Favorite Philosopher's Blog

Ok, I know you’re dying to hear about this.  So here goes.

First, here are the shoes.

Now the story.  When I was in Illinois Al asked me to come down to SoCal the end of the week to go to the Christmas party for his new job.  Sounds good.  However, I would only have a turnaround time of less than 24 hours after I got back to SF from Illinois.

Furthermore, it has been a long time since Al and I had been to a corporate Christmas party, or any Christmas party for that matter, and this one was semi-formal.  So I went over to Carson Pirie Scott (oh, you Illinois girls know what I’m talkin’ about…any excuse and things were on sale…) and after trying on umpteen dresses I forced myself to take the purple one off the rack that would certainly make me cry once I put it on.  To my surprise it looked great!  Mission accomplished.

Fast forward to SoCal.  I arrived Thursday night with the word put out to my friend Deanne that I needed to get shoes the next day and possibly some type of costume jewelry.  Please observe a moment of silence: Deanne has four daughters.  This was good news for me, or so I thought.  Friday I basically tagged along as Deanne and her daughter Caitlin took me to “just the place” to find shoes.  Off Broadway shoes.  OMG, Orange County accent and all.  HUGE shoe store with every kind of shoe you can imagine.

I was willing to get something with a little heel, and was just about to settle on a sensible but glitzy pump when Caitlin (22) walked up with the shoes you see here.   They matched the purple dress perfectly.  I tried them on.

NO WAY.

I took them off.  But then…like the siren’s song….a song I am immune to as the mother of sons…I was drawn back to them.  I could just sit a lot at the party, right?  They went home with me.

I got dressed for the party at Deanne’s and Al was going to pick me up after work.  I put the shoes on and suddenly after 57 years or so of walking, I could not figure out how to walk in these stilts.  I did a few practice runs in the hallway.  It was so weird.  In those shoes you simply cannot execute a normal heel/toe gait (as we call it in the PT business).  I finally got the hang of it but felt sure I might end the evening resting in the ER with my ankle wrapped in ice waiting for x-rays.

Of course that didn’t happen.  I got used to them.  I even danced in them – dancing was actually much easier than just standing because you are constantly taking the weight off each foot – so there wasn’t enough time for the pain, pain, pain.

And here’s a little secret I found out.  These young gals walking around in these shoes? Guess what? They are in pain, too!  I had no idea, because shoes with these heels have never been popular since I was old enough to wear or care about such things.  You see them everywhere now, of course, and like me I’m sure you wonder how they can wear them?!?!?!?!?!?

My son Jeff tells me “it’s really ridiculous – they put them on and then after about ten minutes when they are sure everyone has seen them, they come off and never go back on for the rest of the night.”   At the party we had to have a little more decorum than that, but I was gratified when I absolutely couldn’t take it anymore and walked towards the hotel elevator with them swinging in my hand – and I ran into another grown woman doing the same thing.

So there’s my story.  I survived and actually I expected stress fractures of my metatarsals the next morning but that didn’t happen.  I’m not going to be buying any four inch heels again soon, but it makes me think maybe I can go a little higher than my standard flats, now that I know the rules – 1)  it hurts to be beautiful my Mom always used to say, and 2) they are not painful because I’m 57 years old, they are painful because they require you to stand on your foot bones on end as opposed to flat on the floor and 3) you can take them off whenever you want.

Now about my purple sparkly nail polish, courtesy of Deanne’s other daughter Sarah.  It actually looks much better than I thought it would and so I’m game to try other colors besides Whore Red, Coquettte Coral and Party Pink which have been my standards…

And the purple tattoo? Well, that happened after a few drinks…

This is beyond daunting.  I can’t believe how much stuff I have to go through.  This weekend it was my office/retreat room.  The books are easy – this was a recently established room so the books were already everything I wanted.

I opened up a cabinet – a huge stack of Dollhouse Miniatures and Nutshell New magazines. At least one of those, Nutshell News is defunct.  A few more how-to-make-stuff for your dollhouse books.  I started sifting through them.  This was not a great plan because I began to remember how nearly twenty years ago I built a dollhouse and enjoyed the process so much.  The dollhouse is gone, and I only plan to make roomboxes now with the furniture, etc I collected.

This then got me thinking over what I thought I wanted when we move.  I should note that Al, realizing that I followed his cute butt from Illinois to SF and now am following it again to SoCal, says “The lady gets to pick the house.”  As was previously written here, I was set on a house near the beach with an ocean view.  Then I started to really look at the map and because I am nothing if not a practical dreamer, I started to worry about the commute to Irvine for Al.  San Clemente is not prohibitive but it is not 15 minutes away either.  A quick internet search answers the question nicely: – 25 minutes or 3 hours.  We will be able to assess that a little better when we get down there but for now I’m thinking I’d rather have Al home than on the road.  This takes us a little inland and there really are some nice areas.  It’s hilly – like here.  I’ve survived with a lovely valley view that graces this blog for 22 years I guess I can tolerate it again!

I check out a home for sale website daily and today I did two things – I changed my search a bit inland, which means a bit cheaper, and also decreased my purchase price about a third.  I was delighted to find that those prices are more likely to get you a single story home in an older neighborhood. This includes established landscaping and cute little yards, and may include a view as well.  It is a little more difficult to find a floor plan that is light and open – also one of my “musts” – but it is not impossible.  One I really fell in love with had a long lap pool!   All this because a lower mortgage will allow me to follow my work dreams and play with my dolls again.

Back to my room – I put my beautiful Cleopatra doll on eBay.  I got her at a school auction for a song – she’s Franklin Mint and just gorgeous.  Of course, I knew nothing about collectibles at the time so there is no box nor certificate of authenticity.  Had I kept those, she’s be worth about $200.  As it is she’s only worth $50-$75.  We’ll see if she goes.  If not, I’ll take her with me but it was really an impulse at the auction (isn’t it always?)  Big dolls aren’t really my thing, I like the minis.

Then  – to the temple of doom, my case of journals and writings and emails from time gone by.  For some reason I felt compelled to make several copies of everything I’ve ever written.  So it wasnt’ simply a matter of closing it up and putting it in the packing pile, I had to go through it all and make sure I wasn’t taking all those extra copies.  When I get to SoCal I will do it again and toss half of it.  My emails were pretty good though – I often did exactly what I am doing now, so the descriptions of life-as-it-was are like journals in themselves.

So my plan to write about something else is not coming to fruition.  My kids never rode their motorcycles through the gymnasium anyway…however my journals tell of other exploits that should prove useful fodder for this blog someday.

Sorry I haven’t written in so long.  Moving and all that.  Spent three glorious weeks in Illinois, Mom and I tooling around shopping and getting errands done. Managed to visit many friends, some long lost.  Took off for a few days to Lawrence, Kansas to see m’boy Jeff and a KU football game (don’t ask.  We are happy basketball season has arrived…).  It was a gorgeous fall weekend, he lives in a little house in a small town Midwestern neighborhood.  It’s nice.

I guess I haven’t written much because it’s the same old story – moving.  I have been trying to chip away at it, two boxes a day.  Some areas are worse than others.  Living room, not so bad.  Walk in closet.  Oh boy. I actually had cleaned out a lot of clothes last spring but there are things in there like newspapers with huge headlines – Earthquake!  etc.  Can’t toss that quite yet.  Just can’t.  Going through some of Mom’s stuff with her in the basement office helped me with that decision.  I am convinced that someone who comes after me will look at a newspaper from 1989 and say “cool!”

The worst part of the walk in, though, is the four drawer dresser – plain oak, we bought it unfinished and lacquered it up for our first baby, put a changing table thingy on top of it.  We were set to go.  It has made its way all around two houses.  I think we’re going to keep it.  It’s just so compact and so unassuming and so useful.  It just tucks away and happily resides there doing its job, not needing to crow about its beauty.

That’s the easy part.  It’s the INSIDE of those drawers that are troublesome.  I almost got rid of Great Aunt Helen’s prayer book but the thing was copyrighted in 1888.  No can do! I’m sure one of my sons will be happy to take care of that after I’m gone.  Into the moving box.

Rosaries – I have so many now I’m not sure where they all came from, but I know they are special.  Some are from Lourdes when Mom went there, one I think belonged to Al’s Dad.  They will travel with me and maybe I’ll display them somehow, or even say the Rosary once in awhile.  Meditation, schmeditation.  Go sit in on a group of ladies praying the Rosary and you will be on another planet before you know it.  Totally hypnotizing.  I can remember my Grandma falling asleep in the chair with her rosary.  More recently I had a patient who was once removed from thinking clearly and spoke mostly Italian, I think, some foreign language.  Anyway, when I asked if she would work with me (I had arranged the time with the son and the assisted living) she very sweetly told me I would have to wait until after she finished praying her rosary.  I remember her voice getting louder as she looked me in the eye and said “It’s IMPORTANT.”  Yes ma’am.  I waited.  I watched her.  It made my day. Her son later told me she is ALWAYS saying the rosary. She didn’t have any interest in exercising anyway.

Handkerchiefs; things that let your eyeglasses hang around your neck and onto your bosom (Mrs. “Smo” as we liked to call her at Santa Maria, had those.  You could rest a book on her rack but she just let her glasses rest there…).  I tried them but they didn’t work in my profession, my glasses were constantly getting caught in my hair when I leaned over and didn’t stay put on their shelf.  Sachets; birthday cards from my Mom with sweet notes in them (keep.)  A love note from Al – ten things he liked about me in the year 2000.  (Keep.)  Foam ear plugs. (Still good.  Keep.)  A piece of paper that has in English what the gauze-y cotton tablecloths say that Mom and Dad brought from Kenya.  (Sorry, it’s downstairs.  Not going to go get it.  Maybe later, just for you.)

That’s just the first drawer.

Then I came across one of those mini books Mom gave me a long time ago called Quotable Women: A Collection of Shared Thoughts. 

I ended up here at the computer because I realized that might be a nice way to inspire my writing on FP.  I’m so focused right now – work, eat, (eat more), try to exercise, toss, keep, donate, pack.  Toss, keep, donate, pack.  Talk about hypnotizing for the reader.  So, for the next few weeks I think I’ll just pick a quote and see where it takes us.  Are you game?

Of course, whenever I “plan” to do something in this blog something else happens that requires immediate written attention.  Dogs eating skunks, that type of thing.

And now…drum roll please…I will flip the pages and randomly pick out a quote for tomorrow…

OK, never mind, I couldn’t randomly pick one.  I picked one that speaks to me.  I have always loved this one, and we shall chat again tomorrow…

“A mother is neither cocky nor proud, because she knows the school principal may call at any minute to report that her child has just driven a motorcycle through the gymnasium.”  Mary Kay Blakely b. 1957  American Writer…

I am starting a legal fund for myself just in case I’m incarcerated in the future.  I want to warn you all, friends and family, that should I be stuck on a plane on a tarmac for over three hours, I will likely be arrested.  Of course I am referring to the people stuck (again) on the Jet Blue plane for seven hours.

I joke, of course.  Sort of.  I just don’t know if my temperament could handle such an ordeal.   There are several things that really bother me about this whole scene.  First, the moms with babies.  Under the best of circumstances, it is overwhelmingly difficult to travel with small children and babies.  I am the person on the plane who makes a point of smiling and cooing to the mother with little ones when I am on a plane, especially if I am seated near them.   I think one smile makes up for the fifty dirty looks a woman gets for having the audacity to take her child to see Grandma and Grandpa.  I know of what I speak, having lived in California since my honeymoon, with family back in Illinois.

I’ll never forget the dude sitting next to me who gave me dirty looks because Joe was 18 months and pretty much wanted to sleep with his head in the aisle – and in no other position – which required me to try to reason with him, corral him, and required him to whine and cry and challenge my maternal authority.  Did I mention he was 18 months old?  Joe, not the jerk sitting next to me.  The Jerk also read his journal while his wife, seated just across the aisle from him, dealt with three children, one a toddler and one a baby.   In that instance, I almost relished the fact that my son was being a pain in the ass. Stuck on a tarmac in that situation for seven hours?  I don’t think so.  I would have probably been encouraging Joe to crawl on the guy and smiling like St. Patience at my out of control child, but I digress.

What really kills me  is that when the pilot finally said they needed police out there because it was getting serious, VOILA! Police and ambulance arrived right away.   This was clearly another case of rules, laws, bureaucracy, idiocracy out of control.   What kind of person in charge at the airport does not look at the situation, realize that it is unnecessary and inhumane, experience empathy and say “rules be damned, I am going to make an independent decision and get a team out there to get these people off the plane.”  A spineless coward or an idiot, that’s what kind of person.

It’s a pretty scary culture in which people are afraid to make an independent call because they are afraid of the consequences or, worse, can’t think beyond their job description.  We see it all the time now in stores – it used to be that a clerk at a department store could make a customer service decision.  Now they have to talk to their supervisor who is powerless and will refer it to the appropriate department and you will hear from them….well, never.

I flew from ORD to SFO yesterday.  This is fresh in my mind, thus my rant.  Please send all donations for my legal fund to….

From the AP:

“SIRTE, Libya (AP) — Dragged from hiding in a drainage pipe, a wounded Moammar Gadhafi raised his hands and begged revolutionary fighters: “Don’t kill me, my sons.” Within an hour, he was dead, but not before jubilant Libyans had vented decades of hatred by pulling the eccentric dictator’s hair and parading his bloodied body on the hood of a truck.”

Upon reading these words and seeing the bloody corpse of  Gadhafi on the TV, I thought immediately of my Dad’s favorite poem.  What I find interesting about it now is that the sonnet was written in 1817 by Percy Bysshe Shelley.  It is set in an “ancient land” – and yet it seems that the message remains the same and could easily be substituted by the name of Gadhafi, or Hussein, or….

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ever was it thus in the Middle East.  Who will be next?  And why do we think that we can possibly do anything to change it?  I just thank God that we do not have to a) deal with our leaders for more than eight years and b)we get to rid ourselves of them in a more civilized manner than having to drag them out of a sewer pipe and parade them around half dead on the hood of a truck.  Say what you will about Wall Street, welfare systems, religious freedom or lack thereof, blah blah blah blah blah.  I’m glad I was fortunate enough to be born in this country and am frequently aware that my  life and the life of my children could just have easily been very, very different had I been reincarnated in, say, Libya.

The king is dead, long live…freedom, or at least our feeble and imperfect attempts to achieve and maintain it.

I was shocked to hear one of my sons disparage Steve Jobs.  I don’t know much about the man – he was an intensely private person as all the news stories reiterate.  I didn’t know that he was not much of a philanthropist.  At least not that we know of.  I contest the notion that just because his name isn’t plastered on buildings all over the country that he of course didn’t give money privately.  Ultimately that is none of our business.  My parents always pointed out how classy it was when people would donate to the church or school play or whatever and just sign themselves “Anonymous.”  They didn’t do it for the laud and honor.    I don’t know if Steve did that and can’t really comment one way or the other on the philanthropy issue.  It’s just something to think about.

One thing I do know is that he was insanely creative and determined.  I find it interesting that one person can change the world so drastically for the better and still be judged for his perceived faults.  I do know that his famous Stanford commencement speech made me so happy, especially that it was given at Stanford, in front of a crowd of students, many whose parents had never said anything remotely like what he said – follow your heart.  It was how I tried to raise my children, and in an area where shooting for Stanford and the pressure to live up to your parents’ dreams for your future was more common than not.  It is how I have tried (and often fallen short) to live my own life.

I do know that when Al started his business back in 1988, when the babies were in bed I would sit down at the old electric typewriter and type out his bills, the pile growing higher and taking longer as his business began to succeed.  I remember our first computer, how despite two college degrees I didn’t know what that little arrow on the screen was for, or what those little pictures meant.  I remember the first time I heard that magic sound of the beeps and bings and grinding as the internet connected me to the rest of the world.  Now I just finished a week of training my co-workers how to use a laptop for point-of-care medical documentation.

I do know that no matter what anyone says about the Apple Company, and heaven knows I’ve had my moments, the idea that I could recently toss my vinyl record albums (calm down vinyl lovers, I’m sure they found a good home) and just carry a thousand of my favorite songs on a little pink lightweight rectangle no bigger than a baseball card is amazing to me…and very very life giving – I love music, it feeds me.

I do know that it would have been inconceivable twenty years ago that I could write this note to you, push a button and you could see it in seconds.  I also know that Steve Jobs did not make all this happen single handedly.  What he did do was pique our imaginations – when I say “our” I mean the imaginations of people my age in the real world of pen and paper. We were dopes compared to our computer geek peers.   Computers seemed so foreign, so out of our reach, so 2001: A Space Odyssey. Apple made it ours, too, not just for the geeks.  He forgave us, and shared his passion with us.  Younger people who were born with a computer mouse in their hands don’t understand now why we grieve his passing.  It’s not just about him, it’s about us, too.  He grew up with us, and we were in the “in crowd” because he made it so.

A few years back when I finally convinced my Mom to get a computer (no, you do not get to know her age, but let’s just say people much younger than her pooh-pooh getting a computer because they are “too old”), my brother and sister insisted on a Mac for its ease of use and sure enough, Grandma now emails and sends jokes and Skypes and researches whatever her little heart desires.

I actually believe that the internet and computer technology is the answer to many of our problems on our little jewel in the universe .  Information happens so much faster, the projects we need to work on are literally at our fingertips. I believe it will ultimately lead to peace.   First it may have to lead to increased agitation, but instead of two exchange students – on Palestinian and one Israeli – meeting and trying to convince their friends back home that the other is really not so bad, many Palestinian kids and many Israeli kids can, at the click of a mouse, find out they have more in common than they thought.  This was undoubtedly made easier to do because of the genius of a man who shared his intelligence and his dream with us.  Perhaps philanthropy isn’t just about cash.

Thanks, Steve.  You did good.

Major storm in the Bay Area tonight.  I am laughing at myself because all of a sudden I’ve turned into a southern California girl and am worried about the wind that is due in.  I am never afraid of the Bay Area storms, what the hell?  It’s like I suddenly want to get out of here alive with no trees falling on me or anything.  It’s crazy!  

I think I’m just a little on edge.  There are so so so many changes going on in my life.  Today I learned that the wonderful woman who gave me the chance to change my work life is leaving the company.  She is only leaving because she is at the point in her life where she needs to set herself up for retirement and there is a job opening at Kaiser that she has to grab while it is available.  I will miss her terribly – she has been my mentor for the last year and although we will certainly keep in touch – it’s just one more slam bang change in my life.  Some are too personal to share, but all are significant.  No wonder I’m afraid of a little wind!  

This past weekend I went down to San Diego to see Al.  He has been staying with his brother and sister-in-law for the past three weeks and has been looking for an apartment as well.  Those of you  of a certain age might be surprised to hear that, even when you’re not a college student, renting an apartment is not what it used to be.  Remember when you’d show up with your hair combed and your checkbook in hand, you’d smile nice and talk intelligent-like and the landlord would say “You seem like a nice person” and you’d move in?

No more.  Now it’s the credit report. The application.  The references.  Not to mention the outrageous rents.  Al finally found a place in Little Italy section of San Diego – a fun little neighborhood that comes alive on the weekends.  The one bedroom is a condo and the owner lives in Irvine.  He was lucky to get it for a few months.  So step two is done. We get to pay two rents.  Woo hoo.

Now on to step three, which is waiting to find out exactly when Al’s job moves to Irvine and then finding a second place to live while we sell this house and look for another down there. This weekend was not an easy one – for starters we are not as young as we used to be and moving stuff back and forth between  his brother’s place and his rental, as well as picking up a new mattress and box spring was exhausting work.  We did that on Saturday and then Sunday the real fun began.

Al and I got in the car and went up north.  We started in Irvine which may not have been the best idea, because by the time we had gone past where his job would be located I was a zombie woman.  My soul had been totally sucked out of my body.  Irvine, which was strawberry fields when we first moved here, was totally developed.  It is the very definition of “sterile.”  I know I don’t have to live there, but I was tired and scared and poor Al had to listen to me have a nervous breakdown in the car.  My sons know what this is like and it’s never a shining moment of maturity and grace for me.  “I can’t live here even temporarily!” was pretty much the long and short of it.  My mind became a Willy Wonka train ride of visions of women with bulbous plastic lips and white blond hair and a house with no yard and endless traffic and…

I ordered my chauffeur to drive straightaway to the beach communities and as we neared them my soul returned to my body.  I can live there.  I can even live in Irvine temporarily (although step 2.5 is going to be finding a short term rental that will allow a boxer dog!).  I kind of wonder if I will revert back to my nature girl self there.  My hair frizzes up with the ocean air – I can toss my flat iron and curling iron – they will be just a waste of time.  And what a great place to write my books.   It may be quite liberating after all.  I tell myself that every weekend will be like a mini-vacation.

But as I write, it is raining here in Lafayette.  I am looking out my window which is eye level with the treetops and everything is wet and green, the squirrels are hopping around, the bucks are chasing the lady deer. I will miss that.  I’m so scared, and yet I have faith that the ocean will soothe me – you are never really alone or far from eternity when you walk along the ocean.

Right?