Myriads

McCain/Palin? Fudge/Umbridge!

2008-10-07T02:30:00.000-07:00

Put a tea cozy on the hand of ruthlessness and you have.... Dolores Umbridge. Put a pair of glasses on the face of ambitious and willful ignorance, and you have.... Sarah Palin. Reverse those sentences. Not too bad a fit, is it? Consider wikipedia's description, edited by the author, of Dolores Umbridge:

"In her ambition for glory, she climbed her way to (Mayor) Professor, (Governor) High Inquisitor and Headmistress of Hogwarts. During the height of the (Iraq) Second Wizarding War, Umbridge ran the (Oil and Gas) Muggle-Born Registration Commission while (George Bush) Lord Voldemort was in control of the (Administration) Ministry, and sadistically prosecuted many innocent people."

McCain/Palin is to the US as Fudge/Umbridge was to London: a well-meaning but bumbling headliner and his simpering but very nasty lieutenant. Like their counterparts in the literary world, they don't agree on everything, and many reasonable, thoughtful people are fooled. Put a nice suit, or a bowler hat, on a friendly-looking grandpa, and most people are inclined to think well of him, especially if he's got a title, as does Senator McCain. I mean, Minister Fudge. Put a pair of corporate glasses on a calculating but ignorant politician, or a bow in her hair, and all of a sudden she gains legitimacy.

Gov. Sarah Palin's experience is not the problem. It's that her experience doesn't seem to have umbued her with any critical thinking skills. As my college thesis professor would say, just coming to class isn't enough. You've got to actually pay attention, and allow the experience to transform the way you think. (Even to the point of grasping contradictory and coexisting truths.) Instead, she's chosen shallow, oversimplified judgment on top of seething rage and shared pain. Dolores Umbridge has a similar problem. She's been in the Ministry for years, but still can't seem to see what's directly in front of her: enforcing, even brutally, all the rules you agree with and punishing those who don't agree with you doesn't solve most problems. It just cuts people out of the conversation and wastes a lot of talent and energy. Consider:

1) When Dolores Umbridge was made High Inquisitor of Hogwarts, her first act was to get teachers she found objectionable fired. Compare with Gov. Palin's tendency to see pink (slips) the minute she ran into an ideological divide with anyone over whom she had power.

2) When Dolores Umbridge came to power, she paid attention to the reason she was given it only as an accompaniment. Palin, as we saw in the Biden-Palin debate this week, is suffused with hyper-ambition, and a "hubristic self-confidence" that she is qualified to place judgment on many, many things about which she knows nothing. Neither of these two women ever considered that *understanding* a problem was key to solving it; they both simply attempted to steamroll their way through it -- and anyone who got in their way. Neither of them have a speck of humility, and it shows in their reckless, desperate relish to control any situation. "Collateral damage," is merely an acceptable risk; neither understands the difference between power and responsibility.

3) Dolores Umbridge "taught according to a politically-restricted curriculum" which entailed learning strictly the theory of (creationism) Defence Against the Dark Arts without any practical applications." Palin's position on evolution is vague but seems to be basically distrustful. Worse is Umbridge's attitude toward, oh, human rights. (Since she doesn't believe students require them.) Anyone recognize Palin's attitude toward suspected terrorists?

4) Palin and Umbridge share their greatest fault: neither of them know how to listen. Facts and evidence are totally insufficient to change their opinions. They are zealous and fierce enforcers, but we usually station those at the door, not in the big chairs.

The one way in which they seem to differ is that, on paper, most people had the sense to be cautious of Dolores Umbridge, willing to appease her but totally clear on this point: filled with ruthless ambition, her tea cozies and cutesy office fooled no one into thinking she cared about anyone besides herself. Unfortunately, many pundits say, either Americans aren't good at this whole off-paper business, or Palin is better at somehow projecting that she's sympathetic, because not everyone gets just how dangerous it is to put power in the hands of the -- not unqualified, not inexperienced -- but dangerously unwise. But there is more if you look.

Palin's power is that she taps into the rage and denial of many Americans' darker belief that somehow, someone else is to blame for our problems. Blasting someone else and laying blame feel good, and she validates our need to be Joe Six-Pack, everyday, unintellectual citizens. We can't be blamed for our ignorance, because, like Palin herself, her ignorance comes of her innocence, and we share it. If she is like us, and can get through this, then so can we. Her rage is understandable, even necessary: we're the victims here, and if we can see her be successful then it means we can be, too. And we don't even have to take a long look at ourselves in the process, because we're already like her.

In our pain and rage, however, we are missing something important. Recall how Umbridge was quick to rationalize her use of an Unforgiveable Curse on a student, demonstrating that she completely missed the concept of an Unforgiveable Curse. The curse is not unforgiveable because of its power to destroy the victim, but the power it carries to twist and deform the soul of the one who carries it out. If Palin actually takes office, I will be horrified to see what her Unforgiveable Curse will be.

In Voldemort's words, there is "no such thing" as right or wrong. There is "only power, and those too weak to seek it."

Not like Sarah Palin. No one could ever call her "too weak" to seek power.

Fudge/Umbridge '08!

Raveling

2007-05-23T15:59:00.000-07:00

He skidded to a halt.

"Oh no.." he thought to himself. He caught a glimpse of a red dress disappearing around the corner. He listened, frozen, unable to move. He was too late. He heard them together, the waiting becoming an anticipated certainty. Her heels clicked rhythmically on the tile floor, and the door at the other end of the hall swished closed. It closed slowly, taking its time. A boy had thrown himself through the door and was careening down the hall, looking behind him. A loose pair of sneakers slapped on the floor as dark green jeans, rumpled hair, and a loose windbreaker all went flying down the hall. There was a muffled yell as the sneakers tried and failed to skid to a stop, and then a final explosion of red dress and teenage knees. A sickening crunch and a yelp of pain reached him as he slowly walked toward the wreckage. A frightened boy was trying to untangle himself from the red dress and keep running down the hall, but the commotion had caused a number of doors in the hallway to open up, and just as the boy broke loose, a large and severe hand clamped down on his shoulder.

A tanned, hairy forearm showed from beneath shirtsleeves. Mr. Duncan was standing stock still, his thin white shirt and plain brown tie proclaiming that this was, after all, a place of rules and order. The flailing young man flailed for another second or two and then slumped. He seemed to recognize defeat.

At the same time, a teacher came running across the hall and ran toward the red dress. She knelt quickly, laying a gentle hand on the red dress' forehead.

"Are you all right, Amy?" said the hand's voice. The red dress moaned a little, testing out her breath.

"I think --" she faltered, "I think something is broken."

Three or four other adults swarmed around, the first aid kit from the teachers' lounge disgorging tape and other assorted medical supplies. The red dress was soon lying down with her head held fast, a blanket over her paling skin.

All the while, he stood there, staring at this train wreck. When someone looked up at him, he realized how long he'd been standing there and reddened. He walked forward slowly, trying hard to think of a good reason to be there. He finally settled on Kindly Bystander.

"Is she all right?" he asked, in what he hoped was a voice of deepest concern.

"Call an ambulance!" Someone barked.

"Right!" he turned and quickly headed toward the office, hoping to find a phone along the way.

He kept walking, hoping to look purposeful, and hoping to catch a glipse of Flying Green Jeans. He had just reached the office when the door to the assistant principal's office swung closed. A boy in green jeans sat in the chair, looking appropriately contrite but also, he noticed, completely closed in. No emotion radiated from the boy other than a muted sense of silent remorse.

His heart sank. The boy was a Raveler. And he'd messed this up, badly. He was going to be in very, very deep manure when he got back.

He watched the door swing closed, his heart sinking in time to the faint hiss.

A few moments later he sat quietly, touching his fingertips and slowly rotating his thumbs. Denise would kill him for this. Just murder him. Or, if not kill him, she would place half of him inside a wall and then eat an entire pizza in front of him. He was doomed. The shiny floor and expensive metallic walls cheerfully bounced muted light all over him, but all he could see were the dust particles illuminated in the sunlight.

He stirred for a moment. Braindust! It might actually help him in this situation. He stood up quickly, shoving his hands in his pockets. He could get some braindust from the Pharmacy, go back to his room, and see if inspiration struck. Maybe there was a way to go back again and see if -- the door banged open, and Denise stood there, taking up the entire doorway and sucking all the air out of his lungs.

"Come inside," she said shortly. He sagged, all the braindust-inspired hope zooming straight down to his toes and settling between them. It might come out again once his dressing down was finished, he thought desperately. Some brilliant idea, some way to -- slam!

Denise slammed the door behind him and briskly walked over to her desk. It was not shiny or metal, like nearly everything else in the facility. Denise's desk was ancient. On her left was a wooden rolltop desk, pristine and beautiful, dating from the 1930's. In front of her was a solid slab of mahogany. It was a deep, beautiful brown, so well-polished it held streaks of lovely red in it. The center was covered with a green felt material, which kept her papers in place. At the moment, it was empty, save for Denise's fingers, which were laced together, not moving. She wasn't drumming her fingers, or even moving at all. She sat, staring intently at him. She was not angry, he realized suddenly. She was staring at him very intensely. She looked down, and started to read from a piece of paper she had retrieved from nowhere.

"You were originally assigned to follow Levi Levinson and prevent him from physically colliding with Angela Bennett on the 27th of March at 1:56 pm. Ms. Bennett Is a seventh-grade teacher at Newcastle Middle School. Mr. Levinson Originally collided with Ms. Bennett on the first floor of the school in which she teaches after she came out of her classroom to secure some additional teaching materials. Mr. Levinson was running from a Segue," she glanced up at him reproachfully, "who had seen him in his act of Raveling." She took a deep breath, quietly and professionally but clearly displaying her displeasure at having to speak these words.

"You were then seen by not less than three bystanders, and were spoken to by one, who gave you directions you agreed, but failed, to follow. After this you were able to secure your departure and return to headquarters." She finished this with some disinterest, sorting her papers back into a neat pile and returning her attention to him.

"Now," she began, "I understand that your task of preventing the collision was not altogether simple. There was the crowded location, for example, and the prominence of Ms. Bennett - as a teacher, she would stand out in a collision far more than would another student." She stared at him straight on. "However, where was your planning in all of this? Did you not know that Ms. Bennett would be in class? Did you not know that Mr. Levinson would be running, full-tilt, to escape the Segue? Did you not know When the Original act happened?" She stared at him directly, clearly expecting a response.

"Well, I... I mean, I thought I would just come into the school, see Levi coming, and direct him the other way," he said weakly.

"Did you not anticipate that this course of action would require very precise timing on your part?" she asked in a businesslike tone.

"I, er, well.." he looked down at his hands, and started to hunch protectively.

"Did you not research the hour before to the roughly hour afterwards? I show here," she produced a small sheet of plastic from thin air, "a requisition for the observation lab for two hours, during which you were to observe from one hour before to one full hour after the event you were to change." She stared at him again. It was beginning to feel as though she were trying to read his mind by ripping it out through his pores with her eyeballs.

"Did you perform this research?"

"Well, I mean, yes, sort of," he said quietly.

"'Sort of'?" she repeated shortly.

"Well, I looked at the half hour previous, and then about fifteen minutes afterwards. I -- well, it didn't really make sense to watch for a full hour *after* the event."

She seemed not to have heard him.

"Did you not know that this research is absolutely required before you undertake any timechanging?"

"Yes, I did," he said firmly, "but the wave was approaching, and I had to surf."

She looked down. She seemed to be trying to make up her mind about something. Finally she spoke.

"There are many ways of looking at a single event," she said briskly. She stood up, twiddled her fingers on her remote for a few seconds, and then stepped in front of her board. A pen appeared in her hand.

"You can look at all the previous actions that lead up to this one and see which ones fall outside the embrace of the Original person's overall moment." She drew a dot on the board, and then drew a single line out of it. "Some actions are Critical Path, and cannot be changed without affecting the person's momentum along their chain of events. We call this, you may recall," she allowed a hint of disapproval to enter her tone, "a person's timechain. But others," and here she drew a curved little line that went out, and then back in, to the original line on the board, "are simply little distractions from the main timechain. They are digressions, and can most often be changed without affecting the Original's personal momentum." She turned to face him.

"You can also look at the Raveler's actions. We sometimes find it more desirable to change the actions of a Raveler because he or she is aware that time is being manipulated. He or she is an active party to this change. He or she," she said with some impatience, "will not potentially have his or her timechain completely demolished by finding out that time can be changed from underneath him or her." She looked at him in silence for a moment. "However, changing a Raveler's actions has its own risks, which are often more dangerous than changing an Original. But that is something we can cover later. For now, it is enough for you to know that we essentially focus on changing the actions of the Original in order to clear the path for the Raveler to do his or her work. For now," she stared at him straight-on again, and he automatically sat up straighter, "you will focus on identifying and changing digressions." She turned slightly, facing the board.

"Some events can be ungrappled from the timechain more easily than others. Digressions are nearly always the easiest to change. There are some exceptions, but most of the time this is true. In any case, we always," and here she even glared at him, "endeavor to change the event that can be most easily ungrappled from someone's timechain. We do NOT --" she faced him, looking intensely and pointedly into his face now, "-- simply march in and fly by the seat of our pants!" she turned away from him, once again businesslike.

"It is important to keep your intervention simple, quiet, and to the point. Do you understand this?"

He nodded slowly. "I think so," he said carefully. He wasn't so sure about the "to the point" part. It wasn't like he'd gone out for ice cream or hung around checking out cars. He'd tried to do what he was supposed to do. He decided he'd better ask; he didn't want another lecture like this one anytime soon. "I'm a little confused. What do you mean by 'to the point'?"

She actually allowed a tiny corner of her mouth to quirk upward in what might have been the start of an approving smile. It faded quickly.

"I'm glad you asked that," she said briskly, once again sifting through her papers. She returned her piercing stare to his face. "You, I am afraid, have shown a flair for the dramatic."

He bristled. Who had he been trying to act for, exactly? She leaned forward, sighing. Her voice dropped slightly.

"Why did you choose to try to meet Mr. Levinson in front of the school doors?" He blinked. Wasn't this obvious? He guessed not, and decided to repeat it anyway.

"To tell him to go around, so that he would not crash into Ms. Bennett," he said carefully.

"Why did you need to tell him directly?" she asked, still leaning forward and looking at him, though not quite as intensely.

"How else would he know not to go down that hall?" he asked. It seemed obvious to him; why couldn't she see it?

"Why did you need to tell him at all?" she held up a hand as he opened his mouth to protest, and continued speaking. "What if you had changed events so that Ms. Bennett was not in the hall at the time?"

He stared at her, not speaking. It hadn't occurred to him that Levi's mad dash through the school wouldn't have been a problem if the teacher hadn't been tripping down the hall on her high heels at the time.

"I don't know, it just seemed like a bad idea for Levi to go pounding through a school. I mean," he warmed to his subject now, "he could have collided with anybody, couldn't he? If it wasn't Ms. Bennett, how do we know it wouldn't have been someone else?"

She peered at him through narrowed eyes.

"Did you check the **occupancy** in the hallway?" she asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"No," he said slowly, "but even though Levi went through a few minutes before the bell, if he'd been stopped at all he would have ended up in the hallway when the bell rang. He'd have been seen by dozens of students. It seemed like a bad idea, that's all." he finished with a shrug. She was silent for a moment or two.

"That is an interesting idea." His heart leapt, then sank again as her eyes returned to her papers and she continued. "However, as it happens, the hallway was empty until Ms. Bennett entered it. It only filled with people after Ms. Bennett and Mr. Levinson's collision and the noise it made drew several people. It also happens that a full ten minutes went by before the bell rang, leaving Levi plenty of time to dash through the school and out the opposite door before the halls filled with students." Her mouth grew thin, and her voice grim.

She looked at him once more. "Whether or not you thought Levi's actions were too assertive, you chose a corrective course of action that was foolhardy in the extreme. First, you chose a course that gave you less than eight minutes' margin for error."

"The janitors had come through about six minutes before you arrived. And as we have seen," she shot him a look over her glasses, "your arrival was actually two minutes too late. In order to be successful, you would have had to arrive after the janitors but in time to prevent Levi from hitting Ms. Bennett." She pursed her lips.

"Six minutes is barely enough time to orient. Even the most experienced time-travelers can get sick --" he snickered, and she turned to him, angry for the first time, "Even the very most experienced Ravelers can get sick, injured, mis-jump, or make any number of mistakes! We *expect* you to make mistakes, and we expect --" she bit this out, "we EXPECT you to use them to figure out your limitations!"

He sat very still, watching her carefully as she spoke every word slowly and carefully,

"Part of your job is to learn what you can and cannot do, what tools you need to succeed. I suggest you start paying attention to yourself."

She returned to her matter-of-fact voice.

"Secondly, you chose to act on the Raveler, Levi, instead of on the Original, which is virtually never what we recommend. Thirdly, your strategy had too many loose ends and no backup plan: your failure to prevent the collision actually created more intervention issues. No less than three people saw you, Levi, and the accident." She sighed a tired sigh, then spoke again in a voice that he usually heard when she assigned homework to a particularly dull student.

"I would like you to consider this: did you want to confront Levi yourself because you wanted him to *know* you'd just saved him?"

He didn't say anything.

"Consider what would have happened if, instead of trying to dash in front of Levi at the last moment, you'd gone to the teachers' lounge where Ms. Bennett had left her missing flimsies. Consider what would have happened if you'd simply picked them up, slowed time down, taken them back to her classroom, and then left. Would she have needed to leave the classroom at all?"

He was thunderstruck. It had never occurred to him that he could have changed her reason for leaving the room in the first place.

"You didn't think of that," she said flatly, "because you did not do your homework. You did not check on the coupling of events, or you would have seen her simple digression, one that could easily have been used to achieve the goal. There was a clear, simple, and to the point path you could have taken. You instead chose to be flashy -- become Levi's hero. As a result you bungled the job, unconcerned about exposing yourself, your team, and the work we do here."

Neither of them said anything for a moment. He was ashamed, and yet slightly resentful. She seemed to read his mind.

"You may feel that I have been unnecessarily harsh, but it is essential that you grasp the point: what you do has consequences! It matters! As you -- if you -- advance to more responsible roles, it will be of utmost importance that you take your work seriously. Flashy, dramatic entrances work well in action movies, but not in correcting the slow unraveling of time." He did not fail to notice her correcting her sentence from "when" to "if." He must be in big trouble. He finally spoke.

"I did learn something," he said quietly, hopefully.

"Yes?" she said stiffly.

"I think there's another reason it was a bad idea to try to stop Levi, and not to try to change the events that led Ms. Bennett out of her classroom," he said.

"What is that?" she asked, her face impassive.

"Well, it's that Levi was in the embrace of his moment," he said firmly, "and Ms. Bennett wasn't."

She nodded a tiny nod, encouraging him to go on.

"That is, to change a person's timechain, you should always go with their nature, never against it. And Levi," he allowed himself a brief grin, "is constantly running. You can't really get him to stop. But Ms. Bennett is so organized she alphabetizes her spice rack. Leaving her stuff was almost out of character for her, so it would have been better to, um," he trailed off, as he was finally running out of steam.

"Direct her back into herself?" she prompted, her voice surprisingly warm.

"Yes," he said, encouraged.

"Well then," she said, and she glanced down at her papers as her tone became brisk once more, "you may, in fact, actually be learning something. A good thing, too," she sniffed coolly, "since we now have to send two Ravelers back to clean up this mess."

"Two?" he couldn't help himself; why would two people be necessary?

"Yes, two," she said shortly, "you not only failed to save Mr. Levinson, but you also created a mess of your own. We have to send someone back to stop *you* from interacting with a teacher."

"But --" he blurted, "I didn't do anything with them! They didn't even notice me!"

She sighed. "I'm afraid they did. One of them asked you to call 9-1-1. You said, "Right," as you may recall. You obviously failed to do so. Unfortunately, since the teacher, a Mr. -" she glanced down at her records, "Milenysk, thought you were calling an ambulance, he told everyone else not to call them. Twenty minutes were lost, and Ms. Bennett bled so much during those twenty minutes that she required a transfusion. This changed the amount of medical care she needed, the doctors she met, and so on." Her voice had grown increasingly clipped with each sentence she uttered.

He was silent; he'd had no idea how badly he'd truly bungled it. He hunched over, looked at his hands, and drew his elbows protectively together.

"Your next task," she went on, as if he'd not reacted at all, "will be to schedule some time to practice your shifting. You'll need to spend several full days working on it, since your next assignment will involve it."

He looked up at her. He'd thought he was very near to getting chucked out, to be sent back to his hometown to work in a grocery store and read novels all night.

"You must master directional shifting, as you will be required to shift through walls without falling through the floor." She stood her papers up and tapped them into a neat stack, which he knew she was planning to put back in the file folder with his name on it. She was nearly done with him, then. "You will receive more information in a week or two as the cusp event comes into focus." She glanced up at him, folded her hands neatly on her desk, and stared intently at him once more.

"I suggest you work very hard over the next few weeks."

He nodded, murmured a "thank you", and stood up. She threw out an "mmm-hmm" and turned her back, already reaching for her headset.

He spilled out into the hallway, feeling depressed but exceedingly relieved: he knew what he had to do. This was much better than not.

"Your primary task is to analyze the timechain, find a digression, and

"In short,

She was drawing on the board now. Seven or eight lines all drew together to a single point. A single line came out of this point. She then draw several lines out of this point, all of them pointing randomly.

"

""

""
"Now then," she said in a teaching tone, "

Prototime.
Protosplit.
Proto

Digressions are nearly always easiest to change, but sometimes not because digressions take up time. Timewasting is sometimes a key activity. It promotes braindust gathering. It links together events in a timechain that may have gone awry because too much time elapsed between events. Digressions sometimes are the bone spurs of genius, creating an image of importance that cannot be changed or that creates great inspiration. We cannot read people's minds, we do not know what makes them tick. Digressions are sometimes very important because they are little enclaves of meaning.

Changing a Raveler can be very difficult because while an Original's timechain can be plotted, it is more or less a regular function, a Raveler's is not. An Original has a 1-to-1 relationship with time. He is eating dinner at 6 pm, it can reasonably be predicted that he'll be eating dinner at 6:03 pm. A Raveler is much more difficult because he or she has a much less linear relationship to time. A non-linear relationship, in fact. Eating dinner at 6:15 pm provides no assurance he'll be eating dinner at 6:18 pm. He might be out of his own timechain, suspended in past action. His dinner may get cold or even rot before he returns to it. Because of this, it's impossible to plot his timechain. Generally this isn't a problem because the Raveler is not simply an object to be acted on. A Raveler is in on it, and can change actions in response to what you tell him or her. However, you're still talking about a loose particle that cannot be plotted, and things sometimes do go haywire. For this reason, we nearly always try to change an Original, and simply clear the Raveler's path of potential problems.

Whatever Happened to Baby Carly?

2006-11-05T15:40:00.000-08:00

Carly Fiorina was not dumped from hp because she was a woman. She got dumped, ultimately, because of her total failure to understand engineers within an engineering company. Again, not because she had a man's attitude, but because she walked in, guns blazing, with thinly veiled irritation towards the unfortunately-necessary "engineers" one simply must tolerate when one is CEO of an engineering company. (Reminds one of Healthcare Hillary, before she became imminently successful Senator Clinton... totally did not understand the cloakroom.)

Carly wasn't a bad CEO, either. Her decision to push for the Compaq merger was most likely one to build those "quick wins" that marketing people love to use to create InstaCred -- instant credibility -- with one's coworkers. Why? Because marketing people build their credibility by delivering successes. (Most professions require this, but some professions don't require a public peacock dance. In some, you just build something amazing. But in marketing, you have to *sell* something amazing. And your first sell is to your own team.)

Delivering one right away is a good gamble; either you look fantastic, or you look idiotic, but either way you look Decisive, which is critical if you're a marketing person. You look like you Know How to Get Things Done. A good marketer's epitaph would read something like, "Joe Walsh, 1955-2006. Got Things Done." This is why they are called Rainmakers: they stomp around in the dirt and Make Rain. It's an act of magic, and it all begins with being able to create something from nothing. If you're going to create something from sheer force of will, it's very helpful to convince the people you work with how much of a tidal wave your force of will can produce. Why? Simply put, if they believe in you, Making Rain is lots easier, because they help sell your reputation to others. In addition, people who believe in you are more likely to forgive you if you royally screw up. If you sort of pussy-foot around, they'll fill the void called What They Don't Know About You with hemming, hawing, and Inaction. If you're a marketer, you definitely don't want What People Think They Know About You to be titled, "Inactive."

When they think of you, you them to think of you as a firm, decisive, go-getter who makes rain and is a force to be reckoned with. Of course, the greatest way in the world to do this is stride forward confidently, making deals and Being Effective.

We have all known those particular individuals who, once entrusted with power, stomp around on expensive heels, clenching well-pedicured toes and frightening everyone in sight, simply to remind everyone that They Are Powerful. I recall walking through our immaculately painted and very tastefully lit office one day on my way to a meeting and nearly being run over by a junior staffmate who was flying through, hair and papers streaming. She whispered frantically as she all-but-flew by, "She's on the stomp!"

I immediately dove for the nearest cubicle and looked for something important to work on. Then I turned so my back was to the opening, realizing that I had worn no lipstick, no eyeshadow, nor even any hair goop today. I was sure to be the victim of a scathing dress-down at the Boss' lunch out today if she saw me. Then I heard it -- the tell-tale heels. She was stomping across the room at top speed. My heart stopped but I knew if I just kept my head down and didn't let her see me, she'd cruise right by and find some other poor soul to torment. Ack, why hadn't I thought to at least sit down? No, I was hunched unbecomingly over a proposal. My back was starting to hurt. This could really suck if she decided to stand there much longer. I wondered if I could slide into my seat without my head popping up over the half wall?

I listened hard for voices, remembering to sift paper every now and then, for a few minutes, and then the heels stomped on. I sighed, straightened up, and headed back to my cube.

The Arrival of the Morgan, Part I

2006-10-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

He's here! He's really here!

There are so many moments, but here are a few...

This time, when we got to the hospital, my husband did not try to park the car and have me walk across the parking lot whilst in labor. A good, self-preserving plan, that. But we did get inside, and end up having to wait at the ER because it was about five in the morning. Two people were ahead of us, getting registered. Only one woman was at the desk. My husband was rather too patiently waiting for someone to help him register us, so the minute someone came through the waiting room with a name tag, I said, "Can someone help me? I'm in LABOR!" It was really patient of me, I thought. Here I was, having active contractions in the waiting room chair, trying to hold my beautiful two-year-old and keep my nightgown on. I recall breathing hard and staring at my swollen feet in the glare of the flourescent lights and the reflective chair, wishing I were in a more enclosed space. I was grounded in an alien, I-need-something-else-to-think-about kind of way. The woman had the grace to say, "Omigoodness. We'll get you taken care of right away!" I sighed, and threw a rather unfortunate glace at my husband. I suppose I wanted him to make a scene and demand that someone help his wife, She's in labor! But really, it's much more effective when a half-mad pregnant woman with a toddler dangling from her arm uses a contractions to propel her voice into a war cry.

All I could think about was that my son needed a change -- I could smell it -- and that the TV was on a program much too violent for him. How could I - ow! - get the channel changed? And had I -- OW! -- brought the diaper bag to change Julian? And if so, did it have some -- YEEEEEEOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWW! -- clean pajamas, in case his diaper had been defeated? Eventually, grandma did come, but she took a very long time, and in the meantime all I could think was that MY TWO YEAR OLD NEEDED TO BE CHANGED, BADLY! I was a terrible mother, I was certain: my child was out in the world at five-thirty (then six, then six-thirty, then seven) in a dirty diaper and pajamas with urine on them. I would never be allowed in the Mothers' Club. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if most department stores started locking their doors when they saw me coming. I was clearly bad news, and Child Protection Services should be pounding on my door any minute. At no time did it register that I was in labor, that most people are forgiving in such circumstances, and that even if they had pounded on my door at seven am (not normal working hours), I was not at home. I was in the hospital.

I was in labor for only five hours. I got pain relief after almost three hours. So in the middle of hour three, I was in full labor, with loooong contractions, and no pain relief. (Yes, I know, our foremothers would shake their heads and wonder at our sissyfied need for pain control, but damnit it HURTS.) I would have throttled the nurse who said, "She's having long contractions, but is handling it well." I couldn't do anything with my hands but grip the bed. What, I wondered, would she consider NOT handling it well? Sobbing uncontrollably? Well, then, I guess I was handling it well. But if I could have wrapped my hands around her neck, I would have handled it very, very well.

I asked about pain relief for the contractions about every sixth nanosecond. Apparently my doctor had another patient in who was also in labor at the exact same time. I cursed whatever Indian food she'd eaten that had brought on her contractions at this *exact* moment. Blast it, I wanted pain relief!! In retrospect, it's probably best that I didn't get it immediately, because I had one of the most depthful experiences of my life. One of those experiences where you look at the task in front of you and think, "Dear God, I don't know if I am up to this." And then, all of a sudden, you have no doubt that you are completely up to it. You might even take in a round of golf once you're finished, in fact. That's how totally Up To It you are.

It's like having a big shovel come along and dig a hole in your You. It hurts like hell, but when it's done you have no choice but to admit that you're a lot deeper than you thought you were. In fact, that shovel didn't quite hit bottom, so you must admit that you still don't know much you can do, because you have yet to come to the end of yourself. It's possible that you really are powerful beyond measure, but what's really scary is wondering what else there is in you that you haven't even met yet. Maybe you'll be lucky enough to meet it in this lifetime. But hopefully you'll be able to do so because it will willingly come out and meet you, rather than be dug out with a big damn shovel.

I remember breathing through the contractions, and I remember for a fleeting second thinking that they would last longer than I would; I would be beaten by the pain. Then, somehow, I mentally sat up and got my head in the game. "Come get me!" I thought. "I can outlast you." And somehow, my vision expanded in front of me, and I could see that the end of myself was much farther away than I had thought. I had so much of me to go. Another contraction came; I breathed as hard as I could, still waiting to bear down. But this time I knew, my line is longer than yours, Contraction. I can master you.

My doctor told me to groan, that it would help. And it did. And to slow my breathing down. I did. I could do this, I knew. I was working too hard, so the doctor told me to sink into the bed and relax in between contractions. I did this as best I could. I think it went well, because the doc said nothing about it again.

Then it was time to push.

I don't know if this is genetic or what, but I know I pushed, and I know it hurt like nothing I've ever felt, but even two days later, I couldn't really remember the pain. I don't mean I don't remember the birth, I mean I can't recall what the pain felt like. When you burn your finger on a hot stove, or when I broke mine a year ago, those things we can recall perfectly. How it felt, the shock to the system, what we did afterwards, etc. Even the sound my finger made as the bone cracked, I can remember clearly. But to recall how much pain I was in is impossible. Intellectually I know it hurt, but I can't recall it or relive it in any clear way. I suspect this is survival of the species. Why else would women have twelve or thirteen children, with no pain control at all? (I bow down, by the way, to those women. I just bow down.)

In any case, I pushed for maybe twenty minutes, something like that. I remember the buzz of activity, that something amazing was happening. I remember being viscerally and violently present and at the same time about a foot behind myself, experiencing the Event. In the middle of pushing, I had to take a break, it hurt so much. The doctor had me reach down and feel his head, which was halfway out into the world. I remember the feel of it, warm and slick with blood and fluid, and so trusting. I remember feeling simultaneously omnipotent, as I was the only one bringing this child into the world, and completely helpless, my husband holding my hand, the doctor catching the baby, and me just trying to survive the moment. At that moment I knew what it meant to be a family: I was necessary, but not sufficient. I felt transparent, sticky, and tensile, held up only by their support -- I could not have begun to do it alone -- and singly and wholly bringing forth another soul. I felt lovingly scorched.

Never had I so wished that anyone wishing the use phrase "give birth" would be required to experience this moment. Anytime the phrase passed someone's lips, I imagined, the Truth police would march in and trot you off to a Virtual Reality chamber, where you would live through an experience like that. Then you could be popped back to your coffee house or restaurant or book group, new depth lovingly scorched into you.

Much, much more later....

2006-09-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

I have enjoyed watching Heath Ledger ever since that funky little Arthurian movie he made when he was about twelve (or eighteen, or something). He just looked so.. earnest. And nice. He was handsome, certainly, but mostly I was drawn to his openness and clear spirit.

I trotted along, merrily knowing that Heath was out there doing his moviemaking thing, right up until Brokeback Mountain came along. Now, I am fine with Brokeback, and I think both he and Jake Gyllenhaal did a great job. But frankly, it wasn't the plot I was viciously following when I watched it. No, it was the character development, and of course, the crazy choices.

I grant you, Heath has such a handsome, angular face -- more angles in his face than most geometry textbooks, thank you -- and such a wide-open look about him that I had a hard time buying into him as a secret homosexual. He is a very good actor, so I did buy into the troubled layer of Tough Guy over top of his secret emotional space. Jake was even easier, except that his Stoic Man seemed more careless than stilted. And what else is stoicism besides emotion with a hard set to it?

In any case, I just wanted them to come out, admit their affair, and then buy a cute little place in Wyoming they could do up nicely. There are plenty of men in the Bay Area who could have shown them how it's done: shabby chic windows, fabulous paint, and some very cool lighting and accessories... sigh.

But, obviously, this movie wasn't really about them. No, really, it wasn't. It was about the cultural norms that drove their natural tendencies into a sharp, ninety-degree problem. Really, now, in San Francisco this would all have worked itself out so neatly. (Can you say "Leather Bar"? I knew you could.) Now, I admit that I find absolutely nothing wrong with the human desire to love and be loved, whether that takes the shape of homosexuality or not. I do have trouble with people lying to themselves and others, however, and this is what made the movie so captivating: had these men lived somewhere other than Wyoming, the emergence of their feelings for one another could have taken shape as an interesting dimension of their personal lives, adding depth and human interest. The love affair could have permeated the atmosphere like so much food for gossip, swilled over coffee or cocktails while Heath, in a fetching black sweater, earnestly leans over a spot-lit marble table and asks a girlfriend, "Do you really think he could be The One?"

The depth you can get out of analyzing what person is Really Right for You is amazing. Unfortunately, we didn't even get that far.

I don't know if it's just me, but there was almost a forced shallowness about their relationship. Not that it was shallow, but it was somehow robbed, not allowed to breathe. Like a red wine guiltily broken open and consumed when a little too cold, with no time to breathe, that's how they loved. I suppose what makes me sad is that, like wine, love should be uncorked, given time to breathe, carefully poured into beautiful glasses at a well-lit table, and then savored with delightful food. It shouldn't be crammed into a stolen moments of freedom.

I grew up in Montana, where it seemed that many real moments were quickly reshaped into something Socially Acceptable, so perhaps this truncation is particularly saddening to me. After all, Montana and Wyoming are just a hop, skip, and jump away. Though Wyo's red deserts are more captivating to me than Montana's endlessness.

That's it, I think. There is opportunity, almost, to dive in, head first, to a deep and clear lake, beautiful, dangerous, and wet. And somehow you end up splashing around in the shallow end of a small swimming pool. So much promised depth, so much time wasted on the top three inches of water. It reminds me of walking out at the beach, where pools of shallow water soon get filled with dead seaweed, algae, and the like. Those pools aren't cleaned by tides and waves; that shallow water starts to stink very quickly.

Somehow, these emotional truncations remind me of trotting all your stuff out to the beach, setting up a lovely table with dinner, and sipping a glass of wine while watching the tide pool. For about an hour, a tide pool is interesting to watch. After that, though, it just starts to stink. And you find yourself watching the ocean, where the waves take down everything in their path, instead of being trapped by old curmudgeons of sand. Who doesn't find the ocean so much more relaxing?

I don't live in Montana anymore; that pool, for me, began to stink. Perhaps in general, I find that watching people trapped in lives too small for them is awkward at best. Even in the movies.

Prepping to Go to California: Part II

2006-09-27T15:06:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday to Me today! Hooray!

So, moving to California....

We'd been planning this move for a while, but the free time to actually carry it out never materialized. My husband was (and still is) buried under some side work he was finishing up. That more than took up the two weeks we'd scheduled to have him off, plus nights and weekends since. So he would emerge from the basement occasionally to eat, use the bathroom, and remind our son who Daddy was whilst I packed. And of course, the side work was "For a Good Cause," and part of a longstanding relationship we couldn't just break out of at the last minute.

It was going all right until the other two people involved got a whiff of how much stress the project was under, and then they both flew away as fast as they could, not wanting to put themselves in a situation in which they were underpaid, underappreciated, and then overworked. Can't say as I blame them. But it does mean my husband is now the sole owner of all this junk. Sigh. Even an extra two hours per week from one other person would make a huge difference. But once the fingers are burned, never a charred digit did program.

Anyway, so my husband is basically AWL (Absent with leave) from the moving process, I'm uber-pregnant, and our two-year-old is hyped up, knowing that something is going on but not sure what it all means or how to handle it. It's all a blur, but I do know that the day before I threw a bunch of papers into a bag so that they wouldn't get packed away in an anonymous box. We also stacked a pile of stuff to take down in the car -- ladies who are eight months pregnant cannot fly, they must drive -- and taped to the wall a big note saying, "Do not pack!" Then we threw everything out of the fridge that we couldn't give away, took out everything we still had that was intended for Goodwill, and filled up two trash cans with bits of trash from every which spot.

But, somehow, and I'm not entirely sure how, it all gets figured out and moving day arrives.

On moving day, I showed the foreman what all we wanted to have packed. He thought we had 10,000 pounds of stuff (actually we had 9,500 - so darn good guess). We'd only budgeted for 7,500, so we hoped it didn't come out to much more than that. (It didn't.) The foreman started his team of five people in the backyard, with the shed and patio. That took a couple of hours. Then they moved into the garage and kitchen. My husband had ruthlessly pruned the garage, thank goodness, so there were only tools and essential things to pack. The kitchen was pretty straightforward, but I came to understand that 20 boxes of kitchen stuff is not unrealistic when you fill about half the box with packing material. I stared at what looked like a pretty blatant waste of material, but then relaxed, knowing that packing costs were fixed, and these boxes did have to live through being stacked to the ceiling in the truck, unpacked in storage, packed back up two weeks later, and then unpacked in our new house. So I shrugged and just watched.

Whoops! Then it turns out that the movers can't pack anything that's been "opened." So I packed what had been opened, and they marked it "Packed By Owner." By this time, Mom took my son on a walk, and on the way picked up protein bars for the Red Bull team. I was afraid they would crash about 3 pm, collapsing on top of packed furniture and unpacked computer parts. (They did not stop for lunch.)

So here we are, one big pregnant lady, five burly men, and enough paper to pack up three million dollars' worth of china, all madly stuffing boxes full of stuff.

Prepping to Go to California: Part I

2006-09-27T14:26:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything here, and the following update should explain that quite clearly.

First, I'm having another baby in THREE WEEKS. This means I have been Really Darn Pregnant for quite a few weeks. But I do have surprising energy, which is good. Particularly good, that energy, because here's what I've been doing since the end of August:

1. Arranging to become my father's conservator. Not easy. He was in a very serious car accident at the end of April and now needs some help getting his feet and cerebellum back underneath him. He was always the brilliant but absentminded professor type, and now he really falls into the "excused absence" camp. He was in a coma for over two weeks, had brain surgery, and then rapidly and tumultuously came out of his coma and rocketed back into daily life, albeit in a very off-center sort of way. Think of someone walking around at an 18-degree angle, and that's about where we are. The most noticeable piece is that he has skipped from robust middle age to old age in a matter of four months. He's now a Grumpy Old Man, and behaves as such. Grump grump grump..

2. Managing the nine thousand people who want money for Dad's stuff but don't have it. And since I cannot sign his checks yet, I have far less hair than usual. However, since one does stop losing hair during pregnancy, I think it's nearly evened out. Let's hope that when my hair starts falling out again post-pregnancy I get credit for previously-removed strands.

3. Prepping for the entire family (me, my husband, and my two-year-old) to move several hundred miles from rainy Portland to sunny Northern California. My husband has been down in California since August 25th. So I was prepping a three-bedroom house with a full basement, garage, and storage shed to be moved. Yes, we had movers, but have you seen how movers pack? Three shovels and one cylindrical metal tool about shovel-height were all put into a single large wardrobe box. So basically you have four tall brooms taking up as much space in a box as half the contents of my closet. Not exactly efficient. Further, when we did a check, we noticed interesting inconsistencies, such as that the patio table legs were packed, but the table top itself was sitting quite jauntily on the patio. I do not know how they missed that. (Though the cans of Red Bull - empty - I picked up and recycled gave me a strong clue.) In any case, I spent many weeks trying hard to get rid of things we didn't need, organize what we did want to keep, and somehow have everything well-enough set up so that five non-English speaking movers could come in and pack up our house, my husband's office, and all our stuff without me. I may have been present, but who can help five burly men hopped up on Red Bull all at once? Considering my exceedingly limited Spanish, I thought it went quite well.

So picture me, waddling around with my big tummy, attempting to chase a two-year-old (who far outstrips my top speed at the moment) while also attempting to put everything we own either into boxes or into piles that would later be put into boxes. Tip: never pack a toy or clothing box while the child is in the room. I repacked the same box four times before I got wise. And then TAPE IT UP IMMEDIATELY! Wow, was he ever angry when he figured out he could not open the box. If you have ever witnessed a two-year-old trying hard to get to one of his favorite toys, when he knows RIGHT where it is, and you are the reason he can't have it, you know what I mean.

It went much like this:

1. Sort kitchen. Keep this, toss that, put this in a pile to take to Goodwill. Put this box aside for E., this box for S., and this one for B. Now I have boxes for me, Goodwill, and all my friends. And I have sorted just two cabinets. Hmm.

2. Sort my half of our bedroom. Since I am pregnant, I have "Pregnant Clothes," and "Just Post-Pregnant, Baggy Clothes," and "Skinny-Post-Pregnant, When-I've-Lost-All-That-Ice-Cream-Weight Clothes," and "I Will Never Wear These Clothes." So once I had sorted Maternity, Baggy, and Skinny (labels I thought of later), I then had the fourth category to haul to Goodwill. Yet, at this exact moment, all my friends announced their intentions to pick through them and take some. Now, I knew this was a recipe for disaster, because I would be running something like a free store, with all my friends expecting that I wouldn't give them away until they'd had a chance to look at them. I would have to maintain a spot for them, in the midst of all the packing, and keep them from getting strewn all over the house. Now, this is next to impossible to do, especially with my son, who thinks that clothing left out is intended for him to play with. No, I would have discarded clothing covering every surface in the house, and some would no longer be wearable.

So, I didn't tell anyone, I just took many boxes to Goodwill. I then prepped myself that when my friends called, I would stare at them wide-eyed and say, "What clothes?" You know what? They didn't call. Now that I've moved, I'm safe in saying that they had to go, should anyone call. (Female signaling behavior is never so easily mapped as when clothing is free. If I'd been charging for them, I'd have had a line at my door.) In any case, here's my recommendation for women who are moving: don't tell anyone. Just move. Keep the same phone number. Give the new renters or owners some cards to hand out when your friends show up at your ex-house. Then just be surprised when they call and query you. "Oh, yes, isn't it exciting??" you gush, "we just LOVE our new place! Come on over and see it!" If you move out of state, tell everyone very early on, and then announce a good-bye dinner five days before you leave. There will be no time for anyone to ask for a slow, leisurely picking-over. Of course, if you have friends who will just take everything and sort it out later, call these people immediately and often! Ply them with food and drink! And forward them on to me.

3. Break down. Cry. Eat some chocolate. Stare helplessly at the Stuff that has rapidly become Baggage. Read my son a story. Cry some more. Then eat something, and prepare to move on to the next room.

Repeat these three steps. Don't forget to stock up on chocolate. (For those of you who've never experienced pregnancy, or experienced it vicariously, please note that emotional swings, food cravings, fatigue, and strange behaviors are all normal. You must add these to your stress quotient. Divide by 3.2, and then multiply by ten. This is your expected stress level.)

In my next post... Moving day finally arrived!

Em-Tee: A Bit About My Home State

2006-08-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

When I was little I always wanted to be a writer. Be the one to hold the story in the palm of my imagination and marionette it to a literary victory. Then I discovered that perhaps the best way to learn to be a writer is to have an Interesting Life(TM). You know, have something to write about. So then I put writing aside and set out to have the very most earnestly interesting life as possible. I marched right up to Life, banged on its door, and brazenly announced my intention to have a keen look around. Would it be so kind as to show me the plumbing, please? I did so need a good understand of how to move fresh water in and the results of bowel movements out. And I have been so fortunate as to have many, many relationships that required a lot of flushing. If I hadn’t been so eager, at the age of eight, to have an Interesting Life so that I’d have something to write about, I probably would have been content to simply learn to, you know, actually write.

The Chinese have a curse about an interesting life. As in, may you have one because interesting lives aren’t all that comfortable to live in.

And then I walk around in my life, trying to interact with friends and acquaintances as though they are characters in my stories; trying to twine my fingers about their motivations. Doesn’t make for such a lovely lunch, let me tell you. People don’t like being under a microscope. I think it’s also that people don’t like being evaluated. I do mean evaluated; I think I evaluate my friends for their suitability as characters all the time. This evaluation is somewhat stressful for them, however. I suppose I must try harder to exude enthusiastic approval of them as persons if I am to keep up a below-the-covers analysis of their ability to play a plot piece. I am not subtle, however, so this is not an easy task!

Along the way

So interesting to remember Montana. Growing up there was both a lesson in loneliness and desolation as well as a close-up view of the brilliancy of what it is to be human. Compassionate, wonderful people, awful weather, and a culture that punished weakness harshly. I grew up in Montana in an in-between time, before the dot-com boom and California real estate money turned it into a trophy town, divided sharply between the haves and have-nots; and after the time of O’Toole, Rankin, and Mansfield, whose careers were carved out by populism, progressivism, and activism.

Activism has returned to Montana, in the form of nearly epidemic environmentalism. But populism and progressivism have, in large measure, given way to neo-conservatism. Progressivism in the community was such a brief, shining moment for Montana; rugged individualism drips like honey from the very word “Montana,” and around the corner was the bracing and yet unforgiving movement of neo-conservatism. (How many other states have an SUV named after them, trying to capitalize on that rugged, self-made feeling?) Progressivism had such a short time to thread itself into the culture; Montana could hardly be expected not to slingshot back to its roots. It was, after all, a state based on resource extraction and a nearly religious belief in property rights and fiefdoms.

But growing up then was certainly interesting. So much talent, with no place to use it up, pushed many a talented actor, musician, artist, even journalist out into the world with a huge sense of purpose. I suppose boredom might have been the cause, but I suspect it was simply the knowledge that somewhere else, someone else was doing something meaningful and transformative. Sitting at home watching the snow drift up was frustrating. Of course, a mere ten years later, a young man from a small town in Montana would publish a children’s story ("Eragon") that would become incredibly popular, and he and his homeschooled siblings would then live a life of dreams: money taken care of, they could fish and ski and hike and bake cookies, with the outside world dropping coins in their piggy banks for the pleasure of a few pages from his imagination. Brilliant. But, alas, many of us didn’t think of that, and thus ventured out into the world, mostly into upright colleges, bound and determined that we country bumpkins would show those city folks a thing or two about how smart we were. Funny thing was, the city people never said we weren’t. They just didn’t know much about us. A little group of well-educated kids from the middle of Montana with nothing to do but better ourselves was entirely welcome; it was we who made it a contest. There are law school graduates to this day who still get their chuckles out of describing how they bested some Ivy League stuffed shirt. But the only one thinking that’s funny is the law grad, who, deep down, is still afraid that being a Montanan requires proving something about competence.

To me, it’s never been about competence. Montanans are highly competent. What they lack is grace and humanity.

Noblesse oblige sort of missed Montana. The robber barons were at their best in that state, ripping resources from the earth and giving as little as possible in return. Even human capital was sacrificed, as poor Irish toiled away in the mines until their lungs filled with coal and their souls with unspoken bitterness of indentured servitude. Their too-proud, too-loud railing to the contrary, these families were in the grip of the robber barons as much as any Southern slave.

And yet, so many of us who were raised on a hybrid of strong self-determination and copper mine exploitation ended up with cases of terminal noblesse oblige. Many businessowners are now, I think, even more socially conscious than in other states, perhaps because for them the grief is still too near. They remember swimming in water that we later found out was dangerously contaminated with heavy metals, with no warning signs posted. You literally could die from ignorance. This seems to have given the population more of a sense of community, of responsibility to one another. Or at least the sense that no individual can escape culpability. If you can do something, shouldn't you? These big questions are thrust into focus in small, everyday ways it becomes hard to ignore. Should you tell the vacationers from out of state that the creek they are playing in has very dangerous levels of mercury, lead, and cadmium? That one isn't so hard. The next ones follow even more easily.

But in general, life is more laid-back there; you won't find many spike heels tripping around the malls.

The turmoil of an unhealthy social system rammed up against a harsh and achingly beautiful land came to the forefront quickly there. I like to think this is still bearing fruit.

I haven't been back in years, now. I was back for a few days a couple of years ago, but I haven't been there for any real length of time in a while. I still find the slow pace of life stifling, and find I prefer more urban communities. But there is a magnificence there. There are natural temples, far greater than any man-made, interacting with you nearly every time you step, or look, outside. Having mountains and rivers in front of you everywhere is something you can't help but internalize. Every once in a while I run into the enormity of its natural beauty. I often can't believe it was once Home... I do not remember that Home was ever that beautiful.

Stock Options: Father of Bridezilla

2006-08-29T22:04:00.000-07:00

I was reading a Miss Manners column the other day in which a gentle reader wrote to tell Miss Manners that his fiancee’s brother and soon-to-be sister-in-law announced their engagement 18 months in advance. The bride-to-be turned the color of something red when told that her brother’s sister and fiancé also planned to be married within a few months, the summer before her own wedding. She stormed and informed them it was “her summer,” demanding they rescind the ceremony and, presumably, wait until her “perfect day” had had its 18 months in the sun. Miss Manners, appropriately, lit into the subject of modern weddings becoming a grand excuse for egomania and, unfortunately, the “perfect day”, turning the planners into control freaks as they attempt to create an old-fashioned fairy tale on the modern front lawn.

The frightening thing was that not only was I not surprised, but I chuckled and remembered just such an experience in orbiting the egomaniac on her “perfect day”. It had been absolute hell. Miss Manners claims that getting married is not an excuse to trod all over other people, but this trend seems to be rapidly changing. I attribute it to the increase of general egomania and the rise of the yuppie.

Now, it’s admittedly difficult to get on too big a high horse, being sorta close to being a yuppie myself. We just bought our first house and have a subscription to the opera. We do not, however, own an espresso machine. I pray to the Wedding Gift Gods not to give me one, so that I have one solid reason to plant me in the non-yuppie camp. (Our recent house purchase, however, netted me another one: I now own a freezer, complete with meat older than my Debbie Gibson cassettes.) Back to the point. The 90’s gave rise to a huge class of yuppies, fresh out of college/grad school and into high-paying jobs with stock options. Remember the VP of Juno, who dated (and allegedly punched in the stomach) a colleague, and then fired her? The 24-year-old VP was saddled with a sexual harassment lawsuit, and the business world collectively hung its well-educated heads.

The point here is that with an entire class of young professionals out there who were making big bucks straight out of school, the “upwardly mobile” part of yuppie began to take on frightening heights. Just how high could this go? We found out that Earth still does have a gravity policy, as many dot-coms crashed, nine eleven happened, and the barely post-pubescent crowd stopped skidding into executive offices at the speed of light. How did this all begin? Good question. Some believe that Bill Gates’ Geekiest Generation started it.

The geeks took over, and I for one was not totally unhappy to see that day, being taunted by wealthier and somewhat snobby cousins about being a “nerd” in my younger days. However, the point remains that geeks are not well-known for their ties to society and willingess to lead in its well-being.

Still, how did we get from the rise of the geek to totally self-absorbed new money? It seems to me that we’re really just enduring the rise of a different sort of gentry. It happened in the South; plenty of carpetbagger wives with new money went nuts, and the old South shook its head in embarrassment. But this is a new sort of gentry; one that has the opportunity of education and the motivation to use same to go out and make boatloads of money, which become power and influence in this country. And of course, the main difference is that we really are getting closer and closer to a meritocracy. At least, a meritocracy culled from the privileged, educated elite who can take advantage of market forces ahead of time. Is that so bad? Not especially. But I don’t expect my friends to stop going Bridezilla anytime soon.

Intro to Some Fiction

2006-08-29T21:46:00.000-07:00

I have decided that my virgin collection and emotional cauterization are all fodder for a book. If I can ever get enough sleep to have an imagination. I think mine left for the Bahamas. Along with my biceps. I think my imagination and my biceps are having a keen time poolside. They've ditched my thighs; left them here with me. Probably figured they’d be a drag at the swim-up bar. Assholes.

So here’s a go at some fiction………………

What is there about googling old schoolmates that makes a person feel semi-incompetent and yet highly motivated at the same time? One girl is a high-powered environmental lawyer in the Bay Area, after having gone to study law at the We Only Let Five People in Each Year and It Will Never Be Mere Mortals Like You University. Yet another won a Rhodes Scholarship to study Afghanistani parasites and spends her weekends counseling former garment workers on how to sue the pants off the evil corporations who drove them into sexual slavery. Yep. Somehow, I am motivated to totter off to the kitchen for a glass of wine.

Except that my tottering is a result of pregnancy, which means I can’t have any wine. Blast those overachievers anyway. I hope they have shallow relationships, bad sex lives, and… and… and have acne, all because they are so career-oriented.

What’s wrong with me? Why do I have any bitterness towards these people? It’s ridiculous. I shared classes with these people, earned similar grades and was (am?) of similar intellectual capability. So why do I begrudge them the choices they made? Does it have anything to do with the fact that they can now afford the car I want, can fit into pants I can’t, and can probably even eat Oreos without justifying it by scraping most of the mayo off the turkey sandwich preceding it? Well, not really, I guess. I mean, they could always eat what they wanted. The fact that they now wield so much buying power that seems out of reach for me might be hard, but really, I don’t think it’s that.

I think the fact that I took my first two years of college to bootstrap myself out of my parents’ divorce – all while denying it was affecting me, of course – and then spent my final year, while I was supposed to be working on my thesis, babysitting a dangerously depressed boyfriend really shot in the ass my chances of ever being named a Rhodes scholar. And I'm bitter at anyone who didn't fire a shotgut into their own behind, I suppose. (Snort. In their defense I suppose when your tush is that small, it's difficult to aim. Grunt.)

But let’s face it: I did it all to myself. Did I make my parents get divorced? No, of course not. But getting over it and (not) dealing with it, that was something I did (not do) all on my own.

I guess I wish I’d done better. Or wish I could go back and actually perform at the level I expected of myself, and that everyone else expected of me, too. Well, actually, had I done that, I wouldn’t have been in the right place at the right time to meet my husband. And I certainly wouldn’t ever take that back.

So I guess I’ll try not to be too bitter as these women conquer the outside world. I’ll be content with having conquered my inner world (for the time being). I’ll munch my Oreos, piously and piteously justifying it with mayo deprivation, and be thrilled about my beautiful family and wonderful, if dull, life.

Hey, and let's give that book a shot, shall we? I've always wanted to do it, ever since I was very, very small. At some point, someone I respected told me to go Have An Interesting Life, so that I'd have something to write about. Now that I can conceive of my life as dull, I see what a curse that person really laid on me. I'll see if I can remember the Interesting Times enough to share them.

Fiction 2

2006-08-29T21:37:00.000-07:00

My first story paid in the high two figures. At first I thought, sure, two figures plus a comma and some zeroes, and that starts to look really attractive. Heck, I could give up my day job for pay like that. Blink blink. Reality check: there were no commas involved. Nor were any enthusiastic zeros rushing to join the party. There were exactly two, and no more than two, digits. As in, less than one hundred dollars. Less than $100, viewed slightly differently. My spine slumped a little; I was suddenly depressed. I could purchase two shirts at the Gap, take-out for myself and my boyfriend for one night, and one of those bargain-basement sets of spoons at the Bon Marche. I could see them tinting a cheerful blue at the bottom of a dingy barrel in the basement of an active department store. I shuddered, thinking of myself pulling out that package of silverware as four hundred hosed and heeled women tripped along smartly above me, searching for $300 suits.

Why, exactly, had I bothered with a high-priced private education? I reminded myself that my degree had been in Economics, and I had escaped barely a semester from having a second degree in Foreign Lanugages. Ah, perhaps that was the ticket, then. One needed to major in English! But wait; they were all poor, too; living in small apartments and making their own craft furniture while hunting out jobs in the 2003-Tax-Cuts-But-No-Jobs recovery. I suppose that if you had a job, which many did not, then the tax cuts would come in handy. But it’s hard to see how tax cuts will help you when you’re not earning any of the money of which they’re designed to help you keep more.

Fiction 1

2006-08-29T21:33:00.000-07:00

Cadence stretched her legs out in front of her. She liked to do that; remind herself of her nice legs, a clear characteristic of attractiveness to the opposite sex. It seemed to take care of a small but latent tendency toward fierce competition with every other woman in the immediate vicinity. Clarisse wondered what would happen if those legs ever became unattractive. She suspected it would be taken out on every other woman in the room. Visions of Cadence’s fingernails ripping through stylish, shiny girlskin as she sliced right through the competition at top speed danced in her head. Something about the girl was primal. Something stirred in Clarisse at that, too. Primal was sexy, even in another girl.

“So you wouldn’t want to date an older man?” Cadence was asking, gazing at her sexy gams for comfort. Clarisse bit a fingernail. She wasn’t totally oblivious to the fact that she was serving as audience for Cadence’s exhibitionism, but it wasn’t obvious enough… she was just vaguely uncomfortable.

“No,” she said slowly, “I’d rather love someone I could grow old with.”

Cadence’s laugh was tinny instead of tinkly in her ears; somehow irritating.

“But you could grow old with an older man,” she said merrily. “He would just grow old faster.”

Clarisse shifted in her seat, unsure of whether the two of them were watching the same movie in the same theater. She suspected the movie was similar enough, but the seating arrangement might make discussion of the plot too difficult. Still, she would try.

“No, I’d rather have a man I could grow old with,” she repeated steadily, “than one I have to follow into old age at the end of a leash.” Cadence’s tinny laugh rang on an increasingly toughening ear. Then she sat up, ceased her self-admiration, and looked Clarisse straight in the eye. When Cadence actually paid attention to you, it was like a laser suddenly turning on, her fierce eyes boring right in. Clarisse sat back, unnerved. Cadence’s eyes half closed.

“I suppose it would depend on which end of the leash you had,” Cadence mused. Clarisse chewed a grass stem.

“I don’t think so,” Clarisse said finally. “Wearing it or holding it, you’re still attached to a leash.”

“But what if you’re holding him back, telling him to heel, and not fall into old age?” Cadence asked with a half smile. Clarisse had the unnerving feeling she was being toyed with by a wolf - restrained, but bloodthirsty. She shrugged.

“Or he’s running ahead, yanking me along into geriatricland with him.” Clarisse said mildly. “The distance between us means that one of us is always disconnected from the other, and pulling us together is always pulling someone off balance.” She chewed absently. “I want a partner, not a pet.”

Cadence raised an eyebrow. “What if you’re wearing the leash, then?” She asked in an amused voice.

“I don’t want to wear a leash.” Clarisse said simply. “Do you?”

Cadence seemed to think it over. Finally she started chewing grass, too, and silence reigned.

“It’s a matter of perspective,” she said slowly. “Suppose you’re standing in a beautiful park. You’ve got the finest ponds, beautiful scenery, a gorgeous place to live. No worries about enough to eat or cold weather.” She paused. “Now suppose that you can only be in that beautiful park if you’re older and accomplished, or with someone who is.” She chewed the grass thoughtfully. “The difference between total freedom and a long leash isn’t so bad, and when the alternative is finding a different park, it becomes obvious.”

Clarisse was halfway horrified. “So you’ll take a leash over freedom?”

“No,” said Cadence slowly. “I’m saying that perhaps I don’t mind a long leash. There are many things to be learned with a lot of free time and independence. It’s not just the park,” she said as Clarisse’s emotions crept through to her face, “it’s the kind of relationship. Perhaps I’d rather have my independence; a partner not tied too closely. And an older partner.” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "One who is already refined, already civilized."

Clarisse considered. “So,” she narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, “you enjoy the leash?”

Cadence laughed suddenly, too merrily. “Oh, what are we even talking about? Leashes and parks. As if we were dogs or something. Let’s get in the pond, shall we?” Cadence got to her feet and started toward the pond.

Hurricane Espresso

2006-08-28T09:43:00.001-07:00

I was reading about Hurricane Ernesto and thought I saw Hurricane "Espresso." Somehow, this made me giggle.

I think it made me giggle because the reality of our modern life is that unless you are in the middle of Hurricane Ernesto yourself, you're probably in the middle of Hurricane Espresso. That's the one taking place at Starbuck's or Coffee People... about eight women in designer jeans and expensive haircuts, phones glued to their ears, chattering away about business -- or pleasure -- in near-total oblivion to what is going on around them.

Now, I've seen "The Devil Wears Prada," and you have to admit that the heroine of the story has a point: pretending you don't care about what other people think is self-delusional, because very often it really does matter in your life. And not in some insignificant way, but in job opportunities, at social functions, and in the many other ways that people slide together, or past each other, in the great game of Life.

Having grown up in Montana, I can tell you that in that time and place, wearing what the Devil's Personal Assistant wore in the movie would have not only made you a laughingstock, but you'd have frozen to death besides. It's really not a guffaw-worthy thing.. it may seem like most of us look at crunchy, out-of-touch Montanans on the one hand and call them backwards hicks, yet we are secretly glad to see those hangers-on who sport the very latest (if laughable) fashion trends get a come-uppance. Yes, we think, we are blissfully in the middle, purchasing reasonable yet mainstream items, fitting in (unlike those trail-stomping Montanans) yet not selling our souls to do it (like those lacquered Auschwitz victims in the Big Apple). No, Vogue magazine may projectile vomit the stuff into the grocery aisle we're standing in, but we make far more conservative choices. And that, my dears, is where both the New Yorkers and the Montanans have it all over us.

New Yorkers might lack warmth, and their veins might have been starved into nonaction so many years ago that blood doesn't actually flow through them anymore, but in general these folks are smart, hardworking, high-energy, and not afraid to look stupid to corn-chewers from Middle America. Truth to be told, most of 'em are corn-chewers, and prefer that you not remind them of it. In any case, their greatest collective strength seems to be a penchant for creativity and self-determination. If they are fashion disasters, at least they determined that on their own.

Montanans, too, might be a bit gee-whiz, and are certainly more thin-skinned than anybody I've ever met in the cities, but in general these folks are smart, hardworking, generous, and warm. Nor are they afraid to look stupid to city people who sail in with yachtfuls of money. Whatever they might say to their rich clients, most Montanans have found a way to creatively earn a living in a desolate economy, and have come to terms with life in their own way.

In short, smart, hardworking, creative individuals exist in these two extremes in ways those of us who live relatively safer lives can't quite put our suburban fingers on. New Yorkers, for instance, take a big gamble that hard work will eventually allow them to live in something larger than a postage stamp. Montanans, by a strikingly similar design, must usually rely heavily on themselves in order to earn a decent living, because competition for high-paying jobs is fierce. So if you can't be the very best lawyer in town, you have to be creative.

I'm going through all this because I think these two sorts of people end up butting heads in much the same way as two matriarchs do: two Alpha females fighting to establish dominance. The only difference is the territory involved.

Where was I?

Ah, yes. Hurricane Espresso. So, I stand in line at Starbuck's, in the midst of five other women. Several have on designer jeans. One has steel-tipped high heels. And, this being Portland, Oregon, one has biking gear on. Three have phones strapped to their ears, one other is scoping her iPod for the latest episode of "Lost," and the last one is gazing out the window. I find myself wondering why it is that 20% of the world's business, 25% of its leisure, and at least 35% of its stress is experienced in the middle of this, the hippest coffee shop in the world. Businessmen have meetings here. Women escape from their offices here. And yes, some people actually do simply come in for the coffee. But at $4 a cup, I think there is definitely some serious signalling behavior going on here. As in, I signal to you that I am cool because I'm going to Starbuck's.

In fact, so very much of our modern life seems to be about signalling to others how cool, interesting, skinny, or suave we are. In a state of near-isolation, however. And I think creative, interesting people do it as much or more than anyone else. Like we're movie stars, caught up in our own movies. Just make sure a director catches us on the good side, and we're all good. That's the danger of being forward-thinking, creative, and individual: you can drive yourself right off the Cliffs of Idiocy all by yourself.

Spring Up?

2006-08-27T00:38:00.000-07:00

I had a great conversation with a fellow economics major the other night. We were at the going-away party for my husband (and me, and our baby, but it being mostly his friends... well, you know), and this lady was another female econ matched with a male computer science grad. We talked for a bit about babies and time off and meetings and so on, because that's where we are in our lives. Kerry was very nice, very self-effacing. She's pretty accomplished; having earned her Master's in her field and then rising to a management role within her economic analysis firm.

We talked for quite a while about the dearth of people who graduate with degrees in econ who cannot write, cannot express themselves clearly, and above all, who cannot analyze. Yes, ANALYZE. That, as an economist, is your JOB. We talked about needing to break down an argument, needing to pick into details, and needing to structure an argument so that it makes sense. Now this may sound lofty, but this includes things like, "If you have a column of numbers that is supposed to add up to 100%, then let's make sure it actually adds up to that, okay?" She lamented the lack of analytical ability amongst some of her more junior colleagues, and I lamented my own circle of friends' total lack of interest in economics in general.

All that done, we both tore off to our respective husbands, sweet, gentle, loving computer nerds who would not even speak the word "statistics" in front of us. We hung off them, soaking up the kindness vibes for all we were worth. (Why are women who are susceptible to hard-charging careers also susceptible to extremely teddy-bearish men?) This works well, and explains a great deal about econ-computer science matches. (I know of three in my class alone, out of twelve, who married computer science grads. Go figure.)

In any case, I ended up thinking that my education in econ was a wonderful, delightful thing... and I'm actually rather glad I don't work in the field. Kerry spent some time encouraging me to go back to work in it if it interested me, and I found myself glazing over like so many donuts.

I'm glad I studied econ, and I'm glad I learned to tear apart and analyze the World In Which We Live. I mean, let's face it: you may not be interested in the business cycle, or in the bond market, but Economics folk can tell you that it impacts your daily life. Yes, your daily life. Why? Well, I better keep this short, but essentially, raising interest rates affects the job market (usually). The job market affects how much money you can ask for, whether you can work from home, etc. Tain't sexy, but paying attention to the bond market is a good idea if you're deciding how hard to push for that next raise.

Now, you don't actually have to pay attention to the bond market on a daily basis. But if you know what general trends are and how they work, you can think ahead. You can decide not to buy a house for about five months or so because certain super-spendy markets are actually sliding sideways and might actually fall... so you can get more house for less money, and spend that money on shoes. Or purses, or iPods, or whatever. You get the idea: these things matter to YOUR life. If you don't get the whole general trend thing, you can ask someone who does. This is why economists have jobs!

So I'm very pleased I studied this stuff... I feel quite empowered to take on just about anything, moneywise.. I might not know, but I can find out. (Granted, my relatives don't actually listen to what I say, and have occasionally lost boatloads -- well, perhaps small raftfuls -- of money because of it, but when I actually have the opportunity to influence decision-making, it goes well.) It's given me the ability to run my husband's business, understand tax consequences of purchasing, and do all the bookkeeping for about three years. And I now know that I hate it! Actually, I just hate all the tedious recordkeeping that is necessary in order to do the job well -- such as bookkeeping. Actual accounting is really quite interesting. Just as soon as I can afford a good, anal retentive clerk, I'll be in good shape.

What rocks: ah ha! I remember we bought two laptops last year. And those are dee-DUCK-tible! What sucks: now if I can just find those receipts. I know they're here somewhere. Darn it, here's Thomas the Tank Engine, and some blocks, but --- oh good. The receipt is covered in crayon.

And let's see, there was that horrible SUV we had to rent in order to move all those servers last year. Again, dee-DUCK-tible. But it was really awful... the backseat was about a mile from the front seat, which made it impossible to hand a bottle back to an unhappy 6-month old, and the center of gravity was higher than Indonesian inflation, which made every last gust wind a potential flipping hazard. Oh well, dee-DUCK-tible... now where is that blasted receipt? Oh, right, I forgot: after a half an hour of screaming at the top of his surprisingly well-developed lungs, my 6-month old got fed up with his lack of milk and vomited all over the place. That receipt has gone to the Great Paper Mill in the Sky. (I wonder if they smell as bad up there as they do down here?)

What this really all comes down to is a simple realization: having the knowledge and ability to treat some portion of the world in a scientific sense gives one the stability to leap off the infrastructure of the world and reach up into its more fulfilling places.

You could say, I suppose, that understanding how the bridge is put together better enables one to jump off it, but that's not really what is meant. It seems to me that once you 'get' How Things Work in some meaningful sense, in some field, over some period of time, the more likely you are to throw the whole thing in one morning, accept that there are some things you don't need to know, and just enjoy life. You could do it or make it or build it if you wanted to, but sometimes it's nice just to float in a relaxing bubble bath and let the world move on. Sometimes, the greater the depth of understanding, the lighter one can float.

Now, I know many people who don't do this.. they don't give it all up and just be a person for a while -- they just haven't made any effort to understand or think deeply. It's sometimes hard to tell the difference between people who've made the effort to understand their world, think critically, and make conscious choices about what they allow to fill their time and consciousness, and people who've never bothered. Easiest way to tell: take a movie that depicts the Civil War in all its incivility. People who nod knowingly and look slightly pained have already heard the stories, and know the reality. They just decide not to be weighed down by it. Then there are people who are genuinely surprised at the brutality their ancestors visited on one another.

After some thought, I have decided that I'd rather know, and have to let go of it to enjoy life, than not know. I might never be pained by it, but I don't think a full life is defined by lack of pain. If you're willing to let painful things pass through you, you can know without having knowledge weigh you down. It's when pain gets stuck in you that you can become.. broken, somehow.

So, I am glad I have the tools to deeply understand some things. And equally glad that I don't feel an addict-like compulsion to do it regularly.

Pruning the Neurons

2006-08-21T21:57:00.000-07:00

Did you ever wonder if perhaps the whole neuron-pruning concept, intended to help parents figure out how to stimulate the heck out of little brains whilst their neurons were still winding their way to genius, was really a way of telling us parents that our lives were bloody well over?

Let me elaborate.

Certain research shows that the number of years of post-secondary education correlates directly with IQ and the decline of mental functioning. So if you can afford it, and your family won't abandon you for your incredible selfishness, just go to school for years! You'll stave off Alzheimer's, get a permanent email address, and be able to access reasonably affordable health insurance. Not a bad way to live, frankly.

However, supposing you can't afford to be a perpetual student, the fact remains that at some point, our brains stop being able to form new connections. So if you never took an art class, or a boxing class, at some point it will just be embarrassing for you to start. For instance, when I am trying to discuss money with baby boomers who have decided not to like discussing money, I find myself wondering if these otherwise intelligent, well-educated, and competent people simply can't grow that branch anymore. Their eyes glass up. They look like they'd rather be anywhere but here. (I really can't understand this perspective *at all*, I must say.. if you're interested in your life, why wouldn't you care that a simple decision can make the difference between working forever and retiring comfortably? I just don't understand why someone would willingly remain ignorant of the ability to control the direction of one's own life. But then I was an economics major and am a slave to decorators because I can't envision space usage to save my life.)

In any case, it is becoming more and more evident that part of the point of having children is to inculcate humility in parents at knifepoint. Yes, knifepoint. The same two-year-old child who says, "knife too sharp!" as he reaches for it; wants to look at his poop; and has trouble saying "bye-bye" to strangers because it is a tad scary will also put together blocks in ways I had never envisioned. He sees only what is delightful in other people... he points at some difficult people and says, "He go for nice walk!" These difficult people immediately become putty in his hands and will cheerfully go across town to pick him up a popsicle, while I seriously doubt I could convince them to pull me out of a burning car, even if I offered stock options. The two-year-old can do somersaults, hold his legs in positions my insurance will not let me even consider, and manages to find dirt a fascinating part of life. Which it is. Which brings me to my follow-up point...

I think perhaps a secondary point to having children is to prevent us from having pruned all but the most efficient and necessary branches from our brains. I no longer stride past the rosebushes, talking intently into my cellphone and forgetting they exist. Now we stop and smell them. I sometimes forget that dirt is cool, poop is kinda neat to look at, and there really is not anything more exciting than a big pool full of cold water on a hot day.

Possibly, their presence in our lives is intended to remind us that Life is most important. After all, when I consider what I want for him, it generally boils down to Getting the Most Out of Life. I am not sure at what point we all decide that Getting the Most involves meetings, performance reviews, and the Best Private School(TM), but I think little ones remind us that Getting the Most starts with Getting the Most Out of Yourself. And that it should be *fun*. Not awful, not always work. Fun is good.

Still, it is hard sometimes not to equate Getting the Most with Having the Most. Or even Doing the Most. My husband likes to say "You are not a human doing, you are a human being." But it is just so, so easy to forget that.

At what point did my value as a person become associated with my direct impact on GDP? I'm not sure. It seems to correlate in some messy, spaghetti-like fashion with my introduction to feminism, my early lessons in social responsibility and history, and of course the ever-present correlation between one's career and one's ability to buy better and better shoes.

Spanky New Bloggy Blog

2006-08-21T17:07:00.000-07:00

Welcome! Golly gee, here's my new blog. I started it mostly because my husband thinks that my cellular requirement to put words together would be best used this way. Sigh. Perhaps he's tired of hearing my chatter. He's really attempting to help me actually get back to writing, which I've been meaning to do for a while, because that's the kind of loving and supportive husband I have.

In any case, welcome to my first entry. I must now run off and eat something before my fetus demands something hormonally ridiculous. (Oh, yes, I am seven months pregnant, and counting.) This pregnancy should be much easier than the last, which was one big exercise in expansion and contraction of the severest sort. I gained 60 pounds, lost 70, and then became pregnant again. But we're managing much better this time, the fetus and I. Not having a desk job certainly helps keep the fat away. Although the real reason, I am quite sure, is my lightening fast two-year-old. A marathon a day. :)