it's getting alarming

I spent all of yesterday hoeing out and organizing the bedroom closet and the pantry. I don't think I came fully awake until I was up to my knees and elbows in clothes I don't wear anymore. I blinked, looked around the room, saw it looking like Taz had thrown a birthday party for all his friends and progeny in it, and looked down at my hands busily emptying drawers and folding socks.

"How did I even start doing this?" I inquired of the cat. "All I meant to do was unpack!"

So today I threw a fit of rebellion against whatever force is rising up in me to make me incurably and frighteningly domestic and did nothing. The only productive (i.e. involving money) event of my day was buying a few groceries. Then I goofed around on the internet and knitted.

No! I wasn't knitting on my last day off! I wasn't! I was throwing candy wrappers all over the apartment and ordering pizza!

Okay, fine, I was knitting.

My trip home for Thanksgiving was marvelous. My extended maternal family was as crazy as expected, but, as my mother said, I was "serene and out of the way," so I didn't come to any harm or frustration. And the rest of the visit, with my parents, was great. I haven't been home in almost a year, and I haven't seen my folks since April, so it was a long time coming. And it was really, really nice.

It's an added bonus that when I go home, I get my own queen-sized bed. That's a considerable upgrade from what I'm used to.

home again, home again

The past few days have been marvelous.

MP threw another of her marvelous feastie occasions last night as a pre-Thanksgiving celebration, complete with stuffing, an enormous picnic table dragged in from the backyard, and a twenty-pound fresh Farmer's Market turkey. She and her cousin Tom and I spent the weekend shopping, rearranging, and cooking to prepare for it. It was, of course, a smashing success. I had a moment of pure longing (in geek form) made real as all ten of us sat down to gabble and pass huge bowls of food around: At the end of a rather poignant Firefly episode all the characters, most of whom don't usually get along (but part of the poignancy was the episode's arrival at solidarity), sit down around their big, homey dining table (on a spaceship, of course) and begin to talk and laugh and pass things around, and when I saw it for the first time a couple of weeks ago, I teared up, missing so badly having that sort of experience in good company. And last night the wish was fulfilled. I almost teared up again, but my mind was distracted by the turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoe pie, squash casserole, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Mmmmm.

Everyone should have Thanksgiving twice in a week.

And today more wonderfulness occurred. Because again, I have a wonderful boss. He called the day after his wife had knee replacement surgery to ask if I wanted Wednesday off to go home. So now I get a five day weekend to travel to the traditional Thanksgiving site at my maternal grandparents'!

I find myself looking forward to it. I haven't seen my parents since April, and with Christmas being a little different this year (I'm spending a couple of days prior to Christmas at home, and then Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at my sister's), it's going to be really nice to see them for a little more time than I had expected. I'll get even more time because I'm driving home, then riding down to southwestern PA with my parents, driving back up with them, and coming home from there.

AND MP's teaching me to knit in the round tonight, so that I can work on my leg warmers in the car and all during Thanksgiving. (As I'll be the only "kid" there, and a lot of the conversation centers around people I don't know/don't care about, it'll be good to have something to do with my hands, and yet be able to participate peripherally in what's going on...or at least look like I am).

Maybe they'll even let me help with the cooking this year!! My grandmother makes the best stuffing EVER.

That whole side of the family is riotously dysfunctional, and I've been kind of sad the last couple of days, thinking I'd have to miss it. There's nothing like my cranky and slightly inebriated alcoholic grandfather yelling at my alcoholic uncle to PUTAWAYTHATBEER. And my grandmother is wonderful -- a no-stuff-and-nonsense woman full of humor and heart. This is the side of the family that argues and yells a lot, forgets about it five minutes later, and then yells about something new. Somehow it's warm and comforting, and makes me feel like I'm not actually a frigid northern European whose still icy waters run silent and deep, occasionally exploding like a geiser. Or makes me feel like my usual spirit of righteous indignation is in excellent company.

So my boss said, "It's a family holiday, and you haven't seen your parents for a long time, and I hate to keep families apart if I can do something about it."

That's what you get for having a former priest and a family man for a boss. It's the bestest thing ever.

When the cat's away, the mice will...make a lounge

Yup. My boss and his wife are out of the office today and all next week, so the part-time employee and I spent the entire morning rearranging the upstairs offices. The front one in particular needed work. It was being used as a spare room for all sorts of junk. So we condensed all the junk into boxes, threw a lot of boxes away, and turned it into a lounge, complete with recliner, TV/VCR/DVD player, microwave, coffee maker, rug, and fake tree.

Now I can't wait to bring my lunches and sit around watching movies and knitting during that precious hour of not having to work.

I just need to wait for Target to get another shipment of that bag I want...then I'll be all set.

sweet convenience, sweet crock pot

So MP and I made an innocent trip to Target on Sunday. All she wanted was a hat. I was just along for the ride.

But Target seduced us with its sparkling kitchen accoutrements. As we wandered through the gadget aisles, I saw, illuminated by under-the-counter spotlights as by a ray from heaven, a crock pot. A red crock pot. A red crock pot on sale for seventeen dollars.

I ooed. MP saw and aahed. Of their own accord, our hands reached out and seized the boxes. We left Target balancing a crock pot under our arms.

"Now we just need a slow cooker cookbook," MP declared.

"...Wanna go to Borders?" I asked.

So we pilgrimaged to Borders and came away with NOT Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook. I also bought 150 Best Slow Cooker Recipes.

I tried out my wonderful new kitchen companion yesterday with a recipe from my Mediterranean cookbook: Provencale Beef and Olive Daube. A gloriously fresh enormous cut of meat from the Farmer's Market, marinated in a simmered concoction of olive oil, red wine, onion, shallots, carrot and garlic, went into the pot. So did half a pound of bacon, half a pound of sliced Heirloom carrots (one of them was purple!), a can of stewed tomatoes, and two cups of black olives. I turned it on Low and went to work.

And came home to a delicious bubbling meal. MP came and partook. Afterward we sat about talking and knitting.

As she was putting on her shoes to leave, she glanced into my bedroom to see NOT Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook on the floor by my bed.

"Are you reading this in bed too??" she demanded.

We laughed. "We really need to channel this into something that makes money," she said.

After she left, I tidied the house and got ready for bed, thinking about the marvel of the crock pot -- that I can have something to do my cooking for me. When I come home tired and hungry, there's dinner waiting on the counter, hot and ready to serve. I no longer have to spend my weekday evenings working two and a half hours to cook a meal, so that I eat at eight-thirty and then have to go straight to bed on a full stomach. Nor do I have to sit around making a meal of cheese and fried eggs, or whatever junk food I have lying around. Forget being a busy soccer mom -- this could be the saving grace for singles!

When I crawled under the covers, the kitchen was sparkling clean, all the dishes were put away, and the leftovers settled in the fridge.

I am turning into Betty Homemaker.

Now why won't someone marry me?

embracing the girly arts

I have begun learning to knit. MP taught me last night, and now I have two and a half feet of bright pink scarf, only a little raggedy.

Oh yes...I am turning into that single woman, with a cat, who knits. Next I'll be wearing glasses that come to points at the corners, with big thick black rims, and flannel nightgowns with high collars.

But really, knitting is awesome. MP was reading me the intro of Stitch 'n' Bitch as I struggled with purling and knitting and not dropping stitches, and the woman has incredible points. Particularly how, as I've been ranting for some time, the idea of women's lib has devolved into turning women into men, and losing all the feminine arts that make life lovely and comfortable. And furthermore, men have not been encouraged to take up the tasks traditionally done by women. So what we have is an overmasculinized society, where everything is prefabricated and food comes ready to pop in the microwave so everyone can spend grueling hours focusing on their careers, going to the gym, and going to bed.

What's with that? All it's saying, in the end, is that "men's" skills are still better than "women's" skills. And there have been too many centuries of that same old attitude. This era is no different. Instead of men's and women's traditional roles becoming fluid and ambisexual -- where a man and a woman alike can have a career and play soccer and cook and sew, the tasks of cooking, cleaning, making clothing, and raising children have been given almost entirely over to factories and take-out services.

Boo hiss. I like the new trend that defies this, and I know a goodly number of men who are experts in the kitchen. MP says that men in Ashville knit all the time, and in public. One of my favorite men taught his wife to crochet (I think I have that right). Now that's progress.

And within the next few weeks I'm going to learn to shoot. I'll be the Gunslinger-Who-Knits.

Maybe I'll knit my own holster.

the latest news

If you're my friend:

All generic acetaminophen in your possession, NOT labeled with the brand name Tylenol, you might consider throwing away, as it has been found to contain fragments, shards, and strands of metal wire which could, at the least, give you stomach pain, and at the worst, rip up your throat. This includes acetaminophen sold by Wal-Mart, CVS, Safeway, and, according to Fox News, "more than 120 other retailers." So please pitch it all into the nearest child-proof wastebasket, even if you bought it up to three years ago. It's bad for you. I don't want to get a phone call from you to hear your voice gurgling on the other end due to ruptured blood vessels in your throat from contaminated generic pills. For all of our sakes, stick with Tylenol, the brand name we all know, trust, and can't afford.

If you're not my friend:

I have a lot of acetaminophen I'm giving away.

the note on my door

This year I've finally been found by door-to-door religious groups.

It's not that I dislike them; but I do dislike being proselytized. Give me an honest, open discussion between two people of differing viewpoints any day; but please, spare me the rhetoric with the intent to convert me to exactly your point of view. I don't share a like point of view with most people of my own faith, let alone anyone else's, and I lost interest a long time ago in getting into one-dimensional arguments where there is no intention to arrive at a deeper mutual understanding, or to broaden both people's perspectives, or to make both people think. I also don't believe I can change people's minds, any more than I believe I ought to go banging on my neighbors' doors trying to change their minds for them because I or my beliefs say that their beliefs are wrong or false or misguided. Attempts from strangers to persuade other strangers based purely on word and symbol are generally fruitless.

Also, in order to answer the door, I have to go downstairs, making sure my keys are in my pocket in case I get locked out. Oftentimes the keys are lying in some place I've never put them before, and I can't remember where they are. Then when I find them I have to kick off my slippers and put on shoes, and now that it's getting colder, I have to don a coat in case I wind up standing in the stairwell for awhile. Answering the door is rather an elaborate process. So when I hear the bell ring, and think perhaps it's Kevin or MP or some other friend, and I get downstairs to see someone holding a pamphlet, it's a disappointment.

After my last hit-up on Sunday, I politely disengaged myself almost immediately and marched back up the stairs and sat down at my computer. Taking a cue from The Meg Formerly Known as Boss, I printed and posted on my door the following text:

"Please Note: If you are calling to solicit, without our direct, specific and personal request, anything material or immaterial, including but not limited to goods, services, politics and religion, kindly refrain from ringing the doorbell, or knocking on the door, and continue on your way. We appreciate your concern, but are not interested.

"Respectfully thanking you in advance for your cooperation, and with our best wishes,
"The Residents"

I may feel a bit mean and take it down in the future, but for now there it sits.

My boss was proud.

even if

Since the first of June
lost my job and lost my room
I pretend to try
even if I try alone
~Sufjan Stevens

For the past month or so I have felt increasingly emotionally paralyzed. Which is at least a change from the quiet, persistent mental agony that has been going on since June; but it troubles me.

I’m certain it stems from two things. First is the upped dosage of antidepressants – far from being "happy pills," antidepressants stabilize your emotional state, so it reaches a plateau of non-ill-being. Again, this is better than suffering constantly. But it leaves you feeling a bit dead.

Second is that, as my sister pointed out on the phone this weekend, blocking memories and emotions from traumatic experiences is one of my primary coping mechanisms. Sometimes she’ll bring up something painful that happened anywhere from four months to twenty years ago, and I’ll have forgotten about it completely.

In fact, my memory has been getting worse and worse. Not so much as far as my job is concerned (in fact, the job is going remarkably well – I got a raise last week!! Hooray!!!); but as far as the events of the summer go, I can’t remember much of them. And I have a scarily far-reaching memory. I can remember moments from when I was eighteen months old. When I was working at Ann Taylor and putting new client information into the computer system, for mailing lists or shipping addresses, occasionally I would hit a wrong button and everything would vanish; but within twenty seconds I could enter everything back in, remembering birth dates, social security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and all but three or four digits of their credit card numbers. I would only have to say, "And can you verify your credit card number one more time please?" and they’d never even know anything had gone wrong. My coworkers used to look over my shoulder as I did it and mutter in my ear, "That’s freaky, Sarah."

But I can’t remember things from this summer. I forgot that my sister had come to visit shortly after I lost my job. I forgot a lot of things that were said to me during and after the losing of the job. I’m forgetting names of people who worked and lived there, whom I saw and spoke with every day.

And it’s bleeding into other areas too. Sometimes I wake up and forget what day it is, or I forget that I signed up for the GRE, or I forget to pay bills, or I forget to write to my grandparents, or I forget to fulfill minor social obligations. This weekend I forgot to pick up my antidepressant refill, remembered only after the pharmacy had closed, drove around frantically looking for one that was open later, cried when they couldn’t help me, and cried when they could.

I’m forgetting everything.

So, getting back to the original point, which I had also forgotten, I tend to block memories from difficult experiences. I also block emotions. So, in the aftermath of grief and loss from this year, I’m feeling next to nothing.

It’s been surging toward an eruption. I don’t think the numbness is going to last too much longer. I think I’ll be relieved when it breaks.

It’ll be nice, when it does, to care again. The only things I can focus on much are work, and my TV shows. I don’t care anymore about being single, or dating, or finding someone, although there are certain indications of certain guys beating their chests at each other around me. I don’t care about my future. I don’t care about my hobbies, or my passions.

I’m tired. I’m tired from the struggle to find or hold onto faith, hope, love, and joy, which seem to be running between my fingers like Presque Isle sand. I’m tired from the effort to keep my head up, and keep trying. I’m tired from the effort to pretend that I’m fine. I’m fine, and I’m not fine at all, and I don’t care either way, and whatever is wrong with me is almost inarticulable (despite the above articulation), because I don’t know exactly what’s wrong, and I’m indifferent to it. It’s my indifference that bothers me the most. I’m not indifferent to that.

But then there are little moments – like today at McDonald’s, when, tired and sad and lonely and ready to buckle down with a few pieces of paper and process my problems, I was beginning to sit down when an elderly couple called over, "Hey, lady – do you want to come eat dinner with us?" So I sat down with them, and listened to parts of their life stories, and was amazed to discover that such a spry, alert, humorous couple are in their mid-nineties, and celebrating their seventy-second anniversary this month. Those are the moments that simultaneously assuage some of the sadness, and deepen it, and give me hope. And at the very least, it was so lovely to have total strangers ask me to eat with them.

And there are other moments too – like my raise last week, or today when I caught my reflection in a storefront window as I walked past on my way to drop off office mail, and realized that after a gawky, awkward adolescence, in which my mouth bristled with braces, my hair was odd and my pants too short, I have become a serene-looking, lovely young woman, all grown up.

So I know I’m going to make it. Growing up isn’t all peaches and cream – I don’t have enough money to shake a stick at, I’m single and far from family, and life has snapped a few vicious curve balls this year – but adolescence was no vacation either, and I don’t believe in life without struggle. And this, on the whole, is much better for me than I might have otherwise chosen for myself. Even if I don't understand how. Even if it's often difficult, harsh, or sad. Even if I spend most days trying not to lose myself.

Even if I try alone.

Touched by an Angel

I get really attached to my TV shows.

Growing up, my main show (aided and abetted by my family, of course) was Star Trek. Wesley Crusher was my first crush (though now it’s switched to Data). Dad would tape it when it showed in the evenings, which was past my sister’s and my bedtime, and we would watch it as a family the next evening, munching our dinners in the living room in front of the TV.

In my adolescence our family switched to The Pretender. I have since bought the first season of this show, which completely enthralled me when I was younger, and found it to be far more obvious with its undercurrents than I remembered, but still palatable. The thing is, it was VERY mid-90s, and feels distinctly dated. The opening lines of the theme boom out in an Unsolved Mysteries voice over a black screen with the lines verbatim represented in white letters: "THERE ARE PRETENDERS AMONG US." I mean, ack. We lost interest in the show when it prolonged itself beyond reason, and became pointless without resolving any of the undercurrent conflicts.

College was the era of Dark Angel. This remains one my all-time favorites, and every time I watch it through till the end of its brief life, I grow enraged at Fox all over again for cancelling it after only two seasons. Leigh Ann and I agree that one of its major appeals is its dystopic setting, with a kick-ass heroine just trying to make it in a harsh and beat-down world. Leigh Ann and I began saying, "Dark Angel is life" due to the gorgeous and relevant themes that this show focuses on – nearly all dealing with social justice. And then "Dark Angel is life" became a catch-phrase for the frequency with which we would see cast members in other movies, TV shows, and commercials. Those actors are everywhere, especially the small bit part actors.

The first year of post-college was House. I maintain that it has an excellent first season – the brilliancy of the indirect characterization of House through his associates, and some of the more amazing episodes which play with narrative structure, make it an incredible watch. But the second season failed and boiled itself down to runny melodrama, and I underwent a bitter divorce from the show.

This year, nearly a decade after missing its first airing, and all its subsequent airings, I fell in love with Buffy, and then with Angel. Leigh Ann had purchased every season, and became my own personal Netflix administrator, mailing me the seasons as I went through them. With a few several-month breaks in between viewings, I managed to finish all twelve seasons of both shows combined (with Leigh Ann, of course! She took a few trips out to South Bend for the express purpose of watching the shows) in just under exactly one year.

Angel sustained me through the summer. Heartbroken over my job loss and the betrayal of good friends at work, alone, terrified of the future and hard-pressed to find employment, I spent a lot of my days curled on the couch escaping to L.A. (Haha.) I found a great deal of strength and courage from the events, characters, and themes of the show, particularly as it progressed to Seasons Four and Five. Episodes dealing with disillusionment, doubt, the death of idealism, and the necessity, always, of fighting encouraged me not to give up.

Perhaps that sounds silly. But story has always been paramount in my interpretation of life and the world, and good television can be easily as powerful as good fiction, with just as many layers to unwind. Leigh Ann and I spent hours, days, and weeks on the phone talking about the show. I’m not sure that I would have survived well without it.

Now the show du jour is Bones. Leigh Ann and I started watching it, of course, because David Boreanaz is the co-star, and we were sad and let-down after the abrupt finish of Angel (Damn you, Fox! Cancelling all my favorite shows!). But then we fell head over heels in love with the show itself, with the interplay and deep, mostly unspoken intimacy that develops between Booth and Brennan, without putting them in a relationship; with the supporting characters; with the writing; with the skillful way the show avoids the formulaic trap into which House fell by focusing on the characters without sacrificing the strength of the episodic plots; with the even more skillful avoidance of melodrama by placing the characters’ most deep-seated issues (Brennan trying to locate her father, who has been missing since she was little; Booth dealing with seldom seeing his son, and his gambling addiction) at a low boil – occasionally they rise to the surface for some fantastic drama, but mostly they stay underneath and undealt with, while the characters go through the daily business of their lives.

And the show is pure and wonderful escape. It went on hiatus while the World Series aired, and I really think that the recent deepening of my depression partially stems from the inability to escape every week into the world of Bones. I’m excited beyond belief that it’s coming back tonight – and dealing with the Jon Benet case – AND casting MP’s very own cousin as the slain girl!

Then last night I started watching Firefly. Another of Joss Whedon’s, it takes place in the space-traveled future. And I fell hard in love. It has the best pilot I’ve ever seen, fast action, humor, poignancy, good characters.

There have been other shows, of course. I watched and loved most of Sports Night, and have been slowly and delightedly working my way through Arrested Development and Veronica Mars.

I love books. I’ve been reading a lot of my old favorites lately, particularly Madeleine L’Engle’s works. But I also love TV. Clearly science fiction and fantasy are my dearest genres -- partly because they tap directly into myth, the are myth, and myth is the human race's oldest way of telling stories. It's the First Art of Story.

Whatever gets you through, right?