Why I Write

I am quite sad today. It has been a week since any contact with D. I’m having those moments of abject amazement that after decades living in each other’s pockets, we have come to this. I don’t know how he feels about it, obviously, but I’m assuming he’s okay with it. Doin’ all right. Makin’ out. Whatever.

How do guys do that, turn their backs so completely on a relationship? It happened to me once before, in college. One minute I had a boyfriend and the next he was telling me that he had succeeding in putting me out of his mind. An act of will, to what end I’m not sure. Maybe that summer vacation was beginning. Maybe that I wouldn’t put out. I still remember sitting in the park, at night, on a bench and listening to him say that he’d just made up his mind not to care for me anymore. My mouth is still hanging open at that one.

I’m not writing this for publication, particularly. Maybe I’ll put it on ByJane, probably I will as I’m not uncomfortable revealing the things I do. But I don’t want, as another blogger put it, a pity party. Mostly I’m up, or at least even-keeled. I think when I have to talk about the situation to others, it puts me in a funk of sorts. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend, and though she wasn’t at all nosy, I ended up spending more time with those words about the situation in my head and mouth than was good for me. And last night at knitting, a friend asked how I was doing. She asked out of concern, to be supportive, but what I thought was, I don’t want to have to think about it enough to articulate something reasonable and truthful to someone who is not inside my head. But I did answer her, and maybe that’s why I had a painful dream of D and the situation he has created, and I woke up feeling sad. And now, quite sad.

But this is why I write. Because somehow, after saying all this, I don’t feel so sad anymore. Why is that? Because I've said what I'm feeling, I've communicated my state to the outside world. It's not just holed up on my heart where unspoken, it can fester. It doesn't matter that it's just me and the laptop (and Molly, the faithful dog) here in my office. I 'm writing to people who I know read my words, even if I don't actually know my readers face-to-face.

The meme on BlogRhet asked: Can you point to a stage where you began to feel that your blog might be part of a conversation? Where you might be part of a community of interacting writers? When did that happen for me? In stages, incrementally, often microscopically. First, there were the people I actually had relationships with before blogging, and then came the people I met through blogging. And then people who I've never seen and maybe never will. But they're in my heart and--

--I just realized--they're in my head. They are the people in my head for whom I am "articulat[ing] something reasonable and truthful." And the act of doing so to my blogging community is vital to me. Non-bloggers often assume that what we do is just an on-line journal, and for some that may be. But for me, it goes beyond the bounds of a journal. My journals over the years are so full of woe and pathos, even I can't bear to read some of them. I just spill it all out there, guts on the page, inarticulate, pure emotion.

In fact, I started this post in my journal and you can see by the change in font where I switched to the Blogger post. It was at the point where I realized that I had written myself out of sadness, and set about to figure out why and how. And I recalled the moment, round about the middle of the second paragraph where I made the choice of voice, my voice, the voice of ByJane, which is totally different from that of my journals. It was a deliberate choice, and it signaled my intent to work at articulating what was reasonable and truthful. To write and revise, rework and rethink so that I'm telling all of you what I am feeling right now. Not shouting to myself on some private pages.

Because I am part of a community of bloggers, I know I'm being heard. And that makes me not alone.

Blogito ergo sum....indeed.

The Newly-Single Woman Goes Food Shopping

...and what she buys--well, just have a look.




I spent just about what I always spend at the supermarket, give or take a dollar or two (or ten)(or twenty). But there was a noticeable difference in what I bought. I haven't exactly reached the cat food and powdered milk stage, but I think the perceptive reader can tell there's a change in my larder.

For example, Coke Diet 6-8 oz. Have you seen these 8 oz. cans? They're kinda compressed, sort of midget versions of the real thing. I bought them because I never finish my Cokes, and before I was newly-single they would hang around the refrigerator going flat. And annoying D. Who could drink a 12-pack of Diet Coke in 36 hours.

If you scan both photos, you'll see that there is no meat. NO MEAT! Where's the beef? It's not a meal if there's no meat. Gotta have meat. This was the mantra I lived by before I was newly-single. But now--ha! I get to eat what I want, when I want. Maybe I will eat meat and maybe I won't. My call--tra la la!

There are, of course, the obligatory diet frozen dinners for those evenings when I just don't feel like cooking. Before I was newly-single, those were the nights we ate fast food. My cousin wrote Fast Food Nation, so I know how awful that stuff is for you. Now stocked up as I am with Lean Gourmet Meals, I can get my engineered food and multi-syllabic chemical additives without leaving the comfort of my own home.

Then there's the Nature's Path Organic Optimum Zen cereal. This was an impulse buy, I must confess; I went originally for Cheerio's. But how, in my current situation, could I resist a breakfast food that promised me "a 'Zen' moment, where health, mental balance, spiritual fulfillment come together and you can 'be' the best that you are." I'm really liking that whole mindfulness thing, so why shouldn't my stomach benefit as well.

You can see I bought lots of produce. Grapes and cherries. For me. All for me! And salad stuff and single serving cans of tuna and beans and cantaloupe and my own mini watermelon, which is listed as Org Personal H2O (which the wicked might think was a strange device for pleasuring onesself, but it's merely the supermarket's way of cataloging Very, Very, Very Small Watermelon).

And finally, you'll notice the last two items are digestive-related. A bit close to the cat food model, perhaps, but don't you think that a newly-single woman has earned the right to her heartburn.

Why I Have Not Posted Since Last Week...

...no good reason. Or maybe that should be, no good reason to post. You'll forgive me if my head is somewhere over my left elbow these days, and my scintillating self has gone into retrograde (like Saturn, or is it Jupiter?).

My last post notwithstanding (and what the fuck does that actually mean?), I spent all of Saturday cleaning my house. There is a certain kind of cleaning that I really do enjoy: it's the once in a blue moon, only when I feel like it deep cleaning. Saturday I turned on the TV and Got At The Floors.

First I swept and then I Swiffered and then I Swiffered with wet stuff. I have tile floors that look like something from the Getty Museum (at least, I think so), and they do, as the Brits would say, come up all nice when they're clean. I also Swiffer Carpet Flicked the area rug. Several times, since Molly likes to chomp on her crunchies while lying on the rug, and she will get crumbs, you know.

You might be asking why I didn't just vacuum the whole thing, and that is, of course and indeed, a legitimate question. Particularly since there are several vacuums in the house. But they are Electroluxes, the cannister kind with a long hose and attachments. It isn't that they belong to the former man-of-the-house--which they do and he is a cannister vacuum junkie. It is that I have found in my vast experience with floors that I cannot bear dragging the cannister along like a recalcitrant dog whining at the end of a leash.

Along with my Swiffer activities, I did some redecorating. I had the Home & Garden channel on, so I was inspired I suppose. I rearranged tschokes and pictures, made little arrangements, as they tell you to do, of bullshitty whatnot stuff that I've had lying around for ages. I actually went shopping in my own house for knicknacks. It was fun. I had a good time. I went to bed happy.

But really, when all is said and done, what I was really doing is no more than a cat does when he marks his territory. I was claiming the house as mine and mine alone. Or almost. Maybe.

To Tell The Truth...

...about the bold-faced lies.

5. My athleticism is such that I could be a professional swimmer if only it didn't require my getting wet.
This is my problem with all swimming, be it pool or ocean, mighty flail or dip of toe: it's the wetness factor. I don't like it. Because it's--wet. What can I say? Maybe my mother bathed me too often as a baby. Maybe I was a harpooned whale in another life. Whatever, I avoid it at all costs when it takes place outside the boundaries of my toilette. Even as a child, I wasn't partial to the water. I didn't avoid it then as I do now, but once in, I was never quite sure what to do. Was there any pleasure in mindlessly churning up and down and aisle? Noooooooooooo. So what else was there to do? Once in high school and college, there were some other interesting things to do, provided a person with a penis was present. But beyond that, and now past that, what's the point?

The real lie, however, is in the first clause, the one about my athleticism. Ha! And double ha!

8. I am a neat-freak who would rather clean than do anything else.
Let's put it this way: I feel about cleaning as I do about getting wet. What's the point? The endless, endless monotony of it. O, whine whine mighty whine. Thus, I have cherished several adages told to me by women in the know. My first mother-in-law once said, "Tidy little people have tidy little minds." And my own mother insisted, "I didn't bring my daughters up to be maids." I didn't know what she meant until I realized that most mothers had their daughters doing Saturday morning KP as a regular stint, to teach them how to clean, for chrissakes, to instruct them in the humble but worthy arts of housewifery. Mine didn't.

9. I have been pregnant three times.
With laughter, as my mother would say. But not with baby, fetus, or even a lowly zygote. I've written about this before. It wasn't intentional and I do keep my eye on those oldest mom in the world stories. I've still got some time to go, I figure, if the upper limit is 6o-something. But to date, no: never had a bun in the oven.

So there you have it, the truth about my bold-faced lies. Ten tales, only four are false. That leaves 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, and 11 as the truth. The facts, m'am (and you sirs as well), just the facts.....

I Feel Sleepy, Very Sleepy, So Slee--

I'm fine as long as I'm upright, but the moment I sit at the computer, I begin to sink into the chair and drone into some slllllloooooooooowwww alpha state. I'm trying to do stuff, to get things done, to achieve and make much of my life, but I feel sleepy, so sleepy--!

This morning on my long walk with Molly, I saw a huge white rabbit, complete with big, perky ears. I did a double take. To see a hare on my walk, or ducks, geese, edible birds of all sort is not unusual. But a white rabbit? The Easter Bunny? And it was --did I mention this--huge. I know I saw it, but my life is such that maybe I didn't. Or maybe it was my father come down to beat the shit out of D for abandoning his little girl. You can see where my mind is these days.

Speaking of my father (yes, the emparadised one), did I ever tell you that I carry a picture of him in the console of my car? Sort of like a photographic St. Christopher. Yesterday I took it out--because I was stuffing yet another gas receipt in the console--and put it in my Date Book, which I was carrying to my appointment with the lawyer. What do you think of them apples, Harold Darling, I asked him. He didn't answer, but I can tell he isn't pleased.

The response to my Meme in Quarter Time was so fantastic that I've had to forego the prizes, since there were so many I couldn't possibly choose. I will now, however, begin the backstories. Don't know how far I'll get today, because remember that I feel sooooo sleeeeeepy. So maybe I'll just get the Bold-faced Lies out of the way to begin with:

4. I love Progressive Jazz.
Wrong. I hate Progressive Jazz. It is the only kind of music I have absolutely no tolerance for. Rap, yes. Country/western, certainly. Rock, pop, folk, and classical--yep, yep, yep, and yep. Progressive Jazz--nope. It's just noise to me. I get that there are improvisations and trills and drills and recurring whatevers, but that's all intellectual as far as I'm concerned. Maybe I'm not smart enough. That has occurred to me, since my sense is that Progressive Jazz is the province
of intellectuals. If so, call me dumb; or call me someone who needs more melody, more heart, more emotion in her music.

Two Weddings, Two Divorces

The first time I got married, I wasn't exactly blushing, but I certainly marched down the aisle in full regalia. I was married at Heinz Chapel, which is an 18th century reproduction of a 16th century church in Europe, somewhere. It's got gorgeous stained windows, six feet high, depicting what I can't quite remember, but it seems to me that blue, deep dark blue is the prominent color. You'll forgive me for my sketchiness of details: it was a long time ago and I was really just a girl then, full of hope and dreams and fantasies about what my marriage would be. That it wasn't could have been predicted at the moment, but how was I to know that.

The second time I got married, it was in my parents living room. My sister played me in to Here Comes The Bride on my dad's electric organ, and the only people present were those family members who were my nearest and dearest. I wore an elegant silk suit in a champagne color, size 7 if you please. We drove to Oregon to honeymoon, and perhaps the result of that marriage might have been predicted by the sight that greeted me the first morning: dead moose heads in various stages of decomposition jammed on fence posts.

I thought of the difference between my two weddings this morning when I sat in the lawyer's office and listened to her tell me the drill. It didn't sound familiar, even though I must have gone through it once before. I couldn't figure out why and then I thought of how Marriage Number One came to an end: not with a bang, but a whimper. I left the marriage but didn't divorce until some, oh, say, about ten years later when a friend who was a lawyer could not stand it anymore and prepared all the papers for me. All I had to do was show up in the court room and respond to the judge's "is-it-true-that-irreconcilable-differences" spiel in the affirmative.

This time promises to be somewhat different. I really will have to be engaged in the process, which is ironic considering that in #1, I engineered the breakup, and now in #2, I haven't. Another irony: big fancy wedding>puny little divorce; puny little wedding>big fancy divorce. I'm not sure what, if anything, to make of that.

Ten Bold-Faced Lies, a meme in quarter time

Karen, formerly of Troll Baby now renamed Vodkarella, has a meme going that appeals to me, for various reasons. She's created a list of ten personal statements, some of which are true and some of which are bold-faced lies, i.e., patently untrue, that is, without verisimilitude. She's asking people to guess which are the true and which are the false. Every couple of days, she writes the backstory of one of the truths. And she seems to be awarding some sort of prizes, which seem to be some sort of YouTube hit, but I could be wrong about that. Whatever. I came in the middle of the contest, just enough time to steal it for my own (in the writing biz, this may be called collaboration). I like the idea because it is (a) interactive (which they say is just a down home bonus for all blogs), and (b) it gives me something to write about other than the sorry state of my affairs.

So--here are my ten statements, some true, some not. Which are which? You can answer in comments, or email me (my email is somewhere on this site, isn't it?????). I will find something suitable with which to award the winners. And I will be posting the back-stories as the contest progresses (and even if it doesn't--so there!)

1. I won a date with a famous pop star when I was in high school.
2. I have never been a blonde.
3. After three years of high school I went to college, and after three years there, I was asked to leave
4. I love Progressive Jazz.
5. My athleticism is such that I could be a professional swimmer if only it didn't require my getting wet.
6. I once peed in my pants in the street in New Barnet, Herts.
7. The name I go by now is not the name I used to go by, but it is the name I went by once.
8. I am a neat-freak who would rather clean than do almost anything else.
9. I have been pregnant three times.
10. In sixth grade, I was named Miss Irresponsibility and held the record for being paddled more than any other student, female or male.

If You're Lucky, You May Get This For Christmas...

...or even if you're not. It's my latest foray into felting, this time Dry-Felting, nay, Needle-Felting. Bet you didn't know there are so many different kinds of felting. Bet some of you don't even know what felting is...poor schmucks.

When I was a kid, my older cousin Ernest (who fit his name quite well) was given a kit for making enameled jewelry. There were various pieces of copper onto which Ernie placed--I don't know, what would it be, glass shards? powdered glass? He then fired it up in his little kiln. And toute suite, out came a piece of jewelry. Which he gave as gifts to everyone in the family, cousins, aunts, uncles, you name it. The first time, it was quite a treat. Ooooh Ernie, so beautiful, thank you so much. By the third and fourth and fifth and sixth holiday season, we were groaning when we saw him lumbering up the front walk, hauling a bulky bag of oddly-wrapped gifts, like some moon-faced, Jewish Santa visiting the shetl. Oooo Ernie, you shouldn't have.....

I will try not to be an Ernie with my felting, but I am sooooooo in love with the process. And you know how few are my pleasures these days....

Don't Slam The Door....

So here I am in my newly-emptied house. It's not really empty. Just the clothes and the books and the paintings and the man are gone.

For the past few days, he has been filling the SUV, newly registered in his name, with stuff. The garage, which we had specially fitted-out so it could be his studio, took the longest time. And made the smallest dent in my perception. But then, sometime yesterday or maybe the night before, I started to notice. A favorite painting that I sort of considered 'mine' was gone. And his clothes--there are few things sadder, it seems to me, than a closetfull of empty hangers. Of course, the good news is that I will probably never have to buy plastic hangers again, so many do I now have as spares.

Paintings off the walls and some transportable furniture left bare places that I couldn't leave alone. So I went trolling through my side of the garage and found a painting that I had done when I was about sixteen to hang where one of his had been. I quite like the painting; it's an abstract that I did in my aunt's studio one night while the grownups were talking 'round the table. It doesn't really fill the space, but it's better than blank wall, until I decide what I really do want there. And one of the Mission rockers that I bought at an auction in PA, that I put where his huge upholstered Bishop's chair had been. It's too small as well, but it will do the job. That all went out yesterday, and truth to tell, I felt quite sad all evening.

Today, he packed up his computer. But not before I undertook the Herculean task of deleting all of my files and programs. We shared that computer for a number of years and unwrapping my life on the hard drive from his was probably harder than the legal separation of property will be.
This is all so new and mostly, I don't know what to make of it. When I think of the reality of what's happening, I'm astonished, aghast, appalled. How can this be? How is it that in the space of what, six weeks, life as I knew it and expected it to be has been erased?

Still, I can't say I'm suffering mightily. I'm shocked and hurt and disappointed and mad--hey, I'm a candidate for the stages of mourning, aren't I! Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, writ large. But I'm sleeping well, and my appetite isn't off. And I'm exercising--yes, yes, yes--on my new Pilates Reformer, so tomorrow is another day, etc. etc. etc.

Actually, Molly is the one that I feel the most for. So much of her life was spent with him. They had routines that she won't have with me. I won't be taking her to Starbucks every morning and sharing my scone with her. Nor will she accompany me on trips hither and yon, although I do have her carseat (yes, Molly has a car seat, of course) in my car. But they used to spend some good portion of the day driving. And if he was in the garage painting, she was there with him. She doesn't understand what's going on. All she knows is, something's wrong with my people. Today I sat on the sofa with her after he had driven off and she scrunched herself up small, shoved her head under my hip and jammed the rest of her body as close to mine as she could get. I think she would have gotten inside me if she could. And then she'd be sure that I too wouldn't leave her.

I'm in Exalted Company, Lucky Me

Last week when I was at my dentist's in LA (yes, darling, of course I go to B.Hills for my dental work), I told him about the demise of my marriage. He was appalled. Chagrined. And sympathetic. And then he muttered something about it happening all over. I didn't question him--because his hands were in my mouth, for god's sake--but I wondered. And now I'm wondering no more. All is clear as headline after headline hits the tabs about famous couples breaking up.

Larry and Laurie David, 20+ years. Anthony and Corina Villaraigosa, 20+ years. Dermot Mulroney and Katherine Keener, 17 years.

Is there something in the air? It's a pretty big deal, it seems to me, when couples split after such a long time together. Your lives are so intertwined. You get the same jokes. You know where to tread lightly and where not to go at all. You live overlapping lives, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad and sometimes just plain blah. But just how irreconcilable must differences be in order to warrant creating the cataclysm of divorce after decades together?

Still, my second or third thought after hearing about these splits was--hey, these guys are now available. Not that I find the notion of dating at all, AT ALL, appealing. When D and I first married, I said, this is it. If this doesn't work, I'm done with the whole man thing. But still, I quite fancy the idea of having dinner with Larry David.

And then there's Paul McCartney, he's on the block as well. I always was a big Paul fan.....

Camp Knitque for Girl Crafters....

This is what I did on my summer vacation. Well, on Saturday, actually. Under the pine trees in Elk Grove, I learned to dry felt (or was it wet felt?), which sounds like something I might have done in junior high, but certainly not now that I'm a lady all growed up.

It's a scarf, in case you can't tell. It's roving on silk chiffon with strands of a novelty yarn sandwiched in. I'm not sure whether I'd wear it, but I sure loved making it.

So Where Have I Been...?

You know where I've been, nowhere, that's where. Or rather, right here--but more specifically, on Twitter. If you want to know where I've been and what I'm doing, follow me at Twitter.

Twitter is my new best friend, my sole companion, my TV-watching and newspaper-reading buddy. Last night I saw the Tonys, by myself of course. But my bon mots were not lost on the world because I was able to Twitter them. If I had had to keep my opinions to myself, I would have been so sad. But I didn't, and I didn't. I commented on Marsha Mason's girnormous weight gain and the puerility of the Mary Poppins revival, among other things. That this satisfied me is testimony to the fact that what we human beings (and maybe dogs as well) need the most is to feel that we're being heard. And Twitter allows, nay enables that.

Here's another thing that Twitter does: it connects me to specific people in the world. Some I know; some I've only met through Twitter. But I know what they're doing. And how they're feeling. It's a connection that is meaningless, but incredibly valuable to me. And if that's an oxymoron, so be it.

The Wandering Minstrel Boy Returns....

...and not to a hero's welcome, obviously. I've got my ears plugged up with my Ipod buds (thank you, Steve Jobs) and I'm doing my best to maintain the illusion that I'm alone. This was the resulting dialogue:

D: So, that's the way it's going to be from now on? You're doing vengence.

J: No, I'm doing self-protection.

And it's true. I am not into the vengence trip. It is exhausting and so non-productive. I just don't care enough, I guess. But it does interest me that he would assume the starring role in this little play.

So What's New?

I've spent the better part of the day mewling and puking on the nets, checking my email, reading blogs, rechecking my email, reading more blogs, rechecking my email--. You get the point, don't you.

That was the portion of the day when I was not telling D that I wanted him out, out, out.

I can hear a collective gasp. But really, those of you who are careful readers must have know this was coming.

I want him out because he (1) doesn't want to be married any more, and (2) wants to move to Oregon. I'm not sure how those things are related, but this is a guy that has never really been alone, so I'm willing to bet he's got some close personal friend waiting for him up there. Whatever.

He announced this, apropos of nothing, about a month ago. I've been sitting on it and with it since then. The whole thing is a mystery to me, and it's not like I'm an ostrich when it comes to things psychodynamic. He seems incapable of or unwilling to offer any rational explanation. He can't even come up with a dramatic one that I could make some money off in Nashville.

So here I am, "ahem"-years old, married for almost two decades and, hey world, welcome me back.

A Dollar Late and A Day Short--or is it the other way around?

And what the fuck does it mean anyway?

Ne'er mind: tis only my cute way of explaining why this post about How I Spent Saturday Night in LA is not being written until the following Wednesday. And, no, it is not because it took me that long to recover. Smart Ass. Kevin, I'm looking at you.

I went to a party. In the Hollywood Hills. Whoohoo! It was at the end of Woodrow Wilson Drive. Does anyone know how long and windy WW Drive is? And how the houses are set back and up. Up, as in 180 degrees (is that possible, I'm a little weak on numbers) with a switchback or two included for good measure. When I saw the walk up, I took off my party shoes and flipflopped my way up the hill. Stopping only once or twice to gasp, loaded down as I was with wine bottles. Having left the chips and dip in the car because, well, because I was on my own, having neither mate nor sherpa to carry the goods.

It was the first annual LA Bloggers party. There is a nifty badge but I've decided that this is to be an unillustrated post. Since I didn't take my camera (what--I should carry that too????) and it didn't occur to me to whip out my Treo. But if you want to see the full monty and beyond, go to LA Daddy, who organized the do. Or Sueb0b, who was there adding to the Red Stapler archives.

I have whined on this site about how lonely the lot of the blogger is. It's a hard, cruel world where your friends and family not only don't understand you--"you blog? what does that mean exactly? But they shun you as well--I don't want to communicate with you along with the masses. Thus, you can imagine the joy of being at a party where almost every single solitary person (and those not so solitary) had blogs. Some even had several (I did notice that there was a tendency among male bloggers to go for size assessments, as in I have five blogs....well, I have ten).

Sueb0b and I fell on each other, having met at BlogHer last year. But other than her/she (and I claim to be an English person?), I knew no one. But the bloggers, we are a friendly group and I felt a member of the crowd in no time. Even if I was only tangentially from LA...in my heart...at least for a while. I highfived with Sinking into the Pacific and Down With Pants. Exchanged tales of being a daughter with Tara Met Blog. Envied, envied, envied the incredibly flat abs of Baby on Bored. And the bump of LA Mommy. And not House of Prince who had to head for the head to pump.

And then the everglorious LeahPeah arrived, with the trusty Joe by her side, bearing my BonPron, which I promptly put on, causing all sorts of people to say, after talking to me for a while, "is that an apron you're wearing?" Yes, and a bonnet, as well. I traded her my Two Sticks Cammie Bag for it at her Trade a Craft site.

Sueb0b and I crawled down the hill together, leaving Sweatpants Mom and company to crouch by the fire and lollygag in the hot tub without us. If you want to get a really creative version of the evening, go to the above-mentioned Kevin Charnas, whose partner Will's nametag said it all: Blog Widow.

I know I've left people out, but my fingers are getting cramped and I'm getting a bit bored with this list. So if you're not here, and I met you and love you--I'll be visiting your site soon to comment.

S'all, folks...

Blogito Ergo Sum, redux

For those of you who have faithfully followed my every post, yes, you have already read this. But I'm reposting it because (a) I'm going to use it as the "About Me" on this blog, (b) it is still so very, very true not to mention heartfelt, and (c) hot damn, it's good. Oh, a nb: my knitting group was merciless when they read this, so I've already taken all the stick they have to give.

Blogito Ergo Sum: I take this as my honi soit, to be hoisted on the masts and engraved on the crest. Or at least heat-stamped on a T-shirt. I had planned a rather humorous, lighthearted disquisition on this topic, but some serious thoughts keep pushing their heavy-handed way in. So bear with me, and maybe we'll get to the yucks later. Or maybe not.

I've always been a smart chick (too smart for your own good, missy, some would say) and a mouthy one as well. I have a showy kind of intelligence, the sort that ranges wide but doesn't settle particularly well. As my dissertation director once said to me, "You are good at synthesizing a broad amount of information; you are not good at digging into one particular point to follow it to it's end." Basically, what she was saying was: you're terrific in a class where you see the connections among the works; you're lousy at writing a dissertation. And she was right. As, obviously, my continued status as an ABD (All But Dissertation completed for the Ph.D) will attest.

Having given up on academia, however, I am left somewhat bereft. There is no place to settle the huge respository of [useless] information that one acquires while doing a lit PhD. No one gets my allusions. There are times, it might even be said, when no one knows what I'm talking about. The other night, for example, I sat at my Wednesday night knitting group at Knitique Yarn Shop, and noticed a hand-lettered sign that had a missing hyphen. I felt compelled to inform all and sundry about the missing hyphen and exactly how it altered the meaning of the sign. Around the table were the faces of my friends, looking at me, with that expectant look that signals someone hopes you'll start making sense soon, but for now you're speaking gibberish. Which is fine, and appropriate for that setting, yet it make me long for the times when three or four grad students would have gotten their teeth into that hyphen and argued it until it's head whipped off. I miss that. It's a part of me that is almost never tapped these days.

This morning while brushing my teeth and reading O Magazine (there are few places in which I don't read), I was reading the list of Zoe Heller's favorite books and Amy Bloom's article on poetry, and I felt quite keenly the absence in my life of people with whom I could talk about such things (and if you don't think I'm an unrepetent grad student, check all those prepositions that come rolling off my tongue in exactly their proper place). It's not that my friends don't read. Some of them do (and some don't, it must be said, which to me is unimaginable but I love them anyway). It's that no one reads a book like a literature grad student, with the full play of the critical conversation, past and present, weighing in. I miss that. I miss the intellectual wrangling that is the academic arena.

I have tried to fill these gaps with what would seem to be similar activities. In LA, I was a member of a bookclub. We met monthly to eat, drink, schmooze, and talk about the book. I think at first they liked having me there, because I more or less taught whatever book we were reading. But then I think that they got tired of me pushing far deeper into the work than they wanted to go, and I got tired of them thinking that "I liked it...It sucks...This would never happen in real life....I hated the main character" sufficed as literary criticism.

In LA I was a grad student again, this time in psychology. That wasn't such a far stretch from my lit studies, as one of the areas of criticism with which I dealt was psychoanalytic literary theory. However, psychoanalytic literary theory and psychoanalytic theory are different beasts, it would seem. Lacan never figured in our class lectures or discussion. The French Feminists? Do they have to do with fashion?

So there I am, with this rich inner life, that gets very short shrift in the outside world. Except here. On By Jane. Here I am free to expound and explicate and elucidate at will. Here, I am free to be me, all of me, not just the comprehensible bits. Thus, for Descartes, it was cogito ergo sum. But for me, it is blogito ergo sum--I blog, therefore I am.

Redecorating and all....

I'm in the middle of a spring clean, a massive redo of this blog. Some of which you'll see already. Feel free to offer opinions. As in,

• Whaddya think of the feed from my Google Reader?
• And the type face--too big? too little?
• How about all that stuff floating around at the bottom? It's the technical stuff, like my Creative Commons license (not that I really know what that means to me) and my Site Meter. I'd like it out of the way, but it's soooo big-- the font, I mean.
  

I'm going to start actually fiddling with the template--ooooohhh, am I bold or what? Or stupid, maybe. But I can't resist. I would much prefer it if I could just reach into this machine with my hands and move things around, but I'll settle for template-fiddling.

This is a character trait--or flaw, call it what you will--of mine. That I can't leave well enough alone. I have to fiddle. Even when danger lurks. Even when I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. As is the case here.

Tasting the Wines

Last night I went to a wine tasting. Such is the state of where I live that the wine tasting was held at the supermarket. Now before you get all snotty and superior, let me tell you that this particular Raley's is a ginormous market with its very own drugstore, post office, and organic/natural foods department. (It is the latter that actually, I believe, spelled doom to the Elk Grove Natural Food Co-op. It is so much more convenient if you can buy your organic produce and your Twinkies at the same place, isn't it.)

The wine tastings are from 5:30 to 7:30. I got there at 5. Not that I was eager for the wine, but more than I had to get out of the house (the night before I went to see Shrek, but that is another story). I bought myself some sushi and the latest issue of US magazine and settled down at a table to nourish my mind and my body. I was only half way through my tuna and a few pages into US when the tasting began.

The wines were Kendall-Jackson. I have no idea whether that is good or not, because I know jack about wines. Which is why I went to the wine tasting in the first place. I want to learn about wines. I want to develop a palate. I want to see if I have a palate in the first place. Thus, I am putting myself forward at every opportunity as a wine weenie, and asking--nay, begging--for help.

Last night that help came in the form of a cheat sheet the winery had at the ready, spelling out in black and white exactly what notes and tones and other foo-fah descriptors ascribed to the particular wine. The first wine I tasted was a Syrah, "heavy-bodied and chewy with black cherry, currant, jammy, spice and tobacco tones." It tasted nice. I liked it.

The second wine I had was the Merlot, "medium-to-heavy-bodied, smooth-finishing with black cherry, plum, raspberry and chocolate notes." It was not so nice. I didn't like it much. It made my mouth pucker at the end.

The third wine was a Zinfandel, "medium-to heavy-bodied with blackberry, raspberry, black pepper and smoke tones with a spicy finish." I got the smoke tones. I think.

Then I had another Syrah, to see how it compared after the Merlot and Zin, but this time it didn't seem so nice. I didn't like it. Perhaps it's a one-glass wine, you know, like a one-date guy. Or maybe one isn't supposed to be mixing all those wines at one sitting. But then, why would they have wine tastings in the first place???

Then I moved to the whites. There were two chardonnays, one by K-J, and the other by an all female winery. No cheat sheets accompanied these, but--hallelujah!--I could taste the fruit in the KJ chardonnay. Peaches, I think. Or maybe apricot. I've never been a white wine person, but maybe I secretly am. Perhaps my palate is a white wine palate. The other chardonnay, what I refer to as the feminist chardonnay (LaCrema, I think) was not, I regret to tell you so nice. I got no notes or tones, just a massive mouth pucker. That made me sad, as I so wanted to be supportive.

Then I went home. With a nice buzz on.

Detritus, not Detrius

One of the final lessons my father gave me, when I saw him for what would be the last time and he was in a hospital bed, was that the word detritus is not pronounced det-tri-us. The emphasis is on the first syllable, which is a long e, as in weed, not a short e, as in eh, whatever. The second syllable is try, as in attempt, not tree as in the oaks and pines. And there's a t at the last syllable. De'-tri-tus. It annoyed him that I never pronounced it correctly, and my father annoyed was quite imposing, even when flat on his bed and at death's door.

It's a good thing that I now pronounce the word correctly, because this morning I have, once again, been dealing with the detritus of my father's life. I have before me just one of the credit card slips he saved: a gas purchase at Hong Ki Han's Arco station in Lomita, CA. He got 10.7 gallons, for which he paid $6.30.

Following Fussy's example, I have been throwing this stuff out. She is shredding her father's papers, but mine has been dead well over ten years, so I don't think there's a danger of identity theft. Is there? I've tried to be firm and analytic about what to save. But I have to save some of it, because I am, after all, my father's daughter.

So I've saved his Cabrillo Beach Museum docent's patch, because it reminds me of his frequent attempts to do the dance of the whales. I saved some index cards on which he wrote things. My father was an inveterate writer of notes and he was extemely frugal with paper. Some of the index cards have been cut in half, because then you get two for one. I've thrown the ones on which he wrote shopping lists and designed castings or created on paper one of his many bricalages out, but there's a couple where I think he may have been writing a poem. I saved the letters he wrote to my mom before I was born, but I didn't read them because she once told me not to and I am, as ever, a dutiful daughter.

This is what I'm doing today, slowly but surely winnowing down the detritus of my life....

It's One of Those Days...

...you know, the kind where not much gets done and what does is totally unsatisfactory or unsatisfying, whichever of the two you need. I've spent much of today getting up and sitting down, walking into other rooms, walking out again, coming back to my desk and sitting down and then getting up again. You can tell by this blog entry that I'm having one of those days, can't you.

D got back from Oregon last night. He spent the week wandering around Grant's Pass, seeing if he could fantasize himself into a life up there. Sorta, he thinks. Kinda. But he's not really sure.

I, on the other hand, have no intention of moving to Oregon. Perhaps, you might say, that accounts for it being One Of Those Days. And, of course, you'd be right, as you always are.

It's also one of those days when I feel overwhelmed with my Stuff--the detritus of my life. I would probably feel better if I threw some things out. That's what I'll do. Right now--.