7ToF: Flatly I'll stand on my little flat feet and say: this post is all over the place. Good luck.

1. For some reason I had the urge to watch South Pacific this week, the 1958 version with Mitzi Gaynor as Nellie Forbush. It's an experience. My mom was a big Rogers and Hammerstein fan, so we listened to the soundtrack obsessively when I was in elementary school. Watching it again after not having seen it in at least 20 years was like being dumped right back into another time and place. 

It's often embarrassingly cringe-y. Bloody Mary, the white actors in full-body makeup playing Polynesians, middle-aged Emil creepily singing that he needs someone young and smiling-- Nellie can't be half his age. 

But considering the times, it's sometimes surprisingly sophisticated--that racism is carefully taught, not inborn; the hints of transgenderism; the moment between Nellie and Joe Cable, both of them madly in love with someone else, when they struggle with their pre-war small minds and the wider world they've encountered. (That's my favorite moment in the movie. Among other things to love--eg, the hauntingly bitter "My Girl Back Home"-- I can't think of another movie of that era that has a similar moment of pure friendship between a man and a woman. It's rare enough even now.)

2. But half the reason to watch it is so that you get the full impact of the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles' ironic South Pacific Medley. It's priceless.

3. There are a million and one reasons to be upset with the GOP leadership for caving in to Trump for the past four (five) years. But one of the worst is that they have erased the path out of the QAnon lies and conspiracy theories. There's not a chance in hell that the people who have been sucked down that rabbit hole are going to believe a Democrat, ever-- after all, we're the ones who are colluding in a Satanic pedophile ring, right? And we're bringing on Armageddon and the downfall of moral society and the demise of the family and all that rot. But no one the QAnon folks would be willing to trust is saying, "Look-- we're conservatives and we agree with you about a lot of things, but Trump is lying to you. There was no election fraud." (I mean, if the Dems had rigged the election, why did they lose pretty much every contentious down-ballot race?) So the QAnon people have no path out. Maybe that is the biggest failure of the GOP right now.

4. At the end of Avengers' End Game, I declared that I was done with Marvel. I've told you before, I really enjoyed the Marvel movies, especially some of the later ones (Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Guardians of the Galaxy). But it felt like they had their run and I wasn't willing to go back for more of the same. How many superhero stories can there be? I mean, when you get to the point where your superheroes are fighting each other (as they were in Captain America: Civil War), maybe the well has run dry. Enough already.

5. However. I keep hearing that WandaVision is really good. Hmmmm. Might have to try it. Let me know if you have.

Me, age 7

6. The photo is of me, as my ultra nerdy seven-year-old self. I'm putting it here this week because I've been thinking quite a bit about the blonde thing. I heard a black woman say in an interview last year that there is no more privileged person in the world than a blonde white woman. I wanted to object-- there's still the whole patriarchy thing going on, and you have to put up with blonde jokes and having your intelligence underestimated. But I also get what she meant. There are a whole bunch of men who are captivated by blonde hair. I don't understand it, and I don't buy into it for sure, but I also can't say I've never taken advantage of it. 

6a.  To be clear, I've never, ever, ever cried in front of a professor to get a grade changed, or to a police officer to get out of a ticket, or any of the other stupid things blonde women supposedly do. But I've politely accepted that certain older men are going to flirt or take extra notice, because even when it was annoying, it seemed fairly harmless.

7. You can see from the photo that I've been blonde for a long time. Sometime in my 30s, my hair darkened up enough that up until the pandemic shut down hair salons, I'd been getting it highlighted 2-3 times a year for ages. Once I couldn't get it done anymore, I decided that I would let it grow out and see what my natural color is at age 59. Honestly, I kind of liked it. It was a sort of caramel-y color, and in the summer when I was in the sun fairly often, it still had blonde-ish highlights. But over the winter, it really darkened up. So yesterday I went in, got an inch and a half hacked off (it was down to my shoulders), and got the highlights again. Mea culpa. It's the dumb blonde life for me.

Have a great weekend.

out of the deep freeze I cry. too dramatic? it's been pretty dang cold.

My family in Texas has had a rough week. My mom went to stay with my sister since the power at her senior apartments was out for four days. Not sure who was getting rolling blackouts, but my sister has had power all week, and my mom's place had no power from Monday until last night. But even with power it was a bad week because nobody had water. I'm not sure exactly why that was (the power was out at the city water plant?) but they were all relieved to have water again last night and be able to take showers etc. It's easy to snark about Texas's lack of preparation unless your loved ones are involved. 

We also had a bad weather week, but we're much better prepared. I've been able to hear the snowplows going up and down the highway several times a day all week, and the guy we contract to plow our neighborhood road has been by most days, too. Last Friday we woke up to -16 degrees, which is way too cold. There's winter, and then there's below zero, and I do not like below zero temps. For one thing, it's usually accompanied by barometric pressure swings, which means migraines. It was not a good week for me, but at least we had heat and electricity and running water. And even if our heat had gone out, we have a wood stove and good insulation and a closet full of down blankets.

In other news, I told you last fall that I would finish reading the books about racism that were still in my stack and let you know which one you should read, if you're only going to read one. It's an easy choice-- read Isabel Wilkerson's Caste. From my goodreads review: A few of the books [on racism] I read were heartbreaking but didn’t really change my understanding of race in our country. A few of them really did completely re-orient my thinking but were on the academic side and not something that a casual reader would push through. Then I read this one, and this is it. It’s mind-blowing—as other readers have said, there’s before you read it, and there’s after you read it— but it is readable and accessible. I would never say that it is an easy read— it’s too uncomfortable for that— but it’s not difficult to follow, and she manages to avoid the guilt/shame dump we've discussed before. Everyone should read this book.

I'm going to try pre-writing a series of posts, so I will be hit and miss for awhile. Since I already missed last week just because of weather and headaches, it's pretty clear I won't be able write two different sets of posts at a time!

Have a great weekend. Stay warm.

HEALTH.

I've told you before about my Thought for The Year. One year it was "lighten up," last year it was "pay attention." During 2020, there were some moments when the phrase "pay attention" would pop into my head, occasionally in surprising contexts, but also weeks went by when I didn't think about it at all.

So it seemed kind of pointless. This year, the first week in January, I decided that I wouldn't do one this year. Before the thought was even fully formed, the word HEALTH popped into my head. 

Me: That "phrase of the year" thing didn't really do any good last year so this year I'm not ...

HEALTH.

Me: No, seriously, I'm not going to do one th...

HEALTH.

Me: Health? 

Yes. HEALTH.

So, OK, looks like HEALTH is my word for the year. 

And honestly, the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I didn't exactly let myself completely go last year, but it was a shitshow of a year, and there were times when my own well-being just didn't seem all that important compared to everything else going on.

By the end of the year, I was no more stressed or exhausted than anyone else, but I was definitely stressed and exhausted. I had arrived there in my own individual way, and learning my way back has to happen in my own way, too. 

I've learned some things from all that lockdown time, some things about myself that I'd never really known, because who the hell thinks about what it would be like to be shut down for six months before it happens? 

First and foremost, I figured out that mental health takes some work. I've told you before that I have periods of depression and paranoia, and over the years I've figured out some ways to jostle myself along when I'm in the pits. But I don't think I fully realized that being responsible for my mental health means being proactive-- because at least some of the things that I need to be proactive about are things that happen without any effort when there's no shutdown.

For example: making it a priority to spend time with people I love, even if it's just a zoom call. Seeking out fun and laughter. Not letting myself get too bored.

And that's on top of the things that I already knew: avoid sugar and too much caffeine. Stay away from books and media that will leave me feeling dark despair. Get some exercise. Get outside every day, even if it's just for a few minutes. Hold on to my sense of self, the things I know about myself, so that I don't give in to pressure from others to do things I know I don't want to do. 

Vibrant health has a lot of components: healthy body, healthy mind, healthy spirit. Feeling loved and loving others. Knowing that you have something to contribute. 

I'm figuring this out as I'm typing. Maybe this will be an ongoing topic going forward. My version of health will be different than yours, but maybe we can think about this together. 

p.s. I hope you've been around long enough to know that I don't seriously believe I'm hearing a voice in my head. But I do have these thoughts sometimes that feel like they are from some other source. Sometimes I think it's because I spent so many years in therapy when I was in my 20s and 30s. I have an internalized therapist. Maybe I should give her a name. For example, a couple of weeks ago when I got in a weird situation with an acquaintance, my therapist voice wisely (and somewhat irritatingly) suggested that maybe a little KINDNESS and HUMILITY were in order. Apparently my inner therapist speaks in all caps. 

Have a great weekend.