Digging to find the brown gopher of gratitude

I read today that writing gratitude lists sometimes can make us feel worse rather than better. I find that news a great relief. Now I don't have to feel guilty about (a) not writing a list and (b) not feeling grateful. 

Gratitude means judging. We need to figure out what's worth being grateful about before we can decide to feel gratitude, am I right? Maybe you have a clear sense of good and bad, but the older I get, the more I fail to grasp the eithor/or-ness of the whole idea. I get stuck on the judgy part, trying to parse good from bad, and getting lost in the space between. My Jungian friend would call that the liminal space. I call it a mild form of hell. Life would be so much easier if I could clearly differentiate good from bad. 

It's a continuum, bla bla bla. I'm not going to debate whether it is bad to commit murder, for example, or steal a lint roller from Walmart. Those cases are not under consideration when I might be contemplating being grateful for something. I'm grateful I haven't committed murder, is that a thing to put on the list? I'm grateful I don't care if my clothes have lint on them, so a lint roller holds no appeal. 

I've maundered far and wide in this blog on the topics of creativity, success, and bad decisions, so I won't bore you with all that again. I can't remember what I've written before, but I know a few of you actually have functional memories, and I don't want to annoy. Ha. As if it were possible. But I can seek to minimize the annoyance. You are welcome.

I'm reporting today that it is possible I've made a bad decision. Oh, I've made a lot of bad decisions, and I've told you all about them, but this one might be right up there near the top of stupid things I've decided to do, worse maybe than the decision to move to Tucson. 

I decided to see if I could write a story a day. For a year. 

Not only that, I decided to publish daily on my personal website. For a year. 

I must be nuts. After eleven posts, I'm beginning to realize I might have bitten off something that is going to break all my teeth and choke me on my own spit. Not that it isn't fun writing, but writing for an audience as if no one is reading? That gets the heart rate going. Lucky for me, my heart can take it. My stomach is in knots, though. 

I think my ego is getting in the way. I just realized posting as if no one is reading isn't all that much of a challenge when no one is actually reading. 

Oh, poor me. I'm adopting a woe-is-me posture, claiming the pressure of writing and posting daily is so intense, I can hardly stand it. Truth, I don't have a subscribe option on my website. Nobody can sign up to get notified of my daily contribution to the infinite pile of stupid, poorly written stories. Whew, that's a relief. And with my mom now dead, there goes one-fifth of my readership, which was spotty even on a good day, a good day being when she could remember how to turn on her computer. What's more, my one timid foray posting on social media was like a grain of sand dropped into the Grand Canyon. My vague post was more of a practice run, really, just in case someday in the far future, when I feel like I might want to pop my head out of my isolation hole and sniff the air. 

You might ask, why put yourself out there like that, Carol? Aren't you afraid of what people will think? Friends (if that is what you are), I am not longer a perfectionist, as you will surely see if you are one of the lucky half-dozen who know who I am and can find my website. Typos, repetitive dialog, missing punctuation . . .  it's all there, like cakes that failed to rise in the Betty Crocker test kitchen, except these cakes, I mean, stories, are on full display. 

I am not a quitter. I signed myself up for the long haul. Only I will know if I failed to meet my goal. We'll see, I guess. I will try to keep you posted. 

All I can hope for is that the internet goes out. 

Flying through the night

Bill rides a bike around the trailer park in the evening and we occasionally cross paths as I'm out walking my route. A few nights ago, we stopped and had a lengthy conversation about the weather, whether it would rain, what monsoon means, and the phenomenon known as virga. 

The next evening we crossed paths again. Bill told me his wife had died last year and asked me if I would like to have her bicycle. I said yes. He told me the number of his mobile home, and two nights ago, I set out walking in that direction, despite ominous clouds and light sprinkles. I'm an Oregonian—I'm not afraid of rain, even the downpours we have here in Tucson. I marched up the middle of the asphalt road, intent on my destination. I almost didn't see the woman standing on the edge of her gravel lawn waving at me in the deepening twilight.

"You might not want to go that way."

I stopped. She was brown-haired, perhaps somewhat younger than me, who can tell, everyone in Tucson looks ageless to me. She wore a big t-shirt and loose pants. 

"Why, what's going on?" I asked.

"There's two javelinas up there walking around."

I wanted to say javelinas, I'm not afraid of two javelinas, but I didn't want to offend. At that point, the sprinkles intensified. Not quite drops yet. We both looked at the clouds and continued our conversation. 

"I've seen one javelina around," I said. "She seems pretty shy."

"They usually run in packs," she said. "They can be nasty, especially if there are babies around. Oh boy, looks like it might start pouring!"

"That's okay. I'm staying just over there, on the other side of the wash."

"Do you want a ride back home?"

I was thinking, who is this troll blocking my way? My destination was close but the rain was coming down harder. I had the feeling I just needed to back off. I was more leery of her than I was of two javelinas. To keep walking forward toward danger after her obvious warning seemed rude, so I turned around and retraced my steps. I walked around the park in circles, waiting for the rain, which didn't arrive until much later in the night, disrupting my sleep by pounding on the metal awnings. 

Last night, the sky was clear. I tried again. The troll was nowhere in sight as I marched up the street past her place. As I came around the corner, there was Bill on his bike coming toward me. I waved. 

Bill is a thin rangy sunbaked man with bad teeth, glasses, and shaky hands. Every time I've seen him, he's wearing a beige polo shirt, tan cargo shorts, knee-high socks, and well-worn white sneakers. 

"Come inside, I have something to give you," he said. "Besides the bike."

"Oh, I don't know, with Covid, is that such a good idea, to let a stranger into your home?" I said, standing on his back steps 

"Just for a minute."

He obviously didn't care about Covid. I didn't have my mask with me. I've had my shots. I assume he got his too. The likelihood of us transmitting Covid to each other was probably small. I followed him through his kitchen door, admiring his shiny beige compression socks as he went up the steps. 

"It's all original," he said, pointing proudly to the counters and cupboards. "The floor too." I nodded in appreciation, noting the1970s beige linoleum squares and pale green and white swirl Formica countertops. "My daughter-in-law painted that part," Bill said, pointing to a strip of blood red wall running around the room above the white cupboards. I admired the breakfast bar with its pale swirly Formica surface. "Psychedelic," he grinned.

He led me into the dining room, which was carpeted in plush beige shag. I took off my shoes and left them on the kitchen floor. He told me the story of his dark brown oak dining room table (oak grown in the U.S., shipped to the Netherlands to be made into a dining set, and then shipped back to the U.S.).  Next, we toured the living room. Three big overstuffed pieces of furniture occupied half the space, arranged around a coffee table. The base of the table was wrought iron, and the top was made from squares of desert-colored cut rock. "It took two guys to get that thing in here," Bill said proudly. 

A large dark wood entertainment center dominated the wall opposite the longest sofa. Bill pulled out doors and opened cupboards to display his collection of DVDs and CDs. He asked me what kind of music I like. I mentioned 1980s new wave dance music. I wonder if he's heard of New Order or David Bowie. 

"You'll like this, then," he said, handing me a stack of CDs with hand-written labels. He'd compiled his favorite songs onto CDs. I lifted my glasses so I could read the songs. "Air Supply," I murmured. "Okay." 

"You take those and listen to them." 

I dutifully accepted a small stack of CDs and held them carefully as he led me over to a table against the wall. The table was covered end to end with sympathy cards. In the center of the table was a wooden box with an engraved tree on the front. I read the inscription about losing a limb from the family tree. Bill started to read it and choked up. I finished reading it for him. 

"Everyone here loved her so much," he said. "She was the nicest person you could ever hope to meet."

I did my best to be a good listener. When it was time to go, Bill put the CDs in a plastic bag along with an extra inner tube for the bike tires. I slipped my shoes back on and followed him out to the carport. He got a little bike out of a shed and wheeled it to me. It was a sturdy girl's bike with tall handle bars, no gears, and old-fashioned foot brakes, a lot like the bikes I rode as a child. I got onboard. 

"You have changed my life today, Bill," I said, thinking about the rides I could take on the bike path and around the mobile home park. He grinned. 

"I hope I remember how to do this," I said. I hung the plastic bag on the handlebar and off I went into the darkness. 

I rode back to the trailer, reveling in the warm darkness. When I pulled up next to my car, I heard a voice.

"I just wanted to make sure you got home okay."

I knew right away who it was. I turned and saw Bill on his bike. 

I'm back... in the land of the upright, that is

Maybe my throbbing right inner ear knew that I meant business when I made a doctor's appointment. Maybe my ear decided to cooperate, knowing the gig was up. Whatever the reason, today I am gently swaying rather than violently swirling. That is a good thing. What am I talking about? Vertigo, baby. The silent dismemberer of intentions, the invisible destroyer of brain capacity, the soul-sucking energy vampire that overwhelms your brain with sneaky waves of fog and water. Ugh. It sounds horrible, doesn't it. It is horrible. I hear it's pretty common. I wonder how many people are laying on their kitchen floor tiles, puking into buckets, and hoping death will come for them soon.

Today, at last, the happy day of my doctor's appointment, and as all happy days do, this day dawned bright and clear. My main concern was that I should make it to the doctor's office without driving my car up on a curb or taking out someone's brand new Prius. My mother was supposed to be on standby to give me a ride if the ocean in my head turned stormy.

Luckily, I felt pretty okay, calm inner seas. I called my mother to notify her that her chauffeur services would not be required. She wasn't home. Later I found out she was out getting her hair cut.

I talk to myself a lot. Do you do that? For the past almost two weeks, I've been talking to my inner ear, berating it, begging it to behave, threatening to send it to the doctor. My ear, like all minor-league demi-gods, has responded by laughing. And then swamping my mental boat with 30-foot waves.

I know I'm giving free-agent characteristics to my inner ear, but I've spent so much time talking to it, I'm fairly sure it now has a rudimentary intelligence. If I listen very closely, I can hear it muttering something. Sounds like redrum, redrum. No, I'm kidding. It doesn't say that. I am officially hard of hearing in my right ear, according to the doctor's tuning fork. (I haven't seen a tuning fork since grade school. How cool are tuning forks?) If my ear said anything, I didn't hear it.

The doctor directed me to pinch my nose shut and blow, ten times a day. Apparently, I have a case of airplane ear, my sister says, who is the expert on world travel by plane. Who knew there was a name for that icky pressurized pain? As a special bonus gift from the universe, I also have chronic ear crackling, kind of a soapsuds-in-your-ear sound, which I can hear just fine, oddly enough, considering I'm almost deaf in that ear. I've had that for over a year.

“And you didn't see anybody for it?” the doctor asked, gazing at me quizzically. Subtext: WTF?

“No, I thought I would handle it the way my father handled his physical ailments: by eating 10 maple bars and doing bicep curls with 20-pound dumbbells.”

“And how well did that work out for him?”

“Not so good. He died from a heart problem he could have had fixed.”

I didn't really say that. I thought it, though. I did tell her that my father's cure for everything was to lift weights. She didn't look impressed. No doubt she could tell that I wasn't really following that regimen very closely. She prescribed an antihistamine. Take it for a month, she said. And she wrote a referral to an ENT specialist. I left feeling no less dizzy, but for some reason, much, much better.

I managed to glide through the grocery store, hanging onto the cart like an old lady with a walker, before going home and crashing into bed. In about 30 seconds, the tsunami flooded my brain. The elevator floor fell out, and down I went, going with the flow. Bring it on, I moaned. I waggled my head this way and that, trying the Epley Maneuver in a last ditch effort to wrest control back from my evil inner ear. Let 'er rip, I groaned. Do your worst. I waited until the waves receded to a gentle rocking. Then I went to sleep for two hours.

When I woke up, the fog was lifted. The waves had calmed. The mental boat is still gently rocking while I write this, but now I seem to have found my sea legs. I don't know what happened. Timing, probably. The evil little calcium crystals in my inner ear probably finally dissolved, or moved, or settled down, or whatever the hell they do when they are behaving, and I'm returned to my full upright and locked position. I have no idea what happened today. Any mystery with a happy outcome seems like a miracle. I'm not complaining. Yesterday sucked, and tomorrow may be a repeat of yesterday, but today I won the battle for my equilibrium. Yay me.

Merry ho ho ho from the Hellish Hand-basket

It's the end of the year again, time to get maudlin over mistakes made and opportunities missed. All those wasted moments spent networking with people whose names I've forgotten ten seconds after they hand me their business cards. (Even the ones I sort of liked.) All those frustrating minutes spent writing and posting content to the white meat version of social media to support a business strategy I never really believed in but adopted on the pompous recommendation of some so-called experts. All those long tedious hours spent editing other people's lousy essays instead of writing my own lousy essays. Woe. Woe is me.

Time to regret the past as it muscles its way around me into 2015. I'd shut the door on it if I could. Or at least, on 2014. I'd shove it out on the porch and slam the door on it so fast. Take that, you stupid past, you.... go fight over the birdseed with the squirrels and rats! I guess I could say it's been a tough year. But that would just make me sound whiny, self-centered, and chronically malcontented.

Is this a happy time of year for you? Do you get all amped up with the high-voltage season? Do you like all those smells you mostly only get in December? You know the smells I mean: recently cut and soon-to-be-dead fir trees? Egg nog lattes? Nutmeg and cinnamon? Bayberry candles?

Do your eyes bug out of your head with all the twinkling lights? Are your neighbors trying to outdo each other with their yards full of tasteless glowing Santas and radioactive snowmen? Oh, sorry, I mean snowpeople. And the sounds! Zounds! The endless loops of insipid music playing from staticky speakers in the grocery store an orchestral rendition of The Little Drummer Boy, pounding holes in your head?

Oh, sorry. There I go, projecting my stuff onto you. Maybe you like The Little Drummer Boy on an endless loop while you are grousing over the price of zucchini. And what's not to like, really. Drums and boys, I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

I finished a particularly tedious editing job last night about 11:00 and uploaded it into the magical cloud, whoosh! Off it went into cyberland where I assume some cranky elves are parceling each massive wretched tome back to its author, who will open up his or her nicely wrapped file in the morning and exclaim in horror at the red ink bloodbath. (Well, red, blue, and green, if I turn on all the Track Changes options.) Super festive editing for a super festive season. The author of yesterday's debacle will probably feel a little sick when he sees my hatchet job and my terse warning about the consequences of plagiarism, but it won't be anything that a little eggnog and a shot of rum won't cure.

There was nothing new in my inbox this morning, so I decided I would spend the day cleaning up around the Love Shack. If you have followed my blog over the past year, you will know that the number of times I talk about cleaning up the apartment corresponds to exactly the number of times I have cleaned up the apartment. That is to say, twice. Maybe three times at the most. So you can understand, it is a momentous occasion when I pull out the vacuum cleaner. My cat opts out, slinking under the couch until my conniption fit is over. I guess if I revved up the vacuum cleaner more often, he might not find it so frightening. Oh well. Three times a year, dude... that hardly qualifies as torture.

I changed the sheets on the bed and fed all my quarters into the greedy machines in the basement to do two loads of laundry, one of cotton stuff and one of fleece stuff. I folded all the warm undies, t-shirts, and towels and put everything away out of sight. Next, I figured out that I could use a small fine-toothed comb to remove the clingy cat hair furballs that dot my fleece jackets, pants, and blankets. That took a while and made quite a pile of cat hair. Finally, I vacuumed the bedroom rug. I even swapped out the bulging cleaner bag. By that time, my nose was in full protest, and it hasn't stopped protesting since...achoooo!...three hours later. Maybe that is why I'm a grinch tonight. It's hard to feel the joy of the season when one's nose is constantly dripping.

Well, happy holidays from the Hellish Hand-basket. Thanks for reading. (Or visiting and clicking away with an annoyed curse, which is what I suspect most visitors do.) I hope your holiday season is happy and filled with just enough joyful surprise to remind you that life is worth living, even if the future is bleary and the past is a bully. Somewhere in the now is where we'll find that old holiday spirit, kicked back in an easy chair with a glass of potent eggnog in one hand and a cigar in the other, watching reruns of Gilligan's Island. Enjoy the season, Pop, wherever you are.

Mom dodges the slammer

I honored one of my relatively recent holiday traditions last week: I celebrated Buy Nothing Day on Black Friday. I'm happy to let the happy holidays pass me by. I'd be a lot happier if the places I hunt, forage, and gather my food could be separated from the places where maniacal holiday shoppers congregate en masse in pursuit of deals. Alas, the world of retail commerce is not organized to suit introverted outliers like me. As my friend Sheryl would say, suck it up.

It's always something, especially during the holiday season. This week my mother's heat pump went out. She found out things weren't working properly when she got an inordinately high heating bill.

“The fan is running all the time” she complained. “I've set the thermostat to 55° to get the fan to shut off. Your brother brought over a space heater.” Great. My 85-year old mother is hunkered down in her dark freezing condo, huddled next to a space heater. This situation could be described as a disaster waiting to happen. I can picture my mother going out to the garage for a smoke, leaving the heater on full blast next to her lap blanket.

“Did you call the furnace guy?” I asked.

“I'm on the list, I think,” she replied. I wondered if it was finally time for me to step in and take control. Should I be calling repair people on her behalf? Should I be paying her bills? Isn't that one step away from moving in with her? I feel like a rabbit frozen in oncoming headlights. There will be no coming back from that move, I fear.

“You won't believe what else happened,” she went on.

“What?”

“I was driving on Hassalo, you know, where the road is gravel off to both sides? There was a car coming, so I moved over to the right.”

“Oh, no,” I said before I could stop myself, picturing the worst: parked car, cat, kid? Insurance bills, legal problems, jail time? I can't imagine my 85-year-old mother in prison orange. She's more of a winter.

“Some dumb homeowner didn't pull their garbage can back far enough and I hit it with my right side mirror,” she said in disgust. Then she burst into hearty laughter.

It's a good thing we were talking on the phone so she couldn't see my terrified face.

“The mirror popped out of its socket,” she said. “I went back and found it. I can get your brother to glue it back in.”

Luckily sounds like the garbage can survived. (Of course, the whole thing was the homeowner's fault.) Did we dodge a bullet? Not sure. Maybe. I'll take the gift, in honor of the season.

Another Thanksgiving adventure

My scrawny 85-year-old mother called me a few minutes ago. “Have you ever had a worse Thanksgiving meal?” she asked. I had just finished admiring my friend Bravadita's colorful repast, described on her blog, complete with mouthwatering photographs. Roasted brussel sprouts. Mmmmm. I was inclined to say, no, probably not. But that would have been an untruth. Yes, I admit, it probably wasn't the greatest Thanksgiving meal I've had, but it wasn't the worst, by far.

Here's what happened. Yesterday I picked my mother up about 10:45; we rumbled through the rain to a local crappy chain diner (where my mother often eats with her cronies), where we met my younger brother. I'll call him Spike. We strolled into the place behind an older couple, who stood staring at the glass case full of pies.

“We are here to get a pie to go,” said the old man. We quickly sidestepped our way to the counter and were seated forthwith in a booth with a nice view of a gray wet boulevard. Mom ordered a turkey sandwich (which she told me today was chicken. I'm not sure if it was chicken when it was supposed to have been turkey, or if it was chicken from the get go, or if I simply misheard her when she ordered, assuming that because it was Thanksgiving, she would get a turkey sandwich.... am I making sense?)

My brother ordered a Denver omelette, which prompted some discussion about why an omelette might be named after a city in Colorado. I ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, and pancakes. We all had coffee, which led to a discussion about how the coffee was better than expected, and how the best coffee comes from Astoria, but we couldn't remember the name of the company that roasted it, only that the best stuff is called Thundermuck.

The food came fast as the place filled up with families. The servers were speeding around, looking harried. I mentioned to Spike and my mother that my eggs were cold, but I didn't really care. I often eat cold eggs. They tasted fine to me. The bacon was good, too, but I really just wanted the pancakes (syrup and butter, mmmm). Sadly, they were somewhat disappointing, being simultaneously doughy and hard (is such a thing scientifically possible?). Still, I was enjoying myself, sitting across from what is left of my local family. I took Spike's picture, and he took mine. We teased each other gently; our teasing is a pale version of what it used to be: we are old now, and tired.

The whole dining adventure was over in an hour. Spike declared his intention to go home and take a nap. Mom and I agreed it was too early to take a nap. “I'll probably play some computer games,” she said with a resigned sigh. I had a paper to finish editing. Every day is a work day for me. My brother and I split the bill while my mother was making a pitstop in the restroom, which prompted a discussion on the way home about the importance of learning to gracefully receive a gift, because to repudiate a gift diminishes the giver. That shut her up for a while.

I left her standing in the rain in her driveway, waving her little wizened hand at me. I trundled my moss-covered Ford Focus home, thinking I need to replace my wipers, and had some more coffee before I started editing the paper (a dissertation on probabilities and real options... I know, what?). When my eyes were properly crossed, I watched an episode of True Blood and then went to bed. As Thanksgivings go, it was one of the better ones.

The worst Thanksgivings were the ones from my preteen childhood, in which my grandmother invaded my mother's kitchen, my father and grandfather watched football, my older brother read a book in a quiet corner, and my sister and Spike duked it out in silent fury. Where was I? No recollection. I'm pretty sure I was there, but I might not have been completely there, if you know what I mean.

The second worst Thanksgivings were the ones I attended at the homes of various boyfriends. For example, I visited the surfer dude's bronzed parents, who lived in a ranch house in Newbury Park, California. I was an overdressed new wave mannequin in turkey-sized shoulder pads: it was 1980, after all. (But I was in the garment industry: it was my job to look edgy.) The surfer dude's two-packs-a-day mother and her bizarre onion casserole was mitigated by the desert heat.

A few years later, the surfer dude was gone, displaced by the Jewish dude. The Jewish dude's mother made chicken soup without salt or seasoning. His siblings tolerated me, but I think his father was secretly fascinated by the wild fashionista goy toy with spiked hair. (That would be me.)

Finally, I figured out how to say no and stay home.

The best Thanksgiving ever was the year when my sister came to Los Angeles to work for the Getty on a museum grant. While the Jewish dude went off to do the family thing, she and I stayed home and watched movies and ate popcorn for dinner. Despite that being the year of the Malibu fires, floods, and the Northridge Earthquake, it was one of my best years in LA, because she was there.

“Didn't you want to send the eggs back?” my mother asked me on the phone.

“No,” I said. I thought about trying to tell her how much I am thankful we aren't doing the whole cooking and cleaning insanity anymore. And I wanted to tell her, too, how much I enjoy going out to eat with her once in a while, and how much I will miss her when she is gone. But that's probably best left for another day. All I said was, “No, I don't mind cold eggs once in a while. It's all part of the adventure.”

I'll have some fries, with a side of righteous indignation, please

No complaints from rainbow city. I'll take our unsettled rain squalls and sun breaks over 6-foot snow drifts any day. On the hierarchy of things to complain about, cold comes first, way above wet. Pretty much the worst thing here in the Northwest is cold AND wet, which happens predictably often for nine months of the year. But yesterday the temp hit 56°! After the arctic polar Canadian chill blast thingie, it felt downright balmy. What's a little moisture when it's practically tropical!

How did I celebrate? Thanks for asking. In anticipation of my upcoming personal health insurance nightmare, in which I throw myself upon the mercy of the open market, I showed up for my 50,000-mile checkup with my soon-to-be former doctor at Kaiser. She's wonderful. Even when she's probing my lady parts, I know I'm in capable hands. Nobody is allowed to visit the private terrain down there except my wonderful doctor.

The assistant, on the other hand, was... well, I could say her behavior was disappointing, but I think I'll describe her as a king hell bummer hot mess. I can only assume she trained at the career college for which I used to work. I didn't ask, I assumed. Not nice of me, I know.

First, she was brusque and breezy. Normally, I don't mind brusque and breezy. You can be brusque and breezy, and still be personable. Just quickly personable, as you rush away to do something no doubt more important. I could accept that. But she didn't seem inclined to slow down and look me in the eye.

“You were just here in July,” she said accusingly, looking at the computer screen which is now de rigeur for every doctor's office.

“I know,” I sighed. “It wasn't my idea.”

“What do you mean?” she frowned.

“I got a robocall,” I tried to explain, and even as I spoke, I realized I had failed to put the right amount of righteous indignation in my voice. If I had just sounded like a customer, I'm sure she would have backed off. In my defense, it was barely 8:30 in the morning (crack of dawn for this puppy), and I hadn't had anything to eat. I didn't have much enthusiasm for churning up some frothy indignation. Wishing that pap smear services came with a coffee bar, I went on, “The voice said to call, and so I called. The girl who answered said I should make an appointment, so here I am.”

“Huh. Do you want a flu shot while you are here?”

“Sure, why not,” I sighed.

“Here. Opening goes in the back.” She handed me a white sheet and a paisley gown and sped out the door. Chanting to myself opening goes in the back, opening goes in the back, I shucked my layers and proceeded to drape myself in the one-size-fits-most cotton gown. I sat on the end of the table, scritching my butt on the paper cover and waited.

After about five minutes, the aide knocked on the door and came in, carrying something I didn't want to look at too closely.

She grabbed my left arm, flipped the cover off the syringe, and jammed the needle into my muscle. With one hand, she slapped a little blue-patterned band-aid over the hole she'd made in my arm. It happened so fast, I had a mere moment to be simultaneously appalled and impressed. Clearly, she did this often. Clearly, I did not.

The actual exam took an anti-climactic ten minutes, tops. After being poked and prodded, reamed, steamed, and drycleaned, and after wishing my doctor happy holidays, silently hoping I would see her next year, I dragged my clothes back on and shuffled down to the lab to get some blood drawn for a cholesterol check. As I sat there, a little damp and used, waiting my turn, I began to feel a little wan. I chalked it up to lack of food, rain, and pelvic exam.

Later, back at home, I fixed eggs and a pile of broccoli and zucchini and scarfed it down. Pretty soon I felt even worse. My left shoulder hurt: I could barely raise my arm without groaning. In fact, all my joints hurt. I felt achy all over. Hey! I think I have the flu. What the—!

I took a nap, but that didn't help. I met a friend for dinner. She told me that the aide didn't know how to give a proper shot. That helped briefly, as did the french fries, but by TV time, I was moaning on the couch. My cat looked askance at me as I kicked the blankets in frustration. I couldn't find a position that didn't hurt, and my shoulder felt like I had been shot. Or how I imagined it might feel had I actually been shot. Finally, I gave up. I took an ibuprofen and went to bed. Exit, stage right, dragging a case of righteous indignation like a full diaper behind me.

The next day, I felt fine, and thus was able to appreciate the magnificent sight of a double rainbow glowing against the massive gray clouds piled up before me. It was gone quickly, as the rain clouds scudded off to the east to dump snow on Mt. Hood. I reveled in a fleeting glimpse of blue sky, enjoying a delicious 5-minute respite before the next deluge.

Stop twiddling and get a life!

I launched the Hellish Handbasket Blog in January of 2012 as I was headed into one of my many recurring dark nights of my soul: my interminable pursuit of a terminal degree. I wanted a place to lighten my load by dumping my emotional ballast, as it were. And I must say, this blog has served me well as a listening post, absorbing my chronic whining and transmitting my frothy yearnings into the blogosphere.

And lo, the blogosphere has responded. Over time, I have built a modest following consisting of a handful of friends and relatives and a few strangers from Latvia and China who cruise through for a minute or two, probably looking for a hole in the cyber dike. Well, that's Google's problem, not mine. In any case, I was getting a few dozens of page views (including maybe a few bonafide readers) per month and, considering this is an anonymous blog, I thought I was doing okay. And then I innocently posted a post about twiddling and everything changed.

When I was young, the word twiddling referred to an activity one did with one's thumbs. I hesitate to Google the term now, for fear of luring drooling hackers and sneaky viruses to my cyber door, but I'm pretty sure twiddling no longer means what it used to mean. If you look at all my posts from the last three years as bars in a vertical column chart, every post is as flat as lettuce in a vegetable garden except that one post, which is the One World Trade Center Tower of my blog. There is only one thing that could attract that kind of attention: sex.

Now, you could say I'm trying to capitalize on that one post's popularity by attempting to duplicate its energetic verve with this post. You could say that. But you would be wrong. Because I am not interested in attracting wackjobs and knuckleheads seeking to read about twiddling anything but the traditional thumbs. Whoa, I can see I'm going to get in trouble here. Honestly, I shudder to imagine all the things one can do with thumbs that I have never considered. But I'm not going there here, not today.

I just want to say, good grief, stop twiddling, whatever the hell that is, and get a life! I'm happy being an obscure anonymous blogger. I don't sell ad space on my site, so all your cavorting through my twiddling post is not netting me anything but a totally lopsided out of whack stats page! My other posts are infinitesimal specks compared to that one damn post. What the hell, you guys?

I suspect there is a mountain of spam aimed directly at my tiny anonymous blog being barely held back by a small army of Google minions somewhere in a data warehouse in Cupertino. I hope the cyber dike holds. Don't let go, cyber minions.

Meanwhile, I will continue blogging about the inconsequential minutiae of my days as I drift in and out of earning, writing, and networking. Boring stuff, I know, compared to sex. Maybe it would help to think of it as an invitation to use your imagination. Okay, I've said my part. Do with it what you will. I'm off to do some twiddling of my own. At last! The Walking Dead is in reruns.

Let them eat cake

It seems like every time I write about an event I attended, I start with “I survived the...” Is that odd? Do you do that? No, probably not. I guess the best I can do these days is survive. Thriving, or succeeding, or seizing the day are all way outside my current zone of expectations. That's okay. I'm clinging to the short branches, breathing the rarefied air of entrepreneurship. I expect things to be challenging. Like camping at the Oregon coast, for example, which I vow never to do again (rain).

I am happy to inform you that I survived my 40th high school reunion, held yesterday at a park situated on Hwy 224 past Estacada, which, if you are familiar with the Clackamas County area, is part of the exurbian hinterlands. It was a lovely drive, though, along winding tree-lined, single-lane roads, I admit.

I left about 9:15 a.m., and got there a little more than an hour later, delayed ten minutes by an overturned panel truck, lying on it's side in the roadway. Luckily for me, a civilian directed traffic around the truck. More relevant, luckily for them, it appeared no one was injured. As I drove by, I got a 5-second look at the underside of a large truck: not something you see every day (unless you are a truck mechanic).

The other three members of the reunion planning committee were already there when I arrived. Everything was in place except the balloons and the easel, which were in my trunk. I unloaded my stuff and took a look at the layout.

“Having the registration table here is going to create a bottleneck at the bottom of the stairs,” I said, hands on my hips.

They looked at me skeptically, but gamely helped me move the table about ten feet away into an L-shaped alcove. Good call. For most of the rest of the day, I manned the table, checking people in, taking money, making change, filling out receipts, and peeling off name tags. I was safely barricaded, with plenty to do, and blessed with limited social interaction. My perfect job. Too bad it didn't pay.

The park was small, perched on a low bluff over the Clackamas River. Tall fir trees provided abundant shade. The picnic structure was partly covered by a barnlike shed with a huge stone fireplace at one end, and partly in the open, where chairs were scattered around the edges of a wide wooden deck. Picnic tables spanned the length of both spaces. The two committee members in charge of the food arranged a staggering selection of fruit and veggie trays, chips, salads, and other dishes neatly on the tables under the shelter. Flies immediately descended on the croissant sandwiches. I snapped photos of the decorated cake, offering a silent prayer to the reunion gods that I might be allowed to avoid eating any of it.

The weather was perfect: the air was warm, just a tiny bit humid, and there was plenty of shade. The sleepy Clackamas River basked below us, accessible by a short but steep trail, at the bottom of which was an unoccupied wooden dock built for boaters and kayakers. We had none of those, and there wasn't much river traffic, so the River provided a silent but picturesque backdrop for the mini social dramas that unfolded on the deck above.

There was a fair amount of squealing among the women, as they stared at and then recognized former classmates and friends. There was no shortage of hugs. I had a ringside seat behind the registration table. I would eyeball each newcomer as they came down the concrete steps from the parking area, trying to guess his or her identity: is this a classmate or a spouse? Even after scanning yearbook photos and printing name tags, I got only about half of their names right and managed to call at least two people by the wrong name. Can I blame early dementia?

Few classmates looked like their high school yearbook photo, which I had thoughtfully provided on their name tags. Most of the women were obese, the men not so much (although for some reason there were many portly male spouses). After 40 years, it's no surprise we all look somewhat haggard. A few, though, seemed especially aged, while a few others seemed untouched by time. Many of the classmates had major health issues: diabetes, pacemakers, knee replacements... not to mention the challenges of dealing with aging or dying parents and adult children who refuse to grow up, hold down jobs, or marry the right partner. I was so glad to be single and childless. And I hereby declare that I'm going to stop complaining about my mustache: Clearly, it could be a lot worse.

On the other hand, many classmates, when asked what they do, replied that they were retired. They put in their 35 years at their electrician jobs and their telecommunications jobs and their healthcare jobs, and then they gracefully bowed out of the workforce. Ouch. Luckily for me, nobody cared about my life: They were far more interested in talking about their children. And their vacations, cruises, and volunteer activities. I didn't have to try to explain my unsettling financial predicament to anyone and in the explaining inadvertently reveal my fear and anxiety. Sometimes I am relieved that other people are so self-obsessed.

Still, I had a great time. I enjoyed seeing people I hadn't seen in 40 years. Seven of them were people I went to elementary school with. We have history. And as I talked with each person, a strange thing happened: The years seemed to fall away from their faces. I saw past the bald heads, puffy skin, and wrinkles to the 18-year-olds they used to be, the people I knew and the people I didn't know, as I endured the long hellish years of high school. I wasn't afraid of any of them. I felt a deep affection for all of them. We had survived a shared experience. Not all of us lived to tell this tale: We lost some along the way. But those of us who are left have figured out how to live. I'd like to think I'm one of those survivors, although it's always one day at a time for me.

The afternoon wafted to a close, and people drifted away with promises to keep in touch. Yeah, let's do this in five years! You bet. I helped clear away, pack up, and wash down, and eventually just the planning committee was left, plus one stalwart helper, whom we will no doubt recruit for the next iteration, should we live that long. I drove home thanking the reunion gods that I escaped without tasting a single crumb of the cake. It wasn't really such a miracle: It wasn't chocolate.

Thanks from the Hellish Hand-Basket

Today I enjoyed my privileged American life. Today, under amazing blue skies, my family motored to a restaurant and exercised our god-given right to eat anything we wanted. Yep, that's right. No cooking, no cleaning, just good food in good company. (Thanksgivings would have been a lot more pleasant if my family had figured this out when I was a kid.)

My mother and I met my brother and his girl-friend at McMenamin's Kennedy School, a former elementary school in North Portland, converted to a funkified hotel. The walls are decorated with panoramas of the early 1900s. The auditorium is now a movie theater. A janitor's closet is the Detention Bar. We met for brunch in the restaurant. My mother had French toast, I had eggs. My brother and his girlfriend had omelette-like concoctions. We swilled some coffee, took a few cellphone pictures to commemorate the occasion, and called it good. The rest of the day has been devoted to laundry and other creative endeavors.

It occurred to me last night that I have never drawn a basket. You'd think I would have, considering the name of my blog is the Hellish Hand-basket. So, last night while watching a compilation of Saturday Night Live Thanksgiving-related skits, I sketched this drawing. My intention was to express my gratitude to you for reading my blog for the past year and a half. All 5,000 of you. Yes, that is how many hits I have attracted in that time. Not enough to monetize, ha. Considering this is an anonymous blog, though, and only about five friends and my sister know about it, I think I'm doing pretty good. So, thanks.

Yesterday I scanned some family photos. I examined each picture, front and back. Some were of people I never knew, or didn't know well: great-grandparents, grandparents, friends of my parents, cats my parents had after I left home... lots of history was made without me, apparently. (Hard to imagine.) There was an entire album dedicated to my older brother, the special firstborn baby. Then there are a bunch of snapshots of me, mostly with him. I'm the sidekick, later the punching bag, but those moments were never caught on camera. (See Mom, that was the time he broke my nose!) Then bam, along came my sister, and one year after that my little brother, the bonus baby. With four children to herd, my mother lost her mind for a decade or so, resurfacing after everyone but the bonus baby had scattered across the continent.

Thanksgivings were tense affairs when I was growing up, mostly due to the power struggle between my mother and her mother. The men watched football, the women duked it out in the kitchen. The kids laid low. The best Thanksgiving I ever had was when my sister and I lived in Los Angeles at the same time. My boyfriend went off to eat turkey with his family, and my sister and I watched a movie and ate popcorn. Then there was an earthquake and a rash of fires in Malibu, and she couldn't wait to high-tail it out of L.A. Anyplace must have looked good after that. No Thanksgiving since has been so satisfying for me. Thanks, sis.

What, me worry?

I've been avoiding this moment for six months. This week I was broadsided with an unpleasant realization: No, it can't be! Can it be? How could this happen? I'm unemployed! Wha—? Those... those people! Those people I trusted like family (that is to say, not much) pulled up their big boy pants, put on their management hats, and decided that I was expendable, superfluous, extraneous... and they let me go (along with a bunch of other unnecessary human flotsam but this is about me, as usual). Argh. How could they? And more to the point, how come it took six months for the reality of unemployment to sink into my gasping brain? That's kind of a long lag time, don't you think? What's my excuse, you ask?

Maybe it's because I've been busy finishing my D. Phil. Or maybe it's because I've been intermittently flailing in the throes of an entrepreneurial seizure. I don't know. The warm golden days of October are long gone, and now Portland is drenched in November. Brain fog makes it hard to figure out what I'm thinking. Never a good sign.

This morning I woke up in the grimy twilight of mid-morning and found the electricity was out. I put on my glasses and peered out the window. No lights on in the cafe across the street. Hmmm. A power outage in the 'hood? I found my diminutive lime green camping lantern (no, I don't camp) and used it to look up the power company in one of my many yellow-paged phone books. According to the robot on the other end, I was the 258th caller, and two... thousand... two... hundred... and... twenty... three... customers were affected by the outage, which they estimated would be fixed by 10:30 a.m. And by the way, if I had any information about what was causing it, please stay on the line.

I found the dregs of yesterday's coffee in the bottom of my cup and savored the burned staleness, trying to stave off panic, wondering what the hell I would do with myself until the power came back on. What did people do before electricity? Uh.... read books, talk to each other, go for walks, heat water over a fire, work the fields, die of consumption... I took the lantern back to bed with a book, prepared to wait it out. Five minutes later, the bedside light came on. And that was my short-lived foray into the 18th century. I leaped out of bed and got the coffee going, feeling a little more grateful than usual for the blessings of the modern age.

I'm also feeling thankful that I don't live in a hurricane/typhoon zone. The news from the Philippines is heart-breaking. I'm not equipped to handle a disaster of any kind, natural or human-made, especially during these days when I feel so discombobulated. What a luxury problem, to be so self-obsessed. It's hard to fathom a world where huge waves sweep thousands out to sea. I live on a hill, which means I am probably safe from flooding. But I'm a sitting duck in a raging fire.

In the immortal words of Alfred E. Neuman, What, me worry? Just let me get through the next month. Then I can collapse in a quivering puddle of (unemployed) human-flavored aspic.

The chronic malcontent feng shuies the crap out of the Love Shack

The umpteenth time I checked the course room today, there was a message from my Chair: “Unexpectedly out of office. Back Monday.” After a stab of disappointment, I felt oddly relieved. For the rest of this week, I don't have to fret about receiving feedback on my dissertation submission. I mean, I can fret if I want to, but even I am able to recognize the futility of fretting. So I did what any self-respecting adult would do when faced with an unexpected delay: I feng shuied the Love Shack.

I mean no disrespect, and I'm sorry if I offend you, but it's the perfect time to take my housecleaning one step further. I've vacuumed, I've dusted (in places), I've washed the curtains (you know that is a big deal if I keep mentioning it in post after post). I started really looking at the amount of crap I have on my shelves (and I have a lot of shelves)... I mean, really looking. Wow, there's a Microsoft Office 97 book. Really? PowerPoint 2002? Two copies! Who knew!

One thing led to another and the next thing I know, I'm looking up feng shui on the Internet. Score! I found the Bagua, that diagram that divides a space into nine zones. I sketched out a floor plan. Wait, should I make my back door the entrance wall or my front door the entrance wall? Hmmm.

While I was pondering this mystical question, someone pounded on my front door. I froze. Curiosity almost made me go move the curtain to see who was there. But I held very still, like a rabbit in a burrow, and whoever was there went away. People who know me know to come to my back door. The only time I open my front door is to collect my mail. Okay, that answers my question. The back door is the entrance wall.

I returned to my diagram. Darn, it's not to scale. Oh well, close enough to find out what my feng shui condition is. Uh-oh. Looks like Zone 4, Wealth, is in the empty space by the front door. That's not good, is it? Maybe if I switch the diagram and let the front door be... oh, no, that's even worse. Now Wealth is in the bathroom! I'm flushing my prosperity down the drain! I knew it! I switched my perspective back to the back door as the entrance wall. Maybe I can put a money tree by the front door or something. Or a mobile made of Monopoly money.

My analog TV, converter box, antenna, and old-fashioned DVD/VHS player circa 2005 sits in Zone 9, the Reputation sector. This zone also contains the cat tree, a wondrously shaky multilevel contraption I built myself. Wonder what that has to do with Reputation?

Love and Marriage (Zone 2) is in the bedroom. I guess that isn't so bad, except I've been happily single for 10 years. Maybe this refers to my cat. He's sacked out on the bed right now. We're like an old married couple, mostly. He sleeps a lot, farts occasionally, and I do all the work. Yep, sounds about right.

Health and Family (Zone 3) is occupied by a long stretch of heavily laden lime green bookshelves. I wonder what that means. Maybe it means I will get a good workout if I get rid of some of these books. And whatever is left will go to my relatives when I die? I fail to see how that is helpful.

Uh-oh. Creativity is in my bedroom closet. I guess that explains a few things. What goes in the Center? Some of the Bagua maps put Health in the middle, some just say Earth. Get it straight, you feng shuists. Hey, the center is where I sit right now, typing this post and trying to figure out what the center is all about. Oh, man, this is getting too meta.

Zone 8, Knowledge, is where the cat food sits. Career, Zone 1, is where the back door opens. There's nothing there except a fire extinguisher and an umbrella (not to be used together, I don't think). The last zone is Zone 6, Helpful People and Travel. And that is in the bathroom. Well, the bathroom has to go somewhere. It's better to put Helpful People in the bathroom than Wealth, right?

I don't know what it all means, but I'm pretty sure my feng shui score is crap. No wonder my life is shite! I need to boost my feng shui rating. Okay, what should I do? Going to the Internet again... okay, according to one site, in my living room, I need to have family photos (check), harmonious colors (check), and a comfortable chair for every family member (check). The cat has an abundance of comfy places; in fact, the whole damn house is decorated for his pleasure. Seriously. I don't even take showers so I don't have to move his favorite window seat in the bathroom. Uh-oh, the feng shui tips say to hide my TV and electronics. Then how would I watch Scandal and Once Upon a Time? Nope, the TV stays put.

The tips for the bedroom warn us not to have photos or religious icons “watching” us while we sleep. I don't know why not, I don't do anything interesting while I sleep, do you? Avoid cluttered views. Oh dear. The walls in my bedroom are covered with shelves, no lie. Books, tools, sewing crap, clutter. And yes, the closet door is open and you can see piles of laundry and mismatched, outdated, thrift store clothes hanging on wire hangers (I know, I know). Let's see, what else am I doing wrong? Don't put your bed under the window. Nuts. Well, it's only the Love and Marriage zone, who cares? Not me.

I'm more concerned with the Wealth zone. Let's see. I need to correct the subliminal messages in my home that are detracting from abundance. And I need to start a gratitude journal. Really? Argh. And I need to stop feeling and acting needy. Ahhhh. I knew it! It's all my fault! If I just weren't so damn needy, everything would be hunky-dory! Abundance and prosperity would easily and effortlessly flow to me and through me... if I weren't such a greedy, grasping self-centered loser!

Okay, I've had enough of this feng shui shite. I don't need my furniture and accessories berating me for my bad attitude. I'll just get one of those laughing buddhas or something. Wait, is that a different religion? Is feng shui a religion? Now I've probably offended the feng shui gods. Oh man. Let me hunker down in Zone 6 (the bathroom) and wait for some helpful person to come along and rescue me. I'm so screwed.

Many happy returns on the last day of the world

I don't consider myself a Christian. That means I am not inclined to be cheery during the Christmas season. In fact I can hardly stand it. There's no other time of the year that is so pervasive, intrusive, and all-around annoying. (Did you think I would have something good to say about Christmas? Hey, I'm the chronic malcontent; I have nothing good to say about anything.) I lay low and try to hibernate through the season, emerging during the dog days before New Years to re-stock my fridge and re-new the wards on my apartment. Wards? You know, the juju rituals I do to keep away the sights, sounds, and smells of the Christmas season. It works. Come over and you will see no twinkly lights festooning the place, no dead evergreen wilting in a pot of fetid water, hear no Andy Williams or Bing Crosby crooning on the radio, and smell no stinky mulberry candles guttering in the corners. This is a yuletide free zone. Vive le grinch.

Here's something maybe you can help me understand. Yesterday at work, I ran into a teacher I don't know well. She's an energetic adjunct, one of those who takes her job way too seriously (in my opinion). She speaks in exclamation marks. I can't come close to matching her energy. It's exhausting to be around her for a rabid introvert like me.

She rushed off the elevator, dragging her wheely-bag behind her. “Hi! Merry Christmas!” she caroled at me as she trundled by on her way to the office.

I grunted something, heading for the stairs. Suddenly she stopped and turned back. I could practically see her brain whirring as she tried to calculate whether or not she should speak. It took probably a full second for her to say, “Oh, hey! I have something for you!”

I stopped. She dug into her wheely-bag and came up with an object wrapped in white tissue paper and tied with gold ribbon. I could feel my face pulling sideways into a kayla maroney.

“Oh, really, not necessary...” I began. She thrust the thing into my hand.

My brain leaped off the cliff: I don't even know you, why are you doing this, it's probably a candle, I don't need more crap, who can I regift this to?, I didn't get her anything, I didn't get anyone anything, I'm such a scrooge, everyone is drinking mulled cider and they didn't invite me, bah humbug, I don't care, I hate Christmas. Eventually I pulled my lips back into a grimace, said thank you, and went on my way.

After class, I opened the thing, mildly curious, a little apprehensive, and found a clear glass candle holder with an etched inscription: You have a special place in my heart. 

What? Really? Who knew I meant so much to her? I pictured her scanning the shelves at Michael's Art Store, muttering to herself: What can I give my colleagues to make them feel special and appreciated during these dark times? Really? Naw. I don't believe it for one second. She probably got a deal on those etched candle holders. Why didn't she put a candle in there, is what I want to know. If I really had such a special place in her heart and all.

The other thing that perplexes me about this season is the whole Christmas card thing. Some of the coolest people send the lamest cards. I don't want to think that my cool edgy friends are actually closet Christians. Is that too harsh? Maybe they are so cool and edgy that their cards are actually intended to be ironic commentaries on our sad reliance upon organized religion. Maybe I'm not cool and edgy enough to get the joke. I fear in the case of one particular card (nativity scene), my erstwhile cool and edgy friend has gone over to the dark side: she's handwritten a quote into the card, something about how hard it is to keep the season holy. Whatever.

On another card, a girl with with glittery angel wings holds a little gift in her hands (and the glitter is rubbing off all over everything on my desk). On another card, glittery fir trees hold up an enormous star and a huge fat white bird—I guess that is the white dove of peace? I can't ask the person who sent it to me, because I can't read the signature on the card. Two holiday cards sport a snowman theme: charming. But isn't it a tiny bit creepy to imagine snow creatures dressed up in human clothes coming to life? Brrrr. One friend sent a card with a photo of her and her husband. They look happy. I love that it might actually be true. My favorite card is from my colleague Sheryl (not her real name). The card has a picture of a stoic old white-haired gal who is clearly not impressed by the season. The message says: It's Christmas. Try to contain your enthusiasm. Now that's a Christmas card for a chronic malcontent!

Looking at all these cards spread out in front of me, even the one with a goofy nativity scene on the front, is making me realize that even the chronic malcontent has friends. Awwww. It's been a rough couple weeks for everyone. In this holiday season of mixed feelings, I confess I am grateful for simple things: friends, oatmeal bath salts, and the fact that the world appears to have survived another day. I'm thankful for the footwarmer I made myself out of an old pillow case and some white rice (just say microwave!).

Some years ago I strung some dinky white lights around a favorite painting. One moment. Please stand by. Ok, I'm back. In honor of this blog, I just turned them on. They don't blink, but in my dark cave of a workspace, they do look rather festive. Now for the... how do you say it, the coup de grace? No, that's a deathblow, not quite what I'm looking for. Fois de gras? No, isn't that some kind of liver pate? Coup d'etat? No, no overthrows going on here. How about...the piece de resistance! (Spoken with all the appropriate glottal mucus. And sorry all the accents are missing. It's too hard to go look them all up, it's all I can do to remember the code for the Fahrenheit degree symbol.) What was I saying? Oh yeah: the penultimate, The Christmas Stick.

The Christmas Stick is an old dead stick stuck in a vase of rocks and hung with a few old faded ornaments. It spends the year gathering dust on a high shelf in my kitchen. It's jolly in a rather sparse, dusty sort of way. I put it by the string of little white lights. Hmm. It's a Chronic Malcontent Christmas.

Thanks for the cards. Thanks for the gifts. Thanks for shaming me into a holiday mood. But don't get your hopes up. I donated all my disposable income to charity. You won't be getting any cards or presents from me this year. Merry ho ho ho to you, too.

How to be thankful for an annoying neighbor

Hi, how was your Thanksgiving? Mine was awesome, thanks for asking. As you might expect, I am not a big fan of the holiday season. It's loud, smelly, inconvenient, and crowded, clearly not designed with the needs of a chronic malcontent in mind. However, I was thankful for a few things last Thursday. One was that I got to spend the day alone. How cool is that! I didn't even go outside of my apartment. The triplex was silent: no big parties going on at the Love Shack. I luxuriated in my solitude, like a happy speck of bacteria in a delicious petri dish. Yum.

What's that you say? I'm a dysfunctional, antisocial wackjob? Aw shucks. You only say that because you have an expectation of what Thanksgiving is for. For you (I'm guessing), Thanksgiving means warm connection and interaction with family and friends, maybe over a ritual meal involving a cooked bird whose butt is stuffed with mushy croutons. If you are really lucky you have alcohol flowing, and after the requisite gorging on pumpkin or pecan pie, you can loll around on the couch complaining about how much you ate while you watch Netflix on a big screen TV. SO much to be thankful for.

I, on the hand, having experienced many years of similar rituals (minus the warm connections and big screen TV), am utterly and fervently grateful that I don't have to do that anymore. For the record, let me just say in my defense, I was willing to take my mother out to eat, fighting the crowd at one of the more festive McMenamin's like we usually do. But good old mom was under the weather, so for my demonstration of willingness (I called her on the phone), I was given dispensation by the universe to spend the day as I pleased. And so I did. I spent the day revising my paper, and it was excellent.

I have good news to report on the status of my dissertation concept paper. A few more revisions and it might be ready to send on to the committee. Does that sound familiar? I think I've written those words before. I think what we are doing now is called polishing. My sister buoyed my spirits by reminding me that every time my chairperson returns my paper for more revisions, it does not mean my paper has been rejected. On the contrary, it means I am in the process of working with a competent editor to make the paper the best it can be.

It's so hard to focus. My neighbor is home. I feel like she's in my home. The air vibrates with the bass of her music. She stomps from one part of the place to another. Maybe she is dancing. Some kind of dance involving stomping. Maybe she's dancing like no one is watching. No, I think she may be rearranging her furniture. Well, who can blame her. That is one of the top ten most fun things to do. I can't do it now, because I'm packed in like a gasping sardine with all my books and binders, but I remember how much pleasure I used to get from a fresh room configuration. Now if I could just do that with my life.

Now she is sneezing. The roar comes through the wall, loud enough for me to feel compelled to say Gesundheit! Next will come the nose-blowing. It's classic Three Stooges nose-blowing, like a foghorn. I hear it best when she is in her tile-lined bathroom, where the echo is truly impressive. I fear for her brains.

I think she is in her bedroom closet now, just on the other side of where I sit at my computer. I hear thumping, shuffling, shoving, punctuated by sneezes. Wow, she must be stirring up a lot of dust. I can relate: That is how I react whenever I clean. Maybe she's doing her annual housecleaning. (Jeez, woman. Cover your mouth!) It's weird—even though I resent the hell out of her stomping and loud music, and even though I'd like to squash her wretched little pooping machine of a dog, I feel a strange sense of kinship with this vigorous young neighbor. Looks like we have something in common. I sneeze, too.

And there you have it, how to be thankful for annoying neighbors. Find the one minute, trivial thing you have in common and forget about all the reasons why you want to kill them. You can certainly be thankful you aren't in jail for beating them to death with their own stompy shoes. And if you do happen to be in jail for that crime or something similar, well, a roof, a bed, and three squares is a blessing some people would trade their citizenship for. So no more complaining about annoying neighbors! My new approach will be to bless her journey with love and kindness. I'm good with that. As long as I don't have to interact with her face-to-face.

When the pain of this is worse than the fear of that

While I wait for my dissertation chairperson to review the umpteenth draft of my concept paper, I have some time to reflect once again on the purpose of my existence. If such a thing exists.

I just finished re-reading a wonderful book called Silverlock by John Myers Myers, a book I have read many times, savoring every word. Silverlock starts out his adventure as a snarky shipwreck survivor lost off the coast of San Francisco. Magic causes him to drift into a literary fantasy land known as the Commonwealth. After dramatic adventures involving heroes and villains culled from obscure literary references, he is dragged to the depths of hell, where he is forced to defend his existence, desperately crafting arguments to prove that life is worth living, despite all evidence to the contrary. As he is giving into despair, he is granted permission by the Delian Court to continue his journey because he has a cosmic mission to fulfill, if he can: to drink three times from the mythic spring of Hippocrene. The first drink is for recollection, so he won't forget what he's seen and learned in the Commonwealth. The second drink will give him the way to find his way back to the Commonwealth. The third is “the maker's drink,” no limit on what is possible. When he finally arrives, Silverlock manages two sips before he is magically thrown back into the Pacific to await rescue by a passing freighter, a changed man blessed with awareness of the gift of life. After reading Silverlock, I no longer have the will to complain. That is the power of a good book.

Maybe we all have an internal mythical spring of Hippocrene, beckoning us toward our dreams. It would be pleasant to think so. I'm a skeptic. I get irked with all the Do What You Love and Money Will Follow disciples, because my experience has demonstrated that it is a fallacious philosophy. But I'm a chronic malcontent. I'm genetically predisposed to look on the dark side. My bliss could be biting me in the ass right now and I wouldn't know it.

When I was young I didn't realize that the life I would lead later is the accumulation of all the little choices and actions I took from day to day, year to year. I never made the connection between my actions and my future. The times when I said no when I should have said yes, or the other way around, the harsh words spoken, the unfeeling shoulder, the desperate demands, the immersion in anything that would take away the pain of living... those moments were the building blocks of the life I have now. I don't think I'm complaining so much as having a small epiphany, tinged somewhat with regret, I admit.

Equipped with this realization, what now? Every action I take today helps construct my tomorrow. I guess it's like voting. If you didn't vote, you have no right to complain. I'm either running with the big dogs, or I'm cowering on the porch. I'd like to say I'm courageous, but I don't know what actions would demonstrate my courage. When my pain of the present is worse than my fear of the future, then I guess I'll change.

It could be worse

While I'm avoiding writing my literature review, I have the time to obsess about other things. I'm feeling somewhat fragile. The best I can say today is that it is not raining. Whoa. Really? The best I can say? I need to congratulate myself on my approach to self-obsession, because this approach is working disconcertingly well. I'm so focused on self I forget that possibly 90% of the world population would give a lot to have my problems.

My problems are luxury problems. I don't have to worry about food (although I do despair over the state of the food supply). I don't have to fret over gas. (I actually think we should pay more for gas.) I have shelter (albeit nothing fancy, but it's a lot nicer than a grass shack or a tin shed). I have clothes (so what if they mostly were previously worn by others—reduce, recycle, reuse, right?). Really, my life is fine. Fine. I'm fine.

You already know how I feel about gratitude lists, so I won't bore you with that rant again. I'm not by nature a grateful person (although I have been known to smile on occasion). But really, if the best I can say is that it isn't raining, then I need to get out more, because my life is way too small.

I know what is happening. My brain is trying to kill me. I'm stuck in that peculiar paralysis mode where I can't quite get the gumption to open up my literature review and get down to work. I'm in that special state where I am almost, but not quite, ready to do something really crazy-distracting like... mop the kitchen floor or vacuum. This morning I had the urge to purge my closet—you know, pull it all out and start over. But then I imagined the horror of shopping for new clothes and quickly nixed that idea. But someday it has to happen. My closet is stale as a tomb, full of moths, spiders, art supplies, and a shop vac. I mean, really. Could it be worse?

Sure, it could be worse. I could have a job where I have to wear a uniform (been there, done that, no thanks!). Or a job where—god forbid!—I would have to wear pantyhose, a power suit, and pumps. (I'd live under the bridge before I ever do that again.) Seriously, who am I kidding? I can practically hear you say it (and you sound remarkably like my father, weird how you do that with your voice.) Well, all I can say in reply is that I'm entitled to my tantrum. I can feel whatever I want. But you are right. Eventually I must acknowledge reality—Reality, the big R, the one where I'm not the hub—and return to my right size. Eventually the floors will be scrubbed, the hairballs will be vacuumed, and the lit review will be written. Now if I could just keep it from raining...

Happy people don't make gratitude lists

During the late 1990s and early 2000s I was enamored with self-help books targeted at creative people who were having trouble expressing their creativity. You've probably heard of The Artists Way by Julia Cameron, the classic tome for wannabe visual artists and writers. Another good one is Finding Your North Star by Martha Beck. And don't forget the self-help veteran Barbara Sher, author of Wishcraft, I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was, and many other books.

I was a big fan, I admit. I even did some of the writing assignments. (I hear it works better if you actually do the work.) One of the assignments I recall was to write a list of all the things I was grateful for. Back in 2001, I scratched out a list of "blessings": grateful for my cat, for my car, for my teeth, for the fact that only 1,000 feet above the clouds overhead is clear blue sky. I dredged deep. Well, I tried. The ostensible purpose of a gratitude list is to thwart the self-centered ego by focusing on the positives rather than the negatives. My self-centered ego at that time was big as all outdoors, and I was fully invested in the negative.

I guess I still am. I've done a few gratitude lists in my time. It never worked for me, but I didn't know why until I read one sentence by Barbara Sher in her I Can Do Anything book: "Happy people don't need to make lists." Hmmmm. That claim has interesting implications. First, I'm obviously not happy. Duh. Second, making a gratitude list does not necessarily lead to happiness. Third, happy people are too busy living life to make gratitude lists. Four, only cranky, malcontented people believe making a list will lead to happiness. And finally, happiness precedes gratitude. Acting as if I'm grateful is sort of like holding a pencil between my teeth to make it seem like I am smiling. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. If I really wanted to be happy I would try it. Nuff said.

Apparently there is actually a science of gratitude. Who knew. In perusing the Web, I came across a suggestion left by a commenter named Alice:  "Pray without seizing." I think she meant "ceasing." It made me laugh, though. For just a moment, half a second, wow—I felt grateful. For what I am not sure. But it felt good.