The SAD Truth

I think my introversion is a problem.

I follow a group event called Nerdnite, which is a social event for intellectuals, integrating academic-sounding presentations and beer. The Boston area event is held on the last Monday of the month at a bar in Cambridge. And every month, I find a reason not to go.

When this month’s presentations were announced last week, I perked up. The first presentation was entitled, “Wake, REM, Light, Deep, and WTF: A Savage Journey to the Heart of Sleep and Dreams” and knowing my fascination with dreams, you can bet I was intrigued. The subject matter of the second talk was the kicker, though: “The Neurobiology of Zombies.” Now, I want to say for the record that of all the movie monsters, zombies scare the living bejeesus out of me. I was the kid that could not watch Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” without whimpering into a corner and I am the adult that watched all of AMC’s The Walking Dead in the middle of the afternoon. Let’s just say that I have a very active imagination and zombies are a perversion of the human form… it’s a little too close for comfort, much the same reason I will not eat lobster in the shell. But I’m off topic. What I was trying to get at is that I was curious to hear someone’s theory on zombie brains, because in my own rational manner, I would challenge that they don’t exactly have a nervous system.

My point is that I was interested in the talks, and slightly less interested in the proclamation of “nerd appropriate music,” so I put out feelers with people I know in the area as well as on Facebook… does anyone want to check out Nerdnite on Monday? And guess what? Apparently, I am the only nerd among my friends apart from Mr. Horror, who, to my chagrin, had to work tonight. And this is when Cat Muldoon takes the “I” in “INTP” to the next level. I am a nerd, a nerd who desperately wants a social life, but I am a shy nerd who is not familiar with Cambridge and I expect that if I were to go, I’d feel so uncomfortable that I would just leave anyway.

I think affectionately of my friend Lily, a loud, opinionated Southerner who came to New England because her ATF-agent husband was stationed in the area. One evening a few years ago, a group of us got together in Boston for an evening of drinks, theater, and dessert. Lily, who is on her second marriage, quipped that the reason the rest of us were unmarried was because we were afraid to talk to anyone. In all fairness, she was referring to asking directions to the theatre, but I sometimes wonder if she wasn’t right. And then I remember one of the worst, most embarrassing nights of my life.

Before entering any new social situation, I compulsively flash back to myself at 15 years old when I had been invited to Maybelline’s Sweet Sixteen party. Maybelline and I went to kindergarten together, but I had attended another school district since first grade. In the weeks leading up to the party, I was completely excited to go, even though I didn’t know anyone. I was excited up until I got to Maybelline’s house and realized that I really didn’t know anyone and I wasn’t familiar with the mores of the kids outside of my own school, and that no one was the least bit interested in talking to me. I don’t like feeling like an outcast and being eyed suspiciously by cliques, so I spent the entire night alone in the living room watching bad Friday night television and listening enviously to the party going on downstairs until my mother arrived to drive me home.

It is by reliving this painful memory that I invariably talk myself out of going to a club alone, or going to a party where I know only one or two people, or traveling to Cambridge to hear the zombie talk at Nerdnite. I usually don’t mind being alone, or even being alone in a public place, but the thought of being alone in a social place incapacitates me. I just feel better when I have a wing-man or a wing-woman. And this forces me to acknowledge that my dream of going to New York is just a dream. For all of the things that I envision experiencing there, I know I wouldn’t be able to comfortably take advantage of them… I don’t have the support network. I didn’t socialize in Portland, I don’t socialize in Boston, and I wouldn’t socialize in New York.

It occurred to me that I may suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), so I did a bit of research. Without wanting to self-diagnose, it seems as though my fears escalate in interpersonal situations, such as starting a conversation, attending a party, going on a date, and (yes, Lily) asking directions. Interestingly, my reaction to performance situations, such as voicing an opinion or giving a public speech, is quite relaxed in comparison. I also took two versions of the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale Test to gauge my own anxiety level. My responses generated a score of 73 on the first test, which classified me as having “marked social phobia” and 62 on the second test, which was listed as “typical of persons entering treatment for the generalized type of SAD.” Really? My score was lower on the second test, but my diagnosis was more severe.

I am not convinced that I need formal treatment, especially not the kind of treatment that is pill-shaped, but I do think that if today were December 31, I might be tempted to make my first ever New Year’s Resolution. It’s clear, particularly after putting this all into writing and sobbing over the memory of Maybelline’s party, that I am compromising my quality of life and my enjoyment of a significant portion of the world because I am socially discomfited. And that needs to change. I don’t yet know what I need to do, I don’t know how long it will take, but I am making a public declaration that I am going to find a way to tackle this fear… if I am unable to eradicate it, then at least to lessen it. Because, maybe, that’s what this New York fantasy is all about, in its essence.

Prelude to a Kiss

If there’s one thing I miss about having a boyfriend, it’s the kissing.

It’s weird, isn’t it, that a self-diagnosed germophobe such as me should want to have someone else’s mouth against her own? Especially when it’s common knowledge that a human bite would be more hazardous than a dog’s because of the bacteria in our saliva? And remember that dogs eat shit and dead things that they find in the yard, so that’s not saying much for the human race.

Putting all ideas of coprophagia aside, the significance of a kiss is in the intimacy, a shared moment of pure abandonment. A kiss is its own particular brand of currency.

It seems as though I have always been in search of the perfect kiss. My first crush was on John Schneider, Bo Duke on The Dukes of Hazzard. I can remember lying in my bed at night at probably all of four years old trying to imagine what it would be like to kiss Bo Duke. But at that age, having never kissed anyone before, I found that in my fantasy, every time my lips would touch his, he would fold over backwards, just like a sheet of paper. That year in kindergarten I experienced my first kisses thanks to an unwilling boy named Darren Dillingham. All of my female classmates would gang up on Darren during recess and chase him down. When we caught him, we’d hold him against the school building and take turns kissing him while he yelled, “Nooooooo!” Considering Darren’s vocal contempt for our game, I'm surprised that the recess monitor never prevented us from doing that. Certainly, if we were kindergarteners acting that way today, Darren’s family would probably have a sexual harassment lawsuit slapped on the school as well as on all of our parents. 

Many of the girls in my class started “going out” with boys in fifth or sixth grade, around the same time that I was watching A Room with a View and thinking that Lucy and George’s kiss at the end of the movie was perfection. Partly because I was a late bloomer, partly because I was never really enthralled by the boys in my small town, my first kiss happened in the spring of my sophomore year in high school. Needless to say, that kiss was far from electric. It was exciting enough at the time, a feeling that I attribute to so many years of anticipation, but it was hardly the stuff that movies are made of. And how could it be when the soundtrack was Guns ‘n Roses and Tesla?

Happily, the kissing has gotten better, much better, since that first awkward embrace.

Over the years, I have studied screen kisses for inspiration. Many are mediocre at best, but a few stand out for me. The pause before Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway’s lips meet in The Thomas Crown Affair… That soft and tender greeting between Grace Kelley and Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window… The hunger between Keira Knightley and James McEvoy in Atonement’s library scene… That playful, explorative kiss that Audrey Tatou gives to Mathieu Kassovitz at the end of Amelie… The breathtaking longing that Ryan Gosling has for Rachel McAdams in the The Notebook’s rain scene… The way that Gerard Depardieu envelops Andie McDowell during the final scene of Green Card… The decisiveness of Michael Vartan’s kiss when he runs onto the field to embrace Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed… The reunion between Maria Bello and Hugh Dancy on a suburban street at sunrise in The Jane Austen Book Club.

I don’t particularly consider myself a romantic and I am known to scoff at over the top displays of affection, but show me a well-crafted kiss and I’ll always turn to mush. Better yet, send one of those well-crafted kisses my way and let me show you.

Blue Crush

I have alluded to being an INTP in the past. But I had a train of thought this evening that very clearly elucidates the random nature of my brain.

I started by thinking about an interaction I had with our very steamy FedEx guy, Wolverine, this morning. There is probably a blog all about Wolverine simmering inside of me, but for the time being, let me leave it by saying that no matter how garrulous I am feeling for the other 23 hours, 58 minutes, and 44 seconds of the day, when I am faced with Wolverine, I turn to absolute mush and I’m lucky if I can string the words “good morning” together.  I started wondering what it is about him that turns me so taciturn. Then it occurred to me that I know the word “taciturn” because I saw it on an episode of The Monkees when I was in sixth grade (I also learned “banal” and “insipid” that year because of the same show). And then I began to think about other old ‘60s television shows that I loved, which got me thinking about Bewitched and I can never think about Bewitched without experiencing a pang for Elizabeth Montgomery. Which leads me to the subject of this entry… girl crushes.

In general, I am able to fall into infatuation with just about any walking, talking, breathing man out there and sometimes with a historical figure or a character in a film or a book (Captain Frederick Wentworth, I am specifically referring to you). But a girl crush doesn’t have anything to do with lust or romance like a crush on a guy does. Instead, it is about recognizing characteristics in someone else that I wish I possessed and it is about raising that individual to the level of a role model.

As Samantha Stevens, Elizabeth Montgomery had it all. Not only was she beautiful in a very classic sense, she was enthusiastically clever. She had a loving (albeit quirky) extended family, the patience of a saint, and the matchless ability to seamlessly set wrongs right with a few twitches of her nose and a well-placed comment or two. She could pop over to Paris for lunch and still greet her husband at the door that evening with a cocktail in her hand. She was the girl next door with a history. And to my first grade self, she was absolutely the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen. In fact, she probably still is.

Now, how do you think I felt when I read JazzWax on Sunday and discovered this little picture under the Oddball Album Cover of the Week? You got it, like I was five years old again.

I’ve had many other girl crushes. From 2000-2005, I kept pictures of both Ashley Banfield and Tina Fey on the inside of my medicine cabinet so I could gaze upon those brilliant, boundary-pushing girls in glasses and hope that I’d grow some balls like them. My recent crushes are Zooey Deschanel and Emma Stone, who both possess a quirky lightheartedness, an indelible youthfulness, and a sweetness that camouflages something unexpected. It seems as though when I admire a woman, it is because of the qualities for which she’s known, qualities that I feel I need to develop at the time.

But in the end, the origin of all girl crushes is Samantha Stevens: gracious, poised, and genuinely able to do anything she sets her mind to… all the things a first grader hopes to some day emulate.

Wedding Bell Blues

Where I’m from, we have Mud Season, Black Fly Season, Tourist Season and Winter. A fifth, unofficial season, Wedding Season, usually bridges Black Fly Season and Tourist Season. I can confidently report that Wedding Season is in full swing. Living in Massachusetts, I keep tabs on most of my friends through Facebook and for the last two years, I have gradually watched as an old acquaintance, Dave, planned his wedding.

The thing that amazes me is that the last time I saw Dave in person was about five years ago at a reunion. At that time, I was still working in the hotel and had decided to pursue my Master’s degree – and Dave was married to his college sweetheart. In the same amount of time it took me to apply to graduate schools, complete my program of study, gain my Master’s degree, and move to Massachusetts, Dave ditched his first wife, met someone new, realized he wanted to try married life again with her, and is now heading into the home stretch before his wedding day.

I don’t want to be cliché and reference the march of time, but I don’t think I really internalize how quickly time passes until a comparison like this smacks me in the face. It makes me wonder what I’ve been doing with my life. I used the same number of years as Dave’s change of romantic partners to focus on my education and to expand my knowledge, my skills, and my experience. But I wonder if I haven’t been too selfish? Why does it feel like I have to choose between having a relationship and having a career when it seems like other people very happily and competently manage the two.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was never the type of girl who dreamed about her wedding day. Even as a kid, I was focused on tasks. My favorite toy was my Fisher Price cash register. I never played house; in fact, my best friend Maybelline and I would pretend we were city planners, or fashion designers, or we’d make and sell handmade greeting card for ten cents. Later, my focus was keeping my grades up so I could go to college and get away from the small minds in my hometown. As far as romance was concerned, I had one boyfriend for a total of six weeks before I went to college. I always thought the story about my Grandmother going home after a blind date with my Grandfather and reporting that “she had met the man she was going to marry” was sappy, and I outwardly scoffed at my friends who sighed over “Brides” magazine and planned their dream weddings. To this day, all I have for wedding daydreams is a vague notion that I would want the ceremony to be held at Castle in the Clouds in Moultonborough, NH and a list of songs that I would eviscerate the DJ for playing. I suppose I’ve always held the belief that I would get married “someday,” but now I’m starting to wonder. By now even Maybelline, my childhood co-entrepreneur, has snagged a husband. And what rubs it in about her marriage is that she met her husband at college, the same college I attended, the same college that touts that 13% of graduates meet their future spouses there.

Would I sound completely pathetic if I wondered aloud (in writing) whether there is something wrong with me? Am I not open enough to love? Am I too scared? Am I too intimidating? Too unapproachable? Too experienced? Too much of a ball-buster? Not sexy enough? Not flirtatious enough? Not demure enough? Not in the right place at the right time? Have I replaced that instinct to have a partner and a family with a work ethic?

In my own defense, I think I am a pretty interesting and unique person. A few weeks ago, late on a Sunday afternoon, I had a strange feeling like the combination of anxiety and indolence and incarceration… and after analyzing it for a bit, I realized that foreign feeling was boredom. It struck me so strongly because I truly cannot remember the last time I felt bored. I am not often idle. I may fill my time by writing poetry, or making collages, or baking, or exploring a new place I’ve never been, or sewing, or photography, or going to a museum, or reading, or browsing for antiques, or making obscure Monty Python references, or prowling around in a cemetery. I generally get to the end of the day and realize that I wish I had ten more hours in the day to try all of the things I wanted to do. I can entertain myself just by thinking. I try to take every opportunity I can to learn something new. And I try to surround myself with people who have a wide range of pursuits and experiences to stimulate my mind. I’ve said it before and I will probably say it a hundred times more: as long as you know me, you will never have occasion to say that I dumbed you down.

Yet, with all of my talents, and my education, and my inhumanly wide range of interests, not to mention my ability to drink beer all day long without getting drunk, I remain alone. I’m not unhappy about it, but definitely feeling a little insecure.

On the up side, I got a fortune on the underside of a Magic Hat bottle cap the other night (yes, while drinking to not get drunk) that heartens me a bit. The best advice I could receive right now, so good that this bottle cap has a permanent residence in my spice rack where I will see it every day?

When One Door Closes, I Hope Another Opens

It’s very difficult to be good at so many things. Especially when you are good at things that you don’t even like to do. And if you are also not at all adverse to change and relatively flexible when change comes along, this can be a fine recipe for disaster.

Case in point, the news that I got at the end of the day… But let me backtrack so you know where I am coming from.

For more years than I would like to acknowledge, I worked in hotel sales and management. I was successful enough because I believe in doing the right thing by my customers and taking time to build relationships with people. But as far as my role as a salesperson, I would probably be about average and I often felt as though luck played a larger part in my accomplishments than my actual skill. However, I will admit to working hard, logging long hours, and mentally taking my work home with me to try to conceive every possible advantage. When I finally realized that I was stagnating and decided to pursue my Master’s degree, I stepped out of the 60 hour work week routine of the hotel and into the slightly more manageable 40 hour work week of property management – yet again in a sales capacity.

Please realize that I am an introvert to the nth degree. I am not at all excited to pick up a ringing phone; in fact, phones have always caused me undue stress, even when I know it is a friend calling. I’m good with words, but better with them when they are written instead of spoken. I like to internalize questions or problems, think about them from different angles, and then come up with a solution; I am not very good at off-the-cuff discourse. Ah, discourse. That’s a problem all of its own. I am pretty terse. I don’t do small talk. And have I mentioned that I’m a germophobe? I definitely do not want to be shaking anyone else’s hand. Ever.

Doesn’t really sound like a winning amalgamation for a salesperson, does it? Not at all, but I used to be a theater geek, so I usually just pretend that I’m on stage. And you know what? I get compliments all the time on how cheerful I sound on the phone, even when I want to hang up on the caller because I’ve just said the exact same thing for the 26^th time today. And somehow I usually fudge through the small talk and the question-and-answer period by having a mental script (yes, the repetition of the stage really does come in handy to make the presentation sound unrehearsed). But although I have a fair closing ratio and I’m now in my 13^th year of selling, doing sales still feels unnatural, it feels forced, and it in no way makes me feel happy.

So imagine my absolute delight when I was asked to step into a new position a year ago when a co-worker went on maternity leave, this time focusing on numbers and statistics and calculations. Yes! Something structured, something that makes order out of chaos, something completely controllable! While many would see this as a lateral move at best and a step down at worst, I viewed it as a step up because I could finally feel content in my job. I wasn’t on edge all the time. I didn’t physically fear going to work. And when the manager asked me to stay in the position because she thought I did the calculations better, I was flattered.

But now imagine my absolute despair when I was asked to return to the sales position in a short two weeks because the manager thinks I do it better than the person who is doing it now. Truthfully, the entire first half of the day went dark; anything positive that I had accomplished was wiped out. My stomach immediately felt like it was full of knots. I declined going out for drinks with some coworkers because I didn’t feel like pretending to be cheerful. And for the last hour, I’ve been cruising the internet contemplating new jobs in New York where maybe I would be able to use that Master’s degree I left the hotel business to gain, and wondering if I would be able to afford to live there. For me, thinking about July 5 is like knowing the day you’re going to die.

The news of my return to a job that I loathe is all very new and I’m not yet sure how I’m going to turn this sinking sensation around. I keep thinking about Temple Grandin and how she would say, “it’s just one more door to walk through.” Maybe my desire to avoid regressing into something I hate will be my door to a whole new world of possibilities.  

Makin' Bakin'

Despite what I revealed yesterday about being lazy in the kitchen, I maintain that it really only applies to my motivation toward pleasing myself. I would bend over backward to astound and amaze someone else with my culinary acumen.

On that note, I confess my secret dream to be a baker.*

Bread, cakes, cookies, I would be happy to do it all if it meant I could be creating something. And the working conditions!

• For years I have touted that I am much more productive in the morning. It doesn’t matter what time I get started, I always hit a slump around 2 pm. As a baker, I could start in the wee-est hours of the morning and wrap up by noon… long before the 2 pm coma overtakes me.
• Although I am quite good at whatever I put my mind to, I prefer working independently without much contact with customers. Because as a baker I would be at work long before the rest of the waking world rises, I could have several hours of productiveness, uninterrupted by the public. If I were lucky, I could avoid the public altogether.
• Let’s not forget the best part – the baking! I truly believe that there’s something magical about baking, not the least of which is putting a piece of yourself into what you create. I am always amazed that the reality television chefs are so angry – don’t their guests taste the anger in their food? When you hear someone say “the secret ingredient is love,” you should believe it.

I am addicted to books, fiction or non-, that use baking as a metaphor for life: By Bread Alone by Sarah-Kate Lynch, Recipes for a Perfect Marriage by Morag Prunty, Cherries in Winter by Suzan Colon, and of course, Confections of a Closet Master Baker by Gesine Bullock-Prado. It doesn’t matter how trite or predictable or cheesy the storyline may be, I find those books to be full of truth. But maybe that’s because my personal experience with food, both as a cook and as an consumer, has proven that it nourishes body and soul.

I recognize that the reality of being a baker would probably be less romantic than I imagine. Still, it is an alluring notion that I suspect I could be cut out for if I just gave myself permission. Were it not for the fact that I presume there’s not a lot of money in the bakery business (and I can’t say for sure because although I’ve tried to do some research on open bakery positions in Massachusetts, it seems that companies no longer post salary ranges), I’d give it a go. For the time being, I’m resigned to being satisfied by planning the cupcakes for my friends’ birthday parties.

Chocolate-filled Strawberry Cupcakes with Chocolate Butter Cream
for Tzi Tzi's 30th Birthday

*A few other dream occupations include master brewer, archivist, musician, forensic scientist and cemetery caretaker. Jobs from Hell would include any job in which I would have to work in a mill, clean, plan and execute events, or manage people.

Kitchen Confidential

When I booted up the computer tonight, I was expecting to write a very different entry, one that delineated how, although I often feel like a teenager, when put in contact with the youth of today, it is abundantly clear that I am not, and maybe never was. But when I booted up my computer tonight, I had not yet made a horrible discovery.

A week ago, I bought a bag of mini red potatoes on a whim. I don’t especially like potatoes, but now and then, I feel as though I should explore the dark side. I mean, a gal can’t live on rice alone and, really, I appreciate a good no-bones potato salad with just oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.

It occurred to me this afternoon that tonight would be a good night to eat those potatoes. Except that when I picked up the bag, I realized that something was rotting. And not just beginning to rot, but in full out decomp. The bag was sitting in a sticky pool of black goo which, conveniently, also spread underneath the adjacent bag of onions. So all of it went into the trash while I wondered if that was the origin of the vaguely fishy odor I have been noticing for the last couple of days.

The regrettable thing is that I am now the first ring of Single Person Hell, which is lovingly known as “What’s for Dinner?” I always imagine Janet from the movie Singles asking, “What can I eat?” as she stares into her pathetically empty refrigerator. My refrigerator isn’t empty, but butter, Miracle Whip, and pickles don’t make a very satisfying meal.

Let’s face it; there are a lot of pitfalls to cooking for oneself.

1)      The time involved. Now, I’m not saying I’m not worth it, but unlike everyone else in the free world, I work until 6 pm. And by the time 6 pm rolls around, I am already starving. Priority #1 is putting something onto the table immediately.

2)      The leftovers. I am not adverse to leftovers. Were it not for leftovers, I would not have eaten much of the time when I was a kid. But when you live alone, you are potentially eating the same thing for 4, 5, 6 meals sometimes. And I like variety. In fact, I have only a few go-to meals that I make more than twice a year.

3)      Convenience foods are there for convenience, not for health. Have you ever noticed how full of sodium and additives pre-packaged foods are? I am known to “doctor up” a frozen pizza once in a while, but as a rule I do not invest in “crap in a can.” Homemade is just better all around.

4)      Very few things you can buy in the store are portioned for the single person. And when they are, they’re more expensive. Bonus!

5)      And what if you have a humid, poorly ventilated kitchen like mine, where nothing fresh seems to last beyond a few days before growing hair and legs? I hate to waste food, but I have a hard enough time psyching myself up to go to the grocery store once a week, much less to make daily trips so I can avoid pantry penicillin.

The thing that causes me so much embarrassment about the “What’s for Dinner?” question is that I really enjoy cooking – AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT. Book club is due to be at my house this month? No reheated appetizers for my guests! They get savory tomato and basil cupcakes and a giant bowl of Mediterranean Orzo Salad! A coworker is having a birthday? Great, I’ll bake the cake and stay up until midnight decorating it! A friend has a question about what some obscure ingredient is? No problem, ask me, I’ve probably used it! What’s in that bowl next to the kitchen sink? Why, that’s a batch of beans that I’m sprouting! And who’s got the Facebook photo album called “Food Porn” that has nearly as many photos as all of the other photo albums combined? That’s right, this chick!

So why is it that my evening meal so regularly becomes no more exciting than a tuna sandwich and no more exotic than tortilla chips and salsa? *sigh* As much as I want to tout what I wrote in #1 above, that my single self is worth cooking for, I realize that I am much more inclined to cook or bake for someone else. And honestly, I rack that up to pure, unadulterated laziness.

I can’t lie. I can’t evade it or make up excuses. Despite feeling really good when I have leftovers to bring for lunch the next day, after 10 hours of soul sucking drudgery at the office, I do not want to put in any extra effort. I do not want to have to think one more second about anything. I’d rather escape into the pages of a good book or explore my eccentricities via blogging. And I definitely do not want to engender anything that needs cleaning up. That isn’t just about dishes, but about spills on the cooktop or having to pull everything off the bottom shelf to get to the elusive wasabi powder that’s crammed in the back. I like it when my countertops are uncluttered and my sink is empty, and occasionally I even like the way salsa con queso tastes at 10 pm.

So there you have it. But just so you don’t think I’m a complete loser in the kitchen, I am putting in some photos of good eats I have created in the past.



Roast pork, green beans and quinoa pilaf









Avgolemono Soup



A hearty Sunday breakfast:

omelette, homefries and toast



Baked apples and pears



Wasabi-White Chocolate Cupcakes



























Always Look On the Bright Side of Life

I would be a liar if I were to tell you that I am happy all of the time. I candidly admit that although I wrestle with anger issues, I make an effort to stay optimistic because I don’t want to be what my pal VK calls a “Neg Ad” (which is slang for “negative attitude”). Personally, I just don’t want to end up a bitter, crusty, later-middle-aged malcontent who hates everything about her life and who is so envious of the things the people around her have that her only source of joy is making everyone else miserable. I work with one of those; she’s a whole lotta drama. So, I do my part to stay positive.

I recently took a cue from Candy Paull’s The Art of Simplicity: Living Life By the Essentials of the Heart and began keeping a gratitude journal. Essentially, at the end of the day, before I retire for the evening, I make a list of at least five things for which I am grateful. Of course, every day I could write, “I am grateful for nourishing food to eat” or “I am grateful for a roof over my head,” so I attempt to tailor the list to things that occurred to me during the day. I have found this exercise to be inspirational. It has disciplined me to be attentive of my daily activities and not to take the things around me for granted. It has also helped me to see the good inside things I may normally have viewed as negatives. For instance, a friend I have not hung out with for a while recently broke our first date in two years pretty abruptly. I was off-kilter about that for a bit, but when I addressed it in my gratitude journal, I recognized that I was grateful that in making the date in the first place, we had had the chance to reconnect.

When I told Nancy about my gratitude journal, she commented how she thought that it would be really difficult to be thankful for things if one had a bad day, and I could see what she meant. I suspected that on days like that, I would have to fall back on “grateful for having a place to live” to make up the five things.

Well, this week, I had the chance to experience a bad day. And when I say bad I mean that really everything I touched turned to shite. To illustrate, it literally began with a fresh pile of cat shit in my bed, and also included unforgettable hits such as finding mold on fruit I had purchased the day before, being yelled at by a client, getting a call from my insurance company that I may be in default on my homeowner’s insurance, and discovering that the cost of a single load of laundry increased by $1.75 overnight.

The following conversation occurred between me and my high-power lawyer friend, Sexy Bitch, on Facebook:

Sexy Bitch: Today is definitely not in the top 10% of all the days I’ve ever had, or even the Mondays. But I do like my new $11 dress. So there is that.

Me: I think I’m going to have a hell of a time coming up with 5 things to write in my Gratitude Journal tonight… I don’t even have an $11 dress as a go-to entry.

SB: How about framing it in terms of things that didn’t happen to you, Cat? E.g., did not get spit on by a llama, did not mysteriously wake up 9 lbs heavier, did not get notification from health department re: potential exposure to STD, did not shit pants in public?

Me: Yes, yes, then the possibilities are endless!

SB: And fun to think of! I didn’t discover my underwear were on inside out midway through the day. It’s the small things, really.

And you know what? When I curled up with my gratitude journal and began to write, I found that the things for which I am grateful just flowed out of me without having to think much about it. My gratitude was more abundant than on a regular old day when everything is status quo and nothing goes wrong. In fact, I easily thought of not just 5 things for which I was grateful, but 7. And the first thing was, “I am grateful that not every day is like today.”

As I look back on that day, I realize that sometimes things come in pairs, the good with the bad. For instance, the strawberries that were fuzzy just 24 hours after I had brought them home were the same berries that went into the salad that had gotten a rave review from everyone at the barbecue the day before. And the cat shit on the sheets forced me to wash all of the bedding so that, by extension, I now enjoy a completely fresh bed, which is especially nice when it’s 80 degrees in the middle of the night.

To the end of celebrating the little things, I am going to share some items that have made me happy this week.

• A painting by Jack Kerouac and Franco Angeli goes on display in Rome after 40 years in a private collection.
• This extensive collection of Bollywood record albums is up for sale.
• I made this delicious salad, which included Romaine lettuce, Monterey Jack cheese, marinated jasmine rice, toasted walnuts, half of an avocado, an entire peach, and homemade sweet red wine garlic dressing:

• I learned that Magic Hat’s summer seasonal, Wacko, is made with nothing less than beets… I love beets and I must find this beer!  
• One of the specials on Lowell Beer Works's June menu, the Cumin-Scented Tilapia with wilted spinach, green beans, and papaya-black bean salsa and habanero-lime cream. I wish this were the tasternet so I could share!
• The dual album, Rip, Rig & Panic/Now Please Don’t You Cry, Beautiful Edith, by Roland Kirk finally arrived this week, and it has traveled with me everywhere since. Props to sounds I will forevermore associate with summer.  
• This Fickle Picnic comic
• This photo of women who are so comfortable with themselves that they having a pie eating contest while wearing bathing suits. Do it, sisters!
• And, really, just knowing that this blog is lurking out there in my RSS Feeds cheers me up!

Dance Dance Revolution

At about quarter of one yesterday morning, I found myself lying in bed, wide awake, with a case of the Boogie Woogie Flu. I don’t know why it is, but sometimes my mind just won’t allow me to sleep, no matter how tired I am. I chalk last night’s misadventure to being overstimulated from Ladies’ Night with Nance and Tzi Tzi. The only way I could think to deal with my restlessness was to move. And by move, I mean dance.

Imagine it… the slider door is open and the air outside is heavy and still. The room is dark (I was trying to promote restfulness, after all), illuminated only by the blue glow of the LED display on the CD player. My shadow is cast tall and long onto the ceiling and I am grooving to Verve Remixed3, in particular the following tracks: Tom Findlay and Tim Hutton’s Sugardaddy Remix of “Come Dance With Me” by Shirley Horn, the Brazilian Girls Remix of Blossom Dearie’s “Just One of Those Things,” the RJD2 Remix of Astrud Gilberto’s “The Gentle Rain,” “Stay Loose” by Jimmy Smith remixed by Lyrics Born, and as a cooldown, Junior Boys take on Billie Holiday’s “Yesterdays.”

You may think I am a bit eccentric to dance in the dark in the middle of the night. Maybe I am, but I'm comfortable with it. And that’s how I (rock and) roll.

Today I happened across two tidbits that relate to the overwhelming feeling I sometimes have to just get up and dance on the pages of the June 2011 issue of Martha Stewart Living*. The first is an article about how dancing helps to stabilize the joints, to slow bone loss, and improves strength, balance, flexibility, and posture. Additionally, this article relates that a 2008 Australian study found that dancing focuses the brain to be “in the moment” and may be as effective at combating depression as practicing yoga.

The second is the findings of Canadian researchers at McGill University that listening to ones favorite music increases the brain’s production of dopamine, a chemical that is associated with elevation of mood. These researchers also found that when one merely thinks about favorite songs, the brain begins to produce dopamine. 

Thinking about my midnight boogie ball, I suppose I did feel exhilarated and blissful when I was through. And because it was 85 degrees in my apartment, I can say that I was also hot and sticky. I was not, however, any more sleepy than before I started.

*As an aside, I am in no way a fan of Martha Stewart, and I subscribe neither to her supercilious outlook on entertaining nor to her magazine. However, someone left a copy of this issue in the waiting room at work and the Italian ices on the cover looked so decadent that I was compelled to flip through. Like the Martha product or not, I am a sucker for photography that pops and her magazine always knows how to deliver.

Cemetery Stumbling

Not that I need another reason to love walking, but it really makes my day when I discover something absolutely amazing during my morning constitutional. I recently added a new loop to my circuit in an effort to explore a new area, add some distance, and, generally, to prevent myself from getting bored.

On Sunday morning, I turned onto a charming little lane known as Alcott Street. I noticed a pathway leading up an embankment and much to my wondering eyes did appear… a headstone! Initially I figured it was a family plot, as it was smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood, but upon climbing up, I was floored to discover that it was a full cemetery in the middle of the woods! To my happiness, I noticed that the graves of the veterans recently had been honored with flags, so this cemetery is not completely forgotten, but I would bet that few people apart from the homeowners whose property abuts this hidden gem even know about it.

  

The cemetery in the woods on
Alcott Street in Lowell, MA

The photo below is the detail of the tympanum of Martha Kimball’s headstone. All of the pertinent information has been shorn off, but I know that skulls preceded cherubs which preceded the urn and willow… Skulls were used extensively as decoration on headstones during the 1700s; after about 1750, the skull design began to transition to the cherub, so during this time period you find more “balloon”- shaped skulls, less grim looking skulls, and skulls with wings. The interesting thing about this design is that while the skull has a rough wing structure, it is also surrounded by those circles. Could they be flowers? Is this an afterworldly lei?



Detail of tympanum of headstone of Martha Kimball



Apart from that, the stone that this headstone is carved out of is unlike anything else in the cemetery. Sure there are lots of fine-grained slate markers, and some of the more modern stones are granite or marble. This stone has a rough look and is cut thicker and more sturdily than the others. With the exception of the fact that this stone has a coarse carving style, it almost reminds me of the Samuel Blanchard headstone from the West Parish Garden Cemetery in Andover, which is from 1707. And it is beside a smooth slate stone from 1740. I am no expert, but I would guess that Martha died somewhere between those dates.

 

The Samuel Blanchard headstone from
the West Parish Garden Cemetery in Andover, MA.
It is the oldest stone in that cemetery, from 1707.



I wish I had allowed myself more time in the cemetery, but I didn’t want to tempt fate and pick up a tick or two by staying longer. I apologize about the quality of the photos – I was clearly not expecting to find this and all I had with me was my cell phone. I guess I just wanted to share this because this discovery was so unexpected and so out of the norm that it made the morning look brighter and set the tone for the day, proving that stumbling over something first thing in the morning isn’t always a bad thing.

Dreamwalking

I am a walker. At times, I walk with a friend or as part of a walking club, but I usually prefer to walk by myself. On my own, I can walk faster, farther, and longer than I can with someone else and I can adjust my route without fear of inconveniencing another person.

I generally try to get an early start. Part of the reason is because I live at the intersection of two very busy arteries coming into Lowell and I don’t want to be picked off by some automobile racing down the street. Part of the reason is because I like the way the world looks at 6 am: quiet, peaceful, unsullied. Part of the reason is that the only things I have to worry about at this time of day are the occasional overprotective dog barking in an otherwise silent neighborhood and the sprinkler systems that pop on unexpectedly. But the biggest reason is that early in the day my thoughts are less likely to be disturbed by the interference of cars, dogs, or other people.

What am I thinking about that is of such importance that I am known to utter “shit” and deliberately cross the road when I see someone walking in my direction? When I walk, it is the one opportunity I consistently have to daydream. For me, walking is about unstructured time. I do not want to focus on serious matters like work or my finances. This is time with which I am selfish - it is a chance for me to be free from the trappings of my day-to-day existence, to take in the world around me at a quarter of the speed at which I usually see it, to be healthy not only in body, but also in mind.

I find that daydreaming is a productive activity for me, primarily because it charges my creativity. Sometimes I imagine the found art I could make with the various pieces of trash I see on the side of the road. Other times I picture myself as a talk show host and I plan who I would want to interview and what I would want to ask, or I envision what scenarios I would devise if I were a screenwriter. And sometimes I find that my mind reaches a level of inspiration where words pour out of me and by the time I arrive home, I have the foundation for a new poem or a new blog.

I am at my happiest when I am creating something, even if it is in my own mind, so awarding myself the opportunity to recharge and get those juices flowing is vital to my mental wellbeing. In fact, I relish this kind of personal reflection and the products of the time spent doing it, in particular. Hear me now and believe me later… daydreaming; it’s not just for kids anymore.

Dreamwork

As noted in my sidebar, I am an incredibly fruitful dreamer. I rarely have recurring dreams, so when certain things start to show up repeatedly, I take notice. Within the last month, I have had two dreams that featured similar symbols. Although the dreams had completely different content, they were permeated with a similar mood.

The repetitive elements of the dreams:

Outdoors

A green field

A tree with a wide canopy in the midst of the field

A male companion

The repetitive mood of the dreams:

In both dreams, there was a great level of intimacy between me and the leading man; despite not knowing either of them well, it felt as if we had known each other forever. There was a level of trust without suspicion or artifice. In both dreams, we spoke honestly, directly and matter-of-factly. I felt safe, comfortable, at peace.

The Mystical, Magical, Marvelous World of Dreams by Wilda B. Tanner is my go-to book for reflecting on my dreams. It is a great book because it is not only a compendium of dream symbols and meanings, but it also touches on how dreams can be used, how to practice recalling one’s dreams, and how to interpret them on an individual level. Tanner is very careful to stress that various symbols can mean different things for different people; that is, a dog in my dream is influenced by my feelings toward and history with dogs and it may mean something drastically different than what your dream dog would represent.

Let’s look at these dreams through the Wilda Tanner lens.

1)      “…recurring dreams and repeating symbols are an attempt to emphasize a problem we have not solved, a pattern we have not overcome, a situation we have been avoiding, or something we have not yet learned.” (p. 69)

2)      “Wherever we find ourselves, the background is an important ingredient in understanding the purpose of the dream and the specific area of life the dream emphasizes.” (p. 107) My dream took place outdoors, which is generally representative of the spiritual side. And note the openness I felt with both leading men.

3)      Field – I grew up on a farm and I have especially fond memories of the fields. To me, fields are places that I romanticize. They are rustic, slower paced places to relax. But because we did hay the fields, maybe they are also places for growth.

4)      Tree - According to Tanner, “a tree often represents the ‘Tree of Knowledge,’ the fruits of your labors, or… your spiritual life and its state…” (p. 211). Note that the canopies of my trees were quite large. Tanner says that things that are enlarged are there to make a point.

(However, I did consider that the tree in the field imagery may be part of our collective unconscious because this image appears pretty regularly in popular culture. For instance, you can see it in the Six Feet Under opening credits, What Dreams May Come, The Ring, Knowing, The Lovely Bones, and on The Tree of Life movie poster.)

5)      Leaves on the tree – I noticed that the trees were very green. Green leaves can denote “new starts or potential” or a “new chance at life” (p. 212)

6)      The men in the dream – Sadly to say, neither of them are likely representative of a real man. When you dream about other people, you are, in fact, dreaming about aspects of yourself. So, in this case, I was dreaming about my masculine traits, and because I felt a strong kinship to both men, it could further be said that I was dreaming about aspects of myself that I was familiar with.

To put it together, I am talking candidly to the masculine side of myself in an area that is primed for growth and eventual sowing. The tree is showing me that I have the opportunity for a new beginning, and because the canopy is so large, I must assume that I am on the right track. I am dreaming this again because I haven’t yet learned to love and trust in myself enough to get over the hurdle of actually making that new start. Remember when I posted last week about not wanting to move backward? I suspect this is all interconnected, and that makes me feel hopeful.

Dipping a Toe Into the Online Dating Pool

For several months, my friend Nancy has been urging me to try online dating. Recently, two other acquaintances have made friendly suggestions to this end, as well. Each time, I have hemmed and hawed over it, always letting my conservative (read: traditional) side win out.

Thinking about it this weekend, I decided that I maintain a digital life in many other areas: I connect with potential customers via the internet, I buy everything from books to antiques online, I am devoted to my Facebook page, I’m LinkedIn, I vlog, I blog... why not date? I’ve known a few people that have met their partners online and nothing traumatic seems to have come of it. So, I signed up for eHarmony during their Memorial Day “free communication weekend.”

Yes, that’s right; I said eHarmony, the online dating service that’s known for producing more marriages than any other internet dating site. This decision caused me much distress. Because I selected this distinct service, would I seem desperate? Would my matches think that my whole aim was to land a husband? Would I look like I couldn’t get a date anywhere else? And then I said, “Fuckem, the guys who’ll be seeing me are on there, too and I could ask the same things about them!!”

The idea was great in theory, but not so much in practice. In addition to the questionnaire taking literally hours for me to complete, I then had to answer essay-style questions about myself and what I am seeking in a partner. Compared to the average bear, I have a gift for written communication. What no one ever sees is how fantastically long it takes me to write anything of importance. You think I hemmed and hawed about trying online dating? You should observe me searching for precisely the word to transfer my thoughts into writing some time. Legislative decisions have been made faster. And despite how verbose I come across here, I assure you that the answers I produced for those profile questions were terser than terse. Genuine and to the point, but terse, nonetheless.

Predictably, “free communication weekend” was over before I was notified that someone wanted to correspond with me. And that means only one thing: time to pony up some cash if I want to respond. I was stuck in a conundrum. Not only did I feel sick to my stomach at the prospect of evaluating someone that I don’t even know over the internet to see if they could be a romantic match for me, I felt sick thinking about the cost and taking the hit for a minimum three-month subscription. Well, nausea made everything clear… I am not as committed to finding a soul mate as my friends had convinced me I was. At least not right now and not over the internet.

Nausea or not, chalk it up to self-consciousness. I see myself as the girl that’s a friend with all the guys, but never the girlfriend. I’m great for hanging out with. I like barbecue, I will match you beer for beer, I have a mind for trivia, I’ll spend all day in a canoe and I like to sit right up front at a hockey game. In life, I have a naughty librarian thing going on, but in my mind, I am much harder on myself than I should be. Truth be told, I am afraid that, in the end, I will be a disappointment.

That and I’ve reached a point at which nothing short of Norman Reedus will suffice. I mean, in addition to his uncommonly appealing hair, he’s been in TWO movies about the Beats and his son is named after Charles Mingus. I glean from this that he must know a little bit about Kerouac and he obviously likes jazz enough to honor one of the greatest bandleaders of all time with the soul of his first born - he’s got two of my three requirements down. And taking into account that he’s a photographer… well, what photographer doesn’t like to capture some sexy cemetery action on film? He could potentially be the perfect guy, but something tells me he’s not on eHarmony.

Alas, what’s a girl to do? It came to me, actually, as I drove around on this gorgeous late spring day, listening to Dave Brubeck’s Take Five and wishing that I had a Convertible so I could impose the genius of that album on every person in Lowell. Instead of coughing up $26 a month for an eHarmony subscription that might or might not get me any closer to being Sadie Sadie Married Lady, I’d prefer to have the money to spend on things that are… peculiar to my interests. In fact, I wasted no time resolving to place an order from Amazon for a very intriguing book called Assassination Vacation, about a woman who visits the memorials of our assassinated presidents, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s Rip Rig and Panic, which I haven’t heard since I borrowed it from the library in the summer of 1997. Something tells me this will make me happier in the long run than some indiscriminate dude from Roxbury who wants to know if my idea of adventure is eating something I’ve never tried before.*

*In case you’re curious, the answer to that is no. I’ll pretty much eat anything you put in front of me. And that’s just one more reason why Mr. Reedus would be an ideal counterpart (see question #8 here); he probably wouldn’t complain about curry or a meat pie made with nutmeg.

Coming Clean

I went back to my home state for the Memorial Day weekend to visit the graves of my ancestors. This is the day I lovingly refer to as “my favorite day of the year.” The thing is that this year, I didn’t really feel into it, in no small part due to something Mommydukes said to me. “You’ve played hard to get for so long that it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what you ended up being.” To anyone else, this would probably be an insignificant comment, but as it was said at the beginning of our day, and with my singlehood being foremost in my mind recently, it felt very cruel and it hung in my thoughts. In fact, it has taken me several days to feel at a point where I can write about it.

For the record, I want to note that I do not consciously “play hard to get” and why my mother should see me that way really confuses me. I would claim that I am selective. And rightly so considering my teen years, when my father confessed his affair to me rather than to my mother. The separation and resulting divorce was such a source of pain to me that I resolved that I never wanted to feel that way again. If my parents have ever convinced themselves over the years to think that the divorce only happened between the two of them, then they are absolutely misguided.

From the beginning, I was put in the middle; I was the conduit through which the affair was related to my mother. I, who until that time had felt closer to my father, suddenly realized through birthday and Christmas presents that my Pop had no idea who I was or what I was interested in. I knew that I didn’t want to live with him, but I would have felt a bit more consoled if he had expressed any amount of interest in having custody or visitation rights during the divorce proceedings. He made it very clear that any relationship was financial only and that would end as soon as I turned 18. I even had to decline attending my first choice college because the school expected him to pony up funds and he refused.

Pop and me, in happier times

Mommydukes was hardly any better. Yes, she was the custodial parent and to this day I marvel at how she was able to support us on her meager income. However, during their year-long separation, I was regularly employed to pray with her for guidance and for my father to come home to his family (because of course, God is more likely to take your request seriously if there are two people praying in tandem… Guess what? All that praying didn’t do a lick of good). When we weren’t genuflecting by the side of the bed, Mommydukes would wait until I was a captive audience in the car to lecture me about how my behavior or my attitude was reflective of my father. I’m sure it goes without saying that she would vent her hurt and pain and anger over my Pop’s actions to me.

I was polluted with the poison of their divorce.

Since then, I have been very cautious about my own relationships. I am not a quickly trusting person to begin with, but even less so when my emotions are involved. One devastating pain during my formative years and I am unwilling to make myself vulnerable. If I am guilty of anything, it is not being hasty in my love life. I find that I often judge relationships with the question, “can I see myself married to this person for the rest of my life?” and with the exception of one person, the answer has always been “no.”

Believe me when I wonder aloud if I have done myself a disservice over the years. I don’t think I have ever walked away from someone who would have made me over-the-moon happy. In fact, I usually congratulate myself for eventually seeing men for the drips that they are: too needy, too controlling, too absent, too uncommunicative, too uncommitted. But I wonder, if I were less guarded, if I were less distrustful, if I were less wary of the world, would I give those men more slack? Would I be married by now? Ignorance is bliss, after all.

I am actually ashamed to admit that I want to be married. I am ashamed that this is even a thought that occupies my time. I am also ashamed that I am 36 years old with no marriage prospects after 20 years of dating.

So tell me, does this all give credence to my mother’s claim that I play hard to get?