's why I'm intrigued by the hybrid.

By the time the holidays come. And the time when I was really thinking about buying my car, my husband had mellowed as well. We test drove the Civic. He let me know, quietly, that he could live with the Civic Hybrid. So that's what I bought over the holidays. I'd rather get 40 mpg rather than 20+ if driving with an audiobook is my habit. I put 3000+ miles on my car over the two weeks of the Christmas holidays. Obviously my love of driving and reading goes beyond hte normal. So I'm glad to have my hybrid.

I'd rather feel that what i do is responsible, even if the problems of the world won't be solved. I don't want to add. My small commitment.

And I do like my little car. (Except for those fabric seat. These will be a problem!)

Vilette

I just finished listening to Villette by Charlotte Bronte. I had read the book before but never had it read to me. I didn't expect to enjoy it quite as much as I did or be as impressed. This is an odd and impressive book. Bronte is playing so explicitly with perspective. One of the key themes in the narrative has to do with surveillance and spying--watching, perspective. Much of this is focused through the contrast in the novel between Protestant and Catholic, English and foreign (French). The country is a fictional country patterned after Belgium. Bronte herself studied in Belgium, fell in love there with a teacher. The subject of her first novel, the Professor, a key focus in this one--the love interest, in the end, of Lucy Snow.

Lot of literal spying. But also amazing little set scenes such as the evening celebration when Lucy, drugged but not quite to sleep, wanders through the lit and celebrating streets, alone, distressed, and watches. She sits close enough to listen to those she knows.

A very striking book. Not so easily lovable as Jane Eyre, also a great book. But more unsettling. My Charlotte Bronte favorite.