The Public, the Private and Everything In Between

So this is my one thing I know for sure : I can either blog, or I can write, but I cannot do both in the same week. This blog has been woefully ignored since the past weekend when I had something of a mini-blogging explosion, but rest assured this means I have, actually, been writing! I am nearing the close of chapter eight of my novel and there is the high probability I may even finish it this morning after I’m through here. Chapter eight has been a struggle to write…not as difficult as six and seven, where I basically ended up just summarizing event after event to get to the end, and not nearly as easy as some of the earlier chapters…chapter eight is somewhere in between. I am now at the point where I have to fight the overwhelming urge to go back and revise…because I have always, since i started, HATED the opening graph and I now have two possible alternate chapters to begin the novel, but see, I recognize what this urge is, and it’s a Distraction From Finishing. Revising, see, is for another time - in Anne Lamott style I must commit to a shitty first draft! So, onward.

I also decided to move the timeline of the novel forward about ten years. This is going to SUCK upon revision…Ben served in Iraq instead of Somalia, is what I’ve decided. It’s going to be frustrating in terms of the ages of all the characters and fixing those details, but easier in terms of developing his character. I’ll have to fix some of the atmospheric development as well but again, this can all be in the revision process.

I also spent the tiniest amount of times on the early, early beginnings of a mystery series idea - set in Pittsburgh.  I took one of the opening graphs of an abandoned short story and thought the heroine might be perfect for such a series…I’ve made some preliminary character sketches but I will not work on this until my first draft of my other novel is done as this is the Oldest Trick In the Book from Distraction…coming up with another book idea while working on your current one. If you turn to the other book it’s a surefire thing neither will be completed. So I’m just keeping a file of ideas for now.

Blogging - obviously, I didn’t blog one bit. I am hoping to make up for that over the weekend.

Reading - I started Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - and I love it so, so much. I’ve read everything Barbara Kingsolver has written and she never ceases to amaze me. This is my book for the Ecojustice Challenge and it’s just perfect - it will get it’s own post, soon, as will a discussion on my failure to thus far cook a local meal.  I also started reading Firefly Lane - so far I’m pretty blah about it. I chose it spontaneously, not familiar with Kristin Hannah’s work - and I bought it because I loved the blurb…something like “for anyone who ever drank Boone’s Farm wine and listened to Fleetwood Mac” but so far I’m not overly in love. MY novel, now THAT will be for anyone who ever drank Boone’s Farm wine while listening to Garth Brooks and/or Pearl Jam on some beach somewhere at night while back home their fathers were falling into drunken stupors, which they did every night, but you don’t care because you are busy making out with your boyfriend or girlfriend and planning on escaping to New York City…” but okay, here’s the thing…if Ben goes to Iraq instead of Somalia then he and Anna will be so much younger than I want them to be! ARGH. I need to brush up on my history of the 1990s -

I think it’s time for me to leave, here. If all goes as planned I’ll probably be here quite a bit this weekend to update on my Nesting Project and Losing my Feminism, complete with pictures!

This post will be continuously updated throughout the weekend…

11:00 am, Saturday morning - the commitment I’ve made to myself to not do anything if it can’t be done on my bed is much more difficult than I imagined. Things that I have thought about doing since I woke up: go to farmers market, pay bills, unpack *just a little bit,* go buy a new belt and blouse, walk to festival down the street for music and fresh flowers, go to yoga. The thing is, though, my body is tired and needs to balance. It needs to NOT run around town this weekend. I have a terrible time listening to what my body needs, what my mind needs, and in the last several years I’ve found myself fitting in things I enjoy as though they are chores. I didn’t make this kind of life change - I didn’t move us across Ohio and into a city - to maintain the same kind of approach to life I had in Michigan. So, here I sit, in my pajamas on Saturday morning, having just finished a yogurt, and I find myself wondering, what is it, right now, I want to do? And I think - I think - I want to throw on a cozy sweatshirt, put in the Herbie Hancock cd I purchased, and read Heart Shaped Box until I no longer feel like reading. Also, I feel like catching up on some blog reading. So, I’m going to start there.

2:49, Saturday - Well, I am almost done with Joe Hill’s novel! I am thoroughly enjoying it - just what I needed to pull out of a reading slump while remaining prone on my bed. Right now I am carefully eating some lemongrass soup. I had a BAD reaction to something I ate yesterday, which I think was more powerful because I’m still recovering from this sinus/virus/mystery bug. Everyone I know who has had it swears it takes several weeks to get rid of, and it seems two drinks and a heavy dinner were too much for my system. It’s strange, isn’t it, how frail our bodies are, sometimes? Okay, back to my book. Currently listening: Into the Wild soundtrack - all Eddie Vedder all the time…

6:03 pm, Saturday - I finished Heart Shaped Box - great book! My dad read it recently too and he asked if I thought Hill’s query looked like this :Hi. I’m Stephen King’s son. While I was reading it was easy to get into the whole “I’m staying on my bed all weekend” plan but now I’m getting a little stressed - there’s so much I’m not doing - bills and laundry top the list right now. I’d better transition to the next thing, but there’s a strong possibility I’m not going to last all weekend…Currently listening: Take the Weather with You, Jimmy Buffett. I don’t get into the whole hula skirt/margarita drinking craziness of him and don’t need to see him in concert, but he’s a GREAT lyricist.

8:30 pm, Saturday - There is nothing on television. Didn’t there used to be things on television? Hmm. Day one on the bed is drawing to a close. My neighbor is hosting a dinner outside on our porch, which also happens to be outside my bedroom window. I just heard her say “I’m not the same old Jen from a year ago. I was crazy then. Now, I’ve conquered some demons, and I’m settled down.” I have a sneaking suspicion I will get off the bed tomorrow. This has been real, but in the end I simply have too much energy for a repeat, I think. Perhaps I’ll try for a couple of hours, tomorrow, on the bed….the goal, really, is for balance, yes? And I haven’t had balance in a long, long time. Today was a great start, but I think two days is asking  a bit much, from a personality such as myself…

Can you even believe how much I’ve posted in the last two days? I KNOW! A LOT! Anyway, the brilliant and formidable literary kitten, to whom I STILL owe an email (I haven’t forgotten, I SWEAR), started fess up Fridays as a way for those of working on writing projects to discuss our success, or lack thereof, regarding each week’s writing. I signed up because what is better than public humiliation to spur the writing?

So, let’s see - a little bit about my novel. It’s titled Murmurs from the Silent Room, but that could change. Right now, for the convenience of this first-time novelist, I’ve broken it into three acts, each between 100 and 150 pages, 100 being the minimum and 150 being the maximum. I’m following Annie Dillard’s advice and writing a book I would want to read - the kind of book I would pick up off the shelves at a bookstore or library, come home with, make a cup of tea or coffee or pour  a glass of wine, and really settle into. I am not sure how that’s working out for me but I’m not worried about it now.  The protagonist’s name is Anna.  Books I turn to for different kinds of inspiration include Fortune’s Rocks by Anita Shreve, because no matter how wrong you know it is, you root for Olympia and Haskell, and Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood because of the way Sidda is used as a vehicle for stories of women, much the way I am using Anna, and Beach Music by Pat Conroy for How To Write a Novel With Lots of Characters Without Crowding it Up. I am so, so near the end of act one I can taste it. My original deadline was to complete an entire draft in July but I’ve amended that to September, and will not be upset with myself if it takes the rest of the year. There is a lot of research involved.

Novel Update: I didn’t work on my novel at all this week. I let myself have this week off from writing and working out to see if I could recover from my sinus infection. It worked. I plan to spend a bit of time falling back into my novel this weekend. I also plan to FINALLY set up a writing space and S. has moved in and I have my desk back - yay! I detested writing at the kitchen table.

Nonfiction Update: I haven’t worked at all on any nonfiction.

Blogging Update: I think I’ve done fairly well with blogging, for me, this week - I am happy with my presence around here.

Reading Update: My reading this year has not been going very well, but I think Joe Hill’s Heart Shaped Box will turn that around…I’m over halfway done and enjoying it very much, and I feel excited to read something else, afterwards.

Happy Weekend, all!

Okay, so this ALSO doesn’t fit in with my blog posting schedule (and again, feel free to scroll down for more typical everythinginbetweeness, and saturday I will comment on all posts to date), but first-time poster Mark Persons sent me this link today on my Bert/Ernie/Obama/Clinton comparison and I can’t stop laughing. Mark Persons, whoever you may be, THANK YOU!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mwTCzjE-3TM

Scroll down for pooterish Everythinginbetween post!

Just have to ask…

I just finished watching Clinton’s chief advisor wax poetic about how “close” the campaign is and how she could still be the nominee and how she’s “ahead” in the popular vote…

are they delusional? Am I? Do they think if they say it, it will come true?  Listening to their campaign makes me wonder alternately for their, and my, sanity…

It is 9:00 pm here. I just got off the phone with M. - she just received a fellowship for her graduate program. Congrats, M! She will be - everywhere - this summer - tearing up the whole entire world. I am at once glad for her and relieved it’s not me because, and this I’ve just discovered, I am tired. S.’s graduation was last weekend - and it was a wonderful event, with friends, family, food and so much love. This week he moves our stuff down, only to immediately turn around and return to work for a few days before heading north to our cabin for some relaxation before finally, finally coming home. I woke up two days before S.’s graduation with a sinus infection taking over the left side of my face, and in the antibiotic laden days since I’m also suspecting a bit of a virus as well. My parents worry the stress of the transition caused my illness but I work in a hospital and I know sometimes an infection is just an infection, nothing more - nothing less, and this is what this happens to be. That said, I have decided, after S. leaves Saturday morning and I go to the farmers market, I am putting myself on a weekend of bed rest. If it can’t be done on my bed, it quite simply won’t be done. To my bed I will take dvds, books, my computer, and my photo albums, and my cell phone, and from my bed I will watch movies and read and blog and put photos away and catch up on calls but I will not leave it other than to eat for the weekend.

You know, S. and I have been together for ten years, married for eight. In that time, there are precisely nine months where one or the other of us or both have not been in school. Nine months out of ten years. That’s…well, quite frankly, I’m speechless on our behalf. That’s insane.

We had a catch phrase when we first decided to spend our lives together - that catch phrase is the title of this post. By calculating the degrees we both hoped to get, we figured by the time we turned thirty-one, we could complete all of our schooling. And by God, we did. Thirty-one  and done. We toasted to our catch phrase often, last weekend.

Hmm. Obama is just about to give his North Carolina acceptance speech…Indiana still too close to call. He is such a freaking rock star. He’s the only candidate with enough cajones to point out the ridiculousness of a gas tax holiday.  He has managed to maintain his dignity despite the ludicrousness of the whole Reverend Wright spectacle (and by the way, if people thought I stood for everything my minister has said over the years I would be in for a world of hurt) - we must be close, yes? To his nomination?

Anyway. I’m not sure what the point of this post really is - you know, I wrote so many gorgeous posts about S. and his graduation and our lives to this point and what might happen next, but they were all in my head. Instead, tonight, as I come to these keys, I feel mostly a great relaxation washing over me, as though I can really take deep breaths. I feel a mellowing - like there will be time, soon - time to write, to blog, to spend with friends and family. Time to just be.

The guiding catch phrase of our first decade together has been rendered moot - between us, we have two undergraduate degrees, an M.F.A., an M.T.S. and a Juris Doctor. We’ve talked about what will guide us for the next ten years, and we are pretty sure it is the acceptance of mess and chaos - we are quite sure our thirties won’t happen in nearly as orderly manner as our twenties did. We are both such first children, so concerned with retirement accounts and healthcare and education - that accepting a messier decade scares us in some ways. But in so many others - so many others - it feels wonderful. We may not have such a strict road map for our next ten years, but in them I suspect there will finally be time - to take a vacation in the autumn, or lose hours in good books, or even just take a weekend to sit on the bed and breath.

I expect my next post will come to you live from my bedroom (hmm - that sounds so much racier than it actually is) because what I am requesting of the upcoming years, in fact, what I insist on giving myself, is a healthier respect for the hours that make up my life, and using them not only to for work (both public and private) but for restoration, relaxation, pondering and play. Thirty one and done was certainly a remarkable decade, but it is time to move a bit less methodically, with a bit more wonder, and a lot more care.

Goodbye, thirty-one and done. You served us well.

April is almost over and since we are nearly a third of the way through the year it seems like a good time to check in with my new year’s resolutions and see how Things are Going. When I created my resolutions this year I was determined to approach them differently and use them guiding principles for my year, instead of a set of promises I make and then break. So, let’s see…

To never again, no matter how badly I feel it, to say “I’m fat” - This one was surprisingly easy…I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve said this since the New Year. I’m still losing weight with weight watchers but now it’s those last few stubborn pounds…I haven’t felt fat in a very long time, and I refuse to fall into the trap of thinking myself that way any more. However, the second part of that resolution,

To never again say “I don’t eat that” or to discuss diets with others - has been a miserable failure. After years of unhealthy dieting (the coco puff, diet coke and cigarette diet, the South Beach diet, the no carbs after 6:00 pm diet) I am finally, finally a healthful eater, eating all food groups in moderation and attempting to eat a wide variety of foods. I really feel as though I’ve eliminated all my weird food issues but in making a resolution to no longer discuss diets I’ve realized just how many women have not done this. This subject is it’s own post in the making, but it seems to me what we eat, how we eat, when we eat, what we are planning on eating…well, it seems practically to be how women communicate with one another any more, at least in the earliest stages of friendship.  I do not exaggerate when I say it has been impossible to keep this resolution.

To stop voicing health-related fears when they cross my mind, at least to anyone beyond my physician - regular readers know I’m a bit of a hypochondriac. It’s a form of anxiety, and I can’t honestly say if I know how I’m doing with this. On the one hand, I generally am so much less anxious that I don’t tend to succumb to health-related fears the way I did in my twenties, and my job allows me a certain perspective, but when I had a headache last week I found myself mentioning it to coworkers, and when I felt tired a couple weeks ago I wondered aloud if I needed more vitamins. At any rate, I think I am improving in this category.

To no longer to any exercise I dislike - Easiest. Resolution.Ever.

To streamline my life in such a way as to concentrate on writing, reading, yoga and theater - I am focusing on writing and yoga - the reading and theater need some attention.

To have something planned every day that I enjoy and journal or blog about it- Oh, I have not done this at all. I started to in January but then the job interview came up, and then the move…I’ll turn my attention to this resolution in May. In fact, I will post a list at the end of May of all the things I enjoyed - this will hold me accountable.

To embrace my inner academic and approach my job and my personal work with bravery - to embrace complexity - Oh holy hell. I don’t even know how one measures that. Honestly, I don’t even really know how to achieve it.

To learn to live on less - to embrace frugality - Get back to you on this one in December - two apartments, two sets of bills, bar preparatory courses, a rash of weddings and birthdays this summer - this one ain’t happening anytime soon.

To finish a draft of my novel - While I am no longer on track for a summer completion, I am not worried at all about finishing it by the end of the year.

Then there are some other vague resolutions, some dealing with family that are a bit personal, some dealing with practicing presence that make me think I must have been drinking when I wrote some of them, but the biggest resolution and the one I’ve been most successful with, and the one I want to complete this post discussing, is the following:

To make one positive change for the environment each month -

So, in January I decided to stop buying coffee and bottled water, and while after moving to PA I struggled with that one a bit I can honestly say I’m as good at this one as is possible for me. Once in a while I buy a coffee or pick up a bottle of water but MOSTLY I do not…I make a cup of tea in my mug and use a glass for water at work.  This has been a significant change for me and one I’m quite pleased with. In February I moved to Pittsburgh and essentially stopped driving. Consider this: In Detroit I drove approximately 80 miles a day. Since moving to Pittsburgh two months ago, I’ve put precisely 150 miles on my car. I put that many miles on my car in TWO DAYS in Detroit. Here I either walk or I take public transportation - I consider this a huge success because I COULD drive - I have parking at my job and Pittsburgh is a car culture. I choose instead to utilize the reliable transportation system. Financially, I have filled up my tank once since I moved here.  In March I decided to unplug as many electronic devices as I felt I could get away with easily, and I can say that this was by far the most annoying part of my resolution. Things I keep unplugged that I did not before: my cell phone charger, my coffee pot, my bean grinder, my stereo, my hair dryer. Things I keep plugged for otherwise I will go crazy: my laptop, the television. Honestly, I know this is a GREAT way to reduce our carbon footprints but I find it so irritating I gave myself April off to continue adjusting to it. I don’t know why I find it so annoying - I mean, it hardly takes much energy to plug in my cell phone charger or the coffee pot, but I do.

As noted above, I took April off to adjust to my new Way of Living because both one and three were struggles in terms of developing a habit. I am ready, now, to make another resolution, and wouldn’t you know my long-lost sister Emily comes along with the fabulous Ecojustice challenge! I was sort of waffling on what I wanted to do next, and along comes this amazing challenge.  Here is an excerpt:

Before I get started on the actual challenge, I want to explain why this is an ecojustice challenge and not an environmental one. The term “ecojustice” encompasses justice for all of creation (plant, other animal, and human alike). It does not assume any one species (i.e. human) is better than any other species. It assumes that within the human race, those who are most negatively affected by the rape of the earth are the poor (e.g. N.I.M.B.Y. campaigns are very successful in middle and upper-middle class neighborhoods, not so much in poor, inner-city neighborhoods) and that by making this planet a safer and better place to live, all will benefit. It assumes that every living being on this planet deserves its rightful, ecological place (whether certain species want others here or not). It also assumes that we humans are the ones doing the most damage with the most means to stop what we are doing.

So, here is how this challenge will work. The first step is for anyone who wants to participate to pass the link onto at least five other people (or even if you don’t plan to participate, if you like the idea, please pass it on). If you have a blog of your own, this can easily be accomplished merely by linking to this site in a post on your own blog. Below is a list of things you can choose to do. Once every quarter between now and April 21, 2009, I will add to this list. Your challenge is to choose something from this list, to experiment with it, and to post about it here. Or, if you’d rather not post, that’s fine. You can just choose what you want and leave comments on this blog. You can choose to implement as many or as few from the list as you would like. You can choose to stick with one (or more) for an entire quarter, or you can mix and match (one — or more — this month, a different one next month, etc.). My hope is that by the end of the year, at least one item from the whole list will have become a way of life for you and your family. And if you’re already doing some or all of these things, come up with others you want to do, share them with us, and post on them instead.

To join the blog as a posting member, please send an email to: ecojustice08 AT gmail DOT com with your user name and the email address you’d like to use for the purposes of this blog. I will add you to the list of users. Also, please post on your own blog, if you have one. That’s it. And now, here are your choices for this quarter:

1. Choose one day a week in which you will not use your car at all (barring a major emergency, like having to drive your spouse/child to the hospital for stitches). Before you immediately dismiss this one, because you have to drive to and from work every day, please think about it. Is there no one with whom you could carpool two days a week? If so, the day you’re not driving would be the perfect day not to use your car at all.

2. Choose one “black out night” per week. All lights and all electrical appliances are off by 7:30 p.m. and don’t go on again until the next morning. What will you do without lights, television, your computer? Well, the weather’s getting nice where many of us live. Sit out on the porch/deck and tell stories. Read by candle light. Write letters by candle light. Play games by candle light. You know, people did this sort of thing for thousands of years. My guess is that if you have kids, this will be an exciting and fun challenge for them.

3. Choose two days a week in which you are only going to eat organic and/or locally-grown food. Do you know that inorganic farming is one of the best examples of evolution that we’ve got going these days? All the pesticides that have been used to grow our food have helped to create “super bugs” who are becoming more and more resistant to our chemicals. We’re definitely losing this battle in more ways than one. Talk to the people at your local farmer’s markets. Many of them are growing their food organically anyway; they just aren’t certified, because it’s a difficult and expensive process to be so. Buying locally, of course, cuts down on the oil used to transport food long distances.

4. If you need to go anywhere that’s within a 2-mile round trip radius of your home, walk or bike. Where might this be? The first place that springs to mind for me is your children’s school bus stop. Perhaps the post office is close to your home. The library? For me, it’s both the post office and the bank. If you’re super lucky, maybe you have a farmer’s market that’s close by. Or maybe you don’t live close enough to anything, but you do work close by to that deli, say, where you always drive to pick up lunch.

5. Read that challenging book about the environment that you’ve been putting off reading, you know the one you don’t want to read, because it might make you a little uncomfortable (e.g. The World without Us, Diet for a Small Planet, Affluenza). Read it. Post about it. Maybe implement an idea or two based on what you’ve read.

6. Buy only those things sold in recyclable packaging and make sure you recycle that packaging.

I love these options! Emily has created an amazing challenge so please hop over and read her incredibly moving, intelligent post in full. In the mean time, since I rarely use my car, and I am not ready for a black out night, I am going to spend the next couple of months (until July) focusing on (1.) making 2 locally-grown meals a week and blogging about it (will start this in mid-May, when I return from my next business trip) and (2.) reading a challenging book about the environment (don’t know what one this will be, yet). I think these choices, in tandem with the choices I’ve already made, will work out nicely. I do suspect the second half of the year is going to be tougher…I am not the best recycler, and I think eventually I’m going to have to access the amount of groceries I buy in plastic wrapping, and I haven’t addressed the cleaning products I use, but as I move towards greener living I am going to need guidance, and I think this challenge is just the thing.

I am not going to link to five people because I never do, but I challenge everyone reading this to at least stop by Emily’s challenge and read what she has to say. And then, take her challenge. All the cool kids are doing it. And if you don’t have a blog, but would like to do the challenge and maybe write once or twice about it, I would be happy to offer up guest blogging spots here for readers attempting the challenge, wanting to write a little bit about it without creating a whole big blog.  So, go forth and go green!

my dog ate my computer.

Okay, okay. I don’t have a dog.

I was feeling guilty for not being able to fit in a proper blog for nearly a week, but as I caught up with my blog reading yesterday some of that guilt lessened…it seems everybody is writing a post similar to mine. Unless you are a food blogger about ready to lose your mind over spring asparagus (and this is not meant to be derogatory - I link to some food blogs), my little corner of the blogging world seems pretty quiet, mainly because of franticness elsewhere.

What has been keeping me away from blogging? My novel, partially. Laziness, mainly - or rather, laziness at ten o’clock at night, when I have time to blog. I think I underestimated how demanding this job would be, for one. Also, S.’s graduation from law school arrives next weekend, and the planning and coordinating of friends and family has been time-consuming. The day after his graduation I fly out on another business trip. Then S. moves his stuff down to Pittsburgh, but not his actual self, because he’s going camping with my brother. And then S. moves down properly. And then I have another business trip. This summer overflows with riches - important birthdays, family weddings, graduations - the bar in July for S. (The bar exam. Not the bar-bar. That may come in August, though!)

My lovely friend J. came down to visit last weekend to celebrate our birthdays, which we’ve been doing for six years (hers was the 15th, mine this Saturday) and we spent a lot of time discussing different ways to balance our lives. There never seems to be enough time, ever. And we don’t have children…just jobs and husbands and apartments. I should cook more, I said. I love to cook but I don’t take the time. I should go to the museums in Chicago, said J. But mostly on the weekends I want to have brunch with my girlfriends, said J.

It’s not just blogging I’m ignoring. My photos still aren’t put in albums, my novel moves at a snail’s pace, I can barely keep the apartment clean. Now, I know that in many ways I just need to cut myself some slack…after all, much is happening and I did just take a new job and relocate and all, but I also know that some of it has to do with my relationship to time, and that could use some work. There is - there should be - enough time even after working to have a lovely life. I do not want to be, in fact, I often roll my eyes at - those people who adhere to the Cult of Being Busy, who have to check their planners for breakfast two months from now. But it is up to me to change my habits if I’ going to avoid becoming one of those people.

The first habit I’ve changed since moving here is enjoying a nightly glass of wine. Oh, I’m no teetotaler and if fact am going to a beer garden with co-workers tonight, but I don’t sit down to a glass of wine after a long day anymore, because I noticed that if I do I am worthless for anything else. Just one glass can cause me to fall asleep if I’ve popped in a movie. I’ve taken to drinking organic pomegranate juice cut with sparkling water. This means I’m actually interested in sweeping the floors at 9:00 last night…or, rather, not too tired to do so. My maternal grandmother, she of the four-martinis-a day habit, is frowning up in heaven over this, I have no doubt. I was raised, as it were, on cocktail hours.

The second habit I must change (and certain friends of mine may want to stop reading now) is watching television. I started watching television regularly in graduate school, after long days of reading and writing. I never felt badly about it…it is hard to feel bad about watching Alias when one has spent five hours working T.S. Eliot allusions into her manuscript and another five reading Middlemarch. It’s a hard habit to break - one I did successfully in MI but picked up again after moving to Pittsburgh. Last night as I idly listened to some crime show, I realized if I stopped watching television probably I would go to later evening yoga classes, read, or at least flip through cookbooks. So I’m going to see if I can go without television for a while, with the exception of a couple half hour sitcoms I enjoy - ie, 30 Rock with Tina Fey. I admire Tina Fey - I’m going to see her movie this weekend, too. The other sitcoms I won’t bring up here as I’ve already sullied your thoughts of me enough for one day.

I’m hoping these two changes will help me approach time differently. I have more time now, much more, than I did in MI. And I’m not one to sit around and bitch about how working takes away from my writing time - as J. and I discussed this weekend, despite the demands of work we enjoy being contributors to this world, in doing what we can to make the our corners better places. We just wish the pastries would stop showing up at breakfast meetings. Hmm. I wonder if a food/work post is in order? Because really why the need for gigantic donuts at every breakfast meeting? Why? I HATE food at meetings but really, there is no way around it. People freak if it isn’t there. And yet we are in the middle of a food crisis….okay, I need to stop now and return to this later.

So, a couple of changes. The thing is, I could easily give up blogging and eliminate the guilt but I don’t WANT to. I love blogging. I love bloggers. I love reading blogs. In the NYTimes on Sunday I read one in ten people have blogs and I thought, good for them! Blogging is fabulous! I love how it covers so many different subjects, and I truly believe in it’s cathartic abilities for many people. Stay-at-home moms, frustrated teenagers, struggling writers, voracious readers, cancer patients, immigrants, foodies, fathers - all have blogs. Hurrah!

Before I wrap this up (and for some reason I do have to write these catch up posts once in a while, before I can turn to better content), as I noted, my birthday is on Saturday. Blah blah - I turn 31. It’s no big deal. I am not celebrating until S. moves here - we are celebrating our birthdays over together over Memorial Day. But it is my dad’s 65th birthday as well, which I think is a pretty big damn deal, and I am extraordinarily excited about that. He is not, but what are you going to do? I adore my dad. He doesn’t read this blog - in fact, he thinks that by blogging I am contributing to our naval-gazing, self-indulgent, it’s all about me culture - but happy 65th, dad. No girl could have asked for a better father.

Oh! I’m getting a bike for my birthday. I AM extraordinarily excited about that.

But I can’t end all of this without a bit of a last year wrap up, can I? But then again, not all that much has changed. Let’s see…I’ve given up frappuccinos and straightening my hair in the last year. Since moving to Pittsburgh almost all of my anxiety has dissipated despite the transition and I attribute this to walking a minimum of three miles every day (I took my pedometer with me yesterday) - it is hard to be anxious when you receive that much natural exercise. On a similar note, almost all body aches and pains disappear when one walks, and goes to the gym, and practices yoga. I have never felt better, which is good because otherwise I tire more easily, can’t drink caffeine after noon, and can’t hold my liquor. I have both gray hairs and a colorist I have to book months in advance. I have less tolerance for cable news coverage and more compassion for the people surrounding me. I am developing theories about what it means to work. Every day, I shed more and more of twenties me and embrace this still new decade. Really, I have no choice, and the mere thought of twenties me exhausts me.

So, um, that’s it. Hazaah. Possibly a more interesting post next time. Possibly.

The most interesting things happen at airports and on airplanes. Maybe this is why while the very thought of packing and preparing for a trip throws me into brief fits of ugly hysteria, I immediately grow calm once my bags are checked and I am free to wonder the airport. Airports, frankly, are a writer’s paradise.

I’m something of a connoisseur of American airports at this point in my life. My favorite airport is still Pittsburgh International. The new airport in Detroit is fine as well, and I love Atlanta’s airport. My judgment on San Diego’s airport? It sucks. Before you think I spent too much time judging San Diego (which truly, I did enjoy incredibly), I’d like to point out that this verdict is also supported by Thomas, A Business Man from Savannah, GA.  I found myself sitting next to Thomas on Tuesday evening at the small bar near my gate after a fruitless attempt to find anywhere to enjoy an actual sit-down meal. He was drinking a beer, I a vodka tonic. I don’t remember what we started talking about first but he was very kind and I enjoyed our casual conversation. I remember he works for a credit card company and hates all of the travel because it keeps him away from his wife and young children. About mid-way through my drink, he looked at me and said “You know, there is absolutely no where to get a good meal in this airport.”

“I know!” I said. I myself was slightly dazed from wondering from McDonalds to the yogurt shop and back again, blinking and wishing for an actual restaurant with a menu I could hold in my hand. While I had wonderful meals  in San Diego I hadn’t really had time to, as my grandma called it, dine, with a glass of wine and different meal components, like salad and bread and dessert, and while I love tacos and fried scallop plates, S. and I make a regular habit of dining and I had missed it. I was looking forward to, if not a good meal at the airport, at least the experience of dining.

“Even in the airport I last connected in, there was a Chilis.” Thomas said. “It wasn’t great but you could get a steak. I just really wanted a steak.” He looked so forlorn my heart actually hurt for him because, you know, I get it. You are away from your family, your home - even your office takes on a sheen of nostalgia when you’ve been gone too long. And let’s face it, sometimes food IS comfort, and to be forced, as Thomas and I were, to order “roasted turkey sandwiches” which were pulled from a cooler and came with accompanying mustard packets, well - it sort of hurts your soul, a bit.

Later, when I boarded the plane, I found myself in the same row as the largest man I’ve seen on a plane, and the smallest. The largest man was heading out on a business trip - the smallest was a cancer researcher returning to Columbia University. It was a chatty plane of people, and the plane fairly hummed with the buzzing of it. The cancer researcher and I spent some time discussing the conference, but somewhere between takeoff and drink service concern flitted across his features.

“I forgot my movie earphones in the hotel!” He said. “I paid for them and I got to watch Chris Rock all the way here, and now I don’t have them!”

I didn’t really know what to say. I thought about offering him my ipod earphones but I had already offered up my aisle seat to the largest man I’ve ever seen and I really didn’t think I could fall asleep without Bob Dylan, since I am nothing if not a creature of habit and like the Starbuck’s lemon poundcake and cappuccino I always eat when traveling, Bob Dylan is who sings me to sleep on planes. I couldn’t bring myself to give him up.

“They are just two dollars.” I said. “You could get another pair.”

“No, no. This is just terrible. I already paid for a pair. Already I am missing Hillary on Conan! Now I can’t watch the movie!”

“Here,”said the largest man. “You can have my earphones. I brought earplugs and I’ve taken a valium so I’m not going to need them.”

There was much “are you sure-ing” and “thank-you-ing” and but in the end the cancer researcher took the earphones and I swear I have never seen anyone enjoy any film as much as he enjoyed “The Water Horse.”

And so.  The airline I was flying has apparently decided there is nothing like a bunch of captive passengers, and decided to pitch its own credit card to us. Attendants walked up and down the aisle with credit card applications trying to convince us to fill out forms. The particular attendant for our area was particular aggressive and told us he had five kids to support and he could win a plasma screen television with only five more applications. I was mentally rolling my eyeballs when this kid next to me muttered, not quite under his breath, Get fucked.

Something about it - I don’t know - made me laugh out loud. He smiled at me and said, I’m sorry, but this guy is an asshole.

“Right?” I said (a response which warrants in own post soon). The guy was an asshole.

“This is the last thing we need,” he said, gesturing towards, apparently, the whole rest of the plane. “I’m already pissed off about how cold it is in Maryland.”  Some of his friends turned around and nodded their agreement.

“We got used to California weather,” another one said.

“I read somewhere that in Baltimore, on the first day of spring, all the boat owners burn their socks in order to celebrate the beginning of boat season,” I said.

“All of their socks, or just one pair?” Asked my neighbor, frowning.

“Just one pair, I think. You know, because then they can wear boat shoes without socks…”

“Makes sense,” said one of the kids ahead of me. “But we won’t be there too long anyway. We are headed for parachute school.”

And that’s when your intrepid writer finally noticed. The boy next to her. The boys ahead of her - and they were boys, reader. And row after row after row ahead of them - at least three out of every five people on the plane  had the tell-tale buzz cut and wore fatigues. And their energy, their bantering, is what kept a normally sleepy flight buzzing.

“All of you are going to parachute school?” asked the cancer researcher.

“No,” said my neighbor, gesturing to the small group around us. “Just us. We’re the badass motherfuckers of this plane!” Again, he said it so exuberantly it was impossible to be offended. Everyone was going to special training. We were on a plane full of troops on their way to three months of special training before going, of course, to Iraq. And, God. I mean - God.  They were BOYS. Many of them didn’t even yet have planes and angles emerging in their features. Their faces were unlined, their energy contagious. They tried buying beer on the plane, but were too young. They made jokes. They talked about what it would be like to jump out of planes. What it would be like in Iraq. Once they thought I was asleep, they talked a little about having sex with their girlfriends. And all I could think about was how ever since my dad returned from Vietnam, he has slept on his back with his arms crossed over his chest because that is how he slept with his gun. And how you can’t wake him up in the middle of the night without being fearful of his reaction. And how that war has been like another member of our family - or, like the burning smoke of a distant city, tinging the air around us - or, like a jungle cat, waiting to leap on its prey - but mostly how it took a small-town football playing, hopeful writer and turned him into to someone who can’t sleep, someone haunted by the an experience no one he shares blood with can identify with, and according to all my reading this is the same thing we are doing to this young generation of boys, and how it is criminal.

I fell asleep for much of the flight, and when I awoke the boys around me were sharing gum with one another and debating the various merits of Bubba-licious versus another kind. This is how young they were: they were talking about the different flavors of bubble gum.

I wonder if we could end this war if our government officials were forced to fly in coach for nearly five hours with a plane full of boys alternately discussing what it would be like to jump from a plane into the Iraqi dessert, and bubble gum?

As frustrating as it can be to be an American right now - at least, an American who hasn’t supported this war from the beginning and who finds herself disillusioned with how her values stack up against the rest of her countrymen, beautiful moments can still break through. Here is one.

When we landed, our attendant, the one who my neighbor told to get fucked, came over the broadcast.

“As you may have noticed,” he said. “We have some very special guests riding with us today. We have been accompanied by many men and women from the army, and I just think we should give them all a big round of applause for all they do for us.”

And people, the plane thundered with applause. And passengers stood up, until attendants came by and sheepishly asked them to sit down and buckle their seat belts. And the boys all looked sort of sheepish and embarrassed and slunk down a bit in their seats, and my neighbor looked to me and said we haven’t done anything yet. And I thought about how tricky living a whole entire life can be - how as we age solace can be found in a hot dinner or a movie or a stand-up comic and how that’s not all that different from when we were young, when a misbegotten beer made us almost as happy as our favorite kind of bubble gum.

0 - the number of minutes I spent with my novel on this trip, mostly because my conference is exhausting but also because I am lazy…

1 - the number of blog posts (this one) I will have managed to write while in San Diego, mostly (nay, entirely) because my internet connection has been so terrible -

2 - the number of times I ordered mahi mahi tacos for dinner

3 - the number of times I have considered requesting the journalist sitting next to me at this moment please please please stop  talking to herself

4  - hours left  until I board the red eye for home

5 - number of hours it took for my luggage to arrive last week (not too shabby at all, I think!)

6 - average number of times my blackberry rang with questions from the office each day

7 - number of times my parents called to make sure I was still alive

8 - number of hives on my right arm that mysteriously appeared after eating an apple yesterday

9- number of ” contacts” I have made for future reference

10 - number of times I have wondered why people live in southern california

11 - probably the number of pounds I have gained from eating pastries, bread, omelets, tacos, guacamole and imbibing  margaritas -

12 - the number of months it will probably take to get rid of the above 11 pounds

13 - number of gray hairs I’ve counted last week

14 - number of minutes it took me from gray-hair counting to calling my man Corey for my first coloring, and

15 - number of hours between me and my little, tree-shaded apartment in Pittsburgh - that is, if all goes well

‘Kay, I’m off for one more seafood dinner and one more margarita (they squeeze fresh oranges and limes for them here!) - more upon my return to Pittsburgh.