Remind me next time not to live on the north side of a mountain

I'm tired of living in the shade. Winters in the Love Shack are dim, even when the sun is shining. By all measures, it was an awesome, sunny winter day in the Pacific Northwest—50°, brilliant blue sky, sunshine... it's been a rainless winter so far, not good for next summer's water supply but excellent for the chronic malcontents who prefer to avoid winter weather. However, I'm sad to report that due to my location on the north side of the butte, even my light box can't dispel the gloom. The sun came and went so fast today I barely had time to bask and then it was gone behind the shoulder of Mt. Tabor. Remind me, if you meet me and I happen to be apartment-hunting, remind me not to live on the north side of a mountain ever again. I might as well be living in a cave.

It's possible, though, that my moroseness might be due partly to my ongoing efforts to get organized. It wasn't really a New Year's resolution of mine, but after I found out how many tasks my friend Carlita had completed last year, I got revved up and started a list of tasks I wanted to get done in 2014. Then I signed up for an online class on improving productivity and fell off the deep end into organizing hell.

The system proposed by the instructor is a well known system that everyone seems to know about except me. (I'm always late to the party, what can I say. I'm just not that connected, huddled here in my cave.)

The first step (besides admitting I am powerless over... accomplishment?) is to collect all my undone tasks, wherever they may be. Paper scraps, email, folders, notes in books... I don't even want to think about my journals. Collecting all my undone tasks in one place is a colossal task in itself. I've been at it for the better part of three days and made it through one journal. On the bright side, I've uncovered a lot of hidden gems that still seem shiny and new. However, most of the ideas I scribbled with such enthusiasm even just a month ago are now just dusty words on paper. What was I so enthused about? I can't remember. It's like that dream that seemed so vivid and meaningful at 6:00 a.m. that fades into absurdity after the first cup of coffee.

My physical desktop is almost clear (except for the computer, the external hard-drive, the monitor, the printer, the flatbed scanner, two speakers, a purple basket full of small scraps of blank paper [for writing to-do lists], three plastic chests of drawers full of a gajillion paper clips [for clipping to-do lists into clumps] plus other sundry office supplies... oh, and my tea cup [I am on a hiatal hernia-related hiatus from coffee]). So that is progress, right? I mean, I can see the fake wood veneer surface. That's something. So maybe this new organizing system is starting to work. Now if I can just find my round tuit. I know it's around here somewhere. Wait, let me add that to my list. Find.... round... (hey, how do you spell tuit?)

At the rate I'm going, it may take me the rest of 2014 just to compile the list of tasks I want to achieve. I'm pretty sure that is not the kind of productivity the designer of the organizing system was proposing. I'm fairly certain the point of all this task-collecting is to make it easier to finally get around to getting things done. I guess you could say I'm doing things in order to get ready to really do things. Hey. What do you know. I'm meta-doing!

Call me Square Peg: The chronic malcontent goes a-networking, again

For the past decade my personal mantra has been Do what interests you. Following the elusive muse hasn't always been easy. Identifying my interests can be challenging, especially when they conflict, for example, making art and paying the rent. Not mutually exclusive, I grant you, except in my case, where the art tends to be particularly unmarketable. Anyway, using Do what interests you is a holdover from my former life as an artist, and I've adapted it for my current life in higher education, business, and research. It still works as a mantra, but now I have another one, one that ups the stakes considerably. My new mantra is Do what frightens you.

As a demonstration of my commitment to doing what frightens me, last night I once again dove into the deep, dark, and murky cesspool I know as networking. There was an event at a restaurant in Northwest Portland, not an easy place to find parking, so I went all in and took the bus. The sun was setting as I got off at 11th and Alder. The air was cold and pre-foggy. I wore old Levis 501s that fit me like a glove, a too-tight, very uncomfortable, can't-sit-down-without-urping kind of glove. The chronic malcontent (me) got fat over the past few years. Too much sit down typing, not enough treadmill typing, what can I say. The unhappy byproduct of writing a dissertation is a muffin-top. That's why I wear pajamas all the time, but that's another story. I was cold in my too-tight jeans, but I gamely hiked the blocks from Alder to Glisan, figuring that the walking could only help, if I could keep from upchucking in the bushes along the way.

I got to the restaurant. Outside the big plank doors stood a man hawking copies of Street Roots, the newspaper the sales of which help get guys off the street. I knew I had a dollar in my dayplanner. Perfect. Except I couldn't find my dayplanner. I had switched bags in my quest to be cool, and I'd forgotten to put the leather folder into my knapsack. I rummaged around for five minutes while the guy hawked his newspaper to people who walked by him as if he weren't there. Finally, I apologized. He looked at me in disgust, and I went into the restaurant, feeling like a total loser.

“Are you here for the networking event?” The perky young woman at the desk eyed me up and down. I said yes, and she pointed to the rear of the room. I crossed between tables, barely taking in the bizarre Polynesian decor, and found a crowd of people packed into the Kontiki Room, listening to the speaker, a local marketing guru, talk about networking. Men and women in business attire sat at tables, stood along the walls, and even sat on the floor. I could see the audience quite well through floor-to-ceiling windows, but not the slides or the speaker himself, as I was at the back of the latecomer pack milling around in the Kontiki Room foyer, far from the action. Too many heads blocked my view.

I saw a long-haired gal with a clipboard standing in a clear area in the foyer outside the Kontiki Room. I asked her, “What time did it start?”

“The presentation started at 4:30. Networking is at 5:30.”

I kicked myself mentally. Apparently I had missed the whole presentation. I'd written 4:30 in my dayplanner, but when I checked online before I left the apartment, I'd seen only the time for networking and thus delayed going out to the bus. I could have been one of those people sitting in the Kontiki Room, taking notes like the good student I am, soaking up networking tips and pretending to myself that I was using my time wisely, making connections, letting myself become known.

Some other latecomers showed up. One girl stood alone. She looked approachable, so I approached.

“Did you come for the networking?” I asked, to break the ice. She smiled.

“I work with him,” she said, nodding toward the speaker, who looked very far away across the Kontiki Room. “I've seen the presentation before.”

Jackpot! Maybe better than meeting the man himself was meeting one of his minions.

I asked her if she had studied marketing in college. “Public relations,” she replied.

“Same thing, persuading people,” I said nonchalantly.

“You never know who you might meet,” she said, implying she might be looking for another job.

“It's a small community,” I hazarded.

Her eyes got big, and she nodded vigorously. “So true!” I felt a pang of envy that she was a part of that small community, and I was on the outside looking in. I moved away, and then jumped back before the crowd could absorb her. “Do you have a card on you?” She pulled out a business card. I handed her one of my own. She melted into the group as I sought a clear spot, away from the group.

Apparently there are other folks who gravitate toward the periphery. I made two more connections, one a guy who has a company that helps salespeople track and manage their leads. We talked about webinars. He asked me what platform I used to deliver my webinars. I had to confess I didn't have anything up and running yet. Another lost opportunity to promote my nebulous research business. We exchanged business cards.

The third connection was with a young man in a plaid suit who had been sitting near the back of the Kontiki Room during the presentation. He was standing in the open near me, so I smiled and asked what he had learned. He proceeded to tell me some tips he had gleaned from the seminar. He was just finishing an MBA at PSU, so we talked about PSU and completing degrees. He seemed interested in my dissertation topic, so I fumbled my way through an explanation, thinking to myself, I really need to write that 30-second elevator speech.

Once that interaction was over, I was exhausted. I was also hungry, thirsty, and my pants were still too tight. The only consolation is that I never had to sit down, or I am sure I would have barfed all over the Kontiki Room. Maybe there is a god. I cast one more look at the crowd, and then I headed across the restaurant toward the door. Outside the air was cold and refreshing. The homeless guy was gone. I put my hands in my pockets and started hiking the 11 blocks to Salmon to catch my bus.

I was nodding off at the back of the bus when a grizzled dark-skinned guy in the seat ahead of me turned around. “Are we heading toward downtown?” he asked me, brow crinkled.

I smiled. “No, downtown is back that way. You need to get off the bus, cross the street, and catch it going the other way.” He leaped up and headed toward the back door. As he exited he said, “You are going to be my wife, right?”

I didn't have time to respond before he was gone, but I said, “Right,” and laughed to myself as the bus continued plodding from stop to stop back up the hill toward home.

The consequence of starting a business: The trolls are after me!

One of the consequences of starting a business is that you can be found. I guess you could say that willingness to be found is a requirement of starting a business, but I think that is another topic. Today, I'm ruminating on the odd marketing practices of people who would like to use me and my business to make money, both legitimately and nefariously.

Some companies troll through the assumed business name registries and pelt the fledgling entrepreneurs with direct mail missives offering services for everything a new business needs. For example, I've received postcards, flyers, letters, and circulars from companies trying to sell me business card printing, internet access, plastic bags and twisty-ties, conference room rental, and credit cards.

So far I haven't purchased any of those things, but I might. You never know. New business owners are sometimes confused about what to do first, which makes them easy marks for predators. Especially the creditor predator variety. I'm fairly immune to credit card offers, but all it would take is one slip and I'd be sliding back into the giant black hole of unsecured debt that took me so long to crawl out of.

I welcome legitimate marketing offers, because they come from hungry entrepreneurs like me. There are some other marketing ploys that set me to head-scratching. Here's an example. I have a website that no one visits, according to the Google Analytics plug-in. I update the blog about once a month with inane posts that have little content value. However, odd comments have begun to appear, one or two a week, along the lines of Really like your blog, love so-and-so from such-and-such URL. Here's an example, misspellings intact:

Hi, Neat post. There іs a problem with your wеb site in internet explorer, might test this? IE still is the market leаder and a large component of othher folks will leave out уour magnificent writng due to this problеm.

That's pretty nice, huh? He/she is kindly letting me know that my website sucks in Internet Explorer, which is really a shame since my writing is magnificent! If my writing really had been magnificent, I might consider taking this post more seriously. And if the writer hadn't posted a URL that tracks back to some IP address in France that includes the words power play stats. Hmmmm.

Here's my favorite: 

I drop a comment whenever I especially enjoy a article on a blog or I haѵe something to add to the conversation. Usually it's triggered by the fire displayed in the post I read. And on this article [post name]. I was moved enοugh to post a comment :-P I actually do have a couple of questions for you if іt's okay. Could іt be only me or does it give the impression like some of thee respoonseѕ appear like writtten by brаin dead individuals? :-P And, іf you are posting at additional places, Ι'd like to follow everything new you have to post. Would you make a list the complete urls οf your soсial pages lіke your twitter feed, Facеbook page or linkedin profile?

Wow, I can relate to the part about comments written by brain dead individuals. If this commenter found “fire” in my post, I suspect he or she did not really read it, although I suppose fiery posts are in the mind of the reader. It's kind of sweet, though, don't you think? But dude, if you really cared about what I post in other places, please note the convenient links to Facebook and LinkedIn in the upper right hand corner. But really, don't bother, have a nice day.

And then there are the comments that mix random content with several URLs, like this:

Just over two years [URL] For writing it is best to use a felt tip pen with a fine point [URL] This learning experience provided me opportunities to provide pharmaceutical care [URL] I work with computers.

My friends in Minnesota are trying to infuse Facebook with poetry, a wonderful and worthy intention; but I wonder, maybe there is a new form of poetry coming into being, a mash up of art and commerce posted by bizarre humanoid robots in anonymous internet sweatshops in exotic locales around the world. My guess is that the writers of these poetic bits of nonsensical marketing probably don't intend to entertain me; probably they would prefer that I click one of those innocuous URL bombs, which will take me someplace I'd rather not go while adhering vermin and viruses to my trail so I inadvertently track back dirt into the Love Shack.

The other kind of message I repeatedly receive goes into my email inbox and it always starts with something like Attention Dearest One. Eagerly I read ahead to find out who has the temerity to send me an email with such an amusing greeting. If you follow the AIDA marketing communications model, the salutation is the attention-getter. The next paragraph is designed to stimulate my interest with a back-handed insult and an impassioned plea:

I am Charles David, Director of Operations, Eagles Security and Delivering Company, Austin, Texas. USA. It is explicable for you to grow apprehensive reading from me since there was no previous exchange between us. However, I implore your attention on the subject matter hereto contained.

The rest of the message contains, of course, the desire-provoking promise: Somehow this kind gentleman has been saddled with two trunks full of gold bars. Imagine that! And he is contacting me randomly to get some help disposing of said gold bars. Finally, the call to action: All he wants from me is some contact information. I can simply reply to his email and give him my name, address, phone, age, and occupation. I'm pretty sure this guy could then match up my info with whatever data he stole from Target and clean me out.

I can but shake my head in disbelief. It is inexplicable how anyone receiving such a message could believe that it was (a) from a real person, and (b) benevolent in intent. But you gotta love the naive use of what they must think is formal business English. I guess my response is to sigh and remark to myself that if it didn't work occasionally, they wouldn't keep doing it. They are marketers, after all.

Building my relationship network, one stupid event at a time

Last night I braved a little wind, a few raindrops, and horrifying 45° temps to do a little networking at the monthly meeting of the local chapter of a national organization called ODN (which stands for Organizational Development Network). The topic was on conflict resolution. I didn't attend for the topic, for the simple fact that I have no conflicts with anyone. Yes, that's right, the Love Shack is a conflict-free zone. The cat has signed an agreement, promising to lead a conflict-free lifestyle as long as he is on the premises. He is looking at me right now, wondering if he should start a conflict. (He dislikes it when I type.)

I'm always a bit manic when I go to networking events. Large rooms full of people make me skittish. If there is an educational component, I'm okay: I'm a good student. I can sit and zone out while taking notes and drawing pictures. The hardest moments are before and after the program, where one is expected to mingle and talk: building networks, I guess, although I confess I feel better when I'm just a lone node. But in the interests of developing relationships that may be valuable to my research business at some unknown point in the future, I showed up to do my best.

I entered the conference room and introduced myself to three women who sat at a square table. Two of the women (C. and T.) worked at a local conflict mediation center. They were colleagues of the presenter. The other person (V.) used to work with someone who used to work with someone who mentored the two women who work at the mediation center. I began to get the feeling that the conflict resolution field is fairly small, possibly insular, and definitely does not include me. No matter. I'm used to feeling like an outsider, with my goofy knit cap and fingerless gloves (socks), so I didn't hesitate, but plunged right in, determined to press forward with my mission: to network!

Someone (not me) mentioned the topic of emotional intelligence. I thought to myself, oh, that's a cool topic. I wonder how they measure it?

“What instrument do you use to measure emotional intelligence?” I asked politely, looking around the table.

T., an older dark-haired gal, looked at me over her little half-glasses. “Intuition,” she replied flatly. I was astounded.

“How is that working for you?” I asked lamely.

“Very well. After a while, you are able to tell...” She trailed off. Everyone laughed except me.

“We've found that giving people assessments isn't that helpful,” explained V. “People find out what they are good at, and they stop trying to improve.”

“But isn't a desire to improve a hallmark of emotional intelligence?” I asked, feeling somewhat perplexed.

“Yes, I guess you are right,” she admitted, which of course made me feel like I'd scored a point, but underneath I was feeling dismay. I've been thinking that perhaps the ODN people represented a viable target market for my research services. Now I find out they don't even do research? It can't be! Had I committed the classic marketing faux pas of assuming that I know what people need and want? I can't easily sell them on something they don't believe they need. It's like trying to persuade someone who doesn't already eat cereal to buy a new brand of corn flakes. Argh! How can these people help organizations improve without doing some type of assessment? Here I thought I was the shark in a pool of smiling, trusting minnows! How could I have been so wrong?

An answer of sorts came moments later. Apparently a really big shark had beaten me to the pool of unsuspecting minnows. A portly gentleman got up and introduced us to a company (I'll call it Blabla, because I don't really want to give them any publicity, considering that they may be a potential competitor [or employer] of mine someday). Blabla offers tools for OD and HR consultants, a whole slew of fancy tools, all neatly packaged with shiny modern technology (none of this old-fashioned paper and pencil stuff!), and ready for these consultants to use in their practices.

These sharks at Blabla are doing what I want to do, except they are a lot bigger. And I presume they actually know what they are doing. Although you wouldn't know it by the “sales pitch” the portly man gave to the group. He was immediately followed by a younger version of himself (could it truly have been his son?), who proceeded to flatter the group by repeatedly saying, “you guys here in Oregon are the test group!” Maybe I should have felt flattered, but after hearing us addressed as “you guys” five times in as many sentences, I started to think if I just keep at this research thing, I could eventually outlast them just on sheer grammar skills. If he had committed the ultimate sin—“your guyses'”—I would have stood up and walked out.

The announcements ended. The program began. A tall slender man with a pleasant manner spoke into a clip-on microphone as he walked us through a series of PowerPoint slides. The rest of the evening proceeded smoothly. I came away with a handout and a few pages of scribbles, a couple business cards (flagrant networking on my part: Hey, got any more of those business cards? Wanna link up on LinkedIn?), and then it was back out into the embarrassingly warm rain to feel my way home in the bleary darkness.

There's another networking event early tomorrow morning. I'm making no promises.

One small resolution for a better new year—for other drivers, anyway

The beginning of a new year is a good time to clean house, review past performance, and make plans for the future. I'm sneaking up on all three, in good malcontent fashion, doing a little here and there and pretending I'm making progress. Little things hinder forward movement. For example, stepping in cat barf. I think it was cat barf. My sinuses are chronically clogged (the Love Shack is a dust and hairball museum), so I'm not totally sure it wasn't cat poop. I didn't smell anything, so I didn't know immediately that disaster had struck. All I know is, at some point when I navigated the dim hallway to the bathroom, I stepped in something that unbeknownst to me adhered itself to the bottom of my shoe. I then proceeded to track it all over the house.

Eventually I caught on, when I saw the cat sniffing my footsteps. I washed my shoe, groaning loudly all the while. The cat watched, looking a little bemused. Like, WTF, dude, didn't you smell it? Why didn't you step around it? If only. I laugh when I look at my little collection of outdoor shoes, neatly parked inside my back door. It is possible my outdoor shoes are cleaner than my indoor shoes. Well, on the bright side, that miserable toy poodle who used to live next door and leave me miniature poop bombs along the back walkway is out of my life.

Well, if stepping in cat barf is the worst thing that happens, I won't complain. It could be worse. My friends in Minnesota are slammed with excruciatingly cold temperatures, just inhumanly cold arctic air, snow, ice, and wind. It's nuts. I'm such a weather wimp, I can hardly handle 40°. Although I've heard people from back East tell me that Portland has a special brand of damp winter cold that gets in the bones and stays for days, often in the form of pneumonia.

We all have our ways of coping. Me, I just microwave my rice-filled foot warmer and hunker down to wait it out. If you wait long enough, even a crappy fog inversion layer will eventually dissipate to reveal blue sky. Today we had sunshine, real honest-to-goodness sunshine, but the arc of the sun is so low in the sky, we might as well be in Alaska. It's barely 3:30 in the afternoon and already it's twilight in the north shadow of Mt. Tabor. There's no point in trying to go for a walk. Even if I find some dregs of sunshine on the west side of the hill, the shady sidewalks and roads will be treacherous. Because a hip fracture took down my dad, I am understandably wary of pavement covered with frost, ice, moss, or even just deceptively dangerous plain old rain.

I've decided that one of my resolutions for the new year is to stop calling other drivers terms of endearment like Jacka-- and F---head. I say these names with very little animosity, more like a greeting, really. Like, Hey, what's going on, Jacka--? Still, if anyone heard me (and sometimes my mother does), one might think I was angry (sometimes I get frustrated, but it's always short-lived; the adrenalin is not worth the effort). So, in an effort to do my part to make the world a slightly better place, I hereby resolve to use the kinder terms Jackrabbit and Furhead when I am greeting drivers who are attracting my attention with their odd, quirky, charming, stupefying, and otherwise incomprehensible behavior. And Gramps always works, too.

Re-framing 2014

Hey guess what! I've discovered that I am an idea generator. I am a veritable fountain of hot and cold running ideas...things to make, do, write, say... I bet you are, too. Am I right? Do you find you are especially creative when you are with friends? When I am with my friend Prosprus, or my friend Bravadita, or my friend Zeenat the Warrior Princess, I can see possibilities for miles—usually for them, not so much for me, but still! Ideas galore! You might say, wow, isn't it great to be an idea generator! But apparently there are two parts to the gift, and I only got the first part. Like so many gifts, there is a blessing and a curse. The blessing is, I'm long on ideas. The curse is, I'm short on execution. That means I'm a dreamer, not a doer. Darn it. It's always something.

Well, I'm not a total loser. I did manage to finish my Ph.D. That counts for some serious execution points, I think. But in my world, a Ph.D. is just another dream if it isn't applied. Eeek. That sound you hear is the rubbing meeting the road.

You'd think an idea generator would be a bubbly, optimistic sort of person. I mean, isn't dreaming an inherently hopeful act? It implies there is a future. On the other hand, I suppose it could simply be a means of exiting, stage right. Dreaming may be positive by definition, but it could also be the favorite escape hatch of a chronically absent human. It's so much easier to dream than to pick up the pen or the paintbrush or the running shoes. Do we get points for good intentions? Or is it all about getting things done?

My friend Carlita tracks her New Year's resolutions during the year to see how many items she completes before the new year. She reported the results in a facebook post. If she only reported percentages, I could imagine, well, she promised to do ten things and she got eight things done, 80%, not bad! So if I promise to do one thing, and I get it done, I'm at 100%. Woohoo, look at me go! But no, Carlita has hundreds of items on her list. And they aren't wimpy intentions like, I vow to brush my teeth at least once a day. No, her list is not only long but substantive. That woman kicks ass. She knows how to get things done.

The thought of making a list of resolutions makes me want to go back to bed. But I just got up from a nap. I'm not really tired. I just want to escape my life for a while, go be in someone else's drama for a change. I'm sure there are thousands of people who would be delighted to switch places with me, probably in this very city. That's just depressing. I'm sure everyone could live my life better than I do.

I'm making a New Year's resolution to re-frame 2014 as a year of positive action, even if it is just promising to brush my teeth every day. Hell, you gotta start somewhere. (Don't worry, Sis, it's not terminal: It's just me, missing the sun.)

No treats for you! One year!

It's good to get together with friends during the dog days between Christmas and New Years. I don't consider myself a Christian, but stinky shreds of my family's Presbyterian past still cling to me, even after all the years since the torture chamber I recall as Sunday School. To shake off the dregs of the holiday, yesterday afternoon I met up with Bravadita, my friend and former colleague from the now defunct career college. Last summer Bravadita moved to a hip and funky downtown apartment, an old gem sandwiched between taller, newer buildings, within blocks of the Portland Art Museum, the Central Library, and the Oregon Historical Society. I found a place to park with no trouble, fed the meter machine my debit card, and had $4.80 painlessly extracted from my bank account. (I love this brave new electronic world! Way to go, Target!)

Bravadita and I walked over to the Oregon Historical Society, where residents of Multnomah County are allowed in free (why not residents of Oregon? I wondered). We wandered three floors of glass showcases of old stuff from earlier days plus semi-interactive exhibits. We especially enjoyed the slot machine that lit up and chimed when we correctly answered a question about Oregon native tribes. Winner! Within a short time my back was aching, and I was ready to sit down. We walked a few blocks to an Indian restaurant Bravadita had been to once for happy hour.

The space was dark, narrow, and as far as we could tell, empty of customers. “Two for dinner?” the hostess asked. I looked at Bravadita. We nodded at each other. “Do you have a reservation?” the young lady asked, perusing an undecipherable diagram on a small computer monitor. I thought, huh?

“No, do we need them?” I responded, looking around for signs of life.

She may have detected a note of skepticism in my voice, because she smirked a little. Then she said, “I can seat you right now.” Duh, I thought.

She led us toward the back, where a fairly good sized dining area opened up, previously hidden from the narrow passageway. Few tables were empty. Wow, who knew. As we were led up three steps to the upper level, a large group came in and were seated in a secluded area on the lower level. The place quickly filled up. The staff, dressed in black, hustled efficiently around the tables. The menu was extensive. The prices were in line with what I expected—higher than I wanted to pay. But it felt like a celebration of the season and a reward for accomplishments... a treat. So the meal commenced.

We ordered an appetizer consisting of some hefty baked mushrooms draped in wilted greens. The first bite briefly cut off my air supply—hot! When I could breathe again, I decided I probably would have preferred my mushrooms to be less aggressive. But the chicken marsala, which arrived in a timely fashion, was utterly delicious, creamy, coconutty, not too spicy, just yum, yum, yum. I ate the whole damn thing, because that is what I do (past president of the Clean Plate Club), and I would have eaten more if there had been more. (I rarely know when to stop.) Bravadita ordered some spinach and cheese glop, which she nibbled and grazed like a wild deer, and then she boxed up the remainder to take home. To make sure we were really, really crammed to the gills, we finished the meal with a mug of chai. It was a rare treat, indeed, to spend a Saturday evening, dining fine with a good friend.

Of course, like many treats, there are consequences to indulging. I drove home in a mental fog and laid on the couch for the rest of the evening in a fugue state, searching for crap to watch on network TV, rubbing my tummy, and treasuring the memory of that marsala. It was hard to forget. When your stomach protrudes and gurgles occasionally, it's not hard to remember what you ate, am I right? I was still full at bedtime, but not unhappily so. I went to sleep well satisfied.

Maybe it was the chai, but the night lasted forever. I slept in a twilight state, not quite awake, definitely not asleep. All night, it seemed, I swooped and dipped in and out of a series of what at the time seemed to be amazingly creative dreams about black and white videos. (This shouldn't have been a surprise to me, considering that the day prior I had actually recorded a short video of myself for a web project.) In my dream, as is typical with dreams, there were layers of meaning, unfolding like flowers into each other. Each video vignette was visually rich and full, and no doubt reflected the state of my stomach. In the dreams, I remember being pleasantly surprised to have discovered a new art form.

Today, the other shoe dropped, as it were. I guess I was emulating what happens with my cat, when I cave in to his demand for treats. My hothouse flower of a digestive system, after a calm morning, suddenly took a seismic wrench, the floor dropped out, and I was running for the bathroom. In a matter of moments, all that lovely chicken marsala, all that heavenly chai, and presumably all those forgettable mushrooms, all of it, shall we say... drained away, leaving me feeling empty, boneless, and oddly serene. I don't know if I managed to extract any nutrition out of the food before it exited, stage right, but in my opinion the fantastical dreams conjured by my epicurean bender made it all worth while.

Still, I don't think I will be eating out again for a while. I'm all for the pursuit of art, but I'll give it a year before I indulge again in the culinary path to creativity. Treats are highly over-rated.

A tale of two Christmases

Merry ho ho. With no major disasters or mall shootings to fret about (that I know of), all I have left to talk about is family. 'Tis the season. Today we await the arrival of my mysterious and elusive older brother, who earlier today declared his intention to drive in from the coast to visit us, the Portland contingent (which consists of just my mother, brother, and me, as my sister currently is enjoying the holidays in Munich). The hot line is close at hand, over which I expect to hear my mother's gravelly voice telling me, “He's here.” Or perhaps, “He's not here yet.” Waiting for a visit from my older brother is sort of like waiting for Godot: Maybe he'll show up, but usually it's just a rumor. In the meantime, I'll tell you about Christmas Eve.

Last night I picked my mother up to take her to visit some relatives from my father's side of the family. It was the annual Christmas Eve family event, conveniently located not two blocks from the Love Shack in a once-stylish split-level duplex, wherein reside two sisters (let's call them the Red Queen and the White Queen) and their respective husbands—kings?—and their respective pets. My father considered himself a brother to the pair, although I think technically they were all actually cousins. The family tree is somewhat gnarled on my father's side. I've adored the White and Red Queens since they babysat my siblings and me.

The White Queen and her King had three White Princes, all of whom dutifully married handsome women. Two of the three successfully produced offspring at regular intervals, over the years, thereby doing their part to keep the Christmas spirit bright. Likewise, the Red Queen and her King had a son and a daughter, both of whom had multiple marriages and small armies of children of varying vintages. Thus, I expected to find a full house.

The front door of the the White Queen's side of the split-level duplex was flanked with multicolored lights, which did nothing to illuminate the many steps leading up to it. My mother, looking like a Christmas elf in her red fleece jacket and stompy knee-high black Ugg-like boots, grabbed my hand in a death grip. She has a healthy fear of stairs after a fall down some last year landed her in rehab with a busted pelvis. I gritted my teeth and steadied her as we clomped our way through the shadows to the front door.

We were right on time (because we are nothing if not punctual). I pressed the glowing door bell and heard a voice yell, “Come on in,” so I pushed the door open and led my mother inside, where we found five more steps leading up to the living room. Luckily these were carpeted, with a hand rail, so I left my mother to navigate them herself and went ahead to bear our potluck contributions (Mom, cookies, me, salad) to the kitchen. I scanned the room and found mostly familiar faces and a lot of empty chairs. Were we early? I commenced to socialize (which for me consists of annoying people by taking pictures with my crummy digital camera).

The place soon filled up with sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren. The White Queen assisted by her minions (daughters-in-law) spread the table with a buffet of dishes. “Finger food,” she said. “No forks.” I looked bemusedly at my big green salad, thinking, How come I didn't get that memo? The wine flowed at a moderate pace. (About an inch of red wine flowed to me over the course of the evening, along with at least five of my favorite sugar cookies. Another story.) I busily insinuated myself into conversations, camera in hand. The children did their best to entertain, while two perfectly coiffed pure white standard poodles took turns sitting around with perfect posture, then surreptitiously nosed the snacks on the coffee table when humans weren't looking.

After we'd been there for about an hour, the smallest baby had urped all over the couch and the poodles had nudged the brie onto the carpet. The party was really taking off. That's when I saw my mother come in from the smoker's area on the back balcony. She said, “The rest of the party is next door.”

Huh? Next door? I looked around and realized that the people I saw milling around were all related to the White Queen and King. No one from the Red kingdom was present! I was dumbfounded. This had never happened before in my memory of Christmas Eves stretching back over the 16 years I've been back in Portland. The Red and White Queens had never hosted separate events! Was this a case of Hatfields and McCoys, two 60+-year-old queens, I mean, sisters, living in the same building but not talking to one another?

“We need to go next door,” I told my mother. She agreed.

“Are you leaving already?” shouted the White King as we edged toward the door.

“No, we're just going next door,” I said.

“To say hi to the other half,” my mother added.

“Can we come back later?” I asked, thinking of my salad, which I had not yet eaten any of. And my glass of wine sitting forlornly on the counter top.

The White King escorted us down some steps to the lower level, through a door, and into the garage. He pressed a gizmo on the wall and his garage door opened. Out in the foggy dark, he keyed in some numbers on a keypad by the other garage door, which opened, revealing a red Kia Soul. “My son has a green one of these,” my mother said (referring to my brother, Godot, for whom I am still waiting as I write this). The White King ignored her and pounded on the door leading into the house. He was smiling, I saw. Was it an evil smile? The door opened. There stood the Red King, wearing a Santa hat. The White King handed us off to the Red King. We trudged up the stairs and just like that, entered the Red kingdom. Duplex. Whatever.

Instead of watching entertaining young children, the inhabitants of the Red kingdom were watching football on a big screen TV. Instead of finger food, they were enjoying Chinese. About a hundred white paper take-out cartons were arranged on table in the kitchen. The Red Queen and her daughter were looking at something over the sink. Instead of white poodles, the Red Queen and Red Princess stepped over and around a fat brown and black dachshund named Gunny, who spent a lot of time laying on his side in the kitchen doorway.

I looked around and tried to figure out who was who in this new land. “Hi! Have some Chinese!” It was my younger brother. He was taking time out to wave to me while watching the game with the Red King. On the couch sat the Red Prince, a 30-something who seemed to have blossomed... bloomed? No ballooned is the word I'm looking for. It took me a moment to recognize him. He spent the evening on the couch watching the game and eating from white cartons with the other potatoes, I mean, teenagers, who seemed to be a lusty bonus from his new wife's former marriage.

Eventually I got tired of the chemical smell of artificial Christmas that hung like a fog over the group. Or maybe it was the smell of sweet and sour pork. I eased on out the front door and stood outside looking up at the duplex from the sidewalk. In the Red kingdom, I could see the flicker of the television. In the the window of the White kingdom, I saw a tranquil, tastefully decorated fake tree. Fog in the air condensed on my camera, but I took a picture anyway, an image of two kingdoms, two Christmases, through a fine dusting of mist. I went up the dark steps to the White kingdom, entered the door like I lived there, ate salad and cookies, and took pictures as though I'd never left.

How utterly bizarre that two sisters living next door to one another should be so close yet so far apart. Of course, I understand that both families couldn't possibly fit into one living room. And a standing-room-only forest of adults wouldn't be much fun for the kids or probably even very safe. Oh, was that your little leg? I'm so sorry! No, I get it. But the solution is obvious, or at least it was to my mother.

“They need a door,” she said. Yes, I agreed, a door from one kingdom to the other. A bridge between two worlds. And some outside lighting wouldn't hurt either.

The phone just rang. It's my mother, calling to tell me my mysterious brother has arrived. I must fly, before he disappears. More later! Happy Christmas.

Plagued by monkey mind

As my friend in Minneapolis once said, “On a good day, my mind is trying to kill me.” She's speaking of her own mind, but the phrase seems to apply to me this week, too. How do I know? Because my brain is trying to convince me that I didn't actually earn a Ph.D. My brain is trying to tell me that the whole thing—the academic achievement I spent the last eight years of my life working toward—was a colossal... dream? mistake? fantasy? That it never really happened. Poof.

This is bordering on insanity, I know. How can I doubt my achievement? I have witnesses. If reality can be known and understood at all (debatable), I think (most) people I know would (mostly) be willing to accept as reality the fact that after all those years, I finally finished the damn doctorate.

It's not the first time my mind has played this trick on me. One time I got an A-plus on a paper. Within moments I had convinced myself that it wasn't true. It wasn't really an A-plus, my eyes are failing me. Or, it wasn't really me at all, it was someone else, probably that smart blonde girl in the second row, who earned that A-plus. Or, it was a silly grading error; after all, the TA is an imbecile; soon they will discover the truth: It wasn't me. I'm a fraud.

I think this mental condition is related to the Buddhist concept of monkey mind. Sadly, my particular brand of monkey mind leans more toward confusion, indecision, and lack of control, and less toward whimsy, which is too bad, because appreciating whimsy can be pleasurable. On the plus side, monkey mind comes with entertaining visuals: I picture a line of badly dressed flea-infested monkeys wearing tattered red fezzes, dancing on my shoulder and clashing little brass cymbals, right in my ear. Youch. If they weren't so darn noisy, they might actually be funny.

When the monkeys in my mind start dancing and clashing their cymbals, it means my brain is trying to rewrite history. What is my solution to monkey mind? Nap. My solution is to take a nap. Or a bath, or read a book, preferably while taking a bath. And not just any book, but something that takes me far, far away from monkey mind. My current remedy is the old standby, the Otherworld tetralogy by Tad Williams. Each paperback weighs a pound, a thousand pages of virtual reality immersion, and after a few chapters of traveling along the River of Blue Fire, I have no idea what reality is, virtual or otherwise. It's very helpful.

After spending three years working on a phenomenological study, you would think I would be comfortable with the subjective and tenuous nature of reality. Usually I am. The monkey mind is loudest when I fall into the trap of thinking I can ever truly understand or know anything. Hey, did you think that getting a Ph.D. means a person is suddenly smart? Har har, joke's on you. Maybe a little smarter, maybe not, but stubborn, for sure. I think we can agree on that.

How to avoid the holidays: Build a Wordpress website

I'm fumbling around in Wordpress and MailChimp, trying to remember how to change layouts and add mailing list forms... it's daunting. Every time I do this, I'm reminded of my mother, who says (repeatedly) that she can no longer handle technology beyond a non-smart cell phone. Actually, I'm not even sure she can handle a land-line anymore. Last week I think I mentioned we went out to celebrate. When I picked her up at her condo, she came out carrying a plastic bag containing her cordless phone and base.

“I'm not getting a dial tone,” my mother complained. “Can we stop at Radio Shack on the way back?”

She thought it might need a new battery. She was pretty sure “the boys” would be able to figure out what was wrong with it. One of the “boys” waited on her, a young, energetic, patient African American. He took her phone and plugged it into an electrical outlet on the counter. “It's got power,” he said.

My mother put the phone to her ear. “But there's no dial tone.”

The kid and I looked at each other, like, Whoa. You want to tackle this, or shall I?

“Mom, the phone needs to be plugged into the phone jack in order to get a dial tone,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and nonjudgmental. She looked at me blankly. Then the light came on.

“Oh. Right. Okay.”

I assured her I would check the phone when we got back to her place. As it turned out, the phone was fine. It had somehow come unplugged from the phone jack. Maybe she was tidying up cords, who knows, and thought, Here's a cord that goes nowhere important. I'll just unplug it. 

Anyway, I feel a lot like how I imagine my mother feels when navigating new technology. I have tentatively dipped a toe in the new millennium by thinking I can learn to use Wordpress. Yet I sink back into my old technology like putting on an old shabby bathrobe: If you are lucky enough to visit the Love Shack, you will see the analog television, converter box, and unsightly antenna suspended from the ceiling, indicating I have not yet committed to high-def or cable. Every time a bus goes by, the signal shatters into a few thousand pixels, causing me to miss crucial dialog. What did she just say? Darn it!  (Have I mentioned I live on the most frequently traveled bus line in the city of Portland?)

I'm updating my websites, bouncing back and forth between technology and content, probably looking like my cat's tail when he can't decide if he wants to snuggle with my hand or eat it. Form or content, which is more important? People won't remember what I write, but they'll remember what they see. I need photos, I guess. (What does marketing research look like?) I've been told I need a video. Oh, boy. Now there's a scary thought. My former students would cringe. Thar she blows! Stay tuned for the Carol Show.

This stupid cold season

My mother and I went out to celebrate. I'm celebrating the completion of my doctorate. She's celebrating the completion of her stint as co-treasurer on the condo board. We went to brunch at Shari's, her favorite place, not mine. As far as I am concerned, they might as well serve up gravel, dirt, and machine oil, topped with antifreeze. It's all poison to me. But I admit, those pies sure look good inside the shiny glass case.

We sat across from each other in a booth on sky-blue benches whose springs were sagging (broken by years of obese guests, I am guessing). I sat just a little too low. Or the table was just a little too high. We ordered coffee, black, and the young waitress brought a little carafe to leave on the table. My mother ordered quiche, with a muffin. I ordered eggs, with fruit: What can they do to ruin eggs, right? The food came quickly. (It doesn't take long to scramble a couple eggs.) Mom skinned the top of a little container of grape jelly and spread it generously over one of her muffins. She did the same to the other one. She took a big bite of jelly-covered muffin. For the rest of the conversation, she had jelly on her chin. I tried to ignore it.

“I'm really glad to be done with this condo board stuff,” she said. “But some of the residents aren't too happy with the way the board president handled the elections.” She picked experimentally at the little slice of quiche pie with her fork.

“Oh, why is that?” I replied. I was doing my own experimental poking, at my eggs. Scrambled. They looked okay, so I ate a bite. Just about what you would expect of scrambled eggs.

“She nominated and elected people who weren't even there!” my mother complained.

“Wow, you mean people were elected in absentia?” Having served on a board before, I understand some of the shenanigans that can go on when chairpeople start feeling their power.

“That's right! And some of us are not going to stand for it!” She took another bite of muffin. Purple jelly sprayed gently across the table.

“Uh-oh,” I said, sipping the weak brown coffee. “Mom, what are you going to do?”

“A group of us are getting together to decide our strategy,” she said, popping a grape in her mouth and looking smug.

After a moment's reflection, I interpreted her comment. “You mean, you've formed a cabal and you are planning a mutiny of the condo board.”

She looked a little abashed. “Well, when you put it like that...”

I tried to explain to her what would happen when the board found out that a group of residents had gone outside the committee/board process to express their grievances. It would look like the condo equivalent of a military revolution. I pictured a horde of old folks shuffling along the condo walkways toward the chairperson's unit, pitchforks in hand, mumbling, “Get her,” and “No guts, no glory” and “Slow down, ooh, my back.” With my mother leading the pack. She'd be a holy terror with a pitchfork.

I sighed. “You are a lightning rod for trouble,” I said.

She grinned. “I know.”

We ate in silence for a minute or two. I thought longingly of my lovely Trader Joe's Bay Blend coffee waiting for me at home. Even cold, the stuff will put hair in places you've never seen hair before. Delicious. Oh well. Shari's does the best they can, with what they have. It's not Starbucks, after all.

“She won't even call on me anymore in the condo meetings.”

I looked at my mother with some perplexity. My mother, this scrawny woman with the wrinkled skin and flyaway halo of gray hair, with her squinty eyes hidden behind chunky trifocals, this skinny little person with her elastic-waist blue jeans, old white sneakers, and dentures... somehow my mother has managed to intimidate the board chair to the extent that the chair will no longer let her speak at the condo meetings. Way to go, Mom.

I think I figured her out. Tonight as I avoid watching the re-run of the Sound of Music and some country music Christmas special, as I wait for Saturday Night Live to put this stupid cold season into perspective for me, I have some time to think. After all the photo scanning I've done over the past week, I have a visual sense of my mother from her earliest days, through teenhood, into marriage and motherhood, into middle age and retirement, and into widowhood. I think I have her pegged. My mother is a rabble-rowser. She's a pot-stirrer. Oh, my! She's a... she's a chronic malcontent!

I guess that old saying about apples and trees might actually be true.

Is there life after doctorate?

This week I'm wrapping up the loose ends of the doctoral journey. The University wanted a pdf file and a hard copy of the dissertation. First, I took my flash drive to Office Depot and had them print one copy (plain paper, no color, 391 pages [Can you bind it? No, are you crazy, it's 391 pages! That will be $31.28]). As I leafed through the massive wretched tome, I noticed the images of the rich pictures looked like blurry crap. Argh. At home I opened up the Word file and tried to sharpen and color correct the images to reduce the blur. It sort of worked, poor man's Photoshop, lame tools in Word. My challenge was to minimize the file size but maximize image quality... sort of like eating a gallon of ice cream and hoping I will still fit in my jeans. Whatever. I reprinted all the color pages using my own old leaky inkjet printer, inserted the new pages, and stuffed the whole thing in a box. The next day I went to the post office, bought a money order for $160 (I'm choosing Open Access, so anyone could potentially find it, should they choose to search on something so esoteric as academic quality in for-profit vocational programs), put it in the box with my Proquest order form, and shipped it off to the University. (Picture me wiping my hands.) Done. Stick a fork in me again, this time, it's really done. As long as I didn't get the pages out of order, or accidentally skip some pages, or fill in the form wrong, or put the wrong amount on the money order, or mail it to the wrong address...

Today I celebrated my new life as a Ph.D. by applying for an adjunct teaching position at a clone of the college that fired my compadres and me last May. No, not fired, we weren't fired. Laid off, is what we were, laid off when the campus closed. No fault of our own. Repeat after me. It's not a moral failing to be laid off from a job, although it sometimes feels like it.

The job I applied for today was for an adjunct Business instructor, three years of experience required. As I read the online application process, I realized they didn't want the cover letter I had so painstakingly taken time to customize just for them. How times have changed. They wanted the resume, but only as a means to fill in the online registration form. Nowadays, it's all about online tests. Before you can apply, you must take a battery of tests. Tests? Really? Just to apply?

Yep. The first one was a 10-minute timed test of math, logic, and vocabulary questions, all mixed together. As I looked at the practice page, I could feel my heart rate start to soar, my typical response to being timed or tested. Being both timed and tested launched me into overdrive. My hands began to shake. My mouth suddenly grew parched. Do I want this stupid adjunct job badly enough to go through this torture?

I took it one question at a time and soon began to realize that whatever capacity for logic my brain used to have must have been beaten out of me over the past eight years of doctoral drudgery. Here's a series of numbers; which one comes next? 15  32  486  2587 24. Hell, I don't know. Ask me another. Okay, a monkey is to manager as a centipede is to a _________ ? Oh, come on. Really?

I'm exaggerating. They didn't really ask those questions, but they asked ones similarly as incomprehensible to me and my tiny tired brain. But that wasn't even the best part. (Best, meaning, worth mentioning.) After ten minutes of this electronic waterboarding, I was allowed to move on to the next section: 12 pages (12, I kid you not!) of psychological questions about my working style, personality, attitudes, and beliefs, which I was to answer using a five-point scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. Oh boy, Myers Briggs meets the DISC Assessment! I can do this. I'm the survey queen, after all!

I answered the questions honestly, all 12 pages. What could I do? There were so many similar and repeated questions, they were bound to trip up any carefully devised strategy within three pages. You know what I mean? Hey, wait, I know I've answered that question before, but I forgot how I answered it! Darn it! So I answered honestly. They will no doubt find out I'm an introverted (but highly educated) wackjob clinging to a tiny shred of optimism, nursing a slight mean streak, and presenting vast unplumbed depths of depression, probably due to an inability to manage and control outcomes. Har har har. Story of my life.

In the meantime, I'm still scanning family photos, a hundred or so a night for the past week. It's tedious work, but I am noticing a remarkable byproduct: I'm falling in love with my family. Near and far, alive and dead, I'm savoring the images of the people who inhabited my childhood. I've discovered the holidays are the perfect time to look at old photos. I don't care about Christmas and any of that hoopla; I do care about the people I've known in my life. Could be the season, could be the below-freezing temperatures, could be the completion of the long dark doctorate. Whatever it is, I'm feeling sentimental. I'm missing my sister, missing our dead father, missing the old calico cat, the decrepit farmhouse, the overgrown yard, the funky furniture covered with gaudy hand-made afghans... I'm not judging. I'm appreciating. I'm appreciating the good stuff and forgiving the bad stuff. I may be a party of one, self-unemployed, chronically malcontented... but tonight I'm celebrating.

Stick a fork in me

This morning I successfully defended my dissertation.

Sorry. I'm trying to figure out what to write next. Do I mention that my good friend and former colleague Sheryl braved 19° temps to sit with me, serve as my proctor, and be my only witness? Do I tell you how it went, how nervous I was, how I stumbled over my words? Should I tell you that my cell phone beeped during my presentation as it received a texted photo of my brother's girlfriend's old black dog, holding up a hand-written sign that read, “Good luck, Carol!”? Should I try to identify what I felt after it was over (a wintry mix of relief and nausea), or should I talk about how I am now? (Post-dissertation blues, already?) Should I even mention how my brain is already trying to rewrite history in a bizarre attempt to convince me that none of this happened? No, best not, perhaps.

After Sheryl left, I called my mother. Her line was busy. I called my brother: He wasn't home. In desperation, I emailed my sister, my most trusted advisor: Bless her heart, she called within minutes from her job in Boston. Finally. Someone to help me understand what I was feeling.

“Do you have any plans to see people next week?” she asked.

I looked at my calendar. Does taking my car in for an oil change count? “No,”I replied.

“You need to stay connected,” she said. Hmm. Is there a high suicide rate among new Ph.D.s?

I promised to make plans to do something with people. She said, “Congratulations, Dr. B.”

“Thanks, Dr. B.” I replied with a smirk.

I emailed a few people, ate breakfast, and went to bed, too saturated and weary to stay awake any longer. I dreamed of burned onions. (19° outside means no windows open in the Love Shack.) Finally I couldn't stand the smell and got up to find a smattering of congratulatory emails in my inbox. That was nice. My mother called. We talked about her condo board meeting.

I stood around for a while, looking at things. I cleaned out the drawer I had devoted to academic files for the past eight years. I cleaned up my desk. I filed papers I want to keep, for what, I'm not sure. As I stacked paper and filled the recycle bin, the phrase eight years kept rolling around in my head. Eight years, $50,000. Now what? What's next? Who am I, if I'm no longer a struggling grad student? Who am I if I can no longer complain about the wretched massive tome, or the timeline, or the waiting?

It's time to reinvent myself. I'll give it a few days, though, before I tackle that challenge. I need more sleep.
 

Cold remembrances of someone else's past

Self-imposed house arrest, in limbo, waiting for Monday, oral defense day. I made it to the store today, yay me. I had to go; I was out of eggs. Can't live without eggs. It's cold. The temperature almost made it above freezing, but I'm not going to complain: Minneapolis barely made it to 8° before the mercury plunged back down to 5° above. 20° I can handle; 8° would drive me under the covers. After a long hot bath.

While I wait for the waiting to be over, I am building shelves. As if I didn't have enough shelves already, you would no doubt say, if you've ever been lucky enough to see my place: The walls are papered with homemade wooden book shelves, which sag under the weight of books, binders, and more books. Most of the shelves are full. But you can never have too many shelves. The simple wooden shelves I build now will receive my journals as I continue to fill the pages and discard them, one per month, year after year since 1995. The boring story of my life, literally. It takes up a lot of space. Physically and otherwise.

And while I wait for the loden green latex to dry, I scan old family photos. I have only myself to blame. My mother wanted me to look through a stack of musty photo albums one day, and I made the mistake of saying, Hey, we need to scan these! Thus, I volunteered for this self-torture. The albums sat around my worktable for a few months while I wrote the massive tome we call my dissertation. Last week I realized now would be a good time to start clearing up the clutter (considering my compulsively neat friend Sheryl is coming over to be my proctor for my oral defense). Hence, scanning.

It's a mindless, tedious task involving removing old black and white photographs from little paper corners that someone painstakingly positioned 60 to 80 years ago. The album pages are dirty, dusty black paper, and reek of ancient cigarette smoke. It's fairly gross work. While I place five or six images on the scanner bed, I can see if someone wrote something on the back. Sometimes there are useful comments: Ray, Ruth, and me. (Me is my mother.) There are many pictures of my mother and her brother as children, fewer of them as teenagers, and hardly any of them as adults. I'm guessing by then my mother was the one behind the camera. My uncle was behind a glass of wine.

Other annotations were less helpful: This is a picture of the loading dock. Where, Grandpa? When? My mother's father was a sailor and then a longshoreman, first in San Francisco and then in Portland. I didn't know him well, although I could have if I hadn't been so nervous around him. As a very young man, he sailed on the Moshulu, a merchant sailing ship that went from the States to Australia and the Philippines. Some of the photos are obviously taken from the rigging, looking down on decks awash with ocean. Yikes. Now the Moshulu is refitted with fake masts and sails, serving as a restaurant in Philadelphia. And Grandpa is long gone.

Looking at all these photos of people I barely knew or didn't know at all, most of them dead now, makes me feel a little sad. It's a year-end kind of sadness, the sadness you get when it's garden-to-bed time, when it's fleece hat, electric blanket, and rice-filled foot-warmer time. Every summer there is a moment when I stop what I'm doing and think about how I will be feeling in six months, when I'm bundled in cat hair-covered fleece. When the electric baseboard heater is clicking and clacking as it churns out warm (ish) air. When I don't go outside for three days in a row and only then to refill the bird feeder and break the ice on the bird bath. Every summer I drag my feet on the paths of Mt Tabor, hoping I can make summer last a little longer, trying to postpone the horrible moment when there are more leaves underfoot than overhead. Time passes so quickly. Even though this week seems endless, next week will speed by, and the week after that, until all that is left of me and everything and everyone I love is a bunch of old photos in a stinky photo album.

The chronic malcontent supports Buy Nothing Day

As I count down the days to my oral defense, I have done my best to take each day as it comes, free from expectations and judgment. That Zen-like approach does not come naturally to me, as you might imagine, considering I sometimes call myself a chronic malcontent. Malcontents have lots of expectations, which means when things don't go their way, which is often since that is how life is, they end of with a buttload of judgment. This week I found myself whining about all sorts of things... Christmas, waiting, weather...

I know, really? Weather? It's the height of ego to take weather personally, I know, but I still do it. I don't want to look outside, because it is probably snowing. Ugh. Snow. Still, knowing me, I would find a reason to complain about something, even if it were 85° and sunny. That's what malcontents do. We complain. Unfortunately, incessant complaining has consequences, as I discovered this week when I caved to the urge to spew my vitriolic viewpoint over my hapless friend Bravadita.

We ate pizza at a tiny pizza/pasta joint in SE Portland. I added coffee to my meal, because I knew wheat and dairy wouldn't quite be enough to send me over the top into utter mania. As I tried not to moan with indecent pleasure at the rare taste and feel of cheesy pizza in my mouth, I felt the urge to express myself. And because both Bravadita and I are frustrated creative souls stymied by forces beyond our control (our perception), that is of course what I focused on: my frustration. I'm not sure I knew what I was frustrated about, but it was something to do with art, writing, dating, unemployment, body image, poverty, and Christmas.

Looking back on it now, I would guess my frustration was fueled by the endless waiting for my doctorate to be over and the overwhelming terror of what comes after, peppered with fallout from a conversation I had with my sister about why I always wear clothes that hide my less-than-svelte figure. The spark that set off the conflagration was the time I spent the day before scanning dusty slides of wearable art projects, paintings, and fashion illustrations from my former lives as a painter, illustrator, and costume designer. (So much creativity. So much crappy art.) Stir all that into a big a potful of fear that I've spent eight years and $50,000 on a doctorate from a less-than-stellar university and what do you get? A big steaming pile of frustration.

Then Bravadita tentatively offered up her own dark frustrations, no doubt in a futile attempt to make me feel better, and suddenly I felt like marching on Washington in protest against the injustice of a society that judges women by the size of their ass. How can it be possible for one so gorgeous and talented to be so miserable? It defies logic and reason! But wait, am I talking about Bravadita, or am I talking about myself? Oh, I'm so frustrated and confused! And then, insult to injury: It's Christmas! That horrid music is everywhere! And did I mention plummeting temperatures! I'm using too many exclamation points!

I know what you are thinking: It's a wonder I'm even functioning. However, lest you fear for my sanity (Sis), truly, no worries. I've got a program to help me get through the holiday season. My strategy is this: Lay low, drink water, blog, and buy nothing. And when I lose my sense of direction, I will bury my face in cat fur. It's all good at the Love Shack.

After the pizza dinner, Bravadita and I walked across the street to the Clinton Street Theater, an old somewhat crusty neighborhood theater that boasts the longest running midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show in the nation (Who knew! [Who cares?]). We weren't there to see that. We were there to see opening night of Monkey With a Hat On's production of The Noir 10-Minute Play Festival. Ten slightly bizarre, sometimes funny vignettes that were presumably created to represent the concept of noir. Not surprisingly, there were many seedy PIs in trench coats. But there were also some quirky stories: a moment in the life of a suicidal family of ghosts, a sci-fi intrigue complete with a silver-faced female robot, and a depiction of a finishing school for call girls. Between each vignette was a unique musician playing piano or guitar or drum machine or muted trumpet. I think I liked the musicians better than the plays, except for the last vignette, which featured singing, dancing FBI agents. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that dancing FBI agents is exactly what I needed to help me get through this wretched holiday season. Thanks, Bravadita!

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.

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.

How do you know when you're in the flow?

A few days ago I was contemplating the nature of flow. I refer to a state of being where one is so absorbed in an activity that one loses all track of time. If you are a writer or an artist, you know what I mean. But anyone can experience flow. For example, I'm sure my mother is experiencing flow when she plays Castle Camelot.

I often read a book entitled Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I keep it in my bathroom. It shares a shelf with Smooth Move, Trickle Down Theory, and Evacuate! (I'm kidding. Really. Do such books exist? If not, they should.) I've read Flow before, some years ago. Now I am re-reading it, a paragraph or two at a go, so I really have time to ponder the quality of time and the nature of experience.

I wonder, is it better to engage in some engrossing activity—reading, writing, or painting, for instance—oblivious to the passage of time, surfacing in surprise from your bliss hours later, wondering where the day went? Or is it better to be painfully present to the excruciatingly slow passage of time and thereby retain consciousness of every precious second by engaging in some task that you despise—for example, teaching keyboarding to uninterested students? It's a rhetorical question. But think about it. Would you rather be conscious and miserable, or unconscious and happy? Maybe consciousness is over-rated. (Although paychecks are useful, I must admit.)

Today I received approval for my dissertation manuscript. I emailed my sister and attached the slides for my oral defense. She called tonight to congratulate me; I did my best to hold still and hear the praise. She asked for some PowerPoint tips, so I guess she liked the slide show. I'm glad. She and my mother have been my faithful cheerleaders through this entire eight-year journey. It seems a paltry gift to simply name them on my Acknowledgements page, but that's what they are getting for Christmas.

In just over two weeks, I will present my oral defense via telephone conference call, with my stalwart friend and former colleague Sheryl acting as my proctor. She will sit on my couch amid the dust bunnies and hairballs and be my witness as I read my prepared script to an unseen audience. My Chair and the Nameless, Faceless Committee Member will ask me some questions—If you were to do your study over, what would you do differently? How do you think your recommendations could be implemented? What research will you do next? What was the most difficult part of the process? What words of advice would you give to a Ph.D. candidate just starting her first DIS course?—and I will try to answer the questions briefly and succinctly with a minimum of um's. Then my Chair will say, “Okay, Carol, now you will drop off the call while we confer. Call back in five minutes.”

Assuming I enter the right passcode and am shunted into the correct conference call, I will announce myself. Then she will either say, “Congratulations Dr. Carol,” or she will say, “No soup for you! One year!” No, I'm kidding. Ha ha. No, at this point, it's unlikely she will say anything but nice job, Doctor So-and-So, congratulations, upload your final manuscript, so long, thanks for the $50,000, have fun talking to the Registrar, bye now.

Finishing this Ph.D. is going to open up a massive void in my life. The thought of what comes next is paralyzing. Maybe it won't be so bad, though. While I waited for approval for my dissertation, I had a fun little research project for the past week, thanks to a friend's recommendation, analyzing the results of a quantitative survey for a large manufacturing company. It's a different world than academe, that's for sure. Commercial research is less rigorous in some ways than academic research, but you've got all those client demands and interactions. It's the business world, after all: They are the customer, I'm the vendor. I uploaded the files by the promised delivery date, and that was the last I heard. I don't even know if they believe they got what they asked for. I know they got more than they paid for (assuming they eventually pay me). Still, it was a wonderful four days, during which I spent considerable time in flow, oblivious to everything but the task before me.

I need more work like this. Even though the days will pass more quickly, I will be happily unconscious. That is all I ever wanted, anyway, a relief from consciousness. If I can get paid to check out, what more could a chronically malcontented misfit ask for?

Calculating how many degrees of freedom I will have after I finish my doctorate

While I wait to hear if my dissertation manuscript has been approved, I am relearning statistics. It's either that or crossword puzzles. I am adept at running statistical tests in Excel—any trained monkey can do that, once it figures out that installing the Data Analysis Toolpack results in beaucoup bananas. I can compare the scores of two groups to see if perhaps their differences are due to the random chance we all face as we flit about our day, or due to the fact that they are in fact really different in some significant way. Like they root for rival soccer teams or something, I don't know, I'm just making this up. Click the button, whoosh, Excel performs its magic, and voilá, you have output! It's like a statistical meat grinder. Of course, like a meat grinder, what you get out of it depends a lot on what you put into it. I didn't collect this data, so I have to accept what I have. (Have you noticed that I've used two French words in one paragraph? Zut alors!)

Today I discovered the equation that calculates the degrees of freedom needed to conduct a t-test on two independent samples. (No, I don't mean I discovered the equation. I mean I figured out how to type it into Excel. I feel like I imagine Columbus felt when he discovered India, that is to say, like an ignoramus.)

There are so many ways to go with this topic, it's hard to pick just one. Like, are you wondering what degrees of freedom are? Tantalizing, isn't it? We like freedom, it's one of our national values, although it hasn't always been applied fairly, but still, we live and die for it, so it must mean something to us, freedom. Degrees of it sounds a little uncertain, but we can always use more freedom, right? Can there ever be too much freedom? Hmmm. Ask any kid who doesn't get a lot of parental attention. Maybe too much of a good thing, like eating ten maple bars when one or two would do? Food for thought.)

The degrees of freedom I'm talking about actually have to do with calculating a specific statistical test to see if two independently collected samples are significantly different from one another. Does that sound like a foreign language to you? Mais non, if you are a statistician, which I'm not. I love statistics, but no matter how many times I study statistics, I can barely grasp the concepts before they slip away. Like anything to do with numbers, statistical concepts just don't stick in my brain, and the older I get, the less they stick, along with phone numbers, birthdays, and what I had for lunch yesterday. It's like my brain is hardening into a slick marble ball. I look on the bright side: When I'm dead, the morgue attendants can go bowling. Miniature bowling. (Do they have such a thing?)

The statistical equation for calculating degrees of freedom in Excel, in case you were wondering, is this:

Where S1 and S2 represent the standard deviations of the two samples, respectively, and N1 and N2 are the sample sizes of the two samples. That's all you need, plus a buttload of parentheses in exactly the right places. (Oh, and don't type the DF part.) No sweat. I guarantee after you type this in successfully, you will feel a strange tingling sensation that can be interpreted as a frisson of freedom. A successful outcome, by the way, will be obvious when you generate a value that is just slightly smaller than the sum of the two sample sizes. Clear signs that you have erred would include a negative number or a ridiculously high number like, oh say, 16,345.2345 when your combined sample size is 40. Ha! Logic prevails, eventually.