Middling Through

New start

2010-09-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

The hardest thing is starting, but the most important thing is to begin. And beginning is hard. Write now

Work!

2010-01-28T16:28:00.001-08:00

The best thing to do when life gets overwhelming is simply to sit down and ...drum roll ...work. I always forget that the secret to feeling out of control is to take control. There's a small space between inaction and anxiety and action that can knock me out if I let it. Carpe diem is always the best advice; I simply don't always remember it.

Thought of the day

2010-01-27T04:15:00.000-08:00

Thinking alot about what if I had to do it all over again these days. So many other fields come to mind -- child development (based on Alan Alda's wonderful series on the spark that makes us human), stem cell researcher, science historian. Funny since I never really gravitated towards science but it found me late in life and now I'm sort of addicted to it. Of course the information I have is rather scattered, depending on what research I'm currently writing about. I follow in the investigator's footsteps, parsing Wikipedia entries and articles until I understand their findings, and then move onto the next finding.

In this haphazard way, I've learned about everything from short term memory loss to aphasia to retinoblastoma to gastric bypass -- like I said, quite the mishmash.

What was it that kept me from seriously pursuing science studies? Partly being a woman and partly fear of math (although I did quite well) and partly insecurity and lack of confidence. Maybe the hard work as well and the need to find something totally different than anyone else, which I think is also a product of the same insecurity -- when you feel worthless, you want to shine somewhere and being a writer -- which is what I wanted and what I got -- seemed more striking and brave, particularly when attending a college where 70 percent of the students were pre-med.

So our paths are forged.

Interweaving

2009-09-14T09:06:00.000-07:00

what will it be like when N. is off to school? As someone who works from home and schedules meals and does so many things in relation to other people's schedules, I wonder if things will be very different or simply a little different when he takes off.

Summer

2009-08-19T13:57:00.001-07:00

Noodle collapsed with heat on the floor beside me, cooling her belly on the wooden floor while air conditioning pumps through the room. Thinking about work and relationships, and how important it is to divide the personal from the professional in my job, and how it's not easy sometimes to find that balance. Part of it is not being in the office and dealing with people on the phone and feeling rushed by events that I'm not actually taking part in but hearing about via e-mail; part of it is my natural impatience to get things done the right way and not take others advice. Both are alienating to coworkers, and both need to be worked on so that I can become more tolerant and less demanding.

Also thinking about the next project that I'd like to work on. I actually like the idea of a woman who forgets things, but would like to link that to something larger, the death or cheating or something in a marriage. Perhaps a son who becomes unhinged by his fathers' death in some way, although they have never been close. And how that might impact his marriage. Need to freethink more about it...

Closer to Real

2009-07-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

By the time the rain stopped, deer, groundhogs, rabbits and other four legged creatures (gazelles? Antelopes? tigers?) had ground up most of the vegetable garden, although I'm still foraging cucumbers and basil and have faith that the other vine species (cantalopes and zuchinnis) have some hope of producing fruit. However, this year's garden has taught me valuable lessons about hubris -- all those summers of life without invaders made me overconfident about fence free zones. When others talked of invasions, I yawned. Now I pay attention. Close attention. They're eating MY babies....

Rain and Wet Dogs

2009-05-04T16:13:00.000-07:00

Every time I drag our dog Noodle out in the rain, I think about how many things probably confuse her. Noah, my almost 17 year old, mentioned how difficult it must be to have all these legs around you, expecting you to understand commands, and ever since, I've been thinking about the inexplicable from a dog's point of view. Thunder, rain, the random car ride: all without explanation. I'm not so focused on how all of this forces you (or the dog) to live in the moment, but the fear and unexpectedness factor. This is because we have a very, very shy dog and being fairly shy myself -- and having learned to cover it up with years and years of practice -- I guess I relate. Or, as my cousin Jan said early in her own dog ownership -- When do they stop being little human beings in hair suits?

On the plus side of course, with all this rain comes an unlimited supply of delicious grubs which the dog paws out and snorts up. A schnauzer thing, I believe.

Updike

2009-01-27T14:25:00.001-08:00

Back Again

2009-01-09T11:35:00.000-08:00

Writing about work and money: having it, not having it, what it means in both senses, woman who buys to fill space but finds things still empty. What is the third act? If it isn't love, then it has to be some other sort of fulfillment. Find the third act and work backwards...

Grey day.

Back from D.C.

2008-11-12T11:37:00.000-08:00

Spent the past two days in D.C. at a Science Writers Symposium hearing about new approaches to flu vaccines, salmonella, heparin, heart devices and pet food scares.

The group was pretty high powered, from Time to Bloomberg, and the questions intelligent and incisive. I didn't get the sense that the FDA was particularly trying to hide anything, but they didn't really make anyone feel safer about the state of the global food or medicine supply, particularly since save for the salmonella, some of these fiascos were intentionally started by people wanting to make a quick buck using cheaper materials.

The scientists played up the CSI aspects of the searches, but I was more impressed by the connections made by the doctors -- how they bore down and used everything they knew to think and re-think the problem before them. And, how far the search took them from where they had started....

Spent an hour in the part with Noodle, letting her dash around and wear herself out in piles of leaves among animal dens. Such peace watching her sniff and snort and such pleasure as she barrels towards me, hanging onto my every footstep and shrug.

We Did It!!

2008-11-06T12:45:00.000-08:00

The election of Barack Obama means so much to me. Eight years of despondency can't be written off easily, but getting up this morning and finding that yes, the news of the night before was true, that he was (as my husband said) still President-elect, was joyous beyond words. Four years ago, waking up to find that despite our hard work in MoveOn, Kerry had lost (although he did take PA), I wrote my children a note of heartfelt apology for our nation, who had gone so very wrong in re-electing a man who should never have been elected (and was not elected) in the first place. I assured them that the promise of democracy would continue and that next time we would work even harder to make certain there was no fraud, no Supreme Court decisions, no mistakes.

SO instead of tears we had neighbors filling the family room, hunched over electoral scoreboards, drinking, smiling, cheering and finally popping champagne courts for Barack Obama. It is, as we all know, going to be a terrifically tough time for America and for Obama, but the vision of his little girls on the front lawn of the White House and the promise that he will represent for all the other diverse children throughout the country is going to be overwhelming and inspiring. We can't repair the damage of the past years easily, but the hope this election offers is an elixir to the worlds' troubled soul.

As Tim Russert's Dad said -- What a country!!

Obama-rama

2008-10-29T11:25:00.000-07:00

That Obama spoke outside of Widener University in Chester, PA yesterday in the pouring rain in decidedly unstylish blue jeans, windbreaker and sneakers really moved me yesterday. I went to school until fourth grade in Chester, a black city that has been a model for urban deterioration and financial depression for years, and it has long appeared to me as one of the most neglected spots in Southeast Pennsylvania. To find it on Obama's radar at all was revitalizing and uplifting to me; a sign that he is willing to speak to lower class people who do not have financial or political clout.

Idealistic, yes. Hopeful, yes. Still a bit fearful of the outcome in Pennsylvania (no complacency), but happy about the possibilities...

Citation Nation

2008-10-27T16:33:00.000-07:00

Got a citation today from California for S. -- he had been riding on a train and forgot his ticket or couldn't locate it. Struck again how very far he is from us and conducting his own life where he is traveling (all the way to Africa soon!)on his own path and even getting cited...

It made me want to go downstairs and bake fresh bread and chicken cacciatore and apple tarts -- all of which I did with an extra loaf for Dan for good measure. Anything to hold them at the table with me for the moment before they flew away...

Balancing the Books

2008-10-21T11:55:00.000-07:00

After a week of birthday celebrations, I'm ready to admit that I have moved the clock forward by one, and am certainly grateful (as always) for friends and a bit more time. While some years I've been brought low by acknowledging middle age, this year appears to be more in the new resolution mode, but the simple resolutions that I'm after to achieve this year are balance and peace. Part of it is a physical wish: there have been too many medical scares among loved ones lately; and part of it is sheerly spiritual: I want to take time to truly show myself to others in a way I have yet to do.

It isn't easy. Brought up to be appreciative of privacy and the importance of secrecy (in part because of shame and insecurity) revealing my true feelings and trying to be more open has never been easy. But part of this year's mission is to simply let go of all of analysis and try to live in the moment, not in a Zen-crazed-meditation-flower-child manner but to try to appreciate what I have and want what I own.

For several years now, we've lived on the financial edge. Having been brought up on the financial precipice, it wasn't that unusual, but as a child of the fifties and sixties, I did bring along expectations that everything simply got better as you went along. And while it did for a bit -- there were trips to Japan and England and Italy and the beach -- it didn't ever feel like it would last, and even more importantly, that it was not quite 'it'. That 'it' - the life that I saw out there, fantastical and other, was going to finally appear before me, the escalated dream of my imagination that was better than anything that had come before.

Sort of on a white horse, for you romance fans.

But what happened was that in the past weeks, as 401K's and IRAs and pension funds and every other security blanket has evaporated, is that I have begun to realize that this is 'it'. That it's quite possible that there will not be a pot at the end of the rainbow, that living with what I have is what I need to learn to do -- forever, or at least for now and for the next day and the day after that.

What divided us from the upper middle class was more money; what divided us from poor people was access to credit. And now that that has flown, we are struggling in much the way we always have, but maybe with a dollop of more sense and for me -- a bit more self-awareness.

summertime

2008-08-20T10:38:00.000-07:00

Now that summer is winding towards the fall with blackeyed Susans popping up everywhere and the political conventions finally at hand, I am getting the hang of working and relaxing. Better late than never?

THURSDAY THOUGHT

2008-07-31T10:15:00.000-07:00

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands. -H.L. Mencken

Middle Life with Drugs

2008-07-29T17:47:00.000-07:00

The David Carr memoir disturbs me in ways I can't yet figure out completely.

While I really think that everyone owns their life story and gets to put it down anyway they wish to (even as a fictionalized memoir, sorry Oprah), I have trouble when it is a Times reporter who gets twice blessed by the Times. The pain Carr caused his family (including almost killing his twin daughters) is profound, and I think figuring all that on a couch might have been best.

It seems he wants to get paid for behaving badly and being in pain and that the Times provided him with a platform. What else is there to say but that is how the game is played these days?

Stop Being So Earnest

2008-07-28T11:25:00.001-07:00

An order for myself...

Mad Men

2008-07-28T08:01:00.000-07:00

Something in the culture has gone so retro: why are we supposed to feel such empathy with men behaving badly? I get that it's a combination of camp, costume and entertainment, but (aside from the the opening credits which are superb) the assumption and portrayal of women in this series made in this century bothers me no end. I don't believe the relationships, or the history -- it seems more of a wishful version of Sex and the Single Girl, with Draper as the objective.

On the other hand, the office politics are very good, particularly how The Girl (Peggy) might as well be invisible to the bosses as far as her personal life goes. Yet the point of view is so undefined that its' hard to tell which mysteries are intentional and which are simply unintentional distance.

Tony Soprano and Jimmy, where are you?

This blogging business

2008-07-15T05:15:00.001-07:00

I've never been so aware of how much people construct themselves in the best possible light for common consumption as I have while recently reading a fellow traveler's blog. No details here, but it's important to note how much point of view matters when you present information; attitude can mask fact. It's also important to remember how while writing we are all forever -- in one way or the other -- crafting ourselves into characters and that when it come to divorce, mayhem, childraising etc. there is no Right Side.

Only, as Stephen Colbert might say, a kind of truthiness.

On the other hand, (take the recent Christie Brinkley fisasco) maybe sometimes there is a Right Side

Here at home, Number 2 shocked everyone at dinner on Sunday night by saying that he was amazed by genetics and fascinated how little biological material can influence so much. This is after working at the biology lab for a week and a half -- imagine how his own attitude towards science (which has been very negative) might shift by the end of the summer. (!) Even as he's recognizing the power of genes, conservative columnist David Brooks
writes how they may matter less.

Maybe...

2008-07-14T11:44:00.000-07:00

What makes people optimistic in times of trouble?

It's been a preoccupation of mine for years -- how people in truly awful states of war or famine or sickness continue on with their lives and don't give up. Part of my personal problem with understanding the nuances of optimism has been nurture but much more has been nature: bipolar II has made me more depressed than manic and it's much easier for me to go southward than any other direction.

This weekend, however, gave me some clues about optimism. From Friday morning on, it was one of those few times in my life that I can say was honestly filled with giddy, unmediated joy. Seeing friends, sitting out on the porch on a summer evening, eating grilled kebabs and sour cherry cake, sharing tales of travels, hanging out with Noah, heading to a neighbors' surprise party, gossiping and giggling: all of it fueled me and sustained me in a way that I hadn't been for a long time.

It's not that these happy things haven't been there -- it's that I haven't been particularly receptive to them, preoccupied with my own dark thoughts.

So here's the secret: you have to be looking actively for happiness. You have to appreciate it when you find it. And you have to remember that you had it, so you can look back on it and smile.

Could I be more New Age-y and/or corny? Maybe not. But at this point, hell, I'll take it.

Happily.

How to Rebel: #1

2008-07-07T15:42:00.000-07:00

So here comes the hookah.

Since we suburban parents haven't had enough to contend with -- pharmparties, pot smoking, etc. -- yesterday brought a request from #2 to have a bit of hookah puffing around the backyard picnic table.

After negotiating Google searches on what the health effects of this hot college past-time might be, it was fairly clear that a night bubbling tobacco was not going to pass the parental approval test.

Still, he does (as he points out) get points for honesty particularly about how he and his posse have spent several nights hookah-ing this summer. The question is how to encourage the honesty factor while simultaneously quashing the undesirable activity factor.

The best I could offer at the moment (why do kids need a decision a second before the gang arrives???) is a bit of human resource sleight of hand: My job description remains to love, feed and protect him; his remains to take risks, act out, and rebel against a sizable percentage of adult decisions.

And that so far, we both continue to ace our respective roles.

Sigh*.

Nothing New Under the Clouds

2008-07-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

What I've learned from my children:
1. You can be smarter than your teachers
2. Don't always say what you're thinking
3. Getting along with people involves time
4. The value of doing nothing: i.e. hanging out
5. There are no 'second string' friends -- only friends.

Something about having a table of boys hunched over scrambled eggs and Canadian bacon (is this really bacon? It doesn't look like bacon) makes me very happy. I like watching them -- gawky, slightly bristly (everyone is practicing with facial hair this summer), and smelling of too much Old Spice sports scented deodorant.

I like how they forget to take their plates to the dishwasher, stare into space, cook while checking their cellphones.
I like how they debate how to make omlettes and whether a 41-year old mom who is qualifying for the Olympics is on steroids...
I like how they shake one another's hands when they say good-bye.
I like how if you look very closely, you can see the sorts of men they might become..

New Girl Not in Town & Parenting, Con't

2008-05-23T08:46:00.000-07:00

So...Son #1 has coughed up that his proviso that he would NEVER have a long-distance relationship was not carved in butter (or stone), that in fact, he has started (or been continuing) a 9 month connection with a young social anthropologist who is a junior at Harvard and has recently dyed her hair blue. Who, he adds, he met on a plane while on a head hunting trip for his social network. One nose piercing and no tattoos, although they have visited a tattoo convention recently.

And Son #2 failed his permit test. Irony was even clear to him: the question that felled his driving hopes for the moment was what the cops might do if they find drugs and or alcohol in the car. He answered incarceration (!), the correct answer was that they lose their license. That he got this particular answer wrong after an entire parent/child confrontation evening on Tuesday night, which was completely about parents repeating over and over again the dangers of drinking and/or drugging and driving. Poetic justice lives!

On that evening: J and I agreed as we walked down the driveway flanked by damp flowers and dripping leaves that mainly, after facing the boys and covering our own ambivalence and concern over the topic, we needed a drink.