Random Day Stuff

It was a particularly beautiful day in Boston and vicinity today. This was the skyline view from around 7:30 this morning (I think it was 7:30. I don't really remember as I got about two-and-a-half hours of sleep last night. Some things are foggy today) I don't know if it comes through in the photo but I found the pink morning mist over the city a bit romantically sci-fi. I love that kind of thing. 

Pete and Nate have been touring as members of the band, Van Hayride, the countrified Van Halen cover band. They've been opening for the band, Puss N Boots. If either band comes to your town I highly recommend seeing them. 

Pete, Nate, and the incredible Daria Grace

Rod (far left, sorry, Rod, I don't know your last name) Pete, the obviously amazing Jack Grace, Daria (far right)

The women of Puss N Boots are forces of nature. They have a seriously entertaining, POWERFUL thing going. Plus they're really irreverent and funny. I cannot tell you how much I wish I could sing like any of them. In fact I was too stunned by their awesomeness to remember to take a picture of them. 

I got to hang around with everyone backstage last night after the show for a while. I ended up not going to bed until 3 AM. Rock 'n' roll. What are you going to do? 

The best thing was how really lovely all the people were. Everyone was so kind and inclusive. It was a family atmosphere, lots of love and fun in the room. Norah Jones is my new favorite famous person. (Did I have a designated old favorite famous person?) Sasha gave me a delicious cookie. Most importantly everyone was really nice to my boys, Pete and Nate, and I love it when people are good to the folks I love. I also picked up a great tip for dealing with a certain indelicate process (okay, farting - without naming names) that I'm definitely going to use later. Very worth the sleep deficit. 

In other news I signed up to take a yoga class tomorrow morning at the (new to me) local yoga studio in Union Square. I got a two-week unlimited trial pass too. I'm irrationally excited about this. I have never signed up for a yoga class on my own steam before. These days I'm all about trying new things. Billions of people go to yoga classes every day. It's not a big deal. I'm acting like it's some big adventure. Well you never know where something's going to lead...

Spring Night

Hey me, remember this: the first night in spring in Vermont when the frogs woke up that day and the Peepers are peeping and you're hanging out of the bathroom window looking at the fuzzy full moon behind some light clouds and feeling the warm spring breeze blow.

In Honor

In honor of our friend who passed today, I post (again?) the recipe I use for for Cincinnati Chili, to which he introduced us (my comments in parenthesis) I'll likely be cooking up a big batch tomorrow.

Cincinnati Empress Chili

For the chili:

2 lbs. ground beef 

1 qt.  water  (4 cups)

1  & 1/2 t. allspice

1 garlic clove (I used more of course)

2 bay leaves

2 diced onions

dash worcestershire

1  can (6oz) tomato paste

1 T. salt

1/2 t. cayenne

1 & 1/2 t.  black pepper

3 T. chili powder (though I used less than 1T because I ran out and it still came out well)

1 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. cumin

1 T. vinegar

spaghetti - make a pretty fair amount 

Toppings:

orange cheddar cheese grated

kidney beans

chopped onions

oyster crackers

Tabasco sauce

Put the water in a large pot or hotpot.  Crumble meat into the water (yes, raw)  and add all the other chili ingredients.  Bring to a boil then simmer at least one hour and for as long as three hours.  Remove garlic and bay leaves.  (or leave in the garlic and mash it if you’re me)  Serve over spaghetti with your choice of toppings.

Serves six or so

Godspeed, dear friend! We'll never forget you!

Marathon-y

My big plans for today were to go downtown and get myself a new fleece from the Patagonia store and to get new pants to wear to work. I've been running enough that my old pants are all too big. Or else their seats are worn out and you can see light through them when you try to put them on. Classy.

HOWEVER, the Red Sox won the World Series (Go Sox!) and today is the big parade. All over town.

I'm keeping track of public transportation via Twitter and things are a mess. It actually sounds worse than the usual marathon crowd. They're closing T stations (and re-opening them) to control crowds. I'm feeling a bit thwarted. I wanted to get an early start and I was foiled. Oh well.

With uncanny luck, I'm supposed to meet Lisa downtown, just like we tend to do on Patriots Day. We're meeting at 1:00 so hopefully things will have wound down by then. Come to think of it, maybe I should leave now so I'm sure to be there on time.

The weather is fantastic for this kind of thing though. Sixty-ish degrees and sunny, not too windy. A lot of people I know are down by the parade route soaking in the jubilation. I'm not feeling jubilant I'm afraid.

Actually, this morning I checked in with my friend - I don't know what to call it! Our friend whose husband (who is also our friend) is dying. What do you call that? Dying Friend Family? Pool of Pain and Misery? Ouchland? @#$%$&*-ville? (And of course it's not all bad - there are levels of beauty and grace and love to it too but it still HURTS LIKE @$^#%*& and is really, really hard - I mean I don't want to oversimplify) She asked me what I was doing today and everything I could think of to say felt so stupid and trivial and like I should just go over there and take her kid out to play.

So I don't know. I guess I'll just go outside and see where the day takes me. I can get a fleece tomorrow if I need to. I could just order one online if it comes to that. Sigh.

Good luck to you today, however your day goes.

I'm At It Again

I can blog from the subway with this thing (phone)! While I'm commuting to work! So exciting - because I've got bees in my bonnet.

Do you ever feel like you're living in a ghost world? Everything around you has already changed irrevocably but it's still there. Nothing looks outwardly different but everything you live with, everything you're walking around is hollow or just a shadow. It's only a matter of time before all of it disappears.

If I had time to meditate today it would probably be one of those sessions where I'd just cry for half an hour. It's not that everything is so terrible - some things are great (like my meatloaf) Life is just so damned confusing.

Hearts kind of suck. They make you love stuff. People, creatures, situations, even objects. You have no control. You want things that are bad for you - AND good for you AT THE SAME TIME. How can you tell which? It doesn't matter which  because you can't have them anyway. Or you can and then it's a big mess. You love, then you lose! Then your stupid heart stops working altogether and you die! Who invented this crazy system? Absurd!

So many things going on all the time. Love, loss, joy, heartbreak, beauty, horror, ALL AT ONCE!

It's enough to make a gal just want to sit on the sofa, knit, and watch alternating episodes of "Miss Marple" and "The X-Files" while eating bon-bons and drinking single malt scotch for a month. 

Thank heaven I have this chocolate bar at my desk. 

That might calm me down. It's a known fact that chocolate causes a chemical reaction in the human brain that creates a direct connection to the stable "Astral Chocolate Plane" of The Universe. Known. Fact. 

Gotta go do stuff now. Chase papers around, find numbers 'n' stuff.

Persevere

I guess this is what I'm trying to do. I did "favorite" this tweet after I re-tweeted it. Guess I'll go Facebook it now.

Life Is Short And I Don't Know How To Do It

If the post below seems a bit lackluster it's because my heart wasn't really in it. It was the post I'd planned to write on Sunday but I ran out of time. I don't really have time to write this post now. I just got off of work, I'm still at my desk and I'm expected somewhere else in forty-five minutes. That said, I gotta do what I gotta do.

We have a dear friend who is unlikely to be with us for much longer. This is what's really on my mind today.

Did I write yet that I've realized that you don't like your friends, you love them? Probably. I've been thinking about it a lot lately. It's very difficult knowing that this vibrant person with such a unique mind, so much talent, so much love and appreciation for life will be leaving us. We won't have him around to inspire us, to chew the fat with, to enjoy a great meal with. We won't have the distinct pleasure of his company.

There have been times in my life where I've felt as if everything I love was going away. Of course for me it wasn't true. My friend is really being taken away from EVERYTHING he loves. He doesn't want to go. It's so hard to see him fight with this. I can't make him feel better. Pete can't make him feel better. His beloved wife can't make him feel better.

God, it hurts so much.

And it makes me want to LIVE. It makes me want to throw caution to the wind and just GO. Buy shoes I can't afford, throw a HELL of a Halloween party, tell all my friends how much I love them, smooch people I shouldn't (decorum be damned!) plan a trip to Hawaii, quit my job and drive across country, eat A LOT of chocolate, run outside in the wind, swim in the ocean. It makes me want to be extravagant.

I'm usually prudent by nature and very careful of the needs and wishes of others. These tendencies calm me down, cool me off. I would like to be extravagant but I'm not sure I'd dare in the long run. People can appreciate lavishness from time to time but full-on extravagance is overwhelming, bunch of Yankees that most of us are around here. The truth is, too, that as an introvert I'm not sure I could muster the energy for constant extravagance.

I wonder if there's a way to be extravagant in spurts? Then run away to my secret cave when the repercussions hit? Then, energy restored by solitude, jump out and scare the pants off of everyone with more effusiveness. Sounds psycho. Sounds counter-productive. 

All of those things seem pretty stupid and trivial too. (I don't think Pete would be on board with the smooching part either) What is trivial though? I don't know. What's important? Maybe those stupid little things, the things that are fun and that we enjoy are necessary components of a great life and not trivial in the least?

I want to live without reins. I bet I won't though. I want to celebrate life. I might buy the shoes and I'll certainly try to throw a HELL of a Halloween party.

Another thing I've been thinking about, and I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned it here (possibly around this time last year) is that you get to keep the love. When our friend is gone we'll still have his love for us and our love for him. That is comforting to me. I hope it's the same for him, wherever he ends up. Dear friend.

I Get To Run

One reason I love running is that it's a vote for me.  When I run it feels like a new start each time. It feels like anything in my life is possible.

I am looking so hard for a new path. There has been so much change in my life over the last few years. Most of it has felt like hard pruning. Only one or two things have felt like water or sunshine or fertilizer. I wonder if I've been moved to a different location in the garden and I just haven't noticed yet?

For you non-gardeners, before you move a plant you cut it back drastically. You have to do that because when you dig it up you will inevitably chop off a lot of the root system. If you don't cut a significant portion of the top off the remaining roots can't sustain the plant and it will fail. Once the root system re-establishes itself the green stuff grows back.

So maybe I've had my tops cut off and my roots disturbed and I can't tell where I am yet.

I've been trying a lot of new things. I've been looking for the next direction. I feel like I'm being blown all over the place and the next direction is, well, all over the place. Things start then stop. Things look good then they just die out. Something will work for a bit but I know it's temporary and I'll have to figure out something else soon. Some things are just obviously wrong. I get discouraged sometimes. I'll get it eventually - I think - but it seems to be taking so long and I seem to get so much wrong.

Then I get to go running. I start over. I run my head into a pulp and wake my body the hell up. My lungs pump, my blood flows, I sweat, my nose runs (TMI!) My bones, tissues, ligaments get a good pounding on my terms. Life flows through me again. I'm new.

I can let go of the mistakes and miss-steps. I've cleared out the debris and can see a way to keep trying to move forward. I can find a way past the things that fell and blocked my path - at least the next immediate step, even if it doesn't turn out to be a good, long stretch of road.

Roads, paths, prunings, wind. It's all very confusing. What is the analogy here? Life isn't coherent so why should I have to be? Here's the analogy: complete tumult. And then I get to run.

Boston Area Winter Plus A Note From Vermont

I drove out to Wellesley today to go to my sister-in-law's Stella and Dot open house. While driving on Route 2 I was amazed by how ashy everything looks on a day in January when it's supposed to snow but it hasn't started to yet.

When I left Wellesley I took the Mass Pike from 128 to Prudential Center. As I drove under the city I looked at the gritty, blackened, concrete ceiling above me and thought "By God I love this filthy town." I really do. It's filthy and freezing and I really love living here.

Meanwhile, Pete is in Vermont, warm and cozy in his studio, looking out the window at an owl hunting:

Photo by Pete.

Adios, Literally

One of the really hard things that happened recently (a little over a month ago) was that we had to say goodbye to Fay. My girl. I miss her so much.

The week after her fourteenth birthday she developed a problem with her lungs that wouldn't respond to treatment. She felt fine if she was in an oxygen crate at the hospital but she could only breathe for about a minute and a half if she was removed from the crate. She wasn't going to get better.

She gave me thirteen years and nine months of joy. She lifted my heart every time I interacted with her. Every difficult thing I ever did for her was so worth it.

Of course having a pet counts as saying yes to love. Some people say that your pet doesn't really love you, that they're ingratiating themselves to you so you'll give them food and shelter. I don't know if that's true. It doesn't matter if it is. The opportunity to feel and give love is so important, whether or not your love is returned. The love you give is the love you get to keep. 

Love is more than worth its cost in pain.

Inspi-stinkin-ration

I hate inspirational posters that boss me the hell around. Do this, do that... "Enjoy life to the fullest!" "Believe in your dreams!" "Breathe!" "Say yes to love!" (oh, wait...) So annoying.

But this one is good:

It's the Holstee manifesto and you can get a copy for yourself here.

Okay, at times it's a little much for me. I get overwhelmed by all that advice. I'm never going to just walk up to someone and demand to know their passion. Also, the "All emotions are beautiful" lettering should be bigger for more impact. Most people don't understand that all emotions are beautiful - or why. 

Whatever my quibbles may be, this poster makes a lot of good points. But I'm on a love jag right now so I'm just going to focus on that part.

It took me forever to realize that "do what you love" really means do everything you love as much as you can. It's a good idea to fill as many moments as possible with as much of the stuff you love as possible.

Eat the food you love, wear the shoes you love, be with the people you love, surround yourself with the colors you love, listen to the music you love, go to the places you love, do the things you love to do no matter what their value seems to be. Don't be ashamed if the things you love seem stupid. You love them. If they bring you joy then that's enough and screw what anybody else thinks. 

It seems to me that this is how you build a life that has value for you. So that's what I'm going to do.