The Bates MoTELLA

A Filtered Point of View

2008-09-08T21:05:00Z

I scarcely hear a siren, see the flashing lights, before I'm praying, my voice a stage whisper, sudden and foreign in my ears -- Who else hears me? It doesn't matter; I don't realize I'm speaking out loud until I hear it myself, and another's presence makes no difference. After August 28, 1998, with the loss of our grand-daughter during the night, I learned what those emblems, the siren and the lights, mean: life, and death. And as I murmur prayers for whomever is dying, whomever...(read more)

Serendipity is an Unsecured Bike Rack

2008-08-29T20:19:00Z

I was furious when my daughter called me at work to say I needed to pick up my youngest son. It was by chance I even answered the phone; in the office long after closing time, checking mail before I left, I picked it up automatically and she was on the other end. Driving to the middle school where Philip was a 6 th grader, I lectured him before I saw him. Perhaps "lectured" isn't the correct term: My voice was high, my knuckles white, my brow flushed with anxiety and anger, as I recounted...(read more)

Summer Reading List

2008-08-04T20:41:00Z

Summer Reading List by Constance Bates I always had one -- a summer reading list, that is. We read all summer long, my friends and I, for pleasure; that was one of the advantages of child care within a family that didn't believe in television. And with five children of her own, plus me and various hangers-on, with automobile fuel so cheap that "gas war" meant two corner stations trying to undersell each other, and free-flowing library cards, Mrs.DeWitt ran us to the Arlington Library...(read more)

Pediatric Medical Record Terminology

2008-06-22T17:07:00Z

(first published in Greater Expectations , the newsletter of CEA of Tacoma; reprinted in The Tacoma News Tribune by Denny MacGougan) "Baby feeding well" -- Your newborn nurses every 45 minutes for the first three months of life. "Baby voiding well" -- You are washing six loads of diapers a day. "Loud lusty cry" -- Loud cry timed with cunning and malice to discourage lust between parents. "Father plays active parenting role" -- Once he handed you the baby powder...(read more)

In honor of Baby Kai and his new parents...

2008-06-20T14:59:00Z

... I went searching through a cache of papers to find an article I wrote. I don't know where the original is, but I found a copy of the newspaper that gave it fame. That is, my article was read by a columnist for The Tacoma News Tribune and he published it in said column on May 7, 1979. It had to do with pediatric medical records. I had a four-year-old son, a two-year-old daughter, and was ending my first trimester of a Bonus Pregnancy. That is to say, I knew something about baby doctors. We...(read more)

"Save the Popcorn, Kirsten, it's too late for the boots!"

2008-06-06T04:44:00Z

All right, my friends, here's the story: Players: Our daughter, oldest son, me, youngest son; Daddy is messing with the camera in preparation for Christmas morning. Setting: Christmas 1980, Tacoma, Washington, in what we called our Grown-Up Sitting Room The curtain draws open. The children and Mom are watching "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" while Daddy puts batteries in the old Kodak, takes out the full roll of undeveloped film, and practices taking pictures in preparation for Christmas...(read more)

Georgie's in Mourning -- and The Sawtooth Pack

2008-04-11T20:00:00Z

At our house, we all are in mourning. Mickey, our old red dog, is gone; there remains Georgie, a two-year-old Border Collie mix, and the new pup Maggie. We cried, and a part of us is still crying. But my husband has his job and the countless things he does at home that I'm unable to do; my father-in-law has his church and clubs and computer and projects; I have grandchildren to dote on, and prayers to release, and dinners to make, and physical therapy to attend, my Artella work and Artella play...(read more)

Until recently, I never knew...

2008-03-24T20:10:00Z

Until recently, I never knew quite how to interpret the Daily Kaleidoscope. You'd think this wouldn't be difficult, since I was once researching and writing it. But I was stuck. You see, as much as I love those original Crayola colors -- the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, black, brown (white, in the era of the eight-color box, meant you left that place uncolored) -- there is nothing for those of us who are riding the rainbow where colors mesh. Here are my colors: A side note.....(read more)

If I Never Hear These Words Again...

2008-03-05T21:13:00Z

I know, I'm supposed to say "... it'll be too soon". That would finish the title to make one sentence. Note that I didn't say "intelligible sentence". That particular phrase has puzzled me since I was old enough to know whether what I just heard made sense or not. This one does not.

How can an event that does not happen... happen too soon? There's no answer. I won't try to provide one, and if you think there's a way to explain it, I can assure you I won't think you make sense - I mean you as a creature that breathes my air and uses up my precious and dwindling resources. But it does raise some important questions. See below.*

Why do people keep saying unintelligible things?

I just got another email touting "The Feel-Good Movie of the Year!" The obvious question here is, "Why did this particular piece of junk mail make it past my spam filter?"

I've already read reviews of several different The Feel-Good Movie of the Year - which raises another question: Dare we write, "The Feel-Good Movie of the Years" when referring to them in ponderous bulk? Or is it more correctly written, "The Feel-Good Movies of the Year"? Or possibly, "The Feels-Good Movie of the Year", in which case you can find it in the section of the video store with the curtain across the door and the minimum age requirement.

Point being, it should be obvious that there can be only one "The Feel-Good Movie of the Year". I propose (I'm still running for office here - see earlier blog) a law, or least an administration policy, that limits use of this title to only one movie at a time. Furthermore, I recommend that the officious title "The Feel-Good Movie of the Year" not be used until the last month of any given year for which it wins the right to wear said title.

Nominees will go before the public, and the public will be heard. Aunt Bobby will post a forum in the Café here, and (promise you'll play fair) each person can vote only once.

There will be a new vote, with all new submissions, the following day, and you can vote again. At the Forum site, Marney will place a Light Bulb (new contest), a Thumbs Up (cast your ballot), or That Other Thing to show the polls are closed. "The Feel-Good Movie of the Year" will be announced on the last day of the year at 11:59 p.m. (2359 in military hours) for that year, and for ONE PRECIOUS SECOND (my administration doesn't like wasting time), the winning film wears the title "The Feel-Good Movie of the Year". At precisely midnight, we the weary public are not subjected to that phrase for any reason, and especially not in my email box, until the following year at 11:59 p.m. (2359 hours).

If you approve of this plan (I'm checking my presidential ratings here), please DO NOT email me with the subject title "The Feel-Good Movie of the Year". I will assume the popularity of my plan given the absence of the phrase from my sight and hearing.

Electorally yours, Constance Bates ("The Feel-Good Candidate of the Year")

* Authors write "See below" because presumably some people read along and then suddenly, for no apparent reason, their eyes fly to the ceiling or dart across the room or just fall out of their face. So yes, dear child, keep reading in the ever-downward left-to-right manner to which we've become accustomed. **

** I'm not being politically impolite here by saying "we've become accustomed". If you read Chinese or Hebrew or some other language that is clearly backwards and/or upside down, you wouldn't be reading my blog. Or if you are, it wouldn't make sense. Which is the topic of my blog - things that don't make sense -- in case you don't read English and could use some hints here.

And The Oscar Goes To... !

2008-03-01T20:44:00Z

The gala gorging is over. The six-figure gowns and jewels are once again with the merchandisers, or they've been sloughed off for work-out clothes with the tip-of-the-hat to ingenuous invisibility -- the Hollywood hottie adds a casual Hermes scarf or Fendi bag, and the Hollywood hunk dons a three-day beard & worn Ferragamo loafers. (Oh, we'll never recognize them!)

The tears of joy have dried, and the lukewarm applause from the Also-Rans no longer echoes from off-stage.

I can afford to be cavalier here, having never been close to a Red Carpet. But every year, I'm just a little surprised that I wasn't mentioned.

There's a category, you see, where I expect to at least hear my name pitched. It's not quite an Oscar statue category, but has taken on a life of its own, sometimes eclipsing the ceremony itself. That would be the longer-lived Oscar-night category of Best Dressed.

That's my field.

It's not that I try to look over-dressed. I don't work at shabby chic or glam. As a matter of fact, I'm not trying to do anything but look beautiful.

I blame it on teaching school. See, they had these Spirit Days -- Dress Goofy days, I used to call them. As a kid myself, I don't believe I ever participated. But as a teacher working for enough Spirit Points to win an ice cream sundae party, or an end-of-the-year trip, who could resist? My closet and cupboards and craft feathers and beads cried out to help.

And I made a discovery.

It's this: You can start out playing Dress Goofy. But somebody, somewhere, won't see it that way, and it will change your life. That's what happened to me.

I taught school, and it was Spirit Day. I'd run into the office searching desperately for an unused computer, thrown myself into an empty chair, and was tapping away, oblivious. Then I got that feeling you get when you know somebody's watching you. I glanced around -- there were very few adults, all busy themselves, and a couple of kids hanging at the counter. I lowered my eyes to my chore, and tapped the keys best as I could with the fake plastic nails with the heart stickers on them and the heavily glittered eyelashes I was wearing.

I blew feathers out of my eyes. They were dangling from my sunhat. Aqua feathers, with rounded white and black and red beads on the cords. Blew them again, lifting my chin -- and realized it was the kids: They were now hanging over the counter, staring at me without blinking. I recognized them -- a first grader and fourth grader, sons of the custodian.

I smiled at them, then tugged at the triple-length pop-bead necklace I'd wound from my wrist to half-way up my arm, to keep it from catching on the keyboard. Typed. Blew at the feathers -- straightened the hat so the feathers fell over my ear instead of in my eye, and got feathers caught in my earring. Well, it wasn't quite an earring -- it was a Christmas ornament, one of two glittering six-inch Santas that I'd hung from earring findings. I unclasped it to untangle it from the feathers, a little miffed, looked around for a safe place to put it, realized it would probably roll off and break, and settled for fastening it to one of the necklaces I was wearing. I chose the longest and sturdiest of the gold chains.

The other long necklaces wouldn't have worked. One was simple lengths of yarn with dried hand-rolled semi-round clay balls at the ends. The yarn ends were loosely knotted over, and a clay cylinder my youngest son had scratched his initials in kind of latched it -- no place to put a Christmas ornament earring; it wouldn't match. And, the fifth necklace I had to be very careful with; I would not have tried to make that necklace carry a fist-sized Santa, lest it break off pieces of the dyed macaroni.

With all the fussing, the boa had slipped off my shoulders, so I slipped under the desk to pick it up, and smoothed the net petticoat I was wearing over my skirt. When I righted myself, I was surprised to see that the boys had skittered around or over the counter, and were hanging over the computer monitor. I nearly jumped, and covered my mouth with one hand to keep from yelping. Nearly scratched myself with the ink-pen spring I'd twisted into a pinkie ring. I said hello to the boys as I turned the spring-ring outwards, and straightened my wedding band and the Cubic Z anniversary ring, shined the mood ring on my index ringer, and touched the birthstones and five-and-dime cocktail rings on my right hand to make sure they were all still there.

As the boys stared, I became a little self-conscious. I was, after all, just a teacher, and clearly these children thought I could actually help them with something.

"I don't work in the office," I apologized.

"We know," the big one said soberly. I smiled again, and finished my typing. I hit Print.

They edged even closer.

"Gentlemen," I said, scooting my chair back, "I'm not sure you're supposed to be back here -- and I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to be..." I looked about. Nobody was coming to my rescue. Parents were streaming into the office, and any minute I feared I'd be expected to do something helpful.

I tossed the end of the boa over my shoulder with an air of finality. The littlest boy slipped snugly beside me. He had my silver sequined clutch bag in his hand, and handed it to me.

"Oh! Thank you," I said. "I forgot I had that." They stood, still staring. "I, uh, have to get something from the printer... but -- Is there something you need?" The boys looked at one another. Then the littlest one spoke.

"Mrs. Bates..."

The oldest one said, "We just wanted to say --"

"We think you're beautiful," the first-grader finished.

I was so surprised, I could hardly stutter my thank-you's. As I made my way out of the office, the older boy called after me, "And we like your shoelaces." They matched the aqua feathers; I'd made sure of that.

It was that day that I adopted the beauty scale of the elementary child. It's quite simple: One necklace, you have a nice necklace. A necklace and a hat, you look nice. Five necklaces, feathers, netting over your skirt, pop-beads, a boa, sashaying Santas, rings on every finger, and turquoise shoelaces, and you are... beautiful. It was true, I figured: Beauty is ageless.

I wear everything that my grandkids give me now, from Cracker Jack rings to coloring-page brooches. And if a little one puts lipstick on me, I don't touch it up. When I have a pedicure, my Pedi-Person paints polka dots and sparkles on my toes. Sometimes grownup people look a little startled. But later that day, I'm sure to meet a toddler who'll see my grandma-toe polka dots and smile at me in vast delight.

No mystery here: She thinks I'm beautiful.

"And the Oscar goes to...!" Some day, I'm sure I'll hear my name.

List The Ten Most Important Things You Learned in School

2008-02-28T07:04:00Z

That's the topic in my 2008 Planner (or Non-Planner) for the Creative Procrastinator. The page is actually wedged between this week and next, but a creative procrastinator can be forgiven for thumbing ahead. Remember: "Procrastinators avoid one thing by doing another; it's much more productive than doing nothing." (p. 1)

This is not the simple topic you might think, by the way. I've spent a lot of time in school. It took me 17 years to earn a four-year degree -- and soon afterward, I returned to school to earn the right to go to school every day. So, many things I've learned "in" school, I've learned from the opposite side of the desk. Then there's the organizational challenges here. Do I list the things I've learned chronologically? In order of importance? And my continuing problem: What if I have learned more than ten equally important things? What happens then? The instructions say "Ten"... but what if I learned that if there's an A+ to be had, doing more than required is one way to get it?

I've decided to simply list them. When I'm looking for something to organize -- that is, when I need something to do to avoid having to do something else -- I'll create a timeline or flowchart here. Or alphabetize the list. Or count the words and list the points in ascending and descending order.

The Ten Most Important Things I Learned in School

1. Any time you have the chance, regardless of perceived need, use the restroom.

2. If there's a prize for napping, it probably isn't a really cool prize.

3. Not everything you do in school or in life is worth taping to the refrigerator.

4. The difference between FAIL and ZERO can be up to 59 points.

5. Teachers are older and better educated than students, but not necessarily more mature or smarter.

6. No teacher wants to hear Number 5.

7. Two things that are stupid to do in a group: Piano lessons and showers.

8. Scientific thought is most threatened by the limitations of the Scientific method.

9. If you want to use your Foreign Language forever, take a language with popular songs and plenty of menu items.

10. High school counselors are to mental health what high school cafeterias are to food.

11. "Open campus" is a more appealing concept when you're 16 with a crowd of friends than when you're grown-up with a 45-minute lunch, standing in line behind a group of 16-year-olds.

The first ten things I would do if elected president

2008-02-05T07:46:00Z

This exercise was prompted by a page in my Do It Later! calendar (A 2008 Planner [or Non-Planner] for the Creative Procrastinator). Procrastinator Wisdom for January 1 proclaims, "Procrastinators avoid one thing by doing another; it's much more productive than doing nothing." My planner offers a few ideas for productively wasting time, in the event that we're unwilling to waste time trying to think of more ways to waste time.

I decided to use FDR's New Deal "alphabet agencies" as my model. Here's Roosevelt's list (courtesy of Wikipedia.org):

AAA - Agricultural Adjustment Administration
CAA - Civilian Aeronautics Authority (now Federal Aviation Administration)
CCC - Civilian Conservation Corps
CCC - Commodity Credit Corporation
CWA - Civil Works Administration
FAP - Federal Art Project, part of WPA
FCA - Farm Credit Administration
FCC - Federal Communications Commission
FDIC - Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
FERA - Federal Emergency Relief Administration
FHA - Federal Housing Administration
FMP - Federal Music Project, part of WPA
FSA - Farm Security Administration
FTP - Federal Theatre Project, part of WPA
FWP - Federal Writers' Project, part of WPA
HOLC - Home Owners Loan Corporation
NIRA - National Industrial Recovery Act
NLRB - National Labor Relations Board
NRA - National Recovery Administration
NYA - National Youth Administration, part of WPA
PRRA - Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration
PWA - Public Works Administration
RA - Resettlement Administration
REA - Rural Electrification Administration
RFC - Reconstruction Finance Corporation (originally a Hoover agency)
SEC - Securities and Exchange Commission
SSB - Social Security Board (now Social Security Administration)
TVA - Tennessee Valley Authority
USHA - United States Housing Authority
WPA - Works Progress Administration

I'm a modest sort of campaigner here -- not to mention, I only expect one four-year term, so I'm happy to present just ten alphabet agencies in my administration.

OSIS - OutSource Inside the States (Do you really want to hear hardly intelligible instructions for rebooting your p.c. after a failed recovery attempt? Of course you do, so I propose sending all telephone helpline jobs to underemployed regions in Louisiana and New Jersey.)
TPOT - Ten Percent Off the Top (10% good enough for God? Then it's fine for the government. Under the TPOT umbrella: DLD - Dotted Line Dollars so that 1/10th of each dollar can easily be stripped away for immediate disposition to the government.)
REFF - Return to the Education of the Founding Fathers ("Local schools will reflect values of surrounding community." Rural schools a little backwards? Urban schools overcrowded? Well, duh. Save your pity and your pennies.)
RFI - Real Food Initiative (No gas-ripened tomatoes and bananas, which should save a lot of gas and bring down prices at the pump, my friend. No hormone-pumped plumper cows; I just don't like it, not one bit. Under the RFI umbrella: VGI [affectionately known as "veggie"] - Victory Garden home-grown foods Incentives.)
ZWPG - Zero Welfare Population Growth (With the success of my other alphabet agencies, this one will take care of itself. If it doesn't, we'll re-educate welfare recipients in Social Services master's degree programs; with their newly acquired expertise, they can resolve the problem & earn a salary while doing it.)
DWP - Displaced Workers Program (Can't drive a truck filled with gassed unripe tomatoes and bananas? You qualify for training in installing solar grids at schools and mini-wind turbines in paid parking structures, where folks' electric cars will be recharged as they stop and shop. )
HUD/H4H - Housing & Urban Development will become an arm of Habitat for Humanity (I would provide explication here except that there's not a person on the planet who doesn't applaud the move, facts or not.)
OSPCP - OutSourced Penal Colony Plan (You're requesting that you be institutionalized closer to the college campus and fitness gym of your choice... So, which is closer: Botswana or Bosnia?)
CUTI - Clean Urine Test Incentives (This program is umbrella'd under nearly every other alphabet agency. Don't do drugs and just SEE all the great stuff the government will toss your way!)

I know I promised you ten. But this is, after all, a presidential election. And if I told you all my hot licks, some other candidate might steal them. (Wasn't it Nixon who got away with that one?) To be honest -- and I know how the voting public honors honesty -- I'm waiting a while to do number ten. A quick review of my alphabet agencies reveals an overuse of the letters O, S, P, and T, and a lack of the letters A and Z. There is no further page in my Procrastinator's planner dealing with positive uses for the alpha and omega letters.

My next subject is the importance of the underused letters of the alphabet. In fact, when I have time to write it up, I may provide a treatise on the topic. I may make my own calendar planner, based on tasks, chores, and ideas for avoiding them, for every letter of the alphabet. Every letter, voters! Every A... B... C... D... E... F... G... H...

This morning, the first thought in my head was...

2008-02-03T23:39:00Z

... the dream. I awoke, alert and sharp this morning, and already thinking.

This is a new mode for me – now closer to 60 than 50, I no longer float gently to consciousness; burrow in and slip back to the relaxed respiration of sleep; rouse, wrestle with myself, and surrender to oblivion a second and third time, as though my mind were equipped with an autonomic snooze button.

In these, the mature years, my eyes pop open to greet dawn or dark and meet the sharp black eyes of the Border Collie studying my face and searching for signs that vitamins, a bit of cheese, and a Large Breed Biscuit are in short order. The sound of the elder Chow-Wolf impatiently huffing from his safe spot on the floor assures me that my good husband is off to work, all is well, and that I’m the last to linger.

All that remained the same today. But something else happened, and it rushed me to instant analysis.

I had the dream, now consistently about him, the man I didn’t marry in college.

At the time –18 years old, struggling in the small-fish-big-pool environment of an upper class private college, uncertain of who I was and unable to trust that he was who he insisted he was – I ran. Hid. Burned the bridge. Didn’t looked back. Then married a man I’d known just eleven months.

And before long, within my soul and psyche, I slipped from that laurel-resting perch of high school's Most Likely to Succeed to stumble along with the unfamiliar and unheralded hoardes of Those Most Likely to Remain in Poverty and Clinical Depression for Life.

I dreamed often, detailed, richly visual, emotive, uncomfortable dreams, in my Supporting A Husband In College days, my Babies And Children At Home tenure, and the more recent Empty Nest And Yawning Emptiness and Uncertain Future era. Among the recurrent dreams were one of drowning (the Air Pocket dream), one of slipping and edging toward a fall from a sky-scraper (the Earthquake dream), and variations of The Missed Marriage… to high school crushes, work acquaintances, or strangers. Those dreams were the cruelest -- blissfully happy, confident that I was adored, filled with assurance at the cherished role I would fill, fey and floating in whispery white, radiantly alive in a garden celebration, coasting comfortably through the oohs and aahs, and among the observers, meeting the eyes of -- oh, no! The husband I already had! I would awaken, rousing slowly and grieving, so unhappy I felt physically ill, convinced I had truly, irrevocably, ruined my life.

Why I could not shake that last dream, I do not know. Release from the other two made me a believer in dream analysis, so I felt I had the tools. A college course I took in adulthood, Dream Images in Poetry*, made sense of the two recurrent dreams I’d had since earliest memory, the two I dared share. His were, I believe, reiterated theories of Karl Jung, far from the superstition or causality/coincidence interpretations we hear, those one-size-fits-all symbol-filled renderings (“Dream of a wedding, you’ll have a funeral” or “The number five represents mercy.”)

Dr. Seal insisted that the dreamer not only scripts one’s own dreams, but plays all the parts. (“You aren’t having sex with your father,” he told us all by way of example. “You’re expressing a need for a characteristic that is already within you, latent and unexposed, that he represents.”)

Now so many dreams made sense! I no longer felt myself drowning in my sleep, holding my breath until I felt I'd burst... now that I know I have a more difficult time with self-referral than most and therefore must remind myself consistently of each personal achievement. I don’t repeatedly slip toward the edge of a missing wall on the 40^thfloor... now that I don’t crave mindlessly the fame and fortune that I’m coincidentally too frightened to pursue.

But I could not understand the The Missed Marriage dream, and particularly this latest rendition -- to the man I didn’t marry in college, which I lived over and over in my nocturnal life – in any but the basest, most elementary fashion: I should have married him. Life would have been better. I would now be the person I was meant to be.

But last night provided a landmark moment. This morning, when my eyes opened, my first thoughts were alive and bright and looking through intellect’s microscope at that dream. Because in this rendition, for the first time, the marriage actually happened.

We were in our honeymoon suite, and he embraced me, vital and virile and – I stepped back. “I’m not ready for this,” I told him calmly. Then, at his look of disbelief, I said, “I’m married.” And bracing against his shock and anger, I continued, “And look – you’re 24, and I’m 57.” He strode away, muttering, "I'm going to have to think about this." I started to count on my fingers: “He’s 24, and I’m 57. That’s…” But I couldn’t make it work, and struggled to count, over and over, without success. The fact that kept getting in my way, stalled my thoughts, making me count again and again, was this, and it seemed forever that I worked to understand: As I aged, he would have aged. He was not 33 years younger than me (“Wait! 33 represents The Jesus Year!”). He would still be older than me – that is, ahead of me -- having aged, too.

The one I didn’t marry? Why, it wasn’t him at all. It was me --– the personal, professional me I mistakenly thought I’d lost with my youth. Accomplishments, and the goals that produce them, change, alter understandably with age. And with my active, not passive, proclamation – “I’m not ready for this” – I realized that it is not too late for me, as George Eliot assured us all, to be what I might have been, when I am ready. Until then, I can know who I am, with self-assurance, inward security, self-appreciation, the beauty and grace that greets the future with sure-footed excitement and enthusiasm, and grow into my most delicious role yet.

Goodbye, dream of The Missed Marriage; my friend, I no longer need you. I’m alive and in the present at my own wedding feast, today and tomorrow, and I’m the bride and the groom, the pastor and the congregation, the husband I recognize, the fluttery white dress, the flowers bright and brilliant, and the blue, blue sky.

I’m Constance Bates. I’m a writer, a lover of coloring books, a woman who impulsively buys a discount wedding dress and decorates a wall with it. I’m drawn to childish things and prone to outlandish laughter. I’m married, for 37 years now, to a good man; I’ve had children and grandchildren, known the resultant joys and grief.

I remain my best self, the best Constance Bates I know, and I do believe I will become better.

The Very Real New and Improved Me, Part 3

2007-06-15T23:08:00Z

I had the half-altered picture from 1992 on the screen.

I also had displayed a paragraph from Part 2 of The Very Real New and Improved Me -- the monologue in response to Hemingway, who at the moment was occupying my celadon chenille-draped computer chair with the ruffled and fringed Norfolk Garden cushion on it. I breathed deeply in preparation for battle. You know what he did? He read aloud one phrase, with just the faintest tinge of sarcasm:

" ...here I lift smooth translucent silver-rimmed China teacup to tongue and lips, tip my chin to one side and muse... "

Ignoring completely the 1992 photo with the alterations that had irritated him earlier, crunching, then brushing neon orange-dusted fingers against his shirt, he said, "Do that and your tea will spill out."

The first thing I noticed was that each word he uttered, as always, was one clipped syllable. Then I realized that, in the most absurdly linear, concrete, adherence-to-dead-fact way he has of thinking, he was right.

I hate when he does that.

Perhaps I'd have allowed him to engage me in debate, but this particular discourse would have been dreary and far from impromptu -- not even extemporaneous. It was, in fact, already well scripted. And it would end, finis, where he reminded me that I failed Intro to Logic, Phil 101. In my first year of college, well before the first Apple was on the tree, much less on a desk in the living room and plugged into the wall. It did no good to remind him that I failed Phil 101 due to no error in logic of mine: This "class" met at 7:05 a.m., scarcely hours from the typical bedtime of any Journalism, Drama, or Art major I knew. The fact that the Registrar and Scheduler deemed it possible to awaken, much less think, at that hour pointed to a sad lack of logic on somebody's part, albeit not my own.

Discretion being the better part of shutting up, I did that. Eventually my husband left to chainsaw something.

The Very Real New and Improved Me, Part I

2007-06-13T19:37:00Z

I work at Artella, on The Artella Daily Muse. Artella is more than a job to me: It's a support network. It's like-minded spiritual seekers. It's friends. It's family. It's home.

My husband will never understand this. He keeps saying, "But you've never met these people."

In the most insignificant factual sense, that is true. We PM, my Artella people and me. We email. We Instant Message. We meet at online Webinars, teleconferences. We telephone. Never met them? Why, only in the most superficial way could it be construed as Truth that we've never "met".

The only real glitch, a mere misplaced pebble in the cobblestone of virtual reality, occurred when Zura asked me to provide a photo for the staff directory. A small thing, really.

But...

See, these Artella people really know me. Photos, as you know, lie.

After wading through boxes, bins, baskets, and bedroom overhead shelves and underbed drawers for my neatly organized Creative Memories-destined photos, unfortunately wedged amongst wedding and birth certificates, tax returns, Christmas cards I'm going to do something with some day, a now classic TV guide or two, a needlepoint kit with parts missing, some crocheted daisies in a color I've never taken to, an empty nut can with stale salt and settled grease still in it, and a couple of bills I'd have sworn I mailed three years ago, I settled on the most eye-pleasing photo I had.

The truth is, given my choices, this School Year Teacher photo best represents Me. But my husband, the little bad-mouthing demon that sits on my left shoulder arguing typically against the supportive, sweet angel-husband, all reason and light, on my right, kept agreeing with one another: "It's a great photo. Send it. So it's from 1992. These people don't even know you." The fact that both Hims were for it gave me great pause.

He will never understand Truth, my husband, what with his childlike fascination with Facts. Like "virtual office". He doesn't get that. Or "barter pay", which he obstinately insists isn't "pay" at all, but "stuff". (Query: What does one do with "pay" if not convert it to "stuff"?) East Coast Going Live vs. West Coast Going to Bed -- he sees no need to meet a deadline that doesn't include a bell ringing and co-workers taking off their hardhats or storing their guns and gear.

I know our problem precisely: It's Ernest Hemingway and Sylvia Plath lunching at The Artist's Studio. "Whale. Real. 'I am Vertical'. Who isn't? Ooh. Bearmeat Good."

Here's me: Who among us, along our nonoseconds' sojourn on Terra Firma, has not recognized that one's feet are made not of clay, nay, but of basest concrete, the petrified dung of the asphalt streets of William Butler Yeats' Lake Isle of Innisfree -- (here I lift smooth translucent silver-rimmed China teacup to tongue and lips, tip my chin to one side and muse) -- and whilst longing to be soul-kin to the good sweet earth -- real and true Self one with the grass and waters of the cosmos' gem, The Earth -- am helplessly and uncomfortably vertically aligned with foreign-minded two-legged creatures overreaching for goals as unattainable as the skies? My husband will never, ever understand this, lounging there with a beer lodged securely between the arm of the recliner and his thigh, a remote in one hand and fried leg of bear in the other.

Sighing, realizing my choices were limited, I reluctantly elected to scan the photo and send it -- virtual courier, if you will.

But a funny thing happened: When that 5 x 7 rose across my high-resolution screen to a larger-than-life pixelated representation of the Me that used to be, I thought, "Why, this isn't me, not me at all!" True, there was no other acceptable option.

I pondered: How to make Me out of the Me That Once Was...