Coming off a bender

While my sister was in town for a long weekend, the centerpiece of her visit was food. When I contemplate that statement, I wonder what images it inspires in your mind? Do you picture family feasts, home-cooked spreads, gourmet meals at local five-star restaurants? I mean, it's not often my sister comes to town. My older brother actually drove in from the coast for the occasion, so the entire family (all five of us) was all together, an occurrence rarer than a lunar eclipse. It would have been a perfect time to celebrate with fabulous food. That is not what happened.

The only one who knows how to cook in my family is my sister. I doubt it occurred to her to consider cooking a meal to celebrate the get-together. It certainly never occurred to me, because that isn't how it's done in my family. Cooking was our mother's job, and because she despised cooking, we grew up with canned green beans and hamburger patties.

Our idea of social food is Chinese take-out. My older brother has food allergies. I'm not supposed to eat sugar (among other things). My sister and mother eat like tiny birds. My younger brother will eat anything as long as it isn't from the vegetable family, and my father the compulsive overeater has gone to the all-you-can eat buffet in the sky. Even though we all have our preferences, food is still the center of the social time.

Food is a family thing, even when some family members have food issues. Or maybe that is where some family members get their food issues, I don't know. Just like money is a family thing, food is one of the sticky threads that snags you in childhood and trails after you the rest of your life, no matter how far you run. In my family, it doesn't matter how you feel, but it matters a lot how you look. People notice how you eat. Everyone notices if you gain a few pounds.

I picked my sister up from the airport on Thursday evening and delivered her to Mom's condo. As we pulled up to the back parking area, there was our scrawny mother talking with two older women. Mom stopped waving at her mini-roses and started waving at us. The two neighbors, who held two tiny yappy dogs on leashes, became the audience for the minor family drama that ensued.

Mom introduced us to the neighbors. We shook hands and petted the tiny dogs. I retrieved my sister's suitcase from the boot of my old Focus and started dragging it toward my mother's back door.

My mother grabbed my sister in a hug, gleefully saying to the two women, “This is my skinny child!”

I thought perhaps the neighbors looked a little uncomfortable, but I didn't stick around to find out. I rolled my eyes and kept moving into the house. I heard the subtext, loud and clear, though: This is my skinny child (and there goes my fat child!).

We aren't known for social grace in my family. My sister is the anomaly: She conducts herself like a princess wherever she goes (she's been to Europe, after all), but the rest of us are tooth-picking, armpit-scratching, conversational disasters. (Which could explain why my sister prefers Europe). We're all well-educated, but I fear we still exude a slightly sour aroma that indicates we hale from the wrong side of the tracks. No matter the Ph.D., my collar is blue and probably will be till I die. I mean, you can take the girl out of the public school, but... know what I mean?

I'm a chip off my father's block, so food has a special hold over me. This is why I don't buy anything but fish, chicken, turkey, and vegetables. If there is anything else in the house, I will eat it. Going out to eat is like taking an alcoholic to a bar and saying, oh, it's okay, just this once, have a beer. Live a little!

“I need to gain a few pounds,” my sister said as we perused yet another menu. Meanwhile, my mind was running in circles: Salad? I don't want any stinking salad! Could she tell how much I wanted the chocolate cake? (Or the french fries? Or the wheat bread? Or the cheesy pizza?)

“You only live once,” she said, as if she read my mind. At that point, she might as well have had little devil horns coming out of her perfect blonde hair. And a cute little pitchfork aimed at my bulging belly.

The rest of the weekend was the typical culinary nightmare. I get why my food-allergic brother avoids social situations. It takes monumental willpower to turn down food when you are out to eat with the family. It's just not done. Food is love. (And if you aren't feeling the love just then, you can focus on your food.) Food is the glue that holds family times together. If you don't eat (just a little bite of this amazing Belgian chocolate!), then you aren't on the team. You are undermining the team experience.

Clearly, I have no willpower. I know that. This is not news. As I wait for the wheat, sugar, dairy, soy, and corn starch to clear out of my overloaded system (the five fingers of death, according to Dr Tony the nutty naturopath), I reflect on powerlessness. My mother loaded me up with leftovers (week-old glop in a Chinese takeout carton, an unopened box of wheat-filled, sugar-laced granola), which I (eventually) tossed into the trash, but not after once again trying (and failing) to demonstrate that I can live life like a normal person.

As I recover from this bender, I wish I could say that I won't jaywalk again. But even on a good day, my mind is trying to kill me. Sugar may be a slow death, but it's death all the same.

Be careful what you ask for

I told the Universe I would walk through whatever door opened, financially speaking. That leaves a lot of wiggle room for the Universe, I realize now. But you know how it is when you are desperate for income: you start throwing out blanket-sized prayers and making promises to whatever deity happens to be on television at the moment. And before you know it, the Universe (or random chance) responds. With something you were perhaps not expecting, or wanting all that much, like a pie in the face or an e.coli infection.

No worries, neither one has happened to me yet, although I got a robocall earlier today from the City of Portland warning me to boil my tap water. Wha—? Seriously, boil my tap water, here? In the City of Cleanest Water in the World? Oh boy. And wouldn't you know it, the culprit is one of those hundred-year-old reservoirs just 200 yards from my front door. A broken pipe, a little breach, or some nut peeing in the water, whatever the cause, all that lovely Bull Run water is now contaminated with e.coli bacteria, and the City of Portland is on a boil-water alert for the first time ever. A big thank you to my good friend V., who called me to tell me about the alert, else I would have never known, and probably swilled e.coli infested coffee all day long. In fact, ugh, I have! Oh well. If you don't hear from me in a few days, send out the hazmat team.

I spent the last two days editing academic papers for writers whose first language happens to be something other than English. One 7000-word project was through an agency, the other (12,000 words) directly from the author. I've been sitting at my computer for two solid days, editing, commenting, highlighting, spellchecking, formatting... and I must say, this is the stupidest way to earn money I've ever thought of. I'd almost rather be a gardener (I did that for a few months years ago, when I was still young and limber). As my wrists solidify into concrete and my eyes grow gritty with weariness, I am reflecting that I got what I asked for. And now I'd like to give it back, but I don't have any other income right now, so I'm stuck.

It could be worse, I suppose. It has been worse. Driving a school bus was worse. Sewing clothes for overweight, underappreciative female Los Angelenos was definitely worse. In comparison, this has some perks. I get to swelter in my own stinky sweat. I can listen to my music (Grace Jones, John Foxx, and new Coldplay). I can bury my nose in my cat's furry tummy. I can fart all I want and pick my nose. Really, it's not so bad. But I haven't found the balance yet: I haven't been out of the house for two days. I fear the blood has pooled to my ankles. I can barely move, so it's hard to tell. I should probably be drinking more water, but well, whatever.

On the bright side, however, I have sold a whopping two ebooks! Thank you, dear friends. I don't know who you are because the $15.98 has not yet been posted by Smashwords to PayPal, but someday I hope I have a chance to thank you, if not in person, then with a big sloppy email kiss. Mwah! It is very difficult to promote a book anonymously, I have discovered, so I'm not even trying. Meanwhile, I'm contemplating my next book, which will not be anonymous. This time I'm going to ask the Universe for great big wads of cash and see what happens.

Uh-oh. Can I get the cat back into the bag?

I would like to shout out a big welcome to the newest Hellish Handbasket reader: my mother. Yep. You heard right. My scrawny almost-85-year-old Wild-West mother is back online and tearing up the broadest band she's ever had. Speedy doesn't begin to describe her presence on the Internet. With one breath she's complaining that she can't remember how to use her computer. With the next breath, she's leaving snide comments on Facebook and forwarding chain emails to her entire contact list. Way to go, Mom.

A few nights ago, my mother and I were talking on the phone. I don't remember who called who, but as she is wont to do, she asked me what I've been working on. My first thought was to change the subject. My second thought was to lie. But sadly, I don't lie well, especially to my mother, so I took a deep breath and told her about the Hellish Handbasket ebook, which I had just published.

“Oh, what is it about?” she asked.

“It's called 'Welcome to Dissertation Hell,' and it is a collection of selected posts from my blog,” I replied.

“Oh. You know, I don't think I've ever seen your blog,” she said.

“You've been offline for a while,” I said, trying to steer her away to a different topic.

“Where is your blog?”

Suddenly, in a nanosecond, my future life as a demented person who wears her underwear on the outside of her clothes in public, on Trimet, passed before my eyes. Dirty red underbelly alert! Alert! Not... happening. My brain worked feverishly as I considered and discarded 50 lame reasons why I shouldn't give her the URL to my blog. In the end, I came up with zip. Zilch. There was no good reason to exclude my curious mother from reading my anonymous blog. The thought of telling her she couldn't read it felt worse than the thought of her reading it. Still, I made a half-hearted attempt to dissuade her.

“You know I blog anonymously, right? That means you can't tell your condo friends, 'My daughter has a blog.'”

“OK.”

“And you know I write about personal things, right? So you can't be offended.”

“OK.”

So, I sent her the URL to this blog in an email, hoping she would accidentally delete it or corrupt it or something. Well, I can hope, can't I? No such luck.

The next day she called.

“Hello, Mudder,” I answered, as I always do when I hear her voice blasting through the phone.

“You sound like you are the most frustrated person who ever existed!” she shouted. Oh Lord Kumbaya. She read my blog.

“Ma, relax, it's therapy for me,” I tried to explain.

“You are frustrated!” she accused.

“OK, I'm frustrated!” I agreed. “But it's also an exciting time in my life! It's not bad! It's good!”

There was a moment of silence while we both pondered our next move. In used car sales transactions, the person who speaks first loses. So I took a breath and waited.

“Your younger brother tripped over the cat and fell down the stairs,” she said. Whew. Won that round. The equivalent of a 1968 Dodge Dart, I guess. That is to say, not a huge win.

So now I'm outed to my mother, which may possibly be worse than being outed to the entire world, because only mothers can press all the buttons that put us into that special orbit we experience as frustration. I'm not worried she'll reveal my identity... it's out there in the ebook. And who cares if a few silver-haired old ladies know who The Chronic Malcontent is? Not me.

My fear is that knowing my mother is possibly going to read this blog will cause me to censor my words. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, certainly not hers. I don't think I've said anything too derogatory toward her, have I? Besides calling her scrawny. Which I'm sure she would agree with; anyone can see the woman is a stick.

Well, no use fretting over the wreckage of the future. The cat is on my lap, but he would fight to the death to avoid going into any bag, so it looks like I'm going to have to let this one go. I surrender, Mom. Welcome to my blog.

Best advice I've heard today: Go crazy!

As I sit staring at my computer, trying to dredge up something worth blogging about, I listen to Prince's manifesto Let's go Crazy, and think, hey, maybe that's good advice. Maybe it's a sign from god. You know how it is, when you can go in a million different directions, but you just don't know which ones will pay off, so you find yourself waiting for that special sign from the Universe. The song on the radio: You get what you give. The billboard: 127 million dollars! The horoscope: Watch out for family members trying to undermine your creative endeavors. A song from Prince is as good as any other sign out there, I think. I've tried everything else, and all I get is disapproving growls from my cat and a dwindling bank account. (I'm not sure which is worse.) Going crazy sounds like it might be fun.

My friend Zena the Warrior Princess, who is going on sabbatical for a few months, expressed her uncertainty about what activities to engage in during her time off. We talked on the phone today.

“I have a list of about 20 things to do while I'm gone,” she said. “How do I decide what to do first?”

“Write each activity on a little piece of paper,” I said, “fold it twice, and put it into a container. Shake it up and draw one out. Let the Universe decide.”

“That's brilliant!”

While we were talking, I realized that I had already done this. Years ago, I designed a “game” to help me choose among many alternatives. I called the game Divine Chance. I'm not wedded to the divine part, necessarily, but I do believe in chance, as in random stuff that makes us crazy. And, as my brain slowly remembered the game, I recalled that in my kitchen, high on a shelf behind the houseplants, is the colorful game board, a two-foot square piece of cardboard, which I segmented into something like 15 numbered sections. The sections are loosely painted in festive primaries and secondaries—red, blue, green, yellow, orange, outlined in black, all in acrylic, kind of like an opaque stained glass window.

And there is a container, too! An empty coffee can, still smelling like French Roast, pressed into service long ago as a receptacle for about 20 little folded slips of paper. My idea (at the time it seemed like fun) was to place the game board on the floor behind me, shake up the container, and then toss the slips of paper over my shoulder so that most of them land on the game board. Then my plan was to turn around, find the task that landed in section 1, and do it first, and so on down the line, according to the numbers on the game board. Thus would my destiny be created, through random chance.

Of course, it all depends on what you write on the slips of paper, doesn't it? Did I write impossible things, like... become an opera singer? Learn to fly? Travel the world in a yellow submarine? No, I did not. I opened up a few of the musty pieces of paper to reveal the mysterious tasks that at the time were important enough to me to ask for random intervention.

Cut my hair. (Really?) Fix my car. (Uh-oh) Get an MFA. (Whoa. That dusty dream is, like, 15 years old. I had forgotten about it.) In fact, most of the tasks were trivial, prosaic, and years out of date. No longer applicable to my middle-aged solitary self-employed existence. What would I put in the can now, I wonder? Take a nap. Write a book. Go crazy?

But the idea of the Divine Chance game is still funny. And it's no goofier than using Tarot, I-Ching, or tea leaves to try to chart a path through the unknown future. Now I believe that if I can't make a decision, it means I don't know who I am, at least temporarily. I also know that as long as I stay in action, the Universe can influence outcomes. I don't know how it works, I just know that it does. If I sit around waiting for the bus to come to my door, all I will see is the short bus coming to take me away, ha ha. Signs or no signs, the trick is to be a shark and keep moving. Even if everything seems random and it feels like insanity.

Once again we wait for news of the end of the world

When huge airplanes go missing, it gets my attention. Despite continued attacks by the ant hordes in my domicile, I find myself distracted, riveted, mystified, and perplexed, along with the rest of the world. It's hard to concentrate on my marketing tasks when the fate of those passengers is unknown. I especially grieve for their families. The not knowing must be unbearable. Yet, moment by moment, I assume they bear it. Living hell.

Until the authorities find wreckage, those passengers exist in an in-between state, sort of like Schrodinger's cat... not exactly alive, but undead, until proven otherwise. It's the not knowing that makes us crazy. Disasters happen all the time: we express our shock and horror, we grieve, we move on. But in this case, there's nothing to move on from, just a great big hole in our sense of rightness. This isn't how disasters are supposed to be.

There are always insights to be gleaned from bizarre events. Call them lessons if you want, I'm not sure I would go that far: It implies somewhere there is an inept supreme instructor sending us vague homework assignments. Not unlike online learning, now that I think of it. Having just finished an eight-year stint as an online learner, I can say with some authority that some of my so-called mentors were dispensing vague assignments as if they were omnipotent supreme beings. Whatever.

Anyway, what insights are we to glean from a missing jumbo jet?

I guess the first thought that comes to mind is that this unfolding tragedy is a reminder we aren't in control. Duh, you say? Maybe you—you wise adult, you—get that we control very little in life. But how were you as a two-year-old? Maybe you were content to go with the flow, but I remember feeling bat-crazy if I lost for one moment my sense of autonomy and self-determination. No, I won't eat my damn peas! Stop trying to tell me what to do, what to think, how to feel! (Which of course explains my compulsion to DIY or die. But that's another story.)

After a while I grew up and (sort of) assimilated the disappointing reality that bad stuff happens and I have no control over it. I say sort of, because I'm embarrassed to admit how often I cruise through my day thinking if I just do A-B-C, then I'll be rewarded with X-Y-Z. As if I have the magical power to control outcomes. I guess I assume my ability to influence the world around me means I am in control. I mean, I've certainly created my share of chaos in my time... doesn't that mean I have power? Time and again, I fall into the trap of cause-and-effect: Do this, get that. Time and again, I'm shocked when things don't unfold as planned. As I planned. X-Y-Z doesn't happen, no matter how much I try. Or complain. Or weep. I get something else instead, something better, something worse... the point is, I delude myself that I have control.

So in the case of this missing jet, my brain, wrestling with the unacceptable pain of not knowing, tries to pretend I can do something to help. My brain becomes obsessed with solving the mystery. I haven't gone so far as to try to access satellite pictures, as I hear some people are doing...I imagine the crowd-sourced search that is going on right now, people staring at images of open seas, shot from 100 miles above the earth. Amazing the technology, but more to the point, how hard to accept the fact that we may never know what happened. I didn't know anyone on that plane. If I did, how would I be able to live with not knowing?

I'm sure there are more insights from this mess, but I'm too morose to find more words. Everything seems pointless when the world is poised on the fine line between dead-undead, waiting.

The chronic malcontent gets on with the business of living

I'm pleased with myself tonight. If I weren't so tired, I'd be typing this dancing. Well, maybe not dancing, but shuffling. Why am I pleased? I figured out how to give a special gift to the wonderful folks who register on my website. No, it's not a box of chocolate, sorry, in case you were thinking of signing up. It's just a boring white paper about a topic I fear only I am interested in. But whatever. I'm dipping my timid toe into the raging current known as content marketing. So, kudos to me.

That's my technological victory. Not terribly impressive, I know. In a few months when I want to offer a different gift, we'll see if I'm able to remember how I did it. That's the problem with technological victories. They don't come with handbooks my brain can retain. I have to start over from scratch. Thank god for the Internet.

Any other victories to report? No progress on the ant situation: I continue to battle for space in the kitchen, and I'm not above eating them (although fear of being dinner doesn't seem to faze their industrious foraging).

I can report a little forward motion on the networking front. I went to a marketing event on Wednesday evening. Once again I braved the rain to join the unwashed masses on mass transit. The vent was at an independent theater near the famous Powell's bookstore. The event was a lecture by a marketing research guy. The topic: writing effective survey questions. I went to find out what I don't know. You know, the holes in my knowledge. As it turns out, I know a lot, which is nice, and (almost) worth the $40 it cost me to attend.

There weren't many people there, maybe 30 at the most. Not surprisingly, almost all of them were much younger than me. They're so attractive. And they talk so fast, these young marketers. So energetic. Where do they get their energy? Oh, I know, don't tell me. Red Bull. Mountain Dew. Well, I wasn't born yesterday. Obviously: I remember when Mountain Dew was a hillbilly beverage. Now Mountain Dew's former tagline is the name of my email provider. What the f—?

I managed to participate in and even instigate a few conversations, but failed the next day to convert anyone into a LinkedIn connection. I've lost steam on my quest to gain connections. I haven't even hit 100 yet; I'm bogged down in why bother? I get the idea in principle, but in practice, it seems like a futile bit of ego-stroking. Look how many connections I have! Nobody cares.

I wish life were only full of victories. But I guess I have a defeat to report. Victory... defeat... who is to say? It feels like a defeat to me. My mother thinks it is a victory. What am I talking about? This week I agreed to teach one two-hour marketing class per week for the next 11 weeks at a for-profit university in the Tigard triangle. That is the area of the city that has become a hub, a mecca, a swamp of higher education. I won't name the place I signed on with. Who cares. The gig starts Tuesday.

The good news is their rate is more than twice what I was paid at the career college that laid me off last year. The bad news is the class is only two hours a week. The good news is I'll be teaching marketing! (Instead of keyboarding, or Word, or Excel...) The bad news is that it could take me almost an hour to get there if there is traffic. The good news is my car gets pretty good gas mileage. The bad news is... there are only four students in the class. Argh. But the good news... and why my mother is pleased: it's money. It's postponing the moment when she feels compelled to swoop in and rescue me. And more good news: it's blog fodder.

So... victory or defeat? Who knows. It's like any situation: It has pluses and minuses. After a while, when your head stops spinning, you slow down and realize it really doesn't matter. In the end all we have is right now, this moment. Tomorrow is out of our control. Time to stop judging and get on with the business of living.

Zen and the art of waiting

I'm becoming a master at waiting. Over the past six months, I've had a lot of practice, what with the starts and stops of the dissertation process. Collect some data, then wait. Collect a little more data, fret, fume, and wait. Submit a draft, and wait. Submit another draft, and then wait some more. Then suddenly... approval! A fleeting moment of triumph and relief. Then schedule the oral defense, and wait. That's where we are now, waiting for the oral defense. Last I heard, it was on for December 9.

I think I can learn something from all this waiting. The state of waiting implies that I have little power to precipitate the condition I am waiting for. I mean, I would like the oral defense to be tomorrow. But I don't have the power to make that happen. No one likes to feel powerless, am I right? We like to think we are in control, of our own lives, at least. The metaphysics of powerlessness are paradoxical: Sometimes we have to give up our illusion of control in order to gain true independence. That's so Zen, isn't it? Ommmm. I'm pretty sure I'm not there yet. My response to all this enforced waiting is to simply curl up in a ball and endure.

Speaking of enduring, today I took my mother to the mall. She wanted to buy some books for the grandchild, who will achieve his first birthday in January. The mall was sparsely populated with customers, being the week before Thanksgiving, but crowded with young and rabid salespeople. They are relentless at that age! Was I ever like that? Infused with maniacal energy and indefatigable persistence? I don't remember all that much of my 20s, but I don't think I was ever that confident or determined, not then or since, now that I think about it. I think I've been waiting for something. But I digress.

After purchasing three Doctor Seuss books, we exited the last bookstore chain that hasn't succumbed to Wal-Mart and meandered down the mall. This is the same mall where last December a shooter killed two people and wounded a third before killing himself. As we passed by Santa, holding a tense little boy captive on his lap, I didn't think about the shooting. I thought about how slowly my mother walks now, two years after her hip replacement and a year after breaking her pelvis in a fall down some concrete stairs.

“Would you like to sample some tea?” I froze. Then I scanned the landscape warily for the origin of the voice. Drat! A salesperson! For a moment, I thought I heard the baying of wolves, just over the hill and closing fast. You know if you hesitate for the slightest moment, you are a goner. Unfortunately, I hesitated, and my doom was upon me. The young salesperson exerted his will and lured me in. (Mom, go for help!) He led me over to two huge containers, apparently filled with two kinds of tea. He filled a dinky plastic cup and held it out to me. Automatically, I took it and sipped. Fruit flavors! (Chemical aftertaste?) Sweet! (Too sweet!) Brain overload.

He was young, a little pimply, skinny to the point of starvation. “Now try this one!” I obeyed. Cinnamon, vanilla, (fake!) sweet... (oh, no, did I just imbibe some sugar?) I felt like I'd taken the bait and lost my soul. Walk away! Walk away while you still can! Too late. Give my books to the Library Foundation! Oh, Rosebud.

I looked around at all the tea paraphernalia, arranged carefully, perfectly, antiseptically... artificially. Everything was too clean, too perfect, not at all appealing to me. Where's the colorful teapots, the big glass bins of delicious loose teas, made with organic ingredients? The realization that I'd just tasted temptation from a minion of satan swept over me. Suddenly I heard my mother's gravelly voice say, “I'm a coffee drinker,” and reason returned. Hey, I'm a coffee drinker now, too. Ever since self-unemployment, the more robust the better. Tea is for wimps!

“It's very tasty, very sweet,” I began, attempting to reassure the kid.

“It does have a little rock sugar,” he admitted.

I headed for the door, my mother in tow. “Enough of that,” I said, wishing I had a big cup of French roast right then, so I could swill some and breathe the bitter fumes back in his face. He thrust a brochure at me in desperation, but we were gone.

We paused to regroup in front of Macy's. “Let's go back to the car,” she said. We hadn't made it halfway to Sears. We both agreed that there was something about aimless mall walking that really sapped one's will to live. We slowly wended our way back to the parking lot. The sun was still shining. It must have been 50°, so strange for late November.

“What will you do with the rest of your day?” she asked when we got back to her condo.

I said I would like to take a walk in the park, but actually, I was feeling a little dizzy, no doubt from swallowing the two little sips of chemical-laced, sugar-infested artificially flavored beverage masquerading as tea. By the time I got home I had a mildly sickening headache, which I cured with ibuprofen and a nap. And some coffee.

I spend my days waiting. Waiting to feel better. Waiting for my mother to trip over a curb or fall down some stairs. Waiting for the dissertation committee to say, oh sorry, we can't make it on December 9, we'll have to reschedule for January. I've spent my life waiting, mostly dreading bad things that never happen, or being so unconscious and distracted that I don't notice when good things happen. I have the uneasy feeling that I'm rehearsing for the real thing, the life that will soon be coming, if I just wait long enough.

Feeling terminally unique

I can't really dredge up much enthusiasm for this doctoral journey when the pace of it ebbs and flows so much. I'd like more flowing and less ebbing, but at this point, I am almost past caring. Every now and then I feel a spark of interest, like, oh, yeah, I remember why I chose this topic. But mostly I'm beyond both frustration and enthusiasm. At each roadblock, each obstacle, I shrug: Whatever. I have a similar reaction to each success. Yeah, whatever.

I checked the course room every day this week, hoping for word from the Institutional Review Board that they have approved my revised recruiting method. It's a small change, how hard could it be, people? Instead of an approval notice, I got an announcement that my Chair is out of the office until July 29. Because the IRB keeps us at arm's length, communicating to us only through our Chairs like we are cootie-infested members of a lower caste, I can assume I will hear nothing this week. Oh well. Maybe next week.

It doesn't matter. I will be out of town this weekend myself. I'm going to Minneapolis for a reunion. So, if the plane goes down somewhere between here and there, let me just take this opportunity to say it's been a blast writing this blog. I hope this isn't the last post, but then do we ever really know what will happen when we walk out the door? I'm more likely to get decapitated in a car wreck caused by some texting teenager than die in a plane crash. But I've always wanted to be special.

Speaking of feeling special, I probably mentioned I have a new neighbor. Joy is gone, replaced by a young man named Everett. Everett moved in and then disappeared for a while. I feared he might have drowned in his tub. But no, I saw him last week, said hi, made a connection. It's sort of that connection you try to make with your kidnappers, so they won't kill you, you know what I mean? I kicked myself later for not mentioning how thin the walls are at the Love Shack. Because now I am suffering.

He's got something in his bedroom, some kind of a machine with a motor. Does this sound familiar? Wasn't I complaining about Mary having something that intermittently whined on and on? This is not a whine, it's a rumble. It's right on the other side of the wall. I can hear it when I watch my television. I can hear it when I take a bath. Imagine your windows are open to a summer night, and off in the middle distance, you hear the grumble of a freight train slicing through the night, rushing along the Gulch toward Hood River. It's like that. Only it never stops.

Air conditioner is my bet. An exotic guess would be an aquarium pump—maybe he has tropical fish in his room to help him sleep. Maybe it is a refrigerator, for his beer. No, it doesn't go off, it just keeps rumbling, a low, low vibration that I can feel in my chest. Annoying as it is, it isn't as bad as Joy's music. So I'm going to just live with it. I will pretend it is a freight train, heading east out the Gorge, carrying coal. No, not coal. Carrying art supplies and yarn for hungry artists and knitters. Yeah.

If you can't make a decision, it means you don't know who you are

I once overheard someone say, “If you can't make a decision, it means you don't know who you are.” I chewed on that idea for several years while I floundered my way out of a disintegrating relationship. Should I stay or should I go? All those years invested, all that crap to box up and move... but no more companionable TV time together, no more sex...on the other hand, no more snarky comments, no more walking on eggshells, no more of that peculiarly profound loneliness you only get when you are in a relationship... weighing the pros and cons of uprooting the status quo in favor of embracing the unknown.

Breaking up is a big decision. I don't know how you make the big decisions, but I have to roll around in the muck for a long time before all of a sudden my perspective shifts, and I wake up. It's like someone turns on a light switch. One moment I'm in the dark, the next moment, things are bright and clear as day. All that remains at that point is logistics. My heart and mind leave long before my body walks out the door. By the time I carry the last box to the car, I've been gone for months. Each partner (I was always the one to leave) accused me of being cold and callous, of leaving with no advance warning. What can I say? The time for tears passed ages ago. It just took time for my body to catch up to the rest of me. Bye-bye.

I left my last relationship ten years ago, Independence Day weekend, 2003. My only regret is I waited so long. Decision making takes as long as it takes. You can't rush it. It's a process, it's organic, like mold growing on bread. Like yogurt, like beer. Like growing a garden. When you are in the middle of the process, it seems never-ending, a nail-scraping eye-gouging eternity of frustration. Why can't I decide! Clearly we aren't happy! But we used to have so much fun together... But now it sucks. Why can't I just leave? But how will I pay the rent on my own? Argh!

I have an acquaintance who telephones me regularly, presumably to witness her chronic indecision. She (I'll call her Kaylee) has elevated indecision to a high art. The simplest decisions—where should I eat? Should I go out with my friends or not?—are torn apart into microscopic moments that must be examined and discussed in excruciating detail. Kaylee does not enjoy this process. Frequently she weeps. Each decision has the weight of life or death behind it. The wrong decision really feels like a death sentence to her. Me, I'm like, just make a decision already, who cares? Either way you learn something. But she can't; she's paralyzed with fear.

Twice in the past year I've persuaded her to flip a coin to make a decision. The first time was a big decision. She was trying to decide whether or not she wanted to break up with her partner, a man who lived in her basement. (I know, really?) They hadn't had a real relationship in years, yet she was terrified to let him go. For months she told me she didn't love him, she wanted him gone, she just needed to gather courage to ask him to move out. Then she found out he had been seeing someone else. Finally, I thought. Now she'll be happy to see him go, but no! Suddenly her love for him revived. She declared her desire to marry him, to have his baby, to commit to him forever, because she loved him so much. Oh, why hadn't she seen it before, while she kept him relegated to the basement!? Oh, woe, alas, alackaday! She wept, she gnashed her teeth, she went without sleep and food.

I'll be the first to admit, love can make anyone nuts. Leaving a relationship is not for the faint of heart. It's advanced decision making, a 400 level course. It requires guts. So I let her wallow in her indecision on the boyfriend. I witnessed. Hey, it can happen to anyone. Love is a battlefield, right?

The second time we tossed a coin, though, she was trying to decide if she should drive to the coast for a vacation with her friends. The problem was, her cat was sick. Should she stay with the cat, or go on vacation? Hmmmm, a classic dilemma. Should she apply a Kantian approach? The good of the friends would surely outweigh the good of the measly cat. On the other hand, you could apply the Golden Rule: if you were a cat, what would you want? Walk a mile in my furry paws.

I always ask, when confronted with what appears to be two obvious options, are those my only choices? Like, when I go to a buffet, I scope out the whole thing, from lettuce to pudding, before I choose my entree. I like to know the whole picture. Kaylee sees only two options, and both are fraught with the danger of making a wrong decision. I suggested she let the universe decide. She flipped a coin, and it came up heads: go on vacation.

“Great,” I said. “The universe has spoken. Have a good trip.”

“No, I can't go, I can't leave Tippy!”

“Ok, then don't go, stay home.”

“But I really need a vacation!”

“Ok, so go on vacation.”

“But what if Tippy dies while I'm gone!”

“Tippy's a cat.”

“Tippy's like my child! If something happened while I was gone, I'd never be able to live with it.”

“Ok, so stay home with Tippy.”

“But my friends are going to be there!”

I did a lot of eye-rolling while she raved and wept in anguish. When we finally ended the call, I heaved a sigh of relief that I didn't have the disease of indecision. When I decide, I just go with it, whatever it is, if it seems right at the time, I just go with it. I let the universe take care of the outcome. I don't always make the right decision, but I always learn something. Isn't that one of the purposes of living? To learn? Maybe it means I finally know who I am. Or maybe it means I'm ok with not knowing.

Surrendering to the inevitable

Seeing my mother mending her bones in the rehab down the street is triggering my awareness that I spend a lot of my time believing in the silly misconception that I'm in control of my life. Wow. How's that for a sentence.

What would it be like to surrender to life? To stop fighting time and space, other people, my body... to just accept things as they are? Would my experience of my life feel any different?

Would I be able to feel some gratitude that my mother didn't break her neck falling down those concrete steps (which happen to be in front of my apartment)?

Would I be able to serenely accept that my new dissertation Chairperson is just a higher-paid version of the previous flaky Chairperson?

Would I be able to calmly accept that our 15-day dry spell was bound to end sooner or later, because even though there may be climate change, this is still the Pacific Northwest, and rusty is our natural skin condition?

Will I be able to calmly respond to the alarm clock when it goes off tomorrow morning at 5:30 a.m., instead of smacking it five times before I crawl resentfully out of bed?

I'd write more, but 5:30 rolls around awful quick, and I am not a morning person.