lazing it out

I am getting my ass kicked by pollen.  Tree pollen specifically, which tree doesn’t matter, as I’m allergic to all of them.  Why on earth do the trees need to pollenate now?  Isn’t that a spring thing?  Damn cycles of nature.

But the best thing about all that allergy testing knowledge is that I now know why my ass is dragging.  Knowledge is power.  So I worked hard on not beating myself up over my extreme laziness this weekend.  I’ve been through a few discs of How I Met Your Mother, another few of Ugly Betty, watched Peggy Sue Got Married, Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy, and Last Holiday on OnDemand.  And I’ve watched TV.  I have truly married my couch this weekend, become one with it.

And I’m okay with that.

I am working on food just now, like every Sunday.  If I cook and/or prep, I eat well for the week.  If I don’t, I catch as catch can and end up eating really weird not meals.  I know I’m not alone in this.  But I hate how I feel when I do it. 

Culinarily, today has been a day of successful disasters.  Or, as my art teacher used to call them, happy accidents.  My mung bean salad and curried cauliflower dishes became Mung Loaf (vegan meatloaf) and Curry Soup (cauliflower, potatoes, rice, chickpeas).  Both were pretty good, but I don’t have a clue what the original recipes would have tasted like.  Weird, how things turn out sometimes.

Why do you vote?

When I was 17, I couldn’t wait to vote.  It wasn’t so much that I wanted to become part of our working democracy, casting my voice into the chorus of American voices electing people to guide our cities, states, and country.

No, I wanted to vote to piss off my dad.  My dad and I agreed on, well, nothing.  Ever.  I’m not sure when that started, but that’s how we ended things, too.  It was our whole relationship.  Regardless, I was excited to express my opposition to my father, his beliefs, his lifestyle, and his very being by voting (hushed whisper) voting Democrat.

I wonder sometimes if my passionate opposition to my parents — who for the record, were not particularly political — would have died without the big mouth and big ideas of Newt Gingrich.  Not that I agreed with the man.  Hells no.  But he was out there enough with his Contract that even my self-obsessed 17 year old self knew of him and his ideas for America.  And disagreed.  So I voted.  In one little punch, I defied my parents and an old white man in power.

Oh the rush of pseudo power.

Now that I’m older, slightly more learned, and pay a bit more attention to the world (oh, and have generally stopped doing things solely because my parents would not want me to), I still vote.  I still don’t agree with Newt Gingrich.*  I still only have the attention span for limited amounts of politico-speak.  But I try to pay attention because it’s my responsibility as a citizen of this country to be engaged, to be involved, and to care about the issues that affect me.

In the current parlance of politics, I am not sure how I fit in.  Over 30, I don’t think I’m quite the “young” vote anymore.  I am not a soccer mom, a hockey mom, a NASCAR dad, or, in fact, anyone’s parent.  I am not a woman over 60.  I am not a white male, a person of any specific color or ethnic group.  I have been a homeowner in the recent past, but am not currently.  I am an early 30s,  over-educated, devotedly single, liberal-leaning, fiscally-conservative professional career woman.  I am not a demographic, just a person.

In the SNL sketch, Amy Poehler’s Hillary Clinton says something to the effect of** “I didn’t want to be the first woman president.  I wanted to be president, and I happen to be a woman!”  We spend so much time trying to categorize people for our polls and studies that I think we sometimes forget that complicated, fucked up, individual people are in there somewhere, under the numbers.  I am not a demographic, just a person.

But why do I vote?  I care about things, and I want people in charge who sort of agree with me but know more than I do.  Or know enough to pick really smart people in all those disciplines. 

I vote for the environment, because I think we need to exploit some of the many renewable resources at our disposal in this country (ask Kjell about the power of wind.  I dare you.).  I like polar bears and penguins and trees.  I’ve been accused of hugging the latter (the only one of the three that won’t fight back).  I think we need to look at how our rules and regulations promote mindless consumption that benefits a corporate bottom line, but not the lives of our friends and neighbors.

I vote for education.  I loved mine, all 22 years of it, but I’ll be paying it off for the next 24 years.  Is that how we want things to go in the future?  Teaching is a joke job — it’s that throw away answer when someone asks you about your schooling: “So, what are you going to do with that degree?  Teach?“  Imagine that in the most snide, sneering voice possible.  Imagine hearing it over and over for years, knowing that your mother is a teacher, a late life career choice — choice! — and that the reason that teaching is so lowly a profession is not because of its import but because of its paycheck.  Oh, and I don’t have kids.  I don’t plan to have them.  But my friends and neighbors and family and other people in this work do, and education is the only proven cure for poverty.  Nothing else works, nothing else enhances life to the same degree.  Plus, on a purely selfish level, your spawn are part of my future employee pool.  I’d like them to be competent and intelligent.

I vote for comprehensive sexual education, world-wide.  It’s not any governmental entity’s right to control my body, my fertility, and my future, but without information, no woman or man has control over biology.  One of the key benefits of modern medicine is that we know enough now to insure that the majority of children born into this world are wanted by people who can care for them.  That we don’t use that power and that knowledge to our benefit makes us either stupid or evil.  Possibly both.

I vote for history.  I vote because I know some of what it took to gain that right, that enfranchisement, and I am not willing to disrespect those who went before me who gained that right to representation.  With taxation, of course.

I vote for food.  For its safety, for the right to know what I am eating and where it came from, for equal access to nutritional sustenance that should be a basic human right.  It is a glaring inefficiency in our system when we grow and produce enough food in the world that no one need starve, and yet so many do.  This violates the humanity in me, and I do not know how to fix it.

I vote because even when I’d like to be self-involved and self-centered, I know that the world I am part of does not revolve around me.  Paying attention to the issues that concern and affect me is a daily reminder that I am part of a larger whole.  I vote for many reasons, but they all come back to this.

*Funny story.  The one and only time my father ever picked up the phone on his own and dialed my college dorm room was in 1997.  Gingrich was part of the whole Southern Baptist Convention’s planned boycott of Disney World — all because Disney was hosting gay family pride days.  I had been boycotting Disney for years because its unoriginal story lines were retrogressive in their sexual politics, and it was a small way to challenge the corporatization of entertainment.  But since we were boycotting the same large corporation (albeit for opposite reasons), my father wanted me to know that Newt and I agreed on something.  Even if it was just that Disney may be evil.  It’s one of my favorite memories of my dad — his glee at this, my consternation. 

**I know.  It’s everywhere.  I’m too lazy to look it up tonight.

the results are in!

I am officially allergic to The World.  Yup. 

Tree pollens, grass pollens (tall and short), dust mites of all varieties, hazelnuts, and animals (cats, dogs, and horses).

Huh.  I really wouldn’t have survived before modern medicine.

natural selection

In an age without modern medicine, I would not have lived to see 30.  I realize that that was about the natural life-span in several eras, so living beyond that would not have been likely anyway, but I wouldn’t likely have made it to maturity.

See, I am just about functionally blind without glasses.  My teeth came in naturally in a way that would have insured their decay even with modern dentistry, but orthodontia (7 years of it) fixed that more or less permanently.  I have digestive issues that circumscribe my diet should I wish to live comfortably.  But worst of all, I am allergic to the world.

It is this latter infirmity that currently is killing me.  Tomorrow I get to find out how much of our world I’m directly allergic to.  To facilitate this process of discovery, I have been free of the drugs I’ve relied on, in one form or another, for the past 20 years for days now.  It has not been pleasant.  For the first time in years, I cannot wait for Monday morning.

The Question.

Other child-free and childless people know The Question.  Whether you have chosen not to have children or that choice was made for you by nature or time, people feel the need to ask.  Not only “if,” but “why.”  Not that it’s anybody’s business.  And the “why” questioning can get intense and personal if you admit to freely making the choice not to become a parent.

The Question came up the other night as I was sitting outside with my neighbors, all of whom have children.  Within the group, the kids range from adults my age to the month-old infant whose mother holds him all the time because she still “misses him” being inside her.  I find that odd, but then, I freely admit that I do not understand that bond.  Conversely, parents rarely admit to their lack of understanding of my choice. 

Now, my neighbors are nice people, and they meant no harm or persecution with their questioning.  They were not mean about it.  But it still feels intrusive.  After a discussion/description (FAR too graphic, in my opinion) of my neighbor’s recent birthing process (which, thankfully, only took 45 minutes, so there isn’t too much to discuss), one of the guys turned to me and said “Don’t you want that someday?”  I said no.  There is no other answer.  It has not been a consideration on the table for more than 20 years.  Expressions of disbelief and protestations followed, including the “But you’re so good with the kids!  They love you!”  Which is true, believe it or not.  I enjoy the younger children around the neighborhood — well, most of them.  There are a few bratty ones in the bunch.  The woman with the infant has two other children, a 6 y.o. girl and a 12 y.o. stepson, and they’re great, fun kids.  My neighbors downstairs (two brothers, both divorced) have two 9 y.o. girls between them.  I play with the kids when we’re outside sometimes, and we all have a great time.

But being great with kids has nothing to do with parenting.  Nothing.  Good parents, to me, are the ones devoted to teaching their kids how to navigate life.  Eventually, the parents will no longer be necessary, but hopefully they will be friends with their adult children and part of their lives because child and parent have transitioned into compatible adults.  That’s one hell of a long committment of hard work, and I am not willing to make it.  And even if you commit and do your level best, there are no guarantees.  If you’re going to be a half-assed parent, in my opinion, it is more selfish to have children than not to have children.

The decision to parent or remain child-free is an excrutiatingly personal one, one that should not be made lightly or taken for granted.  People ask me all the time why and how I’ve made mine, question my thought process and commitment, and frequently tell me I don’t know my own mind (as in “You’ll change your mind someday” or “You haven’t met the right man yet.”)  How rude!  I have never asked a parent “Why the hell did you decide to spawn?” or “Are you sure you made the right decision?  Any second thoughts?”  That would be unconscionable and would be socially recognized as rude, so why isn’t the reverse true?  Why is my decision less valid?

Broken

cosmic connections, or when the stars align

My first trip out of the country was financed by a long summer working for double minimum wage selling t-shirts and pins for the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games.  When I came home from college over spring break and told my parents I wanted to go to Greece the next January, my father said what would come to be a common refrain, “That’s great, kiddo.  How are you going to pay for it?”  I told him I would figure it out.  ACOG was offering the best pay I could find, and though I was out in the ‘burbs, it was a good time.  With that money, I went to the home of the Olympics.

And a taste for travel was born.  I fell in love with Greece, in love with the shock of newness, in love with the freedom having a passport gave me.  If Grover taught us anything, it’s never leave your passport at home.  You may need to go to Prague.

Apparently the Olympics are auspicious. A chance to go to China was dropped in my lap at a party about a month ago. It’s a package tour, and there will be no one I know well on the trip, just a few people I met once through a co-worker and friend. But the price is too good to pass up, and I will not need to know the billion things it would be useful to know to visit a country with little relation to the US and Western Europe. Then Monday, I got the course flyer for the local continuing ed program — and they are offering Chinese.

Too many things have come together to point east. Even my ever-cautious mother has given a thumbs up to the idea. So I sent in my deposit to hold my seat for this trip today, after clearing the leave time verbally with my boss (it’s not until March 2009). And I’m on my way to China! Beijing, Shanghai, and (I hope) Xi’an, I am on my way.

foreshadowing

There is, today, just a hint of fall in the air.  A bit of a chill in the wind, too.  I am not ready for summer to be over — we northerners have to store as much solar energy as possible for the long, cold, snowy winter — but I love that tease of fall.

Autumn is my favorite season, has been most of my life.  I like the chill.  The combination of melancholy and new beginnings.  I’ve been out of school now for 6 years (this month, in fact), but I still want to go buy new pencils — the “old fashioned” wooden ones that need sharpening, preferably in standard yellow with dark pink erasers.  Autumn smells like leaves, like old books, like apples, like mystery and intrigue and the darker, but not evil, side of life.  It’s invigorating.

But in the meantime, we do still have summer.  Long sunny days.  A few more tomatoes, a little more (soy) ice cream.  Another few barbeques.  Soak it all in.  It’s precious because it ends.

how did i get here?

Recently, a friend of mine was asking that eternal question.  You make decisions at cusps in your life, and they cumulatively lead you to the place you are today.  When you are happy with your momentary present, rose-colored glasses separate you from that past history, casting a rosy glow on your brilliance.  When you are less than happy, those decisions seem cursable, and you curse your historic self.

One tenet of Taoism, in my imperfect understanding, is that there is no good or bad, only our judgement of such.  Moments do not exist in a vacuum, but in a continuum.  We are the sum of our moments, of our relationships, of our actions and our reactions.

We are works in progress.

fear

Dating, to me, is a lot about fear.  About feeling it, about conquering it, about just ignoring it and doing what you want or need to do, sometimes.

See, last night, I was overjoyed at a good date.  My second and third thoughts today were that this couldn’t ever work — and then a list of reasons to support that.  Really, it’s that part of me doesn’t want it to work.  If I never make it past a fourth or fifth date, I’ve not invested much in something that, statistically, isn’t likely to work out in the long run.  Nikki Giovanni said that “We love because it is the only true adventure.”  She is an amazingly brilliant and well-spoken woman, so I wouldn’t dream of arguing, but I think maybe I am not strong enough for the adventure.  Or maybe I see the adventure as mountains, as Everest, when it’s really a foothill or two.  A short hike.  The thing is that short hikes are fun, exhilirating, joyous.  They are not the exhausting slog up Everest that may pay off — but also may kill you.

In some respects, I feel as though I’ve always been solo in the world.  I have family, though I am close to few of them, and I have always had few friendships and many acquaintances.  I know I am better now at letting people know part of Me, better than I was 10 or 15 years ago.  I am a work in progress on that front.  But love and relationships scare me.  In order to engage, you must open, and open wide.  I have done it.  And I have been burned. 

But then, really, so has everyone else who has ever tried.

The last time I fell in love, I fell swift and hard and thorough.  There wasn’t thinking involved.  The brain was left on the sidelines.  We met in early September, and by Veteran’s Day (mid November), I was in Love, even if it hadn’t been said out loud.  I hadn’t felt that before.  It was a thorough engulfing, even though we didn’t spend every day and night together.  I didn’t even speak to him daily — that was never our pattern, not in the nearly 2 years we were together.  The falling seemed effortless, as falling is.  There is little to do unless you try, futile though it may be, to fight the fall.  I didn’t fight it.  Needless to say, it ended, and it ended badly.  Unlike previous Relationships, there was no pretense made at “being friends” afterwards.  It was over, and it would stay Over.  I have spoken to him once since then, at an accidental meeting in the midst of a work day, and now that I’ve moved, will likely never see him again.

I thought I was completely over that, to be honest, but now I see it crop up whenever I have the choice of engaging in another Romantic Possibility.  RPs scare me, as I don’t want the hurt again.  I understand that this isn’t in any way unique.  I am not Special because of this.  But I’m trying to work through my disinclination to ever try to see an RP through again.  Just because they end does not mean they aren’t worth while.  I mean, life ends, but I’m sure trying to do my best with that.

Many words to say that I have not fallen ass over teakettle for this RP, but I would like to see if it is possible.  And in order to see if it is possible, I need to get the damn hell out of my own way.