It's The Economy, Stupid!

While I have been neglecting you, I have been attending to my house. Here's the story behind the headline (and oh, parenthetically, forgive me if I'm repeating myself...). My fact finding trip to LA revealed these two facts.

1. Regarding my career as a Marriage and Family Therapist: The internship in LA would/will be a fantastic opportunity and I am still jazzed about it. Basically, they train you and mentor you and guide you and etc. etc. you in creating a private practice. Bbuuuttttt, it doesn't pay for the first three months. And then it pays a portion of the fees you take in from your clients. And you pretty much have to find the clients, which is indeed a major part of building a practice and you get lots of support, etc. etc., but it takes time. And the current economy is not one in which people, even in LA, are lining up to see their therapists. "Let's see, shall I put gas in my car or pay my shrink?" So we're talking three months without any income and then however long with however limited income.
   
2. My foray into the rental market in LA revealed, as I've told you, the fact that I've passed the point in life where I'm willing to suck it up lifestyle-wise. That being the case, I would have to pay about twice what I could get for renting my house to lease a "do-able" place in LA. Ah, but you over the in the corner, waving your hand wildly: Why, you ask, don't I just sell my house? As Husband #1 used to say, "Good question, Batman." (Isn't it funny the things that stick with you decades after a relationship is over?) And the answer is that I live smack in the middle of the most depressed housing market in the United States. If I could sell my house, it would mean pricing it to compete with all the foreclosures, which (a) would mean a HUGE loss, and (b) wouldn't be enough to buy a place in LA.
   

So you do the math. No income plus major outlay for rent equals gross spending of capital--or as I have come to think of it, major money down the toilet.

Having done the math myself, I came to the conclusion that I must stay put until the market evens out. I have to be able to take enough out of my house to buy a condo in LA. That's not an unheard of exchange of real estate; I just need to have patience. And surprisingly, having made that decision, I am feeling quote hopeful--about, I dunno, my life or something. Which just goes to show you--something. Or not, as the case may be.

Portrait of the Author as a Young Girl

My Date With Fabian, byJane

Once upon a time in a land far away lived a young girl who in today's world would be called a geek, but then was just known as a creep. She was tall, very tall, seemingly taller than everyone else in her ninth grade class. This was not actually a fact, given the truth of pubescent growth spurts which were just now hitting a few boys in her class. But it's the way she felt and that, after all, is what counts the most when you're fourteen.

She was, our young heroine, a girl who lived a lot in her imagination. One consequence of this--and of the fact that she was known as a creep--was that she had never been on a date. No boy had held her hand or kissed her cheek, and as far as anything else went--well, this was a land far away when such things were unheard of until you were seventeen or eighteen at least. This did not, however, mean that she had not lusted in her heart, as far as her heart knew how to lust. In fact, she had seen the movie Gidget eight times. This was not, you must remember, a time of video tapes or CD-ROMS. To see the movie Gidget eight times, our heroine had to go to eight different showings on eight different days. But such was her love for James Darren, the Moondoggie of this Gidget that she eagerly spent hours alone in a darkened movie theatre imagining that it was she and not Sandra Dee that Moondoggie was kissing. There may have been some part of this where she actually wanted to be Sandra Dee, that is, petite and blonde and Protestant, but that is what happens when you give a young girl an imagination that knows no bounds.

Now it happened that in the summer before her freshman year of high school, she spent some time in Atlantic City, staying with her mother in a rooming house owned by the mother of her father's brother's daughter's husband (this detail is only of interest to those who would like to know that said husband eventually ran NBC, but then, he was just a lowly lawyer whose mother ran what was called a cochalein. This is Yiddish for a rooming house where the ice box (yes, ice box) was shared by a number of different women, each of whom had their section of a particular shelf.

Our heroine, who we shall call for expediencies sake, J., never knew why this was one of the few she things she remembered from that summer. Another was that her mother shoe polished her white Keds, which you all must know was, is and will always be a fate worse than death. And the last thing J remembered from that time was--Fabian.
He was appearing at a concert in Atlantic City and somehow J. was going. She can't remember who with, although she thinks there might have been a fix up there by her mother and another woman at the cochalein. She has vague memories of some faceless young man who was, it seemed, the reason why J's mother applied the white shoe polish to J's Keds. But more than that is lost to time, gone with the wind, as it were. What J. remembers about the concert is screaming. She clearly sees herself standing in a mass of other young girls and screaming. She doesn't know if she screamed at the sight of Fabian or at the sound of his voice, but she opened her mouth wide and screamed. It was a primal response. After the evening was over, she was returned to the cochalein a somewhat changed girl, not the least of which was her raspy throat, and life as she knew it would never be the same.

(To Be Continued....)

I Won! I Won! I Won!

The stars must have been aligned for me on Sunday, because I could not go wrong. Not only did I win a wonderful souvenir from Japan from Merlot Mom--which, of course, I will feature here when I get it (ahem!). But I won this
shooting water into a balloon at the State Fair. And these
in similar games of extreme skill and cunning. Aren't you impressed?

You should be, because I haven't won anything since I won a date with Fabian back in 9th grade (which gives my age away if nothing else does). I enter all competitions just assuming I will lose. And when I win, I assume that the contest was rigged in my favor. For example, I'm sure that the bowl from which MerlotMom's son pulled my name was filled with pieces of paper, all of which said "byJane." And I'm certain that I won the banana--and the car--and the shark (or is it a dolphin?)--because the person running the game was pushing a button that made my seat the winning one.

I realize that this is a rather sad commentary on my sense of self. I'll have to think about that for a while before I can offer up a shrink-worthy analysis.

A Confidential Confession

Of course, I know I'm the only person to feel this way: I love Michael Phelps. I also love Dara Torres. I love that they are superhuman and yet seemingly supernormal. I could never do what they each have done, but the fact that they've done it makes in some way and for some reason my world a better place.

I think it's the integrity of their intention that I admire. And somehow that gets placed for me alongside the Chinese in these 2008 Olympics . The Chinese, while producing some amazing results both in events and the show itself, do not have integrity of intention. Theirs is more the win at whatever cost that I normally associate with The American Way.

Funny that, isn't it. Sad, too.

My Olympics

...is purely a spectator sport. I watch, I don't know why I watch, I don't know why I'm so fascinated that I will do nothing for that two week period in the evening but watch the Olympic coverage. I know nothing about sports--any of them, really. What I do know, however, is that I could never be a contender. I don't have the mental wherewithal, never mind what my body would do. Actually, I've been told over the years by a number of independent voices that I do have an athlete's body. My father was a professional athlete, and I guess I inherited something from him. The body type, that is, but certainly not the mental goods to go along with it. The repetition that is the hallmark of a training regime--I could never do that. I would get bored; I would whine; I would come up with a million and one reasons why I couldn't train that day. I don't know how the world-class athletes can bear the sheer tedium of swimming laps again and again and again and then again. Or marathon running: that training schedule of endlessly plowing up hills and down hills, around the block and into the countryside. I understand the mentality that goes into that about as well as I understand Chinese, which is to say not at all.

In the '80s, I did a profile of Mary T. Meagher, the famous Madame Butterfly, who still, I believe, holds the Olympic record for the 200 'fly. As part of the profile, I went to training with her one day. Oh, god, the absolute tedium of it. On the blocks, into the water, 'fly the length, haul body out of the water, walk around to the blocks and get in line to do it all over again. And again. And again. All afternoon and well into the evening. I escaped about 8 p.m., and Mary T. was still at it.

You know, it just occurred to me that I probably could learn Chinese sooner than I will ever understand how these athletes do it. Maybe that's why I watch them incessantly even though I haven't a clue what they're doing. To try to get some glimmer of what it is that drives them--and doesn't drive me.

Wanted: The Single Person's Life

Now that's a totally new concept to me. I heard it the other morning while talking to a friend who was commiserating about my burial in suburbia. "I know exactly what you mean," she said. "I had to leave the suburbs because I wanted a Single Person's Life, and the chances of my finding it outside of a city were nil to none."

I ignored the fact that her statistics were somewhere south of the Georgian steppes (I am math-illiterate myself, not to mention geographically-challenged). I was totally taken with this idea of the Single Person's Life, which emerged as a full-blown vision And since as a writer, I write, I set about making a verbal doodle of exactly what that life would be.

A Single Person's Life is one of contentment, pleasure even, in the solitary nature of day-to-day events. That is, no one else is about to crap on your fantasies or complain about the way you made the bed. If you snore, you only wake yourself. If you get up at 3 a.m. and must have a bowl of cereal, no one is there to say, "What the hell are you doing?" You don't have to wait for the bathroom to be free and the only smelly old sneakers in the closet are yours.

A Single Person's Life is one in which you star. What do you want to eat? What do you want to watch? When do you want to go to bed--and really, what do you want to do once you're there? Here, give me that remote; it's mine to program at will. Sated with the Olympics? Move on over to Flip That House or, better yet, Final Cut/Shear Genius where you can enjoy the sheer/shear bitchiness of the hairdressers without anyone sneering at your choices.

A Single Person's Life is one where you don't have to worry about whether your partner likes your sister, best friend, or the couple down the street. Nor will you ever be concerned about his or her antisocial tendencies relative to alcohol imbibed and conversations had. When you go to a party as a Single Person, you are free to skulk in the corner or flirt with the host, leave early or stay till dawn, as you wish. If you get into an intense philosophical conversation about the relative worth of free range eggs, there is no one over in the corner giving you the high sign, I want to go now. Conversely, you will never be at a company event of your partner's where you must endlessly endure the boss's sexist jokes and the rancid clam dip. If you wander by chance into such an event on your own, you can, without qualm, hightail it out at the first sign of a stale chip.

I have an image of myself in this Single Person's Life. I am, of course, somewhat slimmer than now, mainly because I actually do yoga and actually use my Pilates reformer. I am happy and carefree and entertain a lot in my Single Person's home (using, it must be said, my formerly married person's china and silver). My friends are my family. We actually like each other, which is more than I can say about my family--and therefore holidays spent together are pleasant events, which again is more than I can say about my family.

Yes, this is a fantasy, and I realize that reality does in fact bite. But still, this Single Person's Life is a worthwhile goal, is it not? It's a life in which self-actualization is completely in your control. You are who you are, without any addendum modifying you. And your life, your Single Person's Life, is now an object of desire rather than shame or scorn.

Blog World Expo

I think I'm going. Yes I am. I'm just following my heart on this blogging thing...don't know if it will ultimately make sense, but it sure makes me happy.

Blog World Expo - Home

Food

I rarely write about what I've eaten, unless it's some superior thingie that I made and I've taken photos of it and I'm offering it up in a Martha-ish way. That is not the case with today's post. Today I am standing up in front of the group and saying, My name is Jane and I can't keep my mouth empty. You'll notice I have not used the traditional Twelve Step thingie of admitting to an addiction. That's because I'm not addicted to food. I just use it in a mildly damaging manner as a substitute for whatever else is or is not happening in my life. And don't tell me that's an addiction, because I AM NOT ADDICTED.

Can you tell I have a problem, a slight issue with the whole Twelve Step thingie? This made me tres popular in my Drugs and Addiction classes. It's not that I don't believe in the theories or whatever behind the Twelve Steps; it's that the people I know who participate seem to get, um, addicted to the Twelve Steps. They trade one compulsion for another. Is that such a good thing? Shouldn't a Program be working on getting a person to understand the source of their compulsion?

Take me--for a very good example (please, someone, take me). My compulsion to cram food of any and all sorts into my mouth today was a function of--if I keep that mouth busy, it won't have time to scream. See, that's the source of my compulsion. Now all I have to do is deal with the tiny details in my life that are making me want to scream. Easy peasy....or not, as the case may be.

So: today: I ate: a big fat piece of white layer sheet cake with sprinkles on it, purchased for a mere $2.79 at the local Raley's. The same cake, same sprinkles, is $5.99 at the Nugget, our new holier-than-thou, grander-than-Whole Foods market. Sane cake, same lard frosting, just a tad difference in cost, owing no doubt to I'm not sure what. So--I had that cake for dinner. That's how I justify it. Nine million calories--just another steak and potatoes meal, but without having to cut the meat and digest the potato skins. The cake, rather, is psychologically satisfying because (a) IT'S SWEET, and (b) it's mooshy, so I can squish it between my tongue and the roof of my mouth.

Now I've moved on to itty bitty baby heirloom tomatoes. Much better for me, indeed. And satisfying unto themselves, because they pop and squirt itty bitty tomato seeds into my mouth. An explosion of vegetable glory--and heirloom, as well. Good for the environment, not to mention that organic foods and family farms business.

But the night is young and I'm not done yet. Before I waddle off to bed, I've got some chocolate-cherry soy icecream waiting for me. It's soy, for chrissake. It's healthy. And then there's popcorn in my larder. Did you know that popcorn is the broom of the digestive tract? And, of course, I finish every night with a ritualistic nightcap--glass of milk and piece of chocolate.

Doesn't everyone? Admit it--let he who is without sin cast the first whatever....

Movus Interruptus

...well, it sure as hell wouldn't be coitus now, would it. Seeing as I haven't been near a coit in I don't know how long.

I've got half-filled cartons and a lack of will to finish the job. It's an odd thing that happens to me; or maybe not. Maybe it happens to everyone and no one ever talks about it. When I get out of my comfort zone, I become very uncomfortable. Discombobulated, one would say. I actually have a hard time feeling myself, and certainly I can't tell what I want or don't want. Beyond, let's say, the corned beef sandwich, rather than the borscht and sour cream.

Does this make any sense? No? Of course not. The disparate thoughts are united only by proximity in my brain. That is, I was in LA and out of my comfort zone. That I was breathing was merely a function of my autonomic nervous system (or is it the central? I get them mixed up). I am trying to describe what it feels like to be, as I say, discombobulated. It is as if I am plodding through some murky cherry jello. No, not cherry; lime perhaps. And it's jello before it has set up, when it's still mostly watery with just a bit of the jel beginning. I am able to keep on keepin' on because my brain is telling my legs to move. And I am not totally without decision-making powers in that I can order from a firm preference the corned beef on rye at Canter's Deli. And eat it, the whole thing, more bread and meat than I am used to consuming at one meal. But it goes down because I cannot feel myself and so I don't know that I am full. Until afterwards, when I am in great pain from a severely distended stomach. Not to mention great shame from having Gorged on The Whole Sandwich (plus a couple of pickles).

This discombobulation is why I don't get out a lot. I'm much better spending my days and evenings alone. Even though I say I'm not. Even though intellectually I know it's not such a good thing for a person to be alone so much. But you know, it's safer. I don't discombobulate myself. Other people do it to me.

So movus interruptus, according to the dictionary definition, is when a person says they're moving, buys moving boxes, puts things into those boxes, and then loses the will. Was it anything specific that happened when I was in LA? On my fact-finding trip (my recce, as the Brits call it)? Well, perhaps. Let me just vomit it all out there and you try and make sense of it. Or not, as the case may be.

I stayed with my friend M. She lives in the house next door to my old house. Was it weird being next to my old house and it not being my house? One would think so, wouldn't one? But I felt nothing. Nada. Zip. Is this because I am so over that house. Or is it that my feelings are such that I cannot allow them even an breath of life? I don't know. Either one is pefectly plausible and therapeutically correct, at least in terms of an analysis.

M's house is similar to the state of my house when I lived in it. Late 1920s, Spanish bungalows. Cute. Not without charm. Crumbling infrastructure. I walked around making judgment after judgment about peeling paint, jerry-rigged plumbing, sad floors. M's animals are geriatric as well, which may have something to do with the sadness. Making do.

I went to see the apartment I'd hoped to rent. It was a box with windows that faced interior walls. It smelled like a bar at 9 a.m. the morning after, in the days when we could still smoke in bars. The complex was built in the 1970s, and upgraded last year. But there's just so much you can do changing out a granite slab for formica. If you watch any of the Flip My House programs, you know what can be done on the cheap. I couldn't live there.

I packed to come home in two minutes. I drove the 300 plus miles in six hours. I am breathing again. I can feel myself. I am home. Amid the boxes.

MidLifeBloggers.com: Want to Write For Us????

It's finally up, the never-definitive, ever-almost ready guide to

Writing for MidLifeBloggers.com: A How-to, Why, & When, etc. etc.

If you're a midlifeblogger and you want to write for us, this is what you need to do....Go look!

The Newly Single Woman Starts Over Again

So I've been to LA--tra la! tra la! Here's what I found:

• When I wake up in the early morning--or late night--with panicked thoughts about my life, I need to PAY ATTENTION. There is a difference between taking risks and conquering fear and going askew from where I'm best meant to be. In other words, I'm stepping on the brakes, pulling on the reins and sliding to a gravel-spinning stop with this move of mine. What I found in LA is that I'm trying to do it too fast.
• Like it or not, living in a brand new place has ruined me for going back to living in whatever. I need my clean, spacious shower, my nice kitchen, my high ceilings. I can't bear cracked tile, crumbly gray grout, make-do bathroom fixtures. Consequently, I can't just pick any old place and move in. I'm old enough that I need what I need, and if I have to wait a while to get it, then so be it.
  

This thing of being in midlife and starting all over again is "interesting." Fill in the blank for what the word may mean. Actually, it changes depending on the day, time, and situation. So I'm going to chronicle it here...because that's what I always have done with my life, write about it, and because it may be helpful to others who woke up one day in midlife and found the rug pulled from under them and the floor beneath not too firm. I'll write it as it happens--and if you want to know anything, just ask.....

letter from LA

A Warning...

So I have been less than attentive this past weekend for which I do humbly apologize and warn you that there is probably more of this to come. August is here. I am packing. By. Myself. And. Freaking.

When I freak, I tend to hide. Curl up in a proverbial ball and shut my proverbial eyes. If I can't see the world, then the world can't see me. Right?

But I don't have that luxury this time. I must keep moving because I am packing. By. Myself. And anticipating moving. By. Myself.

Yes, yes, yes, I know. It's the anticipation that will get you everytime. Gotta stay in the moment, in real time, here and now. Do this today. Do that tomorrow. Day after tomorrow will be what it will be whenever it comes.

And breathe. Also a good idea.

My yardsale was relatively successful in that I (a) made some money, and (b) got rid of some stuff I wanted to get rid of. The rest of it I'm shit-canning.

Molly is at Betty's getting beautified. We're going to LA tomorrow. Getting my hairs cut on Wednesday morning. Going to CGI to hammer down the internship position on Wednesday afternoon. Seeing a place or two to rent on Thursday. Further ahead than that I cannot go....

MidLifeBloggers Bling

If you join MidLifeBloggers and you write for us, you get to put this on your blog.

Public Service Announcement

It is eleven forty-one--do you know where your children are? This chillin' is off to bed....

Thoughts on the Relativity of Relatives

I have to say that these days I'm finding blood is not thicker than water. That is, the people who are getting and giving me the most these days are not at all related to me. And those who are, by contrast, the most heartless in their abject indifference are.

Nashville Star vs American Idol - The Judges

Here's the difference: Nashville Star, the judges are Serious with a capital S about critiquing the singers. America Idol, it's pretty much a joke, as we all know. The three judges on Nashville Star--Jeffrey Steele, John Rich, and Jewel--are working hard; they are not just stage dressing (that would be Billie Ray Cyrus). They're coming up with thoughtful, articulate, professional critiques of the particular performance and the singer generally. There's a sense, particularly with the two guys, that they see themselves as gatekeepers to Nashville; they don't want anyone in who doesn't really belong in the Country genre. That makes the show a real learning experience for the singers and for the audience, which adds a dimension that American Idol, with only one serious judge, can't achieve. The numbers are down on AI and I wonder if it's that it's become so very predictable. Who cares what Randy and Paula have to say since they don't ever say anything of substance. They've been coasting on cute and cute gets boring after a while.

A Funny Thing Happened On My Way to a PhD

This was written as a guest post for my friend, Nina, of ReaderWrites, whose dad died last week.

So the order of the day is to be funny, crack wise, amuse the crowd so they won't get too totally bummed out by the fact that we're all here because of--hushed tones, Addams Family music--A Death In the Family. And wasn't that a novel by James Agee? Or one of the Agee's. It sticks in my mind, halfway there obviously, as are any number of other works of fiction. My mother gave it to me on my thirteenth birthday, along with five or six other classics that she now considered I was old enough to read. Hah!

Like Nina (or perhaps that should, grammatically speaking, be As with Nina), I am a dropout from a PhD program in literature. We are, Nina and I, what's known as ABDs. All But Dissertation, that is, standing between us and the world calling us Doctor. I gave up the ghost long ago, admitted I would never finish that damn thing and thus condemned myself to, if I choose to teach, a lifetime of Freshman Comp classrooms. If you read Nina regularly, you know that that is somewhere south of purgatory. I don't know if Nina will finish hers. She might get a growth spurt in the fall and just go for it. Or maybe not.

I think statistically there are more of us ABDs than there are PhDs. Those of you who are unfamiliar with the hell that is graduate school may wonder why that is. Why don't we just get on with the fucking thing and finish it (words that I believe my dissertation director, not to mention my department chair, said to me often). Well, here's the truth of it: the easy part of getting a PhD is the course work. It's structured. There are assignments and exams and deadlines that Mommy and Daddy Herr Professors are setting for you. You go through term after term, picking your courses, buying your books, going to your classes, doing your readings, writing your papers, taking your exams and counting just how many credits more you need until you are Done With Your Coursework. And when you have amassed the requisite number of credits, you get shoved into the PhD Exam stage.

It varies from department to department and university to university, but suffice to say, it entails reading EVERYTHING written by and about and even tangentially remotely related to your topic. And then you get to write these horrendous exams written by faculty who are still sulking over (a) their career disappointments, (b) their age, (c) the horrendous exams their profs put them through all those years and years and years ago. Sometimes you're lucky enough to be in a department that has Orals, when those same sulky faculty are now quizzing you face to face about why you didn't put this or that arcane point into your exam answers. Or, as did actually happen to me, one of your examiners will fall asleep while you're responding. Oh, and did I mention that the chair of my committee was certifiable? But even so, the PhD exams are a cakewalk compared to what comes next.

The dissertation. It is not, as many of our relatives think "a really long paper," like maybe forty pages instead of a mere twenty. It is a book length original work of research. See that word 'book'--yep, that's what you're writing, a flippin' book. And for this, you are almost totally on your own. No Mommy and Daddy Herr Professors telling you what to do and when to do it. Just you. Alone. No deadlines, except what you set for yourself. And no one really cares if you keep them. Or not. No one cares about this thing that is taking up your whole life. And no one ever will. The point of it is that you've done it. It's the final hoop you must vault through before you get your degree. I faltered at the last step. I tripped on the final jump. And thus I am, forever and a day, ABD. A vast repository of now-useless knowledge about one minute speck in the world of literature.

In Which I Dutifully Account for My Luncheon With Rocco

I had lunch with Rocco Dispirito last week. Yes, I did. Me and Rocco...and a bunch of other BlogHers. Bertolli has three new microwave in the bag how easy is that pasta sauces--see, here they are.


And here is Rocco, who is every bit as cute and hunky and funny and did I mention hunky as he seems on TV. Truth in advertising is that boy.