Saturday, July 23, 2016

Trump. Is it really what's for dinner?


Riley has modified the “This is dinner” speech that I used to give into a plea to vote for Hilary.  The speech, which I didn't write, went something like, “THIS is dinner.  Someone who loves you very much has prepared this meal with your nourishment in mind.  It may not be your first choice, but this is what we’re having tonight.  If you don’t like it, you may politely excuse yourself and make a sandwich.  But please don’t sit here and complain or whine, because that is unproductive, and THIS IS DINNER."  For a while, maybe a decade, I think I said it every night.  (Well, I said it for the first few years, and then I assigned someone else.  "Hey, kids, who wants to recite This Is Dinner tonight?")

His much-improved version goes something like this:

"THIS is dinner.  The options are lima beans, or raw goat's heart soaked in castor oil.  You can choose the lima beans, or you can be force fed the goats heart soaked in castor oil.  Not voting or voting for a third-party candidate is the same as being force fed the goats hearts soaked in castor oil.  If that appeals to you more than lima beans, by all means, don’t vote, or vote for Jill Stein.  But these are your choices, because THIS IS DINNER."

I’m grateful that he’s repurposed a family speech, which has been languishing for years.  Which brings us to our new game!


What’s your most used parenting speech? Share it here, and we’ll see what we can do with it.  Reduce, reuse, recycle!

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Six ordinary things, one creepy

Portrait of my living room window, by Adelaide C. Johnson
1.  I wish I pronounced it "nye-thur".  But I don't, I say nee-ther.

2.  I need a plot.  Plot is lacking.  In my writing, in my life.  The plot is actually thinning.

3.  I have a customer who said that I come highly recommended, with three caveats:

  • I'm a hippy flower child
  • I've seen the light
  • I worked for King County
I completely disagree with him on the first two.  I'm not even sure there is a light; it seems pretty dark out to me.  Really dark.  I mean, Donald Trump, a racist, misogynist, lying bully has just been nominated for president.  It doesn't get much darker than that.  (Side note:  The only thing I comfort myself with about the whole Trump thing is that my father isn't alive to see this.  He would be so very disheartened.)
And jeez, hippy flower child?   I wear shoes, fer goddsakes.  I don't own any flow-y skirts or daisy headgear.  After I said that, though, I noticed him looking skeptically at the back seat of my car, noting the massage table, yoga mat, and beekeeping equipment.  It's not what it looks like, I wanted to say.  But he didn't ask.

4.  I think there's a whole lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in this world, and it's making me super irritated.  Bleh.  With luck and a bit of focus, I'll write more about that.

5.  I found the first chanterelles of the season this week.  Yikes!  It's weird to be gathering chanterelles and swimming in the lake in the same week.  Those two don't usually overlap.  Which may be why I wake up every morning, completely disoriented:  What season is this? Am I supposed to be anywhere today?  Is anyone expecting me?  What am I doing on the planet?  and so on.  Usually, I have no answers and can roll over and go back to sleep.

T and the Squirrel
6.  I visited the creepiest field site ever the other day, mostly due to the presence of what appeared to be a prisoner shack: a tiny, remote cabin in the woods with bars on the windows and a deadbolt on the outside.  And a panel van to match!  Which caused me to be thankful all over again for my delightful field partner  because she's fun, knows the scientific names for most of the mosses, will rescue a squirrel at the drop of the hat, and most especially because we didn't end up being prisoners.  One of the more disturbing things about the day was that, while T and I crawled around in the bushes for three hours looking for wetlands, the guy kept his lawnmower on, supposedly mowing his lawn.  When we got back to the car, his tiny lawn remained unmowed.  Adding to our feelings that we were being watched all day.

7.  I have a minor athletic injury from playing Sudoku online.  I won't be able to compete in the Olympics this time.  I'm kind of glad about that, though, because Rio doesn't sound very fun.  In fact, I'm trying to quit.  All those boxes begging to be filled with one to nine.  Who cares?  My thumb is sore from all of it.  I'm doing the sudoku version of methadone, which is, embarrassingly enough, manual sudoku, with an actual pencil.  It's so tedious.  The only time you should do that is if you're stuck in an airplane.  That's an actual rule.


Ok, I made it to seven this time.  And you did too!  Thanks for sticking it out.

Six ordinary things, one creepy

1.  I wish I pronounced it "nye-thur".  But I don't, I say nee-ther.

2.  I need a plot.  Plot is lacking.  In my writing, in my life.  The plot is actually thinning.

3.  I have a customer who said that I come highly recommended, with three caveats:

  • I'm a hippy flower child
  • I've seen the light
  • I worked for King County
I completely disagree with him on the first two.  I'm not even sure there is a light; it seems pretty dark out to me.  Really dark.  I mean, Donald Trump, a racist, misogynist, lying bully has just been nominated for president.  It doesn't get much darker than that.  (Side note:  The only thing I comfort myself with about the whole Trump thing is that my father isn't alive to see this.  He would be so very disheartened.)
A beautiful heavy rock that my son
carried home for me from a
backpacking trip
And jeez, hippy flower child?   I wear shoes, fer goddsakes.  I don't own any flow-y skirts or daisy headgear.  After I said that, though, I noticed him looking skeptically at the back seat of my car, noting the massage table, yoga mat, and beekeeping equipment.  It's not what it looks like, I wanted to say.  But he didn't ask.

4.  I think there's a whole lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in this world, and it's making me super irritated.  Bleh.  With luck and a bit of focus, I'll write more about that.

5.  I found the first chanterelles of the season this week.  Yikes!  It's weird to be gathering chanterelles and swimming in the lake in the same week.  Those two don't usually overlap.  Which may be why I wake up every morning, completely disoriented:  What season is this? Am I supposed to be anywhere today?  Is anyone expecting me?  What am I doing on the planet?  and so on.  Usually, I have no answers and can roll over and go back to sleep.

T and the Squirrel
6.  I visited the creepiest field site ever the other day, mostly due to the presence of what appeared to be a prisoner shack: a tiny, remote cabin in the woods with bars on the windows and a deadbolt on the outside.  And a panel van to match!  Which caused me to be thankful all over again for my delightful field partner  because she's fun, knows the scientific names for most of the mosses, will rescue a squirrel at the drop of the hat, and most especially because we didn't end up being prisoners.  One of the more disturbing things about the day was that, while T and I crawled around in the bushes for three hours looking for wetlands, the guy kept his lawnmower on, supposedly mowing his lawn.  When we got back to the car, his tiny lawn remained unmowed.  Adding to our feelings that we were being watched all day.

7.  I have a minor athletic injury from playing Sudoku online.  I won't be able to compete in the Olympics this time.  I'm kind of glad about that, though, because Rio doesn't sound very fun.  In fact, I'm trying to quit.  All those boxes begging to be filled with one to nine.  Who cares?  My thumb is sore from all of it.  I'm doing the sudoku version of methadone, which is, embarrassingly enough, manual sudoku, with an actual pencil.  It's so tedious.  The only time you should do that is if you're stuck in an airplane.  That's an actual rule.


Ok, I made it to seven this time.  And you did too!  Thanks for sticking it out.

Monday, July 18, 2016

Ten things

I've been in a bit of a writing slump, so I'll try to take my own advice and just write a list.  Ten things, day 1:


1.  I have friends who communicate almost exclusively through emoticons.  I don't know what they mean usually, so I feel like that old person.  The "get off my lawn!  And don't tag me in snap chat!"  Sort of on the edge of knowing stuff.  Which reminds me of a FB friend I used to have who, rather than searching for someone he was thinking about, he posted their name as a status.  Like that.

2.  I like giving massages.  There's a bit of magic that's more than manipulating the muscles.  I don't like that a prostitution sting operation involves a fake "massage" parlor.  Grr.

3.  I've been cleaning my house more than usual.  And making less art.  Hmm.  Something always has to give.

5.  I'm trying to make a mosaic patio table, which is one of the worst ideas I've ever had, for the following reasons:

  • mosaic involves gluing tiny bits of glass onto a surface in a super fussy way.  I had very high hopes for this project until I remembered, partway into it, that I'm not a fussy person.  I like doodling and cooking and gardening -- things that forgive you the instant you leave the ground.  This, not so much.  
  • Oh, and there's fussy sticky glue, and you're trying to squeeze tiny bits of glass into just the right spot.  And your fingers get sticky, and it's just not fun.  
  • And, you either have to cut the glass up with the violent glass cutter, or use squares.  Violence, or squares?  Right?  Is that our choice?
  • I recall this thing we had during the summer when I was a kid, before parenting was a verb, called "Playground."  My friend and I walked ourselves to the school a half a mile away, where there was stuff going on: arts and crafts, a movie (which was a big deal then!), and games like tag.  I always picked arts and crafts, and made a series of mosaic ash trays for my non-smoking parents.  They always had that "my unsupervised kid made this without knowing what the hell she was doing" look about them, because the thing that makes mosaic good is being fussy.  Like having equal distances between the tile.  And having a plan, and tiles that are  the right colors and shapes, not just all the broken plates you've saved (not hoarded!), for years.  None of that, just so you know, is happening here.  
6.  The arc of history trends toward justice, because each generation is better than the last. The young people pull us and push us into being more open, more generous, and more just, than we are.  They feel contempt that we've settled.  Settled for jobs, relationships, lifestyles, that aren't as good as they could be. And most of all, for allowing injustice to persist, and for letting the problems in the world go unaddressed.

I know this because I heard my neighbors in a shouting match yesterday.  The young adult son declared he'll leave the country if Trump is elected, while the dad defended Trump, saying that muslims in Germany oppose Oktoberfest, due to the alcohol, and if we don't ban them from this country, who knows what's next?  (I could hear this discussion from 500 feet away!)  I didn't realize that Oktoberfest in Germany is one of the big issues for this election, but I've been out of the loop.   I'm way out of the loop, in fact.

7.  Even still, there's a different thing that we bring to the world as we age.  Yes, we're tired, and cynical, and we've settled, and sometimes choose to look the other way because yeesh, what do we look at?  The giant island of plastic?  Racism?  That local issue, whatever it is?  Climate change?  Unfairly incarcerated people?  Endangered species?  Cruelty to chickens?  Gun laws?  Economic disparity?  Sexual violence?  Carpal tunnel syndrome?  That weird noise my car makes?  (oh, wait. That doesn't belong here.) I could go on and on.  But what I've come to believe is that showing up and doing the best I can is an actual thing, and it's the only thing I've got.  At the most elemental level:  trying to practice kindness and generosity, trying to create goodness in my days by listening and trying.  Honoring my loved ones in the ways I think matter.  Letting go of friends who need distance gracefully and with love, not grasping.  Trying to be present to the suffering I encounter, even if it's not the worst suffering in the land.  No, my loved ones aren't about to become lamps made of skin, but still, their pain matters.  Voting.  Working to build institutions that will persist to do good work.  It's not enough, I know.

8.  Jeez, why did I say I'd write ten things?  Ten is almost 12, which is a full horoscope.  So, 8.

Saturday, July 16, 2016

The Girl at the Grocery Store

FROM THE PAST.  Again.  Because my sister reminded me of this familial sunset thing.


There are a few things I like about her, even though she’s kind of a ditz. One is that she used to have a gauged ear piercing the size of a nickel, but let it grow back; this gives me hope. The second thing is that she’s always sneaking out to the parking lot to take pictures of the sunset with her cell phone. I don’t have a thing for sunsets myself, but I do have a thing for people who have a thing for sunsets. Perhaps because my grandfather, who worked at Kodak long enough to get free film for life, took about 15 pictures of the sunset from the same spot at the same beach in Florida every single day; when we’d visit once a year, he’d show us one long slide show (over several consecutive evenings) involving thousands of sunset pics, narrated with stats: film speed, f-stop, date, time, and sometimes, temperature. About 8 photos while the sun was sinking towards the horizon, 3 or four right at the horizon, and maybe 4 or 5 just after it sunk. Once in a great while there was a cloud, but other than that, nothing changed.

I know it sounds boring, but it was so extreme that it came full circle and became interesting again, if you can imagine that. Anyway, the other thing I like about the checkout girl is that she comments on what I’m buying. Also in the category of so boring that it comes back around again. (Note: when the UPS guy comments on what I’m buying, it’s creepy, e.g., “I see you ordered something from Victoria's Secret, would you like me to wait around to see if it fits?” That’s creepy. Checkout girl commenting on groceries, not creepy.) It starts out boring, but inevitably goes off on its own weird trajectory that I just never see coming. Peaches, yum! Oh, I have that salad dressing too. Kleenex, do you have allergies? Comment, scan, comment, scan, and so on, til she gets to one item, and I can never predict just what it’s gonna be, that causes the conversation (if you could call it that) to go off somewhere no one has ever been before, like a voyage to the weird second moon orbiting the earth. The other day, baby bok choy. “Oh, did you know bok choy is good luck in China? One of my parents’ friends brought me a baby bok choy as a souvenir of their trip, and I was pretty bummed out at first, I mean, seriously, all the way to China, and they bring me bok choy, and meanwhile, I’m spending the best years of my life scanning this shit all day, I’m serious, I almost cried when they gave it to me, but I didn’t because, whatever, that’s just how it is.”

Really? They gave you bok choy?

“Yeah, but it was a little sculpture made from real bok choy, with a saying about all the good luck it brings, which, actually, come to think of it, might be working.”

And then the transaction is over, and I’m walking out before I’m fully aware of all the questions I have. I want to go back, but that’s not how it works at the store, you have to wait til you need more half and half or something.

I walk out to the parking lot, and the sunset actually is pretty amazing, so I run back in to tell her, because I know about her sunset thing. She’s strangely grateful that I remember, and closes her line, to the dismay of all the people standing in it. I get a dirty look from the first guy, who’s stuff is half un-packed onto her little tarmac, but I smile at him the way parents smile at each other, like, oh well, if you love something, let it be what it is, and I follow her out while she flips open her crappy little cell phone camera. If you already know its there, you can tell there’s a river at the edge of the picture, but the photo she takes will just show cars in a parking lot next to a highway, with just a little more color than usual.

Saturday, July 9, 2016

The magical blue sphere

While men with guns were murdering one another this week, I took a class to learn about shiatsu, which is a magical eastern form of massage.  According to Wikipedia, "there is no evidence that shiatsu is an effective medical treatment... shiatsu was one of 17 therapies evaluated for which no clear evidence of effectiveness was found."  I tend to think effectiveness should be measurable, so I don't think I believe in shiatsu.   But it is kind of hard sometimes to know if something works.  Really fast, what's your pain, right now, scale of 1-10?  How 'bout now?  Right?  How can we measure someone's experience?  

And we know energy is kind of hard to pin down.  What makes us feel tired, what makes us feel rejuvenated?  I'm pretty sure it's more complicated than food and sleep.

We learned to find a tight spot in a muscle that needs relaxing, and a loose spot that needs tightening.  We were told to gently hold the low energy spot while massaging the tight spot until we felt the energy flow from high to low, reaching equilibrium.  We listened to a pulse, not from the heart, but a meridian pulse.  We listened for the disharmony between the pulses and tried to even them out.  I practiced on the teacher, who said, "There!  You did it.  Did you feel the pulse?"  I didn't, but nodded because I wished I felt the pulse.  Instead, I felt what I always feel:  people respond positively to nurturing touch.  They exhale, and that's good.

We also learned to create a violet flame. Or maybe we didn't create it, but just summoned it?  I wasn't exactly sure.  When we removed the bad energy from a person, we tossed it into the violet flame, where it was destroyed.  Or transformed.  I'm not sure about that either.  But I do know you don't want to leave that stuff lying all over the floor.  

And we learned to close the massage by creating a protective blue aura around our client, so they will be well and be safe and no bad ju ju will get them.

I don't believe in this, but I'm trying to live as if I do.  As if I could create a magical blue bubble of goodness at the end of each massage.  A spell that would protect people from experiencing and creating harm, from negative thoughts, from getting shot by a random bullet, from not feeling love from their loved ones, from passive aggressive or vengeful instincts, from sinking into the muck rather than lifting people out of it.  From pride and excess, from shame and regret.  From boredom and depression.  From wasting time on Facebook.  From not experiencing the wonder and mystery of this remarkable planet every day.

I don't have any special powers.  I don't believe in the violet flame, or the blue orb of protection, or the secret meridian pulse.  But I wish I did, and if I had magic, that's what I'd do with it.  There's no downside to casting a spell on people, wishing them good things and calling them to bring their very best selves to the table every day, even when it's hard.  Or maybe I should just try to do that on myself.  Forgive, accept, empathize, appreciate, let go.  Over and over. Maybe that's the only magic I can work on.

I'm excited to report that the author Celeste Ng has selected m y modern love essay to read for the Modern Love podcast next week. Suc...