MaRveLouS MadNeSs!

Questo Muro

2008-04-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

You will come at a turning of the trail
to a wall of flame

After the hard climb & the exhausted dreaming

you will come to a place where he
with whom you have walked this far
will stop, will stand

beside you on the treacherous steep path
& stare as you shiver at the moving wall, the flame

that blocks your vision of what
comes after. And that one
who you thought would accompany you always,

who held your face
tenderly a little while in his hands—
who pressed the palms of his hands into drenched grass
& washed from your cheeks the soot, the tear-tracks—

he is telling you now
that all that stands between you
& everything you have known since the beginning

is this: this wall. Between yourself
& the beloved, between yourself & your joy,
the riverbank swaying with wildflowers, the shaft

of sunlight on the rock, the song.
Will you pass through it now, will you let it consume

whatever solidness this is
you call your life, & send
you out, a tremor of heat,

a radiance, a changed
flickering thing?

-Anita Barrows-

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle Has A New Blog!!!

2008-04-06T18:49:00.000-07:00

Well, not Mrs. Piggle Wiggle herself, but the niece of the author of Mrs.Piggle Wiggle has a new blog and I hope you will be sure to visit it right here ! It is written by the one and only Miss Marilyn Beck, who has been browsing about the bloggy world for a couple years now and after some trepidation, she has at last leaped in so I hope you will go and send her some Blogger love and leave her plenty of comments to urge her on!

I have known Marilyn for about seven years ever since we first met while working together for three years at the Peace Corps office in LA. At the time, she was in charge of Human Resources and I would bug her with my receipts from hotels I was staying at while I traveled up and down the coast recruiting Peace Corps Volunteers! She approved all my silly "on the road" expenditures at my favorite inns up and down the California coastline and rarely gave me grief about it! But I could also see that she was somewhat not living the life she really wanted, that she was a creative beast being squished to bits in her little cubicle office. You should know that Marilyn is a Cheese Wizard and makes very tasty asparagus and is always reading great books, challenging me to think in ever expanding ways, and is not going to be able to keep up with me when we go running and hiking in Big Sur next month! Marilyn is one of my best friends in all the world and I am very happy to report that she is living a life these days much more in tune with what she really wants so please do go visit her and welcome her to blogging at long last! I am sooooo glad you are writing Marilyn!!!!

P.S. Check out my new website here! It's not finished yet but I'm working on it!

WHY are we human beings so sucky when we don't have to be?

2008-03-29T11:27:00.000-07:00

This is taken from the AP Press this morning. It made my heart sick.

Gray wolf hunts planned after de-listing
Idaho, Montana and Wyoming to manage estimated 1,500 animals in region
The Associated Press
updated 2:58 a.m. AKT, Sat., March. 29, 2008

BOISE, Idaho - Good news for gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains: They no longer need federal protection. The bad news for the animals? Plans are already in the works to hunt them.

Federal Endangered Species Act protection of the wolves was lifted Friday in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, giving those states management of the estimated 1,500 gray wolves in the region.

Even though environmentalists plan to sue the federal government next month to restore wolf protections, hunts are already being scheduled by state wildlife agencies to reduce the wolf population to between 900 and 1,250.

‘The world is watching’
Idaho hunters will be allowed to kill between 100-300 of the animals this fall under a plan approved by the Idaho Fish and Game Commission. The hunts are partly in response to increasing numbers of livestock being killed as the predators' population has grown.

"We manage big game for a living, we're good at it," said Steve Nadeau, who oversees large carnivores for the Idaho Fish and Game Department. "The world is watching and we know it."

Fish and Game estimates Idaho now has 800 gray wolves. Should the number of breeding pairs in Idaho fall below a target number, the animals could be brought back under federal protection.

After a series of public shouting matches between wolf advocates and opponents, comments from Idaho Department Fish and Game officials on Friday seemed largely designed to reassure both ends of the debate.

Cal Groen, director of the department, told reporters that his agency has already proven its ability to recover and maintain Idaho wolf populations. "We've exceeded all the goals the federal government set," Groen said.

But Doug Honnold, a managing attorney for the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice, disagrees. Honnold said the wolf populations won't be fully recovered in Idaho and the northern Rockies until the animals number between 2,000 and 3,000.

Umbrella group plans lawsuit
Earthjustice, which represents 12 local and national environmental groups, plans to sue the federal government next month to continue wolf protections.

All three state plans to manage the wolves call for a reduction in their numbers, which will eventually lead to weaker breeding, Honnold said in a telephone interview from Bozeman, Mont.

"We think that would be a disaster," he said. "We've spent a lot of time, money and effort to promote wolf recovery."

Gray wolves were listed as endangered in 1973 after being hunted into near extinction, but the population has rebounded dramatically after restoration efforts began in 1995. The wolves were recently de-listed in the western Great Lakes, while the wolf population in the Southwest remains endangered.

Wildlife biologists estimate there are now 41 breeding pairs in Idaho, in 72 packs. If that number falls below 10 breeding pairs, or 15 during a three-year period, the wolves could be brought back under federal protection.

On Friday, Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter signed a bill to allow ranchers, outfitters and pet owners to kill wolves harassing livestock. The law gives owners up to 72 hours to report wolves they've killed after catching them annoying, disturbing or stalking animals or livestock.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

the little boy and the old man

2008-03-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon."
Said the old man, "I do that, too."
The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants."
"I do that too," laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, "I often cry."
The old man nodded, "So do I."
"But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems
Grown-ups don't pay attention to me."
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
"I know what you mean," said the little old man.

-- Shel Silverstein

Why Does Blogger Keep Casting Me Out? Are my posts that Bad???

2008-03-17T19:50:00.001-07:00

Change AND acceptance were both very much on my mind this week as I grappled with the very real possibilities that a cancer diagnosis might likely bring. If I didn't have a lot of time left, what would I want and need to focus on? what did I need to accept, and what still would I want to work to change with a limited amount of time left, within me and in my relationships with others and life itself?And then how does that change again when you suddenly are given good - no, GREAT-news and it feels all over again like your own little bucket of time has been generously refilled? I don't want to let that awareness go, no matter how terrified I have to say I was going to Providence Cancer Center yesterday morning, that too often I act as if I have forever to live, see, breathe, make amends, etc etc etc. because none of us is guaranteed much more time. It just feels that way. And I keep thinking about all those others who walked through those same Providence Cancer Center doors each and every day and wake up this morning not with a sense of profound relief but something far more terrifying and unknown because they didn't get the call that I did. I still can't believe I'm ok.

A reporter interviewing A.J. Muste, who during the Vietnam War stood in front of the White House night after night with a candle, one rainy night asked,"Mr. Muste, do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night with a candle?" Muste replied, "Oh, I don't do it to change the country, I do it so the country won't change me."

How do you hold onto the most precious parts of yourself so that the world at large, or traumatic events, or hurtful words don't seep in to your very soul and alter you for the worse? A lot of my work, with myself and with others, seems to be about navigating change, and yet, at the same time, really realizing that we are totally awesomely whole to begin with, and so it isn't about changing because there is anything wrong with you as you are, no matter WHAT you have done or said or thought or felt, but maybe more about, as Morrie said in one of my all time favorite books, Tuesdays With Morrie, change is about "stretching yourself into everything you are meant to become."

One of my favorite book titles is by Cheri Huber- "There is Nothing Wrong With You!" I especially love lending this book to my many teen clients because too many have built up cases of steel against themselves and their sense of worth and value. Too many of us become far too competent prosecuting attorneys against our very own selves, and that is tremendously sad to me. There is very, very little that someone could tell me that I wouldn't forgve them for or would change my opinion of them. Really and truly. No one's shadow is bigger than my own at times and I see that and know that. I guess I have to be forgiving because I am so very, very far from perfect myself and am blessed with people in my life who understand and are committed to the art of repair in relationships and moving on and forward.

But I am thinking a lot about change, and how fast or slow does it need to be? There is William James's advice about change:

"To change one's life:
1. Start immediately,
2. Do it flamboyantly,
3. No exceptions."

But then I also think Steinbeck is right too, that change can come more gradually, more softly, over time and over a lifetime of paying attention, "like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass."

But then I found this quote too by the Corinthians:
"Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye..."

I like that too! The idea of fast-zap change.

I am curious what change can or has meant to you, what your relationship with change is or what do you want it to be?

GOOD NEWS UPDATE! Finally Blogger is working again....

2008-03-12T11:43:00.000-07:00

UPDATE!
I got a call a couple hours ago-one of the best calls in my whole life- from Dr. Hunter in Radiology at Providence Hospital who was kind enough to call me after hours to give me the great news that I am ok! I still can't believe it. I wasn't feeling really hopeful about it at all based on the earlier tests as my week went on & my head was spinning possibilities and just WOW! Thank you for all your love and support and wonderful comments and emails. I couldn't believe anyone even reads Alex's Marvelous Madness blog anymore since I have been on hiatus for so long so THANK YOU sooooooooo MUCH !

By the way, that MRI machine is gigantic! Jim said to just think of it as a "gigantic, loud bra" but it felt more like the reader of impending death. THANK YOU to Laini, the most wonderful friend who signed off on the paperwork which allowed her to sit right there in the room right next to the machne. (She did order a pepperoni pizza to the MRI room because it took so long but that's ok.) I did try to be brave and initially not bring anyone in, but once I was undressed and saw this huge honkytonk clanker of a machine I was about to be pushed into, I was like, "Ummm, could you please go back out there and have my friend sign all the paperwork afterall?" And she did! With the crazy bright pink hair and the bright turquoise shirt it was like having my own pizza-gulping superhero right there in the room!

This was a really hard, hard week this week for Laini, Jim, me, and some others who no one who reads this will know. Someone I cherish here in Portland will likely lose their mother tomorrow or Sunday to breast cancer. I can't help but think about all those others too who might have walked into those same doors as me at Providence Cancer Center all this week and didn't get the same call as me, who didn't get the good amazing news, and so I want to say a prayer for all of them too because it is a terrifying process and I ache for anyone who has to go that next step in the other direction in the coming weeks. It feels like we have forever sometimes but we really have nowhere close to it...

----------------------------

All in the span of the last week my two favorite people, Laini and Jim, lost their baby, as you probably know by now , plus my wonderful supervisor lost his partner at just 33 years old, then my other equally amazing supervisor found out her mom has less than a month to live, and then I spent the afternoon today called back in from tests last week to have many more tests for breast cancer. First, the radiologist told me she thought I may have a "sneaky strain" of cancer, then upon many more tests she doesn't think I do, but can't rule it out until I have an MRI on Friday. Laini is going to come and try to squish tiny cupcakes inbetween my toes since my feet will be sticking out of the clanky machine! The very stinky part is that you can't bring your Ipod in with you so I am going to be forced to play all my Harry Chapin and Van Morrison songs in my head, and that really isn't the same experience. I was all ready to make the ultimate Ipod mix. ): Where is my magic wand that allows me to control the entire universe, or at least the small portion that most affects those I love and myself?

It is times like this I can wish I had a solid faith of some sort to rest my head on...but I don't. I was raised Jewish, and went through a brief but ultimately short-lived period I call my "SuperJew phase" but that got squeezed out of me almost within hours of moving to Israel at 24 years old and meeting people of so many backgrounds and faiths and realizing that everything I was so dogmatic about was b.s. I saw very quickly that my truth wasn't any more true than anyone else's, and actually, had a lot of dangerous, lethal consequences for millions of people and their children. I guess I fall into the "spiritual but not religious" category since I do believe in some higher power or source that some might call God. However, I haven't been in any type of spiritual dialogue with myself, God, or anyone else for that matter in a long time now. Maybe too long. But now, that seems to be the only dialogue with everything that is happening that feels alive or comforting so I sat in the dark, literally, for a long time at Providence wondering, praying, and somehow, that felt quite good to do again after a super long hiatus of about ten to twelve years.

Something else happened too. Between the radiologist's first words about cancer and my hour and a half wait for the next test, when I was sitting half naked in a tiny dressing room with a cozy padded bench. I turned off the light, put my head in my hands, cried and couldn't stop shaking for a period, and then of all the voices I could have heard in my head, I heard Tony Robbins's voice! I still can't believe it because I have many, many nurturing, soothing, and admittedly insane internal- and external- voices to turn to but I heard him. It must have been because I mentioned him recently in something I wrote here to Lorenzo I think and there was a time where I listened to Robbins's CD's, and I don't care what anyone has to say, especially people in my field who all too commonly and (really, really ignorantly and stupidly) wave away personal coaching/"New Age" approaches, but I remembered something he once said about when you are facing a big problem or challenge, ask yourself "Whats GREAT about this situation?" What is great for me is that it is a huge wake up call on multiple levels for reasons I need not delve into here, but I guess I share it here because one, selfishly, writing allows one not to have to hold as much inside, two, it's always good to share and see what happens, who can relate, or not relate, etc. and three, it is a great, great question and it forced a healing shift of focus within me, and I'm really grateful for that. I also understand if someone thinks there is nothing in any way great about even the word cancer but in my case, and I am praying hoping praying hoping for good news Wednesday or Thursday, but this one afternoon of freaky news followed by a past few days of sadness for others I love does catapult me into a much needed, well overdue reevaluation of my life and direction and some recently misguided assumptions I was believing. That can't be a bad thing so now either way, no matter what happens, cancer or no cancer, my life is about to undergo a period of massive deconstruction AND reconstruction, a whole new chapter! it is time to write a whole new mission statement. My old one is outdated and no longer applies. I'm psyched about that!

Things to Think by Robert Bly

Think in ways you’ve never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you’ve ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about
To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

"each must make a safe place of his heart,
before so strange and wild a guest
as God approaches."
Li Young Lee

BTW, Jim is putting together my site and I plan to send him the rest of the text by sometime in 2078 but in the meantime, please take a peek at www.alexandrasaperstein.com and let me know what you think!

Six Things to Love About Laini Fatty Taylor!

2008-03-09T14:23:00.001-07:00

1) Laini is FEARLESS. She stares needles in the eye as they take her blood without a shudder or a wince. Laini is not afraid of death, childbirth, possums, zombies, or UFOs, and that's just a short list. Literally hundreds of things could be added to this list!

2) Laini will almost never turn down dessert. She not only bakes the tastiest of tasty treats like snickerdoodle cookies and tremendously tasty cobblers but she is usually good to go for a round of cupcakes or anything else with sugar as one of its first ingredients. When her and Jim visited me in Bulgaria, she came up with a rule that every time a train was late, she would eat another ice-cream. Not long ago when she came over she brought with her a huge piece of Safeway single slice birthday cake and so we ate that and mini apple turnovers with ice cream which together added up to about two days of Weight Watchers points, but Laini didn't care. She ate every bite without guilt or remorse.

3) Laini is extremely patient and loving and understanding with highly sensitive people. Someday I wouldn't be at all surprised if she sells all her belongings and opens up the first national Center for Highly Sensitive People. That's how much she cares.

4) Laini's heart is gigantic and shiny and sparkly and beautiful, just like an enormous disco ball dangling from the sky.

5) If you had to sum up Laini and stuff all the essentials that encapsulate her into a snowglobe, it would burst because you would have to stuff inside every color of paint ever invented, books, thousands of desserts, billions of thoughtful gestures and acts of love and generosity she always does to make others feel good,cartons of Pepto Bismol because she is very, very gassy, and lots of wide open space for that brilliant soul that is always filled with so much curiosity, joy, and wonder for the entire world around her.

6) Laini is the best young adult writer writing today hands down! She is filling the planet with the juiciest, creepiest, most amazing stories being written anywhere in the world-true classics that will be around as long as Twinkies.

This list isn't done but I have to go repair my Cessna 152 aircraft for an early flight out tomorrow but it will be continued!

YoU ArE Oozing ScruMpTioUsNeSS!

2008-03-01T08:35:00.001-08:00

Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
From bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
Faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
Elect an honest man; decide they care
Enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they are born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
Amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
That seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

-Sheenagh Pugh

Do you like this poem? I think I'd like to keep extra copies of it in my purse, to pass out like a prayer or a blessing to those I may pass with downtrodden eyes and shivering souls. I think it would be sort of neat to live in a world where people did more spontaneous and "random acts of kindness" like pass a stranger a poem, leave chocolates on someone you don't know's doorstep, or making a loaf of bananabread for the mailman. People would be taken aback, but I think many happily so actually. Distrustful of it, perhaps sadly, but shaken up a little by it, in a good way. I think the most random act of kindness that happened to me recently was when I was sitting with one of my child clients on the school bleachers since it was so nice and sunny out this last week and my client suddenly said, "Alex, did you know your shoe is untied?" and before I could reach down to tie it, he said "Its ok. I want to tie it for you."

Thursday I read this neat article about a woman named Krystyn Heide in New York City. Andrea Scher also wrote about her recently on her Superhero blog. One day Heide decided to leave hundreds of tiny messages all over her neighborhood with simple messages of love and encouragement. Then she wrote about it on her site and it sparked a movement and now people all over the country have done the same thing. Since I was with my friend when I was reading the article, we were inspired to make a few ourselves on some ripped up yellow papers we had with us. So if you were on Fremont by 48th and you happened to find some notes with stuff like "I wish I could give you a hug so mighty your heart would pop right off the face of the universe," or "There is something not so inconspicuously scrumptious about you" or "You are oozing scrumptiousness!" those were from me. My friend's notes were a little more tame/normal and came with great doodles. If you want to read more about Krystyn, here is a link to her site directly:
www.hoperevo.com/welcome/

I Love Running, I Hate Running

2008-02-17T12:52:00.000-08:00

Among my favorite things are hammocks and piers, daydreaming and reading, cozy velvet sofas and cupcakes, listening to rain and sipping soup, and being curled up in my quilt under my big wooden canopy bed or sitting in my favorite writing chair (see photo!). Notice that all of these things require very, very little movement or physical effort!

So, no one was more surprised than me when I decided to try out running last June! I was inspired initially by my older brother who began a few years ago and is now training for the Boston Marathon after doing quite a few other marathons around the country. He does this even while also being an incredibly engaged father and husband as well as attorney working a lot of hours. I thought, "If my goofy brother can do it, I should really give it a try." Afterall, I've always been better at absolutely everything than him. And so I did try. And while I have had some stops and starts here and there, taking up running has been one of the best choices I've ever made.

Too often I think we get in the pattern of assuming we are 'this' or 'that' kind of person, someone who is 'outdoorsy' or 'not outdoorsy,' someone who is an 'artist' or not, a shy person or not a shy person, someone who is 'good at this' and 'bad at that', or even assuming that because twenty years ago we didn't like spinach we still won't like it tonight for dinner either. We box and limit ourselves in countless ways, assuming this or that to be "true" about who we are as if we are not always changing and evolving, and in the process, deny ourselves an awful lot of experiences we might be surprised to find we love at this time in our lives. (I think we also do this with each other, incorrectly judging, pigeonholing, and summing up people we claim to love or care about.)

My first week with running wasn't like that!

I still hated it. I postponed it until evening times, hopped off the treadmill well before my goal was completed, and just had an all-around whiny time. I have no idea why I kept at it, other than I was getting very close to my Weight Watchers goal and thought this would help me to cross the finish line. And it did do exactly that! But somewhere into the second week something else happened. It reminded me of that quote by Dorothy Parker that goes, "I hate writing. I love having written." That's precisely how I was feeling after running. I felt tired afterwards but invigorated. I felt aches in my legs but I liked it because I realized they were the pains of learning to show up for myself again. It was about rebuilding the long lost skills of perseverance and commitment. When I first began, I couldn't jog a quarter of a mile.

And then there was a second shift, and this came with realizing I was enjoying running while I was running! Running has proven itself to be a fantastic teacher, mentor, coach, whatever you want to call it. It is a mirror for me of the nutty, rambling dialogue that spins and vines itself through my head, perhaps more exhausting than the racing of my legs themselves. I am constantly wanting to quit, and yet when I run, another voice pipes up and asks, "I wonder if you can go just one more minute, one minute farther than you think you can." Then another, much older voice replies, "Ummm, I don't think so. I have plans with a cupcake. No can do." Then the other voice returns again, gently and coaxingly suggests that I keep at it and not give up.

The not giving up part is really what it is most about for me. I am learning through running that I feel safest when I am actually out on a limb, dangling off the edge of all I think I know about myself. Running tells me, "You are way more capable than you could ever imagine for yourself," With writing, you can show up all you want and still have an endless string of "bad writing days." But with running, if you show up and you do it, you've done it. I ripped out a page from Runner's World magazine a few months ago. It is of a woman running through a trail in the jungle. Underneath is the caption, "A run can separate a good day from a bad day. The choice is mine."I find this to be really true.

Now I know there are two kinds of running. There is the kind where you are running away from something, whether that be something internal or external, or both. And then there is a second, much more illuminating and ultimately fulfilling kind, and that is a running into or towards something, perhaps a new part of yourself, a new way of being or experimenting with parts of oneself that one is meant to outgrow or rethink. I wish I could remember the poem or poet but there is a line I once read that says, "Change rooms in your mind for a day." When I run, I literally feel like I am running through rooms in my mind and body that were closed off to me before, and that is probably why I both love and hate it so very much!

MeeT My DesPerAte FriEnD, AnDy!

2007-10-30T20:02:00.000-07:00

(See that bighorn sheep above his head? That is the closest he has come to a date in recent memory.) Meet my terribly desperate friend, Andy. He lives in Boston and works for one of the largest defense companies in the country as an engineer of some sort. Long, long ago he was the boyfriend of my dear friend, Anh, for about five years when we all lived in Seattle. At the time he was working on his PHd in Physics at University of Washington, a process which he dragged on and on and on in fact! He is seeking assistance from me to help find him a date. Lets just go ahead and dive into the interview because he is extremely upset with me that this post was promised about five-six months ago. As you read, please ask yourself, "Do I know any women anywhere I could set up with Andy?" because he is desperate for a date. Terribly, terribly desperate. He really is. Ok, lets begin:

Me: Whats your best guess at what is wrong with you?
Andy: Whatever do you mean? There isn't anything wrong with me.
Me: Hmmm. I don't think thats in any way, shape, or form accurate.
Andy: Alex, do you think there is something terribly wrong with me?
Me: I do.
Andy: What might that be? Do you want to share this pivotal information with me since it concerns me directly?
Me: I'm concerned that if I answer that here hope will be a terminal condition for you, that you may never ever get a date.
Andy: I'm willing to take that risk. Go ahead, tell me.

(Pause..Note to Reader: Now I am in a real pickle! What do I do? Do I tell him the truth? Maybe not..but I will tell you privately about some of his drawbacks and then we can get to his more positive attributes and selling points later. Much later though because there is a lot to cover on the front end first.)

The worst thing I can say about Andy is that he can be horrendously closed-minded. But then again, can't we all sometimes? But Andy's stubborn bullheadedness gives the illusion at times that his birth head was long ago replaced by ten thousand bowling balls crudely welded together. He is extremely rational and sometimes insensitively blunt though he sees it as just being honest. Some of his ways of thinking are quite outdated.

AND he can be crazy, crazy stubborn. Let me give you an example.

When we lived in Seattle, Andy was cleanshaven. As you can see from the photo above, he now has a beard. When it occurred to me that his ultimate soulmate might be repulsed or allergic to beards and that perhaps he should shave for an updated, cleanshaven photo, he refused. Heres a snippet of that conversation from earlier today:

Me: Ok, so you won't shave off your whole beard. How about half of it then?
Andy: Half of my face?
Me: No, half of your beard, straight down the middle, so people can cover up the other side of the screen with their hand and get a better idea. This way you won't be prematurely cutting off either pro-beard or anti-beard prospects. You don't want to be cutting off any potential options Andy because there will likely be extremely few given your personality. What do you think?
Andy: I'm not cutting off half my beard.
Me: Why???
Andy: Because I will look ridiculous.
Me: But how can you possibly know this? You've never done it.
Andy: And nobody else has either. Thats my point.
Me: What? How can you say that? What about that quote that the first time someone does something new everyone thinks hes an idiot but then it turns out to be a success and everyone thinks hes a genius?
Andy: Noone is going to think I am a genius for shaving off half of my beard Alex.
Me: Its exactly that attitude Andy that is likely going to cost you a single date.

Ok, now here are some Q & A's with Andy so you can get to know him a bit better in his own freaky words. I started out by asking him about a plant he neglects in his apartment. From time to time he has spoken of the plant which he is addicted to pushing to the brink of death and then reviving it with a scoop of water, over and over and over again.

Alex: Are you capable of treating a potential girlfriend better than
you treat the plant in your kitchen?

Andy: Well, my relationship with the so-called
"Lazarus Plant" really owes its character to a confluence
of three separate factors: 1.) my hatred of washing dishes,
2.) forgetfulness of, and procrastination toward, chores
that I do not enjoy, and 3.) an occasional urge to push
boundaries and test limits.

The way the cycle with the Lazarus Plant used to work,
back in the days when it was flourishing and in relatively
good health (I seem to have stressed it out just a bit
too much the last couple of times, so I have been trying
rather desperately to nurse it back to health in recent
weeks and months) was that I would neglect to do my dishes
for a period of time, and, since the plant lives right next
to the kitchen sink, it meant that by putting off doing the
dishes, I would pretty much inevitably forget to take care of
the plant for a while also. After a while I would notice the
poor thing looking really shriveled and wilted, and I
would water it, and, like magic, within a day it would
spring back to life, looking all healthy and turgid
and green again. Eventually I started to become so
impressed with this quiet little vegetably drama that
would play out next to my sink periodically that after
a while I started wondering how far I could push
things. How close could I let the plant get, I
wondered, to seemingly inevitable death, before leaping
in to rescue it with a pint of life-saving water and thereby
bringing the little bugger back to life again? And thus the
Lazarus plant was born. We continued on together in this
fashion for many, many more months, until at some point,
out of sheer forgetfulness or preoccupation with more
pressing daily matters, I just pushed it too far, and
about 90% of Lazarus's leaves turned yellow, shriveled
up, and fell off (currently he is struggling along
with only two rather forlorn looking leaves, and I
am really worried that this time he truly is not
going to make it, though for the time being still
we soldier bravely on.

So, why will I treat a girlfriend better than my plant? Well,
there are at least three reasons. First, I can pretty much
guarantee that no matter who I am dating, even if she turns out
to be a horrible, ugly, petty, nagging, kvetching hose-beast,
I will automatically enjoy spending time with her more than
I enjoy doing dishes. The second reason is that girlfriends
in general are much better at commanding my attention than
plants are. They have all sorts of resourceful and creative
methods at their disposal: low-cut blouses, phone messages,
initiating conversations with me in person, tears, drama,
throwing dishes, sneaking up behind me and tickling the back
of my neck, greeting me at the front door wearing nothing
but an apron and a smile, etc. What can a plant do? If
it needs love, all it can do is sit around silently and look
forlorn. It's not very eye-catching, is it! Finally, the
third and last anticipated plant/girlfriend difference is that
I have learned to be much gentler in pushing boundaries with
people. Although I would not claim for a moment that I will
never present any challenges to a potential girlfriend (and who
would even want that anyway, it would be completely boring,
wouldn't it?), I can at least guarantee that the boundaries
I will push will never involve, in any way, testing how close
I can come to killing her, only to pull her back from the
brink just in the nick of time. With people, I tend to
push boundaries more by doing things like debating
slightly controversial ideas with them, or by getting them to
taste test new cuisines and the like. That is to say, low-stakes
kind of stuff, with no risk to life or limb involved.
Potentially stuff that could even expand her horizons, if
she came to it with an open mind.

Question: The Grim Reaper has come for you on his moped as you
are leaving for work. He (or she!) tells you that you
can bring three things with you into the afterlife.
What are you going to bring? (Food and drink not
necessary.)

Andy: 1.) One copy of Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" (translated
into English, of course) for use as a guide book, since the
Lonely Planet has not to my knowledge come out with a
volume to cover that territory (yet).

2.) A cell phone, so I can keep in touch with my friends
and relatives. It just seems like it would be so much less
trouble and expense for them than hiring a medium and
calling a seance every time they wanted to talk to me.

3.) An infinitely large supply of ice, as sort of a hedge,
in case I am sent to hell. I know it seems like I might
be wasting a wish here, because most likely I haven't been
bad enough to get sent to hell in the first place, but on
the other hand, I figure that if I do get into heaven,
my material needs are going to be pretty well taken
care of for all eternity anyway, and purgatory,
well...doubtless it'll be a little more spartan than heaven,
but I'm fairly resourceful, so I'll probably be able to get
along and make do with whatever they have available for me
there also, and thus, hell is really the only place where I'd
have to concern myself about the possibility of arriving
seriously under-prepared. So I figure that most likely
I'll never even use the ice, but gosh, if does turn out
that I need it in the end, it's going to be really good to
have.

Question: Theres been a lot of speculation that you use
to
abuse your ex-girlfriend's dear friend with brutal assaults of wet
paper
napkins. Some say you once even showed up uninvited at her front door and that when she opened her front door, kaboom! This tiny delicate flower we call Alexandra fell to the ground, concussion and all. Is this accurate? Shes so wonderful. How
could you do something like this?

Andy: It is in fact 100 percent dead on accurate. And
yes,
I agree, the friend who was involved in the wet
paper
napkin hurling incidents is indeed quite wonderful,
albeit slightly immature from time to time. So how
could
I do it? Simple: she started it. I had no choice
but
to respond. When a person launches an entire volley
of wet paper napkins at another person, completely
without provocation in any way, the person who is
under attack cannot allow such a direct challenge
to go unanswered. To do so would quickly invite
all sorts of more serious infringements, even
open disrespect. A return volley was the only
viable
option. Well, O.K., I suppose we could have gotten
into a wrestling match over it, which I'm sure I
would have enjoyed immensely, but under the
circumstances,
it wouldn't have been right; in the first place, we
were in a restaurant, and in the second, I think the
girlfriend would have gotten a bit jealous.

Question: What are the three qualities you are
most
looking for in a potential mate? What are the
three
qualities you can't live with?

Andy: Number one, I want a woman who knows how to disagree
productively, meaning to me that she knows how and
when to de-escalate potential fights before they
actually reach "full-blown" status, and also we can
argue about things fairly, without it getting petty,
personal, or out of hand. Second, (and your readers
are going to hate me for sounding sexist, but I
can't help myself because it really is so true) I
want a woman who likes to cook and is good at it.
And third, I want a woman with a bodacious ghetto
booty.

Things I absolutely cannot live with: an overly
pessimistic or negative attitude (although
ironically,
my own midwestern brand of humor is often tinged
with a morose, gallows streak that occasionally
other people find difficult to relate to), excessive
drama, and flakiness.

Question: So Andy, I've known you for many years and under my
close tutelage you've made tremendous progress. What
should a prospective date know about you right off the
bat before they go on any date with you?

Andy: Well, if it's a breakfast date, or a picnic, they
should be aware that I hate melons. All melons.
Seriously. (Well, O.K., technically, I make an
exception for the double-entendre variety, of course.
Naturally, I enjoy those; who doesn't? But all of the
rest, the real melons, so to speak, like honeydew,
cantaloupe, or watermelon, I can't stand 'em!) If I go
out with a woman, one thing she should definitely know
right from the outset is that she should not even consider
trying to serve me any melon during the course of the date.
I used to hate how airlines always used to serve melon
salad as part of their breakfast offering. Now of course
they don't serve anything anymore, so nowadays it's not
an issue.

Other than that, though, I'm not a picky eater, so
any place a woman would like to take me out to dine,
I'm sure it'll be fine.

And that concludes the end of the interview and its probably a good idea to end on a positive note, and thats only possible if Andy is now sealed off from speaking on his behalf! Despite my intense reservations, I want to give anyone who might be interested in Andy my highest endorsement! Even his ex-girlfriend said the worst she could say about Andy is that he spends way too much time in the bathroom in the mornings. I can always depend on our phone conversations to make me laugh. and hes a great friend. When I was living in Bulgaria, he sent me a care package and when a group of us traveled through Canada together, he was very enjoyable and fun. Hes been a dear, dependable friend of mine for a decade so if you live near Boston or are willing to move there or just want to fly in and go on a date with Andy, you can leave him a comment right here. He will likely be checking this post every single minute so at the very least, do leave him a compliment here (even if you have to make it up!) just kidding Andy as you know I think the world of you! (but a very small, tiny world)

Off to L.A! ..(RUMIANA- Plamen photos below-& very important bday photos for all those who have yet to send gigantic presents..you know who you are):

2007-06-17T22:39:00.000-07:00

(This is the bridge we went over yesterday-it crosses over the Columbia River, connecting Oregon and Washington.Btw, that is Zeus in the Hummer.) My brain is fried from studying, packing, and more studying and packing-thus, very little brain power left ...I leave for LA shortly! I decided to fly partly because I may need driving glasses for the first time and am going to get my eyes officially checked once I'm down there and my prep class starts right away. Hmmm, what do I want my glasses to look like? If I do really find I need them, they might as well hold stuff too- I'm thinking a compartment for a straw, my ipod, a pita pocket, my journal, and a little shot glass for my favorite sparkling blueberry juice. And maybe one for a banjo.

In other news, one of my wonderful former students, Plamen, from my high school teaching days in Bulgaria came to visit. ( (Btw, notice my flourescent peach pants. I have moved into a "bright colored pants" phase so if you see any bright turquoise ones, do let me know asap!) We, along with his terrific mentor, Jerry, went all over today-driving along the Washington side of the Gorge to Skamania Lodge, climbed up Beacon Rock, stopped at Multnomah Falls, the rose garden above my house, and meandered about Powells Books. Anyway, it was fun to swap stories with Plamen and to see one of my former students so totally thriving and happy. He is on a full scholarship at USC for his PhD in Environmental Science. I've known him since he was in the eighth grade and while I only taught him for two years, he was one of the many students that made me love teaching dearly. I miss it sometimes and thats probably why I will do some more of it once I have my license. He still calls me "Miss Alex the Axe," which is the nickname his classmates came up with when they realized I was going to be giving them a lot of work to do! See, I'm not all fun and games. I am also a diehard disciplinarian who loves to let a good little power go shooting up straight out of my head. Just kidding...I was the first American they had ever met and I learned yesterday expectations had been very high and had to be reconfigured immediately the moment I leapt through the door frame. The thing is things got off to a weird start right away. First, the teacher's chair was way too little but my gigantic teacher's desk, which stood up on a high platform, was just right so I taught most of the time sitting Indian style on top of my desk, where I could also more easily beam my striped beachball at whoever wasn't paying attention. There were no rules about teaching inside or outside of the classroom so if the mood striked or the weather was right, we would hit the pavement and English lessons would become more improvisational and freewheeling. They were all very good sports and mostly endearingly sweet kids, Whenever I was sick, some would always visit during the day bringing cookies or fruit. Really what I wanted for them in the end was to learn about possibilities for themselves. While I was there to teach English and Literature, in the end, my favorite thing about those two years was an empowerment camp I set up called Camp Glow where they had the opportunity to design their own awesome community service projects individually and travel to nearby countries like Macedonia, Romania, Czech Republic, and Hungary. We were supposed to go to Turkey right before I left but that ended up getting scrapped last minute because parents were afraid to send their daughters there. It was a shame because Turkey turned out later to be perhaps my favorite country I have ever been to.
But every time I hear from one of my former students my heart smiles. I'm so sleepy I'm about to fall over on the suitcase sitting beside me so I am posting some photos from today and my latest birthday party earlier in the week at Laini's wonderful parents' house. Her mom is like having an extra fairy godmother who has such a heart of gold. I dearly love spending time with them. I don't know what happened to the photo but she made the most beautiful and tasty cake with a single strawberry draped across the middle. The photo went MIA or I'd post it below with the others. I'm going to do a whole post on L's mom and her incredible gardens and majestical bird room in the next couple weeks. As I am leaving for LA shortly, I'll write once I am settled in there...these are some photos from last week.
Nighty night!

That is Jim's left hand in the upper left corner ruthlessly pelting me with pepper while I am trying to take care of very important business opening birthday presents!

I strongly believe that you should be thrown in prison when you hamper people from unwrapping their birthday surprises. I'm going to contact Oregon Senator Wyden today so Jim------...you will be hauled off very soon. Wyden and I are like this!

Heres another one of me opening more presents...just look at how good I am at it!

I should add that Jim's prison sentence should be slightly reduced because he did make this tremendously delicious pear and blackberry pie for my birthday! (He wasn't willing to pose in person with his pie but he did let his driver's license photo represent him instead!):

And here's the whole gang just before we sat down for dinner with wonderful chard from Patti's garden, vegetable and chicken grilled kebabs...so tasty you could almost pass out from the tastiness of it all. She even made sure it was all Weight Watchers-y because she knows how committed I am to the program. Thank you Pattii!!!!!

2007-04-07T16:08:00.000-07:00

(Look how sweet & cute my Easter Basket is from Laini and her mom!)

I went to an early and wonderful Easter dinner at Laini's mom & dad's- it was so fun! There were little egg candles at every place setting, bunnies hanging from door knobs, a whole tree of Easter eggs from around the world, and the most delicious casserole I have ever eaten with zucchini and cheddar cheese inside. Yum! If you are celebrating Easter tomorrow, I hope you have a wonderful holiday, and for those who celebrate Passover I hope you are having a meaningful week as well. While I am Jewish and cherish my heritage and wouldn't trade it for anything, I have to say that the Taylor family has awakened me to the wonders of the Christmas stocking, holiday decorating opportunities, and Easter baskets! We, Jews, really have to expand on our blue and white very limited holiday decor-theres only so much you can do with dreidels and menorahs and matzoh and latkes. I have decided to be a Christmas decorating, Easter basket toting Jew who still celebrates all the Jewish holidays and Shabbat. Is that terribly wrong? I feel very lucky to live in a country which has a great deal of not only religious tolerance but offers the free and clear opportunity to explore faith in all its facets and allows me to actually be a Christmas decorating, Easter basket wielding Jew! yay America- this is the one thing Bush hasn't yet screwed up! I feel very lucky to have grown up always having friends of different religious faiths. Personally, I find synagogues, churches, and mosques equally sacred and beautiful.

The title of this post was going to be "I Hate Knitting" after my first class from last week but then lo and behold, I had a breakthrough knitting session today where I not only mastered the fine art of the knitting stitch but excelled to the point where the teacher got very snippety and became downright unglued when she realized that I was one of those exceedingly rare "second class masters." She went into a ferocious rage pulling thousands and thousands of spools of yarn off the shelves in big sweeping arm arcs and then she chased me and all the students out of the shop with a gigantic five foot Samarai sword (Laini almost had her head lopped off!). For my first knitting project I am making a fifteen story apartment building made entirely out of violet and lime china eyelash yarn. Even the toilets, pipes, balconies, and doors will all be hand knitted by moi! If you are interested in living here once it is all done, rentals will start at $1200 per month.

I SpY a VaCaTioN

2007-03-18T20:13:00.000-07:00

Last week I read a story on Reuters about a man and his soon to be ex-wife in Germany. While she was away at work, the husband, who just happens to be a mason, literally sawed their home in half and drove his portion off, where it now sits in his brother's yard... If you don't believe me, here is the photo of it being hauled away! Now that is what I call "creative problem solving." Needless to say, his wife was not happy about it! Right after that lovely story I read about another woman in Kansas who had her husband's ashes made into an egg timer when he died so he could still "help" in the kitchen. When I think of stories like these, I am reminded of something one of my favorite people, Harlan, once said to me. He said, "You know what Alexandra? I don't like most people but...I love certain people and so I just focus all my attention on them."

I'm headed up to Seattle this week as part of a certification program I am taking at The Gottman Institute at University of Washington. I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to learn and work closely with one of my favorite writers and clinicians in my field. I'm also going to see a dear friend I haven't seen in nine years! In the meantime, I never got to post my response to Sunday Scribbling's "Dream Journey" prompt last Sunday but all week long I have been inspired and dreaming about it and as I searched on the Net for photos, I found yet more places I yearn to go, some places I had never even heard of before, like Taprobane Island off the coast of Sri Lanka. Its just a few hundred yards into the Indian Ocean and you can wade your way there or arrive by elephantback. Founded by an eccentric count in the 1920s, it is very tiny and looks like an extremely cozy place to stay. There is also an annual festival every year in the U.K. where participants gallop at a crazed pace down a very steep hill in hot pursuit of a round block of runaway Double Gloucester cheese as it barrels down the hillside. This fantastic event takes place every "spring bank holiday" in May. I really want to see this!

I also want to spend a night at a lighthouse on the White Cliffs of Dover, dream under reindeer skins in a hotel made entirely of ice blocks in Sweden, and nap in a thatched treehouse in a guanacastle tree in Belize. In Provence, there are old Gypsy wagons which have been beautifully restored and which you can now rent, and right beside a river even. I could easily stay here for a good month! Of course there are plenty of other places I have already been and ache to return to- Bulgaria, Transylvania, Turkey, Greece, Israel, Italy, just to name a few.

I would almost sell off my left buttock if someone would let me trade it for a round the world ticket. I've never been to South and Central America, "Norwegia," India, Africa...looking at globes makes me want to leap right inside them like Mary Poppins and Bert did into the sidewalk chalk sketch. Remember how neat that was? High up on my list is to take The Sound of Music tour in Salzburg, Austria, where you can see all the places the movie was filmed forty plus years ago and of course, NO trip would be complete without going to MoominWorld in Finland. I don't know why the Moomin books have never been popular in the States but they are my favorite children's books of all time. Moominworld is set up to be a recreation exactly as the author/illustrator, Tove Jansson, imagined them in her many books!

I want to go back to Luxembourg Gardens and have a twilight picnic, play UNO on the Orient Express (which used to pass right through my town in Bulgaria), and I'd love to do more trips that combine travel with volunteering. Maybe not another two year Peace Corps stint, at least not for awhile, but something that allowed me to discover a new part of the earth while also making a difference there, if even in some small way.

BooKs!

2007-02-13T23:44:00.000-08:00

I just found this newly released book, Kaleidoscope, which is deeply inspiring filled with stories and ideas, and beautiful to leaf through too.
You can read more about it here if you are interested.

I've never read so many books in a row that I have enjoyed so much. It got started with The Time Traveler's Wife last year and then it never slowed down since, just one amazing book after another after another! Another really thought provoking one was The World to Come, a mesmerizing fiction novel that was hard for me to read because I never knew how very close to nothing one of my very favorite painters, Marc Chagall, did to save his fellow Soviet Jews, some of whom had been very close friends of his, from being murdered one by one by one by Stalin when he went on his purges to rid Russia of its Jewish intellectuals and artists, this despite his worldwide fame by that time. It starts out at an orphanage where Chagall really did teach art following one of the most brutal pogroms in Russian Jewish history in 1919 when over 100,000 Jews were slaughtered, leaving so many orphans that it was necessary for them to set up special orphanages for all the tens of thousands who had seen their whole families murdered. But the book is about so much more than this. Its also a series of intergenerational love stories and how we as individuals and families sometimes lose our way and stumble our humble way back. I was mesmerized, and very sad too, as I read it but it was one of the best books I had read in some time.

Another way up on my list of recent favorites was The Adventures of Hugo Cabret, a huge, beautiful novel that is part words, part graphic novel/flipbook, about a young orphan hiding out in a Paris train station in the early 1900s and is desperately trying to repair an automaton which he believes will reveal a secret message from his late father. I loved it.

Any suggestions for future reads?!? Any new recent book faves??? I'd love to know.

2007-02-09T19:18:00.000-08:00

"As a child, I knew I had one great possession: my body. It was little and quick. I lived within it...I'd wake up in the morning, excited, ready to go out and look at the world. Breakfast would only slow me down. I wanted to leap into the empty lots outside our windows just as soon as I could and see what had happened overnight. As an adult, I met people who talked passionately about their new Rolls Royce. But that isn't a real posession. All we actually have is our body and its muscles that allow us to be under our own power, to glide in the water, to roll down a hill, and jump into someone's arms."

-Allegra Kent

A VeRy SpEciAl ReQuEsT!

2007-02-07T19:03:00.000-08:00

I never ever read email forwards because they annoy me so. Anyway, I did mysteriously decide to open a forward today sent by my sister-in-law, Susan, and I am very glad I did because it was about a mother of a soldier over in Iraq and she is trying to get one million birthday cards sent to her son by his birthday on March 5. So below is his address. It only requires a 39 cent stamp since it goes to his APO box and is then forwarded. However, it should be mailed asap to make it there on time for his birthday. How cool would that be to receive one million birthday cards on your birthday! My brain can barely fathom how terribly, terribly, excrutiatingly exciting that would be! I think my head would implode and then explode from all that thrilling excitement (BTW, my birthday is May 20 and I am now accepting cash donations all the way through May 31.) So here is this soldier's address should you be interested. I hope he gets so many cards that it is his best birthday ever. Let's try and make that happen, what do you say??

PFC Paul Michael Black
9th Engineer Battalion
43026
APO AE 09344
USA

I have to say, I have a very special relationship with the postal service. Just seeing those chocolatey brown postal trucks makes me go all gooey inside. It started initially when I was living in Seattle twelve years ago and my best friend was living in the Bay Area, and feeling hungry for her banana bread, I said to her over the phone, "You know the kind of best friend you remember when you are eighty years old? The kind that will send you a loaf of homemade bananabread in the mail!" Then! two days later thats exactly what I received in the mail! That one sly request launched years of what we affectionately call "BigMail" as the packages we would send one another got bigger and weirder and more and more and more fun. Now we have boxes of these long and treasured letters sent back and forth over the years, decorated envelopes, and various other assorted things.

When I lived in Bulgaria in a teeny town about the size of a pinkyprint called Dryanovo , I use to have to travel 6-7 hours by train to retrieve my mail in the capital. About 4-5 months into my stay, I sent out a tsunami of mail to essentially everyone and anyone I have ever known requesting mail, as much as they could possibly, possibly send and I brazenly even included items I would be happy to receive like TeenPeople for my students and various edible items too! (pretty obnoxious, huh? But i did it!) Now my mom and Laini were amazing the entire two plus years I was there sending me mail constantly because they knew I could easily go insane if there wasn't mail there. As it happened, I went insane anyway! So! about two months following my postal ambush on all my family, friends, and acquaintances I arrived at the Peace Corps office to retrieve my mail. Under my name was listed "22" packages (and that doesn't include all the letters that couldn't fit in my mail slot) waiting for me in the mail room. The packages covered four shelves back to back and everyone I passed just shook their head at me because they knew me by then and knew I must have orchestrated this somehow. My favorite package was from my friend, Will, who sent me a letter that made me laugh for hours explaining how I was permanently destroying the relationship between the States and Bulgaria, along with all five of my favorite magazines I had requested and Chips Ahoy, together which made for a perfect train ride back, and Hersheys Kisses, which I then doled out to all my high schoolers and had contests to see who could keep it in their mouth the longest without eating it!

The people who deliver mail are our angels in flesh. Lets reach out and hug them more often (but ask first). And if you have time, perhaps forward this soldier's address to everyone you know. I just love the idea of this soldier who has to be having quite a tough time of things in Iraq having such a special birthday surprise.

If YoU SeE SoMeOnE WiTh Hair MouSSe In ThEiR Ear DO TeLL ThEm!

2007-02-03T09:15:00.000-08:00

All day long yesterday at work I unknowingly to myself walked around with a big dallop of shiny white hair mousse in my left ear. I didn't notice it until almost four o'clock in the afternoon when I caught the top glimpse of it in my rearview mirror. Now instead of putting my mind to what it really needs to be on, mainly studying for my license exam and finishing the first part of a certification program through University of Washington, I can't stop asking myself, "Why oh why oh why did no one tell me?" I keep running in my head all the people I saw and worked with throughout the day- families, my supervisor, students, a gas station attendant. I didn't notice it either in the restroom mirror but then again I was so rushed all day I don't think I looked in the mirror, And why didn't it melt? Or fall out? Are my ears like little magical safety baskets that can store all sorts of stuff I've never considered before now? Swords and lanterns, letters and cupcakes, rifles and fairy tales, ushebtis and massage oils! Maybe I don't need a new purse afterall? I'm thinking about Gene and being from Ukraine, he was with me the first time he had Chinese food. He was about to eat his fortune cookie when I stopped him and said, "Waitwait! Theres something in there!" Mesmerized, he watched me crack it open and pull out his little fortune. Then!, he snatched it back, peering into it with one eye as if it were a seashell, and asking "What else is in there???" The world is full of silly things waiting to be discovered and this may just be the most unnecessary post I have yet written! But! I needed to vent because again, why wouldn't you let someone know they have hair mousse in their ear? I just don't get it! It was a BIG dallop! And what if my left ear is really a secret portal, a gateway to another universe in time altogether? Maybe only I could see the mousse as it was a secret signal illuminating the entrance point! If I don't return again, you know where I went! (I wonder if I can fit my beloved honey brown leather writing chair in there too!)

Slugs May Be Tasty But Beware & The Suckiest Job EVER (for real)!

2007-01-28T08:06:00.000-08:00

(That is a photo taken on my trek up Mount Everest last year.) After a crazy busy week of work as I am now working at two schools, I finally got to have some fun! Friday night I stayed up into the wee morning hours writing-which is rare for me as I usually konk out by eleven or twelve. Then yesterday I woke up, saw TWO Imax films, Hurricane on the Bayou and Mount Everest, at Portland's amazing OMSI Center. Because I am a diligent auntie I also picked up some tasty edible banana slugs for my six year old nephew, Sammy, there. Btw, did you know that banana slugs are immune to our stomach acids and will go on living in there if you eat them live? Be careful out there! I know its tempting but its not worth it. Incidentally, I also learned that they reproduce by biting themselves in half (ouch!), can be trained to tie themselves in a knot, can survive in outer space, pick up radio signals with their tentacles, communicate using telepathy, AND their slime really does taste like bananas! Now that you are thinking sluggishly, I will also mention that slugs are hermaphrodites! They have male and female parts: thus, they can mate with themselves and save a lot of money on dating.

Hurricane on the Bayou was pretty startling. My mom was born and raised in New Orleans, part of a huge family with enough relatives left that we have a big family reunion there every other year. I hadn't really understood the whole wetlands thing and just how important they are. Did you know that every three miles of wetlands reduces a storm surge by one entire foot? And Louisiana has already lost more wetlands than equal the size of the entire state of Delaware-and thats just in the last fifty years! I have to admit, I have essentially done zero when it comes to being more environmentally active. Mount Everest was also amazing. It chronicles the expedition to the summit by the son of the first man to ever climb Mount Everest, the first woman from Spain to accomplish this feat, and one American man from Utah. What the human being can achieve when we set our minds to it is simply awesome, isn't it? (That makes it sound like I think I could do this too if I wanted, and I just want to state for the record that I would only walk about one inch up the mountain before I would totally cave and suggest we go find a hammock somewhere instead and play Parcheesi)... but! I am in genuine awe and honored that such people and I are of the same species at all! (And if you are still reading then you know by now that I was just kidding when I said that is me in that Everest photo! That wasn't and never will be me! If I really want to impress someone, I might consider when I go to Nepal visiting Everest and walking about six steps in an upwards direction so I can casually mention in conversation, "When I climbed Mount Everest..."...If they don't ask for more details, then technically I haven't lied!)

And last, but certainly not least, I went to the Portland Art Museum afterwards, somewhere I had never been though I have been here for two years. This was a very busy day considering I prefer when not working to travel no further than the distance from my hand to a laptop, book, or writing notebook. But while driving I had heard on the radio that there was an actual boat on exhibit that had been buried with an Egyptian pharoah to help him navigate his way through the underworld, and that I had to see! This was the first time I had seen my field trip companion,Laini, since January of 1962 when we trekked up the slopes of Mount Donut in Cupcakistan! The exhibit was called The Quest for Immortality: The Treasures of Ancient Egypt, and apparently was the largest exhibit of ancient Egyptian artifacts to ever tour North America. It was pretty fascinating, all the stuff they would bury in the tombs with their loved ones. I'm talking not only sweet momentos like letters and a little bit of food, but rather BIG things like furniture, mummy beds, detailed maps and instructions, symbolic animal figurines, beautiful canopic jars holding all your internal organs, the works! The entombment process alone lasted seventy days. (Note to Family: Please bury my beloved chair with me if I should perish suddenly along with twelve dozen cupcakes, twelve hundred blank notebooks, my bookshelves, butternut squash fries, my cranberry flannel sheets, a cell phone, and my Body Shop shimmery cranberry body lotion. Oh, & sushi from Yuki's on NW 23rd.)

And if you are still with me after all this nonsense, I shall now reveal The Suckiest Job EVER award, It goes to all the "ushebtis" out there- or really, under there. Whats an "ushebti?" I didn't know either before yesterday! Apparently, it is a small figurine buried beside the deceased in ancient Egyptian tombs believed to magically awaken and required to perform any and all labor that the tomb owner might require in the afterlife, basically a ghostly underworld slave! "Ushebti" translates to "one who answers." They were so serious about it that they actually buried beside the ushebti tiny versions of agricultural tools that he or she would be expected to use. I never ever ever want to be an ushebti. Thats another reason kids to stay in school, study hard, and get your education!

What do you want in your burial tomb?

Sunday Scribblings: Fantasy

2007-01-20T17:10:00.000-08:00

I hopefully am not rascist but I am bookcist, which means someone who holds prejudice towards those who don't choose to read, or even worse, those who find reading boring. Ok, I did just make that word up but its very real to me. I don't like non-readers, or maybe I should just say they make me queasy. I don't care what one reads but to not read when the world is so full of stories and books and magazines and newspapers feels like choosing to live in a world with just one color. Why would you do that when you have choices of mulberry and fuschia, maroons and lavenders, golds and a thousand and one shades of blue? As far as we know, we are the only species with the ability to read as well as to imagine. Thats incredible to me, that we can dream up things that never were or throw a bunch of characters in the blenders in our heads and pop out stories on paper or screen, create whole worlds and oceans, love triangles and sagas that stretch a millenium, put wings on leopards just because we feel like it, fly an owl gondolier across the night sky, even be a king or a queen...in the world of our imaginations, there is literally nowhere that we can't travel. What a contrast to our real lives that are stuffed with stop signs, detours, relationships that end (or begin!) against our wills, irreversible consequences, and sometimes, all too often, sad endings.

I've spent the afternoon in Snoosy Lickylice's writing room reading picture books to get back in the rhythm of one I am working on myself. I've written three different drafts over the last half year and it amazes me that they are three totally different stories. Each unfurls in a totally different direction. I love that! I love that when our minds get loose enough they start stretching themselves every which way, performing acrobatic feats our actual limbs wouldn't dare. I've spent the last few hours with poet dogs that travel to Paris to pursue their dreams, North Winds that carry the lovelorn across the earth, Moomintroll and the Snork Maiden floating about in a hobgoblin hat across the skies of Moominland (a place I have wanted to live for many years!)... I couldn't do this in my real life which is what makes fantasy so, so great! It enlargens and multiplies our worlds in a million directions all at once, and through that process, transforms and inspires us to find ways to sprinkle magic across our waking, tangible days like stardust. I'm inspired by the grand gestures of kindness, generosity, and integrity that the characters in my favorite books choose for themselves. I think the stories we love most make us greater than we would otherwise be too. They ask us to be more than what we are inclined to be, challenging us too to be better, braver, nicer, wiser, crazier, and sometimes even more mischevious and devilish! (Afterall, its very important to have a teensy bit of devil alive and swirling wildy inside oneself, right?!?) Maybe we can't just hop on a magic carpet just because we want to, but by opening ourselves up to fantasy, to written words whereever they might appear, our lives become so indescribably richer, not to mention a whole lot more FUN!!

I still read picture books often before bed. I consider them as vital as vitamins and brushing my teeth, and I never cease to be surprised at just how many wonderful stories continue to be churned out! My favorite of the last couple of weeks is Ms. Rubinstein's Beauty by Pep Montserrat. Its about a bearded circus lady and a man with a long striped proboscis, also in a traveling circus, who happen to meet one afternoon in the park while their circuses are both in town. I won't tell you anymore but it is a story that left me with such a feeling of joyous delight. A world without books and fantasy isn't a world I'd want to live in. I'm off to go read and hopefully write some more now!

SnoW DaY AND My OnE YeAr BloGGeRVeRsArY DaY !

2007-01-16T18:06:00.000-08:00

That was my street this morning when I awoke! (more photos below) And those are my parents in the picture below while traveling in Estonia! ( I know you are thinking too that I should be in this photo but I wasn't invited!) Aren't they cute? They celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary this upcoming November. They are both cancer survivors, big eaters, book lovers, and ever since my dad was recovering from cancer five years ago-he was diagnosed on September 11, 2001- they go to sleep almost every night together listening to music. They met on a double date in New Orleans, only they weren't each other's dates! My mom's date and my dad's date were friends but as soon as my dad saw my mom, he liked her much better than his own date and asked her out soon afterwards. (Fortunately, she said yes!)

I am home today from work because it started snowing early this morning and it didn't stop until nearly noon! I'm sure all the kids at the high school and elementary school where I work are psyched. This is rare for Portland so its very exciting. Can you see the snow show out my windows? Growing up in southern California it only snowed once the whole time I was growing up, and that wasn't really even a snow. It was really only enough to cover the fingernail tip on my pinky and it was gone by morning.

So its been a wonderful, unexpected day off spent reading, studying, exercising, and writing in my living room. I love being home, hanging out with my plants, a bowl of red pepper and tomato basil soup, pumpkin chocolate scented candles, rereading The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, one of my very favorite books. Unfortunately, I can barely remember it anymore which is why I am rereading it again! Its hard to describe what its about so I will just copy a couple sentences from the back sleeve. "One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The vistors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites, and that would be the Master and his Margarita." Last I heard it was going to be made into a film with Johnny Depp but I haven't heard anything recently.

I did don my new ice-cream cone gloves, a Christmas gift from my best friend, Snoosy Lickylice, and go for a walk in my snowy neighborhood. I inherited a digital camera recently so these are all photos I took today as I walked. I love snow! I saw that the kids had made homemade signs on an adjacent street closing it off so that they could go skiing and sledding. Of course I promptly made civil arrests as that is illegal and drove them to the Portland sheriff myself and now they are all sitting in jail cells, even little seven year old, Christopher Pendlebottom, seen below. Fortunately I had a lot of emergency licorice in my trunk as there was only so much room inside my Toyota and I had to tie a couple of them up with the spare licorice ropes and place them on my car's rooftop. Incidentally, Christopher will spend the next five years behind bars for his actions this morning. Children must learn consequences, even on carefree snow days when school is closed.

YaY BulGaRiA!

2007-01-01T17:51:00.000-08:00

Bulgaria (along with Romania) became part of the European Union effective today, New Years Day! I know that you have been waiting for this with baited breath, counting down the days and crossing them off on your calendar, and at last the day is here! Really, I never ever thought that I would care but then thats what happens when you travel to places you have never been, and dots on maps become freckles on faces and before you know it, you find yourself in a relationship with a country other than your own, and forever after when you hear its name in passing on the television or on a news headline, you stop in your tracks and listen because somewhere across the tens of thousands of miles people you now love may be affected. I can't imagine what it must be like for say, Pakistanis in England or the US who have to learn through television that their hometown has suffered a catastrophic earthquake, and the gruel of the wait to learn whether or not your loved ones are alive and okay. Fortunately, today it was good news, great news really for the people of Bulgaria because this means that the economy actually may begin to improve. When I lived there as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I knew of babushkas who were so strapped that they had to ration out their daily beans to ensure they would have enough to eat every day.

Last night I called the family who lived in the apartment upstairs from where I lived when I was there. Deshka, the mother, used to call me her third daughter, and both of us cried when we wished each other a happy new year. I wondered if she cried because she thought I would forget about her, but that would be impossible. One can never forget someone who took you in like a longlost famiy member though they had no obligation, benefit, or ulterior motive. Whenever I think of traveling somewhere new, its the natural thing to marvel at all the differences and to worry about all that might go wrong, but when I lived in Bulgaria, over and over again I was forced to realize how very much I ultimately had in common with Bulgarians. I imagine it would be the same nearly anywhere I would go despite the blaring distractions suggesting otherwise.

I have a really good feeling about 2007. Despite the horror of all horror moments of last night when my ex-husband took my "before" photos of me in a red bikini from Target so that I can gleefully compare them to my future "after" photos (and he was extremely sweet about it, insisting I only gained "a maximum of 3-4 pounds," which unfortunately couldn't be farther from the truth!) , still, I feel positive! We are entering the last two years of the Bush presidency with a new Democratic Senate and Congress (yippee!), Darlene's son is continuing to survive and heal each day, and I have a head filled with new dreams, old dreams that refuse to give up, and a world stuffed with people and their stories to be inspired by. Happy New Year!