Testing Tax Software is Terrifying...and Surprisingly Somewhat Satisfying

No one said it would be easy
But no one said it'd be this hard
No one said it would be easy
No one thought we'd come this far
"No One Said It Would Be Easy"
by Sheryl Crow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Af1qeouMc

I wish it hadn't been this hard but it has.

I came to this new job at Jackson Hewitt (JH) back in February and wanted to understand it all in an instant (or at least six months), thought with my many years of IT experience it should be easy, but I've learned that some things you have to experience for yourself in order to understand.

The concept of a "season" for software is new to me and what it boils down to is our busiest time of year, making sure the tax software is bug-free(ish) and ready to be used by all the tax preparers across the country, is right around Thanksgiving - and Christmas - and New Years.  No one gets to take time off during this period, totally unlike what I experienced in Milwaukee at Northwestern Mutual.  There, things would go dead for a good 2-3 weeks and if you were so unlucky as to have no vacation left for the year (always the case with me), you were left in a virtual dead zone at work; it got real quiet and various projects usually screeched to a halt because people often weren't around that you needed to move things forward.

I was trying to figure out why it felt so different at work, at JH, this time of year ("the most wonderful time of year" after all), and it finally dawned on me that it's because everyone is there at work, pulling together and working hard and trying to make often ridiculous deadlines.  It was downright festive the day before the long Christmas weekend (when the office does *close* for two days:  today, Xmas Eve day and of course Xmas day as well), with people bringing in cakes & cookies and giving out Xmas cards, candy and gift cards.  It was so much fun!

I say that JH "closes" for Christmas only because so many people keep right on working, either remotely or coming into the office like I did today for a bit.  If only to "lead by example" for my team:  a group of 4 full-time and 8 seasonal testers who work their asses off, even while some have a slightly disgruntled attitude that I try to just sear away with my positive sunny outlook on a daily basis.  :)  I inherited A LOT of crap (and not all just personnel-related), when I took on the role of Team Lead back in August, but I am doing my best to handle it.  I wrote on FaceBook to a co-worker who recently left JH in large part because of how hard it was to be on a team that was so dysfunctional "today I found myself saying 'I'm staying positive even if it KILLS me...and it just might' LOL."

And it is not just the difficulty of trying to uplift a team caught in downward spiral of sinking morale and overall negativity, it's been learning how to be effective at testing tax software - not as easy as it might sound!  Due to various factors that I wouldn't bore my worst enemy with, this job has challenged all my well-founded ideas of how to test software, how to manage code, how to manage change to the software and how to document the requirements and determine "expected results" or behavior of said software.  It has been a HARD learning process!  And at many times I have wanted to give up, to flee, to find another job or just to quit even without another job to go to.  That's how bad it got for me, emotionally, at times.

Yet, as I have done already with so many difficult situations in my life, I persisted.  And slowly but surely I feel like I have *gotten* it...the rhythm of the work, the patterns of the software (my husband often says that so much of working in IT is about "pattern recognition"), the organization of the VOLUMES of test cases that have to be completed.  I think I sort of see a method to the "madness" as I thought it all was when I inherited it, even while I recognize possible opportunities for changing it, to make it better, more sane.

And I recently found myself writing a co-worker from my last job this email:  "But, strangely, I'm actually pretty happy at my work now, it's a recent feeling so cross fingers for me - but it feels like it's kinda paying off, thanks to some tenaciousness on my part and then just the company finally meeting me half-way with the promotion/raise for all the additional responsibilities of Team Lead (which turns out to be a lot more like a real manager than I realized when I agreed to take it!).  So, despite A LOT of difficulties (and my copious complaints that you got to hear at our Girls-Night-Out), at the outset, I'm really enjoying it now.  I work with great people and, as usual, that makes all the difference..."

I worked 55 hours the week I wrote that, I think, coming into the office both Saturday and Sunday because the work goes so much easier with two monitors (which I don't have at home), and that garnered some respect from my micro-managey kind of harsh boss.  He seems to have softened recently whether because of my efforts or that I complained about him or because he is terrified we might all quit and he'll have to do the work himself!  :)  Not really sure, but either way I will take it.

So, all in all - rough year!  Not sorry to see it go...but happy I'm still here, on this planet first & foremost and at my current job.  Here's to 2013 going just a little more smoothly, at least in the area of work.  The rest of life will probably still be as challenging as ever but "no one said it would be easy."  Merry Christmas everyone!

Boy

Just one more song, if you can bear with me....

How important this song once was for me and my friends!  And totally important in the history of song-making...not really, one-hit-wonder for sure, but still has a short entry I found on Wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_%28Book_of_Love_song%29

The lyrics aren't much but oh...the feeling of this song still takes me back to a time when I was (really) young and all was possible!  And one of the biggest best possibilities then, was meeting a Boy that you really liked...who might like you...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x7cDOHHk30

Boy, uh huh, boy, uh huh
Boy, uh huh, boy, uh huh

Boy, uh huh, boy, uh huh
Boy, uh huh, boy, uh huh

Boy, uh huh, boy, uh huh
Boy, uh huh, boy, uh huh

I want to be where the boys are
But I'm not allowed
I wait outside of the boy's bar
I wait for them to all come out

I'm not a boy
I'm not a boy

It is 5 AM and You are Listening...to Me

I love this song at least for this one lyric...just for the weird & wonderful existential implications of it! ~
"we are all/in some way or/another going to/Reseda someday/to die"

Brought to me by my old college (L.A.) friend Oliver, on a mixed tape probably long thrown away, but this song coming back to me now for some reason.  Best not to ask why. :)

Soul Coughing- Screenwriter's Blues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR9WJSX9pnU

Exits to freeways
twisted like knots on
the fingers
jewels cleaving
skin between
breasts.

Your Cadillac breathes
four hundred horses
over blue lines
you are going
to Reseda
to make love
to a model
from Ohio
whose real name
you don't
know

you spin
like the cadillac was
overturning down a
cliff on television
and the radio is on
and the radioman is speaking
and the radioman says
women were a curse
so men built Paramount
studios
and men built Columbia
studios
and men built
Los Angeles

it is 5 am
and you are listening
to Los Angeles

And the radioman says
it is a beautiful night out there!
And the radioman says
Rock and Roll lives!
And the radioman says
it is a beautiful night out there
in Los Angeles
you live
in Los Angeles
and you are going to
Reseda; we are all
in some way or
another going to
Reseda someday
to die
and the radioman
laughs because
the radioman fucks
a model too

Gone savage
for teenagers with
automatic weapons and
boundless love
gone savage for
teenagers who are
aesthetically pleasing
in other words
fly
Los Angeles beckons
the teenagers
to come to her
on buses;
Los Angeles loves
love

it is 5 am
and you are listening
to Los Angeles

I am going to
Los Angeles
to build a screenplay about
lovers who
murder each
other
I am going to
Los Angeles
to see my own
name on a
screen, five feet
long and luminous
as the radioman says
it is 5 am
and the sun has charred
the other side of
the world and come
back to us
and painted the smoke
over our heads
an imperial violet
it is 5 am
and you are listening
to Los Angeles.

You are listening.
You are listening.
You are listening.
You are listening.

Remember when you were young...

Shine On You Crazy Diamond (I-V)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SqFPNTBnv8

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom,
blown on the steel breeze.
Come on you target for faraway laughter,
come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!
You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision,
rode on the steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions,
come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

The Cure - For the Moment

Can't beat songs that remind you of being 13 years old...especially when you want to escape the present.  Let's just call it "the Cure" for this moment in my life.

Six Different Ways
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouitmsVcXqY
This is stranger than I thought
Six different ways inside my heart
And everyone I'll keep tonight
Six different ways go deep inside
I'll tell them anything at all
I know I'll give them more and more

I'll tell them anything at all
I know I'll give the world and more
They think I'm on my hands and head
This time they're much too slow

Six sides to every lie I say
It's that American voice again
It was never quite like this before
Not one of you is the same

This is stranger than I thought
Six different ways inside my heart
And everyone I'll keep tonight
Six different ways go deep inside

Push
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH3f39iMhAM
Go go go
Push him away
No no no
Don't let him stay

He gets inside to stare at her
The seeping mouth
The mouth that knows
The secret you
Always you
A smile to hide the fear away
Oh smear this man across the walls
Like strawberries and cream
It's the only way to be

Exactly the same clean room
Exactly the same clean bed
But I've stayed away too long this time
And I've got too big to fit this time...

Warm.Dry.Safe.Loved

It was Summer of 2008 and David and I were doing the "try it" period on the land we had bought in Southeastern Alaska, just a year prior.  It's hard to describe the landscape there, how raw and rough it is.  Much like the Puget Sound area I grew up with - all rocks and water and non-deciduous evergreen trees, but imagine it, like, 100 years earlier.  That much rougher and undeveloped.  Picture Pioneer Days. :)

It's also hard to describe the landscape of my emotion for the mini-life experiment we were undertaking.  I so wanted this to be the "answer" we were looking for, in our quest for a life outside of regular parameters...a life of peace and quiet, no more corporate jobs, 9-5 grind, we could do yoga everyday, no commute or dry-cleaning, no more frickin panty-hose!  I put a lot of pressure on myself, even before we got there to make this thing work.  And it just didn't.

We took three weeks precious vacation and flew from Milwaukee, WI to Ketchican, AK. We took the float-plane from there to the "city" of Craig on Prince of Wales Island and then a taxi to the town of Klawock, where we settled in at a B&B for the night.  I remember being worried about going out to our land the next day, and barely sleeping the whole night.  

I was that anxious.

And any feeling of "vacation" was over when the next day we quickly claimed the used boat friends of ours had arranged for us and then (unfortunately) bought a brand-new outboard motor and (thankfully) managed to get out to the land we had purchased on Wadleigh Island, an outer island to Prince of Wales Island, without killing ourselves on the rocks that seem to spring up out of the water, like new discoveries, depending on the hour and corresponding tide.  (You are ruled by the tides, when you live on the water like that.)

We ended up staying in the "cabin" on our land on Wadleigh Island (more of a hunting shack than anything, with no running water, no electricity & no toilet), for less than a full week it was so uncomfortable, after the inflatable bed we bought wouldn't actually um, stay inflated and we were so cold and the mice running nearby our heads nearly drove me insane.  Turns out I wasn't quite the "happy camper" I thought I could be, and the deprivations were far too much for me, despite my best intentions.

Defeated, we retreated to the "mainland" Prince of Wales Island, where we found a hunting lodge/RV park with little cabins that were LUXURY compared to what we'd been dealing with...I'd never been so grateful for a space-heater and hot water, soft bunk beds with warm sleeping bags, and not being stranded out on an island so far away from anyone who could help you if you twisted your ankle on a rock or lost your boat to the tides. 

We made a few more trips out to our land, but it was clear by then that it was too far from anything called "civilization" and it wasn't going to work for us, long term.

What I realized through all of this is that I don't necessarily need to escape my corporate job and be truly "free" because all I REALLY want is comfort.  After the worst night we had, I remember thinking clearly "All I want is to be Warm and Dry.  Safe and Loved."  That is not too much to ask is it?

My life had been reduced to these few basic elements, fundamental needs we all have, and I was so grateful when they could be met.  A little bit like anyone who has been through a hurricane or other natural disaster.  That is what my experience showed me, in a real way I will never forget.  How basic our needs are.  How we get lost sometimes when we want more.

Teaching Yoga is Terrifying

I wish it wasn't but it is.

I'd like to not reveal this vulnerability but my husband tells me it's very "unyoga-like" (which he is wont to do, and yes it's very annoying), to not be able to tell the truth about what I'm going through. :)

Tell the whole truth and nothing but, on my own blog but, can I really do it?  And - well, why wouldn't you?  (why indeed...)

So, after worrying about it before & while doing Yoga Teacher Training (YTT) this past summer - "it" being whether or not I would use the training and actually make something of that time & money spent - I basically had a yoga class land in my lap.  Wonderful experienced yoga teacher who went through training with me said she wanted to give up her Wednesday night class at "Shapes" an all-women gym in Bradenton, a suburb of Sarasota.

Would any of her fellow YTT people like to take it?  I said yes.  I pretty much immediately regretted it.

The whole real truth is that I should be a lot less nervous about teaching because I got trained, I got full-on 200 hours trained and certified, I have my YA (Yoga Alliance) card in my wallet to prove it!  Yet I still feel so unprepared and it's still hard...so hard.

The truth is I'm strung out, haven't slept well in months, and I am not a paragon of health, so how can I be a yoga teacher?!

I watch these yoga videos online lately and the teachers, they have all the perfect words (not to mention, perfect bodies)...but I don't.  I'm a total fraud.

https://www.doyogawithme.com/

But I'm somehow making a go of it, driving 20 miles north from my work on Wednesday nights after an often stressful day at my full-time corporate IT job and hopefully I remember to bring something light to eat for dinner and thank god I have two yoga mats one for home and one for the car and I've been so nervous about it I always make sure I have my yoga clothes packed with me and I take notes before class about what I want to do and take notes after about what I forgot and want to do better next time and did I mention I'm barely sleeping these days?!?  It has been, um, a real juggle...

And yet, after my last class - only the third one I have taught since YTT - they actually clapped, and two students came up to me afterwards and asked if I teach anywhere else or another night/time at that gym because they wanted to take more classes from me.  I melted.  I am so grateful and want to keep going, to be more excited and less scared, looking forward to teaching my next class and maybe filled with less terror and dread. 

But I am also left with the thought about how much we can pretend...to not be filled with fear, and how much people believe the illusion we project.

"You seem like you've been doing this for years" more than one yoga student has told me when I've revealed that I only recently went through training, and that I'm new at this.

How do they not know that I'm terrified?  Real question.

Wise Up

Wise Up
~ by Aimee Mann
from the film "Magnolia"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_9EpBL5Txc

It's not
What you thought
When you first began it
You got
What you want
Now you can hardly stand it though,
By now you know
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
'Til you wise up

You're sure
There's a cure
And you have finally found it
You think
One drink
Will shrink you 'til you're underground
And living down
But it's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
'Til you wise up

Prepare a list of what you need
Before you sign away the deed
'Cause it's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
'Til you wise up
No, it's not going to stop
'Til you wise up
No, it's not going to stop
So just...give up

My Love

I found out from listening to memory and silence that I didn't much care, at least then, about going to Paris.  That what I wanted was the breath in the house and the warmth and demands of someone who needed me. 

"It's your love," my old friend Pete had said to me years before, when I was trying to leave a lousy relationship.  "You get to keep that."  My love: precious, lonely gift.
pg.183
Let's Take The Long Way Home
by Gail Caldwell

Love Must Be This, If It Be Anything

"I pray you if you love me, bear my joy"
~ by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I pray you if you love me, bear my joy
A little while, or let me weep your tears;
I, too, have seen the quavering Fate destroy
Your destiny's bright spinning--the dull shears
Meeting not neatly, chewing at the thread,
Nor can you well be less aware how fine,
How staunch as wire, and how unwarranted
Endures the golden fortune that is mine.
I pray you for this day at least, my dear,
Fare by my side, that journey in the sun;
Else must I turn me from the blossoming year
And walk in grief the way that you have gone.
Let us go forth together to the spring:
Love must be this, if it be anything.

The One Place I Can Always Feel Good Now

In my life as a teacher, I used to hammer away at the idea of simplicity. In both fiction and nonfiction, there's only one question and one answer. What happened? the reader asks. This is what happened, the writer responds. This...and this...and this, too. Keep it simple. It's the only sure way home.
pg.150

She takes my hand like a woman in a dream. She is in a dream, and so am I. Like all sweet dreams, it will be brief...but brevity makes sweetness, doesn't it? Yes, I think so. Because when the time is gone, you can never get it back.
pg.841
From the novel 11-22-63
by Stephen King

I recently finished my yoga teacher training (YTT) summer intensive program and boy was it intense!  And terribly tortuously long and yet brief at the same time - and so so sweet.  Even though I enjoy having my weekends back now and feeling like I finally have time enough to actually take care of my life again, I miss it.

I don't pretend that this matters to anyone else but me and maybe my husband, close friends and those who went through it with me.  It doesn't matter on the grand scale of world events or whatever - it's not as important as the situation in Syria, the upcoming presidential election, or Summer Olympics that are now over (to which I somewhat paid attention, listening on the radio while driving back & forth to training), no one really cares in the face of so many other things pressing for our attention - I know this.

But still, it meant something really important to me.  It is my current story.

So, this is what happened...and this...and this, too...I took the YTT course and I wanted it to transform me.  And yet, now that I am through it - I don't feel any different, or I do but just barely. 

I complained to my husband David two weeks in "it's not working!" and he said "it's not working - yet" and that was very positive (and David is often much more positive than me, truth be told), but I can't wishfully think myself into being transformed, I have to FEEL it. 

I wanted it to cure me of various self-destructive habits (such as drinking too much and smoking), but I'm surrounded by these very things at home so it's hard not to...I wanted it to help me feel stronger, and I do. 

I have these new arm muscles (that I'm afraid will disappear fast if I don't keep using them), that I love and the pose "chaturanga" that kicked my ass & I complained about on FaceBook two months ago is easy(ish) now.

That is a change I can see and believe in and love.  My friend, that I hadn't seen since before the training, when we finally got together kept commenting on how changed I seemed, how toned!  But also my thinking, the things I said to her were different and I seemed mentally stronger.

What I love about this story is how now I feel wrong if I can't do yoga every day, and I think about being present with my breath to manage stress much more than in the past.

There is still a lot more life to manage ahead, but I always have at least this yoga/meditation practice I can rely on, this yoga mat I can step onto and take a deep breath and forget all my worries...the one place that I know I can always feel good now. 

Hey Yoga Girl

What are the common (mis)perceptions of Yoga?  As I get into my yoga teacher training (YTT) intensive program this summer, I am as fascinated by the debates & discussions as I am by the postures, and learning how to teach them. 

And one of the first things they did in our training was to expose us to both the history of yoga and what it has become in today's world.

Take this video by the guys who did that "Whole Foods" song -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-8IPDR4Khc

And an interesting discussion on the commercialism of yoga, with the author of a book called Yoga Inc. (see second link below), and the director & founder of a chain of yoga studios:
Yoga Wars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djj78geiM0c

https://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Inc-Journey-Through-Business/dp/0670068438

Is it really an exercise class that pretends to do a spiritual practice and in the midst just makes a lot of money?

I hope not.  Because I'm looking for it to change and heal my life in ways that I don't think step-aerobics, Jazzercise or the latest power-kick-boxing-spinning-body-pump whatever class could possibly do.

All I know for now is that I have never felt more peaceful than I do after a yoga class.  I am in it for the long-haul and just can't wait to see what I discover next....

How to Break Your GPS and Other Stories from Panama

One Day.  One rental car.  One GPS. 

Yes, driving in hectic over-populated Panama City can be daunting but how bad could it be?

We had done this once before, when we visited last time in 2009, but then we were following our friends - one of whom is a native Panamanian and therefore knew the city well.

This time, on our own, we asked for directions on the best way to get out of the city and onto the Inter-American Highway (also known as the Pan-American, see link below), for our little day-trip to El Valle about 2 hours west and north of the city, from not one but several people. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-American_Highway

But, given their poor English and our (sadly, still) poor Spanish, we remained a bit foggy on the exact route.  Or at least I, the navigator did; David just trusted that with my uncanny sense of direction I had it well in hand.  Then the car-rental guy recommended we take the GPS for an extra $11 and when we accepted he even programmed it for us, starting point and destination, so it all seemed perfectly reasonable and off we went.

Even between our maps and the GPS we ended up going quite astray before we figured it out.  The GPS kept saying randomly, and unhelpfully "stay on this route" - even when we were clearly NOT on any prescribed route as we meandered through one of the (has to be) poorest neighborhoods of Panama City.

Near historic Casco Viejo (Spanish for "Old Town" - see link below), which we had toured on foot the day before, but instead of crumbling buildings next to pristinely restored mansions, it was just crumbling building after crumbling building.  And nothing historic about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casco_Viejo,_Panama

But still A LOT of people around so we never felt too unsafe, plus we just kept moving through the labyrinth with car doors locked.  By the time I realized where we could get the viaduct to take us to the Inter-American Highway, there were suddenly signs for a detour.

I swear we followed them, but before we knew it we ended up on what looked like a pedestrian-only walkway.

Picture a pleasant little Sunday market (Panamanian-style, that is), we just plowed through, before we finally got to the right turn I wanted.  The policeman we passed on our right, as we were almost to the end of it, just looked at our faces and shook his head - probably thinking "Is it just me or are the gringo tourists getting even MORE stupid?" :)

Once on the Pan-American highway and after another short wrong-turn side-trip we soon saw the limits of technology in our world today:  the GPS had gotten so confused by our road-less-taken route that it was telling us we had arrived at our destination (the mountain town of El Valle), about 100 miles before we actually got there in reality. 

Or I just never understood how to use it, user error?  Either way, at the end of the day, when we finally arrived back at the Hertz office across the street from our hotel in Panama City, and told our story to the car-rental guy, he ended up not charging us for the GPS.  Which was really nice of him.

That is probably my best memory of this Panama trip - how wonderful the people are there.  How they put up with our questions in bumbling Spanish and how they had to finally talk in their best broken English before we could understand.

As David says - Panama rocks!  More stories to come....

Put Your Pretty Dress On

Rosie Thomas - Pretty Dress
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XMxwyBBywc
Put your pretty dress on
it's time for you to go to the dance
tie your hair in ribbons and lace
and wear pearls round your neck
And all the pretty princes will see you
All the pretty princes will see you
Some day
Some day

Put your red boots on
it's time for you to walk home from school
every one will laugh
they'll point fingers at you
they'll be cruel
but cover up your ears and don't listen
because you'll know much better than them
some day
some day

and they'll wave to you
and they'll wave to you

put your red coat on
and walk with a light in the woods
if it gets dark dont get scared
there's so much waiting for you
cover up your tears and dont show them
cause you'll know much better than them
some day
some day

and they'll wave to you
and they'll wave to you
and they'll wave to you
and they'll wave to you

cause they don't see you like i see you
if they did, they'd see
the nice litte girl whose
grown up to become homecoming queen

put your pretty dress on
put your red boots on

and they'll wave to you
and they'll wave to you
and we'll wave to you
and we'll wave to you

put your pretty dress on
put your red boots on
put your red coat on
put your pretty dress on
put your pretty dress on
put your red coat on
put your red boots on
put you pretty dress on

2 Wonderful "West Side Story" Stories

In talking with my husband recently I discovered that we both have our own deeply meaningful childhood stories that have to do with the movie "West Side Story" - total accidental memory recovery, a little bit like what led to me posting our twin experiences in "Everybody Has a Swimming-Pool Story" ~ http://www.yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2011/06/everybody-has-swimming-pool-story.html).

I was at the house of my parents' friends and I guess I was bored while the adults had what I now know of as a "dinner party."  I have no idea where my many siblings were, but what I do know is I watched TV (probably resentfully, because no one was paying attention to me!) and all was regular joe-status quo but then - I switched the channel from an episode of Star Trek that I think I found somewhat creepy, tuning in magically mid-way through the movie "West Side Story" and - everything changed for me.

I was immediately & completely captivated.  "It all began tonight, I saw you and the world went away" - "But here you are and what was just a world is star, Tonight!"  OMG was ever an impressionable, dramatic, headstrong 7 or 8? year old more in love with love, after seeing that?! 

I think this movie (for better or for worse, probably worse), informed a lot of my ideas of what romantic love would be like.  You see the handsome stranger across the crowded room (yah, like the song, I know), and everything narrows down to just the two of you.  And you're instantly in perfect love forever and ever, amen. 

I watched as much of West Side Story (WSS) as I could, but at some point the adult party was over and it was time to go home.  I probably kicked and screamed to be parted from my movie, but the worst part?  They didn't let me stay up to watch it when we got home, they enforced bedtime, as if it were just any other night.  An injustice I will never forget. 

This of course was before the age of VCRs (remember them?), so we couldn't just run out the next weekend and "rent it" - and therefore my care-worn exasperated parents probably insisted it would be on T.V. again, I could see how the movie ended some other time, it was late, it was a school night, whatever.  But my undaunted & anguished cry most surely was "WHEN?!?"  I eventually did see WSS in full but I don't remember exactly when...it may have actually been years later, and it had probably lost a bit of its original "charge" by then. :)

My husband has another WSS story...and just as my story paints this tiny portrait of me, so his does of him.  He was at the house of his parents' friends also, but he was older - maybe ten - and he had already seen the movie (in full, no doubt).  Being similarly ignored by the adults doing their own thing, he found something to occupy himself, which was to hang out with the family dog. 

Of course, that is the saddest part of the story - how his parents always had better things to do than pay attention to him, how they treated him a bit like "luggage" they carted around, without ever asking him what he felt or wanted to do.  As a very kind Aunt of David's once noticed, and actually said to him.  It was true, we will both never forget it, and David did his best never to treat his own son that way.  (In fact, David's own parenting style evolved mainly out of remembering how he himself was parented - and then always at least trying to do the exact opposite.)

Even just being baggage, young David loved going over to this particular neighbor's house mostly because they had a beautiful golden retriever.  He was always drawn to animals, especially dogs.  He once told me in a letter (early in our relationship, when we were briefly living in different states), that he loved their "know-all and tell-nothing eyes" which was kind of my "you had me at hello" moment, but that's maybe another blog post. :)

This sweet gentle dog sat there and probably panted and drooled and loved all over David as he recounted the entire plot of the movie.  I can just picture it:  "Riff went to Tony and said 'ya gotta come to the dance' and so Tony went to the dance and there he met Maria....and afterwards Tony wandered the street yelling her name and then he found her!  on the fire-escape and they talked and sang...and then later there was a fight and Bernado killed Riff!  And then Tony killed Bernado, but he didn't mean to..."

For David it wasn't the romance, or it wasn't the obvious romance that we all think of as the heart of the story, the one between Maria and Tony - the one that got me yearning for love at such a young age, long before I read the original Romeo and Juliet story.  For David it was the romance of being free on the streets of a big city, able to come and go as you please, having a life that's your own. 

Basically the idea of being a real person, instead of a piece of luggage. 

After seeing WSS, David fantasized about running away to New York and joining a gang because it looked like a real family to him - and definitely had something going on that was missing at home.  When he innocently asked his mother "do they have gangs in Milwaukee?" she actually had a moment of pretty good parenting (PGP) when she responded succinctly: "Yes, but not like New York." 

So, we had very different experiences of the movie WSS and different things we took away.  But he, like me, discovered the soundtrack in his parents' collection of records and listened to it over and over, memorizing the words to all the songs:

When You're a Jet, You're a Jet all The Way ~  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9z33lasnkU

I LOVED the dance scene at the gym - the music and that girl in the ice-blue dress (how she moved!) were the epitome of cool to me - not to mention totally hot Rita Moreno in purple ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aenJ5V43Xvk

I guess what this all means, is that David and I are going to have to get the DVD and watch it together.  Me in charge of my own bedtime at last - he with someone who can share the joy & anguish of this amazing film, and actually answer back in more than woofs.  It's about time he and I both get what we need and wanted around WSS!

Doing the D.R.

In less than a week we are due to arrive in the Dominican Republic (the D.R. as we like to call it), for our now-annual Caribbean get-away-from-it-all vacation. That is, of course, a very happy thing. But, sadly in the meantime I am "doing the D.R." in another much less pleasant way which is to say I am doing the Diet-Reprise, hence this potentially snooze-inducing and uninspired blog post.

re·prise

noun

1. Usually, reprises. Law . an annual deduction, duty, or payment out of a manor or estate, as an annuity or the like.

2. Music .

a. a repetition.

b. a return to the first theme or subject.

verb (used with object)

3. to execute a repetition of; repeat: They reprised the elaborate dance number in the third act.

I do realize that women and their weight is possibly one of the all-time most boring topics, maybe mostly to men but even to other women also, I imagine. But what is interesting, I think, is how uncanny: here it is about a year later and I'm doing the same damn thing for the same damn reason. (See blog post from March, 2011 - http://www.yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2011/03/battle-of-body.html)

Practically killing myself to get my body back into some kind of acceptable (to me) shape before we go spend 6 days lazing on a beach. Different beach, same damn repetition. As "they" say and this is me paraphrasing to some degree: in life we will be presented with lessons & we'll repeat those same (damn) lessons over and over until we actually learn (damnit!) what we are supposed to learn. Then we can move on - to the next damn lesson.

So what are the lessons here exactly?
1) Don't procrastinate, like I did - leaving yourself only a couple weeks in which to do the dutiful diet-dance.
2) Slow and steady wins the race - Weight Watchers (program with which I initially lost all my excess weight years ago), has the exact right model IMHO; it's about changing the way you eat for life, versus a three or four week crash diet that takes it off fast.
3) Don't stop going to the gym FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER!!!!! Especially if the monthly fee is being sucked out of your bank account anyway, so you are paying for it whether you go or not - I mean that's just stupid right?!
4) Don't go from extreme diet to eating whatever you want, for you WILL gain the weight back. And sometimes, amazingly, alarmingly quickly.

For full disclosure I should admit that I am in the midst of violating #2 (I did a juice fast/cleanse last weekend - just 2 days - and am back on HCG Diet since then), and plan to willfully violate #4 as soon as I step off that plane into the tropical island afternoon next Tuesday.

But just this one last time, I swear!

After coming home from this next vacation I do plan to do the moderate and sensible thing and then hopefully not be in this same place a year from now or even 6 months...here's hoping I can follow my own damn advice and learn the lessons finally!

But...as my older brother reminds me, with one of his many witty FaceBook posts ("Next time you want to whine that your coffee is too hot and you slightly burned the roof of your mouth, remember... THAT'S A FIRST-WORLD PROBLEM. Get over it."), like too-hot coffee, too-abundant food & cushy desk jobs that keep us sedentary are first-world problems. Maybe I should just "get over it" and myself. But still get my first-world ass to the gym - from now on that's mandatory! :)

You All Know the Story of the Other Woman

He puts his bones back on,

Turning the clock back an hour.

She knows flesh, that skin balloon,

the unbound limbs, the boards,

the roof, the removable roof.

She is his selection, part time.

You know the story too! Look,

when it is over he places her,

like a phone, back on the hook.

◦ "You All Know the Story of the Other Woman"
by Anne Sexton

She thinks she can warm the stars

A woman who writes feels too much,

those trances and portents!

As if cycles and children and islands

weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips

and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warm the stars.

A writer is essentially a spy.

Dear love, I am that girl.


"The Black Art"


By Anne Sexton

autonomy

by Wislawa Szymborska In memoriam Halina Poświatowska 

In danger, the holothurian (sea-cucumber) cuts itself in two.
 

It abandons one self to a hungry world 
and with the other self it flees. 

It violently divides into doom and salvation,
 retribution and reward, 

what has been and what will be. 

An abyss appears in the middle of its body 
between what instantly become two foreign shores. 

Life on one shore, death on the other.
 

Here hope and there despair. If there are scales, the pans don’t move. 
If there is justice, this is it. 

To die just as required, without excess. 
To grow back just what’s needed from what’s left. 

We, too, can divide ourselves, it’s true.
 

But only into flesh and a broken whisper.
 

Into flesh and poetry. The throat on one side, laughter on the other,
 quiet, quickly dying out.

Here the heavy heart, there non omnis moriar* - 
just three little words, like a flight’s three feathers. 

The abyss doesn’t divide us.
 The abyss surrounds us. *I shall not wholly die

https://www.npr.org/2012/02/02/146281183/wislawa-szymborska-poet-of-gentle-irony-dies-at-88

The Problem

Another Graduate school-era poem, written somewhere in years 1995-1996

the problem is not 

in the time 

for there is plenty 

of that 

no lack of days 

spent 

with books and pens

notebooks to be filled 

the mind eager 

bent to the task 

it loves the long sweet still 

consumption of 

lingering texts 

and lives at wide desks 

in library-silence 

no lack of nights 

lying there like paper 

with eyes wide-awake and lined 

to precision, the body 

folded, unquiet, largely alone 

and inelegant: stealing words from 

pillowed space, it hogs clichéd 

covers from the tossing-turning 

other shoulder, when I really should 

just shut my mind and 

maybe "take a lover" 

this abundant time 

is wrecklessly spent 

when body/mind becomes 

wildly aroused under 

heavy blankets, and 

there's no lack 

of inspiration but - 

I find my energy all used up 

with no thing created 

out of that all that crazy 

literary heat and friction 

the problem is the laziness 

and it all ends up being wasted 

the images lost to dreaming 

the ideas yield no precise 

paper production 

the problem is the giving-in 

to words that are eventually 

recorded,  my too-easy personal 

story, the whining 

and trite, cloying 

emotion 

the problem is the undisciplined 

days and nights of 

hedonism, the desire for it to be quick 

and easy like masturbation, how the 

mind & body love immediate gratification 

and in my covetous hurry the paper sinks 

into profligate time when I'm so tired and 

heavy (like Hemingway) I can barely lift the pen 

to describe things that should not be recorded 

the problem is that the greedy soul 

goes seeking poems in these excesses 

as if it can obscure an almost willful 

ignorance: as if I don't quite know how 

I got here, or even how I got 

an English Degree (from a really good college!) 

without reading Moby Dick? 

the problem is in the soul 

which tries to hide my lack 

with smoke-screen of so many 

cigarettes at the bar, as if my words 

will be more beautiful for the bottles 

the varied colors, shapes and sizes of glass 

as if I could somehow reflect myself ten times 

the size I usually am (since no one else will do it) 

as if in harsh morning light there isn't always 

glinting, grinning shards to rub against a tired 

paper body, saying: you drunk fool, 

to think that you could ever write!

How We "Hurt"

"Hurt" - by Johnny Cash
(originally by Nine Inch Nails)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything

[Chorus:]
What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here

[Chorus:]
What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way

Before the Holidays, 1995

Before the Holidays, 1995
I am stapled to this paper
that won't let me
say what I am reaching towards:
a generous room with soft
rose-colored carpet
and no more words needing
to be written.

I can't go home
yet, am stuck
in this cold
New England woman's mind,
stranded in her one stingy room
of a Puritan house,
laboring in this chilled
forbidding, midwestern town
for the 25 (below, wind-chill factor)
more pages of Emily Dickinson.

It's torturous
listening to my written voice
posing as authoritive
watching the pen
move in and out of darkness
wondering if I will dream
her words and mine tonight
knowing that tomorrow
I will eat them for breakfast,
with a little butter to take the edge
off her awe and a pinch of sugar
to sweeten her black-coffee bitterness.

If I only owned a computer
I could wrap modern
technology around me
like a rose-colored baby blanket.
And forgo those
freezing eight blocks
of heat loss and skin buckling
at the unforgiving elements.

I fold up in the face
of my self-sabotage anyway,
voice in my head that says:
you can't do it!
It overpowers me like the weather
the "Burglar! Banker - Father!"*
the poverty of loans and anxiety
of deadlines and doubts about my talent.

Whenever I venture out
I always come back again to this
one room with books that don't help
and my Imperial Ego that always
says I am better than anything
I've written and this scarred dark
Salvation Army desk
where I am trapped.

I am tethered to this paper,
stuck
out in the cold
like some poor dull
brown animal who plods
through the drifts
dying of the temperature
and not noticing it, for she
grows numb with uncertainty,
loses all sense
of direction, no answers
available and she'll never
get safely home again.
*The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson #49

The Job-Leaving Talk

So, I recently left a job I had for about 1 year and 10 months (not that I was counting), for another job and it was a good but hard choice.

In many ways what I left was a really good job that at one time I was extremely grateful for: a great company that seems to be growing, decent pay & no ridiculous hours expected, nice co-workers, challenging work (sometimes too much so though!), rewarding when the customers appreciated what I did to help them, when my co-workers felt they learned from me, and when I learned from them too...

But I had to leave. Like a not-terrible relationship that you could just hang onto, even though you weren't really getting your needs met, and you did not feel "fulfilled" - easiest to stay, especially if you worried you might not find someone/something else better, once you left. If you were willing to give up on the best things in you, and give into fear of being alone etc.etc.etc.

I almost did that, right before I thankfully met David, my someone/something better - who showed up at just the right time, which made the choice much easier. I got lucky, truth be told, I know it! :)

David, my husband - who is certainly not perfect, nor is he necessarily "the one" (I don't believe in that romantic kinda bullshit), and we've had plenty of struggles as a couple during these almost-16 years since then; but he meets me completely, right here in the middle of this crazy life we try to live together, as best we can.

I have way more fun with him, and lots more interesting conversations than I ever could have had with the one I semi-reluctantly let go. But what I love most is how he gets me, and I (for the most part) get him. And that kind of payoff is worth - risking - everything.

And so, I give you this: two poems, the first from a series I did, once upon a time in Graduate school (called "Graduate Student/Love/Sex/And Lament" - other poems from this series will be forthcoming, that's both a promise & a threat). The second poem just written, out of this most recent life-changing event, leaving a job I could have easily stayed with - and it would have been fine, but I just knew there had to be more.

Because leaving a job can be a little like leaving a relationship, in my experience & humble opinion.

The Leaving Talk
The dryness of a conversation
is nothing
next to being with a body
you have no use for because
the excitement has been wrung out
like a sponge;
your giddiness gone, by way of someone else
who caught your eye or ear
and now the trouble is your being tired
and unable to keep the wear out of your face
that annoyed tone out of your voice for much longer.

The dryness of living day-to-day
is nothing
compared to the lack of luster
in a relationship that's become
a requisite kiss from a relative
and early morning tenderness begins
to quease your stomach and all the unease
just means it's inevitable that you will leave him
leave him
leave him.


The Job-Leaving Talk
The dryness of conversation with co-worker
is nothing
next to this relief you feel
in meetings that will come
to nothing, about projects
that seemed doomed
from the start, for you
won't be there
when.

A company (that may come
to something despite themselves)
you have no use for because
the excitement has been wrung out
like a sponge;
your hopefulness gone, by way of awful
customer-support conversations
your allegiance spent
because of ongoing ridiculous
trying-to-manage-chaos
with a project plan.

Now something else
has caught your eye and ear
and it's not about the money or the benefits.

Now the trouble is your being false
and unable to keep that professional
smile on your face
the annoyed tone out of your voice
for much longer.

The dryness of living these last few days
(requisite two-weeks notice)
in weird worried limbo
is nothing
compared to how conversations
with your manager begin
to quease your stomach -
your worry that he might be shocked
and try to talk
you into staying.

But all the unease doesn't matter
because you know that you will still leave it
leave it
leave it.

Slim Slow Slider

Slim Slow Slider ~ by Van Morrison

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMEExDZEgoo

Slim slow slider Horse you ride 

White as snow 

Slim slow slider Horse you ride 

Is white as snow 

Tell it everywhere you go 

Saw you walking 

Down by the Ladbroke Grove this morning 

Saw you walking Down by the Ladbroke Grove this morning 

Catching pebbles for some sandy beach 

You're out of reach 

Saw you early this morning 

With your brand new boy and your Cadillac 

Saw you early this morning 

With your brand new boy and your Cadillac 

You're gone for something 

And I know you won't be back 

I know you're dying, baby 

And I know you know it, too 

I know you're dying 

And I know you know it, too 

Everytime I see you 

I just don't know what to do

"In God We Trust" but...Men Dream of Rust

Men dream of rust:
broken
trailer parks and
long lonely red
plains filled with dust

no work

A vision of prosperity
their fathers taught
them to trust
collapsing on itself:
the disappointment
of promise that the U.S.
would prevail
despite Nixon & Vietnam.

It wasn't over yet
the fathers thought
(this empire)
they said so, and
so they taught
their sons to work hard,
seek the almighty
dollar to feed their families
(there are starving children in China
so finish the food on your plate and
just shut up).

That U.S. dollar diminishing
every day we go on
seeking to feed our families,
driving our fuel-inefficient cars
to discount-days
at Wal-Mart,
hunting want-ads
for decent-paying jobs.

Craig's List, Monster.com

"How can anybody afford it?"
anymore
anything we buy,
maybe it would get
harder than they ever thought
to sustain

The American Dream

to sustain that almighty dollar
which they diminish
daily for us

show the choice and make no more mistakes than yesterday

Dance a clean dream and an extravagant turn up, secure the steady rights and translate more than translate the authority, show the choice and make no more mistakes than yesterday.
- Gertrude Stein

There's a clean that comes
when you least expect it
when you're smoking your last
cigarette for the millionth time
you've tried to quit.

When you're fourteen
and you've drunk so much coffee
that you feel sick.

When you're sixteen
and in love and hating
that beautiful hurt you get.

When you're eighteen
bitter years into these habits
you detest but cannot kick.

When you're suddenly
twenty and come home
to drunken memory of all this.

You feel clean
because you know
life is long and you
are coming around
to accepting it.

What Is The Place That You Call Home?

"I come to you and you see me whole," he says. "You love me all the way around the equator and not just for some story I wrote. When your door closes and the world's outside, we're eye to eye." ~ Stephen King (pg. 125 Lisey's Story) A little more than a short while ago (Summer, 2010), I was reading the best book EVER! ~ The Lacuna, and at heart it seemed to be about the topic of "Home." It's by a novelist (Barbara Kingsolver), writing about a novelist (the protagonist - Harrison Shepherd), what could be a safer topic? And yet it's fraught with danger. You will have to read the book to understand what I mean.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/books/review/Schillinger-t.html

When I read the book it was an apt subject since we were moving, after slightly less than a year at our First Place in Florida, and so soon after the Big Move from Milwaukee. We had very little to move but it still felt scary. I was working a newish job where I still felt unsure of the terrain, which also felt scary. And with the move, my commute changed drastically (which was the impetus for the move, actually). I wrote then: "Today I drive my 18.2 miles home and feel safe with David, but have to go back again the next morning. Soon it will be only 8 miles and I wonder if I will feel differently..." 

Flash-forward to today, when I am leaving that same job in about a week and my commute will change again - plus a lot of other things, obviously. We're not moving this time, but it is interesting to look back upon the time when even a temporary "home" changed for us, and feelings about danger vs. safety were running rampant for me. When we moved from Milwaukee was possibly one of the scariest periods of my life...we went through some rough times even once we landed here safely. But we did find our way in Florida, found jobs, a daily rhythm that worked for us, dare I say some peace and um, security? 

Only to then have the shit hit the fan - literally - that summer of 2010, when our house (no longer a "home" per se), in Milwaukee filled with four feet of sewage water in the basement, and we would have rather it been carried down the bluff and dumped into the Milwaukee River than have had to deal with the ensuing chaos. And it happened not once, but TWICE. We tried to do right by our tenants, did the best we could dealing with it all from afar (read: men in HAZMAT suits called in to clean up), but it was pretty traumatic; a lot was lost in "the flood" (view youtube footage via hyperlink below, if you don't believe me when I call it a "flood"), by our tenants and by us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDi7OtULmyA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7fOFXTXdFU

Some of my step-son's childhood drawings and letters being only the most poignant example. And, sadly, we are still paying some of the bills from that disaster (no FEMA aid for us, falling through the loophole of being not a business exactly and not living on the premises). So, a money-sucking burden we can't get rid of - that's what I think of THAT "home" at least sometimes, when I even let myself think of it. We got a new property management company last summer that is way more on top of things, and this has helped some. And I generally just let David deal with it. But it continues to be this worry-thought that comes up sometimes when I can't sleep, a black-and-damaged spot that still exists somewhere inside my head....and I feel so much sadness about this former "home" of mine, now just a "house" and how it was once a beautiful place I loved, where I felt safe and lived for close to 10 years. 

But maybe "home" is somewhat portable, in that it's ultimately where ever you feel safest - a place where you can crawl up into a ball and it's OK - be pajama-feet bare with your soul, have cups of chammomile-tea-intimacy and no one will laugh at your worst fears. Or your best hopes and dreams. Maybe that's why my "home" is with David and where ever he goes. But oh, it's scary to depend on one person so much, a whole other set of fears! (and a whole other blog post) So, if you are up for it, try asking yourself these questions: what's scary? what scares you most? and - what is your home?

Maybe All My Thoughts and Ideas (about Writing) Are Wrong?

"I'm thinking it should start in Paris and then move. It's what happens in Paris that fuels the fire. You can't have the rest without it."

"You always said you couldn't write about Paris because you were too close to it."

"Yes, I know, but for some reason it's coming easily. We were in Pamplona two weeks ago, but I can write that, too. I don't know why. Maybe all of my thoughts and rules about writing are just waiting to be proven wrong."

"It's good to be on fire, isn't it?"

"I hope it goes on like this forever."
The Paris Wife
(page 340)
by Paula McLain

MyFavoriteAnimal

"I like it very much," I said again, because I had two strong arms and ten Alps in sight. He pulled me into the room and we lay down on the featherbed and made love. And I was reminded of what was best about us. How very easy and natural we could be as bodies, with no sharp angles or missteps and no need for talking. How in bed, as nowhere else, he was my favorite animal and I was his.
The Paris Wife
(page 290)
by Paula McLain

Limitless?

"Limitless" - An interesting movie about how we use only 20% of our brains...and what would happen if you took a drug that unleashed that unused 80%. And would you do it? Movie Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUkAfjfWh5g

But...I think, what about a close relationship, a marriage say, one in which we're only using 20% of that capacity? What would happen to your life, to your work, your other relationships, your family...what would happen to your marriage...if you unleashed the unknown 80% that was possible? Would you do it? And what would happen? "Seekers Who Are Lovers" ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf1tEMlViLY&feature=bf_next&list=AVGxdCwVVULXe5YZpIp_8gjO81RU_PDXM1&lf=list_related"

Finally, I can see you crystal-clear" ~ "We could have had it all" ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYEDA3JcQqw

toxic shock syndrome

this way of waking up
in touch of hands
is ruined
and becomes complicated
turns into merely a syndrome:
a cluster of symptoms to be treated
and caused by lovely
minutes when she let him in
to space already occupied
by string and cotton

it wouldn't have happened
without this silver moment of allowing
ourselves to live
only in the present
jangling the nerves
saying: touch me there
the skin glowing
colors of physical excitement
in process of gradual abandon

the quick and healthy
reaction comes to stop
under white lights
in the stirrups
on the steel table
for only an excrutiatingly slow moment
of toxic extraction
and antibiotics to follow for infection,
only slight, you were lucky
the nurse said

and the nurse said: you should've been
worried three days ago
but she didn't ask how it happened
and she didn't say what the woman
on the table heard anyway:
you should be ashamed
and the woman was
and the woman always is

shame is a metal tool
entering to grab
what was kept too long
in there and soaked to obliteration
ruining the fibers they say
in cuddly commercials
are meant for protection
damaging the surrounding tissue
so soft and receptive
entering the bloodstream with poison

toxic to the way lovers want to
wake up, touch and lose themselves
shocking them out of an oblivion
they had blissfully chosen

shame ruins
the jangling moment
when you say: touch me there
and enter into the emotional complications
be part of
the beautiful forgetfulness
and never return
to the cold steel
table of the world again

Animal-Love

My sister Stephanie has had a recent love affair but it's not with a human. It's with...Toonces...who is a cat (as my sister named her, after the SNL skit which I had to Google, you may have to as well, it was from a really bad SNL period, in my opinion, when not much was funny but apparently this was). But not just ANY cat, mind you. This stray cat in her neighborhood that climbed into her life and captured her mind & heart has become something else. And then, heart-breakingly, this stray cat had kittens....and they are so SOFT (as she tells me) it's unbelievable! Almost criminal. This animal-starved sister of mine and her recent erotic cheating-with-the-cats night when boyfriend was out of town (cuz he can't stand them), compelled me to write this post about what I think about loving animals. Maybe it's only cuz I don't have children of my own, and all that nurturing energy has to go SOMEWHERE but I have this animal love/yearning also. The dogs in our apartment complex we see out being walked, with their "know-all, tell-nothing eyes" as my husband once put it, draw me to them. We stop and pet, adore & coo, but we don't have them (or their poop to pick up) and come away a little bit empty, always. Even when it's a relief to think we don't have that work to do. It's still an ache (the memory of the cats I had, and gave up when we moved to Florida), and the love for animals is powerful. It's a love that has nothing to do with sex or romance or babies or family or whatever else you might want to turn it into. But whatever it is, it is very personal. Recently I talked to David about making a trip to the local Humane Society, just to hang out with some cats (but we didn't go, maybe next weekend). And lately when I've passed by a place in a slightly bad neighborhood, not far from my work, called the "Cat Depot" - I've just been filled with such cat-longing & rescue-fantasies....that's how animal-starved I've been. Maybe we could do some kind of cat-foster thing, like I remember one friend did, no commitment but we could help out and I could get that need fed?! No matter how perfect a husband I have (which he's not, of course) it's like still needing a good therapist, despite how great he is and how he listens when I talk-talk-talk - he still can't fill ALL my needs! :) And so, I offer this story - written by my sister years ago, isn't it adorable?! Tiger My family used to have a very handsome cat named Tiger. Not only was he handsome but friendly as well. People would come by our house and stop to pet Tiger and he wouldn't scratch or run away but let them stroke his black and white striped back. One summer day when Tiger was in his usual place, nestled down in the grass under a chair relaxing, my Dad came home from work to find a surprising note on the door. The note read these exact words: "We have been looking for a mate for our luscious seductive pussy cat. We followed a striped, extra-toed hunk to your porch. If he (if it is a He, we can't tell) would be interested please phone us as soon as possible! Thank you, Mary" It was not the kind of note we got every day, and my Dad was surprised. He showed the note to the rest of us when we came home from the beach. We all thought it was very funny. The only problem was Tiger was neutered and couldn't get other cats pregnant. Even so, we tried calling the woman to let her know but we couldn't get a hold of her so we never contacted her. But from then on Tiger was known as The Hunk.