paying through the eyeballs...and a social commentary

I actually cried while filling up my car today. A full tank cost me fifty dollars. When the price skyrocketed above three per gallon, I didn't notice. I knew it was getting worse, but for God's sake, I can't afford this.

I can remember when gas was eighty-nine cents a gallon.

A good plateful of Thai curry helped me forget my woes for awhile (and gave me a runny nose). I cooked jasmine rice for the first time to accompany the curry, and I'm never going back. You know the amazing goodness of Chinese restaurant rice? One of their secrets is, of course, that they steam theirs. Sadly I don't have a steamer/rice cooker. But the other secret is that they use jasmine rice. I always wished I could cook rice so good I could eat it plain and cold from the little cardboard box in the refrigerator (I love cold Chinese), but thought it was completely beyond the realm of my ability. Not so. As soon as I opened the bag to dig my measuring cup inside, that sweet fragrance wafted up and took me straight back to the China Jade in North East. Heaven.

I also cooked with fish sauce. It adds great flavor, but is Very Stinky.

Leigh Ann had this marvelous idea -- since we won't be seeing each other as often now that I work and she's in grad school in D.C. and we can't allow our whole friendship to be based around Buffy every time we see each other -- of mailing me the contemporary Buffy and Angel seasons one at a time; I will watch them, mail them back, and get the next season. Meanwhile we will correspond about them.

This is taking loving a show to a bizarre level. But it's totally made my evening, when I could sit and savor the delectable artistic cheesiness that is Buffy.

Ooooo, and the new season of House premieres on my birthday!

I had no Close Encounters of the Psycho Kind when coming home from work today; it seems that Kevin is hiding or at least out of sight whenever I march past his door on the way to my own. It seems the same evening I shut the door in his face Colette visited him to tell him that there is no chance for him ever to get back together with her. So hopefully he's thoroughly depressed and planning to move.

Today at work the buzz centered around some local shoe store which donated fifty crappy art kits to the homeless kids at the Center and wanted publicity for it. So our whole morning was shot waiting around for the camera people to arrive, and then trying to help our two-year-olds to hold still and not be frightened of the many strange adults milling around with flash bulbs.

I'm not sneering at the donation. Crappy or not, art kits are something our kids don't have to take home with them, till today. But the self-congratulatory oo-look-at-me-doing-something-good makes me ill. Two slickly dressed representatives of the shoe company arrived wearing suits and stood in the middle of the photographs and then hung around shaking hands and giving their full name AND job title when introducing themselves and saying saccharine schmoozy things like, "Well, we hope the kids enjoy the art kits as much as we enjoyed donating them."

At that point I had to grab a kid and make for indoors muttering something about a diaper. It's not like they gave the Center half a million dollars. And how exactly does one enjoy donating something? It's like enjoying pouring a bowl of cereal. You just do it. The kids being happy with the gift is what you enjoy, but the slick reps didn't stick around for that part.

Plus it threw our kids off routine so that they were insecure and cranky the rest of the day (our classroom is about the only routine that most of these kids get). The whole experience was topped off by the random appearance of a Chik-Fil-A cow in full "Eat Mor Chikin" signboard regalia, which frightened our infants to tears. (People dressed in huge fuzzy animal outfits have always given me the creeps too.) At that point I wondered what dimension of reality I had suddenly wandered into and started checking along the baseboards for the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East.

Rrrgh.

So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. ~Matthew 6:2-4

I just can't wait for Christmastime. Maybe I'll spend the whole month of December dressed as Santa Claus so people can't see me scowling behind the curly fake beard. It also might help our kids not to be afraid of morons in suits. (The only suited creature I've ever loved is the Grove City Gorilla, who chased the kid in the wheelchair -- yes, at Grove City he was THE kid in the wheelchair -- and humped him with an orange traffic cone, and who leaped onto the stage at the Class of 2004 Senior Dinner in the middle of Nancy Paxton's goodbye speech, gave us a silent victory sign with both arms, jumped off the stage, and ran out a side door. I loved that guy.)

long post in which I conclude tentatively victorious

When I drove home from work (late today, as Boss Meg and I have started working out after work on MWF in the tiny and deserted exercise room in the not-as-creepy-as-I-had-expected downstairs -- yay fitness!) I saw Slightly Psycho Kevin pulling into the driveway just ahead of me on his bike.

Oh shit, I thought. And crossed myself.

Yes, Colette's Evil Ex has moved into the apartment that she deserted in order to move to a Kevin-Free house across the alley and down the street. Meaning that he is now my downstairs neighbor.

No problem, I thought, right? He hates me (as I've been committing the heinous sin of Spending Time With Her when he's the only person she should ever want to be around...this is a textbook case of emotional abuse, kids...text.book.) and I'm not remotely fond of him. Therefore we'll ignore each other and everything will be awkward but okay.

Not so. Saturday I'm on the phone wearing nothing, as the phone rang while I was in the tub shaving the old legs, and I didn't bother robing up to clamber out and chat with John (I love living alone). Then the doorbell rings. I logically deduce who it isn't (Colette, not while Kevin is moved in) and then logically deduce who it is. I ask John to stay on the phone. I throw on an unseasonally heavy but completely cover-me-up-and-disguise-my-gender terrycloth robe and tromp down the stairs to the door. Oh look. I'm right. It's Kevin.

I open the door and lean out and proceed to be brusque and almost rude. He looks innocently bewildered, and "just wants to talk with me, but he'll let me go because I look busy," to which I answer, "Yeah, I'm on the phone." (The Stories I Could Tell about this guy.) I close the conversation, shut the door, and listen to John laughing on the other end.

Crap, I think. He won't settle for ignoring me. As he has no respect for other human beings (not just from Colette's stories but from what I've witnessed firsthand), I can't expect him to settle for being ignored.

So I prepare a speech. I think very hard about how much Slightly Psycho Kevin I want in my life. (He's been tracking down all of Colette's friends and complaining about Colette and trying to garner sympathy. He has some sort of sociopsychopathological disease.) I decide I don't want him in my life at all. I prepare, and recite the speech in my head for two days.

I delivered it this afternoon when I parked my car and found him waiting on the porch in front of my door.

Here's a rough script of what happened. Picture me not raising my voice or reacting to anything he says, which is precisely true to what happened.

SPK (Slightly Psycho Kevin), looking at me too intently: I got the feeling when I rang your doorbell on Saturday that there was some tension there.
Me: Yep.
SPK: Is that because of what's going on between me and Colette?
Me: Yep.
SPK: Because when I rang your doorbell, I got the feeling that you were thinking, "What the hell are you doing here?"
Me: Pretty much.
SPK: Why would that be?
Me (adapting speech): Kevin, I think it's going to be awkward with you living here. I'll talk about the weather to you, I'll say hello and goodbye, but I am not going to discuss Colette with you.
SPK: I'm not here to probe you for information. [Proceeds to ask me general questions that probe me for information.]
Me: Kevin, I just said I'm not going to talk about Colette with you. Please respect that.
SPK: I mean, the whole thing just hit me like a hammer. I just came from her house and she won't talk to me, and...
Me: Kevin, you're talking about Colette.
SPK: I'm not asking you for anything specific.
Me: I'm not telling you anything general.
SPK (looking confused): I just want to know if there's hope of reconciliation.
Me: I'm not the person to ask.
SPK: Because she won't discuss anything with me...and I was always respectful. I wasn't abusive or manipulative...
Me: Kevin, you're talking about Colette.
SPK: I'm telling you my feelings.
Me: I don't want to hear them.
SPK: Why, because you're friends with her?
Me: That's right.
SPK: It makes me wonder, since you have such animosity towards me, what she must have said to give you such a skewed perspective of me.
Me: I'm not going to tell you.
SPK: Have you ever been in my position before?
Me: Yes.
SPK: Where someone has up and broken your heart?
Me: Yep. It's a common human experience.
SPK (taken aback): Well...yeah, I mean I'm sure it is, but...I've been talking to strangers about it, and they can relate, I've found warmth there, where I haven't had reason to expect it. And I come knocking on your door, and I'm your neighbor, and I'm hurting, and you're cold.
Me (shrugging): I'm not a good crying shoulder.
SPK: Why do you think that is?
Me: Because I've been in this situation before, where exes come asking me for advice. I don't do that.
SPK (looking suddenly mad): Do you have a chip on your shoulder when it comes to guys?
Me: Do I have a chip...? I'm going upstairs. [I turn and walk up the porch steps toward my door.]
SPK: I mean, I mean, we've had good conversations in the past.
Me (turning around): Neighborly conversations. Yes. I can have neighborly conversations with you. But I don't see the point of your ringing my doorbell. I know Colette much better than I know you, and I like it that way.
SPK: So should I say hello when I see you, should I bother with the niceties?
Me (shrugging): If you don't feel moved to say hello, it won't bother me.
SPK: I guess there are two kinds of people in the world -- people who respond to you with human warmth, and people who don't.
Me: Looks like you'll find the latter in me.
SPK (looking really helpless and furious): So I'll just say hello.
Me: Hello is fine. Hello is plenty. Take care, Kevin. [I close the door behind me and walk upstairs shaky, headachey, but snickering.]

The vibes this guy gives off would make a cobra nervous. Here he is, thirty-five, almost middle-aged, and can't handle being dumped. And can't respect a veritable stranger (moi) who tells him she won't discuss something with him. He tried to browbeat, manipulate, insult, and cajole me into pitying him and listening to him and giving him advice and information.

And there was a time not so long ago when his tactics would have worked and I would have found myself unhappily and uncomfortably sitting down with him to discuss what he did wrong, what his approach ought to be, what Colette has said about him, what chances he has. The way he's treated Colette -- even in my presence -- has led me to want to slap him up and down and have a restraining order put on him. (I was over at her house in Kalamazoo for the weekend of the Fourth, when they were semi-broken-up for the twelfth time in a year, and she and I returned late at night from an outing and found him waiting in her driveway, because he had called without leaving messages all weekend and sent her a long nasty e-mail, to none of which she responded, so he came to her house WHILE she had an out-of-town guest and proceeded to fight with her for the better part of four hours while I sat in the house wondering if she would be safe, and what the hell I was supposed to do.) And he thinks he can bully me into telling him all about her and taking his side.

No. effing. way. I thought hard about what role I can possibly play in this insane and all-too-common drama, and that can only be as Colette's friend. I owe nothing to Kevin. In fact I dislike Kevin. He has all of his family and all of his friends...and all of her friends (because Colette told me, after I went to her apartment to fill her in on what happened, that I'm the first person to refuse to talk to him about it)...and random strangers. He could stand a good dose of being alone. Like for the rest of his life.

So it's going to be uncomfortable around my house for awhile, because I'm not going to back down (in fact the plan is not to talk to him at all anymore, and if he tries to talk to me, simply to walk away) and I'm not exactly sure what he's going to do. He is aware of all my goings and comings, as his door along the porch has a nice clear view of mine. I'm a little concerned for my safety, not badly (I don't think he would break into my apartment), but I do suspect he might try to waylay me, either conversationally or somehow physically, especially once it becomes clear that I'm not going to be his friend.

But there's always my landlord, and always the police.

And better yet, there's prayer.

I hate being involved in any kind of direct way with conflicts such as this. Hopefully he'll move out. I don't want him around. He's icky and I've just really pissed him off, and plan to continue doing so, firmly and without ire. I really have no idea how he's going to react.

But he's not getting the better of me. Colette, her decisions are her own; I hope the best for her (freedom! respect! a full life! joy!) and will always urge her in that direction; and only she can get rid of Kevin. I believe she can do it for herself: she is strong and smart, and has strong and supportive friends and family. Me, that's as involved as it's healthy and right for me to get (unless I think she's in danger). He might keep trying to bully her, but he can expect total non-capitulation from me. And I know the right trees up which to bark should the situation call for barking.

did i also mention...

It's eight o'clock on a Saturday morning and I'm up and brewing coffee, having had a wonderful night's rest.

A large part of me can't wait for middle age, when going to bed at ten or eleven on a Friday night is just something you do. I like my Saturday mornings, I like turning in relatively early, I like waking up well-rested with an entire day ahead of me and sitting around letting the morning slowly unfold while I sip coffee and lounge.

Mom said sometime last month, "I know, I couldn't wait to be forty because then I could act the way I've always wanted to act" -- be a homebody, hold get-togethers that start at seven and end at nine-thirty, go to bed early, wake up early.

I hear you, Mom.

So over the summer I have blossomed into a wonderful cook. My forays into vegetarianism are turning into settlements, something slightly more permanent and less clap-board based than a squatter's hut but not quite the huge impressive I-refuse-to-go-anywhere solidity of a middle-class development house. Vegetarian (or whole food) eating is something I've wanted to explore for awhile -- not just Boca burgers and soy crumbles, but the real combination eating deal, beans and rice and lots of spices. My cookbook has been a great place to start -- the introduction talks about nearly every kind of food that a vegetarian would consume, how to prepare them, where to find them. And the recipes are delicious.

I have no ethical reservations about eating meat. I order meat quite frequently when I'm dining out and think fondly of colder weather to come, which means beef stroganoff. But for a few reasons -- my health, my finances, and the intimidation I feel when trying to master my mother's recipes -- I'm liking this new swing in my diet.

Also, having switched to soy milk, I find myself in greatly reduced intestinal discomfort. I think I started becoming lactose intolerant at Grove City, but always thought it was stress. When I stayed at Colette's house earlier this summer, which contained only soy milk, I found I liked the way it tastes and decided to give it a try. Pure intestinal bliss.

The beans are another matter. But they taste so good, and I've had so much fun cooking with new spices and new ingredients (like tahini). And I've discovered a love for fresh cooked beets.

and life is really -- yes, really -- good.

I guess it's been awhile since I've posted on how I'm actually doing. I haven't even journalled about it much...have I been hoarding my happiness? Raking it all up like Ebenezer Scrooge and hiding it from the world, from myself? Well...yes.

I think a large part of me has felt guilty for not missing academia. For the past three years, since I switched from English Secondary Education to English, I thought of grad school as what I was born for. But then I didn't want to go. I opted for a year of bottom-feeding retail jobs over applying to graduate schools. I was ashamed, but also relieved and happy, at Notre Dame's rejection. It left me extremely confused, wondering if I'm still smart, if I'm an intellectual anymore; extremely guilty, wondering if I should despise myself for not missing syllabi, reading assignments, or term papers, wondering if I'm cutting off and throwing away some integral part of myself in (temporarily at least) abandoning the academic scene; extremely ashamed, for having failed at doing something (getting into grad school and being an instant success) when I've never failed at anything before.

A lot of those doubts I'm still working through. But I've come to a full realization of how satisfied with my life I am. It makes me more confident at meeting people -- especially having a job that I'm proud of. I'm not a misplaced cynical intellect grubbing the system while sneering at it (not that that is bad; it was dissatisfying to me because I like to believe in what I do); I'm a pioneer in the social services field and I'll tell anyone who asks about the visions I'm working to achieve.

I love what I do.

Today our most beautiful, energetic, and vigorous child, a two-year-old girl named Dajenara and called Nara unless we're trying to get her attention, was helping me wipe up some spilled water. After we'd thrown the wet paper towels away, I said, "Nara, can I give you a hug??" She yelled, "YES!" and hurled herself at me; I picked her up and swung her around and said, "I LIKE giving you hugs!" and she shouted, "I like giving YOU hugs!!!" and squeezed me so hard around the neck I choked on her shoulder.

She can be a royal pain, she can be frustrating, she can be so headstrong it makes your teeth hurt -- she's an extraordinary human being -- but she is by far the child who makes me realize how much I love what I do. I think of her big shining eyes and her gorgeous smile and her mischievous grin, her spunk and her spontaneity, her tendencies to organize the flock around her and take care of (and bully) her fellow children, her exuberance for life, and I feel so privileged to have the total trust of this awesome little person that I grin a big happy smile into the dark before I fall asleep at night.

I can't tell you what I'll be doing in ten years, or twenty, whether I'll ever be married, whether I'll have children -- anything. But I can tell you that I don't care. What I'm doing in the present is so worthwhile and fulfilling that I have confidence in the goodness of the future, without needing to think about any of it.

I have timeline goals, which helps. They are:

1. To have a house, a king-sized bed, a cat, a dog, and a new car by the time I'm thirty;
2. To embark on two years of teaching English in a rural Chinese village when I turn thirty-five;
3. To get my Master's and PhD before I'm fifty;
4. To write and teach till I'm too old to leave the house.

The rest I don't need to know about, or care about, or worry about, until it happens. What's going on now is good enough for now.

For a girl who has always banked her happiness on the future, and hated the present, this is quite a miraculous step.

daily life

Experienced quite a busy weekend this one past -- in a great way. Friday Colette and I swapped family and guy stories over Thai curry, then church stories over hot chocolate at the South Bend Chocolate Cafe (whose excellent dark hot chocolate is exactly like the scratch kind Mom taught us to make, with baking cocoa and sugar). Saturday I sat journalling and intensely Dealing With Issues, after which I felt much better -- the Issues have been percolating for about a month or so, and it was time and past time to take the lid off, swirl them around, and filter through them. Great stuff. Saturday night I met Meg's friend Matt while Looking Hot in a Black Skirt and had a fun two hours of theater story swapping at the Fiddler's.

Sunday was shopping at the Michigan City Outlets with Colette, where she bought work clothes and I bought a badly needed new pair of sneakers (I hear "sneakers" is an East Coast term; people around here supposedly all say "tennis shoes") which I love. I go through sneakers quickly, being rather brutal to them, and I hadn't bought a new pair in at least two years. Sadly the grey pair with green trim were unavailable in my size, so the grey pair with pink trim sufficed. I woke up excited to wear them, and after a day of chasing babies in them my feet are happily sore from *gasp* Enough Support.

While shopping with MP for a new TV last week I also purchased a new tea kettle. (I had borrowed hers for the summer.) Tea kettle shopping consists of a few dense moments of overwhelmed anguish in which one selects the desired color and handles all the display samples, wondering what on earth shade/shape/brand will do. I settled for a darling red Kitchenaid which works so beautifully that the already pleasurable ritual of preparing coffee in the morning is intensified.

It's a good life.

some peripheral venting

Unfortunately I can't air my issues with total honesty as I would like. But, in the meantime, you get a slice of my angry pie, if you care to continue reading.

A half-conclusion at which I've arrived this week is that I push most dateable guys completely out of the way because NEEDY MEN PISS ME OFF and I'm convinced that any guy I wind up dating (because I've been a magnet for the Needy Guy in the past, whimper whimper Sarah fix my problems and listen to them all while I sit here not giving a damn about your life, YUCK) will turn into one of these men. Men who stifle my emotional life because all they want is for me to tend to theirs, to shut my emotions in a closet and adopt their emotions as my own. And all I'll hear forever is I hate my job, I hate my parents, I hate my life, blah blah blah blah blah make it better, and while you're at it just sympathize with meeeeeeeee.

As Virginia Woolf wrote of Mr. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse, "There he stood, demanding sympathy."

Sorry, Imaginary Dude Whom I Won't Let Into My Life. It's your job to seize your life with your own hands and forge something out of it. It doesn't have to be something world-changing, but it does have to be yours. I'm not having any part of making you who you are. You're that without me, as I am who I am independently of you. I'll be your companion, I'll share your stories and your life and I'll laugh with you and I'll be quietly sympathetic when that's really what you need and I'll build a comfortable and healthy and secure home with you; but I'm not going to sit around letting you suck the life out of me because you refuse to be content and turn your nose up at an optimistic and hopeful outlook.

Now, I am beginning to understand that not all men are like this, so my friends who know that this doesn't apply to them need not take offense. I plan to learn more about regular guys, who, I hear, populate the planet. But to the person whom I may have not yet met who plans to make me his support and mainstay, forget it. Companion. I will be an excellent companion. But I'm no Atlas. Nor do I expect you to be. My life and problems are my own. All I ask once in awhile is a hug and a genuinely meant inquiry as to my well-being and a real interest in the good things of my life, the things that make me happy. But I'm responsible for me; no one else can be. And you are responsible for you.

If you're wondering at whom this post is directed, look up a well-known Plath poem. (But don't comment about it, por favor, I need to deal with this person directly but had to post about it first.) And for further clarification: If I met you in college, you are not the object of this post.

This garbled and esoteric rant brought to you courtesy of Sarah.

processing

So much has happened in the past two weekends...not "much" as in occurrences that you could measure on a timeline of action, but changes in states of being. All in a good way, but it's taking some time to sort through how I'm doing, so no posting recently.

This next week or so is (are) going to challenge my stamina. We started a four-month-old infant in our program today and it shifts around what Meg and I are able to do. With no volunteers and seven children, it promises taxation on our emotional, mental, and physical resources.

The import of this: Early bedtimes! Hurrah!

i'm grown-up and boring -- hooray!

It's a quiet moment in the P.E.D.S. program at the South Bend Center for the Homeless, so a little-known (but soon to be famous) employee named Sarah is snatching a tidbit of precious time to blog...because when she gets home from work, she is too tired to look at a computer screen.

We've been overturning the house at work, have Meg and I, improving the educational environment for the children. Yesterday we rearranged big pieces of furniture (shelving, kiddie tables, kiddie cupboards) to make room for a Reading and Writing Center and a Music Area. We already have a Kitchen, a Workshop, and an Art Studio, and the room is now full of simple and valuable toys. We weeded out a lot of useless or nonproductive toys (or annoying toys) so that there are less toy sets with muliple pieces that just get strewn around and thrown at people. Now the kids have free access to musical instruments, books, a magnetic writing pad, chalk and markers, blocks, Legos, and Play-Doh.

We suffered from so much motivation that we even stayed late to put a few "finishing touches" (when is anything ever finished?) on the room. Normally we wait to do all the major improvements until the last Friday of the month, when we have an "In-Service Day," but most of this stuff we hate waiting for.

Meanwhile to make up for a huge sleep deficit stemming from the beginning of July, I have been going to bed at 9:30 every night this week and sleeping until seven in the morning. I'm beginning to feel, for the first time in forever, great. I think. It's been so long that it's hard to tell.

Monday and Tuesday night I read big chunks out of Angels and Insects, which I find fantastic. Last summer I decided to love A. S. Byatt no matter what, and we are very compatible as a writer-to-reader team.

AND Louise Erdrich is coming out with a new novel in September. Excitement, rapture, joy.

lazy Saturday

I have two guests for the weekend, both of whom are sleeping on my living room floor just behind me, and have been since about one o'clock.

It's amazing how different it is to have people in the house. Even when you're doing nothing at all, even when you've just awakened from a floor nap and idly flip a book off the shelf to read it -- things you would ordinarily do alone, so are not novel -- you are still aware of the presence of another human being in your habitat.

It's quite refreshing. I have grown to love living alone, except when the weekends drag on Sunday with no prospects of doing anything; it is amazing to wake up in the empty solitude of a few sunlit rooms and boil water for coffee at your leisure. But still I enjoy the company in ways I'd forgotten. The anticipation of getting up and talking to someone. Sharing a bathroom. Staying up late talking and fighting sleep until the blood vessels in your eyes leak and the brain fuzziness reduces conversation to delirious mumbles.

It's wonderful to have people wander about your apartment looking at all your books (which are all yours). Fantastic to think that they drove six hours from Pennsylvania to spend a Saturday afternoon asleep on my floor.

Little routine-breaking miracles that braid one's internal monologues together.

six amazing things

1. I cooked two meals in one week. Two scrumptious, excellent meals. (My God, you say. Yes. I can cook.) I love my vegetarian cookbook so much that I was motivated yesterday, in one hundred degree weather (at least in my apartment) to heat my oven to 400 degrees to bake eggplant for curry. (Which was the most delicious thing I think I've ever eaten in my LIFE.)

2. Leign Ann is coming up this weekend.

3. Leigh Ann is coming up this weekend!!

4. So is Shelley!

5. Fabulously, I have weekend plans that can easily include two good friends, to make it look like I have a life in South Bend. And to give them a good old time: a James Thurber play at the Civic Theater (a block away from my apartment), a night at the St. Joseph ("St. Joe") County Fair, church (Chris-with-a-House!), and Sunday brunch at the Fiddler's.

6. I got to talk to Colette today. (Ex-boyfriend Slightly Psycho Kevin has been hanging around a lot controlling her time. Jerk.) Yesterday morning when I shut the door at the bottom of the stairs to go to work she stuck her head out the door with a huge grin and came running over. (Life at the house I live in is a combination of Days and Friends.)