July 29, 2003
the good news
Before we split up, Susan used to read the news to me in the morning. Well, she didn't actually sit there and read to me. But as she read the Globe each morning, she'd gasp or wince or say "ohmygod" and I'd be forced to ask "what!?" and then she'd tell me. She'd synopsize most stories, unless it was particularly unbelieveable, in which case, she'd read the article or the offending portion to me. For 22 years, that's how I got my news. Through the lens of Susan I'd learn what was important, what was critical, who died, what I needed to worry about, what was tragic.
I'd catch the occasional snippet of news on TV, by accident, or on NPR while driving to or from work in the car, but my primary news souce was Susan. I was free to focus on the comics, my horoscope, the book reviews and maybe the arts section, more in concert with the bon-bon eating, dilettante persona I was perfecting, resting comfortably in the knowledge that Susan would feed me the news.
Since last September, I have been responsible for obtaining my own news. For a while, I picked up a free Globe and Times on my way into work. They were stacked in the basement level near the student activities desk, free, for the students. I ended up reading them a day late, because by the time I got them home at night, I was too tired to absorb much. And, besides, I'd gotten in the habit of taking my news with breakfast. Finally, I decided I needed my news the day it happened, not a day late, and broke down and ordered the Globe, home delivery. I get the Times headlines emailed to me daily, but it is the Globe I have with breakfast.
This year, on a whole the news has been very bad. The war(s), of course. The economy. SARS, famine, global warming, the Middle East. No news, or very little of it, is good news. However, this past week, was one of those weeks that made me glad I get a newspaper, glad I have become one who has the news with breakfast. First it was the front page article on Blogging. (BLOGS' SHAKE THE POLITICAL DISCOURSE , Published on July 23, 2003 by Joanna Weiss, Globe Staff). Even tho my blog is more likely to shake the plumbing discourse, I still felt like part of a movement. Like if I wanted to have an effect, at least I had this really cool vehicle. And I like the idea of political action, even if I don't seem to have the time or energy to actually live the life of an activist.
The next article that tickled my fancy was the one about the cell-phone mavin, Carol Page. (Now tell me that isn't her real name!) She's the self-appointed cell-phone etiquette-meister who even has a cell phone etiquette web site. There you can read an advice column, "Should I answer my cell at a funeral?" or be truly and deeply annoyed by dancing cell phones. Although I share with Ms. Page an abhorance of "cell yelling" I draw the line at her objection to the musical rings. I am always fascinated by which folks choose which rings. It reveals so much, don't you think? Another big objection Ms. Page raised was that people tend to talk about really personal things, too personal, she thinks, on their cell phones. All I can say is I rather enjoyed standing on line at the Broadway Market the other night listening to the woman next to me therapize her sister on her cell phone. It helped to pass the time. My own feelings about cell phones? I put off getting one as long as I could. I don't particularly want to be reachable at all times, to all people. But I love the fact that when Alex away at school or out late, I can always reach him! That is, unless he turns off his phone, his battery runs out, he leaves it in his other pants pocket or I get my signals crossed with a non-English speaking denizen of Manhattan.
So the news is mostly bad, and yet, despite everything, interesting. But today, the news was uplifting. Today, I learned that besides my health, there is something else to be thankful for: that I don't have paruresis, or shy bladder phobia. (Helping unlock the bathroom 'stall'; Research, seminars can cure shy-bladder phobia; By Kathleen Nelson, Globe Correspondent, 7/29/2003)
Yes I am neurotic, tending slightly towards full blown panic disorder and a little PTSS; I am deathly afraid of flying. But I am not afraid to pee in the vicinity of other people. In a public restroom, for example. Or in an apartment where others are present. I don't have to go off to a five day seminar where I hook up with a pee buddy and slowly, slowly let that person get closer and closer to me while I pee, potentially modifying my shy-bladder phobia. I'm not suggesting that I seek out situations in which I can pee in good company. But these long weeks, when my bathroom has remained torn apart from floor to ceiling, exposing the rusty innards of this aged house, when my upstairs neighbor telephones to tell me she can see into my shower, and I pee daily to strains of Jazz wafting up from the apartment below, I give thanks to the Globe for reminding me that life could always, always be worse.
July 22, 2003
day at the mall
Perhaps I shouldn't have been shocked to see all those humans in the mall on an incredibly lovely Sunday afternoon. I would have imagined that they'd rather be at the beach or rollerblading or playing softball with the team from the office. Before passing judgement, I considered that maybe they were there, like me, to get that one last peice of techno fluff that would make their lives perfect.
The principle of delayed gratifcation takes precedence over all. Alex and I had just discussed it that morning. We share the gene for this, saving our favorite snack, our favorite book, our favorite comic strip, for last. Otherwise, what is there to look forward to?
My list for Sunday went something like this: Old Navy, Sears, maybe Victoria's Secret and last, but certainly not least, the Apple store.
I had pants to return to Old Navy, in exchange for which I promised I would pick up a white tank top for Susan who inadvertantly ruined hers in the laundry. Since I lost my receipt, the young women at the check-out counter, where they conveniently handle returns, informed me that I could not exchange these for anything but the very same particular pants, which I no longer wanted. I could, however, get credit by mail.
What does credit by mail mean? I asked, genuinely frustrated and with the beginnings of the dreaded mall headache building up around the edges. The young women explained that they would send me a credit in the mail. Why they couldn't just give me the credit made no sense to me, but I accepted the Old Navy will, and went off to buy the tank tops. Bought two large white ribbed tank tops, (after calling Susan on my cell to confirm that was indeed the size she wanted) and headed to the opposite side of the mall from where Sears is located because my brain is old and addled and I can't remember where anything is anymore. When I got to the very end of the mall, passing, considering, but not entering Victoria's Secret, and found Best Buy, Borders, Filenes but no Sears, I turned round and making a second pass at Victoria's Secrets finally found Sears right back where I had started.
Men's department? I asked, thinking how odd it was that Alex is now a man. A man needing boxers. He agreed, finally, or maybe caved, is a more appropriate description of his acquiesence, to keep some underwear and socks at my house, so that he doesn't have to run "home" whenver he needs a change of clothes. Like a pack rat, I have hoarded tee shirts, hoping against hope that the more of his stuff that makes its way to my apartment, the more he would feel at home here.
The order was for boxers. They come in a package, he said. Plaid. I had no trouble finding the underwear section, but for some reason, the selection in his size was piddly. I finally found a package, medium, 34-36, plaid. Turquoise. Is my son man enough to wear turquoise plaid boxers? I doubted it. But they were all I could find. So I tucked them under my arm and moved on. On my way to the register, I came across another display, Hanes, this time, with manly man plaids: gray, black, navy, forest green and red. These are what Alex had in mind when he said plaid. I totally knew that. Yet when it came time to pay, I kept the turquoise ones, just in case.
By this time my headache was raging. I knew the only thing that would save me was a Starbucks Tazo Chai Creme Frappacino; a quick hit of caffeine for this non coffee drinking girl. Striding back to the far end of the mall, where I thought I remembered the Starbucks, I let my gaze wander towards one of the carts cluttering the ground floor of the mall, and caught the eye of an Israeli hawker.
I'm Shlomi, he tells me. What's your name? By this time he has my hand in his and he is asking me, are these your natural nails? Any fool can see that of course they are my natural nails: un-polished, un-manicured, short but not bitten to the quick: the nails of an artist. He tells me he is going to work magic on my nails. He points out ridges, which I cannot see, but he assures me are there, and the dull color of my nail. With a four-sided rectalinear shape he begins to alternately sand and buff my nails. I am fascinated by the various grades of this cubic nail file and by the attention my middle finger is getting. When he finishes buffing, he covers my nail with his finger so I cannot see the result. He tells me to remain calm, not to scream out it surprise when I see the huge difference that this process had made. I play along and promise that I will not scream. He removes his finger. It is all I can do to keep from screaming. There was my same old little fingernail, glistening a high gloss mall glisten.
He finished off this one finger manicure with some oil applied to my cuticles, (reminding me never to cut them) and a mini hand massage with cream scented like the ocean. For only $39 I was suckered into buying the whole shebang, and it was worth every penny. I had to draw the line, however, when he tried to get me to buy a second set with fresia scented cream for my mother and perhaps a third set would be free, with citrus scented cream, and didn't have I have friends who would appreciated the money they'd save on nail polish and manicures?
I didn't have the heart to tell him that no one, absolutely no one I know has manicures, except for my mother, and the whole point of it for her is to be done to, not to do. I was firm with him, only bought the one set and now with a steal band tightening around my head, I was desperate for my frozen drink.
With ice chai in hand I allowed myself, finally, the exquisite pleasure of entering the Apple store, knowing that I was going to buy. I circled the store once, taking in all the whiteness, the Ipods, the Imacs, the white display tables, the white wires and the sales folks standing out against all that white in their orange "camp" tee shirts. I didn't get the reference and I still don't so if any one wants to clue me in that would be fine.
However I did find a guy to whom I posed my Airport question. Can I, with my cable modem and my Imac, hook up the Airport base station so that I can use the new PBG4 wirelessly from my living room and still have my Imac in the bedroom access the internet? Without a router? Without a hub? The answer, he assured me, was yes. Cable modem in here, ethernet cable out there, printer in here, I hand him my credit card, and I am on my way to the parking garage, Airport base safely tucked into the wonderful white Apple shopping bag sporting the candy red apple logo.
Suddenly my headache is gone, I am slurping the dregs of my chai, and can't wait to get home, sit in my living room, thirty feet from my cable modem, open my PB and log on. When I get home Alex rejects the turquoise boxers with a big eye roll, tells me "They are turquoise!" when I present them to him, but suggests, slyly that they might look good on me. I think he might be right. And they will go smashingly with my newly buffed fingernails dancing happily in the ambient light atop the 17 inch PB's backlit keyboard. Life is rich.
July 18, 2003
come down from the ceiling
The start page in my Safari opens to a generic Apple/Netscape page. It is annoying at best, but it gives me the temperature, which like my good friend Annie, I need to know before I get dressed in the morning. I have just been too lazy to change it and I don't really have a favorite virtual place in which to begin my on-line day. This morning, a skull icon 
caught my eye. It was a link to the Lifeline Calculator,a little test to determine life expectancy. They asked the expected questions, how over weight are you, how long did your grandparents live, how often do you exercise, do you smoke? I was doin great until I came to the question about living. That is, with whom do you live?
Family, spouse, significant other? They didn't have a category for "living alone for nine months for the first time in twenty years" or for "my son lives with me two nights a week in the summer when he is home from college." The closest I could come in their multiple choice format was "living alone for less than ten years." With that, they predicted I will live to the ripe old age of 87. Then I tried it again, lied and said I lived with a significant other, I gained two whole years. It wasn't 10 years or twenty, but, all things being equal, living with family will add two years to your life. Two years, when faced with the end of life, is nothing to sneeze at.
On another note, the plumbers are back, but they broke with tradition and came while I was eating my breakfast yesterday. I say they, but there is really only one plumber, a short, sweet, plumber in his late sixties, who apologized for not returning my calls because he had nothing to tell me. He also promised to fix my shower, which currently pours torrents of water into the tub while at the same time a shower stream barely trickles from above. He also brought with him the carpenter, who loved my comic book shower curtain and is going to replace my missing walls and floor. But before he does that, they are still replacing piping and have now ripped out the pipe and a good chunk of the ceiling. There must be some synchronistic, Fung Shui meaning to all this, the walls of my inner sanctum being ripped away, exposing ancient, rusty pipes, peeling, rotted wall board and a view both downward to my neighbor's kitchen and upward into darkness. Not to mention what it is like to sit on my brand spankin new toilet and wonder who can hear me going about my business...no I won't mention that. But what does it all mean? Is it a reflection of some inner renovation? And when it is all put back together will I love my solitude so much, that I won't mind losing those two years?
July 17, 2003
those dern plumbers
I should have guessed it from the jug of Ice-Melt crystals in the center of the vestibule. I opened the door and there it was, even tho it is the middle of the July, long since our walk was icy. And I knew it wasn't there when I left for work yesterday morning. Somewhere in the recesses of my end of the day mind was the thought, door-stop. Somebody used the Ice-Melt crystals to hold the door open for them, while they went in or out, perhaps carrying heavy objects. I returned the jug to its rightful place beside the radiator and trudge upstairs. It was Alex this time that had to use the bathroom.
Both of us stood staring at the new toilet. Alex with bemusement and I with unbearable sorrow. It is not a bad toilet It is white white, with a small snug plastic seat. But it was only when I saw this new fixture in my old bathroom that I realized how much pleasure I got from the shape of the my old toilet's bowl. It isn't anything one would ordinarily pay much attention to or even talk about. But I loved my ole' toilet's bowl: classic, round, perfect. And I didn't even have a chance to photograph it seriously or, sadly, to say goodbye. And the secret and unexpected visits from the plumber when I am not here, make me nervous. Not to mention the unsightly hole that still remains in my wall (see "renting" in side bar) and the new hole left by the removal of my taller, more stately old toilet.
July 09, 2003
today is today
Back now a couple of days from the cape, in the hhh...hazy hot humid....city air...artificial ice of the AC, when it works, suffocating sticky heat when the power goes off at three this morning. Spent the whole day yesterday working on the lab image, running into problems with Quark, when there was "no support for Classic" because in building the image, we had neglected to install 9.2.2. Finally figured it out, dragged the system folder over from another machine, thanks Adam, and we are really close to starting to move it around.
rough night, little sleep, much angst, this all aloneness, this no where to turn at 3:49 am, but Pema. Thank goodness for Pema. In The Places That Scare You, she quotes Einstein and others, but the line that brought me back, finally was from Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. "...when we look to see that yesterday was yesterday and now it is gone. today is today and now it is new. It is like that-every hour, every minute is changing. If we stop observing change, then we stop seeing everything as new."
Somehow that calmed me and gave me hope. How big a task it is to stay in what is now. How thrilling if in fact we could see everything as new. How terrifying.