Bah humbug. No wait, I didn't mean it, really...

I generally don't post in forums or in the comments sections of articles or blogs, although I get a lurid thrill out of lurking on the periphery, reading other peoples' snarky comments and wondering how they have the guts to write their nasty trollish responses to other commenters they've never even met but apparently hate on principle. It's entertaining, shocking, occasionally disgusting, and somewhat addictive. Today I must report that I stopped being a lurker. And thus, today I had my first interaction with a troll.

My grocery store invited me to post a comment in their online forum, describing my shopping behavior on Black Friday. No doubt their many research snoids will comb through the massive database of comments to find the behavior patterns and keywords that will direct next year's holiday marketing campaigns. Hey, I'm a market researcher; I know how this stuff works. More or less. I always fill out the store's online surveys, but this is the first time I was invited to comment in a forum. Out of a desire to be helpful and interest in the research method, I registered my user name and entered the forum, where I posted a short comment:

I dislike the holiday season. I avoid shopping if at all possible. I don't buy gifts. If I could sleep through the entire season, I would. I don't participate in the obligation or the rituals. The religious connotations are uninteresting and the commercial aspects of the season make me despair. (Where do all the dead ornaments and foil wrapping paper go? Does anybody care?)

Now, I admit, true to my chronic malcontented nature, I was using the forum to express a contrary view, more out of a desire to poke the frog than anything else. After all, I have this blog through which to express my whining, so I don't feel a strong urge to post my frothy resentments in other online venues. It was an experiment, you know? Research?

Frogs, when poked, jump. Not long after I posted my admittedly dark, somewhat snarky comment, I received an email in my inbox, notifying me that someone had commented on my post. I clicked on through and read:

Get a life......and move back to Communist Russia.

Huh. Clearly another troubled soul. I thought about the wide range of actions I could take in response to the comment. I could retort, I have a life, thank you very much, and what's wrong with Communist Russia, anyway!? (Is there any part of Russia that is not Communist, I wonder?) I could claim that my birthright as an American gives me the right to say stupid things, just like it does them. I could try to explain more fully my feelings about the commercialized holiday grind. I could apologize for pissing them off. I could give them some empathy and address their fears. I could ignore them. Which is probably the wisest response, considering what I've seen of vitriolic exchanges on other forums. Within six volleys, I bet we'd be fighting over Obamacare. Keep in mind all this would be taking place in the online forum of a grocery store, in response to the question, How do you shop during the holidays?

After I stopped laughing, I thought for a moment and responded as follows:

Thanks for sharing. Sounds like I struck a nerve. Sorry. Next time I won't be so open about sharing my feelings. My intention was not to create strife. I'm glad you felt safe enough to share your feelings, though. All the best to you.

It sounded pretty good at face value. But I am a liar. First, I didn't actually care if I created strife, clearly, or I wouldn't have posted such a overtly provocative comment in the first place. Poking the frog, stirring the pot, call it what you will. I can't help myself. The contrary view draws me like ants to dirty dishes. 

And second, reading the message between the lines isn't hard for anyone who has spent time in counseling for relationships: the words you stupid dick were invisible, perhaps, but clearly implied. I learned my passive aggressiveness at the foot of the master. Or mistress, I guess. 

I was curious what type of person would tell someone who was struggling during a stressful season to get a life and move back to Communist Russia. I can't tell from the user name if the person is male or female, old or young. I wonder, who responds to a cry for help—unskillful as it was—by smacking them down with an admonition to go away? Like, far away. 

Someone who is hurting themselves, no doubt. Someone who has probably maxed out her credit lines in a vain attempt to buy the perfect gifts for her many grandchildren before the looming deadline crushes her beneath the wheel of failure. Someone who is terrified that if she doesn't uphold the all-important religious traditions of the season, she will surely be condemned to the bitter hell reserved for failed evangelists. Someone who secretly wishes she could keep the festive decorations but toss the obligations and enjoy a long nap before tax time. That kind of sorry-ass soul, probably.

When I got home from a meeting tonight, I found another note in my inbox. I clicked through and read:

What a gracious response to such a ridiculous comment. Good for you, Carol!

Ha. Don't you just love it? Chickaboom!

Mom dodges the slammer

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Thanksgiving adventure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you mean?” she frowned.

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

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

“Sure, why not,” I sighed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ass kickers and dream killers, oh my

My friend Bravadita dragged up on Portland and moved to Gladstone, my sister is gallivanting around Vatican City, my friends in Minneapolis are snowed in, the kitchen windows in Love Shack are shuddering with a relentless east wind, and humans landed a washing machine-sized spacecraft on a moving comet! What does it all mean? I can't figure it out.

Luckily, the electricity has stayed on today. Yesterday, not so lucky. But we survived. We, meaning the cat and me. There's not a lot to complain about, in relative terms. I'm alive. I have food and clean water. It could be worse. Of course, if the internet goes down again, you'll hear my screams of rage in Pacoima.

Last night I ventured out of the Love Shack into the frigid (40°, feels like 25°) windy night to go to a networking Meetup across town. I thought everyone would be hunkered down in their snuggies, braving the onslaught of what passes for winter weather in Portland, but no. Everyone was actually out driving around in their lumbering SUVs. I guess when you drive a Hummer, you aren't afraid of anything, certainly not a measly 50 mph wind gust or two. That's nothing when you weigh four tons. I just hoped no errant wind gust would pick up my tin can Ford Focus and toss me into said Hummer. Yikes.

So I was in, if not good company, certainly lots of company, driving at a snail's pace on I-84 toward Lloyd Center, trying to get to a funky Chinese restaurant by 6:00 p.m. When it's dark so early, all the red taillights flashing on and off remind me that it's my most-dreaded time of year: Christmas. That's a rant for another day.

I arrived at the restaurant at few minutes before the hour, and found no place to park in the tiny lot, so I drove along the street and around the first corner. Plenty of room under some wildly waving trees. Hmmm. I parked and hoped my car would be intact when I returned. Intact, meaning not buried under a toppled tree. I battled the wind to the restaurant, fought the glass door open, and whooshed inside with a pile of dead orange leaves. Festive.

I scooted past a gauntlet of empty red leather booths into the back room. I greeted the Meetup hostess and filled out a name tag, which I placed on my hat. After milling around aimlessly for a minute, hoping to connect with someone and failing, I took a place at a long plastic-topped table and plastered a fake smile on my face. More people arrived. The patient waitress was a welcome diversion. No one else seemed perturbed by the wind. I kept thinking of my dark dead appliances and hoped the power would be restored by the time I returned home.

There is a moment at every networking event when I feel like an alien from another solar system. It's usually when I'm seated and others are standing, talking over my head. I am forced to look up to see their faces, which hurts my neck and makes me feel like I'm invisible. I imagine that is how people in wheelchairs feel most of the time. It's painful on many levels. To push my chair back and stand up would be awkward, and knowing me, I'd probably lose my balance and fall either onto the table or onto my chair and thence onto the floor.

However, staying seated while trying to pretend I'm part of the conversation is also awkward. With my neck at an uncomfortable angle, I can sometimes see the standing participants cast quick glances in my direction. Mostly they see the top of my hat, where I've placed my name tag. Oh well, at least they will know my name if not my face.

In these situations, my solution is to turn my back on the standing networkers and address myself to my dinner as if to a long lost friend. Food doesn't argue. It's always been a reliable companion, at least until it's gone. But as long as there are a few crumbs of fried rice left, I can sink into the comfort of my own company and pretend I am too busy eating to be bothered with inane pursuits like communicating with other humans. Because, as I've mentioned before, I don't really like people, and I don't really care.

Well, that's not entirely true. I confess, I am fond of the woman who co-founded this Meetup group. I think she's swell. She was the only one, though, sadly. I recognized one other person. I'll call him Andy. At a previous Meetup, he described himself the “Ass Kicker” component of the “Dream Killer-Ass Kicker” coaching partnership. That is as frightening as it sounds.

Andy is a youngish man with a purposefully bald head and a plethora of facial jewelry. From our previous meetings, I had the impression that he was gay. Not that it matters. I don't always get it right (although I did accurately call it in The Crying Game, just saying, which surprised my then boyfriend, who was totally snookered). Last night I was the one who was snookered. Andy brought his female partner with him, a young Australian woman, introduced as Michelle, who was missing a tooth and wearing a mottled fur hat with ears and long tails hanging down her chest.

Of course, gender is a malleable thing. I've been mistaken for a young man before, when I was young and slim and everyone wore bell-bottom jeans, moccasins, gold wireframes, and long straight hair. (At the time I was mortified. Now I'm rather gleeful.) Because gender is amorphous, there is no telling the true nature of the relationship between Andy and Michelle. I don't spend much time thinking about it. But I did wonder about that weird fur hat, especially after she put her name tag on top of her head. I was perplexed, not because she appeared to be copying me, but because I thought, she just wrecked her fur hat by putting a name tag on it. Not my problem.

The evening's speaker was a young, overly enthusiastic pixie of a slip of a wisp of a girl, wearing a slim purple dress and demonstrating an annoying habit of saying, “If you're with me, say 'Hell, yes'!” After reading about Stanley Milgram's psychological study of teacher-student shenanigans, I never participate in obvious manipulations unless it's in support of someone I know and truly love, or unless I'm really drunk. I abstained from shouting “Hell, yes!” every three minutes and instead doodled in my notebook, drawing yawning faces, barely listening, and finally the sweet young thing wound down and squeaked out her call to action: “Only $39 for my four hour workshop, if you sign up tonight!” When the presentation was over, the real networking began.

But it turned out, it wasn't really networking. Four of us sat at one table. There was Andy, me, a massage therapist from Russia—I'll call her Tatiana—and an older gal named Rena, who described herself as sort of an astrologist, but with destiny cards, whatever those are. I didn't ask. We went around the table, sharing our notions of our ideal customer. It quickly became clear that Andy was in coaching mode, and Rena was worshiping at his altar, so to speak. Tatiana seemed content to support Rena, and I was content to carve heavier and heavier black lines into an image of a bleak stone face, which took up most of a page in my journal. I labeled the face Dream Killer, in honor of the absent partner. Andy didn't notice, being too caught up in playing the coach.

I spoke up every now and then, and I took my turn and exposed my quirks and foibles without much reluctance in a game attempt at authenticity. I really have nothing to lose. I'm pretty sure massage therapists and wannabe-astrologists will never see market research as a solution to any problem they may encounter in life. Why should I bother trying to convince them they have a problem that only research can solve? Andy, the ass-kicking coach, on the other hand, is a business man. He understands the relevance of and need for marketing research. But I wouldn't work with anyone who self-proclaims as an ass-kicker. Or a dream killer, for that matter.

Enough about networking! All of this just affirms what I've come to realize over the past year: I work best alone. As the wind moans under the eaves of the Love Shack, my cat snores in the chair next to me. What more does a person need to be happy, really? Electricity, a cozy cave, and a snoring cat. I've got it made.

Death by bug

This week I took time out between rainstorms to go for a jog. I slogged along in my running gear, following my usual path through the park. First, I climbed the main staircase to warm up. I went at a pretty good clip, considering I'm an aging slacker couch potato. I tried to keep my chin ahead of my hips...that seems to propel me forward somehow, as long as my feet catch up in time. I breathed through my nose as well as I could, considering my sinuses are chronically clogged. (Breathing through my mouth makes me look desperate: older gal, trying too hard.)

Every week, no matter how I push myself, young things of various genders leap up the steps past me like gazelles. They make it look effortless. I feel the wind of their passing, and I breathe in the fumes of their coconut body wash, but I keep my head down, watching where I place my feet. Eventually, I get to the top, the summit of the hill, formerly a volcano, now a flat tree-lined avenue of grass where children chase dogs chasing Frisbees. The sweeping evergreens were a lot smaller 40 years ago when my boyfriend used to park his Buick Special overlooking the city so we could smoke weed and do other fun stuff.

The gazelles were long gone by the time I gained the summit. I walked to catch my breath and looked at the city through gaps in the trees. Then I started jogging again, going back down the hill, but the long way this time, down and around, along the gently sloping road, which led me eventually to the reservoirs we hope to save from the EPA, the agency I usually like but currently wish would let our city water be. Whatever. The jog down the hill always feels like a cop-out, especially when some runners pass me going uphill in the opposite direction. My excuse is that I'm old.

At the reservoir road, I stopped and stretched and looked at the sky to see if I should linger or keep moving to avoid oncoming rain clouds. Sometimes you can see it coming right at you and there's nothing you can do. Sometimes, though, you can stay ahead if you hurry.

This week, I thought, I need to up my game. Thinking of my still-too-tight Levis and the ass that I drag around behind me, I decided to run back uphill the way I had come down, vowing to keep going as long as my various body parts held together. Things were going good. I was feeling strong, watching my feet as I plodded steadily along the edge of the road, one eye out for bicycles. Pretty soon, my heart rate began to rise, and then to soar. My left ankle began to twinge, followed by my left knee, not enough to make me stop, but enough to make me reflect on old joints and tired ligaments.

Finally, my congested sinuses couldn't siphon enough oxygen out of the air to keep my tired muscles firing, and I began to breathe through my mouth, although I shut it every time I met someone coming in the opposite direction, to preserve my illusion of youthful vigor. I wasn't gulping air, really, just scooping air, kind of like a whale scoops plankton as it moves through the ocean depths. And that's when I scooped up the bug.

I should have scooped through my teeth. If I had, I would have caught the sucker before it made it halfway down my throat toward my laboring lungs. As it was, my throat closed in the nick of time, and left the bug stuck, halfway down, too far down to come back up, except by the most drastic and messy of measures. Contemplating a finger-jam-induced upchuck in the park with dogs and kids and runners and Frisbees nearby didn't last long, so I did the logical thing and swallowed.

After a few convulsive swallows and some loud hacking-style coughs, with me bent over, hands on knees, tongue hanging out, the bug slid the rest of the way down my gullet. Protein, I reassured myself. Everyone needs more protein. I tried not to imagine the bug was kicking out its last moments while it paddled around in my stomach acid.

As I walked the rest of the way up the hill, I wondered what would have happened if my throat hadn't closed in time, if that bug had stuck there, blocking my airway, and no one had happened by to find out why the old lady was laying in the road turning blue? Would the coroner find the bug during the autopsy? Would the ruling be death by bug? Or would it be ruled accidental death due to a foolish old person's illusion that just because she once finished a marathon twenty years ago that she can trot up a long hill with impunity?

Obviously, I lived to tell the tale. I didn't get an upset tummy or have projectile diarrhea. The bug did not crawl out of my throat (or any other orifice) later while I was sleeping, at least, not that I know of. (Eeewww.) I once read that the average person inadvertently eats several spiders a year. So, what's one more bug? Maybe I should be saying yum.

Stop twiddling and get a life!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My healthcare plan: don't get sick; my retirement plan: die

Last night as I set my collection of six clocks back one hour, I reflected that if I could hibernate until next spring, I would. Dream the winter away and wake up to... well, hell, now that I think about it, fall and spring in Portland look and feel very much the same. Rain. Wind. Rain. Showers. Then drizzle, followed by rain. The forecast for the next eight months is... you guessed it: rain. I wrung every last Z out of that extra hour of sleep last night. I'd have taken more if my cat had let me keep snoozing, just to postpone the depressing moment when I peered out the curtains and didn't see sun.

Speaking of depressing moments, my mother and I took our first retirement home tour on Friday. The place was a giant bunker built on top of retail: Safeway, some miscellaneous shops, and a now-empty former Target store. Not exactly a thriving community below. I was curious to see the community in the monstrous castle above.

We came in through the back parking lot, which apparently was not the main floor. An old man and an even older woman, both in wheelchairs, flanked the elevators, staring morosely at the indoor-outdoor carpet. My mother said in her loud smoker's voice, “Here's the welcome committee!” What happened next was bizarre: It was like someone put a quarter in those old folks and turned the key: The old man sat up straight and grinned right at my mother. Nice dentures, I thought. The old lady perked up, too, and I wondered if they got paid to sit there at the elevator and welcome hapless newcomers in the door.

We rode up the elevator and met the marketing manager, Tom, who had only been there four weeks and was still finding his way around.

“First you can have lunch,” he said, “and then I'll give you the tour!”

Lunch just happened to be a buffet, in honor of Halloween. Aides dressed as goblins and vampires ushered us toward the buffet table along with a horde of smiling old people pushing wheeled walkers. Once you get on the buffet line ride, you can't get off until it's over. I handed my mother a Halloween themed plate and served her up some beige rice. “You want meatballs with that?” I asked, searching in vain for the salad bar.

“What else is there?” asked my mother.

“Teriyaki chicken. Cole slaw. Celery sticks. Hotdog on a bun.”

I served her up the chicken and put a little of (almost) everything on my plate. After I watched the old people load their plates with a teaspoon of cole slaw, a dab of rice, one meatball, I tried to restrain myself, even though I was starving. Clearly, by octogenarian standards, I ate like a lumberjack.

My mom and I found an empty table in the cavernous dining room, hoping we weren't inadvertently sitting in someone's assigned seat. I sipped the odd green punch (carbonated) and watched the lively crowd mill around. Even though they all left their walkers parked in the dining room lobby, for a bunch of old folks, they seemed pretty energetic. Not fast moving, but peppy nonetheless.

“I want some pie,” declared my mother. She got up and went in search of dessert. I thought, should I be fetching and carrying for her? Is that my new job now, to wait on my mother? I watched her walk away, noticing how tiny her flat little butt was in her baggy faded jeans. I slipped gently into a sugar coma. Pretty soon she came marching back with a sliver of pumpkin pie topped with a quarter-sized dab of whipped cream.

“She's bringing you some low-fat ice cream,” my mother said triumphantly. A young woman dressed in a brilliant lime green, air-filled balloon came wallowing across the room toward us, holding a tiny dish in green spandex gloves. Her face was covered with a green spandex hood.

She handed me the tiny dish of ice cream. “What are you?” I blurted out in awe.

“I'm not sure,” she said and waddled away.

Pretty soon the marketing guy found us and herded us out of the dining room for the tour. We followed him like puppies as he backtracked from one side of the place to another, trying to find apartment 330. My mother was not impressed: The ceilings were too high, she said. (She's very short.) For the next hour we rode the elevators and trod the hallways, avoiding slow-moving walkers trundling little tubs of polyester blouses and flannel nightdresses to the laundry room. We looked at beige apartments with one bedroom, beige apartments with two bedrooms, ones with tubs, ones with no tubs, patios, no patios, until it all blended into a beige carpeted blur.

Finally, exhausted, my mother and I extricated ourselves from the castle, loaded with brochures, and exited into the cool afternoon air. Mom needed a cigarette. We both needed a nap.

Later she called me. “What did you think of the place?”

“The food was lousy,” I said, “but the people seemed happy enough.”

“Did you notice how many of them used walkers?” she said. “I don't think this is the place for me.”

One down, four more to go. At least. My advice to you: don't get old.

The chronic malcontent braces for change

The moon must be aligned with Uranus or something. Fruit basket upset! Everyone important to me seems to be on the move. My jet-set sister, after presenting at a conference in France, is traipsing off to Vatican City to scour some libraries for medieval treasure (aka old books). Bravadita is moving to Gladstone, of all the godforsaken burbs a person could go to, so far away: no more monthly Willamette Writers meetings, my convenient excuse to see her smiling face. And to top it all off, my 85-year-old mother has tossed a grenade into my tenuous tranquility by declaring her intent to move out of her condo into a retirement community. Argh. Change is coming!

My brain is a shattered mess. I'm trying to hold all the bits of lumpy gray matter together, but my natural pessimism tells me it's no use, what's the point. (Don't let anyone tell you chronic malcontentedness is not like a disease. Tell me, would you judge me if I had tuberculosis?)

When I can't breathe I call upon my secret rescue inhaler: I ask myself, what would my extroverted friends do right now? Would they let this excess of exuberant change pummel them into a puddle of goo? No. They would not. They would rush out the door to meet it for coffee, preferably with a horde of friends all driving Kia Souls and Mini Coopers. Re-frame! Re-boot the shattered brain!

Lucky me! Between editing dissertations about China's healthcare system, cosmopolitan-thinking in the world's education system, and culturally relevant pedagogy in American middle schools, I get to visit retirement homes.

And when I'm not doing that, I am earning some money by calling people in faraway places to interview them for a research study about fluid connectors. So far I've dragged my double-wide out of bed before dawn to dial people in Italy, Germany, and Minneapolis. Talk about exotic locales! And Shanghai, China, too, although that interview took place at a very civilized evening hour. I am really starting to get a sense of the size of the planet by calculating time zone differences. (Big place.) Although I have to use Excel to figure it out. Or my fingers. I have always had a precarious relationship with analog time. I have no pictures in my head to explain time. I dread the moment we shift from Standard time to Daylight Savings.

Part of my problem is I think making my mother's last years pleasant is my responsibility. I want her to be happy. She's not happy. Last week she had a doctor's appointment. I offered her a ride, and she accepted: Warning sign #1.

Her doctor was a tall, slender Asian man with a scraggly beard and a charming smile. He didn't hesitate to shake my hand (germs, dude! Really?). My mother and I sat on the two square stiffly cushioned blue chairs, the kind you've seen in waiting rooms everywhere. The doctor sat on the rolling stool, waiting calmly, looking at my mother. I waited, too. My mother scooted forward in her chair. Warning sign #2. I thought, she's getting ready to make a presentation. The audience is in place. Showtime.

“My digestive tract seems to be on the mend the past three days,” she began. Good news for my scrawny mother who eats like a sparrow and weighs barely 94 pounds.

“Great,” said the doctor.

“But I just don't seem to want to eat anything.”

The doctor and I both looked at her expectantly.

“I hate to cook, I always have,” she said. I could have said something, but I didn't. Memories of canned green(ish) beans and gray peas floated through my mind. “I just don't feel like cooking or eating much of anything,” she added, frowning. I felt guilty for not cooking for my mother. Even though I'm a worse cook than she is.

“Are you depressed?” asked the doctor.

My mother thought for a few seconds. “No,” she said flatly. “I'm bored.” Immediately, I felt guilty for not doing a better job of entertaining my mother.

“I'm tired all the time. I think I'm bored. All I do is play video games on my computer,” she said. It suddenly dawned on me that since my mother's co-treasurer position on the condo board ended last fall, she's got nobody to complain about. Oh, she always finds something, but without the monthly hassles and gossip of the condo meetings, she's bereft. My mother the pitchfork-wielding extraverted rabble-rouser. No wonder she's bored. She needs a cause!

“I've got too much stuff,” she complained. “I want to move.” No use uttering a squeak as my heart fell into my stomach: I've known this day was coming for a while. I just... I guess there's just no good time for change, is there?

“If you moved into a retirement community, you would have more social interaction,” the doctor observed. “You would probably eat more.”

“That's just what I was thinking,” she said. “I have friends in a place over by Mall 205.”

“That's all you need,” the doctor agreed. “More friends.”

And that is how I agreed to take my mother to a retirement place next week to eat a free lunch and take a tour. I can hardly wait. Next chore: get boxes, start sorting out the ten years of junk she collected since she moved into the condo and the sixty or so years of crap she's dragged with her from place to place along with a husband and four kids. I'm just really glad she doesn't collect Franklin Mint plates or Beanie Babies.

Wake me up next spring

Fall sucks. I'm officially declaring my intention to hibernate until spring, mentally, anyway, if not physically. Oh, I'll show up for my commitments because I'm a good soldier, but malcontentedness will mow down any little shred of enthusiasm that might linger from summer. No worries, I'll still get stuff done, but life will occur in short desperate bursts, between naps. For example, I'll still flog my body to the store for vittles, but I anticipate brain fog will follow me like the dirt cloud followed Pigpen. Be warned, if you ask me a question, I can't promise a snappy response.

The night before last, the power went out while I was dozing to late night TV. I woke to darkness. I fumbled for my fake camping lantern (a lime green plastic gizmo with an LED light) and managed to brush my teeth and fall into bed without stabbing myself with the toothbrush or stubbing my toe. I peered out my window and realized I haven't seen natural darkness in a long time. The neighborhood was dark, no street lights, no lamps glowing in curtained windows, just invisible pouring rain and the dim outline of my landlord's real estate office against a slightly lighter sky. Dark, is what I'm saying.

I didn't mind sleeping in darkness: I curse my radioactively bright blue alarm clock nightly. It was refreshing to not have a street light muscling through my drapes. I opened my window and listened to the rain and pretended I was camping (even though I hate camping). But I knew if the power was still off in the morning, that I might have some issues. And sure enough, when I woke up to a wet gray morning, no power. Which, of course, meant no coffee, no breakfast, no microwave, no music, no internet... no heat. Ahhhhhhhh!

I dug around in the dust for my authentic lavender-colored Trimline analog phone and dialed the automated response line for the power company. We are aware of a power outage in your area. We have received a total of nine. hundred. and. seventy. eight phone calls and two. thousand. forty. six households are currently without power. We estimate the power will be restored at eleven. o. clock. We don't know what caused the power outage. If you have any information that might help, please stay on the line. I quickly hung up, lest they think I had something to offer, thinking if the power company doesn't know what caused the power outage, then there's little hope for humankind.

I tried to go back to bed, but the cat was having none of that. Slacker! My plants seemed to lean accusingly at me when I stumbled into the kitchen: Where's our growlight, slacker? I looked at my coffee pot. I looked at my computer. I looked all around my dim cave of an apartment, missing all the little green lights that usual glow on various devices, proof that I'm safe in the loving arms of the higher power, the electrical grid of my city. I stood there, wondering if I should light some candles and hoping my neighbors wouldn't. Suddenly it occurred to me, ah-ha! Maybe there is some yesterday's coffee left in the coffee carafe. I scampered into the kitchen. Darn, hardly a mouthful. One swig of day-old cold coffee wasn't enough to stave off the fear of caffeine withdrawals.

At 10 o'clock I dialed my mother, thinking, surely she's up by now. Maybe she'll feel like going out to breakfast. She answered the phone groggily, her cigarette-voice gruff.

“Hey Mom, is your power out?” I demanded.

Long pause. I could practically hear her brain processing my question. “I don't know, let me check,” she replied. A moment later she returned. “I have power,” she said. I apologized for disturbing her so early, and hung up.

I ate a banana, feeling bereft, looking wistfully at my silent baseboard heater. Was it getting dangerously cold in the tender climate of the Love Shack? I bundled into my fleece bathrobe while my cat gazed at me bemusedly. I flopped down on my couch in my TV-watching position, staring bleakly at the shiny blank screen of my ancient analog-signal TV, willing the power to come back on. When that didn't work, I pulled the cat-hair infested fleece blanket over my legs and decided to meditate until the power was restored.

The meditation session lasted about 30 minutes and left me with a bad case of brain fog and heart burn. I was getting hungrier and crankier by the minute. Should I abandon my apartment, should I go out and drive around until I crossed the magical boundary dividing those who have power from those who have none? At least my car would be warm.

As I sat on my couch, contemplating my next move through the brain fog, suddenly I heard a rumbling sound in the kitchen. The refrigerator motor. Saved by electricity! Praise the gods of the grid. I'm restored to power, if not to sanity.

What did I learn from my bout with powerlessness? That life is precarious, that nothing should be taken for granted, especially not our invisible, silent miracle—electricity. That coffee is especially precious. That I was lucky the outage was confined to one neighborhood and not the entire city. That next time I might not be so lucky.

Un-join me

As I slide down the dark tunnel toward winter, I'm embracing my inner curmudgeon by de-connecting from social media. I started with LinkedIn groups, ruthlessly clicking the "Leave" button with a sense of relief and hope that there would soon be less in in my box. After un-joining half my LinkedIn groups—just the ones swamped by ubiquitous discussion posts from desperate small business owners who write pleading blog posts with titles like “The ten ways using LinkedIn will make you a content marketing star!”—I moved on to my modest roster of Meetups, wearily choosing "Leave this group," and then typing in the subsequent box exactly why I was un-joining: I'm tired. My feet hurt. I can't stand people. Your inane networking sessions at crappy Chinese restaurants are killing me.

I know it's not much, but it's a start. Next I'll take the hatchet to Facebook. Every time I get an email that says, Joe posted a new photo to their timeline, I cringe at the bad grammar and vow to de-friend everyone. Well, from experience I know it's as hard to leave Facebook as it is to rid your computer of AOL. The best I can do is un-follow everyone (except Carlita and members of my immediate family, of course. My sister is in Europe. Can't miss those photos of Paris and Lyon. Can't breathe, wish I was there).

Today, as my stomach roils with the remains of almost-raw onion eaten at a networking Meetup I went to last night, I find that indigestion and general dissatisfaction with life feel much the same. I fear I've learned to associate nausea with networking. (Have you noticed that Meetups seem to find hospitable homes in the backrooms of Chinese restaurants? Wonder why that is.)

My friend Bravadita is bravely downsizing in preparation for her impending move to Gladstone, a suburb of Portland about 20 minutes south on I-205. As she described her desire to have less stuff, I found myself yearning for something similar. Except for me, rather than unloading my books at Goodwill, it's more of a jettisoning of social baggage, a conscious uncoupling, as it were, from the faceless groups of rabid networkers swarming Meetups and after-work networking parties all over the city. Hey, networkers, back off. You met me, you didn't care to genuinely know me, so stop pretending. You can keep your tar-baby emails.

Argh. I confess, I'm as much to blame: Did I try to know anyone deeply? Not so much, especially not if the place was noisy and crowded. Did I wall myself off in my introvert suit of armor and exit at the first available moment? Yes, mostly, I guess I did. Is my current dissatisfaction evidence of my chronic malcontentedness, or is it just a special case of non-digesting onions? In fairness, I must say, not all networking events are the same; I'm learning to be discerning (no more Moxie mixers for me). And not all networkers are the same, either. I have met some smart, strong, interesting, and determined women in the past year, people I respect and admire. I fear the stinky truth: I'm just ashamed to admit I'm as desperate as the next hungry shark waving a business card at a crowd of fellow sharks. Rather than admit I can't compete in that pool, I'm disconnecting by choice. I'm following the artist's way: If you build it, they can come or not, as they please.

Random thoughts from a stinky cheese chronic malcontent

Bless me, Hellish Hand-basket readers. It's been over a week since my last blog post. My excuse is that I've been immersed once again in dissertation editing hell, editing someone else's massive, wretched, poorly written tome rather than my own. I've been diving deep into the quandary of social injustice in the State of Hawaii. The upside is that I know more than I ever knew about Hawaiian history, and have a whole new perspective into the world of social work (which consists of poorly paid people helping other poorly paid people perpetuate a nonprofit machine in which everyone is poorly paid while chasing charity dollars. I'm super glad I didn't pursue a career in counseling!) The downside is that, by the time I finished combing the wretched tome for extra spaces, misplaced periods, and renegade pronouns, I calculated I earned just over $16.00 per hour. Clearly something is wrong with my business model.

Today, with the wretched tome off my plate, I was able to hunt and gather at the local grocery store, put unleaded into my ancient, tired, dusty, fossil-fuel burning Focus, and put on a load of wash. I love multitasking, which to me means doing the laundry while cooking dinner while running a virus scan while talking on the phone. Look at me go!

The weather is weirdly awesome. It's currently 86° at PDX, which means some tropical pockets of Portland will probably hit 90° in the next few minutes before cooling back down to 60° overnight. While it's not unheard of, it is pretty unusual for the weather to be this warm in early October. I went for a trot in the park and soaked in the heat through my scrawny pale legs, wishing I could stop time before the leaves turn orange.

Yesterday I drove over to my mother's condo to help celebrate my little brother's birthday. He's turning... let me think, I guess he's turning 54. Yipes. My baby brother is over the hill. Guess that makes me over the hill and halfway into the graveyard. Well, no use complaining, especially where the really old folks can hear. Don't bother looking for sympathy from old people; that is like going to the garbage dump for bread.Two of the neighbors who came to the party, a couple in their mid-80s, sharp and caustic as ever, were not inclined to hear my brother whine about how his joints ache in the morning. I knew better; I kept my mouth shut.

Birthday parties never have amounted to much in my family. I'm not sure why. I have my theories. This party was relatively painless as birthday parties go—all of us were ready for a nap after barely an hour. I managed to leave all the cake and ice cream with my mother, although my digestive system paid the price today for what I ate yesterday. I think that if I'm going to get sick from eating cake and ice cream, the pain ought to be worth it. Like excellent tiramisu or German chocolate cake. Sadly, 'twas not the case.

It's hard to sum up life these days. From one angle, everything looks like crap. I'm barely earning, doing something I hate almost as much as I hated sewing and driving a school bus and teaching keyboarding, and I'm wondering why I seem to figure out what to do by doing everything I don't want to do first. I know I'm running out of time. The thought makes me want to give up and embrace my inner homeless person.

On the other hand, I'm not sewing, or driving a school bus, or teaching keyboard! Yay! On top of that, the weather is awesome, and while I don't have a steady job, well, I don't have to get up tomorrow and go to a steady job! No getting up early, no dressing up in a uniform, no worrying about my nose hairs and my blossoming sideburns. That's pretty great, don't you think? Actually, I think the longer I'm out of the workforce, the more unemployable I get, sort of like the opposite of a fine wine, more like a stinky cheese.

I would take all the blame for everything, but I think there might be something going on in the local economy. For example, the rental market is tighter than a frog's sphincter, and as a consequence, my friend Bravadita is dragging up on her cute apartment in downtown Portland in favor of shared housing in Gladstone. Her rent decreases in inverse proportion to her public transit commute, which extends an extra hour per day. I find it sad; I fear something similar will happen to me in the next year. My landshark and his wife could boot me out of the Love Shack, fix up the antiquated bathroom and kitchen, and easily lease it to some marketing wizkid for double the rent. I would find myself rooming with my mother, or possibly hunkering down in the Section 8 housing across the street from her condo, where police seem to be on standby.

It's an unsettling, unsettled, yet oddly fertile time. As I approach my 58th birthday, I don't have a whole lot of hope, but freefall is a surprisingly freeing state of mind. My life certainly doesn't look the way I thought it would. I aimed for Santa Barbara and ended up in Pacoima, figuratively speaking. Maybe more like, I aimed for Fiji and ended up in the armpit of Portland. Whatever. I'm trying to live fearlessly, and failing daily, but fearlessness is something to aim for, in the absence of job security and impending old age. The good thing is that since fearlessness is a state of mind, I don't have to leave home to find it.

Saddle sore

My forward momentum plunged into a tailspin with the coming of fall and cool weather. Even though this afternoon the rain clouds scattered, gracing us with blue sky and balmy air, I can't not know what I know is coming: it's fall, and the gaping dark maw of winter will soon be sucking the life from my soul. This SAD time is normal for me. No need to send in the whitecoats.

Unfortunately, I did not expect that my usual SAD time would be made worse by my first foray into teaching since I left the career college (or since it abandoned me, I should say) in May of 2013. What am I talking about? This week I organized and taught a class on a marketing research topic to seven small business owners, as a beta-test with the intention of refining the class and offering it to a larger group sometime later this fall. I thought it would be fun. I expected to feel happy. I was looking forward to getting back in the saddle.

I prepared. Really. Given my resources, I did my best to get ready. I rented a small conference room in a charming, hip, easily accessible location. I bought a new laptop to show my cool PowerPoint. I wrote and designed and printed and bound 50-page workbooks for each attendee. I ordered box lunches from a reputable health food store, along with a box of coffee. I cut and colored my hair. I tapered my black pants. I wore deodorant. In short, I did everything I could think of to be ready for my first teaching gig in over a year.

I invited a hand-picked audience of small business owners, all women, most of whom I had met at various networking events over the past four months. They all seemed interesting and competent, and I thought they would be willing to give me good feedback on my class in exchange for free admission, a free workbook, and free food. And don't forget the box o' coffee. The women represented a range of industries: professional coaching, web design, interior design, marketing, fitness, and landscape design. They all considered themselves marketers.

The terms of the rental agreement gave me only 15 minutes to pack everything in and set it up. It took me ten of that to figure out how to hook my laptop to the projector. Hence, I was about ten minutes late getting started (and still one attendee strolled in well after I'd begun). I never did set up my video camera.

Within moments I was sweating; for two hours I never stopped sweating. The space was too small. The table was too low. The laptop keys were weirdly flat. Coffee and electronics didn't coexist well (luckily her little Apple device escaped the worst of the spill). The food boxes all had bottles of water in them (no wonder the boxes were so heavy; I should have read the fine print). There was no creamer with the coffee. The air conditioner outside was intermittently loud, but I was too claustrophobic to shut the door.

Yet, like the experienced teacher I am, I soldiered on, trying to give them good information and keep things interactive and engaging. I don't think they knew that I was a sweaty mess. They haven't known me long enough to know that a personal meltdown is imminent when I take off my hat. Yes, I know, hard to believe, but it's true: I spent the entire three hours sans hat.

The final hour began with the coffee spill and from my point of view deteriorated from there. I managed to end the class on time and distribute the food boxes while mopping up coffee. The table became even more crowded as the attendees opened up the boxes, unwrapped roast turkey and harvarti cheese sandwiches, and uncapped little plastic dishes of kale salad and fresh strawberries. There was even a cookie. I was too sweaty to do more than open my flimsy plastic bottle of bland water. Sipping convulsively, I asked them my first feedback question: what did you learn today that you can apply to your business?

After that all I had to do was listen. I did remember to turn on my audio recorder; no way my brain could remain present in my body for more than a few seconds at a time. People said kind things; they offered praise. They offered constructive suggestions. After that first feedback question, they were off and running, dragging me along with them in their wake. These women are smart marketers, my perfect target audience. They anticipated my other feedback questions, giving me gems and nuggets and pearls and I, still sweating, tried to nod and look like I was listening. The praise swept quickly over me. The suggestions (which could have felt like criticism) swept over me too, but not as quickly. Nothing stuck. I found myself thinking, how soon can I wrap this up?

Toward the final half hour, the conversation devolved into a networking session, in which people eagerly offered to help another attendee who earlier had described a frustrating a marketing challenge she was facing. I was happy to let others in the group assume control. They turned their suggestion-making machine on her. I stopped sweating. I slowly and quietly eased into clean up mode, and eventually the group got the message. The introverted landscape designer fled as soon as she could, and I wished I could flee with her.

Finally, the extraverts moved toward the door. As the room emptied out, I began to feel more calm. My breathing eased up. I packed my stuff out to the car with a few willing hands. We said our goodbyes, and I was alone. Finally. At last. Alone.

And now I know something about myself that I didn't know before this class ended. Teaching face-to-face at the career college was a good gig for me while it lasted. I did it well, and the job made it possible for me to earn my doctorate. But teaching face-to-face now might not be such a good fit anymore. Maybe a bigger room would help, and more time to set up, and more practice. But the moment I knew I was headed for yet another pivot in my self-employment adventure was when I sat in my car and felt not pumped up and joyful for having connected effectively with an appreciative group of my peers but relieved that the event was over so I could go home and be alone.

I'm trying to see the value in the learning experience, even as the metaphorical branches seem to be getting shorter and thinner. I want to cling to twigs and not look down: The abyss beneath me (unemployment freefall) seems terrifying. But what if I use what I learned about myself to design a new strategy, away from face-to-face teaching toward some kind of online teaching vehicle? Maybe I'll find my fit if I let go of the short branches. Deep breath, leap, cyberspace, here I come.

Two theories walk into a bar

I'm back in editing hell, editing other people's crappy papers instead of my own. I should be grateful. I am getting paid for my efforts. However, I just finished editing a literature review on the topic of culturally relevant pedagogy, and if I do the math, I'm pretty sure I will discover I earned about $8.00 per hour.

Now, most of the papers I've edited since I started this bizarre gig pay much better, up to $40 per hour or even more. The reason the rate differs so much between papers is that I get paid by the word. The faster I edit, the more money I make per hour. Unfortunately for me, sometimes the writers... well, let's just say they lack skill. It's not like I'm such a great writer. I can't tell a present participle from a gerund. But I'm getting better at this editing thing. For example, I am now developing a knack for sniffing out anthropomorphisms.

Anthro what, you say? It's a mouthful, I know. Anthropomorphism, often used synonymously with personification, simply put, is when you attribute human characteristics to nonhuman elements (such as concepts or theories, for example). Hence, two theories walk into a bar. Hand in hand, of course, which is what the author of today's literature review wrote. (For more information, see the APA Manual, 6th ed., pp. 69-70.)

My former Chair explained it like this. “If a box can do it, you can use it. Otherwise, don't.” I was, like, what? A box? Yes. A box. To help me while I was working on my concept paper, lo, these three years ago, I drew a box on a sheet of paper, and under the box, I wrote a list of verbs that could be used to describe what a box can and cannot do. Two lists, one a whole lot longer than the other.

What can't a box do? A lot, if you think about it. A box can't argue, defend, claim, describe, or recognize. A box can't illuminate (no, wait, I take that back, it could illuminate if it's a light box!). Well, a box can't illustrate or demonstrate. And a box certainly doesn't suggest, point out, recommend, conclude, offer, or walk hand in hand with anything, theoretical or otherwise. A box can't compare or contrast (that's the writer's job). Boxes can't explore, examine, or find the meaning in a bunch of faculty members' lived experiences with culturally relevant pedagogy. No matter how much you pay them! The boxes, I mean; everyone knows you don't need to pay faculty, they'll work for nothing.

So when one of my hapless authors writes, “This study explores...” I haul out my boilerplate explanation of anthropomorphism and slap it merrily into my editor's notes, concluding by typing, “Don't do this! Studies can't explore, only you the researcher can explore. Be warned. Reviewers have been known to reject a submission simply because someone wrote 'my study examines the differences between pigs that fly and pigs that don't fly.'”

Some people think a box can reveal, but I'm not so sure. I haven't seen any boxes ripping their tops off lately. Celebrities on TMZ maybe, but not any boxes, corrugated or otherwise.

So what can a box do? Not a whole lot. Duh. It's a box, for cripes sake. About all a box can do is show, indicate, support, or include. Most boxes I know can also contain, encompass, comprise, and consist of. Some really cool boxes might be able to focus on, and if you don't blink, you may see a box that can center on something. But I think you are safer if you use the verb involve.

Can chapters do anything boxes can't do? Good question. Chapters can outline, if you give them a nice fountain pen. And the smarter ones can summarize. But they don't ever describe, not even in a really tiny voice. I guess you could use some fancy read-out-loud software to get a chapter to talk to you, but technically that would be a case of sound coming out of your computer speakers, not a case of your chapter actually talking to you. In case you were confused. And not your speakers, either, in case you were thinking your speakers were fond enough of you to start a conversation.

Findings, research, data, studies... none of those things can explore, examine, prove, or otherwise perform behaviors that only humans can perform. I recommend sticking to show or indicate. APA uses those two words, so you can't go wrong. If your Chair threatens you with abandonment because you anthropomorphized a verb or two, change all such verbs to show or indicate and tell her to refer to APA pages 69-70.

When all else fails, use the dreaded I-bomb. Take ownership! Stop the passive voice! Claim your power. What did I do in my study? I explored, I examined, I compared and contrasted the crap out of these feisty fickle data, and I found that it's true: as long as no one is watching (and they are loaded carefully onto a cargo plane), pigs can fly!

The chronic malcontent suffers from existential constipation

When I am sitting like a blob at networking functions, or ripping along the freeway cursing out slow drivers, or picking cat hair out of my eggs, I keep saying to myself, I gotta remember to blog about this. This is worth blogging about. Because the minutia of my life is so meaningful, right? To me, maybe not so much to you. I get it.

If I don't post anything for awhile, though, all these minor epiphanies and major revelations pile up until I am paralyzed by a serious case of existential constipation. Ahhh. Everything is meaningful! Everything is important! But where to start?

Should I write about being the only woman at a meetup about customer experience from a software designer's point of view? Rarely have I ever felt so old or out of place. They were kind to me, in that special way we often treat the elderly and infirm. I really need a new look.

Wait, I must write about the meetup where a so-called marketing guru (his nickname is Dream Killer, no lie) leaned into my space, red beard quivering with passion, to tell me, “You haven't figured out the what! Until you figure out the what you don't have a business!”

No, wait, maybe I should tell you about the local AMA luncheon, my third event since joining the AMA, where I ate wheat, dairy, and sugar while “networking” (talking) with two guys from a company that makes aviation headsets in Lake Oswego (I know, Lake Oswego! Who knew!) I'm chagrined to admit I was more interested in the ravioli and chocolate chip cookies than the headset guys or the presenter (whose topic I have already forgotten).

Or maybe I need to write about my second meeting with my SBDC counselor (what did I call him before? I can't remember. Fritz, maybe? He looks like a Fritz.) I swore to myself as I was driving to the cafe that I wouldn't treat him like a therapist. All I can say is, he asked for it.

So much has been happening! I've got too many papers to edit, on scintillating topics like prostate cancer imaging (eeewww), achievement gaps between white and minority kids (yawn, old old news, but so popular among educators), preteen sex (that was a good one, actually), and grief (complicated and uncomplicated). My hourly editing rate varies because I get paid by the word: sometimes the authors are good writers. Other times their writing skills suck. My reward for doing a good job, apparently, is the opportunity to edit more papers.

I'm reaching in all directions, grasping for something I can call success (income). On the teaching front, I'm planning on testing my first class in ten days on a small group of women—two hours on a market research topic. For the third hour I will get their feedback on the class (and feed them lunch). I haven't printed the workbook, or prepared my lesson plan, or finished my PowerPoint. Instead, I've been learning way more than I ever wanted to know about prostate cancer imaging techniques.

And, lo, the planets have aligned and the waters have parted, and now I have a little research project to work on over the next few weeks. I think it will be both challenging and fun. For a brief moment, my heart lifts. Then I think all the thoughts that come naturally to a chronic malcontent: two months till money appears, and half goes to taxes! What about the editing projects? What about my class? And knowing my luck, my car, my teeth, and my cat will all fall into disrepair at the same moment, and I'll have to move in with my mother. It's like winning the reverse lottery. Ahhh.

Once again, my brain is trying to kill me. I'm flailing in the wreckage of the future. And I'm constipated. I need to blog more often.

The season of stupid people

This is the time of year when everything goes sideways. A lifetime of Septembers has left me with a vague sense of dread. What will I wear for the first day of school? Will my classmates laugh at me when they see me with my new glasses? What if I don't like my teachers? What if they find out I'm smart? So much to worry about. New year, new classmates, new teachers, new clothes, same dread.

I don't care anymore about classmates and teachers, and I really don't care what I wear, much to my sister's consternation. But the season still deflates my will to live. I think it has to do with the angle of the sun. We've had a lot of sun this summer, and it's been great. Then Labor Day, and bam, the air chilled, just for a few days, but now the air knows it can grow colder, and so it will, without regard for hothouse flowers like me, plummeting to 50°F, and if it can fall to 50°, what's to stop it from plunging to 40°, or 30°? Or even lower? Labor Day is when the bottom falls out of summer, and I can feel the dark clouds piling up just beyond the western hills, raging in from the ocean to drench us in bone-chilling rain. Any minute now. Even though today the air is warm, it's a vile deception: There is something in the air that smells like death.

When I was struggling to finish my Ph.D., whining almost continuously about my woes via this blog, I always knew there would eventually be an end to the struggle. Either I would fail, or I would quit, or I would finish. Whatever happened, I always knew that it would end someday, and that helped fuel my persistence. Finally, I phinished, as they say.

I launched my business with hope and mild excitement. Now, nine months later, I am thrashing in the messy bog of my startup debacle, and I realize, there may be an end to this suffering as well, but unlike with the doctorate, it's not as easy to see the finish line. I mean, I know the ultimate finish line could look like me admitting defeat and joining the ranks of America's jobseekers. That is not the outcome I would prefer, but as every day passes, it's looking more and more likely.

To earn money, I've been editing academic papers. It's not fun, and the pay rate is erratic: How much I earn per hour depends on how fast I can edit. Sometimes the authors are good writers—not much for me to do, a few formatting suggestions, a word change here or there. I can easily earn $40 per hour. Other times, English is not the first language, which means I'm editing what pretty much amounts to poetry, not good when the topic is land use in China. The paper I edited yesterday was some poor schmuck's literature review. “My Chair has returned this seven times! I just don't know what else to do!” Sound familiar?

By the time I had compiled an extensive list of suggestions to expand and revise his/her literature review, I calculated I was earning $17 per hour. I guess in some (third world) countries, $17 would be a princely wage. Maybe I should move there. As long as I have internet access, I can edit academic monstrosities from anywhere.

I just finished editing a journal article for someone in Texas. I calculated I earned $25 per hour on the paper, mostly cleaning up Word tables. (How the hell do people manage to butcher Word tables so thoroughly? I don't get it.) I submitted the paper and prepared to start my real work for the day: writing the workbook for my first marketing research test class. Five minutes later I got an email from the editing agency: The client has a new version of the article. Can you compare the two versions for differences?

Really? I spent a couple minutes doing a document compare between my revised version and the author's new version and realized that was a waste of time. Then I compared the author's first and second manuscripts: Word found no differences between the two files. WTF? Is someone trying to gaslight me?

What did I tell you? Everything is harder is September. This seems like proof to me. Of course, I am biased toward chronic malcontentedness.

The chronic malcontent is itching for a niche to scratch

I wish I were smarter. If I were smarter, I would no doubt be able to gather up all the loose ends of this entrepreneurial fiasco and bundle them into a cohesive strategy that will fill my bank account. If I were smarter, the path to success (which I define as money, lots and lots of money) would be as clear and bright as the Yellow Brick Road. People would stumble over themselves to help me trot like a frisky colt along my merry way. Or maybe I'd be more like a golden-haired maiden, strewing rose petals behind me. Whatever. It would all happen easily and effortlessly, followed by the miracle of happy and secure retirement.

Last night I went to the monthly meeting of a local SEO Meetup group. (I believe SEO stands for search engine optimization.) I've attended three months in a row, thinking I would meet a specific person (I'll call her Caroline), who was recommended to me by an SBDC counselor (I'll call her Saundra). Three times Caroline has indicated via RSVP that she would be attending the Meetup. Three times she's been absent. This week, I noticed that Saundra had RSVPed her intention to attend. Great, I thought! Saundra is the person who recommended I connect with Caroline. Wouldn't it be great if they were both there? Score! Well, no, not SCORE, I mean, SBDC!

Even as I walked out into the 90° heat to my car, I thought, what am I doing? Odds are neither one of these women will be there. Will I be okay with that? Am I still willing to burn gas to drive 45 minutes in heavy traffic to bumf--k Lake Oswego, sit and chat about a topic I know nothing about, and pay money to eat crappy Chinese food? Apparently so, because off I went.

There was a pretty good turnout this month, about 20 people all together, oddly mostly older men. Sure enough, neither Caroline nor Saundra were there. I was one of four women. Three of us were somewhat long in the tooth and broad in the beam. But there was a golden-haired maiden (I'll call her Tiffany. Or Heather. No, maybe Chelsea. Yeah, let's call her Chelsea.) Chelsea was a young goddess, with full lips, long sunkissed hair, and a Barbie-esque figure, that is to say, prominently jutting along all the right frontal planes.

We started with a round of introductions (in which I introduced myself as a market researcher with no knowledge of SEO, and the emcee—let's call him Daniel—said, “Oh, if you are a market researcher, you probably know a lot about SEO,” a comment I found perplexing, since I was telling the truth, I know virtually nothing about SEO. I have a hard time even remembering what SEO stands for. I keep confusing it with REO, as in REO Speedwagon, which I believe was a 1970s rock band. Maybe he was trying to be funny? People laughed. In my usual out-of-body fashion, I am always the last to get the joke. I still haven't got the joke.)

After the introductions, Chelsea and Daniel fielded questions from the group on various aspects of SEO. I had no questions, but I listened and took notes like a good student. When the show was over, I paid my bill and drove away into the setting sun.

The memorable moment, the takeaway, as they say, was when the older woman sitting next to me turned to me and said, “Who do you do market research for?”

“Marketers and small business owners,” I replied, my usual tentative answer.

“No, my dear. That is much too broad,” she said in a peremptory tone. “Small business owners is too big. You need to narrow it down.” Later I realized she was lying in wait for a teaching moment. Did I look so lost and unsure of myself? Still, I've been trying on niches in my mind, the way some people try on hairstyles and sandals, so what she said hit home.

“Uh, how about the visual art and design industries?” I offered.

“Okay!” She turned back to the woman across the table, her teaching moment complete, leaving me to ponder the significance of what just happened. I don't believe the universe delivers signs, but when the same message keeps cropping up in various places, it probably behooves one to take a closer look.

So, I've got an itch to find a niche. A methodology niche is not going to cut it, I've been told. Apparently I need an industry niche. Banking? Finance? Healthcare? Freaking SEO? Whatever industry I choose to focus should have two essential qualities, namely that the potential clients in the industry want me and can afford me. Other than that little detail, any old niche will do. Clearly, I don't know where I fit, as usual. If I were smarter, I would know this stuff.

Portland, the land of plenty

My sister perused the photos from my high school reunion and sent me an email complimenting me on not getting fat. (Isn't that sweet?) Compared to some women in the photos, it's true, I'm a stick. But it's all relative. At the height of my vegan debacle, some six years ago when my body was feasting desperately on muscle and brain cells, having burned up all available fat, I guess you could say I was pretty thin. To be more precise, I could get into the same size Levis I wore in high school 40 years ago (30x34 in case you are curious), and those scruffy Levis hung on my frame like my own droopy skin.

Then, to avoid dying, and because I could (since I live in America, the land of plenty, and back then I had a job), I started eating real food: eggs, chicken, beef, fish, and lots and lots of vegetables. Over the next two years, my muscles returned, along with all of my fat cells (which were never gone, just deflated, darn it), which ballooned to fill all the spaces in my now too-tight clothes. The Levis went into a drawer, replaced by various forms of loose, stretchy pajamas. Black, of course, because it is so slimming.

For the past year or so, as my system has stabilized on the low-carb real-food food plan, some of the extra weight has started dissolving, first from my face, then from my boobs, then my waist, and—if I live long enough—maybe from my hips and thighs. It would be nice to have thin thighs like I did in high school. The good news, in relative terms considering the world is spontaneously combusting right now, is that I can finally fit into my Levis again (although I admit it's a bit of a struggle to get them buttoned up).

So, thanks, Sis, for the moral support. Keeping in mind of course, that it's not really true that outward appearances trump emotions, behavior, and character. That is to say, it matters more how you feel than how you look. In the big scheme of things, we are lucky to be alive and living in the land of plenty (plenty of everything, good, bad, and in between, but mostly pretty good in Portland). Things could be worse. We could be living in Baghdad, Aleppo, or Ferguson. Seriously. Land of plenty, indeed! Gratitude list!

Let them eat cake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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