Mellow Drama

Healer: Mom Part One

2012-01-23T10:00:00.000-08:00

My Mom celebrated a milestoney birthday last week and, healthy, happy (or insert whatever odious vocabulary for people describing a person approaching the winter of their lives in reasonably good shape, like "spry" - give me a BREAK) and exquisitely nearly universally loved as she is, I'm having some trouble with the whole aging-parent thing. In Facebook I described it thusleh: "I'm finally seeing my old friend Time for the thief he is, and doing my best not to beg him against all sense to spare my Mama."

I'm writing some stuff and sending it to her, along with multiple silly gifts, like footie socks (NOT the ankle length because they pinch, you see). To deal with my grief at the sudden realization that my time with her has an ending, and to let her know what happens when you don't let your daughter make a fuss with streamers and many people and cake. This thing I wrote went along with a donation to the organization she works for - Life Services. Think Planned Parenthood for fundies - they bring in young ladies and men with STIs or unplanned pregnancies and direct them to care, house them if their home life has broken down and facilitate adoptions. What they don't do is anything - anything - related to contraception. You won't walk out of there with a sample bag of condoms, is what I'm saying. But the deal is that when I rail against the sign-wavers trying to skew politics away from a woman's right to choose, one of my problems with them is that what's THEIR strategy for dealing with what would be an enormous influx of childbirths and dependents if abortion is abolished? The people Mom works with are some of the ones actually trying to help, their way. Mom herself gives exams (she's a nurse practitioner), prescribes meds, counsels and prays with them.

She came to Seattle to study male exams - the clinic wanted to be able to treat boys, but none of the other NPs would do the exams, delicate creatures. At Harborview Mom saw many man parts, and on her last day of training found herself holding and crying with a gentleman who got news of his positive diagnosis for AIDS from her mouth. She came home from that day profoundly changed, and wept with me in her turn for her brokenhearted patient. My understanding of my Mother's depth of spirit was likewise rocked for all time. So I gritted my teeth, suspended my own ideologies, as she has hers for love of me, many times, for a minute and made the donation (I donated double to PP to salve my conscience) and wrote this for my Ma:

I think of the hundreds – it must be thousands – of young women and men that you’ve seen at Life Services, and wonder how many you individually remember. Probably doubly that of the average human memory, for yours is nothing short of astounding, how much random information about people you pack in there.

Who do you remember the most? The ones who cry? The brave, smiley ones? The pretty ones who just got a big bad surprise about how much their boyfriend really cares about them? The angry ones? The ones with pimples and terrible hair who you can tell never felt valued at all? The meek ones who stare at the floor and twist their fingers? I’ll bet the meek ones – you’re such a sucker for the scaredy-cats of the world. And the boys…you must get the contrite, the wrathful, the sullen, the frightened – the odd cooperative good guy. You must sit through oceans of awkward silence.

Most of them must be so scared. They’ve found disease, at the beginning of their lives, that they’ll never be able to wash (or wish) away. You’re visited by baby girls who’ve found out that they’re going to have a baby – they’ll become Mother before the Woman in them ever got a chance to wake up on her own. I’ll bet in so many cases you’re the first really good Mother (they wouldn’t know it, because you’re MY mom and only Nathan and me really get how amazing you are) they’ve ever seen. And you have them for so little time. Half an hour, maybe? You must have had some who were abandoned by their support systems when the news came out. I wonder what you must say to someone who has lost everyone else in the gaining of their new little one.

I’ve thought about the humiliation endured already by your patients. You must see victims of abuse. You must have the terrible job of examining victims of abuse, which must be another kind of hell for them. I wonder if you’re the first person who has touched them with care, and love. Dignity. You speak to the most embarrassed of all humans – teens – about the most embarrassing topics known to anyone. I’ll bet you’re the first person to have The Talk with some of these kiddos – overdue by years and years. I’ve heard you discussing difficult topics with people – the death of their loved ones, their own imminent passing, talking people gently through their own physical conundrums when they didn’t understand their own doctors or don’t have one, confronting, sympathizing, challenging, questioning, and most of all comforting, comforting, comforting. You’ve got to be one of the most well-suited people on the planet to have around when kids at your clinic need a listening ear. You must weep for them. With them, sometimes, maybe. I’ll bet on that one, too. Maybe you’re the first adult they’ve seen cry for the pain they keep in their hearts.

When I summarize from my own imagination all that you must see to, person to person, you embody that which these young people should have had already. They should have had attentive parents, who watched them, knew their habits, knew what they loved and hated, what made them laugh or feel bad. What kind of people they got along with, and who bedeviled them. They should have had a woman nearby to teach them about their bodies – how things work, how things feel, what to expect, and what to do when things go wrong. They should have had a host of adults around making them feel safe, listening to them, interested in them, honest with them and treasuring their honesty in return. They should have grown up knowing that they could and would do the right thing, and that their family and friends would love and respect them when they didn’t, no matter what. You see the paupers who should have been millionaires. You get wan, squashed dandelions who should have lived like your roses, drowning in love.

Your dandelions don’t know what I know. In the tiny moment they have with you, they have You – all of you – Healer, Friend, Confidante, Guide, Teacher, Mother. For that moment they have the love and regard of a truly brilliant woman who would give her life for them; who would, if you could, turn back time and give them the lifetime of love that they deserve. Remember that they will remember you. Whatever happens in their new life, they knew a lady who took their despair and confusion and gave them a Plan. Touched and treated their bodies and souls as the incalculably precious things that they are. Along with their folder of papers and bag of samples, they carry the memory of a wonderful person who believed them to be a wonderful person too, and that will change who they are forever.

morning spider - a very deep-sounding personal reflection

2011-08-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

new day

stumbling to the toiley

(effing cat really has to stop lounging in the bedroom doorway. No one's feeding her until Ramon gets up, whether or not she trips me up and gets pissed on for her trouble)

compliance meeting today - fuuuuck meee...

Call in sick? Yes: No: x (dammit)

Bathroom light on. AIEEEEE MY EYES

And...

HUGE DADDY LONG LEGS IN THE SINK. Doing that...sweet jesus, that BOBBING THING. Bobbing up and down, up and down. Sink walls clearly unscalable.

must pee must must must must

toilet MUCH too close to the sink

kill it

"No, no, NO!! Earth trees mountains living together hungry children recycle like a good girl no jobs people hit dogs sometimes toxic sludge grownups yell at kids with scared eyes fucking pipeline offshore bullshit anonymous will take us back to teh stone age and maybe quite good says I Arcade Fire prolly agrees earth and trees shower don't bathe la la laaaa people just need to be loved and THIS SPIDER SHALL NOT PERISH."

Ah. The preachy voices always wake up first. At least I tend to agree with the Negative Hippie (and she never gets me up with "This day presents you with all the problems you didn't see to yesterday and probably made worse by your neglect. Today's a new day and you will most likely disappoint yourself" like the Old Church Lady). So. The spider lives.

Problem #1: can't touch that bitch. Cerise kills few things (besides mosquitoes or cockroaches and I would kill mantises 'cause they're fucking naaaasty-looking but they're too big) but she won't touch 'em, my precious. Noooo spank you.

Problem #2: Daddy can't get out of the sink. I need that sink. If I were a spider (YEEEEK) what would be a good ladder?

dart to the sink, carefully toss washcloth near (but not on, or at, 'cause I'm pretty sure those bastards can jump) Old Daddy and rocket back again

He climbs. HE CLIIIIMBS! Up up up the cloth, to the edge of The World.

Oh, damn. Problem #3: *Now* what? I'm NOT going to hold anything for him elevator-style (ohhh, HELL no ick ick ick ickyyyyyy).

Ah. No. Apparently this is the sort of spider that can let itself down on - oh, I don't know - a line. Made of SPIDER WEB. Dumbass.

Suddenly he's drifting down, legs feathering out like a dancer's, pedaling gracefully for the descent. Touchdown so soft I can't tell when he actually stopped moving. A couple more bobs (ew)...and he ambles behind the toilet and out of my sight.

breathe

breathe

pee

Flunked

2010-12-27T13:02:00.000-08:00

Some of the most vivid memories I have are the times I've really, really flunked in the kindness department in my life. I mean, everybody's unkind, petty and ungenerous - sometimes all three on a bad day, right? We ache, ask forgiveness, forgive ourselves and move it on down the road. I'm talking about memories of the times I've been a real low-down sonofabitch - really grindingly shitty behavior. I made my mother cry. I made Ramon cry. I made a dorm mother cry. I hurt my friend and roommate with one snide remark - hurt her bad, about something in her life that was already a source of torment. I fucked a musical rival over like I can't even tell you over how many solos each of us got for a concert. Etc. Etc.

This last Christmas was one of those times. Not on a par with some of the cruel things I've said, but an act of neglect and callousness that shocked me, both by how I handled it and how easy it would have been to do right, or quickly undo the wrong.

Ramon and I took a ferry over to Bremerton for Christmas with his parents. The ferry was sparsely populated, as usual. Wired kids; the kind that race around and clearly think they seem awfully cute to those of us watching them back and forth, back and forth. FYI, munchkins, not so much. A couple of girls got up in "Santa Baby" outfits that strengthened our belief that THE fashion lesson of 2010 - don't wear tights if you're not going to cover your bum - is a scientific oddity in that it's been proven to be a lesson that ISN'T SINKING IN to many females' minds. But I digress. I didn't wrong the girl who had a runner traveling up her left cheek.

Okay, so I had already transgressed in trying to strike up a conversation with Ramon about a conversation I had with Carmen (therapist) regarding our arguing style. Christmas morning, foggy brains, chilly ferry travel, family gathering ahead and I bring up our FIGHTING tactics? It ended poorly - shit, it STARTED poorly - and I got off the ferry feeling sulky and hard-done-by. Since my excellent Mother-in-law hadn't checked her email or texts for 24 hours no one was waiting to meet us at the ferry. Chilly. Sulky. Now planning to be chilly and sulky for at least 20 minutes, IF we could get hold of any Deslauriers within driving distance. No one was answering their phones. So we're standing in the passenger pickup space with a couple of other random, some disreputable-looking, strangers. Ramon was on his phone leaving "if you get this come get us" messages. A boy - maybe 16 or 17 - came up to us and asked, "can I borrow your phone to call my Mom?" He was in full-cut (I'd say saggy baggy, but I'm cool like that and not one of those stuffy grown-ups who tut at teenage menswear) jeans and a big damned hoodie, with light brown skin and curly black hair. Oy, I was SO not having it.

I'd already refused to give a guy bus fare on the way to the ferry terminal. We were late, thinking we'd miss the boat and not wanting to wait the hour it would take to get another. I had the change, and he looked like he really did just need a couple of quarters to make fare (unlike the usual run of "I'm trying to get to my Aunt in Tacoma who has a job waiting for me" spiels I get downtown). I felt bad about that one, especially since we made it onto the ferry with the seconds to spare that I could have used pulling some sodding quarters out of my pocket and handing them over.

OK, back to the kid wanting to call his Mom. I was finishing up my share of leaving family messages - still talking shortly to Ramon and feeling kind of wearily hostile toward the strangers around me, the gray cold rain and the fact that we were going to be looking around at a really crappy (and deserted) part of Bremerton for a good while. He made his request to Ramon and me. I glanced sideways at Ramon - sometimes I hope he'll deal with the solicitations - but he was still trying to reach our family. All of those goddamned Yahoo articles about "Never let ANYONE borrow your phone - they'll just take it and RUN" were screaming in my head. I wanted to just hand the phone over, but jeez, he was a teenager from Bremerton and what if he DID just run? My iPhone! I looked down at my phone, then finally up at the dude hovering about 15 feet away and said in my no nonsense but not unkind city voice, "I'm not going to let you use my phone, man."

"You're not?" "No."

By then I was looking back down at the technology in question, but I could still see him turn away slowly and shuffle down to the sidewalk and then up the street. Shit, CERISE, what the hell?! For about 2 minutes I could have caught up to him and apologized (please take me back there, back in time, right now, please? Please?). He clearly wasn't a thief. I walked two or three steps toward him, back to Ramon, back toward him, back to Ramon. The kid was making deceptively fast time up that hill. Eventually he was out of my reach and I waited, saying little to Ramon, tears in my eyes, until Dad pulled up.

I waited all day - through presents, visiting, The Meal, the ride back, a blessed quiet moment with Abram and Christa back at our flat before they pushed off home - until we were alone in our home to grab a completely flabbergasted Ramon and bawl. I sobbed into his shirt that I hadn't given my phone to that poor boy who just wanted to talk to his Mom! On CHRISTMAS.

Why wasn't his Mom there waiting for him? Was he surprising her? Does he have a good Mom? Is he loved enough in his life? How much did my nasty little refusal hurt him? How long did it take him to walk to where he was going? Did he get any presents? Does he have friends? Why doesn't he have even a crappy old cell phone? Most kids have phones nicer than mine.

[wipes more tears]

Ramon's been sweet, telling me that I hurt myself much worse than I'd hurt him. My beautiful friends have offered rich absolution on Facebook and praised me for even worrying about it.

If only this were about me. If only my feeling better were what I wanted.

But that child asked for something - such a small thing - from me, and had a long, cold walk ahead of him when I refused him. He didn't even have the heart to ask the other two or three people standing around.

Nothing like that should have happened to him, and the person that made it happen was me. On Christmas. Because I got shirty with my husband and felt peevish afterward.

Fuck the phone. I'd give the bloody thing up twice over to have that one moment back. Child, wherever you are, I am so sorry. I hope you had a splendid, fat, gorgeous, hilarious Christmas. I hope someone does something richly loving for you every day of your life. I wish you could know that I'd give you the phone if I could, including the pink and purple cover and awesome Cut the Rope game and EVERYTHING.

I'll never forget. I know these nasty little memories and they never stop hurting, even when I can ask and be granted forgiveness from the people I've wronged. I'll never find this guy. And this is just the sort of thing I feel in my bones is wrong with this planet: we don't TRUST each other! Bugger the Yahoo articles advising caution. I can afford another effing phone. I can't afford to live the way I did that day. This city is killing me in some ways. I tell people - a lot of times the same people over and over - no when they ask for handouts every single day. I'm not going to say I no longer see or hear them, or that it doesn't hurt a little tiny bit every time I say "No, sorry." (Some city dwellers marvel that I even apologize.) I don't refuse every time, either. But my reflexive "no" is coming a little too easy these days, I think. I could have done right by that boy.

And the real hell of it? There's nobody to say sorry to. If I believed in god I could raise my hands to the sky and cry out my shame and beg forgiveness of The One who would hear and weep with me, and I would know that Someone would reach down and touch the boy's life and my sin would be washed away. And I would feel relief, and that a wrong had been righted.

I no longer believe that it works that way. This one, and other memories, I live with and remember alone, and grieve over for the rest of my days. (And smile at the fact that I get to live inside a Drama Queen who absolutely refuses to forget, or let the memories fade as they surely could.)

Shit.

[backs away slowly]

2010-10-08T16:25:00.000-07:00

Holy crap, so I got on this ol' blog to write a thing about Ramon, I'm looking around - just seeing what I wrote in the past on this gorgeous clunker - and found the following in the drafts. I had never posted it. So I read it and was all: "good god I'm glad I didn't publish it." It's furious, selfish, a TINY bit (a-a-n-nd by that I mean 'wildly') self-righteous and so very very far away from how I've been feeling lately. But then my je ne sais quos kicked in and I read it again and my lower brain shouted "FUCK YEAH" (it's right next to the 'what the hell' section) and...what the hell. It's so tempting to only put stuff up that's flattering and well-crafted. This is neither:

7/7/09

Fuck this world today, man. Fuck it. I'm so goddamned tired of being mad, crying, explaining, and most of all, SO FUCKING SICK OF NEVER GETTING TO SAY WHAT'S ON MY MIND. You know that thing, in the world, where you have to watch your tongue, use your words, don't name-call, put yourself in the other person's shoes? All of that? FUCK IT. Everyone has a day (I betcha) when they have to just turn their backs on all that loving, healthy pro-relationship crap and just say what they feel like saying. This is my day.

You know what I love about myself? I say shit. It's not always honest or well thought out or accurate or empirically valid or very nice at all, but Jesus Christ, at least words are coming out of my mouth that I really feel. At the time, I mean.

Hey, everybody has to watch their mouths. I should say, everybody would generally be better served to watch their mouths. Relationships thrive on people NOT vomiting their feelings on each other all the time. Mostly because feelings change, you gain perspective, tempers cool, but you can never unsay words. I get that. It's so true. I know there are people who know me who think I have no frontal lobe, so crazed are my words, but man...if you knew what isn't coming out, all the time. I must be the angriest, most selfish, meanest, most easily wounded motherfucker on the planet, since I'm currently taking inventory of what I'm not saying and that's the content. Pain. Isolation. Bitterness. Loneliness. Hatred. And, last but not least, complete contempt for...those who have currently come under the lava wave that is my wrath.

I've been around people lately, people I can't avoid, who spend a lot of their time not saying things to me. What I mean is, I'm intuitive enough to know that they're keeping words to themselves that they'd probably like to express to me. Withholding information I could really use, both to understand what's going on between us and to...shit, to just have SOMEONE say SOMETHING to me that's real, for the love of god. To have a little courage and connect with me.

Wheeee...

untitled love rant - not for the weak of stomach

2010-10-08T12:11:00.000-07:00

Ramon, my Ramon, you will never read this. Nobody's here anymore, and rightly so. I've been too twisted up to write anything these last years. But I was watching you laugh last night, and this popped into my head:

There's an anxiousness that comes along sometimes when I think of how I love you so much. It comes when I revel in your beauty and wonder if I can offer anything like it for your eyes (besides my hair, oh yeah). I wonder at your patience with my stupider bits and hope to god you receive even a fraction of that steadfastness from me. I hope that the ferocity and wonder with which I love you makes up for my thousand physical imperfections. I hope the words and words and WORDS I shower on you make up for my inability to grant you a moment's peace now and then.

Most of this I keep to myself, dearest, because such silly comparisons distress you so much.

They don't mean anything. There's nothing to them but my automatic cranial shutdown every time I contemplate the near-perfection of your love for me. Because you never treat me as anything but the most beautiful creature breathing - in your eyes I must be a queen, a wonder, a model of human generosity and kindness. I know you, and it's that sort of person who would make your eyes brighten as much as they do when you look at me. I keep looking at myself for reasons why you could dig me so evidently (human insecurity knows no bounds) when I could be watching YOU watching me. You're like a...a... you're really good lighting and a fan in my Photobooth of Life. And I never truly fear, not really.

Because since that day I saw you across the classroom I've craved you beyond the telling of it. And since that day my heart asks, every day, "Are you mine? Are you? Can I have you reallyreallyreally, for the rest of my life?" And never has your response wavered. To my every unspoken Question you have always, always answered with an unspoken, but deafening, "Yes."

I love you.
I love you.
I love you.

Angry for a Very Good Reason (FINALLY)

2009-05-30T16:37:00.001-07:00

Ramon and I had had - were having - a lovely afternoon up on the Broadway drag. I had a 2:30 haircut with Nicole (freakin' genius at making my untidy mess look like an intentional untidy mess) at Scream Barber, and we were wandering home after, stopping by our haunts. Bailey Coy books, Linda's for brunch, I turned the prayer wheel at Vajra and a brief visit to Urban Outfitters, but only to use the privy and to sneer at the gladiator sandals and the $20 hip flasks that say things like "Bitch" and "Horny". Ramon bought me flowers.

On the way out we stopped at Dick's for a chocolate shake and some fries - the line was about five deep as usual. As I waited for Ramon to pay I heard a voice behind me; a lady on the phone.

"Yeah, someone just 'small-changed' me, so I'm buying him a burger. I'm in line right now - talk to you later." This voiced in a loudish tone of complacent ennui. I looked over at her and saw a man beside her (I had seen him a couple of times that afternoon - a little shaggy, but tidily dressed and kind-looking, asking people here and there for money), looking sheepish. Many people were around.

She looked - well, it doesn't matter, save to say that she pretty much satisfied my prejudice about what a person who said things like that, and how they said it, would look like.

Hey, I feel put-upon sometimes, lots of times, when people ask me for money, and especially if they've got some kind of 'I'm different from the others, just in an unfortunate spot at the moment' spiel (some that I've heard from the same person, day after day - I know your Aunt in Tacoma didn't forget your return bus fare for the third day in a row, love). I don't like it that I get hit up more than once every day in this town, and I hardly ever cough up. I hate hearing the conversations that people have to have about The Homeless Problem or the 'get a job' mentality of the cats who feel like they need a reason not to give their hard-earned cash to someone just because they asked for it. I still seethe with rage at the memory of the dude who yelled at me when I told him no: "Well, what fuckin' GOOD are ya?!" The whole homeless/panhandler issue is a thorny nest of not fun thinky thoughts for me. Seeing things from many sides is a sonuvabitch sometimes, no?

This one cut me down, man. Hurt me right to the heart. I hated that woman - I was so mad I was tearing up on our way home. Who DOES that to someone? Some people like buying food for folks who ask them for money, cool. Not my way, of course - I give 'em money and they do what they like with it - but still better than giving people nothing at all or speeching them out about their naughty vagrant ways. But insisting on buying food and then shouting it all over creation - WHILE the poor sucker is with you, for the love of Pete - not nice. Not loving. Maybe not worth it, to that guy.

Sorry, no 'You see, Timmy' moment to cap this one off. I'm just angry, angry, angry. And hurt. And you know what hurt angry people do in this great age - yes.

Yes, we blog about it. Good stuff.

the M word

2009-03-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

my favorite dance song doesn't make me want to bounce around anymore - today it makes me want to weep. and weeping isn't an urge that needs encouraging today; it's a tide to hold back, moment by moment. i'm not a big fan of holding back.

now is the time for work, but i don't remember what's to be done. now is the time for a woman's work - shutting up, sitting on it, picking battles, waiting in silence for a better time. for him. i never was much good as a woman.

it's time for him to be encouraged, nurtured, made safe on a long, difficult and painfully new journey in his life. now is not the time for sulking, tantrums, interruptions or pleas for comfort or attention. i was never much of a safe harbor for anybody, really.

why is it always about me? i'll tell you why - because my voice is the only one I hear. even medicated, as i am, i still hear the banshee call of me hurt my feelings express myself get it all out screaming for attention clinging sobbing pouting pretending laughing weeping laughing weeping laughing weeping.

it's all about me because the banshee wail - for good and ill, but always loud - constantly screams and croons in my head. it's all about me because his voice is so soft. soft, yes. not always sweet and loving, but always soft and modulated. there are tones in the quiet, if i shut up long enough to hear them. tones of love, impatience, amusement, anger, hurt, disappointment. and after a weekend of pacing around each other - coming together to love, separating again for hurt, coming together to work it out, again, and separating because it devolved into pain. again. - there's nothing in the softness but silence. love, yes, always, but behind a film of...if I knew what the film was I'd use my ubiquitous words to try to push it aside.

push everything aside. see joy and love in his eyes instead of an anxious, tired affection. hear truth instead of shuttered facts held back to protect me. keep me in the dark. protect him. protect everybody. push aside the gunky film of relationshippy exhaustion so that he'll hear when i speak (and the gods grant that given the chance - oh for another chance - my speaking will be spare, simple, full to bursting with love). catch fire and respond when I have a thought. like before.

i want to help. remember that song, 'To Deserve You'? ...and if i could trade my voice for the silence i know that you need... i would do that. i would do that. i'd do a mermaid Ariel and give my voice up - the whole thing - just to help you. me shutting up would help you. me not thinking so fucking much would. me being a simpler woman altogether...ah, but you'll say then i wouldn't be me. like 'me' is what you need right now. i think it's clear that for a short while at least, you could use someone entirely different.

would that i could, my dearest heart. would that i could stop - just for a season - being so perfectly, steadfastly, inescapably, devoutly, helplessly, tragically, and entirely. me.

how i love you...

Shaking Off the Funk

2009-03-03T12:20:00.000-08:00

Ah, spring. Seattle's showing us the first peek up her skirt which is the start of spring. Eventually things will progress to the full-on, Marilyn-style skirt blowup - no grandma panties - that I like to call summer. But for now it's the odd robin (yay!), tiny green buds on trees (WOO-ha) and the almost-warmish air smells like the sea instead of just...cold air.

So, how's my mood? TOTAL SHIT. Yep - a dreadful miasma of sticky, gray, leaden FUNK has been following me around for days now, making me alternately barky or sullen, sensitive like you would not believe, and whining, whining, whining about it to anyone who'll listen. So, that would be Ramon. Poor man. We've gone back to nitpicky tiffs about nothing (last contentious topic: my hair), bandying logic, forgetting who said what, apologizing later, but even that doesn't bring us back to harmony with each other. Just...what is WRONG with me?

Just two blog entries ago it was, "oh, heavens, the meds have fixed me! Happy day! It's almost too easy!"

It was too easy. I'm not sure what's going on, but apart from the rages and/or hysterical grief taking over, which they're not, everything's the same. The rage was replaced by waspish irritability. The hysteria was replaced by either hollow-eyed (I know. I looked in the mirror), chin-trembling fear that I'm still sick - the meds aren't working - or sullen depression. I think the honeymoon's over, kids, and I've got more work to do than I thought. The pills make me not crazy. They don't make me into a nice or well-adjusted person. Drat upon drat.

I'll be OK. I always get low when winter loses its hold - define irony. I'm still in therapy, and Merrill is helping ever so much. I'm still more easygoing and accepting than before. The family stuff is getting better and better. My hair's looking fantastic lately. I would do well to remember that many things are going very well in my life and some of them are even thanks to me. Nevertheless, I'm not happy these last few weeks and can't seem to pull myself out of it. I either can't help it or I'm just enjoying the sulkies too much. But it's wearing thin, for me and Ramon, and thus I submit my list of things that I can do to cheer myself up:

1. Exercise. I quit the gym - hated the new yoga teacher - and went to look for tasty yoga delights in a studio near our flat. It didn't feel that good, the facility, so for now that's on hold. I'm ordering yoga DVDs to work on at home for the time being, and Ramon said he'd do it with me. We both wonder if the long hiatus helped bring my sadness on. I'm also getting out and running around a bit, and I felt great yesterday when I tried it for the first time. It's fun dodging around cranky lunch-breakers.

2. Get that darn flat sorted out. Honestly. I've heard that a clean, well-organized living space helps the brain and the mood, and the following things are killing that right off [NOTE: we don't live in squalor, and both of us are equally industrious or lazy as the mood takes us. But we're 50/50% on this, and we're both fairly indifferent to achieving victory in immaculate housekeeping]:

dishes - reminds me of our hygiene habits at Luzader House at college. The pile actually starts to smell after a while
floor - Ramon sweeps pretty often, but a good mopping? When did we last...hm
bathroom - OK, this is Seattle. The mold thing is not my fault
laundry - may this cup passeth from me
filing - ditto. I bloody well shuffle papers for a living at work
getting the gee-golly closets sorted out. Waahhh

3. Sex. Sex is good for the mood.

4. Dancing it out. Crank up some tasty, tasty musical chaos (Euro-synth-pop is especially good - I'm looking into Hasselhoff. Just kidding) and bounce around the flat for a bit. It does indeed help, though looking sexy is problematic when I have to keep hitching my lounging pants up my bum.

5. Preparing tasty, healthful meals. Well, THAT'S not happening until the backlog of dishes are either washed and put away or crushed to dust with a big, big mallet.

6. No more - and I can't stress this enough - NO MORE FRIED PORK SKINS. The ecstasy (Hey. Everybody has thrilling delights they're ashamed of, all RIGHT?) of munching is followed by the somatic agony of having ingested pure fried FAT - fat fried in fat - which is bound to get one down, as well as the waves of self-loathing that roll over me at having just eaten a snack that is both bad for me and filthy in the extreme.

7. Sunlight. Such a thing, dimly remembered, is now rising to the forefront of our minds here in the Northwest, and we would do well to soak it up instead of just complaining of how long we have to wait for it to GET here.

8. Music. I think I should get some of this screaming inside out on tape, so to speak, and maybe make a cool Euro-synth-pop song out of it. Someone could dance it out to it. Wouldn't that be rad? Geez, Cerise, we've got the gear, for the love of Kraftwerk...

OK, sweety-pantses, thanks for listening to the angsty whine of a maudlin 33-year-old. I'll let you know how this whole thing goes. And say a little prayer for the better half of me, won't you?

P.S. Part of the reason I can even talk about this is that I'm wearing my lucky fishnets today, and gosh DARN it, believe me when I say that nothing brightens a mood more than wearing a nice pair of fishnet stockings!

Schooling Prudence

2009-02-25T12:45:00.000-08:00

[READER ALERT: In this note I am going to poke fun at Billy Graham, god, and say bitch and piss. I will also express support for people who engage in polyamorous relationships. Consider yourself warned.]

I'm kind of an advice column junkie. I used to read SO many: Dear Prudence, Dear Abby, Dear Margo, Carolyn Hax, Dr. Joyce Brothers, and every so often I'd look in on Billy Graham's column, wrinkle my nose, and whisk back out again. Sorry, god.

I finally had to face my addiction and start thinning the herd a bit. Take back control of my life, one step at a time. The first step was easy - rate the columnists and make a decision as to who I'd keep on reading.

Dear Prudence: middle-aged, smart cookie, a little acerbic but never mean (ah, sad...)

Dear Abby: Up. Tight.

Dear Margo: hands down my favorite. She's a snappy old lady with a checkered past, kind heart and wicked sense of humor. She hates the people what done you wrong. I love her.

Carolyn Hax (a daily in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer): Meh. She kind of makes a big meal out of trying to be cute. Whatever...

Dr. Joyce Brothers: Great advice, good heart, but she does go ON, which makes her a bit boring.

Billy Graham: He ends every letter - EVERY SINGLE ONE - with "And you...have you made Jesus the Lord and Master of your life? You should get on that, because nothing's going to go right until you do [my paraphrase. I'm funnier than him]." Enough said.

OK, so, Prudence was one of the columnists that made the cut. Except, EXCEPT, she just let me down in a big way. I mean, she let an advisee down and that pissed me off. Here's the advisee's letter, her response, and the bitchfest I sent to Prudence as a result:

********

Dear Prudie:
I am a female involved in a four-year-long polyamorous relationship with a married couple. We are all happy and love one another very much. They have invited me to move into their home, and I would like to. The problem is that their two teenage children are beyond angry with the relationship. Even though they are not losing anything as a result of the relationship, they blame me for breaking the family apart and are very rude to me and their parents as a result. We don't want to break up to appease their children, who will be out of the house and on their own soon enough. But I can't imagine putting myself in the middle of such an uncomfortable living situation. Any suggestions for getting these teens to learn to accept me and the relationship?

—Three Is Not a Crowd

********

Dear Three,
Teenagers are just impossible these days. Mom and Dad go out and get a perfectly nice girlfriend to share, and the kids totally destroy the great erotic vibe you've all got going with their insolent remarks like, "Ewww, gross!" and "Why can't you be normal like other parents and just get a divorce or something?" They sound like complete downers who don't even understand the stimulating couplings and triplings that could take place when they have their friends sleep over (before the friends' parents hear about this, and all of you end up explaining polyamory to social services). It's too bad these rotten kids don't understand that their parents' need to fulfill their sexual appetites takes precedence over providing them a stable home. But since the teenagers are doing nothing but making life unpleasant for your happy threesome, my only suggestion for you is to find a couple who had the good judgment not to have children and leave this family alone.

—Prudie

********

Hello, Prudence. [this is rad - observe how I get all snippy and formal] I've read your column every week for some time now, and am generally impressed with your sense of fairness and obvious concern for those who contact you. I'm writing about one of your glaring exceptions.

On Thursday, Feb. 9, 2009, you posted a response to Three is Not a Crowd, who was asking you about how to deal with the angry teenage offspring of a couple with which she has a polyamorous relationship. She was looking to you for advice on how to handle the situation. Instead she got judged by you six ways from Sunday. You inferred throughout your response that she was the interloper into an established relationship and that the three of them were in it for nothing but sex, even though she said that they'd been together for four years and loved each other very much! Polyamory is real, Prudence, and it's as likely to be a love relationship as it is to be a sex relationship. Do you really think that the only romantic love that exists is the kind that's between two people and two people only?! For heaven's sake...she came to you for help and you treated her rather hatefully. With sarcasm and scorn. I'm really, really sad for her and disappointed at your mistreatment of a reader.

Cerise Deslauriers

Well of Rage!! [or, Bipolar Lite]

2008-11-21T10:10:00.000-08:00

Most of the people who know me know that I'm kind of an asshole sometimes. Or maybe just a son of a bitch. So, yeah, more than sometimes. Hear ye the story of The Well of Rage:

I was a frustrated, mouthy toddler. My first spanking was for spitting at my nanny in Burundi when I was about 3 or 4. In elementary school I vacillated between jubilant (to the point of off-putting) acting out, wiggly restlessness and smoldering resentment. I started fires (only little ones). I lied so much my parents had the preacher come over one night to talk with me. I stole. I backtalked so much that I wanted to slap me. Ditto my teenage years, except I was in boarding school for a lot of it and gave my dorm parents bucketloads of shit, instead of my parents. One dorm mom actually wept and asked if I was trying to ruin her life. I was angry, angry, angry, but more apt to lash out at authority figures than the classmates who angered me. I would go to the student center and fling myself around, laughing too loud, talking too much, and then escape, suddenly, to the rugby field to walk under the moon and cry for loneliness. I'm not telling any of this with pride, mind you, but sadness, both at the destruction I wrought and for the poor kid who, it turns out, was being pulled apart by emotions she couldn't control. All my life.

My adult life was similar, though I learned a few things in college about 1. keeping outbursts to a minimum, and 2. figuring out how to keep people from fucking with me. Not great lessons, I realize, but I was surviving. My friends liked me because I could always be counted on to tell the truth, no matter how harsh it was (poor things. I was hardly ever telling the truth, so much as finding weaknesses in people I didn't like and parading them around to make people laugh), I was funny (part of how to keep people from fucking with me), and you never knew what I'd do. Like the time I splooshed James' favorite cream-colored cable sweater with a full glass of grape juice. I hurt a lot of people in college. By the time MY time was up there, it was starting to come back to me from people who had figured out that my bark...etc.

Ramon helped a lot. He calmed me down. His total disregard for what people thought of him rubbed off on me. When I went from weeping my eyes raw to staring at the wall, scraping the back of my hand bloody with my fingernails (it was the only way to keep from screaming), he'd lay me on the couch in his dorm room, cover me with a blanket, and put on a movie. He gave me hope that someday I'd be OK, not an asshole, not a lugubrious, clingy, moody, melodramatic bitch.

He also took a lot. A lot. We've been together for 14 years, counting friendship and dating, and married (i.e. living together) for 10. All that time he has allied himself with a woman who is loving and devoted, yes, and very giving of her love and devotion. But also all the things listed above and prone to lashing out at the nearest body when irritated, confused, or proven wrong on some topic or another. For 13 years. He took it all in and only rarely fought back. Things started improving somewhat when I convinced him that standing up to me was the only way he and I would ever survive. I knew even then that I was not in control of my anger. I thought it had swelled to such proportions because of my childhood, those darn dorm parents and teachers (truly, for every angel there were two horrific ones), the church (still in the running for What Made Me Maddest of All). Kids that thought I was weird in school. Kids that messed with my little brother. Who knows what all. The usual list of grievances everyone has.

[note: I want to break in here and say that I had many good days in between "episodes". This all sounds very dire, but Ramon and I lived in sweetness and communion for much of our marriage, or it would surely have fallen apart before the 10-year mark. Ramon's wonderfully patient, but he's no masochist and he knows his own worth.]

I tried therapy. One cognitive therapist heard my Well of Rage theory and told me that it was a Well of Fear capped with anger. She proceeded to try to talk me out of it. That went well. I'm not pissing on cognitive therapy here, just her. She made me feel like shit - guilty for not trying hard enough to transcend myself. And oh, how I wanted to. To be free from the anger and torment and hate.

Friends of mine were diagnosed with this and that - mostly depression - and kindly, hesitantly asked me to see about it myself. I didn't think I was depressed. Doesn't that mean you're blue all the time, can't get out of bed, sleep too much, etc.? I wasn't any of those things. I was just kind of there - a bit blue - all the time with a couple of rage thingys a week and maybe one bout of inexplicable glee thrown in there for a bit of color.

I tried therapy again, this time with a wonderful, saintly woman (except she swears. I made damned sure on our first meeting) named Merrill. Merrill is compassionate, funny, earthy, giving, loving and smart as hell. She proceeded to untangle the knot of some family dynamics shit in a couple of sessions. I'm not kidding. She freed me from inappropriate emotional responses to typical family interactions (I'm being cryptic here. My parentals read this blog. Maybe I should curtail the cussing...). Then one time I was telling her the sad tale of how, in college, I loved singing - loveloveloved it, but could NOT make myself practice. Could not. No, not because I was lazy, I swear. She suggested I might be ADD and referred me to a psychiatric nurse practitioner (like psychiatrists, they can prescribe meds). I spent 1/2 hour with this new lady and she gave me her theory. She thought I was bipolar and prescribed lithium.

This was not good news. I thought ADD was glamorous and kind of tragic - plus it answered a lot of questions about my life. Bipolar disorder is...well, you know when you're having a conversation with someone about someone in THEIR life who's a crazy-ass butthead and making things miserable for everybody? And then they say, casually, "Oh, and they're bipolar and off their meds" and everybody goes, "Ohhhh" and shakes their heads? Like this person is still a crazy-ass butthead AND off the deep end to boot. And it's still OK to scorn them because THEY'RE off their MEDS! That's the first thing I thought of when she told me I was bipolar. Bipolar 2, by the way. Bipolar 1 is your basic depression-mania thing where you're either unable to get out of bed or you're shouting that you can fly and jumping over the rail at Macy's. Basically. BP 1 peeps, correct me if I'm wrong. BP 2 is like bipolar lite. I've got a low-grade depression on pretty much most of the time, punctuated with hypo-manic (i.e., less than properly manic) episodes of either total rage or more of that tasty inexplicable cheer. I never know which one will rear its head. But I'm highly functional; steady job, friends, marriage, my houseplants don't die (much), etc.

Fine. Bipolar 2. Fine fine fine. I still thought it was a shameful and unglamorous disorder, but there it was. It just explained way too much. I eased into the full dosage of lithium very slowly (I told the nurse practitioner, Donna, that if I gained even one pound, or if my sex drive went anywhere but up, I was out), and for a while didn't feel anything. Any change. Wait - I didn't feel anything!! I was a sedated zombie lab rat! I'd be one of those faceless losers who wore beige a lot and never laughed at jokes. Or, OR, a 300-pound slug with no emotions at all who camped in front of the TV watching her stories all day! Or both!! Wait, wait. I still talked and laughed a lot. I still missed Ramon all day and hugged him long when we got home. I still felt joy and anger and irritation. But the emotion would appear in me and then...just...go away again. Even the anger and irritation. It would flash red for a moment in the blackness of my brain (I always picture my brain's interior as black - like the night sky, or a chalkboard always ready for the writing) and then slide away again. Amazing. Sometimes it would escape even before I had a chance to express the emotion at all. My eyes stopped filling with tears every time I felt happiness or a connection to someone (it sounds cute, doesn't it? But it's really embarrassing and kind of a pain in the ass. I still do it, but less often). I was feeling everything I always feel, but I could control it! Let me repeat, especially to any of you who've felt the sting of my anger: I can control it. I can count to ten. I can change the subject. I can pick my battles. I CAN. [YES WE CAN! I'll blog about that later.] Mostly. I've still shot off some emails at work I had to apologize for. Ramon and I have gotten into about 3 or 4 fights since June, which is when I went on the medication. Instead of, you know, 2 or 3 episodes of screaming goodness per week. And there's been zero shouting. I've been like a starving person at a 100-course meal, tasting every emotion EVER and being able to feel it, sometimes really deeply, without being overwhelmed by it. I'll tell you, even feeling joy without control is hard on you, especially when you're around people.

That's about it, really. It hasn't been that long since I was diagnosed and treated. Do I like being one of the Mighty American Medicated? No. Not so much. We're kind of vilified in the media, aren't we? Am I still embarrassed about being bipolar? Nah. Why would I be? I'M bipolar, and I like me just fine. I liked me before I was treated. I've got people around me that I love who have it. Besides, I'm so overwhemed with relief almost all the time that it's hard to find time to be unhappy that I might be the crazy butthead that's ruining everyones' lives. No way. I'm becoming what I always wanted to be, more than anything: affable and good-natured. And still talkative, a bit fiery, opinionated, funny-ish and prone to laughter. I've apologized maybe a thousand times to Ramon for the hell I put him through and he just smiles seraphically - you can SEE him forgetting the past, I swear it - and says he enjoys saying what he wishes to say to me without fear, good man. I'm not so exhausted anymore, reining in my behavior, that I can't try new things and work toward a goal. Like with yoga and the whole fitness thing. Or maybe [claps hands to mouth] MUSIC.

I never knew the meaning of blessed until I started taking three capsules of mineral salts per night. I'm free. I'm fucking free. I'm FREE WITH THE FREE FREEDOM!!!

Thank you, sincerely, to all of you who have stayed by my side while I was still a prickly hoo-ha. I love you so. I'm so sorry.

Cerise

Frightened for Jeremy

2008-10-17T08:34:00.000-07:00

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. My old high school classmate Jeremy has been in an accident in Malawi and has been airlifted to a hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has a wife (also in our class and the apple of my eye) and three kids. This is not good.

A few years ago another beloved classmate passed away climbing Mt. Rainier. By the time we all found out it was already done. He was gone.

I don't want to do this again - grieve another classmate (Ed. grieve FOR another classmate. I'm sure I GRIEVE them all the time). I know I'm jumping the gun here, since we only heard that he was in a serious accident and is in hospital. I'm obsessively checking Facebook and my email. Please, please, please, let him get through this and get well.

Who am I even praying to?

UPDATE: We got word that although he has some seriously hairy injuries (no skin left on his back, dreadful fracture of his shin that required many surgeries, etc.), he is healing rapidly - astounding his doctors, in fact - and will return home to Malawi in a matter of weeks, not months. When I found out he was alive and healing I sat down on the bed rather quickly and cried and cried. Thank...whoever. Thank you. Thank you.

Changes

2008-10-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

We're changing. Everything's changing, it seems. This summer kind of knocked us on our asses - mostly in kind of a good way - and the result seems to have been that both Ramon and I made biggish jumps ahead in a short time. It's also kept me from writing much, since I tend to be an oral processor (that just sounds ten kinds of wrong, but I'm leaving it in because I know you know what I mean) and I've been processing, via endless chatter, all this time and that left little energy to write. Pity Ramon. Pity the man.

1. In late spring, and I can't remember why, I started walking home all five work days instead of taking a bus. It's 3/4 mile and boasts varying degrees of uphill action (with some stairs as an added bonus). Combined with my walk down the hill in the morning, I was walking 1 1/2 miles a day five days a week. Without my knowledge or sanction (snort) I lost 25 pounds.

2. In early June I joined the gym across the street from my workplace and started taking yoga classes three times a week. I soaked the mat with sweat every class (literally. I'd press my hands down during a pose and bubbles would come out of the holes in the mat), my poses looked ALL wrong and I hurt all the time, either from exertion during or muscle soreness after. Then I started getting muscles here and there, getting more limber by painfully tiny increments, and enjoying myself. Kind of. The pain and sweat and exhaustion (and clumsiness) remain, so I've started taking Pilates classes the other 2 days a week for strength. In case all the complaining got you on the wrong track, I love doing this. It's like crack for a pudgy old lady like me.

3. In early June, as well, I was diagnosed with Bipolar 2 disorder, told I'd probably lived with it since Day 1, and medicated accordingly. You can bet your booties I'll write more on this one. This is the big one.

4. Ramon and I spent the last 10 days of June in England, visiting an old beloved friend (FISH!!), meeting her husband, and touring around her beautiful village. We also spent three days walking around London and plan to live there at some point for a goodish period of time. We grieved, grieved, grieved when we came home to Seattle. Grieved for missing Fish and Nick, the country around their home, and London. When I tried to play "England My Lionheart" by Kate Bush I cried all over the kitchen counter.

5. Ramon researched and purchased equipment to record music at home on our MacPro. Now we're sort of hovering around it and trying to find our muse (preferably the really big one with a baseball bat). I've got a huge learning curve with this stuff, but it's all in the name of Creative Output, so I must prevail.

6. Ramon began a painting class early this fall and has also found new inspiration in abstract art, so the flat is alive again with his work and beautifully cluttered with his paint tubes, brushes and he shanghaied my favorite vase for a rinse can. And I donated the last two white linen napkins that we received as wedding gifts (therefore 10 years old and much-stained) as premium paint rags. I hope our home's like this forever.

7. Our ten-year anniversary was in August, and we celebrated it our way: living room. Cats. Good food. Entertainment. Alcohol. Oh, and the England trip, unofficially.

Thus endeth the list, unless I've forgotten something. Add to all this a faint but pervasive miasma of workplace uncertainty - for both of us - and you've got a summer that felt...exquisitely weird. So far though the change has been so, so good, with some hitches along the way. Most days I try to keep inspiration alive and pray - a bit desperately - that I won't go back to the way I was before. I'm not sure I could bear it.

I've missed talking to you.

Love,
C

D Day

2008-06-06T12:32:00.000-07:00

Today marks the 64th anniversary of the Normandy landing. I don't have too much to say about it or WW II or anything - I just saw this picture and thought, "Poor, sweet boys."

Look how young they are...

Worthy of Samuel L.

2008-05-01T14:03:00.000-07:00

You know that scene in Pulp Fiction where Samuel L. Jackson's character kind of ruins Brad's life? I'm feeling that way lately, a bit. I want to point a (water) gun at my Portfolio Manager colleagues' heads and scream, "Say subprime again, MotherFUCKER!!"

It's the crap economy getting to me. I'm in the front seat of the roller coaster working here.

Glósóli

2008-04-03T15:22:00.000-07:00

The following video pretty much sums up all that I believe in and all that I care about. I wish I could tell you what I mean by that, but man, is it true. Sorry for the woo-woo...I'm going through an angsty, begging-the-Universe-to-Show-Me few days.

Thanks to Sigur Ros for blowing my mind and truly blessing the world. Thanks to Ben for hipping me to this video and for fixing things in such a way that I weep every time I watch it.

Cerise

Our Version of a Sweet Moment

2008-04-01T13:05:00.000-07:00

So, it was a housework-y night Monday night. I came straight home in a hailstorm that felt like Seattle wasn't really trying (I was right. The hail had stopped by the time I had locked the door behind me, peed*, divested myself of outer garment and wet umbrella, hugged Ramon hello and stepped to the window to look out) and straight away went to sort the laundry. Monday's a big night for laundry, somehow, in this apartment building, and it's a race to the downstairs room with great acoustics and 8 machines. I also made dinner, a real one, and did some dishes, which were still legion from Friday night's dinner party. We are a relaxed sort of people.

Anyway, I spent most of my evening in the kitchen pottering around. And it was good - wine makes pottering both challenging and a complete delight. Ramon was camped out in front of the Mac making sweet Gmail love to Harley and fiddling with mixes on Pandora. His first station was seeded by Steve Reich and I was subjected to a great deal of Phillip Glass as a result. Which was OK, since I amused myself at the sink by having a daydream about him. Glass, I mean: I'm in a stuffy concert hall during one of his works, and when one of his crashing, pulsing symphonic climaxes comes on, standing up with my friends and screaming like it's crazy-ass-guitar-solo time at a Queen concert. And an unfortunate old codger, when he asks an usher to quieten us, gets told in respectful tones that it's the composer's wish that rock-concert-type cheering during his symphonies is to be considered part of the composition and sanctioned at all costs. If he hasn't thought of that already, by the way, don't you think he should? He's build-to-a-climax boy. There should be cheering.

So Ramon got tired of the Reich/Glass-fest and seeded a new station with Curtis Mayfield, with whom I'm sadly unfamiliar. All of a sudden our home and extremely mellow brains were filled with the strains of psychedelic-funk-soul what-have-you (I'll write a blog sometime about how athletically I suck at classifying music. Ramon can co-write it and spend 3 paragraphs on how I still can't tell the diff between rap and hip-hop, however much I listen to both. It'll be GREAT.) and I can't remember when I've felt better.

Then Cruisin' by Smokey Robinson came on. Let me just say that this will NEVER be our song. Immediate disqualification due to the song's involvement with the movie Duets. Just like I'd never karaoke Bette Davis Eyes. Watching Gwyneth sway and clap her hands above her head and then, AND THEN, watching some blonde do THE SAME RENDITION at the Red Lion Inn Karaoke Night (back when we lived in Eugene, OR) several weeks later was quite enough for me, thank you. Still and all - Cruisin' is a romantic and very cool-sounding song. So I wiped dishwater off my hands, strode into the living room and announced that we HAD to dance to the song - there was some kind of law and the whole thing was out of my hands. I had even waited until the second chorus, because I knew by then that Ramon had had one verse and chorus to really get to FEELING it, you know? And he consented. Tore himself away from Harley's loving embrace and enfolded me instead.

Our slow-dancing history got off to a not-great start, by the way. Our first slow dance was at our wedding reception. I had, in a fit of complete assery, chosen "Night and Day" by Bette Midler. Ramon had never heard it, it meant nothing to either of us, but I HAD to choose a 'first song' and it was about how dissimilar the lovers are, so I thought it would be great. Well, I actually don't know what I was thinking. Oh, heaven and earth. Turn back time for me, for I never tried dancing to the effing song before putting it on the mix CD. It is impossible. Let me break it down for you: I collared Ramon and dragged him to the dance floor (which was and remained nearly deserted for the duration of the reception), all but put his hands on my body (he is a reluctant dancer) and began steering him around the floor. If you ever hear that song - and it's not setting foot on my blog, so just you put that from your mind - you'll understand our struggle. It's got a completely un-danceable beat. Too slow even for slow-dancing. We tried double-time. Too fast and jouncy. We tried dancing to the actual beat. Too slow. TOO SLOW! I was leading (out of huffy necessity, so I thought, since my new husband was not putting out much of an effort), he was also trying to lead, but we'd been raised to believe that dancing was a sin, so the whole thing devolved into us completely out of sync and guiltily trotting around the floor grieving The Lord and wishing fervently that we hadn't banned alcohol at our wedding. Yes, ours was a dry wedding. An ill-omened marriage if I ever saw one. But our family thinks even less of drinking than dancing, so...fortunately, when one serves no alcohol at the reception (not that many of the guests would have imbibed) it only lasts maybe 1 1/2 hours. Then you can get to the important part: for us, scooting to Burger King, settling into our hotel room by the airport, sipping the sparkling apple cider (our wedding night was also free of any inhibition-reducing substances. But then, we were young) Mom provided for us in a lovely basket, and trying to make a whirlpool in our little private swimming pool by racing around the perimeter. Naked, mais oui.

Needless to say. We have always sucked at dancing, and doing it slowly and together especially. However, over the years Ramon has relaxed a bit (mostly due to many more parties and the presence of drinks and people who drink at them) and found his goofy side on the dance floor. Which has increased his confidence and sense of style. He no longer resembles Eugene Levy's character in American Pie when dancing. I have also relaxed, which generally looks like letting Ramon do his thing without any sort of assistance and never making him witness me doing anything TOO embarrassing. And in this and many ways, I've learned to trust him.

So when we came together, leaning, as we have so many times before, on each other both for love's sake and for increased balance (did I mention that we were mellow?), I finally figured out what it meant to follow him. He drifted around our little space, turning this way and that, holding me like the girl I was, and I loosened way the hell up and...followed. If I tried to anticipate where he'd go I'd screw up. If I tried to stick to doing the two-step in place and in rhythm, likewise. But when I leaned more surely on him and turned my brain off and shut my mouth and let myself drift with him, following was effortless. Not perfect. But so fucking good.

A life lesson? Nah. We suck at those too.

* In that order. I pee first when I arrive from anywhere, no matter the condition of my personal hydration levels or how soon ago I went #1. I get home and pee, or there's big trouble of the pulling-an-inner-thigh-muscle-and/or-wetting-myself variety.

On Fi-yah

2008-03-06T15:44:00.000-08:00

Do you ever do that thing where you're eating something requiring hot sauce (read: nearly everything) and you're dribbling a bit on with every bite? Yeah? With me? Then, THEN, you dribble WAY TOO MUCH on the next bite? And you look at it in horror - you can't throw that bit away because this is The Best Chicken Taco Salad Wrap You've Ever Eaten. So you take a deep breath, whisper, "God, but this is gonna hurt so good" and just shove that mofo in and chew for your life. And, deep inside your twisted little mind, brothers and sisters, you wonder to yourself if this is what people who have never achieved orgasm do to get through their day.

You HAVE? OMG, that just happened to me!! We're, like, connected.

Disclaimer: OK, I was only using Cholula, yes. It's not THAT hot. But I have done this exact thing with WAY hotter sauces, so yes, I am nearly as badass as I wish I sounded just now.

Mama Cerise

2008-03-06T10:23:00.000-08:00

Here's your slightly squicky moment of the day. I heard this song by Annie Lennox, Mama, from The Avengers soundtrack. What, you may ask, was I doing listening to such a totally random album such as this? Blame Pandora, my dears.

I think this song is becoming my own song. You know those nerdy people who have 'a song'? Or, even worse, couples that have 'their song'? Well, Ramon and I can't claim the latter yet, thank god, but I think Mama's going to be my song for a while. The good? It speaks to a lot of things I think are true of me, and what I wish to be to my friends. The squicky? There's a lot in it, most of it, actually, that deals with how sexual and abundant the subject is, and how much the singer longs to lose themselves in her. So. Uh...I guess that's something that I want people to feel with me - that I'm sexual, very, abundant (there's not a diet in the world, my dears...) and joyful. Different. Unafraid, or at least unafraid enough to not cower away from being wholly and truly me.

This is more personal than I generally care to get, and I am sorry if this is seriously gross for you, but here's the song:

Mama - Annie Lennox

I was watching the woman that was walking down my street
Walking with grace, so beautifully, carefully
She's a big and pretty mother, big and pretty mother
Swinging her hand-bag back and forth so joyfully
She's drawing circles with her breasts in her jumper

Give me a big mother
Huge and loving one
I can crawl upon
And cling to

She's a large woman...
Warm and cuddly...
Wet lady...
Strong mother...

She's walking down the street in front of my window
Whistling funky tunes in the ears of my neighbours

Give me a big mother
One that will always want me
Hot, embracing mother
I can crawl upon
And cling to

Can't be safer, can't be more secure
Than with a breast in each palm
Than with a breast in each palm
That is the way that I was born
And that is the way that I want to die

Give me a big mother
Yes, a soft and wet one
That would caress me
In all those special places
Where's a strong mother
One that squeezes me
One that I can crawl upon

Yeah, so...a very weird image to paste onto a friend's familiar aura. But there it is. I've read somewhere that women spend their 20s getting taken care of, and in their 30s begin wishing to care for others. I was very pessimistic about my ability to ever get over myself enough to ever care for anyone besides my Ramon and my family (and that painfully imperfectly), but I'm watching myself get all Mama Bear lately, especially at parties where everyone's that combination of mellow and slightly crazed, where emotions are high and good-natured interventions are sometimes called for. I seem to find myself intervening. And I'm glad - obviously I'm still a good Gemini/performer personality: very ME oriented. I mean I'm never going to actually get OVER myself, but I'm so happy to have found friends that I'd put myself on the line for. And I hope that they feel magnificently loved. Even if it's loved by a slightly crazy, sexual, twisted, large-ish lady who never means to, but sometimes does, embarrass herself and/or anyone in her general vicinity.

It's nothing but love, darlings, and I feel it for you.

Cerise

P.S. I don't, nor have I ever, thought that people with 'songs' are nerds. Or, at least, they are, but I do too and I've always been a proud dork, so...get offended, 'song' people, or not, but I'm with you 100%.

P.P.S. I am not unaware of the bitter irony, while we're on the subject of me becoming more of a mother the older I get, that although I sometimes embrace a Mama Bear role and love and yearn to be around many children as well, I have never wanted to bear children of my own.

P.P.P.S. If you think you'll ever catch me in a jumper (the American or UK version), think again.

Hate the Day for Lovers, Love the Lover

2008-02-14T10:11:00.000-08:00

God, I hate V-Day. I just...the Love Industry seems to make single people feel like shit for having 'failed' so far in finding their partner for life (and I as their happily married friend feel bad that they're made to feel that way) and not-single people scurry around trying to "do something" for their loves whilst dealing with cloudy skies and post-Holidays exhaustion. And wondering if the "something" they've done is enough. If the money they've spent on flowers and whatnot is proof enough of their regard. I mean, serious potential spousal fray right there, right? What if the guy thinks he's being wonderful and buys carnations or something and the lady wigs because they're not roses?

[Aside: think it's time to be over the holidays? I don't disagree, but people around here still seem to still be recovering financially and psychologically from the whole thing, Yours Truly included. And I didn't even trouble myself to bake or send out cards.]

Anyway. The frantic marketing behind this day for lovers grates on my nerves like the industry behind Hallowe'en, Christmas and Easter combined can't, for some reason. I think that the biggest difference for me is that for the three big holidays, we're buying things for different reasons. Let's break it down:

[Disclaimer: I know there's Ramadan and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and such and herald the day when they get as much or more attention, but I'm focusing on what are, for now, the three biggies in the Great American Holiday Marketing Machine. In my mind.]

Hallowe'en

Things bought: costumes, liquor, decorations
Purpose of purchases: partying, reveling in our dark side, love of the orange and black - all things I can get into.

Christmas

Things bought: decorations, gifts for others, baking/cooking supplies, greeting cards
Purpose of purchases (agnostic's viewpoint): bringing families (of one kind or another) together to eat and drink good things, give gifts, revel in the Spirit of the Holiday (generosity, love, forgiveness), love of red and green, sending love to loved ones far away. Fantastic.

Easter

Things bought: little frilly dresses/suits, lilies for our Mamas, chocolate, ham, eggs, egg dye, fakey green grass that you have to keep your household pets out of, etc.
Purpose of purchases (again, not going with the church thing so much here): celebrate Spring, fertility, the sight of well-dressed little ones scurrying through the garden with chocolate-stained mouths. Also awesome.

V-Day

Things bought: chocolate, diamonds, flowers, cards, lingerie, cuff links, dinner reservations
Purpose of purchases: romantic obligation, not being alone on such a day, the frail and desperate prospect of getting laid (yes, I know that the right answer here is: To Show Our Loved Ones Love, but I'm being bitter and jaded here. Work with me).

You see? V-Day is empirically and inherently evil and not-constructive for all concerned. It has been decided. Doff your red clothes and slink home in shame.

Fine. OK. I'll give myself ONE PARAGRAPH to not be horrid about this day. The truth is, I get a little icky in spite of myself on V-Day, missing Ramon while I'm at work, snuggling relentlessly with him when we get home, etc. But I also don't buy him a gift, generally, and I don't flip the dining room table over if he doesn't buy me something, either. And sex is entirely optional on this night (TMI? Just you wait...).

7 days ago marked our 10-year engagement anniversary, which means that we're six months away from our 10-year ANNIVERSARY anniversary. It also means that we've been one flesh for 10 years (I speak carnally, brothers and sisters. THERE'S your TMI - bathe in it). Those things are a big deal to me. Not chocolate (oh, I never thought those words would leave my lips) or roses or god-awful jewelry that's too shiny and makes you terrified to lose it.

Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with this, other than to say that although I HATE this day and what it does to people (I can't count how many fights R. and I have had on this day in the past because something Went Wrong), I love my Monchito more than my own life and want to say it here, again. And if you're reading this, chances are good that I love you too. And I wanted you to know.

Be well, my sweets, and eat all the chocolate you can stand today.

Cerise

32 Things I Love About Lisa

2008-01-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

One of my oldest (as in, I've known her for a very long time - she's not even touching the hem of Old's garment as far as her age is concerned) friends is soon to have a birthday. She's had a rotten few days, and a rotten few months before that due to a Very Bad Person giving her the worst kind of hell. She's far away and I can't go to her, give her a hug (and then find the VBP and tear their throat out with my teeth) and say Happy Birthday with cake, so here's the only offering I can give her. There are more than 32 things going right about her, but I'm limiting myself to this particular number, for no particular reason:

1. She and I weren't friends to begin with. We didn't like each other much at all.

2. She has lovely pale eyes.

3. Lisa is a philanthropist. A real one.

4. She has lived in countries I can barely spell.

5. She taught me not to call Sudan 'THE Sudan'.

6. She is open minded to a particular cherished vice of mine.

7. She's my highest-educated close friend. She almost has an eff-dah.

8. We clearly have many inside jokes.

9. She has a beautiful lilting, throaty singing voice and uses it without fear.

10. She and I can actually ask each other for things. This sort of friend is so very rare.

11. She and I accept things from each other without too much fussing and 'I don't know'-ing. This is even more rare. Are you listening, Lis?

12. She has caused me to break my self-imposed blog blackout. For that I thank you, my dear.

13. She knows the proper Latin names of plants and birds (especially birds) from many and varied regions of the world.

14. She has a special smile for me when I'm being an ass.

15. She is a brilliant, emotionally piercing writer. Someday she'll be spoken of by kings and society ladies. I've kept every scrap - soft AND hard copies - of writing she's ever vouchsafed to me.

16. She'd be able to tell me without pausing if I just used the word 'vouchsafed' correctly.

17. She runs. She's a runner.

18. She's not afraid to go play indoor soccer with a bunch of men.

19. She's not afraid to gloat when she runs said men into the ground due to her superior fitness.

20. Lisa has extraordinarily graceful hands.

21. She's quirky. I like quirky even better than I like nice. She's really nice, too, though.

22. She loves traveling on motorcycles. She buys them sometimes and names them things like "Markham".

23. She's a cat person.

24. She's more compassionate than almost anyone I know. Her brand of compassion means action - going somewhere and actually doing something, sometimes unspeakably hard somethings, to help those she loves best.

25. She's not afraid to laugh at me when I'm being an idiot. And manages to avoid making me feel like shit in so doing. I treasure this in a friend (no, really). So rare, so rare.

26. She is going to be a professor soon.

27. She speaks Khmer.

28. She taught me that it's pronounced "Khmaye", not "Khmairrr". You should see the faces of people when I'm talking about Pol Pot and the "Khmaye" Rouge. [snicker]

29. She thinks I'm smart. I think. Reasonably intelligent. Since she's brainy enough to write up dialogues between disparate tribes of people whose village names I can't even, as I said before, pronounce, I feel honored. OK, well, I don't know if she thinks I'm smart, but she gets in a temper when I call myself stupid, so...

30. When certain shitbags are behaving really, really badly and trying to blame Lisa for their pain, she (instead of, say, tearing them to bits with her mighty brain and quick mouth) joins in and asks me what she should do to make things better. For them. It's infuriating, as her friend, but endearing as well. As long as she STOPS IT RIGHT NOW.

31. Her idea of fun is trotting around in the wilderness looking for birdies.

32. She loves incredibly generously. She conducts herself with honor. She leaves people better than they were.

33. (one more!) We were completely different people when we went to school together so long ago. So different that we kind of couldn't stand each other for a good while. We've been in and out of contact since then and changed - both on our own and in how we relate to each other. We are very different. But she still calls me 'friend' and writes me long, luscious emails (even when she's angry, broke, avoiding everyone and at the end of her rope) to tide me over until we see each other again.

34. BONUS! I nearly killed both of us driving in snow once. We survived, but her opportunity to stop and take breathtaking pictures of Snoqualmie Pass snowed under didn't thanks to my negligence. She forgave me.

[raises pint] Here's to you, good friend. May your loving friends circle around you this week and may everyone else be tipped into the rubbish bin by a grouchy maid.

Texting Coversation With Ramon

2007-09-20T17:47:00.000-07:00

09-20-2007:

Ramon: Sorry i missed your call. Love you.

Cerise: Love you too honey. On my way home. Shit day. PMS!

Ramon:
P.arade of
M.uggles
S.treaking?

This is why you and I fit so well, Monchis. [blows kiss]

Cerise

The Devil and Cece Winans

2007-09-13T15:55:00.000-07:00

I was almost home the other night and was standing at the crosswalk waiting for my light. Traffic, as always, was pretty busy - at a standstill, actually - and you can always hear an amazingly wide assortment of music drifting from commuters' windows. You could do a whole study on the crazy shit people like to listen to to get a day's work off their minds. I heard some kicky music coming from the farthest-away car waiting at the crosswalk and as I started across the street I realized that I know that song! It was "Better Place" - the last track on Cece Winans' self-titled album from 2001.

[Sidebar: Cece is one of the Christian artists that I've never expunged from my listening library. True, you have to listen to unabashedly fundie lyrics, but the music's solid and she has got the chops. Other CCM artists that will never lose our love are, in no particular order: pre-Beyond-Belief Petra, Mastedon, Charlie Peacock, pre-(See Inside) Out of the Grey, Imperials, Wendy and Mary, 2nd Chapter of Acts, White Heart, King's X (they would probably object to being classified as CCM in the strongest terms and Matt's just going to kill me), pre-Go-bloody-West-Young-Man Michael W. Smith, etc. AND, when I really want to piss Ramon off, I put on David Meece's Odyssey album real loud and rock the fuck out.]

How random is it to be walking across the street in Seattle and hear Cece Winans, right? Since dancing in public is one of the sure signs that yet another Seattle-ite has gone over to the crazies (talking aloud to oneself and screaming at red-light-runners are others), I fought the urge to bop in the crosswalk, but I did lock eyes with the older gentleman in a PT Cruiser who was crankin' my girl. He was getting down - how could you not? The song's about how you're to keep your head up, 'cause god's going to come on down and take us all to that great smoothie spa in the sky - and when he saw me grinning at him he put his thumbs up and man-squealed "Yah!!"

This is when the whole thing gets...well, it's just typical of my interactions with the general and unsuspecting populace. I put up my horns and crowed, "Cece Winans, BABY!!" and walked the last 1/2 block to my apartment building with a bright smile on my face. But wait. Looking back, why did his smile falter just a bit as I turned away to finish crossing the street? Because, Dear Reader, to a man who loves Christian music and is so chuffed that he's headed for Paradise (soon, by the look of it) that he'll shout his joy at innocent passerby, the "rock on!" horns are actually...[ominous silence]...the sign of Satan! [Dun. Dun. Dunnnnnn.] I had completely forgotten.

It's subtle, but sometimes, friends, but the hand-signal for "rock on!" or "hook 'em horns!" is sometimes confused for the secret "I worship the Dark Lord (not Voldemort)" sign. Comme ça:

Rock on!

Hook 'Em Horns!

I worship the Devil

No, no, just kidding. I'm sure our President doesn't worship the great Satan. But think how alarming it must've been for this old guy when I flashed him the sign of Lucifer! He thinks to himself: "OK, she's clearly a Christian because she knows who I'm listening to, but she also indicates that she's a devil-worshiper. Wait. IS Cece a Christian artist? What if she's not? What if Cece worships the devil? What if ...[puts hands to mouth]...what if Cece IS the devil? It figures that the Devil's female...am I listening to The Devil or one of her minions?" Or maybe he thought I'm a UT alumna and he supports Texas A & M. We'll never know. But for him, either way, our cheery interaction didn't have a happy ending.

(sigh) Cerise strikes again. That song will never be the same for him.

[Did anybody notice that I posted this on the 13th? Oooh. Keep your eyes peeled for lightning bolts...]

Unwrinkled By Time

2007-09-07T12:05:00.000-07:00

Friends, Madeleine L'Engle, second official Blower of Cerise's Mind (here's the first), has died today.

Rest well, good friend, and I hope that what you find beyond death is even more wonderful than what your words concocted in my 10-year-old (and 32-year-old) head. Love to you.

Cerise

Bleary and Irritable

2007-09-06T08:39:00.000-07:00

Wow, that title really makes you want to read on, doesn't it? You're like, "Oh, yeah, a new post from Cerise - and the title indicates that it'll be one of her whiny, narcissistic posts with shit writing to boot! Reading ON, my friend."

Just kidding. So I woke up after apocalyptic dreams about an alien planet accidentally about to crash into ours, planes falling out of the sky, aliens milling around trying to communicate with us, orange/black sky with roiling end-of-days clouds, and people stuffing themselves on buses because there's a last thing they need to say to their loved ones. Cheerful. Oh, and somehow the planes/buses/spaceships crashing here and there are turning groups of humans into ravenous zombies. [note: perhaps Ramon's and my journey through season 7 of Buffy and the fact that I'm reading "Silence of the Lambs" right before bed are contributing factors...] So, yes, waking up after that and wandering semi-blindly around the apartment and bumping into undone housework (argh) has put me in a right lovely mood. Playing different angry hypothetical life scenarios in my head on the walk to work. I'm SO not telling you about any of those. I want people reading this to think I'm, you know, not crazy all the time.

What was I saying? Right...bleary and irritable. Focus, Cerise. Uh - hey. Hey. What...I'm feeling a lot better. What the hell? I wrote out one of the angry scenarios, read it and laughed, deleted it, and now I'm feeling kind of normal. I'm still not sharing it, though. Sorry...

Cerise

P.S. I stalked into work and turned on U2's War album (and thought about Ash, who will be so very pleased and will, I think, agree that there's a U2 album for every mood) straightaway. It's got the perfect balance of 'fuck this all' and youthful hope for better things. Feeling even better.

Driving Myself Insane

2007-09-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

[I'm am NOT going back and looking at the last time I wrote something. I am not. It must be so long ago and the fact that I've neglected this poor blog for however long it is is very, very upsetting and so...I'm not going to find out. Anyway, the last thing I really wrote is this, the following. I never finished it. Written in late July.]

Isn't it amazing how much we can wind ourselves up? Up until about an hour ago I was having one of the most unpleasant days I can remember. It started out badly; Ramon and I moaned ourselves out of bed, blindly reached for the french press to make coffee and then - sin of sins - tried to sort out our schedules for the next two days before ingesting sufficient amounts of caffeine. Here's what we had facing us:

8-ish to 5:30-ish - work

6:00 party at Ramon's work (where I will meet all his artistic, bohemian, funny and terribly intelligent new co-workers - no pressure)

After the party - possibly have a couple over for wine and cheese

5:00am Saturday - get up and drive to Federal Way for one of Elizabeth's triathlons (no preparation required - besides extensive yawning and eye-rubbing)

10:00am-ish - birthday/post-Tri breakfast with Elizabeth, Nathan, and Oz (still hadn't bought a gift for Elizabeth)

Rest of the weekend - free as birds, Ramon and I

So. This morning. Pre-coffee. Still with me? We had to 1. buy something to eat for the party (my mind instantly seizes up with dissatisfaction because I prefer to make something for parties), 2. buy food and drink (different from what we bought for the party, naturally) for having the couple - who I don't know - over, 3. buy Elizabeth's gift (she would be horrified to part of the must-buy lineup and would prefer that I just forget about it, being the sweet person she is, but on this point I will not compromise). All in a small, small space of time - we're both over 30 now and sleep is not negotiable.

Anyway. We were both in Organize mode, both trying to keep things as easy for the other as possible (definitely a plus more than a minus in both our choices for life partner, but the trait - especially both of us having it - does get in the way when we're trying to bloody DO something), and it ended poorly. We were both confused, frustrated and went into our respective Bad Places: me chattering angrily like a very large, very pompous squirrel, and Ramon shutting completely down and looking grieved. God...

For the rest of the morning I was talkative (in the angry way - so great for the workplace) and petulant and succeeded in having at least 3 interactions with people - people that I like and admire very much - that made me feel guilty, crazed, and very, very lonely.

Crazed isn't the even the word, friends. I knew that my unsatisfactory conversations with people were my doing. On my bad, bad days (Not flat tire days. I mean my crazy, angry days. Like today.) every request is a profound irritation. Every sentence uttered by the other is a flattening commentary on my own deficiencies. I get really, really twitchy. They don't happen too often, but when they do I sit at my desk - my comfy, lovely desk surrounded by work that satisfies me - and fume about how insane I am and how I can't seem to get a handle on myself.

Enter my angelic Mum. She called for no other reason than that she was driving to a church camping trip - alone, since Dad was in the woods cutting firewood for the congregation - and feeling sleepy. Dear Momlies. Just a little talk with her reminded me that I'm a good person who loves her mother. I wish I could explain how much better that made me feel. It gave me a little light at the end of my tunnel - knowing that this insane state of mind isn't really me. Or at least it's not me in my normal state.

[Back to the present. The work day ended and I've had a month's worth of not-crazy work days since. The party after was wonderful - Ramon's co-workers liked me and I liked them. I also liked my first-ever glass-of-Crown-Royal-with-an-ice-cube very much. I bought something beautiful for Elizabeth and she loved it. And buying the beautiful thing, on my lunch break that horrid day, calmed me down more than anything else had. Good old retail therapy, right?

Thanks for reading, if you're still here after my interminable hiatus. More stuff to come...]

Post-Breakfast Conversation, Sunday

2007-05-21T09:26:00.000-07:00

[Foreward: Ramon and I play one of those obnoxious marital we-are-SO-connected games where one person uses an obscure movie quote, yells "WHAT MOVIE?!?" and expects the other to guess. If the spouse is not successful, the challenger then continues to recite additional obscure quotes from the movie, getting more and more into the obvious quotes until the spouse successfully guesses. For example, an obscure quote from Ghostbusters II: "Let's see what happens when we take away the puppy." And an obvious one: "Boys, boys, you're scaring the straights, okay?" Get the game? Good. Great. You've now plumbed one of the funnier bits of our marriage. Welcome.]

Ramon and Cerise are sitting replete after a bacon and biscuits breakfast:

C: "Can I cook, or can't I? WHAT MOVIE?!?"

R: "Huh? That's a movie quote?"

C: "Yeah. You know! 'Can I cook, or can't I'. Come on!"

R: "Nope. Nothing. Give me another quote from the movie."

C: "I don't KNOW any other quotes from that movie. It's not that quote-able of a movie."

[pause]

C: "Oh, wait. KHAAAAAAAANNNNN!!!!!"

A Preoccupation With Cats and Bjork

2007-03-21T15:57:00.000-07:00

This hilarious video has many of the usual funny cat clips that YouTubers have seen, but set cleverly to Bjork's "It's Oh So Quiet".

Whiskery snuffles,
Cerise

100

2007-03-20T12:42:00.000-07:00

My friends over at Addison Road are all taking their turns at this, so I thought that I could get away with it, too, and call Narcissism an infectious disease that I couldn't escape:

1. My real name isn't Cerise.

2. I wear almost nothing but black, but am not even close to being categorize-able as Goth. I like colors a lot.

3. I adore my parents. My entire adult life is spent trying to make up for the fact that I was a total asshole from birth to about age...now. Just kidding. I got a little better around age 27 or so, and Mom's got an awesome case of amnesia about the whole thing.

4. (Stealing a bit from Michael) I can't decide if I'm an arrogant prick who gets around it by passing myself off as humble and self-deprecating, or if I've got the lowest self-esteem on the planet and compensate by being an arrogant prick lots of the time.

5. I tell people a lot of really personal stuff about me because I just do. I'm not that private about my personal information. It doesn't mean that I feel close to the person I'm addressing, and the people I like are the ones who get that.

6. I never want to be a mother. I like most kids a lot, I think I'd be OK as a Mom, and I know Ramon would be the best father ever. I still don't want children. I'm deathly afraid that my aversion to being a parent is a result of selfish cowardice. But that's still not a good enough reason to have kids.

7. The last time I peed myself on purpose was age 7 or so. I was playing outside and couldn't be arsed to interrupt my fun time.

8. My brother is my best friend.

9. I have about 5 best friends and they're all REALLY my best friend.

10. I've been peculiarly blessed with my in-laws. I love Ramon's parents almost as my own, and I gained 3 sisters and a brother from our marriages that I'd literally have a super-tough time living without now.

11. I generally don't tack "-in-law" on when speaking about my in-laws. People must think I have four parents, 2 brothers and 3 sisters. I love that.

12. Ramon has saved my life at least once that I know of.

13. In college I thought I had high blood pressure (I knew because I gave blood every 8 weeks and got my pressure taken every time). After college it fell to normal and has been normal ever since. It was just college that was wigging me out.

14. I give blood every 8 weeks and platelets (for free) every two. This dampens my enthusiasm for getting any more tattoos since I can't give blood for a year after.

15. My blood type is O negative; universal donor. This is why I donate blood so regularly.

16. I stopped gaining weight at about 225 pounds.

17. I hate diets, websites, support, charts, calorie-counting, blogs, statistics, advice and plans that have to do with losing weight. Hate them. I'd rather stay fat.

18. I have never doubted that I'll achieve and sustain a normal body weight in my lifetime. And I'll do it without compromising on any point in #17.

19. I have no sympathy for overweight people as a group. None. I'm not even very ashamed of that fact. I know too well the process of choosing that brought most of them to the same point I'm at, and I'm allergic to hearing them or me whining about it.

20. I live in perpetual fear of being thought of as a racist.

21. In my life I have been both a racist and a homophobe. These were both during and connected to my time as a Christian, and before my 20th birthday, though I'm not abdicating responsibility for my own mental choices at that time.

22. I got a lot happier when I left the church. Conversely, all the bottled-up questions, doubts, skepticism and sheer nonbelief that I kept under wraps as a Christian have now blossomed into a vitriolic hate of almost all things Christian that I'm slowly siphoning out of my psyche.

23. I don't hate god. I'm not angry at god, either. I never was.

24. I love living so much. I love this planet, this country, this city. I'm grateful for my chance to look at trees and stuff every day. I even like the weather here. I hope that if everything were taken away from me that I could still look at trees flowering in the spring and feel lucky.

25. My ability to sing is my most cherished gift and my greatest torment.

26. I vacillate between "I'm a lazy, apathetic bum and I'll never amount to anything" and "All things will come in time. I'm doing more than I realize."

27. Stealing from Michael again - I grew up believing that losing your virginity before marriage was just about the biggest sin any child could commit. In order of severity, it was above assault and battery, just below murder, tied with smoking.

28. Ramon's my rebound guy. He befriended me after my fiancé (unofficial engagement) dumped me.

29. I got dumped because I was depressed (college again) and losing my religion. I kind of deserved it, and it's one of the best things that ever happened to me.

30. I understand Baz Luhrmann's movies so much better when I watch them under the influence.

31. I think Ramon's way hotter with a beard.

32. I truthfully think my nephew Oz is the best-looking baby I've ever seen.

33. Ramon and I both have active and very real freebie lists that we continually and mutually update. We have an ongoing fight about who gets first dibs with Angelina Jolie.

34. Regarding #33 - Ramon would shake his head and deny that last bit, but it's still true.

35. I am an unconfirmed bisexual. Unconfirmed because my only sexual partner has been my husband.

36. I married way, way up in the looks and self-actualization department. I'm not kidding. Knowing Ramon for more than a decade has turned me into a calmer, steadier, funnier and nicer person. And I'm noticeably better groomed.

37. Ramon loved me even during my soccer grunge stage.

38. I only attended public school for Kindergarten and first grade. The rest of my schooling, including college, was in private Christian academies.

39. I got a great education.

40. I know the Bible pretty well and am still glad of it.

41. I think I'd be a great English Literature teacher. I'm just not sure I want to.

42. I lived in four different countries in Central and East Africa for a total of ten of my first 18 years of life.

43. My parents' missionary career ended with them getting hurt very badly by the Free Methodist Mission board. If the guy who was the primary author of that hurt stood in front of me today I think I could at least seriously consider killing him with a knife.

44. I think the African American community's general aversion to American police is pretty well founded.

45. I love comic books.

46. My favorite comic artists/graphic novelists are Keith Knight and Neil Gaiman.

47. I currently envy only one person on the planet. He shall never be named, but he is neither rich nor famous. You'll never guess who he is.

48. I was a vegetarian for 3.5 years. A year ago I gave it up because I really missed eating meat. I love being an ambivore but still think it's morally wrong for me to be so.

49. I'm opinionated and quick to judge, criticize and anger. It's one of the things I dislike most about myself. For that reason I rethink, really fast, nearly every opinion I form about everyone and everything. Which means I don't trust my instincts for good reason. I'm kind of mad about that one.

50. I wish to god I could think and act more compassionately first, not second.

51. Every day the fact that I am so much more (concerning my health and profession, chiefly) than what I have become nearly drives me mad. But I value my current way of life too much to effect an overhaul. I pray that fact changes, quickly.

52. I blame my parents for nothing concerning my current life and way of being. I believe my own choices brought me to where I am and that, good or bad, gives me joy.

53. I honestly think that people and the world are no worse off or more evil or destructive than they ever were before.

54. If I could adhere to any set of religious rules, I would probably be some sort of Buddhist.

55. I lie for social comfort and/or personal gain. No big stuff, but still.

56. If I tell you I love you, it's the truth, every time, and means more than I could ever say.

57. I'm trying to get comfortable with the fact that I'll always be talkative, loud, opinionated, mercurial and kind of a diva. I don't think I'll ever be able to change those things, I'm trying to believe that they can be good things and I'm coming closer and closer to not hating them about myself.

58. I don't mean 'demanding, self-aggrandizing and pushy' when I say diva. I mean 'thinks she's got to be performing almost every minute she's awake'. Get the diff? I might be a bit of those first things, but not much.

58. Oh yeah, and I think about myself WAY too much.

59. There's a blog that I wish would invite me to guest-author on. I've wished it for a long time and will never ask.

60. I've forgotten a lot of the grammatical rules. I should really bone up on those.

61. I used to speak French and Swahili almost fluently. I still dream in French a lot and hope to re-learn those languages.

62. Languages I'd like to learn: French, Spanish, Swahili, Mandarin, Japanese, Russian, Italian, German.

63. I've toured many countries and think that for the most part American tourists' bad rep in other places is well-deserved.

64. I miss Africa like I've lost a limb. I try not to talk about it very much.

65. My Dad and I have always been a lot alike.

66. The older I get, the more traits come out in my personality that remind me of my mom.

67. I really enjoy being so much like both of my parentals.

68. It pains me that my Dad wasn't loved enough as a child (in my opinion). The fact that he is the person he is in spite of that makes him some kind of miracle. I'll spend the rest of my life trying to love him enough to make up for what he didn't have before.

69. I'm pretty sure my Mom will be canonized after her death. If she isn't, she should be.

70. I'm starting to bore even my own self with this list.

71. I'll never believe that I was a good enough sister to Nathan.

72. I really, really liked the second boarding school I attended. I spent my Junior and Senior year of high school there and wish to heaven I'd gotten sent there in the first place.

73. I think Eugene, Oregon's feed-two-people-for-about-$20 cuisine far outstrips Seattle's.

74. I am a rabid fan of the following: Quentin Tarantino, Rick McPeak, Frank Miller, Trent Reznor, L.J. Arensen, Imogen Heap, Metallica (the black album got me through my senior year of HS without offing myself and others), Charlie Peacock, Aly Hawkins, Lisa Gerrard, Kate Bush and Wes Anderson. This list is actually much longer, obviously, but these are the people I'm currently digging on the most.

75. I dye my hair black because I think it looks better that way and because my mom's hair was that color in her youth. My real hair color is almost-black brown.

76. I will miss out on cool concerts, festivals and activities to avoid being in a crowd.

77. I used to think it was my right to spill to my girlfriends as many details as I liked about Ramon's and my physical life. I don't think that way any more.

78. I once asked for a Corona in a brewery, got yapped at by the waiter, cravenly apologized and embarrassed my dinner companions. I'd never been in one before and was new in Eugene, where I swear every other restaurant is a brewery.

79. I'm a beer weenie, in that I don't like anything dark or hoppy. However, I love love love microbrews (of the yellow and mild variety) and prefer them to all other beer, even Corona.

80. Our favorite brewery, the McMenamins chain, had two restaurants in Eugene and it pained us to leave them. We got to Seattle and found that their branch here, Six Arms, is literally one block away from our apartment building. I did the Snoopy dance and promptly went and consumed a pitcher of Ruby.

81. [nineteen...more...to go...] I've had a machine gun and a knife (more of a shiv, actually) pointed at me for real. Instead of giving up my awesome mountain bike to the Zairewa soldier who wanted it (and was pointing a machine gun at me to further his agenda), I rode away like hell and prayed he didn't have the balls to shoot at a missionary kid. It's not the stupidest thing I've ever done. The guy who pointed a shiv at me was a crazy dude in Bukavu who had undone his pants and was fixing to violate my honor (I'll never know if he'd have really gone through with it. Like I said, he was clearly crazy). This missionary auntie of mine caught him and screeched and he ran off. I got a pathetic blow to his shoulder in before he did so. Hey, I was only 13.

82. I also fought off another would-be stealer of my virtue with a metal folding chair (I was on my way home from church. We carried our own chairs there) and got rewarded with nothing worse than a slap on the face that made my head ring for hours. I ran straight to Dad's foreman, Msosi, and cried my head off.

83. I got a lot of attention in Africa (the wrong kind) because I was buxom from age 9 onward. It kept me in the house reading books instead of being outside in the land I still love best in the world. It's one of my most painful regrets.

84. My last spanking was when I was 12, for slamming my bedroom door in a temper and nearly breaking my brother's arm.

85. I really like drag queens and movies about them.

86. Some Favorite Movies of All Time (in no particular order): Stealing Beauty, The Royal Tenenbaums, Pulp Fiction, The Empire Strikes Back, Gosford Park, High Fidelity, Grosse Pointe Blank, all period films no matter how badly they've been done. Your basic nerd stuff, really.

87. I almost lost my life swerving to avoid killing a chipmunk sitting in the road, doing 70 in a Ford Festiva. This may be the stupidest thing I've ever done. I'd do it the same way again.

88. I'm very loyal, and become The Angry Friend who'll defend you to the death and probably embarrass the shit out of you in the process.

89. I love all reptiles, but bugs, spiders and especially praying mantises make me want to scream.

90. I once killed a bunch of baby praying mantises (manti?) with a magnifying glass - I think my karma's already coming to get me on that one.

91. I never intentionally kill anything any more. I don't even pick flowers.

92. When I was 11 I got sick with what my parents think was leukemia. They believe I was miraculously cured - I think it was some sort of weird-ass tropical disease that they couldn't diagnose and it just eventually passed. It was the worst pain I've ever felt in my life.

93. Someone I really loved died very suddenly of a weird, undiagnosed tropical disease.

94. I'm afraid that my life is too easy and too good - I keep fearing that What Happens to Everybody will happen to me and I'll lose something or someone that I can't afford to be without.

95. I'm less and less comfortable with my raging potty mouth. I'm considering curbing it gradually to coincide with my nephew Oz's development of speech and imitation skills. He's about 4 months old, so I've got some time.

96. I think Joss Whedon is some kind of minor deity. If he had never created Buffy, Angel and Firefly I'd get a lot more done.

97. I've wanted to meet and have been actively looking for my One True Love since I was about 5. I don't even believe in One True Love anymore, and am the better for it.

98. I knew Ramon was it almost as soon as I met him. He took a bit of work to bring around.

99. The hardest thing I've ever done is the continual work of letting him go (figuratively).

100. Did I already say that I love my life and I'm really really happy? Even when my life is bad it's good.

101. If you're reading this chances are that I really, really like you. There's possibly love involved.

Cerise

In No Particular Order

2007-03-14T10:16:00.000-07:00

1. This whole early Daylight Savings thing would probably go easier on us if we'd stop watching Buffy re-runs until the wee hours (her mum just died so it's understandable that we're terribly riveted and netflixing the subsequent disks as quickly as possible. Somebody buy me the set.) and waking up severely sleep-deprived.

2. I wish to god we'd watched the "About the Movie" featurette for "A Scanner Darkly" before we actually watched the movie. I still liked it very much, though. It just baked my noodle a bit.

3. Did I mention that I quit the Symphony Chorale? Yes - back in October, I think. It was a good decision that I've never regretted.

4. I also quit being a vegetarian. Back in January 2006, actually. I have no defense or even a very good reason. My karma's screwed. I don't want to think about it.

5. My poor mum just released her annual family newsletter and once again didn't have anything newsworthy to report about her daughter. It's all right for the other 3. Nathan's a doctor and that will provide fodder for years to come, Elizabeth brought forth the first grandchild for both sets of families, Ramon released his book, and I...nothing to report here, folks. Move along. Though it rankles a bit in theory, it's not nearly as upsetting as you might think...

6. We may use my March bonus in its entirety to get my cat Simone's butt operated on.

7. If my apartment building owners decide to turn our home into a condo I'm ending it all. I'll most likely do this with some sort of explosive device, so I can take my beloved apartment with me.

8. The trees are in full-on "we're not kidding around, this is no false spring, punks" bloom. It makes me very happy.

9. Ramon downloaded every Kate Bush album for me yesterday. He is the King of All.

10. I'm working on a WordPress website, so this blog will most likely move. That will benefit us all, because if I pay for a domain I will most likely write more. That's the idea.

Cerise

Joy as a Thing to be Cultivated

2007-03-06T13:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was such a good day. I'd had a quiet, sweet, leisurely weekend with Ramon - we took it easy as we were both recovering from illness. I woke yesterday alert and refreshed, with "oh, goody" foremost in my thoughts - a vast departure from my normal state of mind upon rising from bed. It's usually something along the lines of "if someone killed me right now, I could sleep for as long as I liked and face life nevermore." Walking to work was refreshing and, as I said, exposed me fully to the joy of new-budding spring. I spent the day in a haze of bewildered happiness, unable to account for my lightness of heart, quick smile or gracious reactions to the usual irritations that arise in a job in the city. I wish I could convey to you how unaccustomed I am to feeling cheerful and sanguine, how rare it is that I come away from any interaction satisfied that I sought to keep the other's dignity and comfort foremost in my mind. I'm usually so surly, at least on the inside, easily injured, quick to resent and become irritated, harboring small offenses those around me have unwittingly committed in my heart much, much longer than any sane person would. Part of it is is that I've dwelt in darkness these last few months and a heart in distraction and mild despair has no grace to give anyone else. And yes, part of it is that I am not a very joyful, cheerful, sanguine, comfortable or gracious person overall.

I'm passionate, yes, interesting, sometimes amusing, mercurial and jocular. But not kind, not normally. And not happy.

Yesterday was a precious gift both in the pure happiness I felt and in the sudden clarity it afforded me. I had pleaded (with whom, I know not) for insight into myself, for some beam of light to illumine What is Wrong With Me and What Must I Do to Fix It. Well. I didn't get that, necessarily, but I got joy. I'll never know where it came from, but I had it, all day (until 1 in the morning, which is when Ramon and I finally stopped our wonderful, meaningful conversation and settled down to sleep), and I vowed to Tracy that I would do all that I could to hold it in my heart for as long as I could.

I know that happiness is unpredictable and fleeting and that moods change like the sun shining through shifting clouds (most especially in a personality like mine), but one of the good lessons I learned in the church was that joy was a thing to hold in your heart. More than happiness, it is a decision you make, every moment. You can choose joy, cultivate it, act on it, even in your darkest hour. I'm not certain how - I don't have a lesson plan for how my wish to choose joy will batter down walls of hurt, fear, anger, spite, intimidation and dishonesty that I've carefully crafted in my psyche. I don't think I'll be able to go against my unhealthy habits as easily every day as yesterday. But just as Lucy, in the Dawn Treader's escape from the Dark Island, saw the white bird guiding them to safety (amidst blinding and impenetrable darkness) and felt Aslan's breath assuring her that all would be well, perhaps my memory of my decision to live with joy will guide me if the fog (shudder to think) falls on me again.

For now I'm living a small miracle and furthermore have been given the sight, for once, of knowing it for a rare gift and being grateful for it. As I am for all of you.

Cerise

Deepest Apologies

2007-03-05T14:21:00.000-08:00

To my loyal and long-suffering readership of about 3, who all wonder why in god's name I haven't written anything for almost 2 months.

Heavens.

I'm on it, people. This was one of the worst winters to date for me. I thought I had conquered SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder - you Seattleites should know this well) for good but it came for me with a vengeance this year and I fought it not at all. Ever since the days started to shorten in earnest (November?) I felt the fog of apathy, sadness and (this is a little melodramatic - see new blog title - but still) despair envelop me and no amount of Tracy's peppermint tea could assuage it. But I didn't fight. I didn't exercise, eat right, have lots of sex, force myself to play along the Internet Tubes, keep up with my friends and/or family. I didn't do any of the things that would have kept me alive during the long winter. And the saddest thing? I didn't know how bad it was until I opened my eyes today (not those eyes. The other ones), saw buds on trees and really knew for sure that spring was coming. I was nearly dead, exhausted and unhappy and kind of desperate. Today I'm alive and awake and disgustingly cheerful.

Signing off, but not for long,

Cerise

Stay With Me

2007-01-08T09:21:00.000-08:00

On mating for life: you would die for your love. You would kill to protect them. You would do anything in your power, short of bad behavior in general, to keep them by your side.

Yet you must be ready at any time to let go of them, to let them fly free, to watch them large and alone and beautiful on the horizon, and that must be OK. They have to know that at any time you'll gladly and lovingly let them go, when they're ready, if the time comes, when the time's right.

And there are humans out there who don't believe in paradox, in ambiguity, in dwelling constantly in inner contradiction.

I am trying to be comfortable. Normally we breezily speak of the fact that because we love each other we would separate if that were the path before us. No clinging, no drama, no ugliness in trying to retain the company of someone who can no longer fulfill the role of constant companion. It would suck, yes, but we've promised each other that we would let go. We say contentedly that we stay together not because we're legally bound, but because we wish to - we like cohabiting and mutually loving. We like our lives together, knowing each others' ways and habits. We get each other, mostly. We agree on many important things, and our disagreements are few and not that fundamental. We like our arrangement. We're proud of ourselves for our enlightened marital philosophy.

And this weekend I got a glimpse, just a flicker, of what it feels like to actually, truly ponder what it would be like to really let go. (Be not alarmed, Dear Reader. Nothing's changed. This is all a result of a purely hypothetical conversation of What We Would Do If We Could.) For my love to need space, lots of it, for a long time, and for me to have to say, "Fly away, with joy. I will wait for you. I'm proud of you." I handled it badly. I let Ramon's hypothetical dreaming, instead of just a dream, become an abandonment of Us, The Holy Diune Ramon and Cerise. I wept and stuttered and walked home on trembly knees. I didn't cling or plead, thank god. I said the words I've always wished I'd say in such a situation, but through tears and shock, which distressed my lover.

Faugh. Hypothetical marital conflict abetted by a hangover. Makes him careless and me lugubrious.

Cerise

01-09-2007 Addendum: after speaking about it R. and I agreed that though there are a multitude of ways to say "Go do what you have to do, I love you, now go." (and god knows I've used nearly half of them in this post alone), there's only one way to ask your love to stay with you, and that is "Please stay with me." It sounds lame, but it's profound to ask it of your spouse (especially after the aforementioned touchy and disastrous weekend discussion) and be asked it in return.

More Pictures of Oliver

2006-12-11T12:52:00.000-08:00

You can see more pictures of His Majesty here .

Open Wide and Say O

2006-12-11T12:12:00.000-08:00

Well, my dears. The King of Kings is born. Presenting: my new nephew OLIVER!! Oliver Asante (Swahili for "thank you") was born Wednesday, November 29 at 7:39am, after a long labor and subsequent high and scary drama, to my brother Nathan and sister-in-law Elizabeth. Our family mobbed the birth center for two days after his birth and impressed the staff with our whole-hearted shouldering of the new bevy of tasks that Oz's presence dictated. A list:

Auntie Claire, head paparrazza, was one of three family members who held Elizabeth's hand during labor (since Oz was a week ahead of schedule none of the rest of us could be reached. Baby Watch had not yet been put in place. I swear, if Oz inherited his father's family's need to be everywhere at least half an hour early I'm writing him out of my will post-hasty). She then joined me in highest number of pictures taken in the recovery room and had to be stopped from dipping his binky in a nice beaujolais.

Uncle Joel was, as usual, kind and generous with his smile to everyone present (I mean, present after we woke up, rubbed our eyes, took a pee and then checked our phones and found 10 messages saying that the K of K was on his way) and is already working to thwart Nathan's campaign to train Oz to call Joel "Uncle Prick".

Uncle Ramon had never held a newborn, to his memory, and when his interfering wife Cerise kept handing Oz to him, asked her what he was supposed to do with him. He caught on quickly and now whispers moral corruption in his ear every chance he gets.

Aunt Cerise was Aunt Cerise - co-paparrazza with Aunt Claire, Head Lullaby Singer and trying desperately not to say the SH word in front of the baby. Also headed up the "Roll Your Eyes Behind the Lactation Consultant's Back" task force. She has already learned that all of that in-utero U2 listening has warped the Oz-man's mind and if you sing Puccini or Jewel - what was I thinking? - he screams bloody murder. "Where the Streets Have No Name" makes an excellent lullaby.

Grandma Pris, being a nurse, got to do many comforting nursy things for Elizabeth and Ozzie. Her ministrations, I understand, were most welcome and I, though I required no medical attention, was nevertheless glad of her comfort and calm. She was Vice President of the "Roll Your Eyes Behind the Lactation Consultant's Back" club.

Grandpa Nate was always nearby Elizabeth, and probably clocked in the most bedside hours of all of us. He was especially helpful during Visiting Day, when his forbidding visage (masking an enormous heart, mind you) kept the hordes in line. Like, literally.

Grandpa Scott made sure we all wore masks around Mr. Incredible. And washed our hands before holding him. He also did a tremendous amount of running around and was the first to try wrestling the baby seat into the Jetta.

Grandma Chris was beautiful and serene and said many soft and lovely things into Oliver's perfect little ears. And Elizabeth's. And mine.

What do I say about Nathan? He was everywhere. He was with Elizabeth and Oz through every step, every procedure; every scary detail of What Happened unfolded before his eyes and, of the family, his alone. He faced crippling fear and came through with a little family to call his own. He's the man he always was - brave and kind and gentle and so very, very, very...funny. He's an angel and a good doctor and a wonderful brother. My little brother's a Dad, and a really good one - boggles the mind. Oz is a miracle and Nathan deserves him.

As does Elizabeth. You know that when the SH word hits the fan you find out someone's true colors? She was as courageous and determined and hard-working as ever - and those of us who've seen her do a half-Ironman already know her mettle. She is a champion. And she's also one of the most generous-hearted people alive. Like my mother, she'll be kind to you all the way up to almost hurting herself in the process. Know how I know? She was groggy after Oz was born, barely conscious at all, her voice a faint whisper. We were all crowded in her room, whispering too, telling her that we loved her and were SO proud. In walks a nurse - a good one, I think - all breezy and loudish, wondering at Elizabeth's musculature and inquiring as to whether she works out. A frisson of laughter went around the room as we explained that she's a triathlete of no small accomplishment and a personal trainer. The nurse went into her own burgeoning triathlon efforts and future dreams and wouldn't you know it - Barely There Elizabeth still found it in herself to offer encouragement and advice to this fledgling athlete. I was amazed, though getting used to it seems a good idea. It's not like she's not like that all the time...

Nathan and Elizabeth are already patient, good-humored (and exhausted) parents. I'm so very, very proud of them. Oliver is...he is the most beautiful child I've ever seen. I would do anything for him. You laugh, especially you parentals, but he has changed my life. He's inspired so many wild and wonderful schemes in my mind - he takes up most of my thoughts and affections. I'm over the moon for him. I'd JUMP over the moon for him. I'd swan-dive into a 50-ft.-deep, rock-strewn pit full of Batwa (pygmie) tribespersons armed with pointy sticks if I thought such an act would benefit him in some way. Probably not. Maybe just a small harmless bungie jump over a lake or something.

Far from taking the pressure off me, the newest member of the family has now given everyone baby fever and I can feel myself being watched. Of N and E's 3 combined siblings, I'm the only married one and now the pressure's on to see if I'll get the urge to have a kid myself. The watchful eyes see my great love for Oz and wonder if they're seeing longing to have one of my own. I assure you - I'm safe. Oz is baby enough for me, and if I had kids, why, I'd waste all of Oz's inheritance (for he is my heir - providing I die in the black, fiscally speaking) on their soccer shorts and college tuition! No. Oliver's the light of my life. He is enough. He's changed everything.

Cerise

Text-Message Breakup

2006-11-03T09:37:00.000-08:00

OK, I know - enough vids already. But this last one is too funny not to post.

Ex-BF forever, DECK!

Cerise

Take a Deep Breath

2006-10-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

Worried Readers, worry no more. I have quit smoking cloves. I'm not sure why, but they started making me queasy. Even though I stuck to the one-cigarette-per-day limit. So I quit. There comes a time when even the pleasure of sitting outside, fiddling with lighters and little pretty boxes and sucking on an aromatic stick is outweighed by the urge to yack every time I breathed in.

And I'm not about to try real cigarettes to see if they're any better. I only smoked to smoke cloves, and they're turning my lil' stomach, sad to say.

I'm a quitter.

Cerise

All RIGHT, Gato!!

2006-10-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

Jeez - you know, it's hard to find cute cat footage that doesn't have cats falling off things or zooming headfirst into walls. I disapprove of filming cat head-ons. This guy's pretty zen, though. Dig it.

Happy?

Cerise

Superstition Ain't the Way, Naw Naw Naw

2006-10-13T15:18:00.000-07:00

Unbelievable. Regardless of whether or not we believe that Friday the 13th is an incredibly unlucky day, for me this has been at least not a good day. A list:

1. Our company's server crashed with a mighty boom. In the middle of post-quarter scrambling. When we need all the databases our server...uh, serves...the most. It has made everyone a little touchy, since in my line of work many things can't be delayed by a day. Money is lost.

2. I just got what's going around this god-be-damned petri dish of a city. Bad, bad, bad head cold. I'm so high on drugs that I barely remember my own name.

3. I personally have work assignments requiring that I work smarter and faster than I've ever worked before. This on cold medication is remarkably peculiar. Fortunately I'm too drugged-up to panic.

4. The cold has made me so sleepy and contagious that I will not be able to drive home to spend the weekend with my beloved parents, accompanying my mother to two fun-filled baby showers for my sister. We would have had a good time. Now she'll have a good time and call me from time to time to make sure I'm well-stocked with lemons and honey. I love my Mum.

5. [OVERSHARE ALERT] It's that time of the month again, with all the skin afflictions, grouchiness, temperamental bowels and, oh yeah, bleeding and back pain that that implies.

I feel like shaking my fist at the sky and yelling, "WHAT ELSE YOU GOT??"

Maybe on the 14th.

Cerise

P.S. Lest the Universe remind me, I really do know that these are all temporary discomforts at the very worst. My life is awfully good almost all of the time and man, it could be so much worse. And honestly, the Dayquil has gotten me in such a state of blissful highness, I'm really not feeling as pitiful as I sound.

Wait...what?

2006-10-11T10:16:00.000-07:00

I amuse myself often by wondering what conversations between my husband and I would sound like taken out of context. Here are a couple of samples:

Cerise: "Wait - how did Felicity Huffman get infected?"

Ramon: [surprised] "Oh. I don't know. Must've been when the pilot was bleeding and writhing around."

C: "Yeah, but the two doctors were the only ones that got blood on them. Not her."

R: "You're right. Huh."

C: "Just plot-driving, I guess. 'It could be anyone, AT ANY TIME'."

R: [chuckle] "Yep."

Or this [FOUL LANGUAGE ALERT]:

One morning I got up and was pulling on clothes, looking down on a
sleepy Ramon (who was tangled up in the covers with B'Elanna). This is
our conversation:

Cerise: "Monchis."

Ramon: "Mm?"

C: "There's an open condom wrapper on your bedside table."

R: "Oh my god."

C: "It must have been from a few nights ago, huh? Or did you do something to me while I was sleeping last night?"

R: "Uh, no, unless I was asleep too."

[pause] He blinks, yawns.

R: "Sleep-fucking."

************

Anyone else this weird within the bounds of their committed relationship?

Cerise

Your Sugar Shock for the Day

2006-09-20T09:02:00.000-07:00

Cerise

Happy Birthday, Aly

2006-09-19T11:47:00.000-07:00

This month 15 years ago I met Aly. I was raw, new to boarding school and scraped free of parents, those unfortunate two years in America and all my illusions about my new home - which I had waited 5 years to finally get into. I was a Junior in high school - so was she - with two years left to experience Africa, experience this wonderful school (which had been pushed to mythical proportions in my feverish imagination thanks to those pesky 5 years of waiting). I knew that I was on my mettle. I knew that I'd be meeting paragons of cool, self-possessed, devil-may-care missionary-kid-dom. And Aly did absolutely nothing to vanquish my nervous prejudice. Perfectly white-skinned with a mane of wavy chestnut hair and impossibly large, crystal-blue eyes, she was easy and friendly and self-assured. And funny. And the way we met was most peculiar. Back then we bore a passing resemblance to each other. I, too, had wavy dark-brown hair, white skin and lighter eyes, though mine were green. I also contained breezy self-assurance, though Aly's was apparently all serenity and amusment and mine was borne of anger and cynicism. Anyway. We looked a little alike. [The similarity increased later when we found out that we both sang rather wellish (back then she was THE soprano of the school and I was milking the sultry alto thing. To death. I have videos.), though that wouldn't reveal itself until later.] And I got there a day before she did. As I tremblingly met group after group of classmates, their reaction was similar - before introductions they'd peer at me, say "hey", and comment on how I wasn't supposed to arrive until tomorrow. With the obvious friendly ease of people who already knew me. Instant - and I mean instant - fame ensued when I (still trembling - I'd shake for days after) laughingly informed them that I was new and had no idea who Aly was. This was my entrance into boarding school society. On the coattails of one of the coolest girls in school.

And she wasn't one of the stereotypical, "Heathers"-like popular girls, either. Our boarding school didn't have many (if any) of those. She was popular because she was beautiful and, like I said, breezy and self-assured and funny and friendly and quite terribly kind. To everybody. And she was the best singer there. And for the first time in my life, I didn't feel jealousy for my position as a singer.

You have to understand; I was raised believing without doubt in an amazing gift I was given from god to sing. I was groomed by my family and teachers to sing wherever there was a stage, and since we were in church every time the doors opened there were many, many opportunities. All the get-togethers with other children and teenagers had talent shows, and I remember consciously thinking, if things weren't going terribly great in the making-friends department of these conventiony-things, "Well. Wait until they hear me sing." I even didn't do as much personality-crafting as I could have (I still haven't ordered Dear Abby's booklet, "How to Be Popular". It really exists.), since singing to a group would elicit instant attention and either adulation if I did well or sympathy if I'd screwed up and amusement when screwing up inevitably led to me doing something funny to pass the mistake off. So - all of this to illustrate that the fact that I could sing, and I'll say sing well, was perhaps the most important thing in my life up to that point. And beyond.

[For your information, I was NOT disabused of this belief until well after college, when I chickened out on pursuing a musical career and entered the office world, where no one cared that I could sing and no one would ever hear me anyway, since the office never has a stage (pity - we could enact our silly dramas there) and I don't do well with karaoke. It's been a good, if acutely painful, lesson.]

Every other singer I'd met had been an object of veiled hostility to me. Every other singer was in competition for my share of everyone's attention. I was a diva from the womb, it seems, and nobody was welcome in my trailer with the white carpet, white couches, white walls, white flowers, celery sticks and Kabbalah water. Or on my stage. Stupid, right? Well. [sigh] I was a child, rather a histrionic one, and raised for the stage. And I'm still wildly hyperbolic.

I wish I could tell you why I didn't care that Aly was the best singer. I have no idea. She was totally rival material, but I couldn't dislike her. In fact, I was kind of smitten with her. I remain smitten to this day. [Not in that way, perverts.] I wish I could go beyond the endless descriptions of loud laugh, dulcet tones, crystal eyes, mane-of-hair, breezy what-have-you, kind heart, razor-sharp mind descriptions and really plumb for you what makes Aly amazing beyond being beautiful and smart and funny. She entices men and women alike - she catches the eye. She's wildly intelligent without ever being boorish or overbearing. She's beautiful without ever looking unearthly. She's kind and yet without equal the most honest, forthright person I've ever met - thwarted as she sometimes is by her own mountanous sense of diplomacy. Which I believe is borne of her deeply held, innate desire to give the truth without doing harm. Her laugh is loud but never irritating or inappropriate. Her voice is sultry, sacred, cool, warm, thin like winter air and rich as loam. Most wondrous of all - she is hilarious at the expense of exactly no one.

Her faults - she has them, trust me. Two of the biggies? She cares too much, about everything, and she believes maybe 20% of the previous paragraph.

Darling friend, knowing you is an honor I can't express. You are a gift - a bright light in the lives of everyone who knows you. You matter most sincerely to the circle of people who love you and who now anxiously watch over you in this new chapter of your life. I don't fear that you'll change or become someone I no longer know. I rejoice that you are inevitably becoming more truly yourself, and I can't wait to meet the new bits of you that are slowly, painfully being revealed. I love you more than I can ever fathom.

Cerise

Be Happy. Period.

2006-09-14T16:09:00.000-07:00

[Note to faithful reader(s). This next post is about menstruation. Mine, specifically. You've been duly warned.]

Always is my menstrual products brand of choice. I select for my Womanly Time their most advanced, absorbent, and thinnest pads, called (I'm not kidding) Always Ultra Plus Nighttime. I will not share with you why I must use their most industrial-strength version, save to mention that I wish that my reproductive circumstances were otherwise.

The point to this blog entry: if you click on the link above to Always.com, (men, be advised that if your computer is registered to a male-sounding name the monitor will promptly explode) you'll see in the upper-right corner a clickable banner that says, "Have a Happy Period". OK - [leans into the microphone] - does anyone besides me find this new marketing ploy beyond absurd? Really. Come on. It's on the facing on the actual pad as well - you know, the tear-off bit that exposes the adhesive? There it is, every time I'm alone in the bathroom stall, staring at me: "Have a Happy Period Have a Happy Period Have a Happy Period Have a Happy Period" like a manic chorus-line of pale tangerine false cheer. Gah.

Why, you ask, is this slogan so abhorrent to me? WHO IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT'S HOLY HAS A 'HAPPY' PERIOD? You? You, ma'am? You, sir, does your wife ever seem happy during her sacred feminine time? Anyone? No. I thought not.

My period's not happy. A week beforehand I experience PMS. I'm lucky in that there's no physical pain involved. This is sadly not the case for many of my sistern. However, mentally I'm not in a good place. Geez, you know how much I hate false gender labeling bullshit. People accusing women of PMS-ing when they assert themselves at work or what have you gets me hotter than hell (not in a good way), but I'll be honest. I go berserk about a week before I menstruate. Berserk. I can feel it rising like heat in my brain, a buzz of irritation at work, at myself, and especially at Ramon, poor fella, because he's there. Eventually it'll get so bad (especially if I didn't mark my calendar and am therefore not aware of what's happening) that I personally, mentally will not be able to process the fact that he's left the water-sprayer on the bathroom sink again instead of hanging it on the shower caddy where it belongs and go after him, claws extended, guns blazing. Sometimes it just comes out as one snarky comment and then I snap awake: "Wha...? Whoa. Did I just bitch at you about the water thingy? I did, didn't I? Must be PMS. Sorry, babe. I'll mark my calendar." Sometimes it escalates into a straight-up fight (featuring shrieking ultimatums from me and sullen obstinance from Ramon, our specialties) followed by sobbing hysterics from me and THEN a crazed realization that this ruined evening was brought to you by the letters Pee and Em, and by the number 5 (5. S. PMS. Get it?)

[Irrelevant side note: I've finally figured out why women, when they're excited or upset, cover their nose and mouth with steepled hands (a dreadful-looking habit, in my mind). It staves off hyperventilation. Try it - much faster than a paper bag, right? I figured this out when Ramon and I were tussling and suddenly I couldn't stop laughing. Covered my breathing apparati and everything calmed down at once. A miracle. It works for screaming hysterics as well, I found. No need to thank me.]

Honestly, sometimes PMS doesn't manifest itself as much at all, thank goodness, or nothing more than a passing irritability that brushes right off.

Then the real deal a week later. Heavy, heavy flow, backaches, craving for all things edible (as long as they're wildly unhealthful), headaches, fatigue and a totally new and exciting bowel schedule. You'd be surprised how big of a deal that last one can be. The whole thing's not that bad, really, since Ibuprophen and those ubiquitous, cheerful tangerine pads keep me up and functioning more or less normally. I have it so much easier than so many women, y'all, so don't think I'm complaining inordinately. But my period is. Not. Happy.

I beseech you, Always, to rethink this last ad campaign. For me? How about "Have a Reasonably Livable Period"? Or "Please Don't Kill Anyone This Period"? Or "Everybody Understands If You Strangle Your Houseplant This Period, Really"?

Cerise

Racist Lite

2006-08-25T15:09:00.000-07:00

OK, who here knows that my loverman, Ramon, is half Mexican-American? I see that hand, sister [points lovingly to sole blog reader]. It comes up in coversation with people, mostly because I want folks to know that I'm technically in a bi-racial couple which means I'm down, get it? Just kidding. It comes up because he has the biggest brown eyes on the planet and it's due in large part to his Hispanic heritage. Now if only we spoke Spanish (the nice servers at restaurants in Puerto Vallarta kept addressing Ramon in Spanish. We both get pretty green around the gills with a guilt only monoglots can feel when that sort of thing happens) - but that's a whine for another day.

Anyway. Here's one of the funny/weird/was-that-racist? coversations I had when my bébé's skin color came up. I was talking to a guy about an upcoming concert with the Seattle Symphony - did I mention I'm in the Seattle Symphony Chorale? [pops cuffs, smoothes hair] - and mentioned how much I'd like Ramon's family to be able to come sometime. They live mostly in the Midwest, sadly, which is where his grandparents ended up after a lifetime of working their way around the States. Here's what he said:

Guy: "Well, it's a good thing his family ISN'T here, you know? They'd be a rowdy bunch, huh?"

I'm calm. There's probably a rational explaination...

Me: "Rowdy? Why would my husband's family be rowdy?"

Guy: "Well, because they're Mexicans, right? Rowdy - not in a bad way! Congenial! And you know how most people say 'Bravo!' after a piece? They'd probably say 'Olé!'"

Oh, dear. OK, where's my short fuse and fearless temper when I need it? Seriously, I could rip this guy a new one and it would be totally deserved. Crap.

Me: (eloquently and with raised eyebrows) "Uh...'olé'?"

Guy: "Well, yeah, I went to a bullfight and everybody was like 'Olé! Olé!"

Me: "First of all, bullfights are awful. Second of all, you were in Spain, I take it?"

Guy: "Yeah...uh, but Mexians say 'Olé' too, right? I'm just saying..."

Me: "Gotta go tinkle!" (or something equally inane - can't really remember, but I skedaddled without raking my fingernails over his face, to my eternal regret)

This isn't the first time I've gotten this sort of silliness from people. Someone before this told me how happy they were for me - Mexicans being congenial, family-oriented and SO hard-working and all. I mean, come on! Ramon's not congenial! Well - he's nice, but I mean... Family oriented? We don't even want kids. And hard-working, feh. You should see how late this dood sleeps in on his days off. He has two jobs, though. Hmmm.

Oh, my god. They're all RIGHT about Mexicans! Ramon fits the mold perfectly! Sheesh, I might as well start calling him El Guapo, for the love of Pete.

Geh. Dicks.

In case you haven't gotten that I'm weird as hell...

2006-08-23T15:49:00.000-07:00

(Oh, ah, come on in [brushes away cobwebs in the doorway]. Right, so, I suck - yep - haven't written anything since June. JUNE, people. I am never going to get to Dooce-level popularity that way. Huh-uh. Sorry for the long hiatus. No excuse, really. It's not like I've been doing any deep thinking or anything. Noooo.)

Onward.

So I was walking to the bus stop this morning, groggy, slightly breathless (it's all uphill. Both ways. Barefoot in knee-deep snow. All year). I smacked the pedestrian button a good one, since today (it's unprecedented) I actually have time to wait for my light instead of hurtling across the street on a red, praying to Dear Buddha and Baby Jesus to spare my life.

So I'm standing there, enjoying just standing - note to Seattleites that have lived here longer than my own 3 years. Do you EVER get used to the bloody hills? - and it got into my head that a crow (maybe a raven. You know? Since it's my blog and I don't know any better I'm going to call it a raven) is on the light pole across the street, cawing away and I just now noticed it. She was so beautiful (since it's - as I said - my blog, the raven's a girl); sleek black with beautiful lines and delicate feet. I think her head-cock action was so that she could beady-eye me, but I'm not sure. Felt like she was looking at me...I remember thinking that I was just woozy enough from it being 7:30 and not 10:30 (my preferred time of being up and about and not a second earlier) to be looking for omens, but that I'd never thought of black birdies as BAD omens, really, and this one was too damned pretty to bode anything but good.

"Hello, little sister," I thought, smiling up at her. Hey, this whole post is about how strange I am, OK? We've only just begun. I greet trees sometimes. Anyway. I noticed that she'd be quiet for a second, then caw a certain number of times - four, I counted (weird. And slightly OCD) - over and over. Four every time.

"Four? Four's not my number, really. Can I get a five (2 and 5 and 7 are 'friendly' numbers in my head. Weird weird weird)? I suppose seven's too much to ask, huh?" I'm thinking this. At least I don't talk this stuff through aloud, all right?

"Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw."

I'm not kidding, mes amies. 5 calls RIGHT THEN. I'm crossing the street now, taking a treacherous moment to double-take the lovely creature. She really gave me five. Un-freakin'-believable.

Another second, then she's back to four calls. Over and over. And I'm walking away wondering what it all means.

See? I'm crazy. And I'll write more of this loopy goodness, I swear. No more leaving and letting the blog get all moldy.

Cerise

Happy Birthday, Love.

2006-06-23T15:08:00.000-07:00

Today is my husband Ramon's 30th birthday. Sweet man, in honor of this very important number (finally he's in the same decade as me - it's been a long year being the only one in their 30s) I'm going to name 30 things that I love about you:

1. Your eyes - easily your most arresting feature (since people rarely get to see your ass first), they're coffee-colored and turn cinnamon in the sunlight. I'd say that I'd like to drown in them, but death by drowning in cinnamon-flavored coffee is not my preference.

2. Your ass. You think it's too big, too bubbly-shaped, too sticky-outy, whatever. It's magnificent. Trust your wife on this.

3. The fact that you're my friend. I love that we feel more like chums more often than even lovers or domestic partners, though those roles are good, too. You're good company.

4. Your laugh. Your quiet chuckle is the most most common and wonderful, but your rarer total-belly-laugh is music to my ears.

5. Your annoyed-bunny face.

6. The way you talk to the cats - your special voice for each of them, and the way you portray them as beings who talk back. I've noticed that Simone especially cusses a lot...

7. Your art. I'm lucky to be married to an artist at all, but to be with one whose topics of choice resonate so closely with things that I dwell on is spookily convenient. For me.

8. Your kindness - we're both sarcastic, sometimes selfish bastards, but underlying your caustic sense of humor is a deep desire to do no harm to anyone. And you're kindest of all to your wife.

9. Your pajamas. I dunno - something about them...

10. The way you can take chaos and make tidy order in our apartment. I admire that pick-up gene that you inherited more than I can say.

11. You appreciate every tiny thing I do in the household. Every dish I wash, stitch of clothing that's gone through the laundry, everything is minutely observed and lauded by you.

12. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the housework YOU do, for that matter. If it were only me doing the dishes (we don't have a dishwasher, people) we'd never eat on anything reusable.

13. The Mr. Nice Guy act you put on for people you don't know. It's not really an act, though, since you ARE nice and also have large quantities of personal integrity, but you make people really comfortable with your kind-eyed, head-nodding affirmation. And you really listen.

14. Your integrity - you're just a really, really good person. You do the right thing, mostly, regardless of the cost, and you treat people well. I wish you could understand how rare that is.

15. What you looked like as a boy. Your snaggle-toothed, shy grin and that haircut always gets me right here. I'll post some later, Dear Reader. I wish I could have known Little Ramon.

16. Your singing voice. You're busy now and not using it much at the moment, but it still makes me weak in the knees when I hear you in the shower.

17. Watching you at the computer with that digital drawing-pad-thingy. Skill is sexy.

18. I love how you LOVE wine but refuse to get too shee-shee about it.

19. I love your open mind and liberal personal politics.

20. I love our quiet evenings at home when you're working on your art and I'm plowing through another novel, or swearing quietly at the piano.

21. You answer me with care and honesty and kindness when I ask you hard questions about me, or us, or you.

22. I love your restlessness, how every achievement is followed by a What's next? Is there more? from you. I wish you could savor your amazingness more often and for a longer duration, but perhaps your inability to revel in your success too much will keep you humble when you're known worldwide.

23. Your charm. You are a charming man who refuses to acknowledge to me the attention you get from women.

24. Our fights on the bed. Some of my favorite memories of our marriage are when we're lying on the bed talking and the whole thing degenerates into a puppy-wrestle. [Quit retching, perverts. It's not THAT kind of wrestling.]

25. That face you make when I'm being a total ass and you're trying not to either laugh or inform me of my ass-ness. Kindness, that's what that is...

26. Your walk. It says "I'm the coolest mofo around, but I don't really think so and am totally unconscious of how gorgeous I am."

27. Your grace. You are a graceful man, and it detracts not at all from your manliness. This especially comes to light because of your wife, who crashes through life breaking things, losing her balance while standing totally still, acquiring bruises and inventing new invective (god-mother-shite!!!) in the kitchen when that damned porcelain sink claims another wine glass.

28. Your kisses. You're a champion kisser. And you're generous with them. I get just the perfect amount of physical (and verbal, for that matter) affection from you.

29. The fact that you hate PDA as much as I do.

30. Your generosity. You give me whatever I ask for, or try to, and I'm not unconscious of the personal sacrifices you make to make this marriage work so well.

31. Just...you. I love everything about you (to restate a cliché), even the stuff I hate, because it all makes up the person I love and respect and admire most in the world. Life with you is so good - even the bad bits of life are good because I get to share them with you.

There you go - I went over a bit. I love you, Monchis, body and soul and heart and hands and that great nose of yours and your hair and electric shaver and Americanos and passion for edamame and our headshot battle and long showers and how your lips stick out when you're asleep and future tattoos and kissing you with the shower curtain between us and great advice and voracious mind and unwritten novel and morning fauxhawk and bedroom eyes and mirror face and 30-pictures-to-get-a-good-picture and how you get so chatty when under the influence and how seldom you cry and how you SEE me and your concilatory hugs and chasing me around the median and your Converse and batman shirt and everything else.

I wish I could really tell you.

Cerise

Good Friends and a Filthy Habit

2006-06-02T22:52:00.000-07:00

Wow. One clove and a pot of wu wei and I'm loopy as hell. Here's my new favorite thing: standing on my back-alley, open-air apartment staircase landing, drinking a cup of somethin' and smoking a pretty black cigarette. The view is of...the alley, yes, but I can see Union St. and the trees over it, and I get a little strip of sky to look at, and man - nicotine makes me THINK. [For, alas, I found out that clove cigarettes, far from being just composed of cloves, have almost as much tobacco as a normal cig with some cloves thrown in there, too.] Is it the same for all you smokers out there? I get out there with a glass of two-buck-chuck, or a cup of tea or coffee and that one little cigarette and my mind goes bonkers. It's my new happy place. And I blog in my head. Now I know why writers are such champion smokers.

So, loopy. I don't know if it's cloves or tobacco (it can't be the alcohol or caffeine, because, like I said, this time it was wu wei and I'm still flying) or fresh air or WHAT, but I'm as high as if I'd taken a big hit off a pal's water bong. Mom, don't read that last bit. Seriously. I did inhale, yes, but that was the ONLY TIME. I swear. So, as you can tell, my substances, while relatively harmless (sort of harmless. Can you die from a one-clove-per-day-MAX habit?), get me feeling high and groovy and I just want to write write write about you (yes, YOU) and how much you mean to me. I swear - what a doof I am. Getting high on cloves? Cheez...

The people most responsible for my pleasures this evening?

First of all, Aly and Ash, who, while hosting Ramon and I in their beautiful California home, introduced me to the wonder of clove cigarettes, without which this long, silly, lugubrious post would not be possible. Truly - I'd say that I miss them every time I smoke one, and I do, but it wouldn't be quite accurate since I miss their company many more times than just once a day. I do miss you both - so much - out there on that breezy landing. I miss your laughs and clothes and bright eyes and brilliant ideas. And your questions about what's on my mind. Selfish me, that would be the thing I miss most about them. Just kidding.

I have Tracy to thank for the breathtaking new teapot that brewed three most excellent cups of tea. Get this (tea-philes, sit down for this one) - it's a black Brown Betty teapot. The real deal. She brought it to work today with a "pay me later" that means she'll never take money for it, never. T, seriously, you gotta let me pay. I still owe you for that esspensive glass of chardonnay at The Met and that pint of cider at Fado. I'm not kidding.

My good thoughts tonight were mostly taken up with jcarwen and yelahneb, a wonderful, wonderful couple Ramon and I met a few months ago and who continue to reveal themselves as two of the most promising friends he and I have met in a long, long time. I found them whilst trolling for fellow Seattle blogspotters (thank you, Blogspot, thank you!). Three dinners later and we're still completely in love with them. They're friendly without being creepy. Intelligent (boy howdy) without being pretentious or intimidating. Good-looking without being part of The Beautiful People that Ramon and I have zero time for. In love but not schmoopy. They're nice, they're funny, zany, normal, kind, down-to-earth, excellent-flights-of-fancy people. And did I already say they're funny? They're funny. The first time we met for dinner Ramon and I were walking home and I was chanting "Please, god, let this work out. Please." in my head. That's how cool they are.

I thought about the rest of you, too, but the buzz has worn off and now I'm ready for bed. Love to my friends - Jill, thank god you're getting help for that neck thing. I hate to think of you hurting. Dad, you're beautiful body and soul. Don't let the dickheads tell you otherwise. Nathan and Elizabeth, my best friends. How I love you. Peanut, have you learned how to laugh yet? I can't wait to see what kind of sense of humor you'll have. Mindy, time for another two-way-rant, don't you think? And last but never least - Momlies. I'm still walking around flattered as anything that you consider me a best friend. You're the finest human on the planet.

And Ramon - you gonna call me or what? When are you coming home? Quit sweeping the gallery floor and come home to your lovin' woman.

Cerise

New Weird Fetish

2006-05-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

You know how people eating on the phone is the grossest thing to bloody listen to? Usually (even at work) when someone's eating or chewing gum during our phone converstation I'll aggressively question this life choice right into their ear. "Whatcha eating?" "What kind of gum is that?" I'm not kidding. I'll risk strife and personal insult if I can just get Nathan to stop putting Doritos in his fool mouth (just kidding - love you bro). This goes for everybody, no exceptions.

Except, apparently, for my own dear husband. I called Ramon at work to see how he was doing and he took the phone from his boss/friend - "Yah?" He was munching on something and for some freaked-out reason I just though it was hot as hell. He said it was an apple and apologized, but I urged him to carry on. Whoa. I mean, my mind went blank, I started stuttering like a damned twit and totally forgot what I had called for. I even started up a physical response to the whole thing. I'll spare you the details (sorry, Introspectre). So. There you have it, Dear Reader. I get turned on listening to my husband talk on the phone to me whilst eating an apple. Write that down.

If he ever starts travelling for work it'll be such a great system. He can call me from the road in the evening and eat pretzels while I...er. Yeah.

I really hope my parents don't read this blog.

Cerise

For You, Introspectre

2006-05-17T19:21:00.000-07:00

My dear, you had said once that you'd like to find out what I'd write about you in this post. I never have been able to come up with something, and babe, I've tried.

I decided to let it rest when I picked up my favorite book by my favorite author of all time that I hadn't read for a while and the heroine wore your face. It's so weird - it came naturally to me while I read the first few pages of the well-worn novel that in my imagination she looked like you. I can work out a bit of the mystery - you and the heroine share attitudes and strengths and you could even fit her physical description. Fortunately Robin McKinley's physical descriptions are always vague by design. Face it, kiddo - you are Sunshine. This has never happened to me before. Now go read it. Go.

Love,
Cerise

Geeking Out

2006-05-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

I just watched the 7-minute preview for X-Men 3 and I will be good for nothing for the rest of the day. I'm so excited I'm worried about suddenly bursting into song at the staff meeting today. Steady, Cerise. Steady.

Cerise

Startled Daughter

2006-04-21T12:04:00.000-07:00

The six of us (Mom, Dad, Nathan, Elizabeth - oops, I mean the seven of us - The Peanut, Ramon and I) had dinner at a great Italian place last night. In the midst of our extremely and customarily boisterous and hilarious conversation Mom revealed her true feelings for me: "With Cerise, what you see is what you get," she declared, spreading her hands as if to say, "Whattaya gonna do?" And it was a heart-felt compliment.

Hmmm...

The Beaver Game

2006-04-20T10:25:00.000-07:00

My pregnant and obviously perverse sister-in-law Elizabeth taught me this kick-ASS new game called The Beaver Game. The only rule: replace one word of any movie title with the word "Beaver". Sounds kind of...dumb, right? Scoff if you will, but play it anyway. Elizabeth and I nearly asphyxiated from laughter playing this game. She nearly pee-pee'd in her panties. Give her a break - as I said, she's pregnant. Even Ramon was howling. I have been all alone, elbow-deep in dishwater, and have made myself laugh so hard that I've had to collapse on the floor, heaving feebly and kicking fitfully at the dish towel.

Here are some of the titles she and Ramon and I came up with:

"Citizen Beaver"
"The Thin Red Beaver"
"Saving Private Beaver"
"The Beaver Whisperer"
"Lord of the Beavers"
"On Golden Beaver"
"Places in the Beaver"
"A Clockwork Beaver"
"The Beaver Zone"
"The Beaver Redemption"

...and on and on. Know which one got us laughing hardest? The one-word movie titles, like "Chocolat". We'd be furiously thinking of movie titles and then someone would glance around and say "Beaver" very suggestively. And we'd all piddle ourselves a bit.

Cerise

Friday-itis TODAY

2006-04-13T13:43:00.000-07:00

Well, it seems that my hypocrisy knows no bounds. Despite my frustration with Christianity dominating American culture so completely and my firm beliefs about separation of church and state, I get tomorrow off from work and I'm taking it off, darn it.

Our office is closing because the stock market is closing tomorrow, and we follow the stock market's schedule. I don't know - will it be a bank holiday as well? The government folks are still showing up, thank god. I don't have to get too twitchy about church/state separation. If the government offices took Good Friday off I'd move to Canada posthaste.

But anyway, we're off (and why is the stock market closed for a Christian day of moping? The Mob?). And I'm glad, though getting some work done is all the harder for it today. And for those of you engaging in or curious about Good Friday go to Addison Road and watch Michael's podcast. It's really moving. And damned cool.

Cerise

The Peanut Cometh

2006-04-12T10:26:00.000-07:00

Congratulate me. My little brother and his wife are going to have a baby. The parents of my new favorite human on this earth (besides my dear Ramon, of course) are due in early December.

Apparently the Peanut is 4mm long, has a brand-new heartbeat and is at the present genderless. Despite my efforts to convince them to name the child, give it a gender and push it out NOW Nathan and Elizabeth have preached patience and I'm holding on for the moment. Barely. I want it in my arms, dammit.

[Apologies, by the way, to Mindy. I know we called your sweetie "the Peanut" when she was in utero, but I figured that now that Lily is a big girl - 7 months, no less - and has been named Sweetie-Pants, Loveykins, Lilliputian, Filly, La Petite Monstre, The Child and Pooter Jr. by Ramon and I that she'd be willing to give up her former moniker.]

My mom and Christy, Elizabeth's mom, are now grandmothers and dancing in their respective kitchens. This is especially noteworthy of my Mum, since she has previously not danced according to her scriptural reservations. Peanut, you're already corrupting our morals! Rest assured that Aunt Cerise will endeavor to do likewise to you. Dad just chuckles and observes that the kid's doomed from the start to partake fully of our two-family madness.

Much love to the three of you, Nathan, Elizabeth and especially my Natheth (or Elizaban) Jr.

Your favorite (back off, Claire!!!) Aunt.

Breakfast Today

2006-03-18T13:51:00.000-08:00

Breakfast, she chuckles, riiiight. I say "breakfast" but since I dragged my keester out of bed today at 11:51 am I guess I mean "lunch". I think noon (which is what time it was when I had gotten up, rubbed my eyes, peed and put on water for coffee) is too late to even be talking about brunch, isn't it?

[Yes, I know, howling protesters, that I had promised a post about my new tattoo next. The fact is that I don't have any good pictures yet and keep forgetting to get Ramon to photograph it. Mea culpa. I have some bad pictures - I took them right after I got it and it's all puffy and raw-looking, the arm-hair's shaved off and my whole wrist is shiny from smearing the most excellent Burt's Res-Q Ointment on it, which is Serena's (my Tattooist For Life) highest recommendation for after-care. Call me vain. Go on...I've been waiting for my arm-hair to grow back.]

For breakfast I had French-press coffee - my favorite - and twenty magillion pieces of sourdough toast with butter (Earth Balance, actually, which I prefer). The Last Two Pieces, which I would've liked to have devored at the speed of light and thus taken me from Pleasantly Full to Wishing I Were Dead, I saved. I saved them because I am a wonderful wife and Ramon might want a lovely grilled-cheese-on-sourdough sandwich when he gets home from work. And my grilled sandwiches are matchless (unless I burn them, which is never my fault. They burn only when the cat throws up inside the VHS player or the toilet overflows or an atomic bomb goes off outside our apartment or the burner's being tricky), especially because the fact that those last two pieces of sourdough have been ripped from my grasping, trembling hands and I swear Ramon can taste, along with crispy buttered bread and melted Colby Jack cheese, the love and self-sacrifice the went into putting that damned sandwich into his hands.

This is my favorite sort of Saturday, messing around on the computer or reading a book, nibbling fruit, sipping various caffeinated beverages and watching the cats blink in sunbeams. The only sounds are my own breathing, the cats moaning and huffing as they wake up and stretch from time to time and the music I play. Poor Ramon works every other weekend and while I prefer him to be here (if he were here, by the way, we'd be up by 10 and browsing in used bookstores by now) I also love the days when it's me, B'Elanna and Simone watching dust dance in the sun. The only hitch is that if I don't eventually get dressed and working on laundry (or dusting, come to think of it) I'll suffer the moral discomfort of A Day When Nothing Is Accomplished, which, though I admit to being a pretty chronic slacker, still makes me break out in hives.

Happy Weekend to you all.

Cerise

Sweet old Dad.

2006-03-15T15:30:00.000-08:00

...did I mention that I got a new tattoo? Did I?

I didn't. Next blog entry.

Shut off your engine and sit in silence for a moment to contemplate the following earthshattering bit of information: my Dad and I are starting to get along. Yes, you read that right. We're getting along.

He and I have been at loggerheads since I came out of the womb. The reason? We're so alike. SO alike. If you take my Dad, make him female, give him Boomer parents (instead of the grim Depression kind) and the benefit of modern psychology (for all the good it's done me) he'd be me. We're the same right down to the slightly crazy eyes and toes that tend to rise up off the floor when we walk. The laugh, the petulant temper, the generous heart, the constant snacking, the intense and chronic personal insecurity. All of it. We both [demanded] needed the same emotional care from each other and both totally had no idea how to supply it. This made for a lot of yelling on his part when I was a scared kid, which evolved into spectacular screaming matches when I reached adolescence and braved up a bit. And then onto 20s adulthood where I learned that scornful anger could shut him up quicker than anything else. He didn't win many arguments during that decade.

Now, at 30, I've come from "how can I get this guy to leave me alone and give Mom a break while he's at it?" to "evidence suggests that this man is actually a human being of worth and respectability. People like him - look up to him. How do I figure out how to get along with him?" Seriously - I've spent most of my life thinking I have the most screwed-up guy in the world as my Dad and it turns out that there's nothing wrong with him, or at least, nothing's more wrong with him than anybody else. You know how one step in the right direction can sometimes cause the whole problem to open up like a flower? My whole life Dad has reached out to me - has needed kindness and sympathy and a listening ear and respect, and I've given him none of it. None. Or at least the barest minimum. Poor man. No wonder we couldn't stand each other. He was walking around disappointed and confused - wondering why his daughter didn't adore him like children do in the movies. In my defense, I was a kid. It's not a kid's job to nurture their parents emotionally. It's just that I'm not a child anymore (more later on the fact that only at the ripe old age of 30 have I actually thought about casting off childhood, or at least the stupider aspects of it). I've just realized that as an adult I have no business brushing my poor, demonstrative father off like he's nothing to me.

OK, I sound like an ogre. He was never nothing to me. I've always loved him - you can't not love a man who has the best laugh in the history of the world. In the good times he was the best father you could hope for - empathetic to an almost harmful (for himself) degree. He loses himself in other people's hurts and problems and joys. That made him a pretty screwed-up missionary - a good one, one of the best, but he literally came very close to losing his mind trying to singlehandedly deal with two different cultures, bring them together, and patch all of their hurts. Must be a mechanic thing, hey? He loves so generously - I knew from the womb that he'd move Heaven and Earth to give me what I asked for. Ask anybody - this man will go to bat for ya. Take a bullet for your ass. No matter who you are. And I've figured out why I brushed him away with such coldness (always a mystery to me. If you know me, you know I'm NOT cold). I felt entitled to treat him that way. Ever since I woke up from childhood and realized that he had yelled too much, spanked in anger, put demands on his children and wife that we could never satisfy and in some ways really screwed me up I've felt it my right to silence him in any way I could. Not to mention make him feel guilty for what he did. But recently I've realized four things about Dad:

1. Everyone royally screws up their children in one way or another. It's unavoidable.
2. No parent has ever put more effort into trying to do right by us than my dad.
3. He was not raised well - his parents, my beloved late grandparents, also tried their best but were too distracted, too enmeshed in all the wrong aspects of mid-nineteenth-century culture (you know what I mean - the rural, tough, "good for what ails ya" philosophy), and too depressed to give Dad the love and emotional support he needed. He'll tell you, and I'm just like him: we're high-maintenance. We require a lot of love, attention, affirmation and second chances. His parents were good people, but these things they did not give him. At least, not enough.
4. [see above] There is nothing more wrong with him than me or any other human on this planet. Except maybe my husband and the Dalai Lama.

So, now that I've established my Dad as Not Sane and myself as a total effing churl, let me just get back to that step-in-the-right-direction-problem-opens-like-a-flower hooey. I don't know how it happened...wait, yes I do. Ramon (my own personal Kundun) has listened to and watched many interactions between me and my parental units, and has long observed (and has only recently gotten up the nerve to tell me) that I can get preeeeetty impatient with both my parents. Like I'm still a teenager whose mission in life is to roll her eyes, tsk, and huff that her parents are so lame. Eek. Back to the being almost 31 and still acting like a child thing.

So I've been really, really making an effort (now that therapy's helped me to Be Kind to Ramon) to Be Kind to my parents. Tell them I love them before they say it. Hug them or whatever [Dad's head is good for petting, since he's got this sweet halo of fine grey hair that'll just stand on end more as he ages] without needing any particular reason. Tell them what I like about them, tell them that I like them, for that matter. (And hearing from them that they like me in return - you want a thrill? Exchange "I really LIKE you"s with your parents when it's been just "I love you" up until this point. I was inordinately pleased to find out that I'm one of Mom's best friends and she feels like she can really talk to me - wait a minute...hanky needed. Shut up.) Really SEE them, and tell them what I see. Dad had never heard that he really looks scary when he's mad (so do I); our faces get red, I swear we get taller and our eyes - a bit mad-looking to begin with - look like we've launched into another dimension of rage. When the phrase 'piercing eyes' came out of my mouth this weekend he looked inordinately pleased both at the fact that his reticent daughter had made an observation ABOUT HIM that was not un-complimentary and the knowledge that he looks like a bad-ass when he's mad. Anyway. Onward.

Back to the tattoo. He HATES tattoos. Loathes them. Wants to send everybody with a butterfly or Tweetie-bird or whatever on their fannies straight to the Sheol. When I told him over the phone that I had a new one, a visible one (can't wait to see the pictures? I thought not) - and couched the revelation with the fact that I loved him and didn't want to make him feel disrespected but it IS my life and I figure that we're so close that this little ol' thing won't kill us - he actually took it...pretty well. And when we visited them in Spokane this last weekend, he pulled my shirt sleeve up, observed my wrist, said "huh" and then we all showered him with praise for being a modern, easygoing Dad who could totally take what his kids dished out. He still hated it, but liked being a Modern Dad more than he hated the tattoo. It went OK. And he and I didn't fight or even bristle once. Not once. Mom, for the record, said the tattoo is pretty - if she's wigging out that her oldest child now has two tattoos (one of which is readily available for perusal by the public at large) and her youngest is seriously contemplating getting one, she's letting Dad do the kicking and screaming. Which he isn't even doing. And I'm not going to be the one to tell them that I have two more designs ready for the needle...

So, OK, so I'm sometimes a high-maintenance, petulant, highly-strung bitch, right? My Dad knows that I think he's the shit, and I'm my Mom's best friend. How awful can I possibly be?

Cerise

Bacchus Grinned

2006-03-04T15:24:00.000-08:00

Thursday night a week ago was one of the better evenings I've experienced since our move to Seattle nearly 3 years ago. The author of the entire experience was sweet Evan, a good new friend of ours, who had already given us a couple of evenings of his excellent company at our apartment and had used his extensive connections to get us into the dress rehearsal for The Wedding Singer, the movie-based musical that tore up Seattle with its sly humor, clever dance numbers and overall gorgeous 80s-inspired, early-Madonna style. His partner, the luminously beautiful Marc, a founding member of the Washington Ensemble Theater, was in a production called "Swimming in the Shallows". Ramon and I decided a week ago Thursday to attend that night's production, since it was just a quick bus ride away. WET's little theater seats about 50 and abuts a wonderful little coffee shop where we had the best Americanos I've ever tasted while waiting for the house to open. The play - an amazingly quick-paced, clever little comedy about one woman trying, with little help from her bewildered hunter-husband, to buck her own latent Western consumerism; two women in love trying to get the nerve to take the plunge into marriage; and too-quick-to-give-his-heart-and-body Nick (played by Marc) who finally falls for the right guy - an intimidating but, in the end, perfectly congenial shark. Clever and funny don't begin to describe the talents of this little cast of 6. Our little audience laughed enough for 200. I've missed going to plays - someone said that even a bad play is better than anything currently gracing the shelves at Blockbuster. And this was no bad play. I'd missed, without even realizing that I had, the energy, the inevitable interaction (they performed practically in the laps of the front row) between audience and cast, and - I'd forgotten - the almost-awkward voyeuristic feeling of watching two live humans share a hot kiss not 25 feet from where you're sitting. Wow.

So, the play ended to thunderous applause and we filed out to the tiny foyer where Evan waited to hear how it went (he'd already attended twice and planned to go again that weekend). After we hugged Evan, hugged Marc, met the cast and waited around a bit, Marc, Evan, Ramon and I slipped off to Canterbury for a pitcher of what we suspected was Budweizer hefeweizen and a lovely talk. We covered Evan and Marc's love story, Marc's dreams for WET's future, Evan's plans to soon actively take a hand in turning a beloved family member's destiny and then, at length, Ramon's anxiousness for his artistic future and immediate need for a shakeup in his life. Two more lovely and kind (and intelligent and articulate) men were never born.

We then took a chilly walk several blocks to join the rest of the cast at Chez Gaudy. Chez Gaudy is a charming, hard-to-find restaurant on the ground floor of a local apartment building. Indeed, we've lived not 5 blocks away from it for a long time and never discovered it. We were met, as we walked in, with beery cries of greeting; you know the kind of yell that's kind of between a "heeyyyy" and a "helllloooo" and just morphs into a slurry sort of "eeyyyoooo" with a few "there they are!"s mixed in? Yes, that's what we were met with. All very cozy. We even got some hugs from cast members (people we had never previously met) and then, once the four of us had drinks to hand, everyone launched into a long, convoluted and very intersting conversation encompassing pretty much every subject under the sun. Even Ovid got mentioned, I remember. Ramon, Evan and I were crowned the three founding members of WET's newest fan club: The WET Dreamers. The name was Ramon's idea - I voted for the Bed-WETters, but he's better-looking than me, so I got voted down. I feel no bitterness. What a conversation. These bastards are freakin' smart, cultured, knowledgeable and armed with up-to-the-minute knowledge of everything going in Seattle that's inexpensive and worth looking into. Eventually everyone drifted off to their homes and Ramon and I walked arm-in-arm back to our apartment with something like seven new friends, a closer relationship to Evan and Marc, and I think a couple of party invitations.

All Back to Normal

2006-02-06T11:46:00.000-08:00

Ahhh. My Difficult 3 Weeks is officially over. And it wasn't too bad.

Simone's butt is healed, her cone-collar has been off since Thursday, and she's all but forgotten those dark days of injury and discomfort. To celebrate the loss of that collar, she has made up for 12 days of almost no grooming by licking nearly all of the fur off her belly. Anticipating many, many hairballs underfoot in the days to come.

The symphony lived through 2 straight weeks of performing - first Mozart's "Requiem" and then this last week Mozart's Grand Mass in C Minor. Both were beautiful. Ramon attended both and preferred the C Minor - it is a little more striking, with double choir portions, etc.

Anyway, it's all over. I have a week of no evenings spent anywhere but at home, trying to make myself pay bills and do housework. And cheering myself and Ramon up, since the Seahawks lost and all of Seattle is sulking. Hell, I feel bad for them, though football interests me not at all. I'm so proud of them for making it to the Super Bowl (which I didn't watch). Truly. But it's not happy around here. The sun has come out full blast, after weeks and weeks of clouds and rain, just to cheer us up, I think. Poor old Seattle. On the bus last night on our way to thai food, the atmosphere was quiet, sad and more than a little beery. I'm serious - the whole bus smelled like very sad beer breath.

Ah, coupla lattés and we'll be fine...

Recent Events

2006-01-29T15:43:00.000-08:00

This last week has been hell on wheels, though oddly enough several lovely things happened in the midst of near-collapse.

Last Saturday Simone (one of our beloved cats), after a week of moping around and eating little, experienced that most lovely of animal ailments: an abscessed anal gland. Very painful, very messy, requiring stitches, drains, an exorbitant vet bill, and much maintenance by the humans she holds in her sway. Washing her bum 3x per day, I mean, and forcing antibiotics down her throat. And that most humiliating and frustrating necessity for a wounded cat: the cone collar, which she must wear until her stitches come out this coming Tuesday (thank you god!). Add to that the panic we felt for days ("She's not eating. She's still not eating! She'll never eat agaaaaaaaain!!") and the fact that I was NEVER home this week except for sleeping and grabbing peanut butter toast on my way out the door made this week nearly unbearable just for that reason. And the fact that sick kitties keep you up all night, for as you know sleeplessness compounds every bad thing into a potentially life-ruining catastrophe.

Work was busy. Not so crazed that going there was unpleasant, but busy enough that taking time off wasn't an option. Even though my bosses and co-workers are to a person cat-crazed and generally very kind and accomodating.

Every evening this week was spent either rehearsing or performing Mozart's Requiem (Friday was his birthday, you know) with the symphony and my beloved chorale, and we were conducted by the immortal Itzhak Perlman. Though this chewed up and spit out my schedule, this was one of the wonderful things that happened to me. There's a good reason he's a rock star in the classical world, besides the fact that he's one of the best (if not THE best) violinists alive and a marvellous conductor. He's personable, funny, generous with praise, and so giving of his energy - muscling us through hard (and boring - forgive me, Sussmayr) bits and making sure every last person felt needed and indispensable to the musical experience.

So - that was one of the great things about this week. Another great thing was that Ramon was a prince. He did laundry, dishes, took Simone to the vet to get the drain removed, kept the cats company while I was off gallivanting with Maestro Perlman and "poor babied" me though what was nearly a breakdown. Since he has the gentlest hands he did the bum-washing while I held Simone and scratched around her ears.

Seriously. No matter what happens in my life, I must from now on get 8 hours of sleep a night. No compromise, no excuses. Because sleep deprivation makes me aggressive, moody, cynical, paranoid, self-hating, and convinced that every terrible feeling, reaction, word and sound I utter is All. My. Fault. Well, I'm like that normally, but not to this degree, OK?? I was so fuzzy I was walking into traffic without a green light (bless you, angels of protection, because those SUV drivers do not care, man), coming away from conversations at work wondering if something bad just happened but being unable to remember what dreadful thing I said, and the worst thing - unaware that one good night of sleep would make all the pain, heaviness, sorrow, frustration, cloudiness and anger go away. Finally Friday night, when it was almost all over (except one more performance Saturday night), Ramon and I were hunkered down in front of the TV with chinese takeout, and I caught myself choking up throughout almost all of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". Egad. Time for bed, Cerise.

I slept 12 hours that night. Got up at 11 Saturday morning, read a book for two hours, and then slept from 1 to 4. And bounced out of bed, took a shower, and have since been the picture of smug, happy well-slept-ness. Poor Ramon. I honestly don't know whether I'm easier to live with despondent and withdrawn (unless you piss me off) or so cheerful my jaws start to ache and I haven't stopped talking long enough to put food in my mouth.

Anyway. It's nice to come out of a week knowing that not only did all of that heavy darkness have a reason (other than me being a total shit, I mean), but that it's reasonably easily remedied. And I'm never so traumatized by one of my low weeks that I can't watch Ramon moving gracefully through our life, comforting, healing, and patiently (for the most part, since he is a mortal man) waiting for all of his 3 girls to return to sanity and joy.

You're my light, love.

Cerise

Maintenance Senryu

2006-01-29T15:33:00.000-08:00

Stepladder shaking
Lightbulb stuffed in my cleavage
Knew tits had some use

Phrases I'd Write About My Friends In A Novel

2006-01-25T11:44:00.000-08:00

Ah, if you can't think of anything clever to write on your blog, make a list! Let's see...something fun that commentors can contribute to and also self-revealing. Aha! Here we go:

Phrases I'd Write About Friends In A Novel

(note: I am not a novelist, so if these seem lame it's because, as I always annoyingly insist, I'm no writer. Especially when it's convenient to say so and I'm feeling insecure about, um, my writing.)

1. "I don't think she had ever fully realized how much space her eyes took up, even when smiling."

2. "...had anyone else ever been born whose features married lowering fierceness with wide-eyed vulnerability so beautifully?"

3. "A blue-eyed, lash-batting honey who could giggle her way through a bad joke in one second and have you reaching for your dictionary, nay, an encyclopedia, in the next."

4. "In him I could still see the child I knew, though the little one tag-teamed with the jester, tyrant, therapist and kindest friend."

5. "You'd find yourself wanting to dwell on the hard hits life had thrown her way, but her grinning blonde good-old-girl ways deflected pity better than any wordy protests of self-sufficiency could."

6. "Restless energy borne with the grace of a willow marked his every movement."

You can see that my writing about you would include more love than poetry, concise wording or good grammar, but since I DO want to be a good lover and not so much a published novelist, I'll not fret too much about the latter attributes my writing may lack.

Many of you (since I have more than 6 friends, thank you so much) are not included. Watch for addendums to this list.

Cerise

New Sandwich

2005-12-14T10:44:00.000-08:00

As a vegetarian who LOVES sandwiches and MISSES pastrami, let me tell you that a new sandwich creation always floats my boat. I refuse to go to Subway (the commercials alone with that dreadful man would put me off) and get the cheese 'n veggies option, I loathe black bean burgers (the vegetarian staple of most restaurants who are too je ne sais quos to serve Gardenburgers), and I'm sick to death of the following: the ubiquitous portobello burger, hummus and roasted red peppers, and [ta-DAAAA!] the ever-available Garden or Boca Burgers.

Since these are the commonest sandwich options for vegetarians and I hate them, it's up to me to find new ways of making two slices of bread very, very happy. One I made up last night:

Dark sour rye, toasted
Butter, melted on the toast [well, it's Earth Balance, actually, which I prefer]
Sliced tomatoes
Dill weed
Red pepper flakes

Heavenly...

Any sandwich options from your kitchens, my dears? Mention pastrami and I'll stuff a Subway 12" right up your butt.

Cerise

Crazy Week

2005-12-13T09:36:00.000-08:00

This week marks my first set of performances with the Seattle Symphony Chorale. And they don't mess around - performance weeks, including final rehearsals and the performances themselves, chew up and spit out nearly every evening from now until Sunday. But I'm not complaining - we're doing the ENTIRE Messiah this week, five times. With a proper symphony and a disciplined choir in an enormous and very grand symphony hall. Nerves jumpin'... Old nags in the chorale tell me that the first combined rehearsal with the chorale, the symphony and the great hall always makes all the newbies cry, so little Cerise will bring hankies, believe you me. We normally rehearse with just the choir with (brilliant) piano accompaniment in a rented hall elsewhere in the city. So I've never sung with the symphony, never been in Benaroya Hall, and never met the Maestro conducting us. That all changes this week. [dear God, please don't let me screw up] If you know me at all, you know that my transparency - readily obvious on this blog - extends into my real life. Which means my screwups are usually loud, magnificent and very public. If only spectacular public humiliation was a market commodity, because to be honest it doesn't even bother me that much.

Cerise

Penn Gillette says it much better than I.

2005-11-23T13:00:00.000-08:00

There Is No God

So, what happened...

2005-11-23T10:57:00.000-08:00

Well. How does one tackle the why and how of their spiritual lives? Some questions I'm constantly asking myself about my own are: How did I get here? How did I get so angry about my religious background? Why am I still angry at the Christian religion? How do I believe in anything after I've gleefully said "I don't believe" to almost all of the things I was taught as unshakeable truth?

I am happy where I am spiritually. Mostly. And where am I? I would say that at this moment (and I can be so mercurial that I may fall into wholly different categories a week from now, I'm sorry to say) I enjoy being undeclared in any religion. I'm a humanist, agnostic, slightly bitter, sometimes apathetic Gen X-er who cast off with joy the restrictive, superstitious, fear-based and prejudicial faith she was raised with and is now trying to decide where to turn for spiritual fulfillment. Restrictive, superstitious, fear-based and prejudicial are strong words to use in describing my childhood faith, I acknowledge.

[I'd like to add now that my parents are not to blame for my backlash against Fundamental Christianity. Though they did and still do have much more conservative views than I in terms of religion and politics and raised me according to those views, they typically do not let any of their beliefs keep them from treating those they encounter - however those strangers and friends may embody the very evils that make Fundies (Christian Fundamentalists) everywhere turn rather green - with respect, dignity, friendship and true love. For that example I thank them from my heart. They are much more compassionate than I, for all my posturing and self-congratulation about being more "liberal".]

So, like I said, strong words and not aimed at my parents. But I do harbor anger against Christian Fundamentalism in general - the leaders (especially of the political church. Focus on the Family, for example, or the Christian Coalition), schoolteachers, pastors and abetting congregants who all fashioned my world into a prison of rules that made no sense to me. I admit that I WAS allowed to question those beliefs. In the Fundie world doubting is encouraged - after a fashion. This kind of doubting (Exhibit A): "I struggle with the fact that we believe that homosexuals are destined for hell unless they cast off their wicked lifestyle. It seems cruel of God, but my ways are not His [HIS!] ways and I'll continue to live according to this rule and trust that God will reveal to me why it's just and fair in His own time." NOT this kind of doubting (Exhibit B): "I refuse to believe that a god who calls itself Love in its own scriptures would 1. have any problem with people of any sex finding love in their own way and according to their own preference, and 2. send anyone to eternal suffering [the existence of which I also question] because of an arbitrary rule against a lifestyle choice that harms no one. The burden of proof of the rightness of this rule lies with God. Not me." Or: "I don't believe that women should be silent in the church, abstain from spiritual leadership or live under the headship of their husbands simply because they are female. Either St. Paul is wrong in the Bible or our interpretation of what he said has long been skewed." Do you see the difference between the two kinds of questioning? One says "I don't understand and I don't like it, but I'm not able to fathom God's reasoning. I accept it as truth in spite of my misgivings". The other says "This rule goes agains my very heart and soul. I don't believe that it's truth simply because it's so alien to my own perception of love and goodness, which is presumably created in the image of God. Therefore I don't think God can possibly mean what we think God means."

Both kinds of doubting have their problems [I remind you that I'm no scholar of logic, philosophy or theology. So my examples and beliefs are most likely ignorant, one-dimensional and strewn with errors. But I can't wait to process this until I get smarter and apologize now for inevitable offenses.] Exhibit A is good in that it's a humble acceptance of things we don't understand, in contrast to the admitted arrogance of Exhibit B. Our minds are finite, undereducated (mine is, at least) and our sense of right and wrong is, although divine in origin (my opinion), still obviously faulty in execution. So we DO have to take things on faith sometimes and trust that greater minds than ours must make some moral (or whatever sort) decisions for us. However. The problem with Exhibit A is that it most importantly keeps people from using the brains god gave 'em. And if you think that isn't happening in the Fundie community here's a good smack upside the head. Not with ALL fundies, no. I'm talking about the seething masses here who jump when Dr. James Dobson (leader of Focus on the Family) says "boo!" and do his bidding - working to criminalize abortion and same-sex love relationships, render illegal the teaching of evolution, make our children listen to prayers to the Christian god in school, etc. When the only doubting allowed is of the former kind, license is given the masses to hate, name-call, shun and work against those they're supposed to love most in the name of Trusting in God. Responsibilty is laid solely on God, the Bible, and those who, often wrongly (my opinion again - oh, hell. This whole thing is my opinion. I'll stop saying it.), interpret both. That scares the bejabbers out of me. And my anger at the church is mostly borne of fear.

Casting off belief in the list of rules - that most Fundies swear doesn't exist but mysteriously still all manage to live by - was to date the most wonderful and scariest thing I've ever done. Wonderful because I could take a deep breath, look around and see things in a different light. No one was condemned, no one was sinful or unworthy or an abomination in god's eyes. I was no longer in trouble for hoping that Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or agnostics had as good a chance of reaping a pleasant afterlife as I. I could now fix my own soul on a morality that I could glean from my own feelings and thoughts, from the manifestos of nations and organizations, from other religions and other...people...instead of one source - The Bible. Wonderful! The world and the heavens were a kinder, happier place and love - real love - could come at you from anywhere. Scary because now I had to come up with an entirely new roadmap [thank you, M. Scott Peck] with which to view my world. The onus was on me to form what I believed and why. If I faced god at the end of my life and was required to give an account of myself Post-Liberation-From-Christianity, I'd need a good reason for casting off one set of beliefs and forming another.

Well, first off I borrowed the beliefs system of the Political Left. Easy to squirm into the wet folds of postmodern liberalist lip-service and be comfortably angry about lack of gay rights, the environment, censorship, America's current administration, racism. Feel "right". Liberal-minded. More accepting, more authentic, less prejudiced and accusatory. No need to do anything, mind you. It's so easy to watch the GOP screwing up the country and accept no blame. So easy to sit back and think that peace, love and understanding would solve the world's ills. But that hasn't been working. It felt like throwing away one kind of hate and adopting another.

More later...

Beautiful Boy

2005-10-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

We met my old friend's husband Ash a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday he turned 30. Have you ever met the significant other of a long-beloved and -missed friend? You recall, then, that not only do you have the jittery nerves accompanying the reunion with said old friend (which I did), but you also must fight the panic of meeting their chosen love. It was very important that I love him. It was important that my S.O., Ramon, at least enjoy his and Aly's company (I'm not even mentioning the pressure of having YOUR S.O. meet your old friends and desperately wanting them to get along beautifully but knowing that things don't always work out that way and trying to prepare yourself in advance to be OK with it). I knew that he was gorgeous (thank god for emailed pictures) and at least a courteous and articulate man, having spoken with him somewhat on this and other blogs. And I knew that Aly loves him.

It did indeed work out swimmingly. Ash is one of those people who puts themselves out to make things work socially from the start. And though there wasn't enough time to get to know him as well as we would have liked, we at least were exposed in great quantities to his overwhelming generosity, innate kindness, impeccable taste in clothes, enormous vocabulary (which he used tastefully and without ceremony, but still...), astoundingly funny sense of humor (helped along by his stirring rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody" on karaoke night), heart-stopping singing voice and evident adoration of my dear friend. Not to mention that he's a sylph-like (not detracting from his masculinity, lest he come to this blog and fume), golden-haired, yellow/green-eyed surfer boy (or at least the fulfillment of this ignorant Washingtonian's idea of one) with a Ph.D. in active listening. Too good to be true? Nooo - he and Aly seem well-matched, actually. They're both deliciously larger-than-life in unguarded moments. And like I said, we weren't with him long enough, alas, to plumb his dark side. Maybe next visit.

Last of all, Ramon liked him very much. Loved him, I think, if I may say that for my poor husband (who bears his vociferous wife having a blog very well). Ramon's stamp of approval is, you can imagine, not necessary but still extremely helpful in my own assessment of other peoples' character. And Ash bore up under the scrutiny with grace and good humor.

Happy 30th birthday, my dear. Good thing I love you like a brother or Aly and I would have a serious problem...

Cerise

Observed Behavior in Seattle

2005-09-29T10:12:00.000-07:00

I was walking along 3rd Ave. the other day when a small thing I observed made me smile. Since I spend so much time (not on this blog. Yet.) complaining about how the crazies in this city get to me (I've been screamed at, spit on, called the cops on a guy beating his girlfriend nearly to death while their 3-year-old son cowered against her stomach, etc. Not that this doesn't happen to everyone working downtown at some time or another) that I decided to start making note of things that delight me about living here.

So, I was standing at a crosswalk waiting for my light, next to a guy in a wheelchair. He had a huge red backpack strapped to the back of it. A guy with some sort of slavic accent asked the two of us where to pick up the 150 bus, and before I could open my mouth, Mr. Backpack gave him directions, kindly, in heavy Rasta-speak. Oh, yeah, and this whole time he was balanced on his back wheels and I was trying, first of all, not to stare, but also to figure out how the hell he balanced so perfectly - no jittery balancing movements, no quivering of arm muscles, nothing. Huh.

The light turned green and our Slavic friend shot off to find his bus, and the guy in the wheelchair rolled forward, still on his back wheels, bumped down into the crosswalk, front wheels never touching the ground, and zoomed to the opposite curb. And no curb ramp would do for him, nooo. Still popping a wheelie, he rolled right up to the edge of the curb, set the front wheels on the curb, and began trying to heave his back wheels up onto it as well. First try didn't work. And oh dear, Helpful Cerise took a half-step forward to help shove him up (look, I KNOW that if people want help they'll bloody well ask for it, but I'm one of those people who can't stand by, OK? I open doors for fully-grown men, OK??? It's dumb, I understand that...). Then I stopped, remembering that 1. he didn't ask me for help and 2. there were enough pedestrians in that crosswalk (and most of them closer to him than me) where we could probably roll him up the side of the building with a little collective effort. I was not needed here. Sure enough, one more heave and he was over. Another gentleman in a wheelchair was coming over from the other street and going up the ramp while this transpired. He laughed and gave the Rasta-man a victory sign, and the Rasta-man grinned and rolled down the sidewalk, pumping his fists in the air Rocky-style.

And I was smiling hugely, not only at this amazing-looking accomplishment (that the fella must do a hundred times a day), but also at my well-intentioned but foolish urges towards helping those that clearly don't need it, and at my gentle reminder from the cosmos that we are closer together than we think. I do love this city.

Cerise

Sorrow and Hope

2005-09-27T12:27:00.000-07:00

Go to Addison Road to hear a podcast song written and performed by my good friend Michael Lee. He wrote it in response to a great sorrow he has encountered, the particulars of which Yours Truly knows nothing. It's soul-stirring, though, which is why I turn your head in that direction.

Addison Road is my other blog home, and though I'm not an author on it I do spend a great deal of time reading what my friends there have to say and shooting my big mouth off in turn. It is religious in nature (I mean, I think the blog was created to dialogue about new emergent thought in the Christian Evangelical Church), so those of you with hair-trigger sensibilities about Christianity be warned. On the other hand, I've got the hair-trigger as well, and I like that place just fine. Just go see it.

Cerise

Predictable vs. Well-Loved

2005-09-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had your behavior predicted with stunning accuracy by your beloved? It's a strange thing, innit? I was hunkered in front of the computer entering our receipts into our money program the other day and decided that I couldn't go on without some music. Ramon was in the kitchen on dish patrol (I miss living with a dishwasher). As soon as "Isis" blasted out of the computer speakers I heard a chuckle from the kitchen. "What!?" I demanded.

"You always play Bob Dylan when you do the money, love."

[pause - while I spend a moment trying to decide whether to be disgusted at being so predictable or to be delighted to be the object of close loving observation. I opt for delight.] "REALLY? You reeeally know what music I'm going to put on when I do the money??" I myself didn't even notice that.

Dear Reader, is it not wonderful to be loved by someone who sees and knows you - sometimes better than you know yourself? I know this subject has been done to death by a multitude of people over many, many years, but I'm always amazed at how unknowingly we (or, at least, I do it unknowingly) bear witness to the lives of those we love. I chose Ramon (and married him) because I love him, wanted to spend the rest of my life by his side, wanted his company and love always. I also, by choosing him as my mate for life, signed on to be the closest witness of his life. His doings, accomplishments, failures, hopes and fears, sorrows and joys. As he does for me. We had no idea. It's cool, though, isn't it? And it shows itself in the little things we can observe and even predict about each other.

This week I'm going to watch him more closely - try to divine his mood, for instance, without the customary 20 questions about how he's doing. Watch how he does things, what upsets and delights him. How he interacts with our lovely girls (cats - more on them later, be assured). How often he laughs. How he cooks so much neater than me. This is what I agreed to, though I didn't know it at the time. It's turning out to be one of my favorite parts of being Ramon's other half.

Cerise

I'm in!!

2005-09-21T15:54:00.000-07:00

Say hello to the newest (and humblest) member of the Seattle Symphony Chorale!!

[going to go throw up now] Thank you all for your good wishes.

Cerise

Today's the Day

2005-09-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

Today's the day I hear from the Seattle Symphony Chorale (via email) whether or not the audition I did with them was good enough to get me into their hallowed ranks. I'm shaking in my little booties, people. Here's the plea for good wishes I submitted at my high school alumni forum:

I'm auditioning to sing in the Seattle Symphony Chorale - the huge choir that belts out the choral parts of classical works (like the poor bastards in Beethoven's 9th Symphony, for example, which the choir is doing this season, by the way. Ouch. Hard stuff). I'm terrified for the following reasons:

1. Seattle is by far the biggest gene pool of good singers I've ever lived in. That means I'll be competing for a spot with lots of people who sing as well as and better than me. Oh, how it rankles...
2. I'm rusty. I've had neither vocal training nor choral experience for several years and so will be trying to overcome the onset of lack of practice, range, and sight-reading skills. The director is no slouch, not by a long shot, and will be able to tell that I've been out of the loop for a while.
3. I'm a big danged chicken.
4. I think I'm coming down with something. [just kidding. Knock on wood]

I also have an OK chance of getting in, you know, since training never really goes away and they'll be able to hear that. And I may not be the monster of a sight-reader that I used to be, but I can still sing most things on sight. My resume is also not too bad, and the fact that I have a degree in singing, years of training under my belt, was El Presidente of my college choir (though long ago), and the fact that I'm singing my audition piece in German are all things that will work in my favor. So it's not hopeless. However, I've spent my life as a big fish in pretty small ponds, musically speaking, and have a good chance of not making it. This would be the first time I've been rejected for a musical group I've tried out for. No more playing it safe, I guess. Yikes.

I know a lot of this sounds like bragging, but I hope you know me well enough to know that listing my assets is just a way of bolstering what's left of my courage. You know me.

Anyway, my church choir director says my chances are 50-50, probably, so if y'all could take a second to tip the balance in my favor (metaphysically speaking) I'd be eternally grateful. I've got a lot riding on this, actually, and this audition signals a return to music and to no longer playing my life so safe any more. Which is a good thing (tell that to my knocking knees, sucka). But competition is the thing I hate most in the whole, whole world (just under extreme poverty, starvation, and willful ignorance). It makes me sick with total, craven, yella-bellied fear. So think about me tomorrow. I'll owe you.

So, there you have it. The audition went very well, by the way. I didn't throw up on the director or anything. I sang very nicely, was never asked to sight-read or show them my range (after all that worrying), and the director and the tenor section leader, who was sitting in on auditions that day, were both very complimentary and very kind. And totally unreadable. Drat.

Now I wait. And try not to check my email every 5 minutes. You can imagine that I'm failing miserably.

Cerise

Happy Birthday, Aly!

2005-09-19T13:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday one of my favorite people on the planet turned 30. Not for anyone would I come out of my writing hiatus, but The Day Aly Was Born ought to be a national holiday - not an American holiday, necessarily - perhaps the French could do right by her. I met her at the beginning of Grade 11 and was instantly swept off my feet. No, before that, because I got to (boarding) school a day before she did, and since we bore a passing resemblance to each other back then (no more, I'm sorry to say) I was hailed all day as Aly. Instant and blazing popularity were mine, since even though the mistake was almost instantly corrected by all as soon as they got a better look at me, resembling Aly, even in the smallest way, made me both an oddity and a celebrity.

My second day at school was the day I met her. I was struck instantly by her beauty, intelligence, integrity (it's amazing - you can SEE it) and kindness. And hipness. And staggering musical ability. She has a poetic, pragmatic, loving, meltingly gracious, ironic, sharp-witted, down-to-earth and wildly imaginative soul. She has recorded damned fine music, written and published a book, read nearly everything on print (I dare you to find a conversational topic she's NOT interested and at least somewhat informed in), travelled the world and generally established herself as a Renaissance Woman of the highest order. If you haven't heard of her already, you will.

And she caps all of this by calling me her friend. I know, Dear Reader, that you all have people in your life, a Holy Circle, of friends and/or family members who never cease to astonish you with how extraordinary they are, how much they know, how many different things they can do. And members of this circle also amaze you because they love you - truly - and find worth in you that you never knew of and that they in turn find astounding to behold. You feel beyond blessed, beyond lucky, to both know them and be loved by them. Ramon's in mine, of course, as is my brother Chad and my sister Kaitlyn.

And so is Aly. Here's to you. [raises a pint of Hammerhead] Thank you for being born, my dear. Thank you for letting me into your life.

Cerise

P.S. Your presents are late. Sorry-kins.

Number seven, BABY!!!

2005-08-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

Ramon and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary yesterday. With dating, that makes ten years as a couple. I don't feel old enough to have married the love of my life seven years ago. We celebrated last night by trying out a new Thai restaurant (Seattle has been overtaken by Thai restaurants, though the rising popularity of pho has allowed the Vietnamese to give them a run for their money), sampling their excellent Thai beer. We walked home and supplemented our already inebriated state by downing a bottle of two-buck-chuck and reminiscing about the last ten years. The rest of the evening is none of your business.

So I'm a little bleary-eyed today but still awake enough to feel profoundly grateful, firstly, that the wedding day is not only over but seven years in the past (a wonderful day but I still thank my stars that it's over forever at least once a month. I almost killed myself in the effort to NOT embody the Great American Bridezilla and I'm still not sure I completely succeeded. If I ever have the misfortune to find myself in the position of having to marry again, I'm doing it in Vegas with bloody Elvis) and secondly that The Ramon, a paragon of human wisdom and kindness, still loves me better than I've ever been loved in my life and I him. Here's to you, Monchis. I raise my coffee cup to thee. Drinks all around!

[end syrupy tribute]

Lucky in love, that I am.

Cerise

Tears for Fears Still Rocking My Pants

2005-08-02T09:27:00.000-07:00

My Favorite Band of All Time, Tears for Fears, came to Seattle a week ago last Tuesday. Well, they came to Woodinville, a Seattle suburb, and played at the Chateau Ste. Michelle winery, a venue that has a big lovely sloping lawn and a huge outdoor stage. You remember Tears for Fears, don't you? The beautiful English boys from the 80s who brought us such eternal hits as "Shout," "Head Over Heels, " "Sowing the Seeds of Love?" Ring any bells? Well, they broke up in the early 90s due to exhaustion and artistic differences after having released their "Seeds of Love" album. Although the golden-voiced and incomparably sexy Roland Orzabal went on to release 3 albums under the name "Tears for Fears," Curt Smith had gone his own happy way and though those 3 CDs were stellar, man, stellar, the sound had completely changed in Curt's absence. But now they're in their mid-forties and BACK TOGETHER, baby! And they're as hot as ever. And bloody married with children.

Anyway, they're touring to promote their album released last fall; "Everybody Loves a Happy Ending." For a rabid fan such as I, this amazing album was a cool drink after a day in the desert. And the concert moved me, man. It moved me. Roland and Curt were front and center on stage, Roland with his hair and his voice and his big, pretty rhythm guitar and Curt still the hottest bass player around. I'm telling you - they're as tight live as they are in the studio, a very important criterium for any band that this old, hide-bound, has-been musician such as me chooses to worship. I mean, respect. The only complaint I had: the Chateau is NOT the place to go when you wish to have a meaningful, fulfilling concert listening to the band that stirs you inside more than any other band. No. It's a venue for you to take your picnic hamper, a blanket and some lawn chairs to and get tipsy (on the Chateau's wine, of course) with your yuppie friends and maybe get up and dance if you've had enough to drink and if the band pulls out some oldies you actually know. Now, Dear Reader, you must be a rabid fan of something, so I'm sure you understand that when you and that something meet up in this universe you want to have connected with them, however distantly (in the case of you sharing that something with about 1,000 other concert-goers). I was there to experience Tears for Fears, to drink them in, to reward their efforts with highest adulation (well, I wasn't going to show them my tits or anything, but you get what I mean). There was a roped-off VIP section right in front of the stage that contained the REAL fans, but naturally I didn't learn of the concert in time to race to Ticketmaster to snap those seats up. To my eternal sorrow.

Don't get me wrong. The crowd was appreciative. And when TFF obligingly pulled out some of their oldies (which thrilled me more than I'm willing to admit, but how can you feel anything but utter joy when a mature band plays a song that you've listened to for two decades straight?) the crowd - even the glass-clutching yuppies - got up and busted a move. But having lived in Seattle now and gone to some pretty good shows, Ramon and I, we now feel that the only proper way to really experience a band is in a smoky, chair-less venue where everybody's in a knot in front of the stage, clutching a pint and hopping in unison. Where we're the nerdy, pudgy old people and everyone else is 22, got up in hipster regalia and sporting 2% body fat. Ah, well. Once the crowd was up, they were UP, so the rest of the evening was a dizzying group-dance under the stars to TFF's old and new stuff. That, I hope, must have gratified them. It sure got me off. Again, don't misunderstand me. I love the whole picnic/concert thing. The key, though, is that I like to listen to chilled stuff, like Water Music or some nice Bach pieces. Not jazz. Jazz gets me as hot as rock n roll. But I can't listen to an exciting musical concert whilst pulling green apples and blue cheese out of my cooler. Oil and water, baby.

Anyway, if you remember TFF and want to find out for yourself that they're still relevant musically and full of the same old mojo, go here to visit their pretty comprehensive fan site. You can hear their new stuff, view their old and new videos and, if you're like me, geek out for an hour or so. Happy drooling.

Cerise

You won't see your name on this blog.

2005-07-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

In the interest of personal privacy, Dear Reader, you will never see your name mentioned on this blog, though if you choose to comment on my blog which name you use is up to you. The exceptions are Aly and Ramon, who I mentioned by name without thinking early on - sorry, luvs. Since I have many loved ones (friends and family) that I wish to speak of in my blog I have created new names for all of you. The name I choose is either one that sounds a great deal like your name or is something I'd actually call you if I didn't know your name and someone put a gun to my head and ordered me to choose one for you. Therefore, my brother and sister-in-law are not actually named Chad and Kaitlyn, though the names, I think, are terribly apropos. Ani and Kevin, likewise.

This might be fun for you - or not. If you wish to find out what I'll call you (with the aforementioned gun to my head) please contact me. If you find out what I'm calling you and hate it, please contact me and I'll discuss options with you. Or, if you've not been mentioned by name but feel sure you will be soon and wish to choose my blog name for you, please contact me and we'll chew it over together. Sorry, Gorgeous Sonuvabitch is already taken. So is Cougar. Ash, your name stands. Aly, I can't figure out anything for you - you're too magnificent to name and I think you'd hate being called "Rio."

Cerise

Lavender Bits Pt. 2

2005-07-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

I spoke to my soap-lady about how I love the lavender soap but could do without the encrustation (is that a word?) of dried lavender flowers on it. She calmly replied that it's the easiest thing in the world to cut off the bits with a knife. And so it is. Consumer relations at its finest.

Cerise

Tommy Hilfiger Sheets

2005-07-25T10:33:00.000-07:00

Oh, lordy, it's been a long time since I posted an entry. So sorry to those of you who continue to astonish me by showing up and looking around for new stuff. Poor suckers.

This weekend I got stuck at Macy's. You see, my brother and his wife had picked me up to go to a mutual friend's party - a lovely time was had by all, thank you to Ani and Kevin. On the way home from said party they (brother and sister-in-law, who hereafter shall be known as Chad and Kaitlyn) decided that they couldn't spend another rotten night on their old, flat pillows and had to go to Macy's RIGHT THEN to check out the bedding sale. I sympathised. Nothing's scarier than lying awake fearing that this weird insomnia might last forever if you let it go on too long. After having secured my wholehearted agreement, of course, we were off to red star land. We needed new sheets.

I found sheets in the most sublime colors, my friends. Of the Tommy Hilfiger brand. I can't remember any of the other sublime colors, though, because I saw the beautiful turqoise ones and looked no further. These sheets are headace-inducing, eye-popping, keep-you-awake-at-night electric blue. Since our goal is to paint the bedroom Pepto-Bismol and then decorate with darker sari colors, these sheets will go great with the walls. We'll never get any sleep. [My inner 18-year-old, who still strives to make me cool with all her heart, is quailing right now at the thought that I'm actually publically saying that I care about and enjoy sheet-shopping. But then, she's in a permanent state of horror that I'm an office drone instead of a rock star, too, so...]

I've loosely boycotted Tommy's stuff for quite some time now on the rumor that he had said that his clothes were never meant to be worn by people of the non-white-skin variety on an Oprah show. Since bigotry is one of my hot buttons (you don't even KNOW), I just screamed "RACIST!" and never bought his stuff. For years. Now, I've found out to my shame that this rumor, more of an urban myth, really, has no ground and has been categorically debunked by Tommy, Oprah and the Anti-Defamation League. http://www.tommy.com/help/rumor/ Of course, we'll probably never know the truth about the Inner Tommy Hilfiger and his opinions about those who do not share his skin color, but I'm choosing to believe that all's well in the Hilfiger Kingdom and that I need to study up on rumors a little more carefully as a consumer. And that's not just because the sheets are the new love of my life.

Domestically yours,
Cerise

It's a brave new blog.

2005-07-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen. Cerise of the steel-trap-mind has now figured out how to ensure that anyone, not just registered users, can now comment on her blogs. Oh, lovely "settings" menu. I know that you were all just waiting on your toes for this moment.

Comment away, Dear Reader!

Cerise

Top Five Things I Love About My Husband

2005-07-08T12:41:00.000-07:00

Studies now show that the more specific a new wife is able to be about listing attributes she values in her husband, the longer their marriage is likely to last. The more vague she is ("nice guy, fun, funny, intelligent") the more likely the couple will become disenchanted rather quickly with each other and they'll be much less likely to weather the storms of marriage well. Though we've been married too long now for me to be considered a new wife, I still see the merit in listing your beloved's good points as often as possible. AND, I want things to go on in our marriage as long as possible, so in a panic I've decided to make my first all-time, top-five list of things I really love about Ramon. In no particular order:

1. His gentleness. Ramon's got his good points and bad points, his kindnesses and cruelties, but I have never seen him act in a cavalier or precipitous manner toward anyone (including me). He has never raised a hand to any animal or human - besides some minor shoving matches with his brother as children. I have never heard him raise his voice in anger. He rarely says things to people that he regrets later. This is probably a normal by-product of the fact that he tends to be quiet, more passive and avoids conflict, but I still think it's noteworthy (and since I'm a human hurricane sometimes - blowing around saying this is 'dreadful' and that person's a fool, shouting and cursing and later apologizing extravagantly) that he...takes care with people's feelings.

2. His hair. The man's got killer hair; glossy, black-brown, straight, silky and soft. It parts in the middle and hangs around his forehead in two perfect wings. It falls perfectly back in place when one runs one's hands through it. I hate being married to someone with prettier hair than me, but I sure love to have it around. Even if it's not mine.

3. His serenity. Ramon can be troubled, careworn, peevish and frustrated just like any human, but he mostly walks around in a personal well of peace. It's great to live around. We've been a couple for ten years now, and even though I have about as much peace wafting around me as a tornado, his general air of well-being is even rubbing off on me. He is one of the most self-actualized people I've ever met. He is who he is and you are who you are and the fact that he accepts you as you are makes him the finest friend I have. He'll acknowledge something he doesn't like about my behavior, but it's in a "yeah, it's rough sometimes. So what? Change or don't change - we'll deal with it either way" sort of manner.

4. His aspirations. Ramon wants all the good stuff. He wants no one to go hungry. He wants the entertainment industry to focus more on authentic expression and less on money. He wants people of different religions, cultures and countries to get along and work things out. He wants to be a freelance artist - not rich, he just wants to make enough cabbage doing what he does best to pay the rent and keep himself in Dickies and software. He wants to be physically fit. He wants to pick up the trumpet again and play in a jazz group. He wants to become a faster reader. He wants to record really good industrial and experimental electronic music. He wants to learn a bunch of languages. He wants to live and do his work in Europe - preferably warm, coastal parts of Spain. What he wants makes him who he is - I love him as much for his dreams as I do for what's there in the here and now.

5. [you of the weak stomachs may want to pass this one up] His affection. Thiiiis is a selfish one, I admit, and hopefully he never reads my blog any more, but he just loves me really well. He's not generally a demonstrative person, but I never, never go wanting for gestures of love. And if I'm feeling neglected (rare) a word will bring him into my arms professing adoration. I hear "I love you" at least 5 times a day (I'm not kidding). We play email chess and I can expect a kind message along with a devilish move (I suck at chess) every day. He even wakes up in the morning to give me a hug and a kiss before I leave for work (he works later than I do - bastard).

6. [all RIGHT, I know this is a top five list - sue me naked!] His laugh. He has the best laugh I've ever heard. He chuckles a lot, but when you hear that loud laugh from his whole body you KNOW you've just said something really, really funny. I spend a lot of time and energy trying to make him really laugh. I also love watching "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" with him because there are parts of it that get him every time.

So, there you go. I'm married to a prince. Monchis, if you read this blog I really hope you're not too embarrassed, honey. Poor man.

Cerise

So sorry, dear London.

2005-07-07T10:04:00.000-07:00

I grieve today for the tragedy that has struck London, even as I rejoiced yesterday that they had won the bid for the 2012 Olympics. The sight of bleeding, sooty, shell-shocked Londoners clutching blankets and water bottles tears at my heart. Grace and healing to everyone in England today. My sorrow and prayers are with you.

Cerise

Happy Canada Day!

2005-07-01T13:33:00.000-07:00

Oh, Caaaaa-na-daaaaa, our home and native laaaaaaand.
Truuuuue paaaa-triot luuuuuuv, within our hearts com-maaaaand!
With gloooow-ing hearts wee-hee seeeee thee rise...

Etc.

Dear Friends to the North, will you harbor me and Ramon when George W. appoints Jerry Falwell or one of his ilk to the now-vacant Supreme Court post? Please say yes.

Cerise

Attack of the lavender bits.

2005-06-28T09:10:00.000-07:00

I had the weirdest experience in the shower last night. You see, I order my shower/face/bath soap from this great little company in Spangle, WA. Their soaps are all super-fatted with veggie oils, all natural, flavored with herbs they grow in their own garden and essential oils, no animal products/testing/cruelty, no synthetic chemicals/scents/dyes etc., etc. The soap is...amazing. Transcendant, even. Their mint julep soap is to die for. I could eat it. My husband likes the stuff, too, in case this is all too girly for you. Let me know if you want this lady's contact info. Anyway, I tried out their lavender soap last night for the first time. You know how natural/homemade soap is made into loaves and the bars are hacked off in slices? Well, it looked like the lavender soap was made into a loaf and then scads of lavender - blossoms? pods? nuggets? - were sprinkled on top of it, so that when the bars were cut one of the long ends of the bar was covered in lavender...bits. I took the bar out of the wrapping and some of the bits fell off and I had my first moment of "um, weird" - I mean, there was this lovely purple bar with one end covered in what looked like little purply-gray bugs. Ew. But I shrugged and turned on the water. And then, what had vaguely resembled bugs came to life under the water. The shower stream made the lavender bits positively SEETHE in my hand and they started streaming off the bar of soap and down my arms, torso and legs in little buggy formations. AIEEEEEE!! It looked like I was covered in little gray...THINGS that were moving and [pant, pant, pant]...just a visceral response to a weird inanimate coincidence (small bits given life by shower spray), but my brain was still going "They're all OVER me! Gettem off, gettem off, GETTEM OFF!!" I honestly wouldn't have been surprised at that point if they had started biting.

I did firmly clamp down with my rational brain (what there is of it) and didn't do anything really dumb like yelp in horror and run screaming out of the shower, but I did quickly put the bar on the floor of the bathtub (so as to let the bits flow down the drain without using my body as a conduit) and rinsed off in a big damned hurry. And used her cinnamon soap for the rest of my personal cleansing experience. Ramon later took pity on me and scraped the rest of the bits off the end of the soap, so now I can lather up in purply, lavender-scented goodness without the fear of looking down and seeing small, moving things marching down my arms.

This lady's soap is the best I've used (hence my getting it shipped across the state), so I don't want to give people the wrong idea, but I am going to have a talk with her about putting bits of things in her soap. Especially bug-colored and -shaped ones. My imagination's just way too vivid to deal with such fine distinctions between moving tiny bits and real bugs.

Cerise

Ode to Kale

2005-06-20T20:30:00.001-07:00

Today marks my third year of being a vegetarian. I thought I'd reminisce about the whys and hows of it all. Vegetarianism isn't that interesting of a topic to put on a blog, but I'll try to be funny, at least. Or at least make fun of myself enough to keep you occupied.

The most amusing thing to think about is how my attitude about not eating meat has changed over these last years. I used to swear off meat because I wanted to do my part for oppressed animals everywhere. Well, I'm still a veggie because of that, but now it seems that I just eschew meat out of habit. I rarely think of why I'm not eating it. You can't think about crippled calves or featherless chickens every time you don't buy a red, plastic-wrapped, mushy package. You'd go mad. I don't push my shopping cart past the meat section and think "can't eat any of that..." When people would try to hand me a smoked sausage sample in the supermarket during my first few months as a veggie, I'd put my hands up in the "defend" position, sail past and say "No thanks, I'm a VEGETARIAN". It used to give poor Ramon fits. I browbeat the salesladies at Bath & Body Works because they couldn't guarantee that their products were entirely cruelty-free. Those first few months I'd walk around all day thinking "I'm a vegeTARian. I'm a vegeTARian." I would read every label, agonize (AGONIZE - I even wrote Miss Manners about it, though she never wrote me back) over what I should tell people having me over for a meal - should I tell them a few days before I eat with them that I don't eat meat, or should I just pick it out of my food when I get there and risk freaking them out? I would look at all sorts of food (fried chicken, my dad's steaks, marshmallows, Jell-O, cheese puffs - they contain rennet), smile sadly, wisely, and say: I shall never eat these foods again. I kept close tabs on my hair (would it thin out?), my nails (don't those little white stripes mean protein deficiency?) and my iron levels when I went to give blood. I carefully ate a whole grain AND a legume at every meal, to ensure the consumption of all 14 amino acids at the same time. This is unnecessary, by the way. I calmly waited for my body to magically begin to melt away. Later - a year later - I learned that there is actually a weight gain associated with becoming a vegetarian, of which I partook. Yes. I partook. Oh, the humanity.

Anyway, now I'm a bit blasé about the whole thing, really, I mean who isn't a vegetarian nowadays? Tofurky and Morningstar Farms and even Boca and Gardenburger make things so easy on us herbivores. Tofurky has a bratwurst that's to die for. Earth Balance has a no-trans-fat, non-dairy butter that tastes better than butter. Tofutti has ice cream sandwiches that my omnivore husband likes better than dairy ice cream, and their "Better Than Cream Cheese" tastes...better than cream cheese. IF you can eat it for 3 weeks to get used to it and never, ever eat dairy cream cheese again. I love tofu paté dip. I haven't found a restaurant yet where I can't convince the serving staff to bring me steamed veggies over rice - even Red Lobster, people. And wait staff in restaurants are always nicer if you don't peer at them from behind the menu, arch an eyebrow (okay, both. I can't arch ONE eyebrow) and ask primly, "are ANY of these soups vegeTARian?" I swear I used to do that, then feel oppressed for my righteousness when they worked me over.

NOW, the hard-core thing to do is to be VEGAN. Vegetarians are SO 2001, but VEGANS, walking around looking slender and mystical, are where it's at now. Hoo. I'm not there yet. Better for now to be a pudgy vegetarian who still gets to eat ice cream or a fried egg sandwich if she likes. I'd LIKE to go vegan, since the reason I gave up meat was to stop animals being hurt for my sake and animals used for dairy and eggs are just as mal-treated as meat animals. Or so I've heard. And who am I kidding? I'd love to be slender and mystical.

One thing I refuse to do is preach to people about giving up meat (disregard the former paragraph). I'll tell people why I don't eat meat MYSELF, but I've never gotten on someone's case for remaining omnivorous. I refuse to have dealings with PETA. I don't hand out copies of "Meet Your Meat", though I don't think PETA's bad (just self-righteous and incredibly annoying) or that the disturbing images they tout are made up. Hell, I won't even watch their DVDs or look at their brochures. You're preachin' to the choir, there, friends. I just think the information's out there and people who eat meat are following their path and I'm following mine. Sure, I'd love a world where lambies and little bunnies and cows all walked the earth freely without fear of meeting their fate in an abbattoir, but I don't think browbeating someone with a forkful of steak lifted halfway to their mouth is the answer. Just like I think confronting an overweight person sipping on a shake in McDonald's ain't gonna help them any. And smacking the rodeo queen in the face with a tofu cream pie was just wrong.

Anyway, my protein intake is great (wish I could control my caloric intake a little better, but that's neither here nor there) , my iron levels are still higher than the average woman's (sorry, Aly), my hair looks just fine, thank you, and my conscience...would be a lot clearer if I gave up eggs, milk, honey, wool, silk and the odd pair of leather shoes. Eep. It's a journey, just like everything else, I guess. I miss meat, just like I'll miss eggs and dairy and the rest when I give them up someday. But I'm still glad that I gave it up. I don't even begrudge the Universe that last 15 pounds I gained. Too bad french fries are still OK for me to eat...

Happy nibbling, little bunnies.
Cerise

Terri Schiavo's Autopsy Report

2005-06-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

I read today that the autopsy report performed on Terri Schiavo (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8225637/) did indeed prove that she was brain-damaged beyond all hope of recovery. I was glad, in a way, not just because I was on the right-to-die side during the debate in the days before her death. I was glad that Michael Schiavo, not a perfect person by any means but well-meaning, I think, was right in carrying out her wishes. I was glad that the judges who ordered her feeding tube removed hadn't mistakenly ordered the death of someone who could have lived as a conscious being again with proper treatment. And, yes, I'll admit that I was glad that the plans of the far-freakin'-nutso-religious-right (I'm not talking about politically conservative Americans here, friends, I'm talking about the real crazies waaaaaay over there on the right side of the spectrum who want to make America into a scary theocracy) were thwarted once by the judges and then again by the autopsy report.

Perhaps I should not have been party to the whole media mess that turned one family's battle into an ugly national brawl. If you've come here and slapped your forehead and gone "Oh, NO. Not another Terri Schiavo blog!!!" then I'm sincerely sorry. I sure didn't like hearing about it, but I followed it and am now commenting because I feared at that time that the larger issue was going to be exploited by the government and the already mentioned religious groups. I feared that yet another of our rights as individuals was going to be carved away under the guise of protecting those who can't protect themselves. Anyway...my family's having a Living Will party where we'll wine and dine a notary public and then sign and stamp and solemnly swear this summer and I guess that's one good thing that came out of the Schiavo family's difficulties.

I was so glad to find out today that what happened was the right thing for Terri, but I did and still do feel such sorrow for her parents, siblings, and husband. I hope so much that the media frenzy (which I admittedly monitored) will now die away. I pray that her family members, all of them, can now rest. Regain some sense of normalcy. Forgive themselves, if need be, forgive each other, and find peace. I'm so glad Terri's at rest.

Cerise

Revenge of the Sith

2005-06-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

Ramon and I, being the stodgy mofos we are, did not go and see Star Wars III the first, second or even third week after its opening. We most certainly did not wait in line for hours with a crowd full of Sand Persons wearing burlap robes and toilet paper tubes taped to their eye sockets or women with cinnamon buns on their ears crying "Don't just stand there - try and brace it with something!" to see the first showing at midnight. This is not a criticism of fans who like to dress up, by the way. I think they're great, and one of my favorite people on earth has lately confessed to having had a Yoda costume in her possession until recently, so that's all right then.

We did all that 7 or 8 years ago when the original 3 episodes were re-released to theaters. We and our college cronies played cards by the hour in the lines to get to the first showing, raising our fists to the sky and screaming through tears when the first chord of the theme song blasted our eardrums, ushering in the beloved yellow words. I dunno, maybe we blew our wad then.

Don't get me wrong. I'm no cranky genX-er bemoaning the fact that the original 3 were the only true Star Wars and the next 3 are not. I'm not savvy enough to bitch and moan about CG overkill and I didn't hate Jar-Jar Binks much at all (I did want to kill that dreadful child who played Anakin in The Phantom Menace - "Now this is pod racing!!!" - grrrr). You won't hear me screaming "Greedo shot first!!!" ever. The dialogue was a little more...regrettable in Episodes I and II than in the original 3, and I don't know if they picked Hayden Christensen to play yet another sulky, whiny Skywalker on purpose (he was perfect for it, as was Mark Hamill before him) or if it was just a fortuitous accident, but overall I enjoyed watching episodes I and II quite a lot. True, I'll never say that they give me the same feeling as the original 3, but that's to be expected. 16 years have passed between Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace - technology's different, George Lucas, bless him, is different, and I'm 12 years older than the first time I saw the original 3 (I was 18. Strict parents. Don't ask). But to recap, I'm a huge fan of the orginal 3 and the newer 2 are a great pleasure to watch.

However. The third one is my favorite of the prequels. [Not of all 6 - don't press me to pick THE favorite of all of the Star Wars movies. My head would explode.] I loved the action, loved watching Yoda lay the smackdown on more than one person, Hayden Christensen got better the more evil he became, and Padme's hair and clothing were up to their usual standard. The biggest complaint I have about the movie was the fact that [begin feminist rant] Padme Amidala, despite having been one of Naboo's greatest and youngest queens, then a wise senator for...I don't know...years? Months? and being considerably older than Anakin spent almost all of the movie following her tortured young husband around with wifely concern furrowing her brow and saying insipid things like "tell me, Annie" and "I wish we were back on Naboo in the lake country, just the two of us" and "Obi-Wan will help us". No leadership, no wisdom, no independent thought. The only time you see her (if memory serves me) acting in any capacity other than pregant wife is in a brief Senate gathering where she gets one moderately good quote; "So this is how freedom dies. To thunderous applause." [OK. Feminist rant over.] But for the rest, oh, how I loved the wookies, loved watching the sad grandeur as the Jedi died one by one, loved as always the scenery and big, fast, sparkly ships. And I adored that enormous lizardy-thing that Obi-Wan rode whilst sniffing around for General Greivous on that one planet.

One question: is my timeline all screwed up? For some reason I thought that from the beginning of the Emperor's reign (when Luke Skywalker is 0 years old) to the beginning of the end of the Empire (when Luke's - what - 18 at the oldest?) maybe, MAYBE 18-20 years have passed. And yet Obi-Wan goes from being mid-thirties at the oldest to something like a 70-year-old man. Is this just a casting snafu? I mean, Alec Guinness was perfect for an older Obi-Wan and in my opinion Ewan McGregor was likewise perfect for Obi-Wan's younger self, so is that sort of inaccurate and the way things turned out and we're all OK with it (which I am, most certainly)? Or am I indeed grossly mistaken about peoples' ages? I know this question has probably been asked a million times on the Internet and apologize if I'm wearying the hide-bound fans, but any insight would be appreciated.

Anyway, that's my first take on Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars in general. As far as true fans go I'm woefully ignorant, I confess, and anyone who says "big, sparkly ships" in an Episode III review should in all fairness be shot, but I'm in love with Star Wars, all of it, so my place in geek heaven, albeit a humble one, is assured. I hope.

My husband's website.

2005-06-08T13:02:00.000-07:00

Behold. The Ramon is on the web and you may now experience his depth and brilliance for yourselves. Stop by. See him. Know him. Love him.

http://home.earthlink.net/~rdeslauriers/index.html

Cerise

On Turning 30.

2005-06-07T20:54:00.000-07:00

Right Now: I'm waiting for Ramon to come home and listening with pleasure to "Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ" by Peter Gabriel.

* WARNING - those of you who have already crossed this terrifying threshold will no doubt find the following entry full of banalities, ideas that have been thought up and chewed over an infinite number of times since the beginning of history, and many thoughts that seem deep but are not really upon reflection. I can't help it - I'm not that smart, don't think of myself as terribly deep (an imprecise and rather arbitrary descriptor anyway), and was a woefully indifferent student in school and college, so I'm not that well-educated either. That said, I do like being me and like thinking my thoughts, so since this is after all my blog, I'll write them down and let the demons howl.

So. I turned 30 two weeks ago tomorrow. This birthday was preceded by about 3 years of worry (fear of aging), frustration (that my Youth was very nearly wasted and I hadn't done any of the things I was supposed to before I turned 30), and not a small amount of anticipation - mostly the firm belief in the assurance that I couldn't help but become a kinder, wiser and more circumspect human being with the onset of years. This last event (Becoming Better) I have anticipated with a feverish desperation for a great deal of time - ever since I realized that I was blundering around hurting people's feelings with my (supposedly witty) sarcasm, making people feel uncomfortable trumpeting my beliefs, embarrassing my loved ones with my abrasive behavior and generally not, as my good friend Aly puts it, building true community with my words and actions.

I realize that no one visits my blog to hear me list off a bunch of complaints about myself, so let me say that a lot's going RIGHT with me. I love being me. However, I could no longer escape three facts as age 30 drew nearer and I began to seriously reflect on my life and my self up to this point: 1. I want to make people around me feel loved, respected, and comfortable and for the most part the social habits I'd formed were accomplishing exactly the reverse; 2. I want to live authentically but again hadn't formed habits that made me feel I was well along that road; and 3. I want to Do Things with the potential I carry within me, but once bloody again hadn't formed any habits that made me at all effective in steering my own life and development in any good directions. One major problem that I've entered therapy to deal with is a general lack of belief in myself. I've spent so many years being blinded by stupid things that I don't like about myself (I'm too fat, not beautiful enough, not smart enough, my motives are all bullocks, I'm a selfish, lazy person, etc.) that I haven't been able to see what's really wrong. Just habits. Habits that make me unhappy and ineffective. Not practicing skills that will make me content, loving, skillful, triumphant.

So, when it came time to really turn 30 - in the last 6 months or so - I started to really concentrate on my habit-forming. Since my birthday's coming and going, I've been ever more conscious of the small things I do that reinforce either that which makes me unhappy and ineffective and unhealthy (mentally and physically) or the things that make me into a more complete, fulfilled and actualized woman.

OK, I'm starting to bore myself.

For your amusement, I'll make a list.

Things I Was Supposed to do Before Turning 30: 1. Bring my weight down from 215 to about 150 or so - this has not happened. I'm not as sad as you might think about this since my ideas of beauty are changing and I have a husband who...uh...wants me bad. Real bad. All the time. I won't lie - I'd love to be little and firm and drive men and women around me into a fever of lust, and I'd at least like to be healthy which is why I haven't given up. But the desperate unhappiness I used to feel whilst looking in the mirror is gone. 2. Find True Love - this one I'm proud of. Ramon's the light of my life - my lover, companion, playmate, helper, sibling (rural Kentucky moment) and friend. I've worked hard to become a spouse that loves him as well as he deserves. And he's just hot. 3. Become a successful and popular recording artist - don't make me laugh. God. OK, I'm a singer, and I'll say a good one, but the idea of doing it for money day and night is not an appealing one for me. The sacrifice to become Great and Recognized is not one I'm currently willing to make. Every so often I get the urge to stand in front of large audiences and pour out my soul and receive blinding accolades, but for the most part my little job and little life with Ramon make me too happy to describe. And I have peace that if I someday can't NOT sing for a living any more, I'll get to it and it'll happen or not happen. Don't mistake me, though. I fully intend to reach my full potential as a musician. Right now I'm learning to play the guitar and I will drag it wherever I go and drive people crazy singing, singing, singing and you WILL like it. Oh, yes. But I no longer find my identity solely as a Singer. That habit was truly eating me alive.

One more thing - losing my innate arrogance has helped me a lot. I mean, not that it's totally gone...but for some reason I was walking around thinking a lot of myself and therapy has helped me see that though I'm a wonderful woman and deserving of love and happiness, I'm not anything much. And as the Hermit said to Bree in C.S. Lewis' "The Horse and His Boy", "It doesn't follow that you'll be anyone very special in Narnia. But as long as you know you're nobody very special, you'll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole..." My deep need to make fun of people is slowly tapering off. It seems odd that someone like me, growing up with a rather low opinion of myself, should also grow up arrogant, bullying and feeling pretty superior to people in general. But the more I truly love the person I am, treating myself gently and courteously and with respect, the more I find myself treating others the same way. And the more I see of my REAL shortcomings, as opposed to the false ones (fat, etc. - see list above), the more compassionately I deal with other people when their faults come to light.

So, Ash, you asked a simple question and got a long-ass blog entry in reply. To recap in a nutshell: turning 30 had great import for me because I decided to give it great import. I promised myself on May 25 to believe in me, to believe in my new attempts to form myself into someone better, to believe in the nobility of my motives in implementing change. I promised myself to live more authentically, to love people better, to let myself fail and fail again and earn no cruelty in my own response to my failure. And the thought of Time Passing, instead of frightening me, gave me hope. In Diane Reeves' words "I believe that God and Time are synonymous." And as time heals all wounds, time also makes hearts kinder, minds wiser in those who seek it. Though time pulls down all things, time is also required to build things up. Now that I'm 30 I've decided trust myself. Trust Time. Trust God.

2005-06-07T19:19:00.000-07:00

My husband Ramon 6-04

2005-06-07T19:16:00.000-07:00

Me on the Seattle-Bremerton ferry 4-05.

First blog entry.

2005-06-06T11:16:00.000-07:00

How exciting. I decided that since I turned 30 a few weeks ago, I assumed a mantle of wisdom and responsibility that the world must be privy to. The universe will hear the silent thunderclap of my profoundest thoughts.

Can't think of anything to write this moment, though, so I'll have a good think and come back...

Cerise