Pa Rum Pa Pum Pum

Awhile back I posted a two-page story I wrote in a creative writing class, and told you I would post another. But I never did, because my fellow class members didn't like this one, didn't like the ending, didn't like the title, thought it was kinda boring, etc, and I was going to fix it before I posted it. And then I could never figure out what would fix it. But I went back and read the original this morning and I like it better than any of the versions I tried to "fix," so here you go. 

From a writing standpoint, the interesting thing I learned is that even though it is somewhat autobiographical (I started playing drums in my 50s), as soon as I made her a clarinet player, she became someone else, someone not me (I play flute). First hand experience of what authors mean when they say a story is based on their own experience, but not autobiographical. 

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When Judy Warren had been playing drums for about a year, her teacher told her she was ready to play in the community band. Judy looked at him doubtfully. She might be in her fifties, but she was still a beginner, and the community band was good. The music they played was hard.

But her teacher was persuasive. And he was the leader of the percussion section, so he promised he wouldn’t assign her any parts that were beyond her skills. She finally decided to do it, because she could always play triangle. Anybody can play the triangle, right? Ding!

Judy was ahead of some beginning musicians because she knew how to read music. She had played clarinet for decades, since she was eight years old at a public school in Dallas. She had picked clarinet because her grandmother had told her she should. Her grandmother had a shelf of Benny Goodman albums and thought he could do no wrong. In Judy’s eyes, her grandmother could do no wrong.

Nearly fifty years later, Judy hadn’t played her clarinet since she couldn’t remember when. In fact, she wasn’t exactly sure where it was. But her children were off at college, and she needed a new challenge, and one day at the library she saw a flyer advertising drum lessons. She remembered being envious of the drummers, who played at the back of the band and always seemed to be having fun. The clarinets sat right under the director’s nose and could never get away with anything.

So she called the number on the flyer, and started to learn. She was awful. At age fifty-four, you don’t very often do things that make you look bad, especially in front of people. It was embarrassing, showing up for her lesson every week and knowing that she wasn’t as good as the fifteen-year-old that had the lesson before her, or even the twelve-year-old that had the lesson after. But she kept going. Soon she was no longer awful, just mediocre.

Her friends thought she was crazy. She spent hours a week practicing, and no one she knew was doing anything similar. None of them knew how to play any musical instrument at all (except she found out her friend Liz had minored in piano performance in college but didn’t even own a piano anymore). They couldn’t understand why she would want to spend hours every week banging on drums like a teenager.

It wasn’t until she showed up for her first community band rehearsal that she realized why she had wanted to do this. Making music, each of you reading black marks on a page and playing your part, was miraculous. There was nothing else like it in her life. It was three months until their first concert, but even with all the rough edges of early rehearsals, there were moments that lifted her soul. She remembered what it was like to make something beautiful with a group of people who had nothing else in common.

Playing clarinet in her high school marching band had been her life. They sweated and practiced under the August sun. They stood nervously together under the lights waiting for half-time to start. They traveled (oh, those school buses) and won competitions. They banded together and thumbed their band nerd noses at their high school’s strict social hierarchy. It had been a place where she belonged.

Percussionists don’t play just one single instrument. There are snare drums and tom-toms, the big bass drum and the tiny triangle, marimbas and bells, cymbals and wood blocks and maracas and chimes. And tympani. There was one woman whose only job was to play the tympani.

As the newcomer, Judy played all the parts that no one else wanted to play. She counted and counted, then crashed the cymbals at the climax of the first movement. She played the wood blocks at the beginning of another piece, and dinged the triangle on the second and fourth beat of each measure for nearly a page in another. By the end of the first rehearsal, she was exhausted.

But it was fun. And the second rehearsal was even better—she was starting to learn her way around. She made the comforting realization that even experienced drummers get lost while sight-reading. She came home and told her husband that playing in the community band was the best thing she’d done in years.

During her third rehearsal, right in the middle of a tense moment in the hardest piece they played, she whizzed by the percussion table to grab the crash cymbals and her hip caught the black flannel tablecloth. Maracas, wind chimes, wood blocks, and two sizes of triangles went crashing down. She wanted to sink through the floor, because everyone turned around to see what had happened.

But after that initial turning of heads, no one said a word. The conductor didn’t even pause. One by one, for the rest of the rehearsal, the other drummers came by with amusement in their eyes and whispered their own mistakes. One had knocked over a similar table of instruments during a competition. One had dropped a pair of cymbals in the middle of a concert. Another simply said, “Welcome to the percussion section! We’ve all done it!” She suddenly, deeply understood why drummers were so fiercely loyal to each other. And she determined, just as fiercely, not to let them down.

7ToF: I find your lack of faith disturbing

We're headed out of town this weekend to go cross-country skiing a few hours from here. The place we're going is out of cell range--in fact, it's off grid-- so I'm writing this on Wednesday. If I remember how to schedule it correctly, this will work, right?

1. We are, as always, watching the Olympics in the evenings. I get addicted, every time. Before it started this year, though, I wasn't sure I would watch because like everything, it turns out the Olympics are problematic and awkward right now. But finally I just decided to go with it. I'm tired of making decisions because of the principle of the thing. Really, really tired. I love the Olympics. I'm watching.

2. This was fascinating: The Dissenters Trying to Save Evangelicalism from Itself by David Brooks. It's in the NYTimes, which is usually behind a paywall, but I used the "gift an article" feature so maybe it will work. It's long, but if you're interested in evangelicalism either as a friend or a foe, it's worth a read. It gave me some hope that maybe Evangelicals are finally starting to come out of the reactionary thinking that has defined them for the past (half dozen? forty?) years, but what gave me even more hope was reading some of the reactions. Sure, there were some who intentionally misrepresented what Brooks said, but there were also many who were either agreeing, or thinking about it in intelligent ways.

3. Another interesting read on an entirely different subject: Ezra Klein on whether or not policy really matters.

4. Skip to #5 if you're not a Star Wars fan. One of my pet peeves in movies is when someone walks up to a computer they've never seen before, sometimes even a computer belonging to aliens, and they know exactly what to do to save the planet or the human race or whatever. It happens in Independence Day, it happens in Rogue One. We watched Rogue One last week, and although I did like it better than I have other times we've seen it, it's just absurd at the end. But you know what I loved this time? Darth Vader in the final sequence. That's one of the few times the presentation of Vader on screen has lived up to the reputation he is supposed to have as the fiercest, most skilled warrior of the empire. It's terrific.

5. I'm having trouble reading right now. I know I'm not alone, but it's messing with my understanding of the universe.

6. I walked into Target today without a mask, and it felt weird. It was the first time in months I'd been in an enclosed public space without a mask. The store policy, which they announce over the loudspeaker every ten minutes or so, is that you should wear a mask if you are unvaccinated, but I'm pretty sure the people who are unvaccinated aren't wearing masks. I've had two vaccines, plus the booster, plus I've had covid. I'm pretty sure I'm as covered as you can get. But it still felt weird-- and oddly, I felt like I was betraying the other people who are still wearing masks. I'll tell you what, though: I'm not interested in wearing a mask forever. *shrugs* But when I went to Costco later, I put my mask back on. Baby steps. 

(For the record, Montana doesn't have a mask mandate. I'd guess the percentage of people wearing masks in public spaces runs 10-20% in our town, higher in some of the larger towns, and zero in the more rural areas.)(Our county has a population of about 100k divided up among four towns, making it one of the more populous areas of the state. One of my favorite Montana moments occurred after we'd lived here for several years when a co-worker told me she wanted to move back home to a more rural area because she didn't like living in a big city.)

7. I might wear a mask on airplanes forever, though. It's so nice not to find out you have a cold two days after you get home from vacation.

That's all. Have a nice weekend.

(for the non-Star Wars nerds, the title is a Darth Vader quote.)

take a bite of this nice shiny apple and learn to see

I was raised Evangelical. My dad was an ordained Baptist minister, although he chose to go into academia instead of the pastorate. I spent my childhood going to church every time our church was open. I went to Christian camps in the summer, I sang in the youth choir, I listened to Christian music and studied my Bible, and I prayed a lot. When it came time to choose a college, I chose an Evangelical Christian one, because of course.

I believed. I bought the whole thing, the whole ball of wax, the whole shooting match, every cliché you can think of. I did all the things, and I had a lot of cool experiences as a result. I went to Explo '76 in Dallas with my parents and heard Billy Graham and Andrae Crouch, and we seriously believed the world was being changed. I attended concerts by Second Chapter of Acts and Amy Grant and others I can't even remember that left me feeling joyously transcendent; I went to fireside talks at camp (and even gave a couple when I was in college) that felt meaningful, like we were really making a difference. I believed it was all about love, God's love, and as Christians, our love for each other. They'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love.

But the chinks in my faith were already starting to show, because (of course) Christians don't always act in loving ways, and Evangelical theology usually ends up more about whether or not you've got it Right, whether or not you are correctly supporting the party line, than whether or not you are acting out of love. Going off to a Christian college didn't help. I thought it was going to be like four years of going to my beloved summer camp, but it was just like high school. There were cliques and popular people, and the kids who came from wealthy families or famous Christian families were more popular than the rest of us. 

I had some great experiences there, and I will never regret going. But it didn't help my frustration with the limitations of the theology I was being taught, the theology that we weren't allowed to question. There were certain ways of thinking about the Bible and heaven and hell and salvation that weren't optional. You couldn't say, "The Bible is an amazingly varied historical document with the wisdom of the ancients embedded in it, the history of the Jewish people, and the start of a new religion as described in the Christian New Testament, but I don't believe it contains literal, word-for-word instructions for right now." If you said something like that, you were wrong. Not just a polite disagreement over the dinner table, but you-are-going-to-hell Wrong.

I didn't know there were any alternatives. I thought you either were a Christian (which for me, back then, was synonymous with being an Evangelical Christian), or you were going to hell. I didn't find out until I started visiting other churches in college that there were people--millions of them-- who considered themselves to be Christian, but who didn't believe in the Bible the way I was raised to believe. I thought it was either believe the whole thing, or you're out. And being out was unthinkable, because I had a whole life of sweet, lovely, transcendent spiritual experiences that I equated with being Evangelical. 

But by the time I was 23 or 24, I just couldn't make it work anymore. I started attending one of those other churches, and I gradually extricated myself from the way I was raised. It's a long, slow process that involves a lot of grieving for the way you thought the world was, and the people you wanted to belong to, not to mention a fair amount of self-judgment because why couldn't I make it work? If you're going through it, all I can say is: just keep going. It gets better. But you never entirely get over it. My heart still lifts when I hear those old Evangelical songs.

Then the Moral Majority came along, and Evangelicalism became even less recognizable as the religion of Jesus who transformed the world through subversive acts of love. It became the religion of purity, the religion of 1950s sexuality, the religion of outward acts of moral conformity that had nothing to do with what was happening in your heart and mind. And then Trump happened, and I just can't even begin to figure out how the religion I believed in so deeply when I was growing up has turned into the mass of lies and delusions and the judgmental lack of mercy that characterizes the far religious right today. It breaks my heart that good-hearted people are being preyed upon by power mongers and conspiracy theorists who get a charge out of proving that they can delude people into believing whatever they make up. ---------

-------- This is another one from my drafts folder. I think I felt like people who are new might need some background, but it is surprisingly difficult to believe that this is interesting to anyone but me, so it has been sitting there for months. Also, I compressed a very long, convoluted process into a handful of paragraphs, so if it sounds ridiculously over-simplified, that's because it is. I spent a couple of years in my old blog writing about the process of leaving my childhood faith behind, and even that wasn't enough to really describe it. But at least it gives you a bit of context.

This week's nostalgia listens: Peace of Mind by Boston, and Jet Airliner by Steve Miller Band. I think after this week I will let you find your own nostalgia listens, because the ones that take me right back are going to be different than the ones that take you back. The trick to finding a good one is to find one that you haven't heard much in the meantime. I went through a Led Zeppelin phase when I was in my 40s, so "D'Yer Mak'er"-- which used to take me straight back to the summer between fourth and fifth grade (for very specific but boring reasons)-- now reminds me more of being 44 than it does of being ten.

Have a great weekend.

anger, part one

I've been sick this week-- not deathly ill, just viral yuckiness. I did finally get a covid test yesterday, which came back negative today, so at least it isn't that. But I spent an outsize amount of time sleeping and sitting on the couch, and not enough time thinking about what I wanted to write this week. So I'm pulling this one out of the drafts folder at 11pm on Thursday night, even though I'm not sure exactly where it's going. If I ever get around to writing part 2, we can both find out.

I've been thinking about anger, lots. Both thinking about it and also feeling lots of anger. I'm angry about so many things right now-- social injustices, lack of change, anti-vaxxers, corporations who are making millions off lies and "misinformation," things in my personal life, and of course there's always the hulking, looming shadow of the pandemic in the background. 

How can you be angry about a pandemic? It's completely out of my individual control, although of course I'm doing my part to stop the spread, and it's no one's fault. What a waste of energy, to be mad about a virus. It's just out there, doing what viruses do. And yet, I am mad about it. I'm mad that I haven't been able to travel freely in two years, I'm mad about events that have been canceled and plans that have had to be changed, social occasions that didn't happen, community groups that have acrimoniously split over covid arguments-- it just goes on and on. 

What to do with all this anger? Where to direct it? I don't know. I'm working on it. Maybe I'll have answers in part 2, but probably not. The thing I've been thinking about this week, though, is the frequent disconnect between anger and having a spiritual life.

Having a spiritual life is an integral part of feeling healthy for me, but it's hard to find a spiritual "path" (sorry, I know it's a cliché) that makes room for anger. Being "spiritual" is supposed to be the same thing as being calm and serene, right? It's supposed to be about floating through life on a fluffy cloud of unwavering trust that God is in charge (if you're theist), or peacefully (smugly) observing the crazy swirl of emotions and over-reactions of the less spiritual (if you're not). 

And that's just not going to work for me right now. Maybe it is because I'm immature and unevolved. But a spiritual life that's founded on dishonesty is hardly worth the effort, not to mention that it's pretty much the definition of hypocrisy. And if I pretend I'm not mad, or frustrated, or even sometimes despairing, I'm lying. I want to believe spirituality is about being real, being grounded in myself, in authenticity (hmmm, lots of buzzwords there). 

Maybe it's because traditionally, spirituality has been connected with various religious paths, and institutionalized religion has a vested interest in keeping its people wrapped in cotton wool, not asking questions, and not thinking about the ways you're being coached into supporting the status quo. 

No. I want a spiritual path that can deal with my anger. I want to be set free to feel what I feel rather than herded into following along. And that's complicated to figure out, because of course acting blindly out of uncontrolled rage isn't a great idea, either. I'm having a hard time right now untangling the beauty of a fully-present life, a life that includes anger and fear and jealousy and pain as well as joy and peace, from my own preconception of what a spiritual person should be like. And a spiritual person doesn't get angry??? That can't be right. 

Huh. That's where the draft post ended. No wonder I hadn't published it yet, because it's like half a thought. It may not even have made much sense. But maybe you will grant me a little leeway since I'm still feeling a bit sickly and I will try to explain better in part 2. 

In other news, one of the things that made me angry this week was watching women my age chase after youth. Give it up. Good grief. Why the hell do we care if a 16-year-old thinks skinny jeans have gone out of style? Why do we want to look like we're 35 again? (well, OK, you got me there.) but since it's not possible, why are we wasting time and money chasing after something we can't have?

Which is one of the reasons I post the nostalgia listens. It's a way of celebrating the things we know, the things we've experienced, that those teenagers haven't and never will. They do not know what it was like to hear "Sweet Baby James" when it was brand new, or "I Just Called to Say I Love You," or "I'll Take You There." And we do. So there. (We're also super mature. ha.) I'm adding links to those songs and they can be this week's nostalgia listens.

Twitterpated, part one

Like most of us who use social media, I have a love-hate relationship with it. I've written about this plenty before, it's not a new topic. My goal has been to "get a handle on" my usage, learn how to steel myself against the addictive qualities of The Scroll, and have a healthier relationship with my phone. Um, yeah. 

In the meantime, while I was figuring out how to be a Social Media Superwoman, I fell into a pattern. I would find myself doom-scrolling Twitter at 11pm, unable to stop. So I would delete it. For a few days, it would be such a relief. Then for a few days, I would miss the interaction, but not much. Then after a few more days, I would re-install the app, and think, why did I delete this? It's so much fun! I love these people! And for a week or two, I would healthily manage my social media interactions and everything would be great. And then after a few more days, I'd be doom-scrolling at midnight again. Repeat.

A few weeks ago it occurred to me, wait, maybe this is the way I healthily manage social media. I don't have to be all-in, I don't have to be all-out. I don't have to figure out what way smarter, more savvy people than me have been unable to figure out (how to resist the addictive qualities of The Scroll, which are purposely programmed in by evil geniuses). Maybe if I reframe the way I think about the cycle, this is how I do it.

So I've been through it a couple more times, and you know what? It works pretty well. I use my social media apps (mainly Twitter), making judicious use of iOS 15's productivity features (more about that another time). When I get to the point where it feels unhealthy, I delete it for a few days or a week. When I start to miss it, I reinstall it and start over. It doesn't seem right to manage it that way-- it seems like I should totally conquer my unhealthy habits, or if I can't, I should abstain 100%. And maybe that's the way it works for some people, and maybe that's the way it will work for me at some later date. But for now, this is the way I "manage" my social media. 

This was going to be a lot longer, but I'm out of time, and I always say I'm going to start writing shorter posts, right? So here you go. A short one. 

p.s. I remember my mom used to use the word "twitterpated," but I had no idea where it came from until I just googled. It is a song from the old Disney movie Bambi. Who knew? And since I didn't, that can't be this week's nostalgia listen, so hmmm.

OK, this week's nostalgia listen: "Jazzman" by Carole King. Listen here. She is a goddess. For extra amazingness, click here for "So Far Away." I wonder if I could find my Tapestry CD.

post-Beatles Beatlemania

If you were born in the fifties or early sixties, and you haven't watched Get Back: The Beatles yet, put it on your must-watch list. It's tedious at times, sometimes for long stretches of time, and we've fast forwarded over, um, a bit of it. But mostly it's fascinating. 

I will confess I was never a huge Beatles fan, at least partly because believe it or not, I was a bit young for Beatlemania--I was eight when they split up. But their music was everywhere in the sixties, the playlist of my childhood. They were so much a part of pop culture that everyone knew who John, Paul, George, and Ringo were. 

But it turns out, they--the four Beatles-- aren't who I expected them to be. Watching them interact with Linda's daughter Heather is just sweet, there's no other word for it. And I've always thought that John was sort of self-consciously art-y and pretentious, so that if I'd known them, I would have been more on Paul's side. But if I'd had to listen to Paul's long-winded, half-whiny lectures for ten years, I'd have wanted to exit stage left, too. Immediately. Good lord. 

Interestingly, even though he's easily the one who talks the most, he rarely wins out-- witness his long argument about why they shouldn't do a rooftop concert (ha). And however arty and avant-garde John and Yoko were, John is also kind of hilarious. He's the one who's always goofing around, trying to lighten the mood.

Watching them work, you wonder that they ever got anything done, they spend so much time clowning around and goofing off and trying this and trying that. It's probably exactly the way musicians write songs, I've just never watched it happen. You can tell that the whole enterprise is frequently in danger of completely coming apart (and it did, a year later, but this is not the last album they recorded--that would be Abbey Road-- even though it was the last to be released, so they lasted through at least one more set of studio sessions). But you can also tell that they are deeply, deeply embedded in each other's lives, the irritating teenage best friends that you can't quite live without.

When they're working on one of their iconic songs and they don't have the words or the melody quite right yet, you want to yell at the screen, No, you dummies!! That's not how it goes!! It's "attracts me like no other lover," not "attracts me like a cauliflower" (granted they're joking around with the cauliflower but they haven't yet come up with the words we all know by heart, and it seems like it should be so obvious). 

And then suddenly they get it "right," i.e., the way we know it's supposed to go, and it's like the finicky car engine you've been fiddling around with for days suddenly starts up and runs smoothly. I confess, I've been a bit obsessed. In case you couldn't tell.

Get Back is only on Disney+ right now but I suppose eventually it will be released more widely.

the right write

For a very long time, when I was in college and into my twenties and thirties, I thought My Destiny was to be a novelist. I like to write, and I love to read novels, and I was convinced that meant that I should be a novelist.

But two things happened to change that. One was that I discovered that I hated writing fiction. I sit down to write a blog post with a fair amount of enjoyment, but writing fiction never, ever felt like anything other than having my fingernails pulled out one by one, or whatever other form of medieval torture you want to imagine here.

The other thing that happened was that I read two or three novels that were the kind of thing that I dreamed of writing, but were far better than anything I had ever managed to produce. I don't even remember what they were at this late date, but I remember several times putting a novel aside with a sigh of satisfaction/admiration/envy and thinking, No one needs me to do this because other people are already doing it better than I ever could. Who needs another coming of age novel by a middle class straight white woman who loves to read?

Then I had kids, and writing became something I only did in emails and book reviews and contributions to the comments of various forums. It wasn't until our younger child was in elementary school that I started writing again. At that point, I was still trying to write a novel, but I never made it past thirty or forty thousand words during National Novel Writing Month, and the rest of the year, all I felt was relief that I wasn't trying to write a novel. 

I started a blog in 2003 (several iterations back from the one you're reading now), and for a long time, that was enough to keep me happy, because whatever else I can or can't do, I do love to write. 

But I sometimes wish I'd had the grit and determination to actually commit to a big, publishable writing project, whether fiction or non, and stick with it to the end. I tried again last summer, but I don't think I ever made it past about 5,000 words. 

It's hard to know exactly how to interpret this. Our culture, especially the writing subculture, is so full of easy wisdom that assures you that you can do whatever you want to do, that all you need to succeed is the previously mentioned grit and determination, all you have to do is believe in yourself and keep trying and you'll succeed.

Seriously, at least three times in the past year I've seen tearfully joyful Instagram posts from first-time authors, sobbing, I've been dreaming of this since I was ten! All of you out there who are dreaming of publishing your first book, I'm proof that you can do it! Just keep writing! And yet, not everyone gets published. Not everyone has the writing chops, or the of-the-moment thing to say, or the built-in audience from podcasting or blogging or social media followers. 

I know that sounds like sour grapes, and you're absolutely right, it is. But my point isn't to whine (even though I am), but to state the obvious dilemma: is it really just not "meant to be"? should I stop even thinking about trying to write a book-length project? or have I not tried hard enough, persevered long enough, worked my ass off long enough?

There were another three paragraphs along these lines, which I have no deleted, because they were boring. You get the message. What the hell am I doing here.

I'm working my way through the half-written posts in my Drafts folder. Who knows what will be next. Have a great weekend.

Start by Giving a Crap. (Right.)

At some point last fall, I think it was in October when covid numbers were dramatically spiking here locally, some inner part of me threw up her hands and said I'm done. I was past the point of caring, past the point of wanting to waste my mental energy worrying and/or arguing with the idiots. Just done.

But the thing about a pandemic is that it isn't done when we want it to be done. It's done when it has run its course, and apparently covid-19 isn't done with us yet. And of course there's all kinds of medical people (including two right here in my house) who don't have the option of shutting down. They're still right there in it. 

After getting several unrelated nudges from the universe this week, though, I'm coming around. I can't stay checked out forever. As my Ten Percent Happier meditation said on Monday--in a somewhat different context-- start by giving a crap. Damn it.

So here we still are. And I'm sorting through exactly what I'm going to care about and what I'm not.

In other news, since I just checked, I can tell you with confidence that I have THIRTY-ONE half-written posts in my Drafts folder. Maybe one way of caring would be to start posting again. 

In the meantime, here is my list of my favorite books I read in 2021. Other than Deacon King Kong being my favorite, they are in no particular order.

Deacon King Kong by James McBride
Everything I read by Martha Wells (especially the Murderbot Diaries)
Good Talk by Mira Jacob
The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K.Jemisin
The Liars' Club by Mary Karr
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson

Honorable Mention: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, King and the Dragonflies, Craft in the Real World, Hamnet, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, Under the Whispering Door, Project Hail Mary, Assassination Vacation.

This week's nostalgia listen: Whitesnake, "Here I Go Again"

OMG you have to watch the video. Did we ALL HAVE THE SAME HAIR? My hair has never in my life been that long but I sure had the perm.

Palate cleanser: try this one (song starts at 2:54) (pass the carrots, please)(but they still have the hair)

oops

If you're new, "7ToF" at the beginning of a post title stands for Seven Things on Friday. So, yeah, I screwed up, because that 7 Things post went up on Thursday (which will be yesterday by the time you read this). I knew I was going on this trip, so I wrote the post mostly on Monday, then I was doing some last minute editing on Wednesday and I scheduled it to post on Friday. 

Then there was so much bad news overnight that I decided I should let it sit over the weekend and publish it next week. So while I was tearing around the house this morning getting ready to go to the airport, I ran in to my desk and I thought I un-scheduled it so it would just sit in my drafts folder. But I must have published it instead. If it seems a little too chipper for the moment, I agree with you. I was going to tone it down a bit. 

Too late now. In other news, if you've been out in the woods since last night and haven't seen the news, New York and New Jersey got slammed by the remains of Hurricane Ida overnight. Some parts of NY had 11" of rain. There was flooding, and the Newark airport (where I should be arriving right about now) was shut down for awhile. For some reason my sisters' flights were not cancelled, but mine was, so here I am spending the night at an airport hotel in Chicago, because routing through Chicago overnight was the only way to get to the USOpen by tomorrow. I have to get up at 4am to make my flight, but if the travel gods are smiling, I'll be there by 9:30am. 

I'm pretty positive that's more than you wanted to know but I feel like I should apologize for publishing that post on a day when people are dealing with floods and mud and no subway and even a number of deaths, and the news from everywhere just seems like it's getting worse all the time (don't get me started). More later.

7ToF: draggin' the line

1. I've been an avid reader since I was eight, and that whole time I've known, or been told/lectured/harangued, that it was bad to read curled up on the couch, or hunched over my laptop or e-reader for hours. But I like reading curled up on the couch, so I did it anyway. Turns out, it catches up with you. Turns out, posture is just as important as my grandmother always said it was. Good Lord, next thing you know I'll be telling you to keep your hair out of your eyes. My back and especially my neck are making themselves (painfully) known. Damn it. A new chair has been purchased, various stands/holders have been tried, and desks have been rearranged. Work in progress.

2. I've heard many, many people have not been able to read since the pandemic hit. Luckily, I can still read, I'm just having trouble with anything heavy or that requires deep concentration. Lighter reading is great, and here are the ones I've especially liked recently: Modern Lovers by Emma Straub, Bookish Life of Nina Hill or anything by Abbi Waxman, the Simon Snow books by Rainbow Rowell, and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. And also a couple that are more weighty but not difficult: Good Talk by Mira Jacob and How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu. Here is a link to the review I wrote of that last one, it's about four times as long as my reviews usually are because I had so many thoughts, so dangit, somebody needs to read it. 

3. My new favorite cookbook: I am loving Everyday Dinners by Jessica Merchant. Apparently her website, How Sweet Eats, is super popular, but I'd never heard of it until someone recommended the cookbook. She has some great ideas that are different than my same five dinners. So far my two favorites are also on her website: sheet pan gnocchi (the method for roasting gnocchi more than that particular recipe), and crispy smashed potatoes (I might have, um, used butter instead of olive oil, except for oiling the pan)(yum). 

4. Ten or twelve years ago, I saw one of those "inspirational" posters that said something to the effect of, "If you keep having the same problems in all your relationships, maybe the real problem is you." It hit me like a lightning strike, because I've had the same problems making and keeping friends forever--since childhood. So of course I was devastated to see The Truth, which led to years of self-recrimination and doubts and miserable awareness of how awful I am at being a friend, including basically just giving up on being friends with people, because obviously I am so bad at it. I'm kind of a loner anyway, so maybe I'm just not supposed to have friends, right?

5. Not kidding, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that it has occurred to me that this is true of everybody. Everybody has the same problems over and over again in their relationships, because we are who we are, and that means we keep on having to work on the same flaws we've always had. Honestly, who came up with that poster? They should be forced to hang out with themselves for the rest of their life.

6. Which sort-of segues into a sermon series I heard this summer by a visiting pastor on learning to live as the beloved of God. She based the series on a book by Henri Nouwen called Life of the Beloved. That led to a whole bunch of thoughts, and I already knew I was going to be revisiting the topics of faith, belief, and nurturing our spirits this fall, so there you have it. Stay tuned if you're interested, please come back in a few months if you're not. A large part of my project is figuring out what it means to be "beloved" if you don't believe in God, because a lot of days, I don't. At the moment, I don't know the answer to that question but maybe we can figure something out. 

(pause)(takes breath) it scares me to make an announcement like that, because now I have to do it and I'm not sure I have anything interesting to say. But you know, on the flip side, now I have to do it. Wait, that's the same side.

7. I know I said I was going to start posting again after Labor Day, but in late breaking news, I get to go to New York over Labor Day (insert whoop of joy here) after inheriting tickets to the USOpen from a relative who couldn't go. So it will be a little longer before I'm posting regularly, maybe mid-September. I'm just putting this up so you'll know I didn't disappear.

aside: I'm typing this on Wednesday morning and the CDC has recommended that even vaccinated people avoid traveling this weekend. So far, I'm still going. (I am vaccinated, for the record. I called and got an appointment the day vaccinations opened up to my age group back in April.)(And if you're reading this and you're not vaccinated, please just go do it. There are millions of us out here that are vaccinated and it hasn't killed us, and you might save a life.)

Hope you are surviving OK. It's a mess out there right now, isn't it? At least we have each other. *tune up soapy music* Or something like that. The post title is from an old 70s song (you knew that, right?) and according to reliable sources (*cough* Google), it refers to linemen stringing up electrical wires, i.e., just living their lives and getting by. If you haven't heard it recently, check it out, it cheered me up this week.