Menacing Earthworks

Posted on February 10, 2012 by

I have been having the kind of week where I am…run down.  I don’t mean that in a melodramatic way — I mean that in a perfectly ordinary way.  I’m quite good at making things into existential crises.  I use big words to frame simple ideas.

But sometimes, the trains simply don’t run on time, and I find that infuriating.  I am kept up late by things beyond my control.  And so I find I must put Tums in the candy dish instead of chocolates (predictable that I have a candy dish; unpredictable that I’d fill it with chocolates since I don’t like them — actually, quite predictable, since I have a notorious sweet tooth and that dish would be empty every night if I filled it with candy that I liked).

My life is incredibly scheduled and ordered.  Perhaps it doesn’t look that way, because the dishes aren’t done, or the laundry is not put away, or there are stacks of paper in my office.  But I graduated summa cum laude from the Big Tom School of Micro Management, where the Don, Dean, Judge, Jury and Executioner — Big Tom himself — made me write proposals for everything I wanted from the time I was four years old onward.  Big Tom, of course, is the man who once (recently) bawled me out because — while I planned a Mt Whitney climb over a period of several months, and sent weekly, then daily, emails and plans and schedules — I didn’t give him an updated departure plan for our team.

PS: The departure plans had been interrupted due to Hurricane Irene.

So.  You can see why I find changes to plans a bit upsetting.

This week has brought one revised schedule after another, along with a series of annoying and stressful matters along the way.  So while I seem to be having an existential crisis, it’s not that at all.  I’m annoyed.  And am shouting about it in the words that you used to dread having to deal with on your spelling list.

That disclaimer aside, I’ve been working on something that precisely one person I know might truly understand (for a number of reasons).  That person was my ex-husband.  We were the type of couple who would bring work home; would sit in bed and talk about work.  Work work work.  We never stopped with the work.

So when the challenges of the week caught up with me, I wanted to climb under the covers of spousal privilege again.  For the first time in years, I missed the man himself.  I missed my marriage — not merely the idea of it.

What a weird, empty feeling!

It occurred to me only recently that I had been trying to preempt or prevent that feeling for a long time by way of obsessively cataloguing my life.  Not in a hoarding way, mind you, but in the manner of snapshots, and journals, and strategically saved essays and emails.

When I was a freshman in high school, I sat in a science class as we discussed the burial of toxic waste.  How would you warn future generations of the danger?  There were a variety of options — since there was no guarantee that modern language would survive.  And there was no way to know whether our skull and crossbones, or similar, would have a very different future meaning.

So we talked through the various proposed options, but the one I liked best was “Menacing Earthworks” — giant spikes and towers meant to communicate so much more than danger ahead; danger below.

I wonder then, if the whole of the things that I have collected has been to try to create something large and imposing, even if and after words fail to protect me.  I suppose that is what I’ve feared the most:  The moment when the vocabularly of existential crisis and the fifty-cent words can no longer obscure a lonely pinnacle.

But this has been just a week; just a day.  Merely a moment, and it passed.

It passed because I missed him, and then I had to deal with a bill my ex-husband sent me for residual interest on a sum that no longer mattered, and nine years of life and love; marriage and friendship was reduced to $186.91.

Today, I wrote him out the amount, and enclosed with it a note on my social stationery — the stuff recently bought; the first purchased since we split.

Then I sat, and I put my head down, and I finished the project he might’ve understood – but not before opening a fortune cookie, as I am wont to do.

And I shouldn’t have been shocked, but I was, that someone in a fortune cookie factory somewhere in London understood the concept of menacing earthworks.  And I shouldn’t have been shocked, either, that things happen at exactly the right time.

Perhaps the right timing is not always mine.

Posted in Adventures, musings, My Life in Airports, On the road again, Rants, relationships | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Road to Hell

Posted on February 7, 2012 by

Oh I had such good intentions!

I was going to run and write and pack and do all of the things that needed doing.  I was going to go to bed early.  Monday Meredith had prepped Tuesday Meredith for a few things, until she woke up several times in the night with a start, and then Tuesday Meredith was off-tracked by some forces beyond her control.

I was going to respond to at least some of the 241 emails in my personal email in-box; the 111 work emails; the Bloombergs that have piled up to the point where my mobile in-box has stopped counting them (the ticker simply says “99+”).  I have friends to whom I owe phone calls; I have documents to read; I have blogs I want to peruse and comments to which I’d like to respond.

But wow.  My brain is fried.  There are some important things going on; life is fast-moving.

I couldn’t sleep last night.  The dog was deeply dreaming — which he never does — and as I woke up, he was chirping and grunting in his sleep.  He doesn’t sleep in my bed, mind you.  I’ve built a nightstand over his crate (I can’t decide whether this is creative, or ugly, or something you’d see on Apartment Therapy, where they tout it as a hack or some other such shit, when it’s just a polite way to say “I took the legs off an inexpensive Pottery Barn nightstand; wrapped a board in some toile; bolted the board to the top of a standard dog crate; placed the legless Pottery Barn thing on top, et voila! Dog Crate Nightstand Hack!)

(This is actually what my bedroom looks like, by the way — no staging involved.)

(Also, this crate hack is known as, necessity is the mother of invention)

So I rolled over; I messaged my best friend:

Something important is about to happen, I said.

I await further information, she replied almost instantly.  Which sort-of confirmed my instinct.  We’re very in-tune with each other, we two.  Always have been.

So.  Big things are afoot; big things of which I am sure I am not quite yet aware.  But before Tuesday Meredith gets too far down the rabbit hole and leaves Wednesday Meredith hanging…

I can only say that hope that you all do not refer to your many selves like I refer to myself as if I am days-of-the-week underpants.

Posted in Stuff and Things, musings | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Terrible Twos

Posted on February 6, 2012 by

Winesday turned two this past week.  Given my abject fear of commitment, and my inherent ability to screw up intimate relationships, this was no small feat.

The origin of Winesday is a pretty ordinary tale — Miss Mal, Kate and I had been training to volunteer in an urban Emergency Department, and the intense meetings had been weekend + Mon/Weds affairs through the first part of the winter of 2010.  When the trainings were wrapping up, we missed seeing each other on a regular basis.  So we planned a “wine & carb Wednesday,” and that night (and many drinks later), Winesday was born.

After two years, Winesday is still going strong.

Winesday is a lot of things: group therapy; consciousness-raising; theme party; scheme party.  (Some fave themes have been:  Chilean Minesday; Winesgiving; Sinko de Winesday (annual); La Fete Nationale Winesday (et la deuxieme Fete Nationale Winesday); Boxed Winesday; etc.)  It’s a place where people come for support, or to bounce ideas off a handful of lunatics.  It’s where the members come to laugh and cry.

I have a round table, and reasonable furniture, and an unreasonable number of serving pieces.  This all seems to set the stage for comfortable family gatherings.

When my parents moved to California, it was a bit like becoming ex pats.  We had no family there, and we had to make our own.  This occasionally infuriated me, because sometimes, it seemed that my parents forgot we had a perfectly good family just a plane ride away.  I didn’t understand, then, what it meant to settle down, and how we choose the places we are from; how we find homes where we settle.  Maybe I was too young, or maybe the west coast simply didn’t agree with me the way it agreed with my father who’d brought us there.

But now, I look around the Upper East Side, and I look at the faces gathered around my table, and I think I am starting to understand a bit better.  After all, I have chosen to be from New  York.  Or, in some ways, a woman without a country; a native daughter of nowhere, when I could just as easily say I’m from wherever my parents call home.  If any of that makes sense.

But one way I define where I am from is here.  New York.  The Upper East Side.  Wednesday nights; round table; sauvignon blanc in summer, pretty much anything red in winter; those Carr’s whole wheat crackers; Winesday.

I cannot say that Winesday has been easy.  There have been some issues that have come up that made me question whether I could go on even looking at these clowns — let alone bringing them into my home week by week; sharing my life and heart and house with them.  But what you learn in love and in war — and by that I mean, in the schoolyard and in the sorority — is that there are things that are worth keeping and that are worth fighting for.  You know what’s good when you’ve got it.  And you hang on to it if you’ve got any sense, even if there are horrible moments along the holding on.

In other words, don’t give up.

So what began as a way to keep up the momentum of nascent friendships, and what started in my somewhat barren; just-separated-from-my-husband; just-back-in-New-York-full-time apartment in the days when I had much less than I once had has grown into something much more than I ever imagined. Over the years there have been late nights; painful dawns.  There have been dance parties in my foyer.  There have been tears.  There has been vomit in my kitchen sink.

There have been birthday parties, and silly hats.  Holidays, and big announcements.  Good news and bad.  But we’ve survived it together.  Primarily by way of silly hats…

Sometimes you are born into a family.  Sometimes you choose a family.  Other times, one chooses you.

In the years to come, we may all stay in New York, or some of us may leave.  The group may change in size and form.  The beauty of family is that it’s not static, but always changing shape; always morphing, always subtly adapting to circumstance in order to survive.

Two years in, I am lucky to choose, and to have been chosen.  And the experience of this family has forever changed me for the better.

Posted in F & B, friends, home, relationships | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pudding

Posted on February 4, 2012 by

It was our Burns Night dinner, and we had pudding.  I mean we had pudding, but not merely in the British sense of the word.  I’m talking Jell-o instant vanilla, here.

I love pudding.  I love anything I can eat with a spoon.  I have a deep personal attachment to spoon-foods, and I have no earthly idea why.

So we sat, a few weeks ago, inhaling the Jell-o instant pudding that Strand had concocted.  We were literally moaning as we shoveled in the vanilla spoonfuls, and asked each other, why don’t we have pudding more often?

None of us knew.

I was still thinking about pudding yesterday (and spoon-foods generally) when I had sushi for lunch, and again was cognisant of how hard it was on my hands to use chopsticks.  And what a jerk I was being to everyone around me because I was so frustrated, fed-up, and exhausted by my bad joints and accordingly, my inability to the the things I wanted to do.  Particularly when those “things” were as simple as “using chopsticks.”

I was hurting, and as a result, I was, and am, being a difficult person.  Not listening.  Being argumentative.  Acting selfish.  Yammering about anything but the difficult reality of the situation at hand.

I tend to act this way when there are things going on with which I do not want to deal.

For the last few months, I’ve been having a bad flare-up of my rheumatoid arthritis.  As to the disease itself — the inflammation and medication are both horrible.  And as to this flare up, the experience has been less than pleasant (to put it mildly), and I’ve been trying to bribe my rheumatologist into cutting off my hands — to no avail, I might add.

I am very obsessed with being a strong woman (in case that you hadn’t noticed that).  And with being able to play with the boys, and getting back up when I’ve been knocked down, and surviving, and living to recount the things that have happened.  Telling the story of life as a divorcee is easy because there is a beginning, a middle, and an end.  There are happy resolutions of individual stories within the main plot.  Even telling the story of life as a recovering anorexic is a (mostly) happy one — because it is a tale of hope and survival.

But to layer the autoimmune disorder narrative in with the other two is just depressing.  There is no happy ending; no real resolution.

That it is so painful to button clothes makes me feel weak.  That it is so difficult to snap the dog’s collar or handle his leash makes me feel like I cannot take care of myself, or of him — and it is most important for me to be able to take care of him.  That it is excruciatingly painful to hold utensils other than a spoon is scary.  That I have to make choices about medications that will affect my fertility, or that will have insane side-effects…it’s all quite overwhelming.  How is it that I should be doing these things?  Don’t may parents have to sign a waiver or something?

But I wear different shirts, and I do get the dog put together, and we move on.  I power through meals for all the reasons that I should (all of them).  And occasionally, I drop things, and I break things I used to be able to hold on to, and I have to make modifications to my life I didn’t think I’d have to make.

It all makes me…a bit cranky.  And I’d sort-of rather you think me difficult or selfish or vapid than as someone who can’t take care of herself.  I’d rather prattle on about bad dates or former lovers than delve too deeply into debating the merits of methotrexate and/or whether I should consider switching biologics.

This flare will subside, I know it.  My treatments will change, and we’ll get this under control, and life will move on.  But I can generally fix things if I put my mind to it; I can achieve what I want.  I come up with the most batshit crazy schemes and bring them all to fruition.

I can’t fix this.  People have begun to take notice of how bad my hands look, and how much I am struggling.  I am weak, and broken, and human.  And that’s not necessarily a bad thing to be, however, right now I am perhaps not the best expression of myself, let alone not the best weak, broken, and human version of that.  Please forgive me.

So, while this isn’t an invitation to discuss my RA any further, you are still welcome to come over for pudding any time.

Posted in musings, Stuff and Things | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

The Furniture

Posted on February 2, 2012 by

He’ll like you.  You’re a helluva piece of furniture – Charleton Heston, Soylent Green

I think I am, unbeknownst to me, giving off some kind of pheromone that is attracting the North American/Northern European Preppy Manchild.  (The Europeans wouldn’t use the word “preppy,” but whatever they are is roughly the same thing, and, being American, my limited Northeastern United States vocabulary gives me only that term to describe it.)

So.  I went out on this blind date last night.  Taylor met me at my building, and my doorman, understanding exactly what was going on upon his arrival, would barely let him in the lobby.  I don’t want to sound like any more of a jerk than I already do, so I will refrain from providing a physical description.  Suffice it to say, it would’ve been impossible not to recognise him: white shirt; blue blazer; patterned tie.  The schoolboy uniform of preppies.

We walked to dinner.

By the time we hit the mid-Seventies, he had run through my educational and employment history, and had clucked approvingly on the quality of the schools I had attended.  We proceeded to dinner, at which point, he enquired about the country club to which my parents belonged; revealed that he was divorced; and asked me if I knew the brand of his tie (I did, in fact, know the brand and it took everything within my power not to roll my eyes).

You know this.  That’s great!  I have all their stuff.  It’s all I wear.  (He slipped off his blazer and pointed to the embroidered whale on his pocket, at which point, I suppressed a groan.)

Yes.  I, um, like the sand dollars? 

Nice!  You can see it!  You wear contacts?  I wear contacts.

Um.  Yes.  -4.50 in each eye?

Was it nerves or was it a lack of anything else to discuss that led us to meander down the memory lane of his college drinking memories?  I don’t know.  Was it a kind of peacock display that meant that everything came with a pricetag and numbers?  Not sure.  I was raised not to discuss things in that manner.  I joke; I mock myself; I talk about the silver and the crystal and the expensive candles…but for the most part, those kinds of hard, numbers-based conversations are reserved for very private discussions, with people I trust.

But with a stranger, over dinner?

No.

The thing is this: I get sick of talking about golf games, and how, if we’re going to keep dating, I have to tolerate golf Saturdays and Sundays and weekenders.  (Though there are some exceptions to that – I don’t like being told what I have to do.)  I tire of talking about the house on the Cape, or the ski house, or the beach house in godknowswhere.  I bore of the assumption that I am just some lawyer, doing just paper-pushing until I find a husband. 

I suppose that there was a time in my life when I was willing to be an idea, or an ideal.  Where I wanted a husband who would prattle on about renovations to his Park Avenue apartment, or where his parents summered (verb).  But I value myself more now; I know that what I do personally and professionally is worthy of being someone’s partner, not someone’s accoutrement; someone’s accessory or furniture.

This kid was clearly smart, and had a great family, and was hard-working despite having grown up very privileged.  But he was, again, a variation on the theme of my ex-husband, and was looking for something that is not me.

Also, as it turned out, he was a cat person.

When I arrived back home at the end of the evening, I apparently had a look of such bewilderment upon my face that my (very sweet, kind, religious) doorman openly guffawed upon seeing me.  I had to laugh too.  And then I wanted to cry, because now I will have to find a new tailor.

Posted in Rants, Try | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Bummer of a Birthmark, And Other Stories

Posted on February 1, 2012 by

Meanwhile, back in the land of my waning fertility, the blind date was finally scheduled.  For tonight.

By text message on Monday and Tuesday, I talked Taylor out of the Peach Pit.  While that would’ve been a funny story, there is a point at which I am no longer willing to suffer in order to achieve a bloggable anecdote.  He agreed, and then told me he’d be wearing a tie on our date what did I think would that be okay did I think that would look nice and be appropriate…and that he’d made a reservation at the restaurant I’d suggested.

This was all transacted via text message, mind you.  Text.  I suppose I could’ve picked up the phone, but by that point, I was engaged in a game of brinksmanship.

Also, I was busy.

Later that day, someone (helpfully?) sent me a link to an article about how people who were “successful” at dating were able to frame their “wants” in positive terms, not in negative terms.  For instance: Suppose your ex-wife cleaned you out after never working a day in her life.  When you phrase how you want a mate, don’t shout about ‘no gold-diggers!’ It’s all in how you phrase it!

Um…

I had to shake my head and close the tab on my browser.  Did I want to be successful at dating?  I suppose that was the first question I had to answer.  And then the second question was (and let’s phrase this positively, here), if so, what did (and do) I want?

Later that day, I went back to the article that someone had sent me, just to see what else I was doing wrong.

If you say you don’t want cheaters or liars, it’s like making yourself a ‘mark.’  No one wants cheaters or liars, but if you say it that you’ve been hurt before, it makes you vulnerable them.

Okay.  While that seemed perfectly logical, it also seemed completely illogical, like the mere statement that you believed in vampires ushered vampires into your home (which, of course, would mean that you’re stuck with the vicious undead).  And if talking about cheaters and liars is problematic for one’s romantic prospects, then I’m toast.  Judging by the content of my writing project of the last decade, I’m just…asking for it.  I’m like that one Far Side cartoon:

(Gary Larson)

Another sage piece of advice was:

It’s not possible for us to know who we are from a distance.  A cheater may not think he’s a cheater.  A gold-digger may not think she’s a gold-digger.

This, of course, was horrifying, but true.  And it’s really not possible for us to know who we are from a distance.  You see me one way, and would want to have a relationship with me based on that long-range view; I have to live in this skin suit and see myself and the world in a completely different way from the inside looking out.

Over this past year, I’ve tried (and not tried) to take a hard look at myself and figure out what the hell I’ve been doing.  I’ve looked through old photos.  I’ve read through two decades of archived notes.  I’ve been trying as best I can to piece together a theory of where things went right or wrong.  I suppose that’s the best anyone can ever do in getting a long-range view of oneself, and I’m a total weirdo in even having the resources to be able to attempt it.  (Is it lunatic, genius, or pure vanity to have curated such an archive in which to perform this research?  I haven’t yet decided).

What I do know, without much research, is this: I am a woman who wears extremely un-sexy pajamas.  And I’m just looking for someone who comes from the same classically fucked-up place from which I hail; someone who isn’t going to resent me for being and doing the things that I love; someone who loves me for who I am, where I am, and who can accept that from me in return.  Someone who doesn’t mind that I do, in fact, own a bed jacket.  (We’re being honest here.  And I value honesty above most things.)

Essentially, I’m looking for a straightshooter who isn’t much of a shot.  How else will he miss the bummer of a birthmark I’ve got?

Posted in Adventures, musings, relationships, Try | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Air Mail

Posted on January 31, 2012 by

I forget which writer posed a challenge to write and send letters every day in February — letters by post.  (If I could remember, I’d link you)  I’m sure several others have written about this, but someone in particular stood out as having suggested such a letter-writing adventure.

I do send a lot of letters, I admit.  I’m better at expressing myself in writing rather than by talking, in the event that you hadn’t noticed.  And I’ve almost always had nice stationery on which to write letters, except for lately (by “lately,” I mean nearly the last three years).  I’m still smarting after I received 100 beautiful correspondence cards engraved with my married name the month my husband and I split up.  I still have my engraving plate in my former name, tucked in its velveteen bag, buried somewhere in my filing cabinet.

The cards are long gone, but after that incident, I never reordered social stationery.

I also used to send wacky Valentines, typically featuring long-dead US politicians, current or former first ladies, and/or famous mustachio’d men.  My Gouvenor Morris valentine was a particular hit.  The annual Burt Reynolds valentines became collectors’ items.

(MS Limited Edition Burt Reynolds Valentine, 2007)

I love to send mail.  I love receiving mail.  I have no fear of international postage; I’m not afraid to write things down.  I used to have beautiful, careful penmanship until rheumatoid arthritis stole my thumb and left me with writing that looks like something out of long-forgotten primary Palmer Method booklet.  (I am apparently getting a new thumb, but that’s a story and a theme party for another time).

What will teenagers today do without shoeboxes full of letters to look back on, I wonder?  When I visit my parents, I love flipping through my piles of old letters that I exchanged with friends who were away at summer camp; notes from friends in different cities; postcards sent and received on travel.  There were cards from my girlfriends who lived around the corner.  Apologies; love notes; inside jokes.  Postmarks from all over.

These days, I occasionally print out emails and tuck them into the backpockets of my moleskines (GOD I am such a predictable writer with my shelves and shelves of filled moleskines, all lined up, with backpockets stuffed with notes, and cards, and boarding passes, and printed out emails.)

But there aren’t a lot of letters, I admit.

Will I write letters every day in February?  Maybe.  I’m lucky if I remember to do 25% of what I need to do in a day, and have time to accomplish 10% of that.  Adding another task into the mix might be tricky.

Will you write letters every day in February?  I suppose that’s up to you.

Posted in balance, friends, Stuff and Things, Try | Tagged , | Leave a comment