The Ramblings of a Woman in Need of Something

It's been quite a day, quite a week actually. Ah, hell the past six weeks have been interesting.

So I sit here at my desk at the office and am fielding emails from an alarming number of colleagues across several government agencies still working at 8pm - your federal government never sleeps! And I need to take a mental break.

I give you my Top Ten Things About Me That Are Not Important Enough To Actually Take Up Someone's Time To Share Them With So I'll Blog About Them ---

10. My podiatrist actually recommended I wear heels to even out my hips. He said two inches but I pretend he meant three inches.

9. I sweat profusely on public transportation - buses and subways - even when I am one of three people on said bus or train car - it is alarming but it is how I justify taking cabs.

8. I rarely try clothes on before buying them.

7. I would love to wear flip flops as commuter shoes but fear the scorn of fellow women / fashionistas.

6. I think Ira Glass's voice is depressing.

5. I am terribly jealous of Crown Princess Mary of Denmark. (Yep, I admit to childishness here.)

4. When I say something is "interesting", that is not a good thing.

3. I am obsessed with stories of tragedies and will Google for more and more details.

2. I feel guilty that I did not do more to acclimate our family dog to condo living.

1. When I am home by myself I hold whole fake, soap opera-y dialogues with myself -- including the other people.

The Promise of a Lifetime

Here is the poem I wrote for my husband and read to him at our wedding reception ten years ago today. No other words could be truer today. Happy Anniversary to the love of my life!!

This Promise

There is a silence
Broken
When a word
Is born -

Who could foretell
Who dared to dream
Yet here we are

What spinning universe
Fell out of sync
What power
Knotted in its own deceit
What desire
Quenched its enduring flame

And written song
Left unheard
Waiting still
For that voice
To make
The right touch upon our ear

The greatest pillars
Of history
Shook
With a mighty roar
I am sure
That foundations will falter -

That trees
Will sweep their stately
Boughs
To the ground
In prayer

On my soul
I swear
The sands
Will drink the overflow
of the ocean's tears

Because we loved.

Game Day

My senior year of college I played rugby - I needed something new - and during one game while I cradled the covetous ball, I was slammed on both sides by two of Amherst's finest. I am pretty sure the whole of Pioneer Valley heard the breaking of the four bones attaching my fingers to my wrist. As I lay on the ground where I had dropped to allow play to continue, I remember feeling stunned. Not physical pain stunned but stunned at how easily and purposefully the premeditated, brute force of the tackle had been delivered. I have been a tentative dancer ever since.

Somewhere in the middle of my career path I received a similar tackle. It was purposeful. It was forceful. It was premeditated and it left me stunned.

To be honest, it changed the way I work. The way I view the workplace. Now, the office is a pitch and the game is on. And I have learned to tackle.

I am not the wunderkind who flew up the career ladder, rather, I have zipped around like a tipsy bumblebee. While I have stayed consistent regarding the arenas within which I worked, my focus areas have been dizzyingly different. Truly. I skidded from education and youth to hospice and end-of-life care with a dog leg through international law.

Each punch, stumble, accolade, and day's end shows the world that I may be down, but I will never be out. The ball may not be cradled in my arms but it will...even if it means I have to do the tackling.

Through it all, I have felt the brightest light of commendation and the darkest cloak of betrayal and in between the slippery silk of disingenuosness. I have fired people, taken pay cuts, developed national resources, taken short cuts in my work, experienced negative treatment as a working mother, held colleagues and direct reports to impossibly high standards, taken personal days, worked through lunch with a sickening regularity and pretty much fought the good fight just like everyone else.

Lately the good fight has taken me on a longer daily tour of duty and so the blog has fallen by the wayside while I navigate this new phase of my flight of the bumblebee. You see, it would appear that I am in another rugby game.

I am cradling my ulcer and my career goals in my arms.

Tackled, I refuse to fall to the ground waiting for play to continue.

These Sneakers Were Made for Walking

A week or so ago I spent the weekend walking through Chicago.

I cried a little.

Cheered a lot.

Snacked quite a bit.

And drank even more.

I also thought about things. Just things.

Every year I participate in the Avon Breast Cancer Walk traipsing through 39 miles of a different city for two days flanked by sis and my buddy K. Just us and 3,000 or so other like minded women and men.

You would think that I’d be too busy, distracted, focused on blister prevention to spend a great deal of time contemplating anything other than the next rest stop.

But no. Over the course of eight years of these walks I have created and broken down life plans, made pivotal decisions, written poems and mourned opportunities missed – all while trotting along in a sea of pink.

Sometimes these discussions have been in conversations held with sis and K. More often than not however, it has just been me and my conscience working it out silently step after step, mile after mile.

I believe there are two reasons that some of my best brainstorming, self-realization and inspirational confabs with myself happen during these walks. First, when surrounded by such examples of strength as breast cancer survivors, I cannot help but assess my own self worth and challenge myself. And second, 39 miles is long…unfettered time to think stretches ahead of you. No matter how many folks are walking with me, nobody can talk for an entire 39 miles and even if they could I’d probably kill them by mile 25.

While walking over the years --

I decided to be a whistle blower. A decision that was right but still haunts me.

I overcame my fear of having a healthy baby. For the most part --- I now have a beautiful baby girl … and a recently diagnosed ulcer which according to everyone is because I stress too much about things out of my control.

I wrote a novel – well, the beginning and end – which is currently residing unpublished in my head. Someday I will hole my self up in a cabin on a lake in Tuscany or the local Starbucks and it will get written!

Admitted to myself that I regret the professional path I have taken.

My now languishing personal shopper business plan was developed and subsequently launched -- briefly.

In Chicago I weighed some hefty thoughts. I rolled some life choices around in my mouth, to see how they would taste. This year’s theme was life in ten years. I have always been addicted to movies where the homely lead actress has a makeover or books where people work to recreate themselves. Fiction is always easier said / written than done.

But looking around at the women and men walking with me I realized that they had made over their lives and come out stronger. And they had no choice. No marathon walk to weigh the pros and cons. The survivor whose dreams were put on hold until she beat cancer. The son who lost his mother before he even got to high school. Lives changed – redirected – remade – redefined.

This year I will not leave my musings on the road. I will not take for granted the fortitude that accompanied me on my 39 mile journey.

They say we show our true strength in times of crisis. I wish to show my true strength every day. For if the Avon walks have taught me anything, tomorrow can change your life.

The Good Humor Man...Woman...Child

For today's post I have dredged up some comedic vignettes I penned about a decade ago. I seemed to have written them from a mother's perspective. How convenient.

IN LIFE

Enter Satan on a neon pink surfboard -

"Yo dude! How many times have you sinned?!"

The president of the PTA is mad.

He upstaged her son, the asparagus.

The holiday play could not be saved.

If I hang up I will have sinned.

I have not worked this hard to end up in the land of boogie boards.

So I tell her that her son stole the show.

He might even end up on Broadway.

You know, maybe play a vegetarian Hamlet.

She hung up.

That wasn't very nice - she never once said a word about my son the snowball.

Do you know how hard it is to put a straight zipper in a circular, bunny fur costume?

And then find out your son is allergic to bunny fur.

At 2am I baked thirty Christmas tree cookies for 15 second graders.

Then the fat kid in the second row threw up all over them.

At that point in life you just want to smile, stand back...and throw up on the kid.

The devil made me do it.

FOR THE BETTER

Something is burning.

But I am on the phone and cannot hang up.

After all, the nice lady is telling me that the florist's van carrying three dozen marigold's for Aunt Bernice's funeral -

Has been hijacked.

Hello dear - how was your day? Uh-huh.

Listen, your Aunt Bernice's marigolds are being sold on the black market in Akron, Ohio.

Oh and I discovered I used yellow fingerprint instead of mustard on the kids' sandwiches.

Watch out for that damp spot in the living room.

The blackened catfish exploded in the oven.

Someone put Snoopy stickers on my glasses lenses and I could not see.

Don't you agree that five looks like a three?

The pizza turtle arrives in exactly 29 minutes.

It is cold.

It has anchovies.

And the delivery guy has no change.

The successful warrior should have three weapons.

The power of fear, a big army and pizza delivery.

SO LITTLE TIME

I am late.

It is ten minutes to the hour when I will fall writhing to the ground in the midst of a nervous breakdown.

I am only too grateful to be spending the last moments of my sanity in a traffic jam and listening to the radio play something that sounds like "I bit your arm off in love."

Oh goody.

The couple in the car in front of me are obviously dying of some fast acting disease.

They seem to think there will not be time to make it to a hospital.

So they have commenced vigorously displaying their undying love for one another.

Right. Now.

Oh god.

It's catching.

The man in the car next to me is rolling his eyes at me.

What does it mean when he smiles at me like that?

Maybe his underwear is too tight.

I guess I'll never know.

His tie appears to have gotten wrapped around the steering wheel.

Now his eyes are rolling in the opposite direction.

God, men confuse me.

RECESSION FASHION P.S.

Memorial Day weekend is upon us and we can celebrate the beginning of summer! Whee!! Wear a comfy pair of shorts and a cool tank. Throw on some shoe bling and relax.

The Committee for a National Mountain Day

I was a giant goober this weekend.

I drove to Massachusetts for my 15th reunion at Mount Holyoke College and cried.

A lot.

I cried driving on to campus, I cried during the Laurel Parade, I cried driving home from campus, and even memorialized my shnuffles at one point on the love of my life's voicemail.

It is amazing how four years out of 37 can define you.

For many people the decision to attend college is intense. For a lucky segment of the population attending college is a given.

Whichever group you were in, chances are you spent a great deal of your high school years contemplating college and its myriad possibilities.

Admittedly, an all female college experience is a hard sell to the average hormonal teenage girl.

As I roamed campus this weekend, contemplating the art museum, the athletic awards, the faculty and innovative curriculum, I thought back to the point in high school when I made my decision to attend MHC.

My mother being of the era when women's colleges were the norm, was the one who introduced me to them - I actually think my best college interview hands down was at Wellesley. Mom even sent me on a prospective visit to Smith.

But Mount Holyoke wasn't on the radar screen. Something about her childhood chum Lou getting sent home from MHC for being scathingly unprepared in the art of constructing a good sentence had scared the bejeezus out of her. A cautionary tale oft repeated to me throughout my four years at MHC. I kid you not, on graduation day Momgoose let out a deep breath and said thank god they did not send you home like Lou!

The schools were nice, I liked New England and could care less by the women only thing - however I remained ambivalent.

But on that fateful prospective weekend at Smith my junior year of high school, I toodled over to visit my godsister at Mount Holyoke. We strolled across the campus chatting and eventually arrived at a waterfall.

Thirty-six hours later I arrived home to my mother's anxious inquiry - Did you just love Smith??

Actually no! I said. However, Mount Holyoke is the best school in the world! Did you know they have two waterfalls??

The best decision I have ever made was because of a waterfall.

I had no idea that I would meet the smartest, craziest, caring, uncommon women who would challenge me, love me, school me and accept me.

Whether we chose Mount Holyoke for its curriculum, riding or crew, the arts program, or because it had a waterfall - we came together and made a home.

And in the immortal words of L. Frank Baum -- There is no place like home.

What's on Tap?

"I find people with children to be tyrants," she said. "As someone who doesn't have children, I think children are fine. I don't think they own everything." (1)

Recently there have been a number of articles in The New York Times and Washington Post with negative commentary on parents of toddlers and babies hanging out in bars or popular restaurants.

This is not a new war -- parent v. non-parent brawls have been raging since the 80's. But now I have a perspective from both sides.

Among the apparent blights on a restaurant or bar's ambience is the intrepid stroller. I get that.

We got the Bugaboo Chameleon and all of its tricked out humvee glory. And man, is it a pain in the tuckus. It is bulky, heavy and maneuvers around corners with the agility of a rhinoceros.

I much prefer our current slimline Maclaren fold up - leaves us lots of space for the party of four at the table next to us -- make that six -- oh wait seven - to add chairs to their table as their friends decide to join them for dinner.

Another infringement on the dining / drinking experience is the child. They talk. Apparently, loudly. In a cafe. During happy hour.

That young whipper snapper generation thinks of everything! The new bar happy hour - a quiet, contemplative space. Genius!

But seriously, babies and children are loud. They can disrupt the low murmur of respectable adults enjoying an adult experience in a lovely setting.

They can...*ring* All the single ladies! *ring* All the single ladies! *ring* "Hello? We are at the steak house. What? Speak up I cannot hear you!"

...they can...

"Yeah, that steak house. No the last time we got seafood I got sick, remember? In July. I said July! Yeah, it was awful."

...pardon the interruption, there is someone across the room taking a cell call...

"So where are you? Let me ask. Frank wants to know where we are going next? Wait, Frank let me call you back, it's really loud in here! There's a baby ya know. A baby I said! Okay let me call you back."

Uh-huh. The baby is always the problem.

Yes, there are parents who treat the public landscape like their own personal daycare. Yes, I have wanted to throttle a munchkin or two on the airplane.

But.

Giving birth does not regulate one to the house after 4pm.

No, I am not going to haul widdums to the bar with me at 9pm and throw back a few before a couple of rounds of beer pong. But yes, when said pub has outside seating and it is 6pm on a Friday of a long week, yeah, I am going hook up the booster seat and grab a libation.

Not only is it my responsibility as a parent to pay attention to the environment in which I introduce my child but I am equally responsible to pay attention to how my child interacts with that environment.

I am aware of those around me - but I cannot help it if Baby C is having a bad day. I'll move as quickly as possible to extricate the wailing time bomb. What I wish is that everyone else had the same consideration - those with AND without children.

But I am not hoisting the gangplank for 18 years before I venture in to a three star restaurant with my whole family.

(1) New Baby Boom Fosters Culture Clash: Parents vs. Public Spaces By Annys Shin, Washington Post Staff Writer , Sunday, May 16, 2010.