The Urbane Homestead

ta da!

Yes, it's true. I really have, finally, graduated. For years I have been styling myself as the "most educated, least degreed" person I know, thanks to my years and years of graduate work without a conclusive event (i.e., the receiving of an actual graduate degree). But no longer, because now I actually have a graduate degree. It's not quite the one I expected, earlier in my life. On the other hand, an MBA means you have learned some things that people will actually pay you to know, which makes for a nice contrast with linguistics.

I have many plans to fill up the empty hours ahead, now that I won't be sitting through three hours of Finance class on a Monday night, or eight hours of Strategies of Growth on a Saturday. The months ahead will include:

• Training the dogs for Good Canine Citizen certification.
• Setting up a Torah study website for the temple. I already have a design in my head.
• Planning the vegetable garden ahead of time this year.
• Organizing the basement, so I have room for
• Making Art.
• Translating Crónica de una Muerte Anunciada (because I happen to have a copy and it seems as a good a way as any to practice Éspañol).
• Writing more.
• And of course, vacuuming. And working to pay off that student loan.

Have you noticed that in literature and myth teeth are a metaphor for power?

As we know, I'm perfectly willing to complain at great length about other people complaining about aging. But that doesn't mean that I myself don't mind aging. Au contraire, I mind it very much. Not because I fear the inevitability of my own death—the idea of ceasing to exist doesn't bother me, because once I'm dead, I won't care, so why be upset about it now?—although the thought of any of my loved ones shuffling off the mortal coil truly gives me the heebie-jeebies. A deeply selfish attitude, I know. And my distaste for the aging process is based on an equally selfish and shallow reason: I want to look good, and generally speaking, young people look better than old people.

Last week, I was reading an article in Slate Magazine about different kinds of wrinkles and how they form. It was decorated with before and after photos of Paul McCartney: the young. fresh, yummy-looking Beatle, and the wrinkly old Sir Paul.  Two things caught my attention about Sir Paul: first, he looks a little like my mom, with those high cheekbones; and second, boy, are his teeth yellow. Quickly reverting to the Me view of the universe, I wondered if my teeth looked that yellow, and if I looked that wrinkly and old (but without the palliative effect of an MBE).

So later that very same day, I found myself in the dental care aisle of Target, dazzled, as it were, by the variety of choices for the whitening of one's teeth. There are pastes, there are gums, there are little bottles of paint, there are strips, there are devices. It's not a good place for the green conscience, because mostly there's lots and lots of packaging. I stifled my eco-guilt and selected a largish plastic box of strips guaranteeing me whiter teeth in just seven days.

Eager to recapture youth and beauty, I rushed home and tore open the wrapper of the box, which contained four packages of seven individually wrapped blue strips for the upper and lower teeth, to be applied twice daily for 30 minutes. Two minutes later my trash can was full to the top with packaging, and my teeth were encased in blue waxy gel. Youth and beauty,here I come!

Seven days later, my teeth are a more attractive creamy color, an obvious improvement over their tannic pine look of last week. It was definitely worth it. But I did learn two lessons.

First, you can't answer the phone when you have the strips in. There's no way to talk without sounding like Sylvester the Cat. The library called the first morning I was wearing them to let me know I had (once again) returned a DVD case with no disc inside. Of course I immediately apologized, but you try saying you're so sorry with a mouthful of wax. I'm sure the librarian thought I was trying to weasel out of something, even though I did return the disc later that day.

Second, if you feel annoyed or irritated, do not clench your teeth. If you do, the upper wax strip will meld with the lower, and your teeth will remain clenched until your 30 minutes are up. Until then, you really can't talk at all, or even move your jaw. It's very tedious, but it does remind you to make sure your yard is free of rusty nails and other tetanus dangers.

I'm sure I'll have to do a tune up in a few months, but in the meantime, I'm trying to toss back my daily caffeinated beverages past my teeth without touching them. And there are lessons to be learned there, too....

One cup

You know how sometimes you're walking along the sidewalk and you see one lone shoe, dusty and tired, all by itself on the side of the road? You wonder how it got there—maybe it fell out of someone's unzipped backpack, or was dropped out of the window of a passing car by a teasing pesky younger sibling. It's hard to find these scenarios plausible, but it's not that hard to think them up.

I am, however, at a loss to explain the half of a bra that I saw today in the dusty grass between First Street and the parking lot behind Pizza Pino's. It was a plain black bra, the kind you wear for a "smooth profile," with no lacy bits or little ribbons or rosebuds. And there was just half of it: one cup, one strap, one little strap adjustment buckle. Where was the other half? How did the two get separated? And is there even a word for half a bra?

Somehow I think there's a story there that I don't really want to know.

Here I am

I know, I've been gone forever. The irony of it is, that I have an absolute ton of things to blog about. Let's just think of this little post as a toe in the water, with total immersion to come.

More about how busy I am, blah blah blah

I go through these periods where I get too busy to post anything. It's not that I don't have the time to write, or that nothing is happening worth writing about (because really, if I'm strictly honest, very little ever happens that's worth writing about). It's mostly that when I get really, really busy, I don't think about things that are interesting, or I don't think about them deeply enough to have anything to say.

I have a midterm this week, originally due tomorrow. Because work was very busy this week (we had our national two-day conference on Depression on College Campuses) and the professor indicated that he was open to extensions and rescheduling, I emailed a request to turn in my exam Sunday instead. "Extension granted," he replied. "You are a very busy lady this week." To which I thought, "Mah nishtanah ha leila ha this week," or, loosely translated, "And why should this week be different from any other?"

And yet, I'm not so busy that I don't enjoy things. I get to be home (such as it is; is a house without a dog really a home?) a lot and spend plenty of time with Joe and Henry. Spring is here and the yard is waiting. Knitting is getting done. I'm working on my shimsham step on the tapdancing board in the basement. It's just about right.

What I'm up to

A quick rundown of this week:
1. Operations Management class: two full days—dawn till dusk—of story problems. (Who could help but think of Gary Larson's Hell's Library, with nothing but books of story problems?) On the plus side I realised I only have about 6 more classes and then I'll be done with the MBA. I thought about turning it into a dual MBA/MIS but decided I'm a little tired of being graded.
2. Reading about Argentinian history and learning Spanish. I discovered a great two-birds-one-stone method: Wikipedia en Español. As you may know Henry sings in the choir at temple; two years ago the choir did an Eastern European tour that was a huge success (meaning that everyone had a great time), so this summer we're going to Argentina.
3. Practicing tap in the basement with Ginger.
4. "Cooking" with Joe.
5. Thinking about dogs.
6. Waiting for spring.
7. Oh, and working.

Ouch!

In the past few days I've broken two of my favorite pairs of glasses and sprained one ankle (mine). The glasses I broke by stepping on them. The ankle I sprained by, well, not stepping on it.

Henry was not home, and I had just put Joe to bed. When I'm home, I operate in two basic modes of activity: sitting on the sofa watching tv, drinking, and knitting; or running up and down our three flights of stairs (one day I counted 37 complete trips to all four floors before I gave up counting in disgust). You may already have divined that I was in the latter mode. After tucking Joe in on the second floor, I ran down to the first floor with some rabbit dishes for the dishwasher. Then I found some stuff in the kitchen that belonged in the basement. There I put another load in the washer and took the clothes from the dryer upstairs to fold. Then I ran up to the third floor to put some of the clean socks away (sorted by Joe, also known as the SockSorter 9000). Once up there, I remembered that I wanted to put a little brass hook in the side of the bathroom shelves to hang my hot water bottle from. That reminded me that I wanted to make myself a new hot water bottle cover, because the one it came with ten years ago has always been unsatisfyingly thin, both in substance and in charm. So I played with some of my yarn stash (from, appropriately, the "warm colors" bin) for a while. Then I thought it was about time to put the laundry in the dryer, so I ran downstairs, stopping on the second floor to hang up the green jacket I wore to work last Thursday. Once I got down to the basement, I forgot about the laundry, but remembered the little brass hook, and headed back up the stairs. Then I remembered the laundry so I turned back. Then I was flying through the air very quickly on a downward trajectory, with only just enough time to think "Uh-oh. This is really going to hurt," before I smacked into the ground in a crumpled heap.

It really did hurt, all over, but most of all in my right ankle, which was in pretty terrific pain. I wasn't sure if it was broken or not, but I was quite sure I couldn't walk on it. I was also pretty sure I was going to need help, and, since Walter is past his Lassie days, I called for Joe. After we spent a while in a "JOE!" "WHAT?" exchange, he finally came downstairs to see what I wanted. I knew he would be upset and worried, so I had tried to arrange myself in a less disorganized position, lying flat on the floor with my leg elevated on the stairs.

Joe was a bit scared, but when I explained that I was okay, but that my leg was hurt, he offered the (correct) opinion that it must just be sprained, because if it were broken I would be screaming. I said that it was important to put something cold, like ice, on it, and asked him to get me a bag of peas from the freezer. He returned a moment later with a cucumber. "How about this? It's nice and cool." I pointed out that there wouldn't be any way for me to hold the cucumber on my leg, and would he please get me the peas. He took the cucumber away and came back with half a bag of frozen artichoke tortellini.

After balancing the tortellini on my ankle, he sat down companionably on the step above my foot. After a few minutes, though, he huddled himself together and said he was cold. "Why don't you get your socks and your bathrobe?" I suggested. He said, for the first time ever in his entire life, "Well, actually, I'd rather just go back to bed," and added in a very reasonable tone, "I need my strength, you know."

I wondered if I should ask him to call Henry, who, on the one hand, was at a shiva which I wouldn't want to interrupt, but on the other hand, would want to be called home in case of emergency, and never having sprained or broken anything before (knock on wood), I truly had no idea how badly I was injured. On the third hand, I figured he would be home soon in any case. And at least it was clear that I had succeeded in not traumatizing Joe.

As Joe was heading up to his room, the front door opened, and I could hear Joe casually mention to Henry that he was on his way to bed and I was in the basement on the floor. A moment later Henry found me, and I finally got the attention and sympathy I felt I deserved: real ice, a bandage, help up the stairs, a pillow on the sofa. Time made it clear that the ankle was thankfully just sprained, as Joe had surmised, and not even that badly.

And as so often happens, it turns out that Mom was right. Soon after Joe was born, Mom stumbled on the side of a country road and twisted her leg. She insisted that it was just a sprain, and continued her walk for a quarter of a mile before having to admit that it was impossible to put any weight on her leg at all, which turned out to be broken. Okay, setting aside the fact that walking on a sprain is not really any smarter than walking on a broken bone, you have to admire her tenacity. But now I can see why—and Mom, I owe you an apology—it is really tedious! I am well and truly tired of the whole thing. From apple trees you don't get oranges. Camille I am not.

My plan is not to do this again.

Sum, ergo sum

I was reading an essay recently which described a figure in a painting as the artist's "altar ego." This prompted a whole series of emotions. First, I was sorry the editor hadn't done a better job of proofreading. It was an interesting essay, and the misspelling was jarring and obscured the essayist's point. Moreover, the essay was about the work of a very special childhood friend who is an extraordinary painter and musician, so I felt a little angry that the editor's shoddy work had detracted from the focus on my friend's work. And I felt a little relieved that I had noticed the typo in the first place, since I am a professional editor but a dreadfully lousy proofreader. Then it struck me—the heck with editing—an "altar ego" is exactly what I need to simplify my life.

She could be the me that has to do all the things I have to but don't want to.

She could go to work for me on the days when I have too many meetings and just want to stay home. She could go to parties for me where I know I'll feel out of place and awkward. She could go to the grocery store and the dry cleaners. She could clean up the cat barf and sort the laundry. Meanwhile, the other me, the nonsacrificial me, could do all the things I can't do because the things I have to do have sucked dry all my time and my stamina. That me could take up violin lessons again, paint the basement stairs a cheerful color, and start the vineyard I'm planning in the backyard. And, of course, she would write more often.

The fun never ends

I'm back. The last month has included: seven thousand deadlines, the high holidays, an office move, peak gardening season, another rabbit, and Joe's first visit from the tooth fairy (who should have gone to the bank for a stash of crisp one dollar bills at the first sign of a wiggly tooth, but instead waited until the tooth came out at 9:30 last night, and had to make do with a five dollar bill, which was so thrilling that the tooth fairy was awakened from a deep sleep at 3:00 a.m. for a high volume news update.) I've been careening from one thing to another like a billiard ball, but less smoothly. It's not just me; everyone in my office is operating on overdrive. I've decided on the perfect office move gift: I'm going to decorate brown paper lunch bags with the Depression Center logo, and pass them out (as it were) when people start to hyperventilate. But I feel much better now that I've had a chance to complain a little.

In other news, Joe is developing his sense of style. He dressed for bed last night in his pajamas that look like long underwear with a pirate motif; maps and ships and treasure chests and such. Over these, he donned a red t-shirt with a picture of a dragon, and sporty blue and green exercise shorts. He looked like a little bitty hockey player—and this morning, he had the missing tooth to complete the look. He's also planning to force his lovely curly hair to be straight by growing it long. Instead of growing down, like my bone-straight hair would, his hair in growing out, and then flopping over like a wilting wildflower. He looks like Einstein would, if Einstein were six years old and (in my, correct, opinion) adorable.

When to cry

My new job, while not itself of a medical nature, is currently situated within the University of Michigan Mott Children's Hospital. Most of my co-workers are centered up on the sixth floor, in a dedicated area, but I and a couple of others are on the third floor, in an odd little hallway that could very well be the inspiration for Being John Malkovitch. I have a nice set of windows in my office—that overlook part of the lobby. If I lean way, way over, I can almost see the feet of the giant plastic Big Bird down there.

The third floor, I discovered on my first day of work, is where Pediatric Surgery and the family waiting areas are located. There are tiny crib-shaped gurneys and little red wagons with pillows in them by the staff elevators, and great wide doors leading off into bright and stark hallways, and doctors and nurses in surgical garb hurrying back and forth. I don't have a lot of experience with hospitals or the medical world in general. I don't come from a family of health care providers; in fact, I come from several long lines of people who make a living by trying to talk other people in or out of things—lawyers, teachers, investment bankers. I don't consider myself squeamish, but I can't bear to think about people or animals suffering, and I hate gore, whether it's for entertainment or educational purposes. I confess I nearly fainted not once, but twice, watching childbirth films in Lamaze class.

Thus I was not prepared to be quite this close, on a daily basis, to children and families in pain. For the first two days, I wondered if I had made the right decision, coming here. I wondered if I might be able to find circuitous routes through the back halls of the hospital, so I could avoid catching sight of patients. I thought about trying to work at home.

But day by day, as I saw that the nurses and doctors who were hurrying about seemed to care about whatever task was at hand, and as I saw families talking earnestly with medical staff or clergy, and other families—with a tired-looking child in a little wheelchair—leaving the hospital, I figured out what everybody else already knows. These are the lucky ones. These children, however traumatic their experience here is, and however tragically sick they are, are in the very best place in the world they can be. If there is help for them, it is here. This is a place where hope is real.

Yesterday, as I was suited up in my tennis shoes and backpack, iPod in hand, heading out past the elevators for the trek home, I saw a woman sitting on a couch, alone. Next to her was a stack of little clothes—a tee shirt, jeans, socks, and superhero underwear—a special pillow, and a stuffed bear. She was crying, the way you cry when you are a good, strong person, but you are scared and exhausted and your heart just hurts. So I sat down next to her and gave her a hug and listened.

She told me all the things I know I would be thinking too in her place—how heartbreaking it was to see her seven-year-old being wheeled into surgery, how helpless she felt, how traumatized she feared he would be. I listened and my heart hurt, too, because I knew how inadequate I was, and that there must be a better way to listen than I know, and that if I only knew how I might be able to help her. But I didn't know those things, so I just listened, and heard how much she loved him, and I held her hand.

I do not know if prayer is useful, but I do know that it is something I can do.