For the past couple of years, I have been orienting my year around a theme. A couple of years ago it was my Donkey Yote (not to be confused with Don Quixote) HeHaW (Health & Harmonic Wealth) tour with me and my ass in search of the answer to life, the universe and everything (in honour of turning 42).
And this year, my theme has been Truth or Dare: 2009 Edition - Game On! It's been a ton of fun thinking about my week ahead and choosing - Truth or Dare? More often than not this year, I have chosen Dare, if only because that is what I used to do in my tween days of playing Truth or Dare.
Admittedly, my dares have not been large. I didn't end up taking up pole dancing or the circus arts or really risking boldly. Sometimes just daring myself to stay in the game or mingle with others, or go yet one more intrepid mile each week felt audacious enough.
But I did take a couple of risks. Holy Hub and I renewed our wedding vows in Hawaii, in celebration of 25 years together. And I travelled back home to Alberta road-trip style, something I was not wont to do. While there, I went to see a renowned forensic psychic - in order to get at the hidden truth behind my niece's suicide this spring. And on the way home, I dared go zipline'ing with the kids and do a 10 am scary roller coaster after a big breakfast. Terrifying and stomach-lurching experiences, both - but fun, nonetheless. And I dared myself to step up and write a business plan for a wilderness education company - an industry sector I previously knew next to nothing about. I did this in exchange for sending my 13-year old son on their Coming of Age rite of passage expedition for boys next summer.
Choosing truth, on the other hand, has meant telling myself the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about things I'd quite frankly rather not. It's meant being honest in my beingness instead of living the myriad little lies that can tend to add up to big ones if I'm not careful.
Sometimes those truths have meant saying no, giving up on things and bringing myself back to a place of integrity. At other times, it's meant being willing to really stand alone with myself in front of a bathroom mirror behind a locked door, and allow myself to ask my silent question and nod my head in affirmation or shake my head in disagreement. I have tried, above all this year to channel to the good bard in living the mantra - This above all, to thine own self be true.
And it hasn't always been easy. I had occasion to stumble, once again, upon a poem a month or so ago. I read it with new eyes and this time, it really resonated with me. Perhaps because I am not always so especially good at living at that most authentically honest level where things are raw and real.
"We live a lie when we misrepresent the reality of our experience or the truth of our being. I am living a lie when I pretend a love I do not feel; when I pretend an indifference I do not feel; when I present myself as more than I am; when I say I am angry, and the truth is I am afraid; when I pretend to be helpless, and the truth is I am manipulative; when I deny or conceal my excitement about life; when I affect a blindness that denies my awareness; when I affect a knowledge I do not possess; when I laugh when I need to cry; when I spend unnecessary time with people I dislike; when I present myself as the embodiment of values I do not feel or hold; when I am kind to everyone except thos I profess to love; when I fake beliefs to win acceptance; when I fake modesty; when I fake arrogance; when I allow my silence to imply agreement with convinctions I do not share." Nathaniel Branden
Packed into this mumbo-jumbo of words is some powerful truth of what it means to be human and at times, arguably, inhuman. I suspect it didn't resonate with me the first two times I took those words in, perhaps because I chose NOT to take the words in and hear many of them as my truth.
So it's been an interesting year, to say the least. I approached 2009 thinking Dares would be where it was at, when in fact, Truth is what has really seemed to define it.
And I'm OK with that. On my painted and decorated garden stake, which served as my anchor and office talisman for my theme this year, I had decoupaged a number of quotes about the notions of both Truth and Dare. One, in particular, stands out to me now.
"The Truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off."
It makes me chuckle but also smile at a deep and cheerful level, because the truth of my being HAS really pissed me off. And to borrow from one of the year's most redundant quotes, it is what it is...
Which leads me to next year's theme. I have decided I need to back up and really sit with my beingness and embrace the present, all the while, planning for the future. So I've come up with Plan Be! as my 2010 theme. It is a reminder for me to stay grounded in the present whilst remaining methodical in strategic planning mode.
The Be also allows the word nerd in me to bring all those other juicy Be words into the realm. You know....like begin and become and bequeath and bestow and believe and behoove and beacon and beauty and beckon and bedazzle and befriend and behold and bejewel and belay and better and bestseller and bevvy and bewitch.
And as would befit the Plan part of the Be, I've decided to attach some further BEatitudinal theming to the months, in order to assign some kind of virtuous purpose and character building to my year. As such, my months translate to Begin, Believe, Beyond, Belong, Befriend, Beauty, Beacon, Benevolent, Beatnik, Bestseller, Beget and Bestow.
It is, in essence, a year of being and doing bundled into one rhetorical package. To be or not to be - that will remain the question. Perhaps at the end I will discover, as the ancient philosophers did, that "to be is to do". I may well discover instead that, in fact, it's reversed and that "to do is to be."
And my 2010 theme song? You guessed it: Let it Be. :) It speaks words of wisdom.
Blessed be. Shalom. Amen.
12/31/09
12/7/09
This is the Dawning of the Age of Expensius
I am now officially the mother of a teenager. I seriously never thought parenthood out this far, which is entirely a good thing, of course, because anyone who plots the teen years prior to conception is 98% unlikely to want to have procreative sex. That's my own random freakonomic statistic but inherent within this grossly excessive percentage is no small measure of validity, I suspect.
It's why we don't give birth to teenagers right out of the garden gate. They'd begin mumbling and bitching about the uncomfortable journey and the myriad other indignities. Like how the air was cold and the light was so bright upon birth. And that they were left naked for so long. And how the doctor pinched and spanked them. And then how everyone wanted to touch their head and hold their pinky and count their toes and check out their private bits. Ewwwwhhh. And then how they got this boob shoved in their mouth.
I was the quintessential poster child for teenage attitude. I well remember the days when I would walk on the other side of the street from my mother on the way home from a movie, lest anyone dared think we were together. And I recall the incoherent, mumble language, which I would utter if and when I felt like it but not necessarily correlative to when I was asked a question. And of course, I remember how out of touch and stoneage my parents were about everything. Their sole raison d'etre on the planet was to embarrass me.
And this acute cellular memory is why I take great pains to ensure I pay the embarrassment forward. Truth be told, I consider it to be part of the parental reward system. Fear of embarrassment is the best behavior modification I know. It's amazing how quickly a facial expression can turn from bland to horrified, just at the mere mention of threatening to chaperone the school dance and do disco moves on the edge of the dance floor. That's nothing, however, compared to the humiliating scenarios I scheme in hopes of one day pulling a Hi-Jinks Nick TV parental prank. That is my loftiest goal as mother.
It's amazing how fast 13 years can morph by though, when you're otherwise preoccupied. I look at baby pictures and I can't even piece together the genetic links between the little boy I used to bath in the kitchen sink and the hulking, gangly, 5 ft. 11 inch teenager, who alternates between being a sloth (sleeping in, farming on Facebook and Wii games are his sloth activities of choice); being a narcissist (he likes to admire his handsome mug in the bathroom mirror); and being a food thief (the constant raids of the fridge and pantry have begun).
I don't dare complain - he's smart, multi-talented, wise beyond his years, exceptionally good with younger kids, polite to adults other than those he lives with, an Order of the Arrow, an Eagle Scout candidate, and he earns straight As in school. Priceless, right?
Well yeah, I suppose, as long as I don't add up the tangibles that come with his winsome personality. Like the cello that needs to be purchased this year (minimum cost for a student-grade cello - $2000), or the braces he's getting this week ($5000), or the annual cell phone and clothing budget ($1500) or the host of other expenses (school travel, summer camps, sports registration, etc.). Not to mention the upcoming biggies. Like the car (which is the only image accessory I refuse to purchase, let it be noted for the record). And university tuition. He has his sights aimed high - as in Ivy League heights. Don't dare ask him what he plans to study at said Ivy League schools though. That will only elicit a glare, a mumble and a healthy dose of that teenage indignation, unless, of course, you happen to be a stranger, in which case you will be treated to a politely-audible if somewhat vague response.
I try to look at the bright side of it all. I consider that I'm learning a new language and that it's my turn to be out of touch and stoneage.
I guess that makes me officially grown up now, more's the pity. But it still won't stop me from disco dancing on the fringe. It's a tough job being a shameless mother, but someone's gotta do it.
It's why we don't give birth to teenagers right out of the garden gate. They'd begin mumbling and bitching about the uncomfortable journey and the myriad other indignities. Like how the air was cold and the light was so bright upon birth. And that they were left naked for so long. And how the doctor pinched and spanked them. And then how everyone wanted to touch their head and hold their pinky and count their toes and check out their private bits. Ewwwwhhh. And then how they got this boob shoved in their mouth.
I was the quintessential poster child for teenage attitude. I well remember the days when I would walk on the other side of the street from my mother on the way home from a movie, lest anyone dared think we were together. And I recall the incoherent, mumble language, which I would utter if and when I felt like it but not necessarily correlative to when I was asked a question. And of course, I remember how out of touch and stoneage my parents were about everything. Their sole raison d'etre on the planet was to embarrass me.
And this acute cellular memory is why I take great pains to ensure I pay the embarrassment forward. Truth be told, I consider it to be part of the parental reward system. Fear of embarrassment is the best behavior modification I know. It's amazing how quickly a facial expression can turn from bland to horrified, just at the mere mention of threatening to chaperone the school dance and do disco moves on the edge of the dance floor. That's nothing, however, compared to the humiliating scenarios I scheme in hopes of one day pulling a Hi-Jinks Nick TV parental prank. That is my loftiest goal as mother.
It's amazing how fast 13 years can morph by though, when you're otherwise preoccupied. I look at baby pictures and I can't even piece together the genetic links between the little boy I used to bath in the kitchen sink and the hulking, gangly, 5 ft. 11 inch teenager, who alternates between being a sloth (sleeping in, farming on Facebook and Wii games are his sloth activities of choice); being a narcissist (he likes to admire his handsome mug in the bathroom mirror); and being a food thief (the constant raids of the fridge and pantry have begun).
I don't dare complain - he's smart, multi-talented, wise beyond his years, exceptionally good with younger kids, polite to adults other than those he lives with, an Order of the Arrow, an Eagle Scout candidate, and he earns straight As in school. Priceless, right?
Well yeah, I suppose, as long as I don't add up the tangibles that come with his winsome personality. Like the cello that needs to be purchased this year (minimum cost for a student-grade cello - $2000), or the braces he's getting this week ($5000), or the annual cell phone and clothing budget ($1500) or the host of other expenses (school travel, summer camps, sports registration, etc.). Not to mention the upcoming biggies. Like the car (which is the only image accessory I refuse to purchase, let it be noted for the record). And university tuition. He has his sights aimed high - as in Ivy League heights. Don't dare ask him what he plans to study at said Ivy League schools though. That will only elicit a glare, a mumble and a healthy dose of that teenage indignation, unless, of course, you happen to be a stranger, in which case you will be treated to a politely-audible if somewhat vague response.
I try to look at the bright side of it all. I consider that I'm learning a new language and that it's my turn to be out of touch and stoneage.
I guess that makes me officially grown up now, more's the pity. But it still won't stop me from disco dancing on the fringe. It's a tough job being a shameless mother, but someone's gotta do it.
10/8/09
1,000 Places to See Before I Die
I've been armchair travelling around the world this year, courtesy of my Page-A-Day calendar. I feel blessed to report that I have been to a good third of the locales listed on these pages - Lake Constance and Lake Como, the Bugaboos, Agra, Cape Breton, Milford Sound, Durbar Square in Kathmandu, Fiji, the Grand Palace in Bangkok, etc., etc. It's really quite affirming to realize that perhaps I have been a place or two on this planet.
Yet, as with knowledge, world travel has a way of hitting you over the head with its sheer enormity. The more I've travelled, the more I realize how little I've travelled. I've been to One Tree Hill of U2 fame, but I've never seen the trees of Yellowstone.
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Today's calendar image is Halong Bay, Vietnam. In a word? Stunning. I want to go there now. Have you ever had a visceral reaction to a destination image thereby inspiring you to travel there? Movies can do that to people but sometimes a simple little calendar image can, too. I got tired of being awed and amazed by travel brochure images of the Bugaboos, which happened to be in my own backyard. So I made Holy Hub drive 90 minutes down a dirt road and off the beaten path in order to see these mountain spires in person. I think it was worth the trip - he still grumbles about the heat, the dust, the detour.
Too many places, not enough time. But I'm determined to get out there in this world and experience a few of these majestic places for myself. Sometime, somehow, someway.
What's on my hit list? Mostly mountains. I monumentally love, love, love mountains. We've seen a range or two or ten in our lifetime - the Rockies, the Alps, the Himalayas, the Karakoram, the Hindu Kush, the Southern Alps of New Zealand - and we now lived flanked by the Olympics to the West and the Cascades to the East. I'm convinced mountains will factor into the images that flash across my mind in those penultimate moments of life - Valley of the 10 Peaks, Mt. Rainier, The Matterhorn, Mt. Pilatus, The Three Sisters, Nanga Parbat - all these mountains take up a huge amount of space in my heart. But there remain, seriously, so many more I must, must see, trek, touch and bow to in reverence in an up close and personal kinda way.
Patagonia, the Dolomites, the Pyrenees, Bhutan, the Drakensberg in South Africa, the Pamirs, the Armenian Highlands (home to Mountain Ararat and Noah's lost Ark), and yes, even a few ranges considerably more local like the Tetons, are all on my must see, do list.
Which leads me to my next category - National Parks. I've been enjoying catching bits and pieces of Ken Burns' PBS documentary - "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" - he's so right, they are. I was inspired by the adventurous escapades of Edward and Margaret Gehrke, who made it a point in the 20s and 30s to travel to all of America's National Parks. While I don't feel inspired to see all of the 400 or so parks in the system, I would like to at least see Yosemite, Yellowstone, the main section of the Grand Canyon, and pretty much every single National Park in Utah.
My next category is Islands. We've vaycayed on more than a dozen gorgeous and memorable islands in the South Pacific, Caribbean Sea and Indian Ocean, but there are some elusive islands I still must paddle to ~ like Easter Island, the Galapagos, the Marquesas in French Polynesia, the Greek Isles, Aruba, Malta, the Andaman Islands, the Queen Charlotte Islands, Tasmania, Madagascar, Iceland and the Hebrides, if only because the latter sounds exotic. Reading books like The Motion of the Ocean: 1 Small Boat, 2 Average Lovers and a Woman's Search for the Meaning of Wife by Janna Cawrse Esarey struck a wanderlust chord within me to want to set sail for the high and low seas in search of sun, sand and ocean spray.
I haven't even touched on Mystical and Whoo-whoo Places. We've been to some sacred sites and ancient ruins, but we have yet to see the biggies like Egypt and Stonehenge or the Camino de Santiago or Machu Picchu or even the birthplace of Bono.
There are oodles of other categories that I haven't mentioned - coastlines and scenic road trips and historical cities - but the aforementioned are what really float my travelling boat.
How can you tell the bug has bitten me again?
Yet, as with knowledge, world travel has a way of hitting you over the head with its sheer enormity. The more I've travelled, the more I realize how little I've travelled. I've been to One Tree Hill of U2 fame, but I've never seen the trees of Yellowstone.
Too many places, not enough time. But I'm determined to get out there in this world and experience a few of these majestic places for myself. Sometime, somehow, someway.
What's on my hit list? Mostly mountains. I monumentally love, love, love mountains. We've seen a range or two or ten in our lifetime - the Rockies, the Alps, the Himalayas, the Karakoram, the Hindu Kush, the Southern Alps of New Zealand - and we now lived flanked by the Olympics to the West and the Cascades to the East. I'm convinced mountains will factor into the images that flash across my mind in those penultimate moments of life - Valley of the 10 Peaks, Mt. Rainier, The Matterhorn, Mt. Pilatus, The Three Sisters, Nanga Parbat - all these mountains take up a huge amount of space in my heart. But there remain, seriously, so many more I must, must see, trek, touch and bow to in reverence in an up close and personal kinda way.
Patagonia, the Dolomites, the Pyrenees, Bhutan, the Drakensberg in South Africa, the Pamirs, the Armenian Highlands (home to Mountain Ararat and Noah's lost Ark), and yes, even a few ranges considerably more local like the Tetons, are all on my must see, do list.
Which leads me to my next category - National Parks. I've been enjoying catching bits and pieces of Ken Burns' PBS documentary - "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" - he's so right, they are. I was inspired by the adventurous escapades of Edward and Margaret Gehrke, who made it a point in the 20s and 30s to travel to all of America's National Parks. While I don't feel inspired to see all of the 400 or so parks in the system, I would like to at least see Yosemite, Yellowstone, the main section of the Grand Canyon, and pretty much every single National Park in Utah.
My next category is Islands. We've vaycayed on more than a dozen gorgeous and memorable islands in the South Pacific, Caribbean Sea and Indian Ocean, but there are some elusive islands I still must paddle to ~ like Easter Island, the Galapagos, the Marquesas in French Polynesia, the Greek Isles, Aruba, Malta, the Andaman Islands, the Queen Charlotte Islands, Tasmania, Madagascar, Iceland and the Hebrides, if only because the latter sounds exotic. Reading books like The Motion of the Ocean: 1 Small Boat, 2 Average Lovers and a Woman's Search for the Meaning of Wife by Janna Cawrse Esarey struck a wanderlust chord within me to want to set sail for the high and low seas in search of sun, sand and ocean spray.
I haven't even touched on Mystical and Whoo-whoo Places. We've been to some sacred sites and ancient ruins, but we have yet to see the biggies like Egypt and Stonehenge or the Camino de Santiago or Machu Picchu or even the birthplace of Bono.
There are oodles of other categories that I haven't mentioned - coastlines and scenic road trips and historical cities - but the aforementioned are what really float my travelling boat.
How can you tell the bug has bitten me again?
9/18/09
Testing Testing
If I knew a way to tote my custom domain to Word Press, I'd be so outta here because my Blogger problems have been huge these past few months.
Let's see if this posts, shall we?
Let's see if this posts, shall we?
7/31/09
Hauntings...
My Blog is haunted. Well actually, I have a different choice word in mind for it but haunted will suffice.
It's been screwing up my settings, not permitting changes (and yes, I clicked "Save Changes"). It's a control and power thing. Technology likes to mess with me like that - seemingly assuming an intellectual superiority.
Anyhoo, our life and times - Blogger-notes version - is that we got Remannied in May on Oahu. I say remannied because that's what our wedding banner said - my husband's name, a popular German one, resembles the first in a two-word Latin descriptor for a particular natural form of birth control - you know the one - initials are CI. In any event, his name is shortened to C--t, which shares phonetic harmony with it's popular German counterpart K--t. Well, for our wedding, his sister, now-estranged - saw fit to fashion lovely car ornaments and head table banners with a stylized font (this was back in they day of dot-matrix printers).
So the R's became N's and our banner read as C-NT & (HOLY) - JUST MANNIED....I'll let you play Vanna. Why didn't we snip the R's? Because to do so would be to mess with the very precarious fabric that fuses the small Schmidt clan as one. Even the pastor was more than a little scandalized that day. And 21 years later, as I made the whirlwind rounds of long-lost but found family this summer, the tale still prevails. "Remember your wedding banner?" titillated family folk would ask, with a giggle and a hand to their pursed lips. (As if we could forget).
But I digress. We were re-mannied once more in early-May. It was a lovely sunset beach affair on the near-deserted Ke Iki Beach, officiated by Rev. Jofrey Rabanal and witnessed by our less than attentive kids, who were just a tad preoccupied with making faces in the video camera and kicking sand at each other than to show any sign of reverence towards the sacrality of the moment. Because let's face it, neither of us were entirely sure we wanted to marry each other again. Kidding aside, we wrote our own vows - this time Mr. Expletive wrote his own and it was stellar - he even promised to obey me this time around (a joking reference to the fact that I argued and lost my war of words with our Lutheran Pastor the first time around concerning having to promise to "obey".
So this ceremony was less the failed performative utterance that the first was (Obey?! - as if!, I mean, Yes, of course I will (not)) and more in keeping with where we were at 21 years ago last August. Our original nuptial vision was to have a small intimate watercraft affair and then escape to a tropical locale for a wondrous honeymoon. So this felt like redemption and might I add, as though I had finally come of age, maritally speaking.
We had a lovely time in Hawaii although unbeknownst to us until the tail end of the trip, tragedy had befallen our family. We learned (by an impersonal e-mail from above-noted estranged sister), that Holy Hub's 17-year old niece (from whom we were also estranged for reasons owing to her still living with her mother) had committed suicide at the hospital.
We performed a bittersweet vigil upon the volcanic rocks of the beach for her on the penultimate eve of our departure under the watchful glow of the most specactular sunset of the week, mere steps from where we enjoyed our vow renewal ceremony days earlier. And then a few days later, we flew back home for the funeral - which was quite possibly the most profane event I have ever attended (toilet humour in a eulogy that is supposed to celebrate the life and brief times of a cooped-up, medicated-from-birth girl is not all that amusing). The only saving moments were the lovely commemorating eulogies of her grandparents, your's truly/Holy Hub, and our brave offspring - who took the time to write and deliver their own heartfelt memories and poems of tribute to their cousin at the podium that day - but those were fleeting and did little to save the day.
We returned this summer to spend time with her grandparents who are still reeling with grief, as well as to visit her gravesite, see the hospital ward she was staying in, and visit with other friends and family.
We, the family, will remain forever haunted by her death. She was only a year away from freedom. She hinted as much on her various blogs, which discovered in hindsight, revealed much about her inner turmoil and unhappiness. We very much looked forward to resuming and beginning anew a relationship with her once she was out of the house. It was not to be.
So there you have it - the fine line between joys and sorrows, regrets and resolve.
I visited with a psychic who does a lot of forensic work, and was able to glean some interesting information about the circumstance(s) of her death. The jury is still out on what all this means or is a foreshadowing for, but in the meantime, the cogs of the wheel in the family, long dormant, have begun to gain momentum again, and that does not bode well.
PS (if you're inclined to leave a comment, do so here - my blog is still haunted.
It's been screwing up my settings, not permitting changes (and yes, I clicked "Save Changes"). It's a control and power thing. Technology likes to mess with me like that - seemingly assuming an intellectual superiority.
Anyhoo, our life and times - Blogger-notes version - is that we got Remannied in May on Oahu. I say remannied because that's what our wedding banner said - my husband's name, a popular German one, resembles the first in a two-word Latin descriptor for a particular natural form of birth control - you know the one - initials are CI. In any event, his name is shortened to C--t, which shares phonetic harmony with it's popular German counterpart K--t. Well, for our wedding, his sister, now-estranged - saw fit to fashion lovely car ornaments and head table banners with a stylized font (this was back in they day of dot-matrix printers).
So the R's became N's and our banner read as C-NT & (HOLY) - JUST MANNIED....I'll let you play Vanna. Why didn't we snip the R's? Because to do so would be to mess with the very precarious fabric that fuses the small Schmidt clan as one. Even the pastor was more than a little scandalized that day. And 21 years later, as I made the whirlwind rounds of long-lost but found family this summer, the tale still prevails. "Remember your wedding banner?" titillated family folk would ask, with a giggle and a hand to their pursed lips. (As if we could forget).
But I digress. We were re-mannied once more in early-May. It was a lovely sunset beach affair on the near-deserted Ke Iki Beach, officiated by Rev. Jofrey Rabanal and witnessed by our less than attentive kids, who were just a tad preoccupied with making faces in the video camera and kicking sand at each other than to show any sign of reverence towards the sacrality of the moment. Because let's face it, neither of us were entirely sure we wanted to marry each other again. Kidding aside, we wrote our own vows - this time Mr. Expletive wrote his own and it was stellar - he even promised to obey me this time around (a joking reference to the fact that I argued and lost my war of words with our Lutheran Pastor the first time around concerning having to promise to "obey".
So this ceremony was less the failed performative utterance that the first was (Obey?! - as if!, I mean, Yes, of course I will (not)) and more in keeping with where we were at 21 years ago last August. Our original nuptial vision was to have a small intimate watercraft affair and then escape to a tropical locale for a wondrous honeymoon. So this felt like redemption and might I add, as though I had finally come of age, maritally speaking.
We had a lovely time in Hawaii although unbeknownst to us until the tail end of the trip, tragedy had befallen our family. We learned (by an impersonal e-mail from above-noted estranged sister), that Holy Hub's 17-year old niece (from whom we were also estranged for reasons owing to her still living with her mother) had committed suicide at the hospital.
We performed a bittersweet vigil upon the volcanic rocks of the beach for her on the penultimate eve of our departure under the watchful glow of the most specactular sunset of the week, mere steps from where we enjoyed our vow renewal ceremony days earlier. And then a few days later, we flew back home for the funeral - which was quite possibly the most profane event I have ever attended (toilet humour in a eulogy that is supposed to celebrate the life and brief times of a cooped-up, medicated-from-birth girl is not all that amusing). The only saving moments were the lovely commemorating eulogies of her grandparents, your's truly/Holy Hub, and our brave offspring - who took the time to write and deliver their own heartfelt memories and poems of tribute to their cousin at the podium that day - but those were fleeting and did little to save the day.
We returned this summer to spend time with her grandparents who are still reeling with grief, as well as to visit her gravesite, see the hospital ward she was staying in, and visit with other friends and family.
We, the family, will remain forever haunted by her death. She was only a year away from freedom. She hinted as much on her various blogs, which discovered in hindsight, revealed much about her inner turmoil and unhappiness. We very much looked forward to resuming and beginning anew a relationship with her once she was out of the house. It was not to be.
So there you have it - the fine line between joys and sorrows, regrets and resolve.
I visited with a psychic who does a lot of forensic work, and was able to glean some interesting information about the circumstance(s) of her death. The jury is still out on what all this means or is a foreshadowing for, but in the meantime, the cogs of the wheel in the family, long dormant, have begun to gain momentum again, and that does not bode well.
PS (if you're inclined to leave a comment, do so here - my blog is still haunted.
6/11/09
The Summer Day
The Summer Day
Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
5/29/09
Drowning Fish
Long time no blog.
To be honest, I don't even know where to begin. I feel ranted and raved out and yet, in counterpoint, I also feel like I haven't even scratched the surface of ranting. It just gets bottled and corked and like all good things left to ferment, it turns sour and distasteful.
Do I blog about my disillusionment with the media? No, it's not worth it. I'm being increasingly more selective about the media since the elections and I haven't been inclined to want to plug back in since, mistrustful as I am of the intentions and agendas of most major media outlets. Pick a story and that will be the case. I'm not interested in the prevailing story, angle, slant and skew. I want to hear the untold story and hear from the voices who aren't as loud, popular and boisterous. And I want to hear the real story.
In the spirit of Oriah Mountain Dreamer's The Invitation, I want to know what people ache for, if they dare dream of meeting their heart's longing, or would willing risk looking like a fool for love, for their dream, for the adventure of being alive. And if they have touched the centre of their own sorrow or have been opened by life's betrayal and can sit with pain, their's or mine, and can be with joy, mine and their own, and can dance with wildness and let ecstasy fill them to the tips of their fingers.
Like Oriah, I don't care if the story they tell me is true - I, too, want to know if others can disappoint another to be true to themselves. Rather than being curious about what people do for a living or where they live or how much money they make, I am infinitely more interested in knowing if people can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. And like Oriah, I want to know what sustains people from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if people can be alone with themselves fand if they truly like the company you they keep in the empty moments.
I don't care if they stand on the side of conservative or liberal, black or white, privileged or oppressed, male or female, single or married, young or old ~ I care only that they dared live and speak their truth such that all those preceding labels become like so much useless armour.
I'm reading Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning right now. It's a clever book. She uses the most omniscient of narrative techniques by positing a dead, quirky narrator, Bibi, as the intrepid guide who takes the reader back in time along the Burmese Trail with an unsuspecting group of journalists, artists and travelers.
She prefaces the book with a delightful quote:
"A pious man explained to his followers: "It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. 'Don't be scared,' I tell those fishes. 'I am saving you from drowning.' Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price, With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes."
I like travel tales. All life is a grand fish tale and the steps that define a journey. As such, all life, with its strifes and perils and plights and metaphoric peaks and valleys, can be aptly depicted within such narrative frames.
What does all this babbling have to do with the price of fish in Myanmar? Simply this: I'm hungry for fresh stories and a new mythology and the truth between the fines lines of the lies we tell ourselves in order to play safe and save face.
But above all, I'm especially hungry for a station stop - I've lost sight of where this train is going and as lovely as the landscape remains, I'm getting more than a little bored with the scenery. My own Burmese Trail adventure beckons.
To be honest, I don't even know where to begin. I feel ranted and raved out and yet, in counterpoint, I also feel like I haven't even scratched the surface of ranting. It just gets bottled and corked and like all good things left to ferment, it turns sour and distasteful.
Do I blog about my disillusionment with the media? No, it's not worth it. I'm being increasingly more selective about the media since the elections and I haven't been inclined to want to plug back in since, mistrustful as I am of the intentions and agendas of most major media outlets. Pick a story and that will be the case. I'm not interested in the prevailing story, angle, slant and skew. I want to hear the untold story and hear from the voices who aren't as loud, popular and boisterous. And I want to hear the real story.
In the spirit of Oriah Mountain Dreamer's The Invitation, I want to know what people ache for, if they dare dream of meeting their heart's longing, or would willing risk looking like a fool for love, for their dream, for the adventure of being alive. And if they have touched the centre of their own sorrow or have been opened by life's betrayal and can sit with pain, their's or mine, and can be with joy, mine and their own, and can dance with wildness and let ecstasy fill them to the tips of their fingers.
Like Oriah, I don't care if the story they tell me is true - I, too, want to know if others can disappoint another to be true to themselves. Rather than being curious about what people do for a living or where they live or how much money they make, I am infinitely more interested in knowing if people can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. And like Oriah, I want to know what sustains people from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if people can be alone with themselves fand if they truly like the company you they keep in the empty moments.
I don't care if they stand on the side of conservative or liberal, black or white, privileged or oppressed, male or female, single or married, young or old ~ I care only that they dared live and speak their truth such that all those preceding labels become like so much useless armour.
I'm reading Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning right now. It's a clever book. She uses the most omniscient of narrative techniques by positing a dead, quirky narrator, Bibi, as the intrepid guide who takes the reader back in time along the Burmese Trail with an unsuspecting group of journalists, artists and travelers.
She prefaces the book with a delightful quote:
"A pious man explained to his followers: "It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. 'Don't be scared,' I tell those fishes. 'I am saving you from drowning.' Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price, With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes."
Anonymous
I like travel tales. All life is a grand fish tale and the steps that define a journey. As such, all life, with its strifes and perils and plights and metaphoric peaks and valleys, can be aptly depicted within such narrative frames.
What does all this babbling have to do with the price of fish in Myanmar? Simply this: I'm hungry for fresh stories and a new mythology and the truth between the fines lines of the lies we tell ourselves in order to play safe and save face.
But above all, I'm especially hungry for a station stop - I've lost sight of where this train is going and as lovely as the landscape remains, I'm getting more than a little bored with the scenery. My own Burmese Trail adventure beckons.
4/22/09
The Late Great Planet Earth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
William Wordsworth (1806)
3/22/09
March Madness
Milestones
This is my 100th blog post. I’ve been thinking it begged a more extravagant form of performative utterance than this casual mention but it doesn’t. Onward, upwards and all that.
The same holds true for my writing or lack thereof. In my attempt to find new footing and get some traction again, I’ve been over-thinking what major thing I should write about. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and so I guess I shall reorient myself from there – that single step.
I get singular steps confused with big steps. They are not at all the same thing. One is measured qualitatively and the other quantifiably. I suppose if I want to justify my lapse of time, I can, indeed, measure numerically the million little things I’ve done of late.
I don’t know that the fruits of my labor (and loins for that matter) add up to anything of substance and tangibility now. All my vested interests feel that way – bound up in uncertain, future dividends. But process is like that – it can’t be measured with any real precision. To quote T.S. Eliot ~ “what we call the beginning is often the end / And to make an end is to make a beginning.” As winter fades and spring fast approaches, I feel that’s where I’m at; a place of resurrection, rebirth and new beginning.
On that note, I’ve begun the next stage in The Artist’s Way series ~ Walking in This World, wherein Julia Cameron, the author, introduces weekly walks to the “tool box” of spiritual-creative outlets along with morning journaling and a weekly artist date. The first chapter in this new book, no surprise, is about discovering a sense of origin.
Fresh start, clean slate, beginner mind – what a great place from which to embark on a creative and metaphoric spiritual journey.
Mindfulness
In this relative state of minding my own business, I’ve been contemplating the mind. I just read My Stroke of Insight, Jill Bolte Taylor’s account of where her brain was at in the days, weeks, months, years following her stroke. I’m also reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and all this brain food has been giving me fodder for thought on the issue of creativity vis-Ã -vis right and left brain thinking.
Along with this, I’m learning to see negative spaces. Perhaps I should say re-learning. I suspect I was born with that vision but have since forgotten it. Holy Son has a grey and white screened t-shirt that features a woman’s face on it. I didn’t notice the face for weeks. Now that’s all I see. I hope to keep it that way.
It’s starting to work though. Now that I’m beginning to notice negative space, I see a different view outside my office window – the leaves and trees are arranged in such a way as to create a kind of Greco-Roman statuesque face of Picasso proportions. I need to sketch it before a big windstorm comes up and blows the leaves off my face.
Yes, it’s true. I have Picasso on the brain. I headed up Holy Daughter’s classroom art auction project this winter and this is the final result (the background matte was woven by a creative helpmate - one of the other moms who was also juggling a staggering three other classroom auction projects of her own).
It sold last night at the auction for $1050. Unbelievable. And here I was, hoping it might sell for $75.00. Holy Daughter’s creations are second down from the top left and the center image.
Mypopia
Speaking of vision, distant objects have seemed quite blurry to me lately. It’s been a crazy, busy time of late. We’ve been juggling all the usual suspects of after-school arts and scouting round-around madness with the kids, as well as a host of medical appointments, family visits and attraction tours.
I can’t believe spring is almost here – this has been the winter that just won’t end. When it snowed again this past week for like the millionth time here in the past few months, Holy Daughter noted that it must be Mother Nature trying to get rid Herself of the last bit of cold and flakey stuff to make room for spring. There might be something to that.
All I know is I’m ready for spring. Holy Son is off to Washington, DC for a school trip next weekend. He’s most excited about staying at a Great Wolf Lodge during the trip. Holy Hub is trying to keep a low yet high profile at Boeing – a precarious, betwixt and between place if ever there was one. I’m still encouraged that, amidst all their layoffs, engineering jobs aren’t yet being touched. Fingers crossed. And summer is around the corner, for which I have nothing beyond Holy Son’s scout camp in Oregon etched on the calendar to show for it. Holy Daughter is flirting with going to circus camp this summer and I’m flirting with letting her. There are a couple of options in town – an actual circus arts school, as well as a cirque institute. We’ll see how that goes.
Mourning
Sudden death loomed large on the horizon last week ~ first, with news of Natasha Richardson’s unexpected passing, and next with the shocking news that a friend’s husband had suffered a fatal heart attack on Thursday. He was only 45. She does not stray far from my thoughts from moment to moment.
Musical
The kids finish up this afternoon with their Snow White play, which has been playing at Bellevue Youth Theatre to mostly sold-out crowds. Holy Son had a small singing solo in it – he played the role of The Raven and did a good job of mimicking and a great job with his singing Holy Daughter played the Huntsman’s daughter and also gave stellar performances. I look forward to having our after-school time and dinner hour back to normal again.
And to finding time to write again.
This is my 100th blog post. I’ve been thinking it begged a more extravagant form of performative utterance than this casual mention but it doesn’t. Onward, upwards and all that.
The same holds true for my writing or lack thereof. In my attempt to find new footing and get some traction again, I’ve been over-thinking what major thing I should write about. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and so I guess I shall reorient myself from there – that single step.
I get singular steps confused with big steps. They are not at all the same thing. One is measured qualitatively and the other quantifiably. I suppose if I want to justify my lapse of time, I can, indeed, measure numerically the million little things I’ve done of late.
I don’t know that the fruits of my labor (and loins for that matter) add up to anything of substance and tangibility now. All my vested interests feel that way – bound up in uncertain, future dividends. But process is like that – it can’t be measured with any real precision. To quote T.S. Eliot ~ “what we call the beginning is often the end / And to make an end is to make a beginning.” As winter fades and spring fast approaches, I feel that’s where I’m at; a place of resurrection, rebirth and new beginning.
On that note, I’ve begun the next stage in The Artist’s Way series ~ Walking in This World, wherein Julia Cameron, the author, introduces weekly walks to the “tool box” of spiritual-creative outlets along with morning journaling and a weekly artist date. The first chapter in this new book, no surprise, is about discovering a sense of origin.
Fresh start, clean slate, beginner mind – what a great place from which to embark on a creative and metaphoric spiritual journey.
Mindfulness
In this relative state of minding my own business, I’ve been contemplating the mind. I just read My Stroke of Insight, Jill Bolte Taylor’s account of where her brain was at in the days, weeks, months, years following her stroke. I’m also reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and all this brain food has been giving me fodder for thought on the issue of creativity vis-Ã -vis right and left brain thinking.
Along with this, I’m learning to see negative spaces. Perhaps I should say re-learning. I suspect I was born with that vision but have since forgotten it. Holy Son has a grey and white screened t-shirt that features a woman’s face on it. I didn’t notice the face for weeks. Now that’s all I see. I hope to keep it that way.
It’s starting to work though. Now that I’m beginning to notice negative space, I see a different view outside my office window – the leaves and trees are arranged in such a way as to create a kind of Greco-Roman statuesque face of Picasso proportions. I need to sketch it before a big windstorm comes up and blows the leaves off my face.
Yes, it’s true. I have Picasso on the brain. I headed up Holy Daughter’s classroom art auction project this winter and this is the final result (the background matte was woven by a creative helpmate - one of the other moms who was also juggling a staggering three other classroom auction projects of her own).
It sold last night at the auction for $1050. Unbelievable. And here I was, hoping it might sell for $75.00. Holy Daughter’s creations are second down from the top left and the center image.Mypopia
Speaking of vision, distant objects have seemed quite blurry to me lately. It’s been a crazy, busy time of late. We’ve been juggling all the usual suspects of after-school arts and scouting round-around madness with the kids, as well as a host of medical appointments, family visits and attraction tours.
I can’t believe spring is almost here – this has been the winter that just won’t end. When it snowed again this past week for like the millionth time here in the past few months, Holy Daughter noted that it must be Mother Nature trying to get rid Herself of the last bit of cold and flakey stuff to make room for spring. There might be something to that.
All I know is I’m ready for spring. Holy Son is off to Washington, DC for a school trip next weekend. He’s most excited about staying at a Great Wolf Lodge during the trip. Holy Hub is trying to keep a low yet high profile at Boeing – a precarious, betwixt and between place if ever there was one. I’m still encouraged that, amidst all their layoffs, engineering jobs aren’t yet being touched. Fingers crossed. And summer is around the corner, for which I have nothing beyond Holy Son’s scout camp in Oregon etched on the calendar to show for it. Holy Daughter is flirting with going to circus camp this summer and I’m flirting with letting her. There are a couple of options in town – an actual circus arts school, as well as a cirque institute. We’ll see how that goes.
Mourning
Sudden death loomed large on the horizon last week ~ first, with news of Natasha Richardson’s unexpected passing, and next with the shocking news that a friend’s husband had suffered a fatal heart attack on Thursday. He was only 45. She does not stray far from my thoughts from moment to moment.
Musical
The kids finish up this afternoon with their Snow White play, which has been playing at Bellevue Youth Theatre to mostly sold-out crowds. Holy Son had a small singing solo in it – he played the role of The Raven and did a good job of mimicking and a great job with his singing Holy Daughter played the Huntsman’s daughter and also gave stellar performances. I look forward to having our after-school time and dinner hour back to normal again.
And to finding time to write again.
2/1/09
Green Green Grass of Home
Shake 'n Quake
Rumblings were felt in the Puget Sound on Friday, no doubt a result of the 7-day stretch of cataclysmic and most-depressing headlines which The Seattle Times has been serving up this past week. All this doom and gloom had the very ground beneath our feet quaking in its boots to the tune of a 4.5 seismic shift. I woke up right about that time but it was to the loud if hollow drip sound of our ensuite bathroom tap.
OK, so I'm anthropomorphising things a bit - but for those of us interested in chaos and integral theories, I don't think it's all that outrageous to presume that all this collective ummm, shall we say, funky energy could take its toll. As above, so below and all that good, cause and effect stuff.
If nature was to imitate us humans in dramatic fashion, I can think of no better method than to posit a foundational crack in the ground. Real estate woes are finally real around the Puget Sound, albeit far less than elsewhere in the country. Our bubble doth done burst and oh woe are the dot-com and other gajillionnaires - investments have tanked everywhere and swindlers have made off with their hard and hardly-earned dough, proving once again that money really is the root of much evil.
And still, the layoff tales continue. Those once dead job fairs will now be packed to the hilt with executives looking to pay the mortgage and feed the kids. It's ugly but there are bright spots. I still contend that sometimes opportunity flies in the face of adversity and than some former corporate lifers may find their true calling from these ordeals.
Green Angel
Speaking of ordeals, some of you may recall that we've been waiting a year for word of our green card status (it was supposed to be a done deal last March). We had almost given up even as we have been apprehensive about next month's Boeing layoffs and how that might affect Holy Hub's job.
But we received notification on Thursday that we've been approved and green cards should be in hand within 3 weeks. Or rather, the entire Holy family has been approved except me - I confessed to my Mom that it had something to do with all that anti-Bush and political rant blogging I've been doing these past few years and she said, "I thought so!!" I then admitted that I was only joking and that it was actually something to do with my fingerprints - I have to re-do my biometrics at no cost to me...(like several thousands of dollars, not to mention several hundreds of dollars of advance-parole (out-of-country travel permits) renewal wasn't an additional cost incurred because of their slow-boat to China productivity, but don't get me started). I will be delighted to go back in and dip my foreign finiger digits in ink in order to get our green cards.
So what does this mean? In a word, everything. It means Holy Hub could get on permanent with Boeing if he so chose. It means he can look for other contract work and not be tied to a trade Nafta visa that permits him employment with only the one employer. It means I can work without having my work permit tied to our annually-renewing visa. It means we're still aliens, but we're legal aliens now...thanks Sting - I now have your mantra singing in my head. It means we won't expire for 10 years, we can come and go as we please, and while we still can't vote and could still get the old DHS black leather boot toe to the butt if we "abuse our status" - (whatever that means), but it mostly means.......
We can have a red, white and green party late February/early March! That's right, it will be happy hour at the Schmidt house with red and white wine and green beer.
I feel very blessed and appreciative, if I can rip a page from this blog to gush gratitudinally to the immigration gods for just a moment. Having to potentially move out of the country in 4 short weeks (if the horrific should happen) was not my idea of fun....especially having just bought a house at the height of the market, having just remortgaged to the tune of a full 2% interest rate drop, and having a kid enrolled in one of the top, albeit lottery, schools in the nation, which has literally hundreds of kids on a waitlist waiting for him to pull out. 'Twould not have been a good time to jump ship.
And I can't lie. I'd like to be both witness and change agent in this momentous, rebuilding time in US history. I'm glad it came through in the week following Obama's inauguration (even though I know it was rubber-stamped in the last days of Bush empire). But mostly I'm just happy, happy, joy, joy, glad. Our relief is palpable.
Bachelorette #1
Holy Hub and the kids were all away this weekend - Holy Hub and Holy Daughter on a Brownie overnight excursion and Holy Son at a Scout camp outing - and so I had 28 hours to myself yesterday/today.
I had all kinds of plans for this magical time. I was going to go on a girlie getaway or maybe take some artsy fartsy classes. Or I was going to go see a chick flick or maybe take myself out on a romantic solitary date. I was going to crank tunes and disco dance with my Swiffer Jet mop turned microphone to this and this, without having to hear anyone yell at me to turn it down, tune out and get with the new millennium. I was also going to get six million manuscript pages written and finish all kinds of incomplete projects and just generally be a lean, mean productive machine.
In the end, I pondered all of the above and chose none. I didn't even eat dinner. I just putzed from one thing to another - revelling in the space of having untold number of possibilities yet having the freedom to ultimately choose none.
I did manage to sneak in the time and headspace to read Daniel Pink's book, A Whole New Mind and felt re-energized that I am that scary, random kind of thinker (I'm an ENFP) who will potentially adapt and thrive in this new conceptual age that he insists has dawned. He hints that MFAs will replace MBAs - this has me secretly scoping out local MFA programs - shhh, don't tell Holy Hub that - it could be grounds for divorce.
But more to the point, I think it's exciting to be raising resilient and outside-the-norm-thinking box children in this new age. I sense a creative renaissance emerging - I spoke of this in the previous blog post - such that they will be the amongst the first generation of Cultural Creative offspring who set about lighting the world on fire in a meaningful and engaging way.
How cool is that?
Anyhoo, here's hoping you have a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious SuperBowl Sunday! Go Cardinals!
Rumblings were felt in the Puget Sound on Friday, no doubt a result of the 7-day stretch of cataclysmic and most-depressing headlines which The Seattle Times has been serving up this past week. All this doom and gloom had the very ground beneath our feet quaking in its boots to the tune of a 4.5 seismic shift. I woke up right about that time but it was to the loud if hollow drip sound of our ensuite bathroom tap.
OK, so I'm anthropomorphising things a bit - but for those of us interested in chaos and integral theories, I don't think it's all that outrageous to presume that all this collective ummm, shall we say, funky energy could take its toll. As above, so below and all that good, cause and effect stuff.
If nature was to imitate us humans in dramatic fashion, I can think of no better method than to posit a foundational crack in the ground. Real estate woes are finally real around the Puget Sound, albeit far less than elsewhere in the country. Our bubble doth done burst and oh woe are the dot-com and other gajillionnaires - investments have tanked everywhere and swindlers have made off with their hard and hardly-earned dough, proving once again that money really is the root of much evil.
And still, the layoff tales continue. Those once dead job fairs will now be packed to the hilt with executives looking to pay the mortgage and feed the kids. It's ugly but there are bright spots. I still contend that sometimes opportunity flies in the face of adversity and than some former corporate lifers may find their true calling from these ordeals.
Green Angel
Speaking of ordeals, some of you may recall that we've been waiting a year for word of our green card status (it was supposed to be a done deal last March). We had almost given up even as we have been apprehensive about next month's Boeing layoffs and how that might affect Holy Hub's job.
But we received notification on Thursday that we've been approved and green cards should be in hand within 3 weeks. Or rather, the entire Holy family has been approved except me - I confessed to my Mom that it had something to do with all that anti-Bush and political rant blogging I've been doing these past few years and she said, "I thought so!!" I then admitted that I was only joking and that it was actually something to do with my fingerprints - I have to re-do my biometrics at no cost to me...(like several thousands of dollars, not to mention several hundreds of dollars of advance-parole (out-of-country travel permits) renewal wasn't an additional cost incurred because of their slow-boat to China productivity, but don't get me started). I will be delighted to go back in and dip my foreign finiger digits in ink in order to get our green cards.
So what does this mean? In a word, everything. It means Holy Hub could get on permanent with Boeing if he so chose. It means he can look for other contract work and not be tied to a trade Nafta visa that permits him employment with only the one employer. It means I can work without having my work permit tied to our annually-renewing visa. It means we're still aliens, but we're legal aliens now...thanks Sting - I now have your mantra singing in my head. It means we won't expire for 10 years, we can come and go as we please, and while we still can't vote and could still get the old DHS black leather boot toe to the butt if we "abuse our status" - (whatever that means), but it mostly means.......
We can have a red, white and green party late February/early March! That's right, it will be happy hour at the Schmidt house with red and white wine and green beer.
I feel very blessed and appreciative, if I can rip a page from this blog to gush gratitudinally to the immigration gods for just a moment. Having to potentially move out of the country in 4 short weeks (if the horrific should happen) was not my idea of fun....especially having just bought a house at the height of the market, having just remortgaged to the tune of a full 2% interest rate drop, and having a kid enrolled in one of the top, albeit lottery, schools in the nation, which has literally hundreds of kids on a waitlist waiting for him to pull out. 'Twould not have been a good time to jump ship.
And I can't lie. I'd like to be both witness and change agent in this momentous, rebuilding time in US history. I'm glad it came through in the week following Obama's inauguration (even though I know it was rubber-stamped in the last days of Bush empire). But mostly I'm just happy, happy, joy, joy, glad. Our relief is palpable.
Bachelorette #1
Holy Hub and the kids were all away this weekend - Holy Hub and Holy Daughter on a Brownie overnight excursion and Holy Son at a Scout camp outing - and so I had 28 hours to myself yesterday/today.
I had all kinds of plans for this magical time. I was going to go on a girlie getaway or maybe take some artsy fartsy classes. Or I was going to go see a chick flick or maybe take myself out on a romantic solitary date. I was going to crank tunes and disco dance with my Swiffer Jet mop turned microphone to this and this, without having to hear anyone yell at me to turn it down, tune out and get with the new millennium. I was also going to get six million manuscript pages written and finish all kinds of incomplete projects and just generally be a lean, mean productive machine.
In the end, I pondered all of the above and chose none. I didn't even eat dinner. I just putzed from one thing to another - revelling in the space of having untold number of possibilities yet having the freedom to ultimately choose none.
I did manage to sneak in the time and headspace to read Daniel Pink's book, A Whole New Mind and felt re-energized that I am that scary, random kind of thinker (I'm an ENFP) who will potentially adapt and thrive in this new conceptual age that he insists has dawned. He hints that MFAs will replace MBAs - this has me secretly scoping out local MFA programs - shhh, don't tell Holy Hub that - it could be grounds for divorce.
But more to the point, I think it's exciting to be raising resilient and outside-the-norm-thinking box children in this new age. I sense a creative renaissance emerging - I spoke of this in the previous blog post - such that they will be the amongst the first generation of Cultural Creative offspring who set about lighting the world on fire in a meaningful and engaging way.
How cool is that?
Anyhoo, here's hoping you have a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious SuperBowl Sunday! Go Cardinals!
1/25/09
New Beginnings
How will history weigh in on 2009, I wonder?
Will it be said that it was the best of times, it was the worst of times? Who knows. I do know this week has seemed to reflect a bit of that dichotomous sentiment.We went from a bittersweet MLKJ day - which proved to be the penultimate celebration and honour for an historic inauguration the next day, to THE day itself Tuesday, where we the people got to participate vicariously in the crowning of a new King, to resumption of doom and gloom headlines later on in the week - more corporate layoffs, more financial messes and quasi-confirmation of our darkest suspicions - that the Bush admin had been spying on members of the press corp and for that matter, on all Americans.
JOB SLOBS
I know of two people laid off this week - Microsoft and L3 Communications. Truth be told, our precarious future hangs in the balance next month, with the advent of 2,400 Boeing contractor layoffs expected. While Holy Hub holds the vision that he might be one of the "lucky" ones not to be axed, on account of his impressive work ethic, aircraft expertise and dare I brag, impressive value he offers to his department, he also knows that when it comes sacrificial lambs in the slaughterhouse world of corporate excess and mismanagement, altruism and pragmaticism don't always win out. Things like union demands and small p-politics and image do, which is all a bunch of do-do, but there you have it.If there was method to the madness, I would get it. I've heard talk that some of these corporate layoffs are nothing more than a legitimate guise for corporations to clean house of deadweight.
In the case of Boeing, I could only wish. It angers me when I hear about employees who didn't bother to go into work for much of the latter part of December, when there was a skiff or two of snow on the ground. These same fraidy-cats would think nothing of playing hooky and taking off to the mountains to go skiing. Or when I hear about employees who rape the company listlessof every conceivable benefit, from sick days to doctor's appointments to mental health days, because it's their so-called God-given right. And let us not overlook the employees who surf the net all day. These are the very employees, the real deadweight, who will be above the law and overlooked come D-day next month. Meanwhile, the contractors, the ones brought in from allover the place to lend their talents and big P produce are the ones who will be ousted.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul in times of famine (which I argue wouldn't be quite so famine had it not been for the greed of the machinist's union last fall, but don't get me started). It's not even a win/win for the company. Because then they end up having to shuffle employees from group to group, thereby incurring increased training costs, and decreased productivity for a great long while. And then when sunnier days come again, these same employees jump ship back to whenst they came, leaving these departments and divisions high and dry, once again, and screaming for contractors who heard the cry wolf one too many times and might now say to Boeing, see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya.
But woulda coulda shoulda. Let it be. Corporate America will not get fixed on the wings of my whining. When push comes to shove, all life is trade-off. We traded safety and security a handful of years ago for this magic carpet ride called the contract world.All we can do is hold the vision. And update our resumes. I finally got my resume updated and I have to confess, I don't feel nearly so reluctant to send it out now. Sucks that my timing is a bit off. On the one hand, while I'm adament on choosing not to participate in this recession when it comes to job hunting - I'm also slightly amused that I picked a fine time to finally pound pavement in these parts. Oh well, it will only make the job-getting more sweet - knowing I had so much more competition.
Today's Career/Workplace section of the paper advocates a bit of workerbee brow-nosing. Not the annoying kind but the fine-line kind, wherein you document your successes, make your boss look good, hunker down uncomplainingly and work like mad.
Which is kind of sad. There are so many talented workers, who prefer nothing more than to stay below the radar, quietly going about their work whilst letting the bafoons and blowhards sing their own so-called praises. And likewise, there are so many hard workers in this country who exemplify hard work ethics and could teach the rest of us a thing or two about the guts and glory of contributing to a team and living the foundational values this country was built upon.
GOBAMA
Speaking of which, I want to weigh in on the inauguration. I confess I got teary-eyed when they announced Obama was officially President whilst still sitting in his folding chair staring off into oblivion in those handful of minutes leading up to taking his botched oath (I so love failed performative utterances, especially an oath of office - let the mistakes be made upfront).Beyond the symbolism and the firsts and foremosts of the day (ie. shift in political ideology from fear to hope, first black President, first true pop-culture, greatest political orator in quite some time) ~ I have this inkling - a dancing in my bones, if you will - that the ushering in of Obamasignals much more than a mere partisan and color spectrum shift.
When I hear of Obama's insistence that the arts have been too long neglected in this nation, and of the grassroots (well OK, Quincy Jones) movement afoot to appoint a Secretary of the Arts) or when I hear Obama speak these words - my heart sings with an excitement that we might well be on the cusp of a new cultural and creative renaissance in this nation, and indeed the world:
So while these may be the worst of times that recent history has brought us - economically, geo-politically and spiritually - they are also the best of times. I don't often (yeah, OK, never) steal pages from Celine Dion's songbooks, but I have to say, it does feel like a new day has dawned.
I looked back on a blog post from January 2007, when I offered up a little book review about a most-inspiring book I had just read - The Audacity of Hope - and it brings creative expression full-circle, somehow. In the crafting of that book, Obama new that he was launching the little engine that could dare to dream of one day soon becoming the next President of the United States of America.
AUDACITY
Audacity is exactly what is needed. In said spirit, I have re-framed my 2009 theme that I blogged about earlier, from New Gold Dream to Truth or Dare: 2009 Holy Edition (Game On!).
I'm in the process of creating a number of Truth questions and Dare statements for myself that, in the course of the year, I will draw randomly from my Truth and Dare boxes each Monday morning. If I complete the tasks, I can choose another.
For example, a truth question might ask, "When was the last time you blah blah blah? (insert obscure activity here) Go do such and such this week." Similarly, a Dare card might prompt me to go do something just a little bit risque or out of my comfort zone. I re-rented Groundhog Day yesterday. Remember that movie? I'm reading (skimming) a book entitled Groundhog Day: Transform Your Life Day by Day -and he captures this dual-vision nicely. On the one hand, we have our daily, mundane lives which is so same-old, same-old as to make us vomit just thinking of meniality. And then we have this wishful thinking, what if? spirit inside us, that wants to chuck status quo to the cautionary winds and fly kites instead. My what if? spirit destructively emerges like clockwork once each month, wherein I flirt with taking a wrong turn out of the schoolyard and heading down the highway Thelma & Louise style.
Truth or Dare is a cheap and constructive enough thrill, I suspect, for me to marry my inner closet Thelma (or is it Louise?) with my inner Suburban Sally Sue.
So last night, I dared myself to go to the movies alone. I had never in my life sat in a movie theatre alone. It was a little disconcerting but at the same time, it was also a bit exhilerating. I went to see Slumdog Millionaire. It was a great movie - I highly recommend it and if, in fact, it wins Oscars, I would not be at all surprised. I now want to read the book, Q&A, which the screenplay was based on.
I'm not sure what I will truth or dare myself next week. My questions and provocations will be further categorized into areas of focus in my life - (ie. career, home, leisure, etc.). Anyhoo, it could make for an interesting year.
Will it be said that it was the best of times, it was the worst of times? Who knows. I do know this week has seemed to reflect a bit of that dichotomous sentiment.We went from a bittersweet MLKJ day - which proved to be the penultimate celebration and honour for an historic inauguration the next day, to THE day itself Tuesday, where we the people got to participate vicariously in the crowning of a new King, to resumption of doom and gloom headlines later on in the week - more corporate layoffs, more financial messes and quasi-confirmation of our darkest suspicions - that the Bush admin had been spying on members of the press corp and for that matter, on all Americans.
JOB SLOBS
I know of two people laid off this week - Microsoft and L3 Communications. Truth be told, our precarious future hangs in the balance next month, with the advent of 2,400 Boeing contractor layoffs expected. While Holy Hub holds the vision that he might be one of the "lucky" ones not to be axed, on account of his impressive work ethic, aircraft expertise and dare I brag, impressive value he offers to his department, he also knows that when it comes sacrificial lambs in the slaughterhouse world of corporate excess and mismanagement, altruism and pragmaticism don't always win out. Things like union demands and small p-politics and image do, which is all a bunch of do-do, but there you have it.If there was method to the madness, I would get it. I've heard talk that some of these corporate layoffs are nothing more than a legitimate guise for corporations to clean house of deadweight.
In the case of Boeing, I could only wish. It angers me when I hear about employees who didn't bother to go into work for much of the latter part of December, when there was a skiff or two of snow on the ground. These same fraidy-cats would think nothing of playing hooky and taking off to the mountains to go skiing. Or when I hear about employees who rape the company listlessof every conceivable benefit, from sick days to doctor's appointments to mental health days, because it's their so-called God-given right. And let us not overlook the employees who surf the net all day. These are the very employees, the real deadweight, who will be above the law and overlooked come D-day next month. Meanwhile, the contractors, the ones brought in from allover the place to lend their talents and big P produce are the ones who will be ousted.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul in times of famine (which I argue wouldn't be quite so famine had it not been for the greed of the machinist's union last fall, but don't get me started). It's not even a win/win for the company. Because then they end up having to shuffle employees from group to group, thereby incurring increased training costs, and decreased productivity for a great long while. And then when sunnier days come again, these same employees jump ship back to whenst they came, leaving these departments and divisions high and dry, once again, and screaming for contractors who heard the cry wolf one too many times and might now say to Boeing, see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya.
But woulda coulda shoulda. Let it be. Corporate America will not get fixed on the wings of my whining. When push comes to shove, all life is trade-off. We traded safety and security a handful of years ago for this magic carpet ride called the contract world.All we can do is hold the vision. And update our resumes. I finally got my resume updated and I have to confess, I don't feel nearly so reluctant to send it out now. Sucks that my timing is a bit off. On the one hand, while I'm adament on choosing not to participate in this recession when it comes to job hunting - I'm also slightly amused that I picked a fine time to finally pound pavement in these parts. Oh well, it will only make the job-getting more sweet - knowing I had so much more competition.
Today's Career/Workplace section of the paper advocates a bit of workerbee brow-nosing. Not the annoying kind but the fine-line kind, wherein you document your successes, make your boss look good, hunker down uncomplainingly and work like mad.
Which is kind of sad. There are so many talented workers, who prefer nothing more than to stay below the radar, quietly going about their work whilst letting the bafoons and blowhards sing their own so-called praises. And likewise, there are so many hard workers in this country who exemplify hard work ethics and could teach the rest of us a thing or two about the guts and glory of contributing to a team and living the foundational values this country was built upon.
GOBAMA
Speaking of which, I want to weigh in on the inauguration. I confess I got teary-eyed when they announced Obama was officially President whilst still sitting in his folding chair staring off into oblivion in those handful of minutes leading up to taking his botched oath (I so love failed performative utterances, especially an oath of office - let the mistakes be made upfront).Beyond the symbolism and the firsts and foremosts of the day (ie. shift in political ideology from fear to hope, first black President, first true pop-culture, greatest political orator in quite some time) ~ I have this inkling - a dancing in my bones, if you will - that the ushering in of Obamasignals much more than a mere partisan and color spectrum shift.
When I hear of Obama's insistence that the arts have been too long neglected in this nation, and of the grassroots (well OK, Quincy Jones) movement afoot to appoint a Secretary of the Arts) or when I hear Obama speak these words - my heart sings with an excitement that we might well be on the cusp of a new cultural and creative renaissance in this nation, and indeed the world:
Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may
be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard workand honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of
progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these
truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility —a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties toourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
So while these may be the worst of times that recent history has brought us - economically, geo-politically and spiritually - they are also the best of times. I don't often (yeah, OK, never) steal pages from Celine Dion's songbooks, but I have to say, it does feel like a new day has dawned.
I looked back on a blog post from January 2007, when I offered up a little book review about a most-inspiring book I had just read - The Audacity of Hope - and it brings creative expression full-circle, somehow. In the crafting of that book, Obama new that he was launching the little engine that could dare to dream of one day soon becoming the next President of the United States of America.
AUDACITY
Audacity is exactly what is needed. In said spirit, I have re-framed my 2009 theme that I blogged about earlier, from New Gold Dream to Truth or Dare: 2009 Holy Edition (Game On!).
I'm in the process of creating a number of Truth questions and Dare statements for myself that, in the course of the year, I will draw randomly from my Truth and Dare boxes each Monday morning. If I complete the tasks, I can choose another.
For example, a truth question might ask, "When was the last time you blah blah blah? (insert obscure activity here) Go do such and such this week." Similarly, a Dare card might prompt me to go do something just a little bit risque or out of my comfort zone. I re-rented Groundhog Day yesterday. Remember that movie? I'm reading (skimming) a book entitled Groundhog Day: Transform Your Life Day by Day -and he captures this dual-vision nicely. On the one hand, we have our daily, mundane lives which is so same-old, same-old as to make us vomit just thinking of meniality. And then we have this wishful thinking, what if? spirit inside us, that wants to chuck status quo to the cautionary winds and fly kites instead. My what if? spirit destructively emerges like clockwork once each month, wherein I flirt with taking a wrong turn out of the schoolyard and heading down the highway Thelma & Louise style.
Truth or Dare is a cheap and constructive enough thrill, I suspect, for me to marry my inner closet Thelma (or is it Louise?) with my inner Suburban Sally Sue.
So last night, I dared myself to go to the movies alone. I had never in my life sat in a movie theatre alone. It was a little disconcerting but at the same time, it was also a bit exhilerating. I went to see Slumdog Millionaire. It was a great movie - I highly recommend it and if, in fact, it wins Oscars, I would not be at all surprised. I now want to read the book, Q&A, which the screenplay was based on.
I'm not sure what I will truth or dare myself next week. My questions and provocations will be further categorized into areas of focus in my life - (ie. career, home, leisure, etc.). Anyhoo, it could make for an interesting year.
1/16/09
Wyeth Officially Famous Now
Andrew Wyeth died today. He is quite possibly the most brilliant artist this continent has ever seen, in my mind. I stand in awe at his work....he channeled the divine each and every time he placed brush to canvas.
His life and work was not without controversy but that will only make him larger than life in death. Same too might be said of the price of his paintings. Anyone, myself included, who didn't invest in his work prior to his death must be kicking him or herself now because in the spirit of supply and demand and guns and butter, his works will be worth infinitely more now.
Sad that one must die in order to come of age, artistically speaking.
1/9/09
Of Resolutions, Risk and Redux
On the nineth day of the new year, my true love gave to me, nine non-resolutions.
That's my song and I'm singing it. I hereby don't resolve in grand pontification to:
1) seek meaningful work
2) finish my book
3) shop my picture book manuscript
4) blast through unfinished home projects
5) lose weight
6) exercise more
7) eat heathier
8) live life with more reckless abandon
9) buy the world a home and furnish it with love
You see, I can't remember a January in recent New Years' past, where I haven't resolved in good faith, spirit and proclamatin to do something kick-ass and worthy. But then again, I can't remember a February in the past decade, where I wasn't also proverbially kicking my own ass for having ditched said lofty resolution in favour of newfound sloth and apathy.
I've had a few New Year's successes. Well, OK, maybe only one that I can think of. I quit smoking January 1, 1990. I still consider that to have been a most amazing accomplishment but the secret to my success was that I mentally afffirmed my intention and quit date with each puff, drag and inhale of each and every cigarette for two months leading up to my quit date. So imagine how many meditative inhalings of each cigarette that might work out to be and then multiple that by 25 and then again by about 60 and that equates to quite the bombardment of positive affirmations I was assailing in inner addict with.
This year, as per the one the last, I resolve to resolve daily. To wake up and begin each day anew with manageable bite-size resolutions that are apropos for a 24 hour period. Period.
Anyhoo, stay tuned for more on this next week, once I've done some visioning work (tomorrow) on the year ahead.
That's my song and I'm singing it. I hereby don't resolve in grand pontification to:
1) seek meaningful work
2) finish my book
3) shop my picture book manuscript
4) blast through unfinished home projects
5) lose weight
6) exercise more
7) eat heathier
8) live life with more reckless abandon
9) buy the world a home and furnish it with love
You see, I can't remember a January in recent New Years' past, where I haven't resolved in good faith, spirit and proclamatin to do something kick-ass and worthy. But then again, I can't remember a February in the past decade, where I wasn't also proverbially kicking my own ass for having ditched said lofty resolution in favour of newfound sloth and apathy.
I've had a few New Year's successes. Well, OK, maybe only one that I can think of. I quit smoking January 1, 1990. I still consider that to have been a most amazing accomplishment but the secret to my success was that I mentally afffirmed my intention and quit date with each puff, drag and inhale of each and every cigarette for two months leading up to my quit date. So imagine how many meditative inhalings of each cigarette that might work out to be and then multiple that by 25 and then again by about 60 and that equates to quite the bombardment of positive affirmations I was assailing in inner addict with.
This year, as per the one the last, I resolve to resolve daily. To wake up and begin each day anew with manageable bite-size resolutions that are apropos for a 24 hour period. Period.
Anyhoo, stay tuned for more on this next week, once I've done some visioning work (tomorrow) on the year ahead.
12/4/08
Shades of Joe Clark
It's an Animal Farm north of the border, politically-speaking, and I won't go there with which breeds and species I think the opposition parties have become. If you're totally clueless as to what I'm talking about, read all about it here.
Suffice to say, Canadian PM Stephen Harper has been reduced to a hunk of prime, mooing Alberta beef awaiting mad cow disease slaughter.
I wasn't at all into politics back in 1979 (pot and lit were more my style), when Joe Clark became PM for only a day or two or however brief his minority-rule stint turned out to be before the Liberals ousted him in a non-confidence vote. Perhaps it was months. It seemed like days.
But the parliamentary rumblings feel similar. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Clark entered into the fray in a very tumultuous economic time in Canadian history ~ post-Pierre Elliott Trudeau and his many "PET" projects, not the least of which was the Petro Canada (Pierre Elliott Trudeau Ripping Off Canada), not to mention the National Energy Program - an endeavor which proved, if nothing else, that "east is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet."
Morph the decades ahead by two, and here we go again. A young, upstart and rather unassuming PM from Alberta who is way more brilliant a policymaker and leader than others might give him credit for. Sound familiar?
Just replace that old monicker, Joe who? with Harper who? - and exchange the old host of feathered foe of the black, Bloc and bluh (insert French accent here) variety, surrounding and pecking away at the conservative carcass until nothing remains but dried dead meat hardly fit for pemiken, with our new and not so new feathered friends, Dion, Layton and Duceppe, (a name that if you bastardize in a half-arsed attempt at guessing whether 'e' is pronounced as a soft or hard vowel 'e' in huck-too-ey Quebecois francais- minus the accent eh goos and upside down c's and fancy birthday hats and all that-, might easily rhyme with deceit).
So the latest and greatest is that in this coalition attempt to usurp and oust Harper, Harper has had to suspend Parliament.
Didn't emergency measures such as that just happen in Pakistan?! Egads - and Harper's not armed like Musharraf was. Holy hacked-up hockey sticks, Captain Canuck, what's going on up dem dar north of the 49th and east of the 100th meridian, eh?
Now having said all this, while I can't rightly determine where my vote might swing these days ~so far left-leaning am I even though I can't seem to muster up any enthusiasm for the NDP ~ I, nonetheless, still have to confess that any coalition involving the Bloc scares the bejesus and sacriste tabernacle out of me.
It's all a crock of merde (pronounced mare-duh), my apologies in advance for bringing something as lovely as female equine into something so unlovely as the Bloc mix, which is the manure that has lined the political streets for the running of the bulls event the opposition parties have been participating in these past few years.
I seriously don't think the opposition sees him in the light that posterity will prove flattered and prospered Canada in the long run. While I don't think Harper warrants a white cowboy hat and white horse, I do think he has Canada's best interests at heart and soul. And I think he won fair and square - the voters decided. And at the end of the day, that needs to stand for something.
So much for bragging this fall that we Canadians knew how to do elections right - drama and epic just weren't our style. Teehee. I suspect we might be in for a longer haul, if not an overhaul.
But whatever way I look at it, it still feels like 1979/80 redux all over again. Am I alone in thinking this?
11/25/08
November Rain
Holy Daughter dressed as Snoopy the Red Baron - Halloween night
Holy Daughter dressed as Ugly Betty - Halloween DayWhat a busy month. Whew.
I haven't been blogging nor journaling nor writing much - just mostly handling what's in front of me and taking this time to be introspective. The daily grind of listening to economic and mortgage doom & gloom as yet more crumbling pillars of corporate society take their place in the ever-growing soup kitchen line and beg for change, not to mention reading of certain disillusioned voters who are already quick to blame Obama before he's even taken office ~ it's all made me want to tune out of the whole blame game.
My personal favorite though is the Palin lovers, whose continued devotion to her has this stomach bug of mine sticking around longer than normal. It just serves to remind that the only normal is of the snafu variety.
Creation Theory
I've been up to my assets in alligators with studying creativity this fall. The fine art of it as well as my place in it. More on that later. In the midst of all this creative thinking, I wrote a kid's book, which I plan to market here in the near future. Sung to the tune of this little bookie went to market. Wish me luck...and a Newbery Honor.
I've also been pretty busy this fall spearheading my Artist's Way group at church. Our 12-week journey is almost complete and it has gone really well. I gauge this success based on the fact that I have only had 3 drop out - one because she felt too young, and the other two because of work demands. Given the intense, psycho-therapeutic nature of this work, having only 3 drop out is rather amazing. The other nine ladies have proven to be very committed to the journey and we have become a very close-knit group of creative types.
My job, apart from keeping us on task and on time with our verbal sharing and insights, has been to come up with creative exercises during the second half of our sessions, based on whatever the chapter theme happened to be. And so, in the course of the past several weeks, I have schemed various activities ~ ranging from drawing our muses, to making shadow self tarot cards, to playing an art auction game, to making play-doh gifts ~ to this past week's activity for the theme of Self-Protection, which involved creating a recipe for creative living card and asked them to come back with all the necessary ingredients and a way-forward list of instructions for how they can begin to manifest this in their daily lives.
This was my art auction creation, Tutti Fruiti - I decided to buy her back.Said recipe for creative living is not to be confused with the cutesy, sprinkle in a dash of joy and add a pinch of variety and spice crap that you see in vile, errr virile e-mails. These recipes are more abstract and methodical, and are very much personal statements that resonate with each individual "concerning all acts of initiative" and creativity.
I have a more general instruction list for living that I've created for myself but I've noticed - because I stare at it each day such that I'm reminded when I am or am not living my list - that I haven't been heeding the first rule on my personal instruction list (a.k.a. the holy grail, secret to my universe stuff that got thrown out with my placental matter but has since been reclaimed in the netherlands of interplanetary, most extraordinary lost and found).
My first rule is to breathe.
How many short shallow breaths can a person take before they finally have to stop and, in Cheech and Chong "oh wow, man" fashion, breathe in the big kahuna? It will be nice for time to tick slower this week. I love how Americans have carved out this entire week practically, where life comes to a virtual halt. People are remiss to schedule things on the Monday and Tuesday prior to Thanksgiving, or so I've noticed. And that's fine by me.
Many Happy Returns
Holy Son played in his last soccer game of the season and scored a goal. That was a big deal. He's usually good for one a season, but not always. He mostly plays defense and has yet to really hone his offensive skills. He's almost a foot taller than some of his teammates, so it's a different game watching him run those long strides of his across the field with the ball.
He's gearing up for his jazz band concert tonight ~ last week was orchestra (yes, he's both a jazz spaz and an orch dork). That means we scrap Irish Dance and Scouts and watch him be the bass guitar dude. And he is beginning to look like a dude. Scraggly, shaggy blondish hair that spends most of its time in his eyes. He likes to brush it forward. He thinks the look becomes him. I fantasize about getting the clippers out in the middle of the night and shaving it all off.
He turns 12 this week, and as usual, we have to ownplay-day the age-ay ing-thay in front of all his 13 year old friends. Even though he towers over all of them and runs circles around them socially. Middle schoolers amuse me. I'm at his school every day to pick him up so I get my fair share of seeing them in the action. He's mostly oblivious to all the groupies he has until an adult happens to point it out. Like his former International Studies teacher, who is fond of stopping me in the hallway and pointing out conspiratorially, how my son "always has girls around him. They follow him everywhere!"
But as I say, he's clueless to the attention. He has one particular girl that he likes. I saw her in the school play. She is exactly his "type: - tall, leggy, long blondish hair and is 12 going on 22. He asked her to the upcoming Snowflake dance and she's all excited. She wants them to dress matching - she'll wear a bright fuschia dress and she's hoping he'll wear a matching fuschia tie. I said welcome to the world of girls, buddy. He bought her a snowflake necklace and his all excited to give it to her that night. Age eleven and already a player.
Cheater, Cheater
Holy Daughter has her own drama. She's been hanging with a certain boy in class who is the son of one of the most senior elected officials in this state. They are just friends, of course, but the whole class teases them about their chumminess. He's very smitten with her, on account of her being an animated, fearless and captivating extrovert. And she's extremely amused by him. He confessed to her that he was going to vote for Obama, despite his father being a staunch Republican. And he admitted that he stuffed the ballot box with 11 dirty ballots during their class Halloween contest. She thought that was pretty funny. So did I. If his father only knew.
She had a meltdown last week and decided that she's just way too busy with too many extra-curricular activities. Mwah-ha-ha. My evil plan is working. I've been desperate to dump a couple of these for awhile now. Brownies will likely end this year. I'm not sure we'll carry on but we'll have to see how that goes. It's only once every couple of weeks and is right after school, so that one is no biggie. And soccer season is over now, thankfully. That one was 2-3 times a week, although we never did make both weekly practices. The problem with dropping something like soccer is that it's the only aerobic exercise kids that age get. Gym is only once a week for 1/2 an hour and they usually only end up doing lame games and activities.
Ballet is the big issue. She wants to drop it. She isn't enjoying it, mostly because it's so repetitive and her instructor, the studio owner, is always a no-show. Ballet is the one activity I'd like to see her hang onto for awhile longer. She's agreed to see this through until the Nutcracker performance is over and then in the new year, switch studios to a more challenging class and see how that goes.
But during her meltdown she confessed that she's cool with dropping Irish dance, and that tickles me. Irish dance requires insanely high leaps and kicks, neither of which she's been able to muster to a competitive degree. And competition is where it's at in Irish dancing, unfortunately. Not to mention that it's pricey and we're at that stage of having to invest in soft and hard shoes, both of which can be awfully expensive. So, I'm holding the vision that by the new year, Irish dancing will be a thing of the past in this house.
Pumpkin Eater
Time has flown since Canadian Thanksgiving. I'm so glad we're not doing the turkey and pie thing again. This year for Thanksgiving, we're heading to our church potluck. It's a great way to be in community with our 'fellow Americans' and best of all, have an opportunity to enjoy the fun and feast without having to deal with a huge kitchen mess.
I'm grateful for the time to relax a moment or two. It's been a hectic fall with little time to chill out and breathe. Big fat sigh.
11/11/08
Tributes, Memories & Milestones
Flowery TributesI don't like having to explain to the children this year what a poppy is and why they should wear it. It's one of the many small sacrifices of identity we make as ex-pats, I suspect. The kids easily spell favorite and think nothing of it. They say zee instead of zed but at least have the good grace to look at my guiltily when they do it. They're forgetting so much about Canada so soon and this makes me want to cry.
Holy Daughter pinned her poppy on her Brownie vest yesterday and she and her troop trekked off to the local Veteran's Hospital to sing songs, present cards and in her case, hand out poppies to the Veterans. It was amazing that some of the veterans recognized the significance of the poppy and were touched. It's not something Americans honour although of course, at Armistice and Remembrance Day celebrations elsewhere around the world, it's universally recognized as the symbol of peace reborn in the killing fields.
I used to have 'In Flanders Fields' committed to memory. Time and complacency have since dusted it from my childhood closets.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
— Lt.-Col. John McCrae
Holy Son is off at an all-day Scout training day this Veteran's Day - he's not wearing his uniform but he does have his poppy pinned upon his scout t-shirt, for what it's worth. I asked him to break for a minute of silence at 11am. He said, "But Mom!" And I just did the raised-eyebrow thing and affected my no-blink, no-compromise stare.
Such is the plight of young foreigners on American soil ~ that they should have to be subjected to their parents weird homeland rituals that bear little meaning and relevance to their own Americanized lives.
Memories
I am only a fraction of the way into my Nanowrimo Rebel project - I got a little derailed by Holy Daughter's art project, soccer, Irish dance performance and Nutcracker rehearsals this past weekend, but I hope to get back in the loop this week.
My book is sectioned off into three parts - I, Don't and Know - the 'I' section is my 14 predominant roles or archetypes in life, the 'Know' part shall be my so-called wisdom text of 14 epiphanies and the 'Don't' section is my negative precept tales ~ it's the one I've been most sluggish about.
Case in point: today I'm going to tackle Pee...as in Don't Pee....which shall be my prosaic witness to a most embarrassing and debilitating time in my teenagehood ~ having LBS (leaky bladder syndrome). Whenever I see a teen girl wear a hoodie wrapped around her waist, I pause to wonder if she too suffers the same ailment I once did. Of course, now there's Depend. :) Not that incontinent teens, with their low-rise jeans and g-string underwear would be prone to wanting to sport a granny diaper. But I was desperate enough back then that I might have considered something, had I known there was an option. It would be a long time before I finally went in for bladder surgery. Proactive medical concern was not a family strong suit. We were nothing if not nuclear reactive.
Milestones
Holy Hub flew home to Deadmonchuk over the weekend and drove his Pa's old pick-up truck back. It was loaded to the rafters with trash and treasure alike and a supply of poppies that will see us through the next few years.
Some of the treasures included a custom-framed Norman Rockwell needlework image Grandma Schmidt had made for Holy Son, Grossmutti's old grandfather clock, ceramic and metalwork candlesticks Holy Hub had made in his distant youth, retro train sets, and a great old Swiss trunk from the 1930s. We have nowhere to put some of this stuff so there it sits in our dining room and entryway, biding its time 'til it might find a more permanent home. Somewhere sometime.Speaking of some who, what, where, when, why's, I'm preparing to launch my new year vision. Consider this my pre-launch party. My 2009 life vision theme is New Gold Dream: The Siren & the Ecstacy.
It seemed appropriate to pick a Simple Minds tune, first and foremost, because it will take a beginner mind vision of innocence and risk to pull this off. And also because the song and arguably the album, New Gold Dream, speaks to an era - 81,82,83,84 when I experienced one of the most profound archetypal deaths and rebirths. On this, the 25th anniversary of the end of that era, I think it's time to die again, in order that I might be give birth to a new gilded me.
Back in October of 2006, I blogged about this very song in reference to both my once upon a time and someday dreams. Here's the once upon a distant future day dreams I constructed that day:
- Someday strutting in a parade with the Red Hot Mamas ~ as an update, I did get to strut in the St. Paddy's Day parade with a bunch of Red Hot Mamas but yes, my parade dream is still largely alive, well and raring to strut her stuff
- Writing and self-publishing a children's book - here ye, here ye. I actually wrote a children's book last Thursday -voila! just like that - and am officially going on record here to announce that I am going to be shopping my manuscript to worthy publishers - the golden-tinge to this dream is that I hope to one day earn a Newbery and/or Caldecott honour for said achievements. Or die trying, anyways.
- Embarking on a six-month sabbatical as a family to a far-flung place in order to assist with an international aid project ~ this dream is fast approaching a need for speed, on account of Holy Daughter being in 3rd and Holy Son being in 7th grade. Time ticks, carpe diem and all that jazz.
- Finally learning to draw and paint ~ I've been flirting more and more with both of these but my inner chicken is Foghorn Leghorn in size and formidabishnish.
- Visiting as many key mystical and ancient civilization sites as time, money and energy will permit in this lifetime - I've been to a few but not nearly as many as I would like. Machu Picchu still beckons.
- Becoming a dragon boat racer ~ this one always ends up on next year's resolution list. Sad but true.
- Learning to breathe and meditate ~ a did a teeny, tiny bit of meditation this year but I still haven't jumped in with both feet, save vicariously, when I sent Holy Daughter away to a Vipassana retreat this past summer.
- Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro with Holy Hub one day ~ this would be very cool. Holy Son and Hub made a pact the other night that they were going to crack open a 38 year old bottle of Canadian Club whiskey on a Mt. Rainier outing on or near 2014. I should maybe see if we change this up to be a family pass-the-cup affair in the wilds of Africa. Not that packing a flash of whiskey all the way to Africa would be easy but who said life was easy?!
- Owning a vacation cottage or cabin in the mountains ~ still haven't made good on this, my most ardent dream. Shame on me. 'Nuff said.
- Writing my memoir ~ this is finally in the works!
It's funny as in remarkable that this top 10 list still vibes with me. Dragon boat racing could easily substitute for some other physical challenge or pursuit - a marathon or long pilgrimage hike could easily suffice, too. But apart from that - this remains my bucket list.
I'm pleased to verify that I've begun to act on some of these dreams, while keeping others in the forefront of my consciousness during these tricky, recessionary times.
Let it be known for the record though: 2009 is the year I guide, stride and high-tide them.
So on that note, I'll re-quote here the sage words I noted for posterity in my October '06 blog post.
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the blowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in the your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."Mark Twain
11/5/08
The Killers Are Coming!
Oh happy happy day on so many level, beginning with the post-election high hopes and ending with 107.7 The End's Deck the Hall Ball bash which I totally forgot about... now that I have satellite radio and never listen to regular radio anymore. Sigh.
So it turns out The Killers are coming and I didn't even know it. Talk about a sheltered life. So I'm taking Holy Son as a belated 12th b-day present - he doesn't know it yet - and Shiny Toy Guns and Death Cab for Cutie will be playing, as well.
Can't wait. It'll be the 25th anniversary year of when I used to hang out at concerts like this...I know what you're thinking...that was back when you were young, Holy. Yup. Still am. I'll have the concert tee to prove it, too!
In other Schmidt happenings, we have a new office desk suite. It took a year of shopping for me to find the color I was happy with to match the dark mahogany stain of our office futon arms. In the meantime, we were using Holy Hub's small kiddie desk from when he was 7. Kinda small and the drawers had this funky 60s smell - you know, the kinda odor that old furniture likes to give off. And it was just getting, well, old.
Craziness. The new stuff is not a perfect match nor is it swanky by any stretch - the furniture is a tad darker but it'll have to do. Best thing about this furniture is not the quality - it's mdf or some other such high quality pressboard - it's that it's made for small home offices and it's no-tool building. Everything snaps together. Kinda nifty. Not that Holy Hub thought so. Putting office furniture together and untangling computer cords was not on his priority list on election night, which comes two nights before he flies back to Edmonton on his whirlwind Keep on Trucking weekend (he's bringing his Dad's pick-up back across the border). But thankfully, it was a tool free and painless experience and he's a light packer.
We've asked that he try to raise $700 on his own through babysitting, chores, odd jobs around the neighborhood, money in lieu of birthday and Xmas gifts, etc. And he needs to earn his American Heritage, Citizenship of the Nation and Family Life merit badges for Boy Scouts as part of going to DC, as well. He's very excited. Who can blame him? The trip looks like a gas. We've discovered there aren't too many 12 years old who would take a trip to the other side of the nation without their parents. Luckily for him and us, Holy Son is already an intrepid traveler from these recent summers trekking off to boy scout camp without us.
Anyhoo, I'm hard at work amassing a collection of 50,000 written words this month so on that note, I must make like Snoopy and type away.
So it turns out The Killers are coming and I didn't even know it. Talk about a sheltered life. So I'm taking Holy Son as a belated 12th b-day present - he doesn't know it yet - and Shiny Toy Guns and Death Cab for Cutie will be playing, as well.
Can't wait. It'll be the 25th anniversary year of when I used to hang out at concerts like this...I know what you're thinking...that was back when you were young, Holy. Yup. Still am. I'll have the concert tee to prove it, too!
In other Schmidt happenings, we have a new office desk suite. It took a year of shopping for me to find the color I was happy with to match the dark mahogany stain of our office futon arms. In the meantime, we were using Holy Hub's small kiddie desk from when he was 7. Kinda small and the drawers had this funky 60s smell - you know, the kinda odor that old furniture likes to give off. And it was just getting, well, old.
Craziness. The new stuff is not a perfect match nor is it swanky by any stretch - the furniture is a tad darker but it'll have to do. Best thing about this furniture is not the quality - it's mdf or some other such high quality pressboard - it's that it's made for small home offices and it's no-tool building. Everything snaps together. Kinda nifty. Not that Holy Hub thought so. Putting office furniture together and untangling computer cords was not on his priority list on election night, which comes two nights before he flies back to Edmonton on his whirlwind Keep on Trucking weekend (he's bringing his Dad's pick-up back across the border). But thankfully, it was a tool free and painless experience and he's a light packer.
Anyhoo, onwards, upwards. We've successfully torn down Halloween. I still have to get pictures posted. The power switch on our stand-alone computer decided to call it quits just as we were moving it around a bit. So it'll be awhile before I get pics posted. Holy Daughter looked priceless as Snoopy the Red Baron. I heart eBay...we picked up three great Snoopy masks in October online. I'm thinking of getting into ditching some stuff on Craigslist and eBay in the next few months.
In other news, we're all banding together in the house to support Holy Son on his Mr. Schmidt Goes to Washington project, which will be his option week trip next spring. He's very excited and I kind of am, too, because I now have 5 months of one-word command behavior modification. It works wonders. All I have to do is raise my right eyebrow - which is more dramatic now that I've had them waxed a tad thinner - and then I affect a poker-face stare and mention, "Washington..." and he bucks right up. It's beautiful.
We've asked that he try to raise $700 on his own through babysitting, chores, odd jobs around the neighborhood, money in lieu of birthday and Xmas gifts, etc. And he needs to earn his American Heritage, Citizenship of the Nation and Family Life merit badges for Boy Scouts as part of going to DC, as well. He's very excited. Who can blame him? The trip looks like a gas. We've discovered there aren't too many 12 years old who would take a trip to the other side of the nation without their parents. Luckily for him and us, Holy Son is already an intrepid traveler from these recent summers trekking off to boy scout camp without us.
And we're gearing up for Nutcracker season soon. Holy Daughter has a big part as a Snow Princess and Holy Son may be enjoying his last stint as the nephew, Nutcracker and prince. It's been a great run for him. He's grown out of three boots these past 3 years and is now working on size 10.5. I've threatened to stop feeding him now that he's 5 ft. 5 and a half, but so far, I'm not having a lot of luck with that.
Last but not least, my weekly Artist's Way group has morphed into a rather tight-knit creative circle. We're a great mix of newbie and seasoned artists. It's been a fair amount of work coming up with creative in-class assignments, but also a lot of fun. Last week we shared our creative collages. I did not create a new one from spring but I'm happy to see that my Obama image has since manifested into more than just a dream. As has my Art Club image. That's the cool thing about making creative dream posters. If you build it - the images, that is; they really can and do come true.
Anyhoo, I'm hard at work amassing a collection of 50,000 written words this month so on that note, I must make like Snoopy and type away. 
11/4/08
Nanowrimo
I decided to get with the program this year and hop on the Nanowrimo bus. It's one part impulsive, three parts scary, two parts liberating and four parts fun. Or something like that. Actually being given public permission to write without regard to editing - that is such a foreign concept for me. I edit while writing. That's my problem - the whole enchilada of writer's block right there in that insidious e-word.
I'm 1/5th of the way there already - I've been writing to beat the banshee the last couple of days. Is it a shitty first draft? You betcha. But in the interest of quantity not quality and an attitude born of altitude, I'm setting my sights high and not blinking until I get there.
Wish me godspeed and a daily flash of insight!
10/25/08
Spooktacular Events
I think it was Holy Hub, who is ever the pragmatic and dare I add a reluctant if late blooming partyer ~ and his third muttering that we would have been better off to book a pool party, order a pizza there and call it a day rather than continue on with this spooktacular howler set for Holy Daughter's 9th birthday party tonight ~ that clued me in.
I would like to be one of those Moms that sets out cake and ice cream, has a civilized gift opening, and succumbs to the wild excess of a pin the tail on the donkey game for good measure, but I'm beginning to realize, that probably ain't gonna happen on my watch.
And I'm OK with that. Not everyone in this house is, but I will go to my grave defending that excess and Halloween actually share the same etymological root derivative.
Speaking of graves and roots and nonesuch, the party today is a graveyard one. Holy Daughter wanted to go a bit goth and creepy this year. So we put out strict orders that no one was to come dressed as a cute puppy, pretty princess or kitschy cartoon character. We switched the dining and family room furniture around - thankfully there wasn't much in the family room to begin with, and have set this room, which shares space with the kitchen, up as a haunted dining room with some Frankenstein costume-clad tall candlestick holders looking on. And I'm happy to report that once lights get turned off and candles lit, the room will be quite creepy and most kooky, mysterious and spooky, maybe even altogether ooky, just like the Schmidty family.
My little Vampiress wants to watch one of the scarier episodes of Goosebumps with her 8 friends in the dark downstairs and then after dinner, we're going to send the bravest of ghouls out to the backyard, where we'll have a Boneyard Cemetery set up, to collect bones for prizes.
All of which has entailed hours of planning and set-up for a 3-hour tour. A 3-hour tour.
I know. I totally get it. But I think it's about taking a stance upon familiar soil. Do I want to stand for lame parties and even lamer treat bags? Never in good conscience could I do so and be able to look myself in the hair eyeball of the morning mirror again. Nor could I stand way over there, at that blowout party extraganza place, which even now in my mind's eye, resembles more of a tailgate bash than the annual celebration of a child's birth. My kids have been to parties like that. Where every child in the Western Hemisphere was invited and where stacks of presents were presented and left unopened.
We've never permitted more than 8 or 9 friends and even that seems excessive, especially given the fact that both kids only have one or two friends they truly count as their closest companions.
So yeah, I kinda get my place in the mix - I like to think I stand on that middle ground soil. But after another equally anal PTA Mom and I planned Holy Daughter's year-end class carnival picnic last year and people were oohing and ahhing over all the little details that this other Mom and I thought nothing of (truth be told, we thought a lot of it was kinda lame given our limited time and budget), I realized that maybe I am a breed apart when it comes to event details. Color coordinating and decor and little chutzkahs have always mattered to me. Even back in the days when we were planning our first annual Christmas open house I can recall getting hung up on matching napkins to plates. It's a genetic flaw, I'm sure - I now know I come by it honestly - my birth family are party throwers extraordinaire. And I know that some of it has come from being so often thrust into the role of event planner in my career this past decade.
But I also get that life is long on fear, droll duty and disaster - especially of late - and rather short on fun. I'm channelling a little of that medieval carpe diem spirit which I know rhymes with evil, but it doesn't take a degree from a Freudian college to figure out that fun, feast, and frivolity are perfectly natural human responses to doom, gloom, and tomb.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much and perhaps that's true. But it's my soapbox so I get to hog the mic and defend, on behalf of anal home birthday party planners everywhere, our right to party plan.
A month ago, as all 5 of you faithful readers out there will recall, I went off on what I like to think of as a bit of a midlife coming of age rite. It felt, looked and acted a whole lot like a native naming ceremony might - I figuratively went out to the wilderness to figure out my role in this large tribe called earth and then owing to my already near-elder stature, I named myself. We worked a lot with figuring out our stances and lesser known but equally impactful defining moments in life, as a way to get clear on what we stood for and showed up as important to us. Early on in this process, it became clear to me that commemorating rites of passage was important to me. Everything from the sacred - milestone birthdays and events - to the profane - hitting my wild thing musical button everytime I accomplished some menial task - has meaning for me.
And so it is that I got tested not even a month later. And that's cool. I can't lie and say I don't feel uncomfortable with being mocked and held at gunpoint at trial for my excessive ways. That's not fun. But it's who I am and I finally own that now. I'm the one that gets the red carpet rolled out at party stores. They see me coming and their response is positively Pavlovian. So be it. It's a tough job but someone's gotta do it.
Same, same with Holy Hub. He takes a stand for quality barbecuing. It's a source of great pride for him as a Weber grill owner. He seldom buys anything but the best cuts of beef or most succulent breeds of salmon. He's also a Webernation member, which is an elite secret society of grill snobs who make it their business to evangelize grill owners of inferior brands as to the Truth of barbecue salvation. No word of a lie - he even has the marketing materials - buttons, stickers, brochures - to prove it.
So we all have our thing, our quirks, our ideosyncracies. For my sister-in-law, it's compulsively folding plastic bags into little triangles whereas for me, it's the tiny details on a party table.
To each their own, this above all, to thine own self be true, and all that crap.
On that note, I have a party that needs tiny details on the table. Pictures at 11.
I would like to be one of those Moms that sets out cake and ice cream, has a civilized gift opening, and succumbs to the wild excess of a pin the tail on the donkey game for good measure, but I'm beginning to realize, that probably ain't gonna happen on my watch.
And I'm OK with that. Not everyone in this house is, but I will go to my grave defending that excess and Halloween actually share the same etymological root derivative.
Speaking of graves and roots and nonesuch, the party today is a graveyard one. Holy Daughter wanted to go a bit goth and creepy this year. So we put out strict orders that no one was to come dressed as a cute puppy, pretty princess or kitschy cartoon character. We switched the dining and family room furniture around - thankfully there wasn't much in the family room to begin with, and have set this room, which shares space with the kitchen, up as a haunted dining room with some Frankenstein costume-clad tall candlestick holders looking on. And I'm happy to report that once lights get turned off and candles lit, the room will be quite creepy and most kooky, mysterious and spooky, maybe even altogether ooky, just like the Schmidty family.
My little Vampiress wants to watch one of the scarier episodes of Goosebumps with her 8 friends in the dark downstairs and then after dinner, we're going to send the bravest of ghouls out to the backyard, where we'll have a Boneyard Cemetery set up, to collect bones for prizes.
All of which has entailed hours of planning and set-up for a 3-hour tour. A 3-hour tour.
I know. I totally get it. But I think it's about taking a stance upon familiar soil. Do I want to stand for lame parties and even lamer treat bags? Never in good conscience could I do so and be able to look myself in the hair eyeball of the morning mirror again. Nor could I stand way over there, at that blowout party extraganza place, which even now in my mind's eye, resembles more of a tailgate bash than the annual celebration of a child's birth. My kids have been to parties like that. Where every child in the Western Hemisphere was invited and where stacks of presents were presented and left unopened.
We've never permitted more than 8 or 9 friends and even that seems excessive, especially given the fact that both kids only have one or two friends they truly count as their closest companions.
So yeah, I kinda get my place in the mix - I like to think I stand on that middle ground soil. But after another equally anal PTA Mom and I planned Holy Daughter's year-end class carnival picnic last year and people were oohing and ahhing over all the little details that this other Mom and I thought nothing of (truth be told, we thought a lot of it was kinda lame given our limited time and budget), I realized that maybe I am a breed apart when it comes to event details. Color coordinating and decor and little chutzkahs have always mattered to me. Even back in the days when we were planning our first annual Christmas open house I can recall getting hung up on matching napkins to plates. It's a genetic flaw, I'm sure - I now know I come by it honestly - my birth family are party throwers extraordinaire. And I know that some of it has come from being so often thrust into the role of event planner in my career this past decade.
But I also get that life is long on fear, droll duty and disaster - especially of late - and rather short on fun. I'm channelling a little of that medieval carpe diem spirit which I know rhymes with evil, but it doesn't take a degree from a Freudian college to figure out that fun, feast, and frivolity are perfectly natural human responses to doom, gloom, and tomb.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much and perhaps that's true. But it's my soapbox so I get to hog the mic and defend, on behalf of anal home birthday party planners everywhere, our right to party plan.
A month ago, as all 5 of you faithful readers out there will recall, I went off on what I like to think of as a bit of a midlife coming of age rite. It felt, looked and acted a whole lot like a native naming ceremony might - I figuratively went out to the wilderness to figure out my role in this large tribe called earth and then owing to my already near-elder stature, I named myself. We worked a lot with figuring out our stances and lesser known but equally impactful defining moments in life, as a way to get clear on what we stood for and showed up as important to us. Early on in this process, it became clear to me that commemorating rites of passage was important to me. Everything from the sacred - milestone birthdays and events - to the profane - hitting my wild thing musical button everytime I accomplished some menial task - has meaning for me.
And so it is that I got tested not even a month later. And that's cool. I can't lie and say I don't feel uncomfortable with being mocked and held at gunpoint at trial for my excessive ways. That's not fun. But it's who I am and I finally own that now. I'm the one that gets the red carpet rolled out at party stores. They see me coming and their response is positively Pavlovian. So be it. It's a tough job but someone's gotta do it.
Same, same with Holy Hub. He takes a stand for quality barbecuing. It's a source of great pride for him as a Weber grill owner. He seldom buys anything but the best cuts of beef or most succulent breeds of salmon. He's also a Webernation member, which is an elite secret society of grill snobs who make it their business to evangelize grill owners of inferior brands as to the Truth of barbecue salvation. No word of a lie - he even has the marketing materials - buttons, stickers, brochures - to prove it.
So we all have our thing, our quirks, our ideosyncracies. For my sister-in-law, it's compulsively folding plastic bags into little triangles whereas for me, it's the tiny details on a party table.
To each their own, this above all, to thine own self be true, and all that crap.
On that note, I have a party that needs tiny details on the table. Pictures at 11.
10/12/08
Canada Votes
I have my priorities wrong, apparently. I hopped over to CBC.ca to check out the winning anthem for Hockey Night in Canada and inadvertently clicked on the Canada Votes tab.
The Hockey Night in Canada theme song is THE voting concern in the nation, is it not? Apparently there's this other little matter of a federal election happening on Tuesday. PM Stephen Harper is worried - plagued as he's been this past while by Afghanistan expenditure disclosures, plagiarism issues and the usual dissent in the east ~ so who knows how that will all go. And let's face it - it's always a crap shoot. Canada's disproportionate election process is equally as snafu as the American electoral college. The election is almost always decided before polls have even closed in the west.
Anyways, of the real vote - Hockey Night in Canada - I'm tickled that my shortlisted favourite won. This will be his claim to fame - or in hockey language, he shoots, he scores!
Have a listen.
The Hockey Night in Canada theme song is THE voting concern in the nation, is it not? Apparently there's this other little matter of a federal election happening on Tuesday. PM Stephen Harper is worried - plagued as he's been this past while by Afghanistan expenditure disclosures, plagiarism issues and the usual dissent in the east ~ so who knows how that will all go. And let's face it - it's always a crap shoot. Canada's disproportionate election process is equally as snafu as the American electoral college. The election is almost always decided before polls have even closed in the west.
Anyways, of the real vote - Hockey Night in Canada - I'm tickled that my shortlisted favourite won. This will be his claim to fame - or in hockey language, he shoots, he scores!
Have a listen.
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