Call me anytime.

Three simple words. Maybe you've even said them yourself. Maybe people have said them to you. I know exactly how many people have said them to me. Three.



The first person to tell me to call anytime was my grandmother. She actually told me I could call collect too. (I'm the only one in the family that ever got that half of the offer.) She told me she was up late every night, at least until nine. That part stills makes me smile. She died fifteen years ago this summer. She was my confidence. She was the one who reminded me not to be intimidated by other people with fancier backgrounds, that didn't mean that anything they had to say was worth listening to anymore than anything I had to say. I still have a letter she wrote me when I was at a summer prep school program the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. It's a total pep talk. I kept it close, on my desk, through college after she died. Whenever I need a little hit of Grandma C, there it was. She was a very wise woman, a very tough woman. She got a scholarship to attend college, but couldn't use it because she was the only one in her family with a job. It was still a pretty big accomplishment for the oldest child of two Irish immigrants with nothing more than primary school educations themselves. She was a cop, walked a beat third shift during WWII, while my grandfather was in the South Pacific. She taught all of us, especially my sister and me, that nothing in the world is as important as your family, that if you're bored you can always take a walk, reading is the most basic way to learn and you never get too old to take advantage of it and if you can't sleep, there's nothing wrong with saying a rosary or two. All of my best qualities I attribute to her.

My college boyfriend was the second person to tell me I could call him anytime. I believe he lived to regret it. There's one night, or early morning, in particular that comes to mind, but first, I should explain something about myself. I hoard. I can't explain why, as I've never gone hungry, but I hoard food. Most often it's candy, cookies or junk food that I hoard. In most cases I never eat it. Sometimes, one of my family members will come to visit and find my stash and eat it, most likely it goes bad and gets thrown out. But it's not like I hide it either ~ they'll find the stash of Easter candy in the cabinet or the months old ice cream in the freezer. My family can't understand this habit. I'm apparently the only person in the family who can have this kind of stuff around without eating it this minute. I believe that's why they find my hoarding so strange. But back to the story. I had a Christmas stocking that someone had given me full of miniature Reeses and Hershey's Kisses and such, so, of course, instead of eating the candy, I just stuffed the whole thing in my bottom desk drawer. Now, I lived in an apartment in a converted row house in Baltimore, which meant shared walls and critters visiting once in a while no matter how clean you kept things. Apparently on one of these visits, some mouse found my Christmas stash and one Spring night I was awoken by the sound of mice feasting on candy wrapped in foil. (Trust me, if you've ever heard this, you wouldn't forget the sound.) So, I was a little freaked out by the noise that was obviously IN my bedroom and we didn't live in the safest neighborhood (there is no such place in Baltimore City or at least there wasn't in the early 90s), so I called my boyfriend. By that time I had identified the noise, remembered the Christmas Stocking, turned on the light etc, and just couldn't get back to sleep. He wasn't exactly thrilled to have been woken up and asked what was probably a rather sensible question ~ what do you want me to do about it? Actually nothing. I didn't want him to do anything, except keep me company until the feasting ended and I could go back to sleep. So I probably kept him awake 90 minutes in the middle of the night, while I tried different methods of persuading the mice to leave the desk (they would not) and passed the time until they quieted down and I could go back to sleep. Consider this a public apology, 13 or 14 years late. I'm embarrassed to admit that I was ever (clinches teeth) that high maintenance and that I abused your affection. I'm sorry.

Funny to admit in an entry that was supposed to go in an entirely different direction, but it really means little to publicly apologize to a person who is about as likely to read this blog as, say, Jon Stewart. (And I would know JS had the blog because he would be trying to get in touch with me to write for his show, duh!!)

Now, it's just assumed that you can call your parents at any time, but only for certain reasons. I could never have pulled off the mice feast fiasco on my parents. Although, I think my father would have played along for a good fifteen minutes or so. You also really can't drunk dial your parents ~ if you do drunk dial your parents, you have a pathology far more serious that my hoarding tendencies... And, you should refer back to the "Dirty Little Secrets" post, because I really think "I drunk dial my parents" belongs there. But what I'm saying, is in case of emergency, you can always call your parents. I'm not saying you'll always get through. It took me half an hour of busy signals to get my mother on the phone when I called from the ER after getting in a car accident on the way to a friend's wedding. And,no, they still wouldn't get call waiting!!! I think the "call me anytime" with parents is more of a mutual understanding. There are certain situations where you are expected to call them, regardless of the hour, they would be upset if you didn't.

Now, the last person who told me to call anytime, and the only person I currently have a standing offer with, lives about 6 time zones away or so. He's probably getting ready to go to work now, while I'm considering getting to sleep. We've had the agreement, which was reciprocal, until I moved into my sister's, for over a year now. We both happened to be going through some really bad stuff at the same time, completely different stuff, but bad none the less. I guess it helps to know that someone else feels like crap, that someone else feels alone and scared of what's next, scared to stay in the same place, but even more afraid to step forward. I can't completely understand what he's going through or gone through, having never been there myself and the same goes for him and my life, but we've known each other forever and even if we don't have faith in ourselves, we have faith in each other. When he found out I got fired, he reiterated the offer. I hold that offer in my pocket like a tiny piece of a childhood security blanket. I know he will cheer me up, make me laugh, convince me that I'll be fine, make fun of the entire incident with me, provide suggestions of how karma may act out in this instance. He won't offer platitudes about how this is for the best or offer pity for my horrible luck. He'll remind me of who I am, that I land on my feet, that I'll be just fine, stronger, even. Have I taken him up on the offer? Of course not. Will I? I don't know. Maybe just having the option is enough right now.

Just What I Needed

ROAD. TRIP.

It's convenient living in Texas. There is no shortage of roads. Long, long roads.

There are things you forget about growing up. Simple things. Like the fact that a car and a driver's license equal freedom. Coincidentally, I got my official driver's license in the mail yesterday and today everyone else was headed to Houston, so I had the day to myself. I could do anything, go anywhere, with no explanations, no estimations of when I'd be back.

I started out headed to Sam's Club to get dishwasher detergent and paper towels and then got side tracked away from that access road to go to Kohl's to get new mascara but then decided to get on 290 instead to go to the big nursery on Congress and then Interstate 35 caught my eye. I'm a sucker for a good interstate.

I've been meaning to drive to San Marcos. There's the hugest (seriously, Texas huge) outlet center there with Restoration Hardware, Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel outlets that I've been planning to scope out for my new house. So, off I went.

Somehow, in the 6 months since I drove down here, I had forgotten that the speed limit on TX highways is 70mph. Most people drive 80mph or more. The road traveled through small pieces of civilization like Buda and Kyle where Home Depot and Cabela's dominated the land speckled with new housing developments. In between stretched open land and cattle grazing, but only for a few miles at a time. It was suburban sprawl at its best. You were never more than 5 miles away from a Whataburger and there were dozens of billboards to remind you of that fact.

I wandered through the Prime Outlets (never actually set foot in the Tangiers mall) in the 95 degree heat. Crate & Barrel is re-opening in a few days and Pottery Barn Outlet is enormous, actually including not only Pottery Barn, but PB Kids, PB Teen, William Sonoma, Hold Everything, and West Elm. Overwhelming would be an understatement. I spent exactly $1.25, on a cold bottle of water. That was it, although I did consider some shortalls and summer pajamas for my nephew.

When I returned back in town, I stopped by my house to check out the current state. They had emailed me a few days ago to let me know that someone had stolen some of the wiring ~ basically all the electrical wire for the kitchen, garage and laundry room, tearing out the insulation where they needed to in order to get to the copper wiring. Nice, huh? It's not like the house hasn't been completely wired for over a month without the insulation in the way and they could have been a lot less destructive. The wiring has been replaced already, but I'm not sure how long this has put the building process back. Drywall was supposed to have gone up last week and now they still need to replace the insulation in the garage where it was torn out.

My mother has taken on the why-does-this-always-happen-to-you attitude. I'm guessing getting fired and having your wiring stolen in one week falls into the category of exceptionally bad luck. I have no idea.

I only know that sitting behind the wheel of my car with Blankest Year blaring on my stereo as I flew down I35, everything felt just fine.

Turn up the volume...

Dirty Little Secrets

There's a song by the All American Rejects called "Dirty Little Secret" and it has the best video.



There are all these people who appear to be people off the street (but are probably actors) who are holding up little cards with their own dirty little secrets. Some are gross "I pee in the sink", some are sad "she cheated", some are disturbing "I'm only dating her to get closer to her sister" and some are just heartbreaking "I wish I was the other twin."

As someone who loves to study the human experience in all forms, I'm mesmerized by these confessions. The song, of course, is about having a secret lover that you're ashamed to introduce to your friends, but the video is much more. Many of the confessions seem far too personal and unique to have been written by writers and not real people ~ you know, the truth is stranger than fiction. "Sometimes I fake empathy so people will like me;" "People think I've stopped lying.... but I've just gotten better at it;" "I'm afraid no one will ever love me.. as much as my dog does;" "I want to go blind so I don't have to see them together;" "I fear I have an undiagnosed mental illness;" "I hate people who remind me of myself."

So it all makes me wonder, what would my confession be? "11 inches (ouch!!) is not worth the ego that came with it"?? That's hardly a secret, at least not to anyone else who knows the person I'm talking about. "I'm not always sure whether I want to live or die.." That would be honest and disturbing, but maybe a little too honest and disturbing. "My sister thinks I'm completely spoiled, but I would trade lives with her in a nano-second." That would be a real secret, something that I've never admitted out loud, not even in some sniping match where she accuses me of never allowing her to have any real problems in comparison to mine. My sister is a professional with the cutting remark. She can say things that slap harder than any open hand. It's all part of the roles we play in the family. She's the responsible one who manages to get by on nearly nothing. I'm the mentally ill one who cannot be trusted to take care of myself regardless of how financially stable I am. I'm just unreliable, unstable, un-everything. I was cast into the role whether I choose to play the part or not. Neat, huh?

So, how's this for a dirty little secret? I'm not the person my family expects me to be.

Self Pity

So here I am, less than two months away from the closing of my new home, having all my annual leave, (which can't be used during your first six months of employment), accruing and planning to use it when I move into my house and when my new niece or nephew is born in November and when my oldest and dearest friend in the world comes to visit in early November (we've been friends for 33 years) and boom. I get freakin' fired. I don't even have final approval the mortgage!!! I finally saved up my nest egg again after obliterating my savings during my rainy YEAR in VA and now. I get freakin' fired.

But here's the thing. As hard as I am trying to mope around and feel sorry for myself ~ and trust me, I have natural talent for this ~ I just can't.

Yes, I got fucked over once again. Someone probably should have warned Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum who just sent me packing that the last person who even considered firing me wound up basically getting publicly humiliated, blamed for the biggest public health fiasco in recent history (think Tuskegee with bears) and got run out of town. Watch your backs, gentlemen. Karma's a bitch.

Still not feeling bad for myself. Why? If I knew I would be bottling it and selling it, now wouldn't I?

Could it be I've turned into a closet optimist? (Perish the thought!!!) Could it be that I spent the morning at the greatest public pool ever (Deep Eddy) with my pregnant sister and toddler nephew and experienced the lowest body temperature I've had since moving to Texas? Quite possibly.

I have another theory. Resilience. Once you build up enough scare tissue, the new cuts cant' cut too deep because the surface of your skin is much tougher than it used to be. Have I been through a lot in my life, possibly too much? Well, yeah, of course. And somewhere along the way, without even realizing it, I learned to roll with the punches.

My aunt used to have this horrible job. She worked with displaced workers. She would frequently be brought on site to a manufacturing plant for the day that mass layoffs were announced. There would be people who had worked at these plants for twenty, thirty years. They had no education, no skills, and no clue that the end was near. Sometimes there would be armed plain clothes security on site as well. Imagine hundreds of people being told exactly what I was told ~ gather up your personal items and hand in your i.d., you no longer have a job. My aunt would be there to talk to them about applying for unemployment and programs for job retraining and other things that the state and federal government had to offer. She also did seminars on resume writing and job interviews. That job basically sucked the life out of her. But she had some of the best words of wisdom.

My favorite was about change. She told me that change was like a huge ocean wave hitting the shore. You could ride it, you could fight it, or you could just walk away. People seem to forget that the third option even exists. But, the third option is always my favorite. If you don't believe in the change, there's no reason to waste your strength and energy fighting it when you can simply walk away.

I think back to those poor souls ~ poor-God-help-us's, as my family would refer to them, it follows the there but for the grace of God walk I theory of life ~ anyway, I am so much better off. I have an education, an excellent one. I have experience, tons of it, in a very particular field that is rather short of people with my experience as diverse as mine.

And I have a family (there but for the grace...), one that will never let me fall or let me fail. For now, unless the bank asks directly if I have lost my job, I won't be telling them. My parents have agreed to co-sign on the mortgage if I need that. And my sister has said that I can stay at her house as long as I need to.

Did I mention that I've already applied for two jobs and one has already contacted me for an interview? I'm a hot commodity. Seriously.

For now, I'll just catch up on my knitting and my reading. I'll continue my plans for my new house and for my nephew's "big boy" room. I'm going to come through this just fine. I land on my feet.

I still would really like to spend a little time wallowing in self pity. Maybe I'll find a way to fit it in next week.....

S is for SUCK

I got fired today. I actually got fired. I think if I keep saying it over and over again it might actually seem real. Fired. They fired me. They gave me a letter and told me how they agonized over the decision. They told me I could go back to my office and get my personal belongings, turn in my badge, not touch my computer and leave the building. I was still within my 6 month probationary period, so I could be fired without cause. They said my skill set just didn't match the job.

Am I supposed to feel better that they agonized over the decision? Do they want me to feel bad for them?? WTF?? Do I get to admit how furious I am that I moved halfway across the country (covering my own moving expenses)for this job only to get fired five and a half months later?! Can I be pissed off that they scheduled the meeting to fire me for 3:30pm at 11am ~ why not give me the freakin' afternoon off?? Why was I working those four and a half hours anyway???? Had I known what was coming, I would have been deleting and shredding all my lit review and analysis toward the journal articles that the two guys who fired me are so damn hot to get done. Why should anyone else benefit from the work that I did?

And then, given the last few years of my life I just have to ask, when does the good stuff start happening? When do things "fall into place?" When do I get to stop trying so damn hard and fighting up hill? When do things get easy? I keep thinking that once I get through this "rough patch" good things will just start happening. But the patch seems to be extending through my thirties. How the hell did that happen, anyway?

Anytime anyone wants to throw some good will my way, feel free. It's becoming exhausting to have to make all the good things happen all by myself.

How I'm really feeling -- stone cold sober

Stand Still, Look Pretty by The Wreckers



I wanna paint my face
and pretend that I am someone else.
Sometimes I get so fed up
I don’t even wanna look at myself.
But people have problems that are worse than mine
I don’t want you to think I’m complainin’ all the time.
And I hate the way you look at me
I have to say
I wish I could start over

I am slowly falling apart
I wish you’d take a walk in my shoes for a start.
And you’ll might think it’s easy being me
You just stand still, look pretty.

Sometimes I find myself shakin in the middle of the night.
And then it hits me and I can’t even believe this is my life.
But people have problems that are worse than mine.
I don’t want you to think I’m complainin’ all the time
And I wish that everyone would shut their mouth
I’m not strong enough to deal with this.

I am slowly falling apart
I wish you’d take a walk in my shoes for a start.
And you’ll might think it’s easy being me
You just stand still, look pretty.

I am slowly falling apart
I wish you’d take a walk in my shoes for a start.
And you’ll might think it’s easy being me
You just stand still, look pretty.


I Found a Reason by Cat Power



Oh I do believe
In all the things you say
What comes is better than what came before

And youd better come come, come come to me
Better come come, come come to me
Better run, run run, run run to me
Better come

Oh I do believe
In all the things you say
What comes is better that what came before

And youd better run run, run run to me
Better run, run run, run run to me
Better come, come come, come come to me
Youd better run

My current iPod playlist -- prayer for Billy

prayer for Billy

1. How to Save a Life ~ The Fray

2. Stand Still, Look Pretty ~ The Wreckers

3. I Found a Reason ~ Cat Power

4. Beautiful Disaster ~ Kelly Clarkson
5. Under the Waves ~ Peter Droge
6. How to be Dead ~ Snow Patrol

7. Time Flies Tomorrow ~ Paul Westerberg
8. Half a World Away ~ R.E.M.
9. All At Once ~ The Fray

10. The Blankest Year ~ Nada Surf

11. Leave the Pieces ~ The Wreckers

12. Wisemen ~ James Blunt

13. Over My Head (Cable Car)~ The Fray

14. World Spins Madly On ~ The Weepies

15. These Arms ~ Matt Costa
16. Chasing Cars ~ Snow Patrol

17. All Will Be Well ~ Gabe Dixon
18. Sway ~ The Perishers

19. Somewhere a Clock is Ticking ~ Snow Patrol

20. Lost & Found ~ Adrienne Pierce
21. Brighter than Sunshine ~ Aqualung

My sister's right....

I'm not really moving out.

She keeps saying this every time I talk about the progress on my new house and any of my plans with my new house. You're not really moving out.

My nephew is fine with this idea. He says, Me and Mama and Dada and Tennyson-cat and Nenn-nenn, that's a family. My sister thinks it's hysterical that I come after the cat, but I continue to point out that the cat moved in first and (more importantly) is always home.

Apparently they're behind on the construction. They've moved the closing date back into August. My poor brother-in-law. I'm sure when he offered to let me stay with them he never imagined I'd be there for close to a year. Good thing I'm the only sibling, because I've definitely ruined it for any other siblings if we had them.

I don't even want to think about the babysitting debt I've run up....

Perspective

It's funny the way you think you know what's important in your life. You get wrapped up so easily in these minute details that seem huge. Like my job. We have this grant due in to the Feds and at the same time we're reviewing grant proposals and renewals for small grants to localities that we provide with moneys from this large federal grant. The stress level is unreal. I have multiple deadlines and these seriously twisted statistics that I need to produce and have all the appropriate documentation for ~ apparently the auditors for this grant make the IRS look like the girl scouts. And OMG! It's $40 million!! Get your mind around that!!! I've actually developed a gag or at least nausea response to everything involving this grant. Seriously. And I'm not one to have physiological reactions to work, or at least not gastrointestinal ones. I'm more of a tight neck, tension head ache type of person.

In the midst of all this tightly scheduled reviewing and grant writing there are of course a whole bunch of out of state meetings and conferences that people have to attend. I've begun to believe that HHS and CDC do this on purpose, the scheduling, just to see us squirm a little bit more. It's their sadistic side showing. Maybe they came from state programs and they feel the need to continue in the hazing tradition or maybe they just like having that kind of control over us. (JUMP!! How high?)

But back to perspective. My mother called about half an hour ago. My uncle Billy is having a heart attack. He's all alone out in upstate New York ~ we don't even have the names and phone numbers of any of his friends. He called my mom and my aunt while he was waiting for the ambulance to come and take him to the hospital. We don't even know which hospital. He lives 6 hours away from my parents and they are the closest relatives to him.

So we got on the computer and got the phone numbers for the hospitals in his city and the fire department where his ambulance came from and the bar he hangs out at and the rectory of the church he attends mass at religiously ~ my mom is working the phone. But we're all just waiting. He should be okay. He's turning 60 in a few weeks and he's been pretty healthy thus far, no diabetes or hypertension. He should be fine.

Right now, I'm just realizing how ridiculous my stress over this grant is/was. It's not like it's life or death for anyone. It's a funny thing, perspective.

She shoots! She scores!

Woo Hoo!! I am now the proud owner of the most bogus looking excuse for a driver's license anyone on earth has ever seen.

And it only took me 90 minutes of waiting and 3 separate trips!!!

You've got to be freakin' kidding me!! again

So, there I am at the Department of Public Safety, armed with my current VA driver's license, U.S. passport, raised seal numbered NH birth certificate, TX auto registration, proof of insurance AND original social security card.

And get this. Their computer's are down. No TX license for me. AGAIN.

Anyway, this just hit me today. Every time I mention to anyone from Texas about all the ridiculous hoops I've had to jump through to get a TX license, they give me the same smug response. Welcome to a border state! Well, try this one on for size, I spent the first 18 years of my life in New Hampshire, also a border state, just without the attitude problem.

Protect New York, but Don't Blame Omaha

I am so out of the loop on homeland security funding, it's laughable.

For three years of my life I nearly lived and breathed it. I knew all about drug stockpiling and carried an emergency "go kit" in the trunk of my car. I knew the protocols for the SNS (strategic national stockpile), formerly know as the NPS (national pharmaceutical stockpile). I knew the wind speed at which the bridges were closed and the city was split in two and which hospital on the far side of the river was staffed up to become a second level 1 trauma center for that half. I could message all the emergency rooms at once and keep track of ambulance diversions. I knew ICS, HEICS, NIMS and a dozen other acronyms. I worked hurricanes, local, regional, state and national drills and planned/staffed local drills. I nearly lived and breathed it.

Here in Texas, they find the whole "secure building" thing laughable. I still take it all very seriously. I guess you have a completely different perspective coming from a state that got both anthrax and a 9/11 plane. That's what got me thinking about Bob Kerrey's comments about New York and Nebraska. I'm wondering how Virginia fared in the homeland security funding.

Yes, Washington is a target, we can all agree on that. But, it seems that in those quaint little brainwashing schools where they teach little Muslim boys that there is more glory in killing oneself along with a sizable number of infidels, instead of, say, reaching the old age of 25, they really don't spend a whole lot of time on U.S. geography. At least 9 out of 10 times, when they mean to hit Washington, they hit Virginia. (Why never Maryland, which is within equal proximity??? You tell me!!)

But seriously, let's be honest. When it comes to good national targets, you're looking at Virginia anyway. Pentagon? VA. Quantico/FBI? VA. Langley/CIA? VA. North Atlantic Fleet/Norfolk? VA. Super secret Presidential Bunker? VA. (I could tell you where, but then I'd have to kill you.) Defense Intelligence Agency? VA. Any mail going to any federal office? VA. The oldest permanent U.S. settlement? VA. (okay, so that one was just a joke and really a rather lousy target since at this point it's nothing more than an archaeological site with two people living there ~ permanent settlement, my butt.) Mile long outlet mall? VA. (Scary part of that one? It's apparently one of the biggest tourist attractions in Washington. Sad commentary on our country. "Honey, do you want to go to the Smithsonian?" "Only if we have time after we go to the IKEA at Potomac Mills!") Headquarters of Gannett and USA Today? VA. Reagan (gag) National Airport? VA. 'nuff said.

How bogus does my social security card look??

Alright, so I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong. Now that I have my actual official, original Social Security card in hand, I need to admit that it could not be recreated using photoshop. You'd actually need to dig up one of those old non-electric typewriters to get the right effect!!

Now, knowing my terribly anal retentive parents, they probably started filling out the paperwork for my social security number sometime early in the third trimester and were able to pick up my card on their way home from the hospital (or something like that.) They're so much more organized than I am. And they love pointing that out. It's one of the few things they enjoy doing together, I believe.

My card was actually issued by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. (Kind of makes you think that the Cabinet had to have been a whole lot smaller then...) The card is actually "Form OA-702.1 Rev. (11-61)" Yes, as in 1961.

But this is my favorite part, verbatim, in all caps! TELL YOUR FAMILY TO NOTIFY THE NEAREST SOCIAL SECURITY OFFICE IN THE EVENT OF YOUR DEATH. IT IS ADVISABLE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH A SOCIAL SECURITY OFFICE WHEN YOU REACH RETIREMENT AGE OR IF YOU BECOME SEVERELY DISABLED.

Oh, little naive ones, as if we wouldn't....

Thoughts for the Perfect Man

All At Once by The Fray



There are certain people you just keep coming back to
She is right in front of you
You begin to wonder could you find a better one
Compared to her now she's in question

And all at once the crowd begins to sing
Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same

Maybe you want her maybe you need her
Maybe you started to compare to someone not there

Looking for the right one you line up the world to find
Where no questions cross your mind
But she won't keep on waiting for you without a doubt
Much longer for you to sort it out

And all at once the crowd begins to sing
Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same

Maybe you want her maybe you need her
Maybe you started to compare to someone not there
Maybe you want it maybe you need it,
Maybe it's all you're running from,
Perfection will not come

And all at once the crowd begins to sing
Sometimes
We'd never know what's wrong without the pain
Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same

Maybe you want her maybe you need her
Maybe you've started to compare to someone not there
Maybe you want it maybe you need it
Maybe it's all you're running from
Perfection will not come

Maybe you want her maybe you need her
Maybe you had her maybe you lost her to another
To another

The Perfect Man

So I should start by admitting that this entry started out being titled "The Perfect Guy," but my own internal semantic argument convinced me that anyone who would described merely as a guy could not be perfect. So here we are with the perfect man.

Apologies first to anyone who was hoping to read about the Hillary Duff, Heather Locklear, Chris Noth movie that is currently playing on HBO around the clock. This is not to say that Chris Noth is not the perfect man. I honestly don't know him well enough to say for sure. I've been a fan of his since his first seasons of Law & Order and actually saw him on Broadway in the revival of a Gore Vidal play. The tickets were a birthday present and we couldn't have been ten rows from the stage. What did I take away from being so close to Mr. Noth? The man has enormous feet! I mean, like seriously huge!! Granted, in the first 10 or so rows of the theater, that's the part of the cast of which you have the best view. Perhaps from the balcony they appeared to be more in proportion with him and with the feet of the rest of the cast, but I doubt it. But enough about big foot.



I am tempted to, and in the past have, believed that the perfect man exists only in the reality where Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, honest politicians, compassionate conservatives and a skin cream that gets rid of cellulite also reside. That would be the reality where I have an extremely high metabolism and am physically capable of tanning, instead of being a melanoma waiting to happen. We were brought up to believe we would meet that perfect person and (wham!) we would know it. And even though the realities of married life and marital discord were all around us, we still believed that someday we would find that magical perfect man and even more importantly, we would recognize him for what he was ~ our future. But as you grow older and wiser, you realize how much time and place come into play. You not only have to meet the right person, but at the right time and place in your life, otherwise it's all missed opportunities. The scariest thought is that you met your perfect man years and years ago ~ like he was the little boy that you were best friends with in kindegarten, who had both Mr.& Mrs. Potato Head and loved the soundtrack from The Music Man, a little boy you adored so much that you wet your snowsuit to stay outside playing with him waiting for his mother to pick him up, rather than go inside and take the time to get out of the snowgear and use the bathroom. (hypothetically) How can you possibly recognize perfect when you don't even know who you are going to be??

In my later years, however, I have become more philosophical and perhaps more generous to the realities of the world. Perfect isn't an exact measurement; it's a generalization or comparison to what else is out there. I think I've also admitted to myself that in general I don't know what I'm doing and half the time I don't know what I want.

I have watched my friends and family members get married and remained the last woman standing (alone.) I've sabotaged myself on a regular basis. I announced when I started graduate school that I was not going to get involved with anyone I met at the university ~ it had a very bad track record: it was where my parents met and where my uncle met his first wife and I'm sure there are more horror tales, but I didn't want to risk an apparent family curse. I was initially joking about it, but it turned into a self fulfilling prophecy.

I have an aunt who is only about 20 years older than me, the product of a large Irish family and the fact that my mother came before the postwar baby boom and the rest of her siblings came after. My mom had a little generation unto herself in her family. But back to my aunt. She's been dating on and off most of my life. When I was in junior high or so, she had a whole set of standards ~ the weight requirement (he had to weigh more the she did); the height requirement (he had to be at least as tall as she was, preferably taller); the hair requirement (he couldn't spend more time or money on his hair than she did) ~ and that's all I can remember. But there was constant criticism of different men who didn't meet the weight requirement or didn't meet the hair requirement.

I've never had "requirements" like my aunt's. But I can be rather difficult. Friends, hairdressers, complete strangers have criticized me for being too picky. But why should I settle? Yes, I can be a little quick to judge. There was the guy who didn't wear his seatbelt, which was bad enough (we were in graduate program for Public Health for god's sake!!!), but then he mentioned that he graduated from college with one of my best friends' little sisters. In a family where the eldest sibling was a close friend of my sister's, the middle child was a friend of mine and the youngest always seemed to be, well, really young, someone who was her classmate was just WAY too young. Then there was the guy who flirted with the teenager who served us ice cream while we were out on our first date. If it had been a male teenager, it would make for a really funny story, but since it was a 16 or 17 year old girl, it was just grotesque. Then there was the guy who talked at me for nearly 3 hours and didn't even seem to notice when I stopped listening. Or the guy who some really good friends tried to set me up with ~ whenever friends try to set you up, it really makes you wonder how they really see you. He had this killer West Virginia backhills accent and this kind of scrub brush mustache and just didn't get my jokes. He just wasn't that quick on the uptake.

So I guess you're supposed to keep plugging along and meeting new people and waiting for that right person. Just keep kissing frogs, so to speak.

Here's the thing. What do you do when you realize that the innate imperfections of everyone are not so much related to their faults, but to the fact that they don't measure up to someone else? That you have subconsciously had an ideal that you've been using and that you're unwilling to accept anyone who doesn't measure up to that person?

It's not a completely new idea. After my college boyfriend and I broke up, I actively sought out guys who were different from him, lacking his habits that drove me nuts, even if it meant sacrificing some of the better qualities that I really wanted.

But back to this ideal ~ assessing the qualities of new people and dismissing them because they don't measure up. He doesn't seem loyal enough; he doesn't get my sense of humor; he's completely full of himself; I could never imagine showing weakness in front of him; he's never very upfront about things and I don't think he's all that honest; he has no idea of where I'm coming from; his smile doesn't automatically make me smile; I think I might frighten him; he just doesn't get me; he will never understand me..... It keeps coming back to one person. And I didn't even realize I was doing it. Maybe I'll eventually find someone who is his equal. Maybe he's doing the exact same thing with me and may or may not realize it. Maybe he's never even thought about me in that way. Maybe if he ever reads this and realizes what it means he will be completely freaked out and never speak to me again.

I have no idea. All I know is that we both want the same things. We have a great deal of affection for one another on at least one level. I could just call him and tell him, but the dead silence on the other end of the phone is not something I want to experience. You really can't drop this on someone and expect some coherent conversation. And what would I say? I'm having trouble meeting the right guy, because they just don't meet my standards and apparently, my standard is you. So, you could say that I've already met the right guy. It just took me a really long time to figure that out?

Yeah, I don't think I can make that phone call. And I'm terrified of actually posting this. But the only constant in life is change. So I guess I toss the big rock into the pond and wait for the ripples to either make their way back to me or just die out.

Anniversaries

We all have anniversaries. There are those we celebrate: weddings; births; the day we met someone special; the year we graduated ~ all happy occasion.

But that are also anniversaries that we don't celebrate: deaths; sickness; major accidents; the end of relationships. We generally just suffer through those alone.

Now never having been married and never having had a child, I can't speak to whether these good anniversaries cause you to relive all of the wonderful emotions that you felt with the actual event. I do, however, have more than my share of the bad type and it seems that no matter how far you get from them, the emotion and the pain still return on the date, just like clockwork.

There's a day in October that my mother refers to as the worst day of her life. It was the beginning of 12 horrible days in my life and my family basically holds their breath around me, willing me to be strong and not feel sucked back to that time. It will be 14 years this October. I was surprised last year when my mother told me it was the worst day of her life ~ it wasn't the worst day of mine, I've had much worse. But I suppose they're right to tread lightly. We measure this distance as linear, year by year, that we traveled away from something. On the 9 year anniversary, I was overcome by a horrible anxiety. What if it's really cyclical and not linear and instead of being 9 years away, I'm coming back to being in the year before? Now that's a frightening thought ~ being doomed to relive some of the worst experiences of your life because time never truly moves you away from them anymore than it brings you back.

Today is a bad anniversary. A year ago today, I had been out of work on disability for 4 weeks. My doctors felt that the reduction in stress and the removal from the truly toxic work environment where my supervisor was seriously out to get me (among other people ~ I had just been of special interest lately) would be enough to stem the symptoms of my illness. They had convinced me that removing myself from that situation would end the freefall that I was experiencing. It was June 2nd that I took stock of my condition and myself and realized that not only was I not getting better, but I was getting worse.

If you have never experienced major depression, let me assure you. There is nothing more terrifying than a freefall. You never actually hit bottom, because there is no bottom. That's the ugly lesson that depression will teach you. And the further you fall, the less of you remains. William Styron once wrote (and I'm paraphrasing) that the mind becomes so overwhelmed calculating its own pain that it does nothing else. You basically have a ringside seat to watching your personality, the things in your life that defined you and everything disappear. In the end, your body is taken over by some shadow of your former self that haunts your former life.

So a year ago today, in complete panic, I spent the day on the phone, trying to get a hold of my psychiatrist, telling the receptionist in his office that explaining the etiquette of scheduling follow up appointments while I was in the office was going to do neither of us any good at this point, trying to explain that being suicidal did not necessarily mean I needed to go to the ER, I just needed to adjust my medication, if they could just put me in touch with my doctor. At 4 o'clock, when I still hadn't heard from my doctor, my sister provided the only thing that put a smile on my face the whole day. When I told her that he still hadn't returned my calls, she responded, completely deadpan, Maybe he's just not that into you..

Finally, at 6pm, a phone call from my doctor. 24 hours later we had altered one drug in my cocktail and I had gained optimism.

One year later and I'm still taking that same cocktail. I need to find a new doctor since I moved halfway across the country and it's not an easy task or one I look forward to. The optimism, not so much there anymore. It's hard to feel clear of something in such a short period of time, even though I know I'm doing much, much better. The anniversary just knocks me a little off kilter.

My current iPod playlist -- Saint Simon, et al

Saint Simon, et al

1. Saint Simon ~ The Shins
2. Welcome to My Life (acoustic) ~ Simple Plan
3. Sway ~ The Perishers
4. Chasing Cars ~ Snow Patrol
5. All at Once ~ The Fray
6. Chocolate ~ Snow Patrol
7. In the Rough ~ Anna Nalick
8. Not Ready to Make Nice ~ Dixie Chicks
9. Unsaid ~ The Fray
10. The Brilliant Dance ~ Dashboard Confessional
11. Over My Head (Cable Car) ~ The Fray
12. Wisemen ~ James Blunt
13. World Spins Madly On ~ The Weepies
14. The Fear You Won't Fall ~ Joshua Radin
15. Dark Blue ~ Jack's Mannequin
16. Always Love ~ Nada Surf
17. Soundtrack to Your Life ~ Ashley Parker Angel
18. How to Be Dead ~ Snow Patrol
20. I Found a Reason ~ Cat Power

My Secret Pal ROCKS!!!!

I got my first hank of yarn from my secret pal today. I just LOVE it!!! Of course, she knew I would ~ it's variegated, it's wool, it's hand dyed, it's green, blue and purple, it's chunky and so very cool!! I'm just thrilled!! This is the yarn itself..



Still not quite sure what I'm going to make with it. I'm considering the button clutch in the One Skein book, but the yarn seems a bit too nice to felt. (That just might break my heart!!) I'll keep you informed. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Secret Pal!! I only hope I can make my pal as happy as you've made me!!

Unfortunately, although I do love bath bombs, I'm seriously allergic to basically all tropical fruits. My sister, however, was very happy to receive the treat!!!

Not a form of identification..

That's actually what it says on your Social Security card. It was never meant to be carried around and flashed as proof of identity or even your SSN.

And yet, there I was at the Department of Public Safety and they flat out refused to give me a drivers license because I didn't have my social security card. I told hem how ridiculous this was, that I should be more than fine with my VA driver's license, my current US passport and my official state issued birth certificate, not to even mention my state employee photo i.d. But, no, they needed the freakin' card, or a letter from the Social Security Administration with my name and SSN on it. Cripes!! Don't they know about identity theft??? Don't they know that Texas has the second highest rate of identity theft (after Arizona) and that actually carrying around a social security card puts you at incredible risk.

I tell the state police officers how ridiculous it is to require an actual social security since anyone with any decent computer skills could probably create one. (Get real, man, my freshman year of college every dorm was making a different state driver's license.) Well, they tell, we've been trained to identify counterfeits. Just for the record, my card was issued in 1970, federal laws never suggested that social security cards employ anti-counterfeiting measures until 1983.(I did my research.) I'm saying my original card could easily be recreated on photo shop and no one would be the wiser. And it's not like they're going to put my SSN on the TX license thereby creating an i.d. with the SSN and my photo. It became illegal to put SSNs on driver's licenses in 2004. (more research)

My social security card, for the record is safely filed in a fire safe at my parents house at the other side of the country. After leaving the driver licensing place following a full blown hissy fit, I called my mother to suggest that perhaps we should have just let Mexico keep Texas. It would have worked out better for everyone!!

And please!! They're on a state server on the state computer system. They have access to the same ridiculous AccessHR (taking the Human out of Human Resources) so they could have simply had me log into the system to verify my social security number since we had already established that I was in fact a state employee. And what's the point of verifying my SSN if they're not going to trust their own freakin' databases and their own employee verification process???

Have I mentioned that I hate meaningless illogical rules that are enforced just because they exist not because they make any sense at all? The social security card is undoubtedly about documented vs. undocumented immigrants, that's what it was about in Virginia ten years ago. But anyone who has ever gotten a constitutional primer knows that being born in the U.S. makes you an automatic citizen (exhibit A: birth certificate) and well, generally, the passport only goes to citizens as well. And since these guys are so well trained to identify fraudulent documents, they shouldn't have any issue verifying the authenticity of my documents. No? Whatever.

My father is coming to visit next week, so he dug out my social security card to bring with him so that I could go back to the stupid Public Safety place. I so wish I could bring my father with me when I go back, but I'll be going directly from work. You have to understand that while my father is really a big old teddy bear, he had this ability to convey a very severe level of intimidation just by crossing his arms across his chest and looking stern. It can be incredibly useful at times.

What on earth made me think I could get my new driver's license on the first try anyway??? And on a day that I happened to have gotten my hair cut during my lunch hour (complete coincidence ~ I had no idea what evening the place was open late when I scheduled the hair appointment 6 weeks ago.) My sister's theory is that they took one look at my hair and decided there was no way they were going to take a driver's license photo when I was having a good hair day, so they just had to come up with some road block.

And here's the real gem. Once you jump through all their silly hoops, they don't actually give you a driver's license. They give you a receipt (extremely bogus and unofficial looking, I might add) and tell you that you'll receive you license in the mail in the next three weeks. WTF??? Do they have only one laminater in the whole state??? So, basically, I will be traveling less that a week after I get this crap taken care of ~ and just for fun, when they ask for photo i.d., I'm going to present them with the stupid receipt, at least in the TX airports. It will be a quiet form of rebellion mocking the state system. (I will, of course, also have my passport, but I want to see how they react to the freakin' receipt first!!)

You've got to be freakin' kidding me!

In Boston, Church Leaders Offer Atonement for Abuse

Do they really seriously think they are getting atonement from anyone?? This is nothing more than Cardinal O'Malley's 2006 tour of the parishes destroyed by pedophiles ~ the ones they know about anyway or maybe just the ones they're sharing their knowledge of. They never have released a list.

I have to agree with the protesters ~ too little, too late. It's just a band aid over a bullet hole. If they wanted to help the victims, help the community and really accept responsibility to gain atonement, they would take down the walls of secrecy. They would name the predators; they would excommunicate them. They would support the prosecution of them. They would stand fully behind the victims and try to help them regain all they had lost at the hands of the church.

My sister and I have always had strangely good instincts about people. There were some questionable teachers where we went to high school (one was later arrested), but we knew to stay away from them. And last Christmas when I was seated next to an unaccompanied minor and the 50 something guy on her other just seemed a little to attentive to her. (He hadn't even looked up when I sat down.) I had him pegged before I noticed that he was hiding an erection under his paperback and by that time I had made it clear that I was going to be occupying every moment of the little girl's time on that flight. Now that my sister has a child, we discuss the people in the neighborhood and who just doesn't seem right, like the retired school teacher up the street who is always telling her she doesn't need to worry about him because he's great with kids. It's actually kind of a joke between us about the pedophile instinct. How do know? We grew up in the Boston Archdiocese.

But back to the great atonement of 2006 and the prayer for God's forgiveness. Let's see it for what it really is. A bankrupt Catholic Diocese with ever decreasing donations making a major publicity play for the heart strings of those not personally affected by the abuse.

Get real, the victims are telling them to take their atonement and go to Hell.

Memorial Day..... And why I hate it...

Two words. Marching. Band.

We used to do three different parades on Memorial Day. We had these horrid all weather wool (meaning equally inappropriate for all weather) royal blue uniforms. You'd sweat under them through summer and early fall and freeze in them in post season football. Now if you know anything about marching band uniforms from 30 years ago, this will all sound familiar. They're designed to fit basically no one. Okay, so maybe 3 or 4 guys in the brass section actually have well fitting uniforms, but the rest of the band, forget about it. There were pants with this weirdly adjustable waist, that were in no way created to fit a girl who had even begun puberty, a blazer, a overlay with the shoulder flaps and a plumed hat to top it all off. Your uniform wasn't even designed to fit you ~ it had been purchased initially for someone who graduated 5 or 6 years earlier and then passed down, class to class, frequently with some very odd tailoring having taken place in the length of the pants or the length of the sleeves.

On Memorial Day, we would all wear shorts and tee shirts under our uniforms and whip the uniforms off as quickly as possible between parades to give our bodies the opportunity to return to a normal body temperature.

Now, it wasn't the parades that were killer, it was the standing at attention at the end of the parade for the Memorial Day speeches that was killer. People would pass out. You could count on someone from the flute section to go first, then someone from the colorguard, eventually the brass section would lose someone and then some poor soul would drop under the weight of a drum set. It was the middle parade in Hudson that killed us. They seemed to let every veteran have the opportunity to say his peace on that one day of the year.

There were mishaps. There was the year at our home parade (first parade of the day) when my sister, the drum major, gave the wrong signal, and instead of playing a nice Sousa march as we headed into the cemetery, the band broke into Another Bites the Dust. I believe that year was the last year we used contemporary music in the parade. Thinking back, it was a rather odd cemetery ~ not a whole lot of space and most of the parade had to wait outside. It was one of the oldest cemeteries in town and I doubt if there were even WWI vets buried there. It was probably strictly a Revolutionary War veterans cemetery.

Then there was the year we were going to cut back to just two parades. The band director called the city where our third parade was located and told them we couldn't attend because we had a scheduling conflict. So they rescheduled their parade, just for us. I don't really remember that parade very well ~ for any of the four years I marched in it. I must have been suffering from some degree of heat stroke by the time we got to it and was operating strictly on brain stem function.

But the best year was the one when some smart ass (probably in the brass section) started a drop pool. You didn't have to identify who would pass out, just guess the number. The band director put the kibosh on that one. He bet on zero and then brought all sorts of water and spray bottles to the parades, demanded that Hudson allow us to stand in the shade. Basically, as my sister pointed out, did what he should have been doing all along, but also cheated. He won the pool, but we continued to have water at every parade after that. We considered it a victory all around.

By my senior year we were getting new uniforms. Polyester this time, I believe. Still ill fitting ~ they wouldn't be band uniforms otherwise. By that time I was drum major and got to wear a skirt, the advantage of which was that it had not been designed for the male figure. We still froze in post season football and actually wished for a bad football team so we could avoid the post season. It wasn't the half time show that killed you, it was the four quarters of sitting on the metal bleachers waiting for a touchdown to play the Minnesota Fight Song (again, NO idea why that was our victory song!!), but I'm proud to say I learned to play it on trumpet for basketball season. (I was a state ranked oboe player.)

When I mentioned all the parade memories to my mother, she let out something between a groan and a sigh, announcing that she no longer attended parades. She had been to too many after all the years of girl scouts and marching band ~ as if! She didn't even have to march in them!!!

Clinging to Anger

There's something about anger that is hard to let go of. We all harbor our own petty grudges against the insignificant things that hinder our progress throughout life and then there are the big ones. The hardest ones to let go of is the anger you hold against yourself.

I am culturally, perhaps even genetically, programmed to hold a grudge. The Irish pass grudges from generation to generation, they cling to the same anger for centuries at a time. Just look at Northern Ireland. If you actually believe that has anything to do with religion, you need to read something by Pat Coogan. It's all about colonization, the taking of land and the forced starvation of generations. I actually went to Northern Ireland ~ Derry City, where Bloody Sunday occurred ~ and thought I could study the politics and history and not take a side. Perhaps if I were Italian?

What do I have to be so angry about? Let's see. There was my last boyfriend who I actually thought might be the guy. Seriously bad judgment on my part. Sure, he was in love with my mind, he lusted after my body, but he had very little use for me as a person. He was an arrogant, self centered, selfish jerk who felt no real obligation to be nice to me when he felt I was being clingy ~ for say, calling him to check in when I hadn't heard from him for a few days. And then there was the part where he lied to me. It wasn't until the relationship ended very badly that I realized he had lied. It was a small stupid insignificant lie that was so easily discovered that it was really ridiculous. But it got me thinking. As someone who has no talent for lying, I tend to think that there are people who lie and people who don't lie. If you lie about little things, chances are you're lying about bigger things as well. There is in fact no end to what you could be lying about. And that is how I find myself in the office of my OB/GYN asking that she just test me for everything, to be on the safe side. I'm angry at him for being the asshole that he is/was, but I'm more angry with myself for putting up with it and accepting it.

I'm angry that some moron in supply didn't know the difference between powder free and latex free and as a result I got super exposed to pure airborne latex particles and my allergy accelerated. I'm angry that I have to be so damn careful about everything I eat and that food service people are ridiculous enough to think they really need to use latex gloves as opposed to vinyl or plastic. I'm angry that I have to be the big party pooper in my office who asks the division director to ask the staff to stop decorating with latex balloons for every birthday, retirement, and secretary day. I'm angry that we as a culture are so enthralled with balloons in general ~ doens't anyone realize they can kill people??? I'm furious that I have to explain the concept of airborne exposure and anaphalaxis to the number of medical professionals that I do. I'm angry that I didn't get to see my grandmother the last two years of her life because the nursing home where she was living was one big latex stew. I'm angry that the first allergist I went to see after my really bad exposure (a native New Yorker who went to med school in Mexico ~ feel free to draw conclusions) failed to notice that I went into shock (even though his staff observed and measured the drop in body temperature and blood pressure) during my allergy test and actually had the nerve to write into my medical file that my allergy was at least partially psychosomatic.

Most of all, I'm angry that I lost the genetic lottery. Even with mental illness on both sides of the family, the risk of my parents having a child with a mental illness was 1 in 3. They only had two kids. We could have easily walked away clean. Instead, I will spend the rest of my life taking at least 6 to 8 pills a day. I will read all the fine print on the prescription plans and I will deal with behavioral health managed care (emphasis on managed). I will always have to come up with excuses as to why I have doctors' appointments at least once a month. I will have to be more careful about my stress levels and my sleep than other people, lest I risk an episode. I will always live with the knowledge that with absolute certainty, I will have another episode. I will also probably go off of my medication again one day, for reasons that I will never be able to explain. I'll then probably have to hit bottom before I can manage to get back on the meds ~ not a particularly happy way to do it. I will forever be the sick child in my family, the one my parents worry about too much and trust too little. There will never be a time when I will stop losing things to this disease.

So this is the anger I hang on to, the reason I want to slap anyone who says to me "at least you have your health." You have no freakin' idea. Will I ever let go? Let's see, does my mother still hold a grudge against the boy who backed out of going to my senior prom with me 17 years ago? She does.

If it turns out I don't have any souvenirs from my last horrible relationship and figure out he really only lied about the one small thing (cough, NOT, cough), I might let go. If someone ever develops a treatment for latex allergy (beyond the terribly convenient avoidance) or a cure for manic depression than they wouldn't be such a curse, but I would never get back the time I lost, the people and opportunities I lost. No, I think that anger will stay with me.

Finding Happiness

This post isn't actually about me. I'm not saying that I have or haven't found happiness. I'm not surfing my bliss, but I'm on the right track. This is more about whether you would stay in a place where there was no possibility of achieving what you want and need to be happy in your life. This is about an old and dear friend of mine that I can't seem to stop thinking and worrying about.

Try this on for size. You're living in a foreign country where the value system is counter to that which you were raised with and that which you have always aspired. What you want in life is to find the right person, settle down and have a family. Family is incredibly important to you because you come from a family where family was always a priority. You understand the sacrifices necessary for this and you're more than happy to make them.

However, you're living in a culture where people honestly believe that their goal in life is to suck as much pleasure out of it as possible. They don't need to plan for the future because the government takes care of things. College is free, students actually get paid to be in school, so there are no huge expenses to their parents and no student loans looming over young graduates. Women can and do have children on there own because the government will subsidize them and the father is forced to pay a fee whether he is actually a part of the child's life or not. Why bother getting married?

My friend wound up there because he married a woman from that country. He thought he had found his person. We all thought he had found his person and we adored her, if for no other reason than she adored him. We don't like her so much any more. She ended things and dragged it out, led him on, etc. etc. Basically broke his heart into a billion little pieces. We (his friends and family) suggested he come home, we asked him to come home, we begged him to come home. But he's still over there.

I can understand not wanting to go home. My world recently fell to pieces and I needed to leave where I was. I didn't want to go home. Luckily, I had a sister with a guest room halfway across the country!

There are people who leave and people who don't. No judgment call, it's just different types of people. My sister, me, this friend, we all left. Most of the people we grew up with never had any ambitions beyond getting to Boston. We were all beyond Boston the minute we graduated from high school. And after college we went even further. My sister chose Manhattan, I hit the world inside the beltway, and my friend managed to work on nearly every continent. After those things, going back to Boston feels like a failure. Not to mention that it's so damn expensive to live there! I'm not sure I could ever go back and my sister can only imagine going back if something happened to her husband and she was left alone with my nephew and the baby. But that's different, that's a catastrophe.

So is fear of failure enough to keep you in a place where you will never get what you need to be happy or be fulfilled? My sister says no. She says there has to be something there that he doesn't want to leave. Well, six weeks of vacation a year could be a definite motivator. Or maybe he doesn't realize that he's never going to find what he wants. It took me twice through his email to realize that. The first time I got caught up in the witty banter and the jokes and the reminders of our lives as teenagers. It was only when I reread it, needing to feel that light heartedness that I saw through to the truth. I doubt he's read what he wrote and saw what I saw; the harsh dichotomy of what he wants in his life and what the culture that surrounds him has to offer.

Inertia is a really powerful thing. I look back on my own life and try to see what it has taken for me to change course and usually it's been the floor falling out from under me. I've had my moments of bravery, usually followed closely by pure panic, but I try to do the things that scare me. They tend not to be so scary afterwards. I wish I could give him whatever it is he needs to move forward. I would. All he has to do is ask.

Personal Data of 26.5 Million Veterans Stolen

I know, I know. You're all expecting a rant about the level of responsibility the government needs to show when playing with information that can be used against individuals. The importance of protecting the individual over everything when collecting data and the responsibility of the data steward to protect those whose information he oversees. Blah, blah, blah. I can do that speech and maybe next week I will, but this week, let me offer an alternative explanation. But before you begin to see me as cold and detached, let me offer up that among those 26.5 million veterans, I have both friends and family, so this is a little personal.

Also, a quick disclaimer. I don't work for the Veterans Administration. I never have either as a direct employee or as the employee of a contractor. I have never even worked with VA data. Might not even recognize it if I saw it on a computer screen in front of me!

That said:
I do work and have worked for government agencies. At present, I work for the health agencies of one of the largest states in the country. I analyze huge datasets. Not all of them are in the order of the 20 million observations, but all of them are too big to be imported into only-65,000-observations-MS-Excel. Have I mentioned that the public sector is exceedingly cheap when it comes to computer hardware? I have crashed SPSS more times than I care to think of simply for lack of available memory. I even crashed MS Access for my entire unit (shhhh. They still don't know it was me.) in my first week on the job. Why all the computer problems? Well, let's see, my computer operating system is Windows 2000 ~ I don't think that's a good sign. And while I can't speak for the current IT support, in prior government jobs, I have been head and shoulders above the IT staff in computer knowledge and ability and yet, they were still able to lord administrative rights over me. I do know that when our new unit director put in an order for top of the line high speed processor, huge RAM, enormous hard drives, etc computers for us, IT questioned the need. My unit director (who had already gotten approval for the expenditure from everyone from God on down) gave IT the quick explanation about what the average state employee uses a computer for (word processing) vs. what his staff uses one for (high level data analysis of enormous datasets) and basically put the guy in his place.

Now let's review what we know about government work in data analysis. HUGE datasets. Outdated computers lacking even the minimum hardware capacity to do your job. Deadlines that were usually weeks before you got the assignment. (Forgot to mention that one earlier, didn't I?)

So here's my point. I bring work home. Everyone does. In government work, I have yet to meet someone who actually can get their work done in 40 hours per week. (I'm sure the stereotypical government worker does exist, but they're not the ones running around with advanced degrees and actual program responsibilities.) I haven't brought any datasets home (most likely because I have no analysis software on my computer right now), but I have in the past. It's really hard not to when you know that the computer sitting in your apartment has eight times the capacity of the one in your cubicle. Efficiency begs you to use the one at home. Frustration nags that you just try using your own computer, just this once. And by data protection guidelines, (i.e. the number of people who have access to the computer with the data; the number of people who have access to the office with the computer, etc) sometimes your home computer rates higher than the one in your office.

Yeah, it was probably stupid to have the data on disks ~ and lets not be moronic, we're talking about cds or zip drives in the very least. 26.5 million records do not fit on a 1.4mb disk, or even several hundred of them! Chances are the data were in some obscure (only the government would use) database format like oracle that your average felon won't be able to even open. Or with any luck, they were in SAS (excuse the obscure on the government would use comment on that one ~ don't want to piss of the SAS users of the world), a format that just won't open unless you pay the lords at the SAS Institute an enormous licensing fee to use their software (read: you don't even get to own the software). And that shouldn't be too hard for the FBI to track, convicted felons with recently purchased SAS licenses...

But let me offer up an easy fix for all of this, beyond the obvious hardware upgrades for data analysis in government work ~ why not pay these highly skilled government employees more money (like the big bucks the private sector shells out for them) so they wouldn't be living in a place where burglary is so rampant???

Vegetable incompatibility

So here's a weird one to consider. How important to you is it that the person you spend the rest of your life with shares the same tastes in foods as you do? Food allergies don't count. We're just throwing those right out. I'm talking about the president who won't eat broccoli or green beans. Would you marry someone who loved steak if you were a vegan? Probably not, but how far do you take it?

A few years ago I was visiting my sister while she was pregnant with my nephew and we decided to get pizza for lunch. She got really excited at the prospect of getting mushrooms on the pizza, a staple of pizza toppings in our home growing up. We ordered from a funky Austin pizza place and I was thrilled to be able to get artichoke hearts, spinach and roma tomatoes on the pizza, but my sister was just excited about the mushrooms. Why? Because my brother-in-law doesn't like mushrooms. Did you know this when you married him, I asked, believing that this would obviously have to be some horrible personality flaw that must have been kept hidden until it was too late to annul. But she did. In my confusing world of singleness, I couldn't quite understand how one could so calmly put aside their preference for pizza toppings and pasta sauces. I mean, seriously, isn't that one of the very early dating screeners ~ pizza preferences? You can put up with a lot for an otherwise perfect man, but someone who never lets you get your favorite pizza is really pushing it. I always thought it was rather serendipitous that my college boyfriend and I both really loved Hawaiian pizza. But then again, what do I know. Turns out, I'm allergic to pineapple.

And so I've been going along thinking my sister is the only one playing vegetable martyr (and she does play martyr well, I should add) when I'm having dinner over at a college friend's house and she announces that the reason she's cooked Mediterranean vegetable rissotto for me is because her husband hates peas. (He happens to be in Bucharest.) Now I could live a very happy life without peas. I like them, but my existence is in no way marred when they're missing from my routine. My friend, however, is apparently quite fond of them. Seeing a pattern?

This all gets me thinking, what would I give up? Hawaiian pizza is an easy one. No effort at all, in fact. But zucchini and spinach ~ not gonna give those up! Yes, I'm one of those freaks who puts zucchini in pasta sauce and lasagne and I've even been known to throw it in chili. There was even a burrito place where I went to grad school that had grilled zucchini burritos! Those babies rocked! And in Washington, there were spinach burritos, equally rocking! (Well, there was a spell following a lithium induced regurgitation of a spinach burrito that turned me off them for several years, but that's just not something worth dwelling on.) Prior to that and then many years later, when I returned to Burrito Brothers, the spinach burritos rocked!

So, I suppose, while I'm in the process of not looking (note the continuity of this blog) I will make a point of not looking for someone who is vegetably compatible.

And they say I'm too picky!!! Seriously...

What is it about health prevention that gets our moral value panties in a bind????

The article (as always from the New York Times) linked to today's blog concerns the recent FDA advisory board's unanimous approval of a vaccine for HPV. For those of you not in proverbial "KNOW" HPV is human papillomavirus, two strains of which (those included in the vaccine) are known to cause the majority of cervical cancer. HPV is an STI (If you missed the CDC changing from STD to STI, you're not alone. I have no idea when that happened!!) and is passed through unprotected sex. Being a virus it can't be treated with antibiotics and testing just became available for it in the last 20 or so years.

Anyway, conventional wisdom is that recommended use of the HPV vaccine (i.e. vaccinating girls at a young age, long before they would be sexually active and making it part of the standard vaccination protocol, eventually including boys as well ~ although the efficacy of the vaccine on males has not been proven, vaccinating males would be necessary to create herd immunity) will most certainly be shot down by the moral majority. Most likely the same people who are keeping plan B medication from becoming available over the counter and the same folks who support a pharmacist's right to refuse to dispense birth control if it goes against his or her value system.

Nice.

It's really tempting to go all "femi-nazi" here and start screaming about how these same pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control on the basis that they believe sex should only occur for procreation don't seem to have an issue with dispensing cialis or viagra without requiring assurances from those patients that they are using the medication specifically to impregnate their wives. Let's not even mention at this point that there's some question as to whether some of these drugs cause decreased fertility as well!!

We'll just stay on point. Vaccinations, right? Hepatitis B. That would be a virus that is bloodborne and primarily sexually transmitted. It had been screened out of the blood supply long before anyone was recommending the vaccine for persons outside the healthcare arena. Now it's a standard part of the childhood vaccination series. Now think with me here. It's no longer in the blood supply, so no one's getting from a transfusion. It would appear the only way to get it is from unprotected sex!! OH. MY. GOD. We're vaccinating babies against an STI! So what? Do you think we just slipped that one past the Christian Right? It is plausible since they've never struck me as particularly bright or scientifically informed.

But let me toss out a better explanation. Only half the population can get cervical cancer. That would be the people who actually have a cervix. Now let's think about those big mouthed overzealous leaders of the religious right and the moronic neo-conservatives who are running this country into the ground ~ cervix or no cervix? Need I say more?

Well, this is a good sign....

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

You know you've become a complete data/science geek when....

You find yourself yelling at your car stereo because the random selection on the cd player isn't really random. I mean, come on, if it keeps going to the same three songs, it's basically the equivalent of a die that only rolls 1s, 3s and 5s which is definitely not random, completely illegal in Nevada and most Indian Reservations and quite frankly, wonky. (And yes, that is a technical data related term.)

I understand a certain affinity for "Baba O'Riley" and am willing to accept that The Who may in fact have their very own gravitational field. But, this is Japanese engineering!!! Come on, guys!! I'm not willing to accept that your greatest wisdom was conveyed in "wax on, wax off."

Maybe we just need a bit more honesty in the labeling. Instead of randomizer, how about "car selected order"? That would be honest and definitely more accurate. Let's be honest with ourselves, there's no little random number generator inside my car spitting out numbers between 1 and 20. If there was, it would want to know if I wanted repeats allowed or not ~ and man, would that confuse the heck out of someone like my mother!!! Better yet, "driver relinquished control" of song order. That's basically what it is, until I start yelling and hitting the forward button because there's only so many times you can hear "Out here in the field!...." on you way to work.

Ah, geez, this is turning into the whole significance nightmare. If you've been there you know what I'm talking about. It's that need to ask, (whenever anyone tells you that something, anything, is significant), at what level? What's the confidence interval? And what was the power? The sample size?

And this is why geeks rarely have non-geek friends....

A 'Da Vinci Code' That Takes Longer to Watch Than Read

Okay, first of all, if you haven't read this review in the NYT, you're missing some of the best comedy writing of the (at the very least) week! (Go, run, read!!)

I read the DaVinci Code back in the day when it had only been on the bestseller's list for weeks counted in the double digits, ah, the old days. It was interesting and intriguing, no doubt, but as A.O. Scott so aptly points out ~ "Dan Brown's best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence" ~ was really poorly written. This is not to say that I didn't run out and read all his other books. Angels & Demons is by far my favorite, but that may just because I was raised Catholic and have always been enthralled by conclave.

Anyway, I place Dan Brown in the same category as John Grisham: middle aged men living out their fantasies in novels that have decent stories to tell but really ought to be written by someone else with actual writing skill. (Hello, ghostwriter anyone?) My sister's theory about Grisham is that after he sold his first million books, they didn't feel like expending the budget to have someone edit him, either that or his ego dictated that he didn't get edited.

But seriously, was there anyone actually expecting "DaVinci Code" to be another "Cinderella Man" or "Beautiful Mind"? (Wouldn't Russell Crowe have to be involved for that to happen anyway???) Seriously, with all the talk about Tom Hanks' hair (which you must admit bears a very striking resemblance to Dan Brown's, hello? middle aged man fantasy?), there must have been a real lack of meaty content to discuss. We're not THAT shallow a society, are we? Wait, don't answer that.

In all honesty, I may actually see "DaVinci Code," when it's showing three nights in row on TNT! But just to see Ian McKellen who sounds like he was aware of the ridiculousness of the proposition from the beginning and just enjoyed the ride!


ps. If you like the Dan Brown tales but can't bear his writing ~ I recommend Steve Berry and his books: The Amber Room; The Romanov Prophecy; The Third Secret; and The Templar Legacy.

But your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

So, today I walked in the March of Dimes WalkAmerica walkathon in Austin. It was a 5K/3.2 mile walk from the river up to the state house and back again. I raised $235 and got a bit of a sunburn, despite the 35 spf lotion that covered all exposed skin. I feel good about taking part in the walkathon and I support the March of Dimes, but I still have mixed feelings about the whole preemie issue. It goes back to the great Jeff Goldblum quote from Jurassic Park that titles today's blog.

This is what I know. Infant Mortality rates had been declining, but since 2002 or so, they have been increasing. The greatest increase is in the early neonatal mortality rate, the first 7 days of life. What else has been increasing? The use of ART (assisted reproductive technology) and the incidence of multiple births. Twins are common and triplets, quadruplets and even quintuplets aren't a rarity. Why? Science. Human women only have two breasts because they were only ever meant to nurse one, tops two, babies at a time. If we were meant to have litters we would be equipped with six or eight nipples like dogs, cats or rabbits. And for those of you not familiar with multiple birth gestation, you basically expect to lose around 4 weeks for each additional baby. So with twins, you're lucky to carry to 36 weeks (instead of 40), triplets, 32 and so on. Then keep in mind that they're sharing one placenta, not necessarily in a particularly equitable manner, and you're got some really shaking ground to start with. And that's before they even check into the NICU.

But back to the babies dying in the first seven days of life ~ major cause of death? Preterm delivery and very low birthweight. We've taken the NICU treatments as far as we can ~ we've stretched the limits of our technology. When do we start asking the question about whether or not a child was really meant to live? When do we consider palliative care over heroic measures? It can't be a pleasant few hours or days of life with all those tubes coming in and out of you. When we know, KNOW, that we probably can't save them, why do we put these babies through the agony?

Because we're selfish. We don't like death. We do everything possible to avoid it. (Everything, that is except eat properly, exercise regularly and get all the appropriate medical screenings.) When I discuss this with other people, they say that it's different when it's your child, but I still don't see myself wanting my child to suffer needlessly. There is enough of that in life that can't be avoided without inflicting it in on those you love.